The Hunter from Bloodborne is flanked by Liara from WildStar and Zasalamel from Soul Calibur IV.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I went to C2E2 and took photos! Part one was the twelve winners of the Costume Contest. Presented here are the other remarkable contestants whose efforts likewise deserved recognition for their skills, efforts, and imagination.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: photos from the fifth annual C2E2 convention in Chicago. In this installment: photos from this year’s Costume Contest!
This didn’t quite go as well as we’d hoped. We arrived in line at 6:30 p.m., an hour before start time, hoping to have seats slightly less terrible than our last GenCon experience. We were wrong, and unaware that VIP ticket holders received first dibs on seats. On the upside, the room had better lighting than GenCon’s contest normally provides, and it was equipped with a massive HD screen that gave the audience a much better view of each contestant.
On the downside, the contest started fifteen minutes late and the judges needed extensive time for deliberation after all finalists had been allowed on stage. On the side of compromise, the judges vetted all contestants first and apparently allowed only the best ones onstage — meaning the presentation was ostensibly shorter, but that we’d see fewer costumes than expected.
On the downside, deliberating ran until sometime after 9 p.m. We had a three-hour drive ahead of us and Sunday morning responsibilities we refused to shirk. The DJs who entertained the crowd to cover the judges’ deliberations weren’t enough to keep us in our seats. Consequently, we had to leave before they announced who won in each of the four categories. Thanks to the magic of social media I did find out who won the whole shebang:
Subject Delta from BioShock 2 won against some ridiculously fierce competition.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: photos from the fifth annual C2E2 convention in Chicago. In this installment: more photos from around the exhibit hall and other convention areas, but with fewer super-heroes than last time. If you recognize any of the unlabeled characters, pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top feel free to chime in so proper credit can be given. Thanks very much in advance!
One of my two favorites from this batch: Sharknado!
Andrew House, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, shows off his company’s amazing new baby.
Though the press conference began twenty minutes late by my watch, some of the news and notes were well worth the wait. The best announcement of the entire conference, as far as our household is concerned, was Square Enix’s assertion (with preview clip!) that the long-procrastinated Kingdom Hearts III is now in development, after years of stalling and inferior handheld offshoots. I’m hoping this is released long before I reach the age of arthritis attacks. The clock is ticking and the calendar is flipping.
Also generating intense enthusiasm here was a trailer for Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which has likewise been in limbo for years. Following it in the lengthy pipeline are the probably spectacular Final Fantasy XV, plus a retooling of FFXIV, which means less to me because the original FFXIV is one of only two main FF installments I never bothered to try.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
[T]he following photo collection, to be curated and presented here in three parts, was previously shared elsewhere online last year, two weeks before Midlife Crisis Crossover was born. For the sake of bringing my works under a single, unified creative banner, it’s my pleasure to present to you, the Viewers at Home, this memory parade of our second time at C2E2.
Part One featured movie-based costumes. Part Two was all about Marvel and DC Comics — “the Big Two”, as we comics fans know them. Here in the action-packed conclusion, it’s everyone else’s time to shine.
One such couple of lovable misfits: Pee-Wee and Globey!
In this day and age where moviegoers can wait until the home-video release before watching a movie multiple times, how often are we willing to devote extra time and money to encore presentations of a theatrical release? The case agreeing to my second showing of Wreck-It Ralph tonight consisted of two winning bullet points:
1. My son and I really, really liked it the first time we saw it. This is the first year for new Pixar and Disney Animated releases in which we liked the Disney film better.
2. We had free passes.
I had hoped to catch more details and Easter eggs this time around. Regretfully, I am old and the film’s background characters are spry. We managed to see a few items we missed the first time around: the other three Pac-Man ghosts; a mounted ostrich from Joust; the resemblance of the TurboTime cabinet design to that of Rally-X; and graffiti on a wall reading “Aerith Lives”. That list is too short. I’d also hoped to catch additional Easter eggs and overlooked scenes more to my liking, including but not limited to:
* A sign in Tapper’s bar reading, “Now Hiring Waitresses”.
* An autographed photo of Fix-It Felix Sr. bearing a strong resemblance to Alec Baldwin.
* The monsters from Rampage standing on a street corner outside the Niceland apartments, just staring and drooling.
* A traffic jam outside the terminal whose gridlocked commuters include the Moon Patrol rover, the OutRun Ferrari, an Armor Attack polygonal tank, an ExciteBike, and Nathan Drake in a Jeep. All sport the same license plate: “RIP G4”.
* A Grand Theft Auto thug being arrested by Mappy.
* A terminal convenience shop run by a Moogle and selling movies on DVD with titles such as Citizen Liu Kang, Disney’s Knights of the Old Republic, Wolfenstein 3D in 3D, and Galaga vs. Gyruss.
* A sidekick barbershop quartet with Clank, Daxter, Sparx, and Luigi.
* Pac-Man throwing a fit at Felix’s party because all the snacks are fruits, and for decades he’s been dying to have just one lousy steak.
* An inter-game prison populated with Leisure-Suit Larry, PaRappa the Rapper, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
* A political-activist poster advocating a unilateral ban on all Minesweeper mines.
* Alternate end credits with the big-head Journey avatars singing the same thirty-second snippet of “Separate Ways” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
…but I guess that’s what cutting room floors are for. Those, and the dreams of over-the-hill gamers who can imagine a film with three times the budget and none of the legal hassles.
Important things first: Wreck-It Ralph is the best non-Pixar Disney film in years, proof positive that both divisions are up to the task of delivering solid results when the right talents are lined up and the marketing department is kept in check. The end credits confirm Ralph was wrangled by four different writers, two of which are omitted by IMDB — Jim Reardon and director Rich Moore, both veterans of the glory days of The Simpsons. (Of the other two, one, Phil Johnston, was responsible for last year’s indie Midwest comedy Cedar Rapids.) From where I sat, I couldn’t see the seams.
Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly is an unloved palooka who chafes in his day job as the villain of Fix-It Felix, Jr., one of several old-school cabinet games at Litwak’s Family Fun Center (elderly owner voiced by Ed O’Neill). Ralph’s major beef isn’t necessarily that he hates his job, but that he hates how shabbily he’s treated because he does it so convincingly. Even when Litwak’s is closed and all gaming characters are allowed to go home for the night, Ralph’s coworkers — the titular hero Felix (30 Rock‘s Jack McBrayer) and the townspeople he saves every day — relax and party in their high-rise apartment building while poor Ralph is forced to live and sleep outside on a mound of loose bricks. Perversely, in their neighborhood Ralph is the 1% and the well-to-do are the 99%. The manufacturer clearly didn’t program these civilians to recognize the sight of homelessness.
This week saw the release of the first trailer for the next Walt Disney Animated Classic, Wreck-It Ralph, which promises to do for video game characters what Who Framed Roger Rabbit? did for cartoon characters — namely, see how many entertainment companies are willing to stuff theirs into the same clown car as their competitors’.
Casual gamers should obviously recognize King Bowser from the Super Mario Bros empire. Anyone who doesn’t know Clyde from Pac-Man won’t be using the Internet to see this trailer or watching movies made after 1980 anyway. I like to think I made it to level 3 by recognizing a King Malboro from Final Fantasy X-up.
After watching the trailer a second time, I suspect all the pieces and clues of this clever how-many-can-you-name trivia game have also been used to construct a sort of movie to connect the various stages of the game. The difficult part to perceiving this value-added extra is ignoring the game and paying attention to the dialogue instead. That’s harder than it sounds, considering this may be the first recorded instance of a modern game whose cutscene graphics are of equal quality to the in-game graphics. (Sorry, Agni’s Philosophy — you were so close. If only graphics processor technology had progressed at a more supernatural rate for your sake.)
The Wreck-It Ralph Theatrical Trivia Game stars Academy Award Nominee John C. Reilly (Chicago, Step Brothers), Jack McBrayer (30 Rock), Jane Lynch (Glee), Brandon T. Jackson (cruelly underrated in Tropic Thunder), and hopefully hundreds of video game voice actors. If Steve Blum isn’t somewhere in this film, then there’s no point to its existence.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 