Sage's Stray Thoughts: The Pre-E3 Craze, and the Blue Bomber
We're about a week out from E3, the biggest annual game-related conference where all the big publishers get together and decide to show off their major titles for the next year and a half or so. You can tell because developers have been seemingly unable to shut up for the past week, as announcements and reveals for smaller (and some larger) games just keep pouring out.
Just over the past week, we've had:
- Monster Hunter X revealed for the Nintendo 3DS. (There are also rumors of a Monster Hunter title coming to PS4. Nothing major, just something to think about.)
- A new trailer for the Xbox timed exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider, the first video we've seen on the game since LAST E3, which surprising enough on its own, but frankly a bit ridiculous considering it was the cover feature for Game Informer not too long ago.
- Bravely Second's Western release confirmed.
- Consistent winner of the award for my least favorite franchise, Dark Souls 3, has rumors so detailed and strong that at this point I think we're all just waiting on confirmation from a legitimate source.
- Probably the biggest announcement of them all, last week Fallout 4 got a reveal trailer. This wasn't really a surprise--it was either this or Elder Scrolls that lead to Bethesda deciding for the first time ever to hold an E3 conference, and we just got TESV four years ago. More surprising, sort of, is that the game may very well come out this year.
- Sony decided to join the party with the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection which was first teased, then officially announced and even given a release date of October 14th.
- Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel was confirmed to be coming Stateside for PS3 and PS Vita. A different, unexpected surprise since most Kiseki/Legend of Heroes fans believed we were another two or three years from seeing the Playstation 3 games since XSEED still needed to localize at least three more titles between the PSP trilogy and the Vita-only duology.
- And yesterday, at the Tales of Festival, despite it being a pretty irregular occurrence to announce a "mothership" title there, the first PS4 Tales game was announced: Tales of Berseria. Between this and the expected Tales of Zestiria PS4 announcement, Namco-Bandai is pretty busy.
- Then today we got Capcom in on it all with a trailer for Resident Evil 0, and the announcement of a Mega Man Legacy Collection. Now I personally think the Collection's a little lazy since probably every Mega Man game ever except the PS2 titles could probably fit on a single Blu-Ray, but hey--at least the Blue Bomber is getting some attention.
All this, and we've got a Game Informer cover reveal sometime tomorrow. (Current guess? Halo 5.) It's been an announcement nearly every day. And I wouldn't expect that to slow down. Pre-E3 is usually just as sweet as E3 itself, with companies rolling out game announcements that would be swallowed up by CoD and other major holiday titles. At this point, it's the conference that has a lot to live up to, though with all the scuttlebutt I'm hearing I don't believe that'll be an issue.
What's most exciting to me is that, a few years ago I couldn't even envision a world in which Japanese gaming was making a comeback around the same time that Western gaming was enjoying a second renaissance, but we're not too far off from just that. I'll be talking more about the games we see before and after E3 over the next week or so, so stay tuned.
Speaking of the Blue Bomber, last week it was announced that a Mega Man animated series was being worked on by Man of Action--it's currently scheduled for twenty-six episodes and will air in 2017. Learning this got me quite excited, because not even a week ago, a friend of mine put this on Facebook:
And I was pretty disappointed with the list as a whole. It only featured four cartoons I considered worthy of a "Best Of" list, and I could only think of four more that even deserved a spot beside them. Still, while I've been pretty down on cartoons this decade as a whole, it dawned on me that this decade is only half done and I've already gotten close to a solid Top 10 of my own* and even a few more series would make this decade capable of standing alongside the last two with ease. And I've got faith in Man of Action--creators of both Ben 10 and Generator Rex--to do right by Mega Man.
As far as Capcom having enough faith in Mega Man to give him a show but not a video game? I'm sure there are a ton of fans bothered by this but this suits me perfectly. I was always more in love with Mega Man's look, universe, and lore than his games anyway--aside from the RPG outings like Legends and Battle Network that I don't think Capcom would want to return to anyways. So, bring on the new Mega Man!
In no particular order: Young Justice, Thundercats, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Avatar: TLOK, Phineas and Ferb, Archer, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. Yes technically a couple of those started last decade but they're still popular in this one and going, so I'm counting them.
Just over the past week, we've had:
- Monster Hunter X revealed for the Nintendo 3DS. (There are also rumors of a Monster Hunter title coming to PS4. Nothing major, just something to think about.)
- A new trailer for the Xbox timed exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider, the first video we've seen on the game since LAST E3, which surprising enough on its own, but frankly a bit ridiculous considering it was the cover feature for Game Informer not too long ago.
- Bravely Second's Western release confirmed.
- Consistent winner of the award for my least favorite franchise, Dark Souls 3, has rumors so detailed and strong that at this point I think we're all just waiting on confirmation from a legitimate source.
- Probably the biggest announcement of them all, last week Fallout 4 got a reveal trailer. This wasn't really a surprise--it was either this or Elder Scrolls that lead to Bethesda deciding for the first time ever to hold an E3 conference, and we just got TESV four years ago. More surprising, sort of, is that the game may very well come out this year.
- Sony decided to join the party with the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection which was first teased, then officially announced and even given a release date of October 14th.
- Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel was confirmed to be coming Stateside for PS3 and PS Vita. A different, unexpected surprise since most Kiseki/Legend of Heroes fans believed we were another two or three years from seeing the Playstation 3 games since XSEED still needed to localize at least three more titles between the PSP trilogy and the Vita-only duology.
- And yesterday, at the Tales of Festival, despite it being a pretty irregular occurrence to announce a "mothership" title there, the first PS4 Tales game was announced: Tales of Berseria. Between this and the expected Tales of Zestiria PS4 announcement, Namco-Bandai is pretty busy.
- Then today we got Capcom in on it all with a trailer for Resident Evil 0, and the announcement of a Mega Man Legacy Collection. Now I personally think the Collection's a little lazy since probably every Mega Man game ever except the PS2 titles could probably fit on a single Blu-Ray, but hey--at least the Blue Bomber is getting some attention.
All this, and we've got a Game Informer cover reveal sometime tomorrow. (Current guess? Halo 5.) It's been an announcement nearly every day. And I wouldn't expect that to slow down. Pre-E3 is usually just as sweet as E3 itself, with companies rolling out game announcements that would be swallowed up by CoD and other major holiday titles. At this point, it's the conference that has a lot to live up to, though with all the scuttlebutt I'm hearing I don't believe that'll be an issue.
What's most exciting to me is that, a few years ago I couldn't even envision a world in which Japanese gaming was making a comeback around the same time that Western gaming was enjoying a second renaissance, but we're not too far off from just that. I'll be talking more about the games we see before and after E3 over the next week or so, so stay tuned.
Return of the Blue Bomber
Speaking of the Blue Bomber, last week it was announced that a Mega Man animated series was being worked on by Man of Action--it's currently scheduled for twenty-six episodes and will air in 2017. Learning this got me quite excited, because not even a week ago, a friend of mine put this on Facebook:
And I was pretty disappointed with the list as a whole. It only featured four cartoons I considered worthy of a "Best Of" list, and I could only think of four more that even deserved a spot beside them. Still, while I've been pretty down on cartoons this decade as a whole, it dawned on me that this decade is only half done and I've already gotten close to a solid Top 10 of my own* and even a few more series would make this decade capable of standing alongside the last two with ease. And I've got faith in Man of Action--creators of both Ben 10 and Generator Rex--to do right by Mega Man.
As far as Capcom having enough faith in Mega Man to give him a show but not a video game? I'm sure there are a ton of fans bothered by this but this suits me perfectly. I was always more in love with Mega Man's look, universe, and lore than his games anyway--aside from the RPG outings like Legends and Battle Network that I don't think Capcom would want to return to anyways. So, bring on the new Mega Man!
In no particular order: Young Justice, Thundercats, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Avatar: TLOK, Phineas and Ferb, Archer, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. Yes technically a couple of those started last decade but they're still popular in this one and going, so I'm counting them.
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