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• FMV Hell: Mystic Midway: Phantom Express

  I'm saddened by the sight of bare-footed orphans selling cast-away cigarette butts for a few pennies, but I'm devastated by the over-eager acting that accompanies some game FMVs. It wasn't so bad in the Playstation era: most of the voiceovers for early anime cutscenes deserved to be ridiculed, and at least the “actors” got to live in infamy. But for a mercifully short time, gamers were infatuated with turtle-paced CD games that featured real actors, and not just a voice transplanted to a flapping mouth. These are the games that lived and died on the Sega CD and CD-i. Most FMV-based games were as much fun as sitting on an upright knife, but sometimes you have to look at the actors and think, “God bless them. They tried so hard, but to what avail?” Mystic Midway: Phantom Express is an on-rails shooter for the CD-i that stars an unapologetically sarcastic carnival barker. The barker heckles you mercilessly, opening the game with a joke he cribbed from the tuff grade two kids who hogged the sand pits at recess: ”I was just reading the most hilarious story! It's called...YOUR LIFE!” If you have at least one eye and/or one ear, you should be able to surmise why this guy's drama major probably never found use beyond a bottom-feeder game console. Still, he throws so much into the whole performance that just want to stand there and take his jabs. Yes, yes, my life is pitiful and my memory swarms with chilling instances of abuse and neglect. Shhh. It's okay. Go to sleep now. Read More... Posted Apr 09 2009, 11:50 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: fmv hell, fmv, nadia oxford, cd-i, phantom express, mystic midway

• 30 Years Ago This Week: The CD

  We’re taking a break from our regular 10 Years Ago column this week, but only because nothing happened ten years ago this week—unless you are some kind of terrible extreme sports game aficionado, in which case you can talk about EA’s Rush Down by yourself. Fortunately for the rest of us, something great did happen this week. It’s just something we have to go back a little bit further to discuss. The Compact Disc (released, sort of, on March 8th, 1979) was first publicly demoed thirty years ago this previous Sunday. It went on to become one of the major driving technologies of the digital media revolution. It also broadened the horizons of videogames as a medium, and to an extent democratized the industry as well. Read More... Posted Mar 09 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: sega cd, fmv hell, sony playstation, joe keiser, 10 years ago, cd-i, amiga cdtv, 30 years ago, cd-rom

• FMV Hell: Moses and Me

  Last week, a member of the Gamespite forums put together a Let's Play for Link: The Faces of Evil. I can only guess he's tired of life. I suppose living has lost its lustre for me as well, as I followed his progress throughout the weekend. The CD-i's Zelda atrocities are heckled at every opportunity, and with good reason. The controls are intolerable, the characters are abominable, and the cut scenes are indescribable. But I was shocked to learn through this particular Let's Play that the CD-i slopped its userbase with worse material through its “career”. See, the CD-i's Zelda library could at least legitimately be called games. Not good games or even functional games, but games nonetheless. There were items to collect, a goal to reach, terrain to navigate. Moses: The Exodus on the CD-i, on the other hand, didn't offer any gameplay aside from “Sing along to songs that are too bland for Sunday School.” Admittedly, that was a clever way to skirt around the controller issues that plagued Faces of Evil. The Angry Video Game Nerd already made a passing mention (rather, a passing rant) about the dreary song collection, but its champion, “Moses and Me” is worth another look. The song is about a school kid who's pressured into whispering test answers to his lazy-ass classmates. The choice is clear: do as they ask, or “end up all alone.” Much as I hate to admit it, “Moses and Me” tackles a conundrum that every kid finds himself in sometimes, particularly shy, brainy kids desperate for friends. Unsurprisingly, the song pitches forward and lands flat on its face with its proposed resolution: believe hard enough in Moses and he will somehow come down from Mount Sinai to protect you from bullies like a shiny Gyrados. Read More... Posted Feb 25 2009, 08:04 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: music, angry video game nerd, religion, fmv hell, nadia oxford, moses and me, cd-i

• Need For Speed is Hilarious: Return of the Live Action Cutscene

  First, the tiny confession: I have never ever played a Need For Speed. I’m no racing fanatic, but I’m shocked I’ve managed to avoid them this long. I tend to play one racer obsessively every couple of years, a cycle that began with Rage Racer way back in, yes, 1998. (It actually came out in mid-’97, but I didn’t play it until a full year later, curious after reading previews for R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. That year really was awesome, wasn’t it?) The arcade-style delights of Ridge Racer are really what appeal to me in a racing game, something Need For Speed has in spades, so it’s surprising I’ve never played one of its fifteen different entries until this week. If Need For Speed: Undercover is anything to go by, I haven’t been missing much. The game’s something of a poor man’s Burnout: Paradise, giving you an open world to drive your licensed rides about but not letting you do much interesting inside of it. You can’t just stumble into races, you’ve got to select them from a menu or press down when driving near them, prompting load times and cutscenes. The driving is no great shakes, either, fast and presentable but with none of the edge of your seat spectacle that makes the aforementioned Burnout such a treat. I’m going to keep playing Need For Speed, though, for no other reason than to keep watching it’s hilarious live action cutscenes. Check out the goods after the jump. Read More... Posted Nov 20 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ea, need for speed, command & conquer, fmv hell, ridge racer, tim curry, need for speed undercover, red alert 3, rage racer

• FMV Hell: Mega Man X4

  Let us board our DeLorean and travel back to 1997. Gaming was going through a massive transition, as was American culture in general. We were still excited about anime and wanted nothing more than to lick rigid Playstation cutscenes up and down. We pressed our noses longingly against the panes of computer shops that ran the Mega Man X4 intro over and over. We said "Ohhhh!" Now we say, "Ohhhh," as in, "Oh God, my eyes feel like moles are scratching them." I'm not even referencing Mega Man X4's awful English voice acting. I don't need to. The low quality of the anime stands by itself, like a putrid pair of underwear. Read More... Posted Oct 24 2008, 07:06 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: fmv hell, anime, nadia oxford, mega man x4, maverick hunter x

• WTFriday: Goldman's Drama Academy

  Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week. I have to apologize because today's WTFriday is more than a little dated; but since my buddy picked up The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return (not exactly a graceful title) for the Wii, I've had Goldman on my mind. Who's Goldman? Why, he's the series' recurring villain, whose plan to "cleanse the world" involves filling it with the most disgusting, abhorrent creatures to not really exist: zombies. But the important thing here is that he's clearly voiced by someone speaking English phonetically. The original Resident Evil tends to come to mind when we think of bad voice acting, but House of the Dead 2 is much, much worse--and rarely ever gets the credit it deserves. Check out the following video and dare to tell me that stuff like "the master of unlocking" is even half as bad the marble-mouthed Goldman: More tips on public speaking after the cut. Read More... Posted Oct 10 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: sega, fmv hell, house of the dead, bob mackey, wtfriday, voice acting

• FMV Hell: Star Studded Casts - Do you Give a Crap?

  Boy, I don't. EA has announced that the new Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 will star the following B-listers: Gemma Atkinson (the UK's Hollyoaks), Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Hunt for Red October), Andrew Divoff (LOST), Kelly Hu (X2, The Scorpion King), Jenny McCarthy (Scream 3, former Playboy Playmate of the Year), Ivana Milicevic (Casino Royale), Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean), J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man, Juno), Autumn Reeser (The OC), Peter Stormare (Prison Break, Armageddon), George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes), and two of the most recognizable names in competitive mixed martial arts Randy "The Natural" Couture (former UFC Heavyweight champion) and Gina "Conviction" Carano (Undefeated Elite XC fighter, American Gladiators).   Jenny McCarthy was just blown away:  "I wasn't sure what to expect when I came in to work on a video game," said Jenny McCarthy from the set of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, while playing Tanya, Allied commando and the most beloved heroine in the history of the Command & Conquer universe. "What I realized is Red Alert 3 is not just a video game, it's absolutely an interactive movie. Ho ho HO! Absolutely!  Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato in Night Trap, Mark Hamill in Wing Commander III, Dennis Hopper in Black Dahlia -- live-action Full Motion Video has historically been populated by washed up Hollywood rejects. In the go-go nineties, development studios could only afford also-rans, which brought middling acting to the medium. Within a few years of FMV's birth, 3D rendering technology evolved to the point where developers could easily create pretty characters at a fraction of the cost of hiring from Hollywood. It was too expensive, not that fun for players to watch, and eclipsed by superior technology. The infamous live-action sequences from Resident Evil could probably be considered the swan song of live-action FMV. Read More... Posted Aug 20 2008, 11:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: resident evil, cole stryker, fmv hell, dennis hopper, wing commander, terri garr, night trap, mark hamill, command and conquer: red alert 3, black dahlia

• FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star

  Time once again for a brief look at the Sega CD games that made us women and men (if you're currently a twenty-something, I mean). The full-motion video in games like Lunar, The Silver Star is unique stuff for a few reasons. First, it was an unfiltered assault of glittery, shojo-eyed anime during an age when most game localisers struggled to hide any cultural evidence that video games indeed come from Japan. Of course, Working Designs is still known for taking some, er, extreme liberties with their own translations and localisations, but by God that's another tome for another night. All you need to know is that Lunar saw its US release in 1993, ages before Pokemon made anime mainstream (bonus fact: anime became mainstream in Canada in 1996, thanks to Sailor Moon recieving an after-school time slot). The intro for Lunar is also made special by its...lack of animation. Maybe we were too busy drooling on the television screen at the time, but when you watch Sega CD intros in today's age of a thousand frames per second, you begin to notice that the "cut scenes" that wowed us over a dozen years ago are little more than kindergarten-grade cut-outs with pinned, movable limbs. Read More... Posted Aug 14 2008, 07:07 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: working designs, pokemon, japan, lunar, sega cd, fmv hell, sonic cd, translation, anime, sailor moon, lunar the silver star, localization

• FMV Hell: Sonic CD

  I'm pretty sure most original prints of Sega CD games were long ago ground up into dog food, but the resurrection of Vay on the iPhone got me nostalgic for the anime cutscenes that used to preced certain Sega CD games. Each scene employed about sixteen on-screen colours and had about thirty frames of animation, but there was something charming about those florescent marionettes. They were like figures drawn in an Autistic kid's painting: clumsy, but admirable for the attempt. (And vasty preferable to the grainy live-action FMV that usually gummed up the games in the Sega CD library.) The Sega CD is largely considered a failure, but every failed system has its must-own games. Sonic CD was certainly a gem, easily the highlight of Sonic the Hedgehog's up-and-down career. Sonic CD began with the standard Sega CD animated intro. It's interesting to note that there are a few versions of the anime. Most obviously, there's a Japanese intro and an American one. The animation in both is more or less the same, but wars have been fought over which country has the better intro song. America long ago became familiar with Spencer Nilsen's "Sonic Boom, Sonic Boom, Sonic Boooooom" whereas Japanese children got to hear a song about leather and lace and what might possibly be a chorus that begins with "Toot toot Sonic Warrior." Here's the Japanese intro stacked up against the American one. Engage comparison. Read More... Posted Jul 21 2008, 08:40 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: music, sega, sonic the hedgehog, sega cd, fmv hell, sonic cd, fmv, spencer nilsen