Nerd News in Brief

After seven years of bitching Capcom has finally agreed to grace fans with another Bionic Commando sequel. Unfortunately, said sequel is slated for release on the PC, PS3, and 360. This means, for those of you watching in black and white, that the new title will surely forgo its 2-D platforming roots in favor of a 3-D makeover.

Shit.

If I learned anything from Konami, it’s that when one of my favorite old school titles makes the jump to the third dimension the gameplay inevitably suffers.

I have a list of demands, Capcom, and I’m gonna break ‘em down for you:

1) Yes, please, for the love of God, do make a new Bionic Commando.
2) Keep it 2-D. As Ninja Five-O demonstrated, the grappling hook effect is still a solid play mechanic in traditional platformers.
3) Fuck the next-gen consoles: what you want to do is make this title for the Nintendo DS. Everybody owns one and it’s the perfect vehicle for old school remakes.
4) Give us an unlockable version of the original title on the same cart, and dump the North American censorship; we all know they’re Nazis.

Wait, I should've asked for a bag of money too, right?! Damnit!

• A geek manifesto: My pal Matt from Headphone Sacrament wrote up his own response to last month’s Something Awful anti-nerdcore sentiment. He shared it with Church and me, and we were summarily impressed. After letting it simmer for a bit, last week he opted to post it on his blog. It’s a great piece, and I highly recommend you check it out.
• The Fantastic Dr. Richards: LogicOne reports that his new album is finally nearing completion. He even went so far as to post a tentative track list over on the Rhyme Torrents forums. Most interesting is his line-up of collaborators, which include confirmed heavy hitters ZeaLouS1 and Super Dragon X and projected tracks with Fanatical, Betty Rebel, and Benjamin Bear. And for those of you who feared that Logic had forgotten his roots, “Comic Shop Rock 2.0” is among the songs featured.
• Happy Nerdoween: In other Rhyme Torrents news, today is the drop date of RT’s Halloween 2.0. Will it make it in before the buzzer? A brother can dream!
• Halloween just became less scary: Church shot me a link to this piece from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry that debunks all my favorite Hollywood supernatural pseudoscience. I am both amazed and disappointed. Crushingly.
• On again, off again: Yesterday mc chris announced that he was planning to drop the Colorado Springs date from his current tour due to some press issues. (There were some other concerns broached in the same blog entry, but that's neither here nor there.) Thankfully, however, he decided, after an overwhelming fan response, to keep the date intact.
• A friend in need: T.Y.T., an artist whose Nerdy South mixtape contribution was played on a recent edition of RFH, is in need of a little financial assistance. More specifically, his father is in need of a liver transplant as the result of hemochromatosis-related cirrhosis. Since his condition is genetic (and not the result of a cause such as alcoholism) he’s been bumped up the organ recipient list. But this process still ain’t cheap, and the family is in desperate need of money to pay for the procedure. The guys from The Awful Show have set up a campaign to raise the needed $10,000, so please consider contributing.
• Christmas with Harry: Wrock fans can now pre-order The Leaky Cauldron’s 2007 charity fundraiser CD Jingle Spells: Leaky’s Rocking Christmas. The disk features all-new, exclusive tracks from 14 different bands, and, of course, all the money raised goes to Book Aid International. Thanks, as always, go to Matt for keeping me in the loop on all things Wrock!
• It’ll never be better than mine!: I just wanted to remind interested parties about the CAGcast them song contest going on over at Cheap Ass Gamer. I mentioned it last week, but I figured that with $100 and some repeat play on a wildly popular podcast at stake it bore repeating.
• Boning the undead: After yesterday’s release of RFH 32, Church and Matt simultaneously pointed me toward this info on proposed CBS series Babylon Fields. I had heard whisperings about the show, but nothing solid save that it failed to make the lineup. Now I understand why; the horny zombies in a crime drama thing has been done to death! ;)
• Zombies, zombies, and more zombies: And that’s not the only proposed zombie series in the works. Behold the viral marketing monster that is Alive. It’s kind of like The Blair Witch Project, only with less snot and a better monster payoff. Plus, it’s got a purported Star Trek link, so as to compound its nerdy goodness.