First and foremost, I am not the target demographic for this commercial. I care about fitness, I try to eat right and work out regularly, but I have no interest in “getting crazy” with an “eleven-minute body-shredding routine.” They also seem to really emphasize that this equipment will make you “bigger, harder, stronger,” which really just sounds like it’s overcompensating for something, right? Also, I don’t think you should EVER look like this guy to the right while working out. That just seems unhealthy. He looks like Bane in Batman: The Animated Series just before his veins get overfilled with toxin and he explodes!

Here’s my biggest problem, though. The tagline “Gotta Door? You Gotta Gym.” I don’t think these guys know what the word “gotta” means. Yes, it sounds aggressive and tough, which seems to be what they were going for, but “gotta” is a replacement term for “got to” or “have to,” as in “I have got to get to the hospital before my heart busts through my freakishly large muscular neck.” They’re using it in place of “got a” which – aside from being typographically identical to “gotta” minus one letter – is used in statements like “who’s got a credit card so I can buy this worthless crap?” You can say “Christ, the cops are here. We gotta make a run for it,” but you can’t say “My sister gotta abortion yesterday,” and not just because “abortion” starts with a vowel so you’d want it to be “gottan” (although “abortion” could be a verb… but then “gotta abortion” would imply that she had a deep desire to perform abortions, which is again unsettling).

For that matter, the tagline seems to imply that “you” is taking the place of “you’ve” or “you have.” What they’re trying to say is “If you’ve got a door, then you’ve got a gym.” but by using “gotta” they’re making the words that follow into active verbs, so what it actually says is “Have to door (as in actively construct and/or use doors)? You have to gym (as in play while keeping physically active, like at a gymnasium).” That’s the most sense I can make out of the line, and even that’s pretty much nonsense. I know you’re marketing your wall-based workout equipment to mixed martial arts fans who watch Comedy Central after midnight, but somebody somewhere still has to care about proper usage of grammar in the English language, right?

This is probably why I got beat up in high school…

The Summer of Scott Pilgrim

Back when I was first talking to Bryan Lee O’Malley about his upcoming “Scott Pilgrim” book series in 2004, neither of us ever imagined what a huge sensation it would become. International best-seller, lauded by critics and media outlets, a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of slacker hipsters. Even with all that’s come before, though, summer 2010 will be remembered as the summer of Scott Pilgrim. It all starts next week with the release of the sixth and final volume in the series, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, wherein all questions will be answered, all plot threads tied up, and we’ll all have to move on to something else. A mere three weeks later sees the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game on the Playstation Network. The 16-bit River City Ransom homage sports squeal-worthy art direction by acclaimed animator Paul Robertson and an original soundtrack by Brooklyn’s own chiptune power group Anamanaguchi. Fandom is sure to reach an all time high, though, with the August 13th release of the major motion picture adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Shaun of the Dead‘s Edgar Wright and starring a cavalcade of hip young actors from everything cool in the past decade.

Intense new seasons of cutting-edge TV drama

The two most-talked about season finales last year were those from Dexter and Mad Men. One season ended with a small core team of the characters quitting their jobs, stealing everything they could from their old office and setting up their brand new agency in a tiny apartment, the other ended with the protagonist stopping the world’s most successful serial killer only to find his wife as the killer’s final victim and himself with no alibi (see if you can guess which show was which). Dexter and Mad Men were both already among the most popular and celebrated shows on television, but the status quo-changing finales last year served as fantastic set-ups for what are absolutely certain to be fresh and exciting new seasons. The characters are all forced into wholly new situations (starting a new business from the ground-up, divorce, single parenthood, suspicion of murder), the intensity be positively rife.

New albums from the biggest names in indie-rock

2010′s already been pretty great for music. We’ve seen long-awaited returns from the likes of Gorillaz, Gil Scott-Heron, and Devo, powerful returns from Los Campesinos!, LCD Soundsystem, and Xiu Xiu, and stellar debuts from the Drums, Fang Island, and Sleigh Bells. Fantastic as all that has been, there’s the very good chance all of that may be forgotten when the tidal wave of summer and fall releases hit, including new albums from the Books, Menomena, Arcade Fire (whose The Suburbs is seen at right), Chromeo, !!!, Klaxons, Eels, Interpol, The Thermals, Les Savy Fav, Röyksopp, The Walkmen, Of Montreal, No Age, Ben Folds, and Antony & the Johnsons. If there’s not a band in that list that gets you excited and tingly then you probably aren’t hip enough to be targeted by national advertising campaigns for your valuable interest. Plainly stated, that’s a pretty epic lineup of album releases. Here’s hoping most of them don’t suck!

Toy Story 3

It’s hard to look past the history of the Toy Story franchise. The very first entirely computer-animated theatrical release, the original Toy Story captivated audiences fifteen years ago. It’s sequel in 1999 met with universal acclaim, a surprisingly existential family film that provoked thought and feelings in a way uncharacteristic of summer blockbusters. Toy Story 3 had started as a Disney project independent of creators Pixar, but when Toy Story 1 & 2 director John Lasseter became chief creative officer of Disney animation studios in 2006 his first duty was scrapping the entire production and putting Toy Story 3 back in the hands of Pixar to start from scratch. The result is the most emotionally poignant film I’ve seen in years. The final thirty minutes has the entire audience in a constant stream of salty tears.

Breaking Bad season 3

Bryan Cranston has won two Emmy’s for best lead actor in a drama in a row, and with good cause. The best show on television only got better in its third season as Cranston’s Walter White dug himself deeper into the dark underworld he never wanted to be a part of. Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman gets out of rehab with a new lease on life – to be “the bad guy.” Dean Norris’s Hank Schrader had a series of violent emotional breakdowns, culminating in an edge-of-your-seat showdown with two of the most brutal characters in recent television history. Anna Gunn’s Skylar White even “broke bad” herself, becoming the most actively deceptive character in the cast. The first two seasons of Breaking Bad certainly had their intense moments, but the bar was truly raised this season. It will be hard to wait a whole year to see the ramifications of the cliffhanger finale. Only time and creator Vince Gilligan will tell if these characters can cope with the decisions they’ve made along the way to breaking bad.

Starscream’s The Space Years

Future, and It Doesn’t Work was one of the most pleasant surprises of 2009. The young New York duo Starscream gave us chiptune prog rock that carried audiences on cascading waves of warbled atmosphere and crashed into the rocky cliffs of crunchy garage drums. The delayed follow-up concept EP The Space Years takes this established formula and runs as far as it can go. Fully expecting their audience to be patiently captivated, Damon Hardjowirogo masterfully builds anticipation with long shoegaze-like threads of squarewave harmonies. The relaxed playfulness is like jazz, juxtaposing well with samples of a frantic preacher lecturing about the necessity of repenting ones sins and worrying not for one’s job or Game Boy (ah, I see what you guys did there). George Stroud’s powerful drumming frees the listener from the tension of the slow climb and announces escape velocity, the point at which Starscream explode through the mesosphere. With The Space Years, Starscream have succeeded in making a musical recording that is both other-worldly and grounded, alien and human, takeoff and landing.

The Good

• Your favorite franchises are back! - Even with all of their innovation in technology and experience, Nintendo’s greatest asset is their catalog of beloved characters, each a ripe mine of opportunity for new games. Nintendo fully utilized that catalog with this years show, highlight brand new games in the Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby, and Metroid lines, plus a new Mario sports collection and Wii Party, a party game starring Nintendo’s newest and probably most popular characters, the Miis. Every single one of these titles looked like the very top-most notch of quality entertainment, with Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn in particular stunning the audience with returns to long-lost and adored realms.
• 3DS - The biggest reveal of the conference is also the hardest to demonstrate: a portable gaming system that displays truly immersive three-dimensional graphics without the use of special glasses. Nintendo wasn’t willing to just let the tech speak for itself, though, showing testimonials from a slew of big name developers and their enthusiasm in already working on the 3DS, along with a list of in-development titles including Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Super Street Fighter IV, Kingdom Hearts, and a long-awaited Kid Icarus sequel. Oh yeah, the 3DS also has an analog slider, motion controls, improved wi-fi, vastly improved graphics, and the ability to take 3D photographs. Oh yeah, this thing is awesome.
• More than just Nintendo - Portables have always been a safe bet with Nintendo, but a lot of analysts have claimed that only first-party games are successful on the big N’s home consoles. Looking to blow off that speculation entirely, the press conference included excellent-looking and crowd-pleasing third-party Wii titles like Disney’s Epic Mickey, EA’s NBA Jam, Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 and Activision’s update on the multiplayer classic Goldeneye 007.

The Bad

• Zelda’s technical difficulties - Nintendo knew what people wanted – a brand-new Zelda game – and so they gave it to them as the very first thing on stage in the presentation. Too bad Shigeru Mitamoto’s live demonstration was plagued by problems with the Wii MotionPlus controller and IR sensor bar. A clever nod to Steve Jobs’ technical difficulties demoing the iPhone 4 a few weeks earlier lightened the mood. Still, when the low point of your show is a brand new Zelda game, it’s a pretty damn good show.
• GoldenEye - While I appreciate the focus group videos reminding us that the original GoldenEye 007 for the N64 is one of the most beloved first-person shooters of all time and practically invented the home console FPS, this modern day update looks… not so good. The graphics are barely improved and look downright woeful compared to other Wii shooters like Metroid Prime 3, The Conduit and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Everyone raised on GoldenEye have since moved on to Halo. You’re going to need something special to win them back, and this ain’t it.

What?

• No Vitality Sensor - This Wii peripheral was Nintendo president Satoru Iwata’s big reveal at E3 last year, promising new degrees of game-to-human-experience interaction by monitoring the player’s heart rate and other physical factors to affect gameplay. It’s been a year and we’ve seen and heard nothing new from Ninendo on the topic, especially curious as Ubisoft showed off a very similar piece of hardware the previous night with their own heart rate monitoring game Innergy attached to it. Maybe games about relaxing just didn’t fit in with this year’s show, which was clearly about delivering big blockbuster experiences.
• No Pikmin - Shigeru Miyamoto promised two things in his 2009 E3 roundtable: that they were working on a new Zelda and that they were working on a new Pikmin. Their only truly new IP of the Gamecube generation, Pikmin is long overdue for a proper reentry. I suppose we can’t have every single Nintendo property in one press conference, though.
• No digital distribution talk - Downloadable titles are the hottest thing in gaming right now, allowing smaller development teams to make tinier games at budget prices. Nintendo prominently showed both WiiWare and DSiWare titles at E3 2009, but this year? Not even a mention of either service. It’s hard to get consumers excited about services they don’t even know you provide.

The Good:

• The Big Games Look Big - Both the Gears of War 3 and Halo: Reach demoes were appropriately grand and atmospheric, perfectly planting the audience into what’s new and noteworthy of the worlds in these established franchises.
• Control with Kinect - The “simplified” XBox menu for use with their new motion control camera is significantly nicer looking than its regular interface, and the ability to speak to your XBox and vocally command it to control your media is something we’ve dreamed of in home entertainment ever since Star Trek.
• ESPN - Sports are sort of a big thing. Having ESPN access exclusively on the 360 certainly won’t drive up XBox sales, but it perfectly placates the frat boy demographic that has made the XBox the smash hit it currently is as well as appeal to the casual family demographic Microsoft is so desperately grasping at.

The Bad:

• Kudo’s a douche! - Seriously, everything about Kudo Tsunoda just screams “asshole!” I’m supposed to want whatever this guy is selling? I don’t care if he’s the creative force behind your hot new product, Microsoft, your pitchman has to not horribly offend the audience.
• Kinect still looks unfun and unresponsive - A year after its original unveiling, Microsoft’s new motion control camera still looks not-ready-for-primetime. Game developers on Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures seemed to be having a good deal of difficulty controlling their own games properly, the Star Wars trailer looked like a bigger waggle-fest than anything the Wii has seen, and Kinectimals just looks stupid. I’m sorry, little girl, but when the cartoon tiger licked the screen it did not actually tickle you! I refuse to believe our imaginations will ever get that carried away while playing with CGI jungle cats.
• The entire Forza Kinect demo - Soooooo, we can slowly move around a car, then zoom in for details on all the pieces? This looked more like a commercial for interactive car commercials. And seriously, we got it the first time you zoomed in on the headlights and showed us a mini movie about how awesome they were, we did not need a repeat with the wheels… and the engine… and the dashboard… and the OH MY GOD, THIS THING WENT ON FOREVER!

WHAT?

• No XBLA - XBox Live Arcade is one of the best things Microsoft has going for it in the console wars, allowing any PC developers to make their own games and share them with the world. There are tons of fantastic independent games already on XBLA with plenty more to come, but the service didn’t get a single mention in the press conference, not even upcoming guaranteed hits Comic Jumper and BattleBlock Theater.
• Joy Ride to retail - At last year’s E3, Microsoft showed off Joy Ride, a kart racer set to compete with Nintendo’s Mario Kart and Sony’s ModNation Racers with the defining difference being that it would be 100% free to play (with purchasable upgrades for those who care). It was an exciting gamble that we were eager to learn more about. This year it was revealed that Joy Ride was now Kinect-enabled and be sold in stores just like all other games. Wait… what? We’re  supposed to buy this game now? Sort of defeats the purpose of the experiment, doesn’t it?

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

This digital download beat’em up from Ubisoft is based on the award-winning and beloved Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series from Bryan Lee O’Malley and Oni Press, timed for release alongside the feature film adaptation directed by Edgar Wright this summer. If the brand’s name recognition alone weren’t enough to get hipster nerds totally pumped, take in those glorious 16-bit graphics from famed retro-animator Paul Robertson (Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, King of Power 4 Billion %, Architecture in Helsinki’s “Do The Whirlwind” music video) and an original soundtrack by 8-bit superstars Anamanaguchi and you’ve got enough geek heat to light Livejournal on fire. While sure to take a few liberties with the source material, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World promises at least six epic boss battles, weapon and store systems not dissimilar to the NES classic River City Ransom and unique movesets for all four playable characters, but honestly, they had me at “playable Kim Pine.”

Shank

Not nearly as over-the-top as the extended gameplay demos we’ve seen in the past, this neatly polished story teaser for the EA-funded indie brawler looks more an more like Kill Bill: The Game every day. If cartoon ultra-violence and ridiculous combos are your thing, so is Shank. If realism and and political correctness are, go play Madden or something. Shank has been in development for quite  awhile and only recently picked up by EA, who’ve shown a dedication to quality in small-team efforts by publishing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend and Valve’s Portal. Eyes are on Klei Entertainment’s Shank to see if they can follow that trend. The animation is gorgeous, the question now is whether Shank has the gameplay to match.

Rock Band 3

The big new features of everyone’s favorite party game with plastic instrument controllers are the addition of the keyboard and a new “pro” mode that more accurately simulates playing real instruments. The new “pro” controllers for the keyboard, guitar and drums even have midi-out so they can be used in professional music production studios. As always, there’ve also been big improvements in setlist controls, character creation, and all the other nitty gritty. Confirmed songs so far include Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” The Doors’ “Break On Through,” and Metric’s “Combat Baby” along with the Jimi Hendrix, Them Crooked Vultures, and The Cure tracks heard in the trailer. I’m sure a lot of people aren’t all that interested in rocking out on the keys, but the concept is curiously exciting to me and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Vanquish

For what seems like the entire history of the medium, popular videogame design has been dominated by the Japanese. Something curious happened in the past few years, though, as Western developers have risen to prominence, primarily with gritty action games starring super soldiers with big guns (Halo, Gears of War, to a lesser extent Call of Duty). Not to be outdone, one of Japan’s biggest risk-takers is trying his hand at this Western design aesthetic in Shinji Mikami’s Vanquish. Single-handedly inventing the survival horror genre with Resident Evil, Mikami knows a thing or two about taking a crazy idea and running with it. The trailer shows an army of soldiers not unlike Halo engaged in Gears of War-like combat wearing suits similar to Mikami’s biggest flop P.N.03. It’s also the newest title from Platinum Studios, the hot young game house of former Capcom employees that’s already produced the smash hit Bayonetta and the excellent-but-commercially-underwhelming Madworld. The question here isn’t whether a Japanese studio can produce an authentically American-feeling game so much as what can they do to make such an experience uniquely compelling.

Super Scribblenauts

5th Cell’s Scribblenauts was the little game that could at last year’s E3. Unlike the studio’s previous Drawn To Life which allowed players to draw the elements of an otherwise generic platformer, Scribblenauts ignited imaginations by allowing the player to insert nearly anything they could think of into the game world via a vast and powerful encyclopedia engine. Once you got past that incredible innovation, however, the game was equally shallow and kind of aimless. Super Scribblenauts aims to fix that problem with better controls, more robust challenges and, most excitingly, ADJECTIVES! Yes, while in the first game you could only summon nouns like “jetpack,” “gun,” and “gorilla” to your aide, now you can clarify the characteristics of those nouns with marvelously colorful adjectives. Just look at that trailer and tell me “Gentlemanly Red Raptor” doesn’t sound like an awesome idea for an entire game right there.

As our modern creatives adapt to the youth entertainment of yore, it so follows that the classic forms of entertainment must adapt themselves to modern creators. It is with that evolutionary step in mind that Mobile Art Lab has produced PhoneBook – Popo and Momo Ride! Ride!, a traditional picturebook that incorporates a custom iPhone app inside windows of the pages:

You see, Popo and Momo are experiencing a variety of modes of transportation, always sitting near a window to the outside world, represented by the iPhone screen. The reader (or the being-read-to) gets to watch out the window as trees pass by their train, clouds outside their plane, fish outside their submarine, and more. Along with the benefit of animation, the iPhone interaction also bring music and sound effects to the book along with, most excitingly, interaction. Tilting the book affects the speed of the vehicle you’re in and tapping the screen allows you to play with the world outside your window, something kids dream about doing well into adulthood.

The iPhone interaction clearly constructs a much deeper level of immersion by allowing both the book to come alive and for the child to become a part of the imaginary world on the pages/screen. Sure, this is only a modernization of the fifty-year-old Pat The Bunny method of playing with what’s in the window of a picture book, but the interactive nature of this small innovation is certain to increase the child’s engagement exponentially. The game-like nature of the window ensures that the parent playing along will likely remain interested far longer than if they were reading their child the same story again and again (after all, I doubt many parent/guardians would be cool leaving their iPhone with their infant unattended). Unfortunately, the desire to tap and swipe the screen endlessly means this is not a book you’ll want to share with your kid before putting them down for a nap as they’ll likely be full of pep at the end of the story and want to play some more. Still, this is just the first of what I imagine will be a whole new generation of “PhoneBook”s, and bedtime stories can’t be too far behind!

For last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Campbell produced a twelve-month wall calendar with racy interpretations of fairie tale femmes. They were mostly innocuously cheesecake, but nearly a year later are gaining attention. Nobody seems to mind the cheeky renditions of Little Miss Muffet and Red Riding Hood, but the following eight are clearly inspired by Walt Disney animated films, and people get pretty hot under the collar when you sexualize icons from youth culture:

Honestly, Tinkerbell looks okay. Her feet look like they’re in pain, but the representation of her and Hook seen here is pretty much in keeping with what we’ve seen from the House of Mouse. Similarly, Malificent from Sleeping Beauty sports an entirely different type of robe than in the Disney picture, but the headdress and mirror on the wall clearly tie her to the motion picture. Besides, that’s probably the kind of robe they’d draw her in now, given the opportunity. Snow White isn’t too far over the line, just a little sexed-up with the needless bows on her stockings and a good deal more skin than I remember. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand… whaaaaaaat? She is clearly completely nude, save for the tiara on her head. Did she happen to be naked when she was playing with that spinning wheel or did her clothes just dissolve over her many years of sleep? At least that matter distracts from the curious apparent size/shape differences between each of her hands, feet and breasts. Cinderella and Belle from Beauty and the Beast seem to each be wearing shiny lingerie. It’s a wonder that the Little Mermaid can wear so much eye makeup without it running in the water (I guess that’s just a fish thing) though I do applaud Campbell’s restraint in not having beads of water dripping down her implausible curves.

Let’s not even talk about Alice. That one’s just creepy.

You can’t expect, though, that everyone picking up this sequel will have conquered the first Super Mario Galaxy. After all, last year’s New Super Mario Bros Wii was a tremendous all-ages hit, and that was a strictly two-dimensional affair. How can people who’ve only allowed Mario to run left and right hope to control the stout hero as he is propelled through three dimensions in the perilous vacuum of space? Never fear, Nintendo’s all over this concern by including an instructional DVD with Galaxy 2. How does this work? Well, let’s take a look at the Japanese version:

Now I don’t speak Japanese, but I think I can translate the video as follows:

• Push the stick forward. Oh look! Mario moves forward!
• Stop pushing the stick forward. Hey, wow! Mario stopped moving forward!
• Move the stick backward. Goodness gracious! Mario moves backward!
• Now we know that the stick moves Mario! Oh my word, see that angry thing coming to attack you? That’s bad! Press the A button to jump on it’s fat stupid ugly little head. The evil mushroom represents America.
• Now that you see how easy this game is, let’s show you the ridiculous acrobatic feats you’re expected to make the portly Italian plumber do without pulling a hamstring. Have fun!

I’m glad we cleared that up?