Let’s get one thing clear: the “Official Nintendo Seal of Quality” is about as meaningful as a degree from Columbus University. In the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System days the Seal meant simply that a game’s developer had paid their dues to Nintendo to manufacture their cartridges. As a distinction, it did not improve with time.
Plenty of studios didn’t even bother with that formality, most notably Atari Games spin-off Tengen, who actually obtained the blueprints for the Famicom’s 10NES lock-out chip from the US Copyright Office under the pretext of preparing for a lawsuit and used it to reverse-engineer a workaround that would allow their unlicensed games to work on the NES. Christian developers Wisdom Tree also released several notoriously awful unlicensed games for the Famicom.
The Nintendo Seal of Quality was even worse than a licensing formality. It was a dirty lie, because not only did it not mean that Nintendo had vetted a game’s, y’know, “quality” – Nintendo actively made games bearing that sticker worse by censoring them for US release, limiting their production runs, and forcing third-party developers into exclusive deals, thus crippling competition from the Sega Master System and others.
All of which brings us to this week’s Emulation Nation Random Game of the Week, a new feature in which I fire up my MAME cabinet (which actually also includes just about every pre-CD-ROM era console game) and talk about the first turd whose stench reaches my nose.
“I can get it to a point where I know I could probably do it better, but…”
-Mike Cooley
Georgia-by-way-of-Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers are by nature what so many bands today aspire to be by artifice: authentic, American, rootsy rock’n’roll. They first hit the national radar with their third album, Southern Rock Opera, an ambitious double-album which used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as a metaphor for the decline of the South as a whole.
Ever since, even while weathering lineup and label changes, they’ve cranked out a great new record on a near-yearly basis in a decade-long winning streak that few bands have equaled.
Directed by Joe Wright (whose previous credits include Atonement and The Soloist), Hanna is a boldly original suspense thriller which stars Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement and The Lovely Bones), Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Eric Bana (Star Trek and The Time Traveler’s Wife).
Hanna (Ronan) is a teenage girl who has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a soldier; these come from being raised by her father (Bana), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.
To mark the release of Hanna, which will be in theaters on April 8, SuicideGirls has teamed up with Focus Features for a special competition.
Q: My husband and I have been together for five years and married for one. When we first met the sex was amazing and now it feels like he is just performing maintenance on a damn car. I have brought it to his attention and he hasn’t done anything about it, and lately I’ve noticed my eye wondering. I don’t want to ruin my marriage, but I need the passion back and I feel like he’s forcing me to look elsewhere for it. What should I do? Please help.
My friend John Graves sent me a photo of a billboard that’s been appearing all over Los Angeles. The one he took a picture of was right near The Grove, in one of the highest rent districts in one of the highest rent cities in the whole world. The billboard says: “The Bible Guarantees Judgment Day May 21, 2011, …Cry mightily unto God – Jonah 3:8, Mon-Fri 5:30 – 7PM, 1280 AM Radio FamilyRadio.” Next to these words is a photo of a guy who is either kneeling to pray or in the throes of a painful bout of constipation.
“I’m ready to fight and I’m ready to sing.”
– Pearl Aday
It’s a cool Los Angeles night at the Standard Hotel and the scantily clad girl in the Plexiglas cage above the concierge desk is nodding off… but then again, Mondays are always a little slow. A drifter ambles past the front entrance, down the sidewalk, mouthing along to whatever voice rattles through his head. Meanwhile rock singer Pearl Aday and I are holed up in a booth in the hotel’s the street-side diner. As she drinks tea and I sip merlot, we talk about the current state of music, more specifically women in rock-n-roll, and Pearl is pissed off.
