Nintendo’s library contains a wealth of classics.

Download: Released 2016.05.02

With Nintendo’s refusal to show the NX at E3 2016 and their delay of the new Zelda title until 2017, and with PSN itself now more profitable than Nintendo’s entire business operation, SiliconNooB and Lusipurr once again despair for the fate of the Big N.

Final Destination — the final destination for our tournament.

The summer has arrived–and, with it, the annual Lusipurr.com Donation Drive!

Flash back to the summer of 2009: Lusipurr.com launches the first site-wide, participatory feature, a playthrough of Final Fantasy IX. Now, flash forward to the summer of 2016: Lusipurr.com launches another site-wide feature, this time for a Smash Bros. Tournament. Now flash back again to the Summer of 2011: Lusipurr.com launches a Summer Fundraiser drive. Now flash forward again to the summer of 2016 as Lusipurr.com refines the Summer Fundraiser once again in an attempt to give readers even more participation than ever before (as evaluated on a sliding, relative-scale evaluative matrix). For the present, hold temporal position as the preceding series of flash backs and flash forwards momentarily pauses.

Overview: Time to flash forward to the second paragraph of this featured post: Lusipurr.com begins an explanation of the fundraiser rules, terms, and conditions for the benefit of would-be participants. At the beginning of June, a Smash Bros. for Wii U Tournament will be held without any human players. Instead, the tournament will use Amiibo figure players, fully levelled but without customisation. Each Amiibo will represent a donation in the Summer Fundraiser. All events will be broadcast live on Twitch, with commentary from Lusipurr and other staff members as available. Flash forward to a list of prizes.

Now you have the chance to be physically represented by a plastic trinket!

Prizes
First Place: A Lusipurr-completed playthrough and featured review (at least 1,000 words) of the selected game (exclusions apply as below).
Second and Third Place: A Lusipurr weekly livestream episode of at least one hour playing the selected game (handheld games excluded), with associated commentary. Other staff members may be included to commentate as available.
Fourth Place: A hardcover copy of The Once and Future King signed by Lusipurr, and inscribed with a personalised message for the winner.
All Participants: Entry into the end-of-the-year drawing to win a new game on Amazon or Steam valued at up to $60 US.
Shipping Note: Physical prizes require the provision of a mailing address.

How to Participate
1. Each $5 donated will allow for the selection of an Amiibo from the display below. Unclaimed Amiibos are transparent in the image. The image is updated daily.
2. Entrants will select the available Amiibo of their choice, and will post their selection in the comments thread below. Once an Amiibo has been claimed, it may not be claimed by any other entrant. (Note that if the Cloud, Bayonetta, and Corrin Amiibos are not available in early June, max-level CPU players will be used instead).
3. Entrants will also select a game of their choice, subject to the exclusions below. Once a game has been selected, it may not be selected again for any other entry.
4. Instead of participating in the tournament directly, entrants may make a $5 donation to select one of the eighteen, non-final stages that will be used in the tournament, excluding the final destination stage. The Final Destination stage may not be selected. Once a stage is selected it may not be selected again for any other entry. Entrants may choose whether to have items on (default frequency/loadout) or items off on their chosen stage, but no other customisation is permitted. Entrants may also designate the specific non-Final round that will utilise their chosen stage. Note that not all stages are available for 8-player battles: click here for a complete list of stages.
5. At the end of the donation drive, any unselected stages will be chosen randomly from those available with default item frequency and loadout. The final round will be played on Final Destination with no items.
6. Donations will be accepted until midnight (US Eastern), 1 June, 2016. A tournament bracket will be created through random draws and posted online, with a daily broadcast schedule at a variety of times.
7. Multiple entries are permitted. Staff members may participate as well.

The tournament format has been based upon competitive Smash Bros. Tournaments, with a few default-oriented modifications.

Tournament Format
• Battles will be set to three stock with a fifteen minute timer (used to enforce a result).
• In the event of a tie, the winner will be determined by coin toss.
• In the qualifying and knock-out rounds, eight characters compete in a single battle with the top four characters proceeding.
• In the quarter-final and semi-final rounds, four characters compete in a single battle with the top two characters proceeding.
• For non-Final rounds, stages and item activation can be selected by donators, as given above. In cases where no stage was designated by a donator, the stage will be chosen randomly from those available, and played with default item loadout and frequency.
• The Final round takes place between four characters in a single battle, competing for first through fourth place.
• The Final round will be played on Final Destination with no items.

Game Selection
Platforms: Available for play on Nintendo consoles or handhelds (excluding Virtual Boy), Sony consoles or handhelds, Sega Genesis, or Steam for Mac OS X.
Region: Released in the North America region in English.
Publisher: Legitimately published full releases: no self-published, pre-release, knock-off, unofficial, browser, or otherwise incomplete titles.
Availability: In circumstances where availability is a problem (due to scarcity, cost, or compatibility), entrants will be offered the chance to select an alternative game or receive a refund.
Exclusions: No MMOs, no games requiring a subscription or monetary transactions, and no non-game ‘entertainment software’ (i.e. there must be valid victory/defeat conditions, rules, possibility of failure, etc.). Games with an online component may be rejected at Lusipurr’s discretion. In addition, several games have already received a full LusiReview and are excluded from selection: Deadly Towers, Eternal Sonata, Fable, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Milon’s Secret Castle, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Available Characters Remaining: 38

Characters and Games Selected: 20/58
Bayonetta: Tactics Ogre (Sebastian)
Cloud: Final Fantasy VII (Sebastian)
Corrin: Legend of Dragoon (Tim P.)
Fox: Streets of Rage (Corrine)
Ganondorf: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Sebastian)
Greninja: Persona 4 (Tim P.)
Kirby: Trauma Center: New Blood (Deb)
Link: The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (Dancing Matt)
Lucina: Secret of Mana (Dancing Matt)
Luigi: Banjo-Kazooie (Corrine)
Mario: Suikoden (Imitanis)
Mega Man: Mega Man 2 (Dancing Matt)
Olimar: Mario Party (Corrine)
Peach: Hey You, Pikachu! (Corrine)
Pikachu: Pokemon Yellow (Imitanis)
Pit: The Secret of Monkey Island, Classic (Dancing Matt)
Ryu: Earthbound (Imitanis)
Samus: Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (Corrine)
Shulk: Suikoden II (Cari)
Sonic: Final Fantasy VIII (Imitanis)

Stages Selected: 0/18
None

[Click to view the Tournament Bracket]

Good luck!

Download: Released 2016.04.25

Imitanis joins the podcast panel once again in search of Diablo III, SiliconNooB brings forth the bad–and the good–news about Final Fantasy XV, and Lusipurr wrestles with the schizophrenic controls of StarFox Zilch.

Lancelot was at the forefront of the fight against Fort Mayne.

Download: Released 2016.04.18

As Lancelot carries Arthur’s fight against Fort Mayne to every corner of Old England, Lusipurr and SiliconNooB wish that they had access to the Gramarye of those legendary days.

Look, mom! In the game world, there are no interfering parents to stop me killing myself!

Download: Released 2016.04.11

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB consider Nintendo’s changing audience demographics and unchanging business attitude, the decision to make Final Fantasy XV the first car-boot-based JRPG in history, and the shocking arrogance of the Final Fantasy VII Remake devs.

Now YOU TOO can look grimly emo and depressed.

Download: Released 2016.04.04

With the advent of Nomura’s long-awaited desire (turning Final Fantasy from a video game franchise into a fashion line), and Nintendo’s release of Miitomo (a content-free microtransaction-fuelled puerility zone), Lusipurr deploys scorn in great abundance.

We choose… THE FALLEN SUN.

Greetings, mortals. Lusipurr.com is proud to announce the immediate rehiring of disgraced former columnist “The Fallen Sun, Esquire.”

The Fallen Sun is set to immediately return for a weekly Thursday editorial slot known as “Social Justice and You: A Primer in 136 Parts”, in addition to a weekly column in which he will discuss strategies for implementing Marxist social theory and practice into gaming.

“We are pleased to announce Mr. Fallen Sun’s return,” said site boss Lusipurr. “His absence has been marked by a period where there was insufficient ‘tut-tutting’ at people for enjoying immoral and degenerate entertainment, and certainly not enough literary jokes.”

“This cannot come at a better time,” Mr. Fallen Sun said, reached at his desert lair where he develops games in which you are only allowed to shoot white people, such as last year’s seminal Everyone’s Gone to the New Black Panther Party Rally, which Polygon scored as a 12/10 and praised as the most significant advance in gaming since V.R. was first announced in like 2009 (or something? Who knows? Thinking about the past is a microaggression). The Fallen Sun weighed in on the importance of his addressing present gaming culture by citing the state of the industry:

“I mean, have you seen the state of gaming lately? Just the other day, I was sitting in the Frankfurt School lobby, discussing Marcuse and Adorno with Anita Sarkeesian over a glass of white male tears, and it came to my attention that they just let anyone play games, even if they plan to vote for Donald Trump! The nerve of some people. As Karl Marx wrote in his finest work, The Critique of Pure Capital, voting for protofascist Oompa-Loompas is the first step down a dark path to a future in which all government buildings will be made of the tackiest gold and marble. You’ve heard of Brutalist architecture favored by European fascists? Wait until you see Drumpfist architecture. Everything is ‘yooge’ and ‘classy.’ Those aren’t even real adjectives.”

Mr. Fallen Sun intends to attach a PowerPoint presentation to every podcast, with signs intended to generate the maximum amount of white guilt:

“As a ‘social justice warrior,’ I know that there’s nothing more satisfying than saying moderately barbed things about white people online, and without a well-coordinated slideshow, I am concerned that there may be some white men who fall through the cracks and are not made to feel ashamed of who they are on any given day; and, failing to meet those social justice quotas is how you get a really bad seat at the next meeting. Last week, I was stuck next to some dry academic who thought that Judith Butler was outmoded and there was more vital work being done in feminist philosophy! I hit him with a copy of Dworkin’s Woman Hating–he eventually submitted and agreed to read Butler’s Gender Trouble until he finds enlightenment. I hope that through my PowerPoint, we can all come to understand that complex understandings of history, sociology, philosophy, and social theory are things of the past, and reducing our ‘enemies’ to convenient strawmen will poison discourse and foreclose any mutual understanding or respect. It’s time to take back the memes of production!”

The Fallen Sun, pictured shutting down the notoriously patriarchal “IO Club” in Englandland.

When asked whether he meant the “means of production,” as standard Marxist-Leninist theory suggests, Mr. Fallen Sun immediately took to his blog (deathtoeverysinglegamer.tubmlr.com), where his six followers were all quite upset that the question was even posed. His followers proposed that Mr. Fallen Sun give a statement at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin next year–a proposal which was gleefully accepted. Former President Barack Obama will moderate the panel from his new home in Dubai, where he hopes to assist President Clinton II in identifying subversives to be brought to secret chambers below Harvard University for “re-education” in what some are calling the “American Lubyanka.”

At the present time, Lusipurr can not be reached for further comment, as he is maintaining his constant vigil around the home of ex-game-designer Peter Molyneux, just in case Mr. Molyneux should attempt to leave and attempt to return to game design, a future Lusipurr described only as “worse than the Nazis” and “the kind of thing you can only imagine after playing Sonic 2006.”

Those who wish to join The Fallen Sun as members of the Lusipurr.com staff are encouraged to complete the site employment application.

There is no linear correlation between money invested and game development success.

Download: Released 2016.03.28

With Nintendo at variance with Nikkei over whether the Wii U will cease production in 2016, SiliconNooB and Lusipurr weigh in on the fate of an industry heavy-weight, and on lessons that the game developers should learn about focus and circumspection.

Le Chevalier Mal Fet

Download: Released 2016.03.21

Because Australians have not yet invented the concept of time, the switch to Daylight Savings Time completely befuddles SiliconNooB, leaving Lusipurr in the lurch. Blitzmage quickly steps into the breach with a dizzying array of non-Cricket news.

Explore the wonders of Shropshire!

In Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, you play a disembodied, voiceless, featureless avatar who does not play darts, or climb fences, or drink beer. Instead, he wanders around listening in on other people’s non-linear conversations. The ‘game’ ends when you, as a player, die from boredom.

Another book comes to an end.

Download: Released 2016.03.14

LIONHEAD STUDIOS IS CLOSED. FABLE LEGENDS IS CANCELLED. ALL IS WELL.

METAPHOR AGAIN.

Download: Released 2016.03.07

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB expose all of the Project NX rumours in a podcast chock-full of literature and culture. Twilight Princess HD comes in for some criticism, and the announcement of SNES games on New 3DS causes some Australian discontent.

Red or Blue?

Download: Released 2016.02.29

The twentieth anniversary of Pokemon arrives, with Lusipurr and SiliconNooB choosing opposite sides of the issue: will it be Red or Blue as the superior option? Or will Blitzmage’s outside choice of Yellow prove Super Effective?

“Come on in, little boys and girls.”

Download: Released 2016.02.22

When Nintendo replaces the Fire Emblem: Fates script with the output from a meme generator, SiliconNooB demands that Treehouse be destroyed. Lusipurr, always more circumspect, suggests a political solution: the formation of a true Lusipurrean Empire.

Some amiibo are created more equal than others.

Download: Released 2016.02.15

When Nintendo makes significant portions of full-priced in-game content dependent upon access to exclusive special edition amiibo figurines, SiliconNooB boxes up his Wii U and Lusipurr breaks out the megaphone-o-ranting to lay bare Nintendo’s greed.

Update:
In the podcast we discussed entries in the summer fundraiser and I could not quite decide between $10 and $5 entries. We have figured out a way to do both. If the requested game is connected to the amiibo entrant purchased, the price will only be $5. If the game is not related to the amiibo purchased, the price will be $10.

Example:
Buy KIRBY and request UNLIMITED SAGA: $10
Buy KIRBY and request KIRBY’S ADVENTURE: $5

Stay tuned: Final, official rules and entry instructions are coming in May.

The glory that is Poke-Bup. Bup-emon. Whatever.

Download: Released 2016.02.08

After SiliconNooB forgets his evening tipple, sobreity rears its ugly head and renders him unfit for service. Bup bestirs himself long enough to ruin the podcast in SiliconNooB’s stead, despite Lusipurr’s best efforts to keep everyone focused on Pokemon.

Valkyria Chronicles is a fantastic game.

Download: Released 2016.02.01

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB try to discuss the Spring game selection, but end up talking about anime instead. Mighty No. 9 is delayed, and the history of the Saxons, Gaels, Picts, and Normans is detailed on the back of an England victory in South Africa!

The Wild Arms 20th anniverary is almost upon us.

Download: Released 2016.01.25

Whilst Merlin and Arthur discuss justice on the battlements, Lusipurr and SiliconNooB discuss underboob in the basement. South Africa rebounds in the Cricket, anime Star Trains are compared, and Final Fantasy XV gains the mechanics of Animal Crossing.

Queen Morgause, wife to King Lot of Orkney

Download: Released 2016.01.18

Dire portents reappear in the form of a crow with a stolen arrow in its beak, and strange happenings abound: Anime news dominates, England beat South Africa in South Africa, amiibos are weaponised against gamers, and Sony tries to copyright Let’s Plays.

King Pellinore, in a moment of lucidity.

Download: Released 2016.01.11

A sword, an anvil, and a stone feature prominently, as do board games, Cricket, virtual reality, and Star Trek, when SiliconNooB and Lusipurr put their feet up on the velvet ottoman of industry, and set about discussing the first developments of 2016.

The resemblance to Santa Claus is no coincidence!

Download: Released 2016.01.04

Steam fumbles the Christmas rush, the opposition crumbles in both(!) Boxing Day tests, SiliconNooB humbles his brother’s bumbled gift, and Lusipurr grumbles about irrational gamer consumerism in the first Lusipurr.com podcast of the year A.D. 2016.

Happy Christmas from Lusipurr and SiliconNooB!

Download: Produced 2015.12.27

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB put their feet up in front of the fire and open a bottle of excellent cognac as they deliver the site’s annual worst-of-the-year awards, with a twist: for the first time ever, they inject some positivity into the equation.

Happy Christmas from Lusipurr.com!

Download: Produced 2015.12.20

Having forgotten fans like Lusipurr and SiliconNooB, Square Enix is overcome by fear: will Persona 5 harm sales of Final Fantasy XV? Will people turn from the gilded baubles of CGI and hold-square-to-win gameplay? ‘Twould be a merry Christmas, indeed!

Two Divided by Zero Equals Zero

Download: Produced 2015.12.13

When SiliconNooB brings to the podcast dire news of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Lusipurr nearly explodes with rage. In his incandescent fury, he pledges to use the site to destroy the business of Square Enix if the Australian’s prophecies come to pass.

Midgar is an excellent metaphor for the Final Fantasy VII remake.

Download: Produced 2015.12.06

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB record a podcast which is suddenly interrupted not by fireworks but by the debut of a new Final Fantasy VII remake trailer, complete with the expected-and-deplored Kingdom Hearts-style battle system, prompting Lusipurrean fury.