Author: Zeke
Pardon Our Dust
What’s up party people. Zeke here, letting you all know that aniRAGE.com is under construction! You may have already noticed the shiny new theme. On top of that, I’ve been working with Kayla to work on a fancy pants new gallery! But in order to do that, we have to download all the old pictures (made some edits and cut some of the chaff) before putting up the new stuff.
So for the time being, our old pics are in Pics, and the gallery is under Gallery!
And fret not, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes that we hope to talk about soon! So stay tuned here to anirage.com and our Facebook page!
-Zeke
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Gaming
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Gaming
2013 Console/PC Game of the Year – Bioshock Infinite
2013 Mobile Game of the Year – Flow
2013 Handheld of the Year – Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Music
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Music
2013 Song of the Year – Let It Go (Frozen Soundtrack)
2013 Album of the Year – Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Movies and Television
Zeke’s 2013 Year in Review – Movies and Television
2013 Movie of the Year – Frozen
2013 TV Series of the Year – Game of Thrones
2013 Episode of the Year – Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor
Holiday News & Notes!
It’s almost time for Thanksgiving! And you know what that means…
Yes, that means it’s still not time for Christmas decorations to go up. So stop it. Bad.
But more than that, it means that Holiday Matsuri is right around the corner!
aniRAGE is proud to once again be returning to Orlando for this great convention, and we’re once again pulling out all the stops! What are we bringing this year?
First off, there’s our classic Whose Line is it aniRAGE? Show! We’ll be bringing some great new games and old classics! And of course our Whose Line is it aniRAGE? Uncensored! 18+ show will be returning as well! We can’t wait to see what you guys makes us do.
Another classic aniRAGE show returns, this time with a holiday theme! That’s right, Anime XD makes it’s return to Holiday Matsuri! Kerby has cooked up some great holiday themed clips for us. And to join in on the fun, Dashi has been cranking out his own Christmas version of What the Japan? We’re calling it What the Christmas? and it’s sure to be a great time.
At the first Holiday Matsuri in 2011, we debuted aniRAGE Remembers: Holiday Specials! We sat around and reminisced about our favorite specials from the days of yore. Last year we stepped it up a notch, and pit your favorite specials head to head in the ultimate competition to crown the Greatest Holiday Special Ever. The winner: How The Grinch Stole Christmas narrowly beat out the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and Nightmare Before Christmas. It even beat out lauded favorite Die Hard!
This year we are taking it to the next level. It’s one thing to let the bigwigs up in Hollywood make a great holiday movie or special, it’s another thing to do exactly what they can’t do: make it our own! Of course, over the course of one panel we can’t film, edit, and direct a full special, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take your suggestions and spin together the plot of our own! So come join us as we try to draft together the greatest holiday story ever!
And speaking of holiday stories, how could anybody forget the classic holiday tale starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad: Jingle All The Way? Seriously, how can you forget that? We’ve been trying to for years. This year at Holiday Matsuri, join us as we get together to laugh along with (but mostly at) this charming tale of Christmas Greed. Or whatever the moral was supposed to be. Maybe we’ll actually figure it out?
All this and more is waiting for you December 13, 14, & 15 at the Embassy Suites in Orlando! Check out HolidayMatsuri.com for more information!
And as always, stay tuned right here at aniRAGE.com!
-Zeke
Zeke’s Top 5: Smash Bros. Characters
Zeke’s Top 5 – Smash Bros Characters!
At E3 last week, we were greeted with the news of a brand new Smash Bros. game coming out for both the WiiU and the 3DS in 2014. Gamers all over the world are excited for this latest edition of the Nintendo character fighting game. Us here at aniRAGE have fond memories of huddling around the 64, then GameCube, and finally the Wii in order to yell, scream, and hate one another as we played through stage after stage. So to celebrate the occasion, I decided to take a walk down memory lane and recall some of my favorite characters to play as through the years!
The eternal second-tier Mario Bros is first-tier in my heart. Luigi was so strange. He floated through the air, and his moves never went very far. But if you in close, Luigi packed a mighty punch. His drop kick, jab, and smash attacks were all very powerful. He may not hit often, but when he does he hits very hard. And let’s not forget the Super Luigi Uppercut. The sound it makes when it connects still rings true in my ears. While he may not be the first in everyone’s eyes, he’s certainly the character I love to pick up and SMASH the competition with.
Now, I have to be specific here. It’s not just any Meta Knight that gets my heart all aflutter. It’s the Green alternate outfit. Why you ask? Because to me, he looks like Dr. Doom. And thus, whenever I smash someone off screen, I can yell out “KNEEL BEFORE DOOM!” and feel that much better about myself. I mean, who wouldn’t love to just smash face with Dr. Doom all day long? While Meta Knight is certainly not my best character, as I still haven’t gotten all the tricks of the trade down, I am currently undefeated whenever I pick the Dr. Doom colors. That being said, you probably could still kick my butt if you ever challeneged me. But even if you did, I’d have a hell of a lot of fun doing it. Because nobody beats Dr. Doom. I just let you win!
The Doctor…is in! And no, this has absolutely nothing to do with my obsession with Doctor Who. I swear! I loved Dr. Mario before he was ever IN Smash Bros, and when he was a character in Melee I played him constantly. I think what makes him my most favorite is the fact that he wasn’t in Brawl, and thus my time with him was limited to Melee. We always want what we can’t have, as they say. Dr. Mario was a little slower than regular Mario, and didn’t have quite the distance with his attacks. But he packed a powerful punch. Plus spamming pills is one of the funnest things you can do in the game. The noise it makes…THE NOISE! Dr. Mario definitely needs to make a come back in Super Smash Bros for WiiU and 3DS. Hell, I’d even pay for a DLC that included him…and that’s not something I say very often! BRING BACK DR. MARIO, NINTENDO! OR ELSE!
They Voiced What??? Michelle Ruff
They Voiced What??? Michelle Ruff
aniRAGE Presents: What The Japan? – Holiday Matsuri 2012
At Holiday Matsuri 2012, we did our first ever presentation of Dashi’s own, What The Japan? Well, this awesome guy went and uploaded a good portion of it to youtube, so definitely check it out if you missed it!
Zeke Counts Down The Pokemon Generations
Zeke Counts Down The Pokemon Generations
With the news of the latest generation of Pokemon games being set to release this year, Pokemon X & Y, this would be a great time to look back at the last 5 generations and rank them from my least favorite to most favorite. This is clearly a very opinionated and controversial topic, so I encourage a discussion of why you agree with me in your favorites, or why you are totally wrong in disagreeing when I snub your favorite!
A few caveats before I begin: I’m going to consider all 3 games of a generation as one unit: if there were issues in the first two games that was “solved” in a subsequent “third game” release, I’ll look past them (though I’ll try to still reference it). I’ll also look at remakes as part of their original generation, so FireRed and LeafGreen will be part of Gen 1, while HeartGold and SoulSilver will be lumped in with Gen 2, as opposed to 3 and 4, respectively.
With that out of the way, let’s begin!
Ah, the generation that started it all. This generation is the simplest, as it was the first, but it also has a charm in it’s simplicity. I know a lot of people look back at some of it’s battle mechanics as broken or unfair, but to me, with how casually me and my friends battled, it felt right to us. Most of my favorite Pokemon come from this generation, and I still have my Red and Blue cartridges at easy access for a bout of nostalgia. Yellow was an awesome variation too, with the ability to start off with Pikachu, and gain every starter (something no other generation has repeated, for whatever reason), but sadly I never owned it myself, but I often played it with friends. Generation 1 will go down in history as the games that started the craze, and the nostalgia will help maintain it’s greatness.
FireRed and LeafGreen were an answer to the inability for Generation 1 and 2 games to be traded to the GBA games. They are polished, improved versions of the original games, and they are just as fun as the firsts. I loved the extra areas they added onto the game, with the 1, 2, and 3 islands giving access to pokemon never available in Generations 1, as well as giving some fresh content to a game that was eight years old. As great as the games art, the classic nostalgia of the original Red and Blue make the a little bit better, but that doesn’t take away from how excellent these two remakes are.
Released two years after the originals, Gold and Silver were sequels to the original Red and Blue. Unlike subsequent games in the series, Generation 2 were direct followups to the prior games, with connected story lines, and the yet-to-be-duplicated ability to travel to the prior region in addition to it’s home region. With 100 new Pokemon, a handful of new Legendaries, and a gripping story line, Pokemon Gold and Silver took everything Red and Blue did and improved upon it. The characters just seemed a bit “cooler” too. Crystal added the additional Color functionality of the new Gameboy Color, as well as added the first ever Female playable character. The increased interaction with the Unown gave a new angle to explore, and made the games even more of a “Gotta Catch Um All!” situation.
HeartGold and SoulSilver were hot on the players minds ever since FireRed and LeafGreen. I previously said that the nostalgia level of Red and Blue made them seem more fun, or at least “better” than their remakes, but HeartGold and SoulSilver are without a doubt my favorite games of the entire series. They took all the greatness of the originals, and added some awesome new features. The story line was just as compelling, the characters were improved, and the Pokemon, Gyms, and Elite Four were all given added toughness and repeat challenges, which just made you want to play more and more. Generation 2 includes my favorite games of the series, but even without that, is by far my favorite generation!