I'm out here standing on a rooftop screaming "Hey world are you listening to me?"

Hello.

Much like most other blogs out there, our inception consists of a lot of enthusiasm, but few concrete details. (I said yes before the question was finished, by the way) To put our mission as precisely as I’m aware of it, we’re three nerds, unrepentant and full of opinions. It would not surprise me if from time to time we post opinions on politics. By and large, they’ll be pretty liberal. More than likely, there will be a lot of discussion of comic books, video games and various role-playing systems (D&D, GURPS, etc) because that seems to be the overlap in our copious free time.

For an introduction: Hi, I’m James. I’m the youngest around these parts. I listen to an obscene amount of punk rock music. In fact, I write for pastepunk.com in a news and interview capacity. I also keep up ipso.vox.com, which is based towards more video games and music politics. I have a feeling that ipso will be merged with this blog, but that’s neither here nor there. Or perhaps it won’t. I get the feeling this is pushed towards more of a length format, whereas ipso.vox.com is just getting ideas and thoughts off my chest at the time they come to me. Here, I’ll be thinking about things for a while, and then writing about them, not the other way around. Quite often, in fact.

Let’s get started, then. BioWare (you might know their games: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and other PC RPG staples…) announced they’re working on an RPG for the Nintendo DS. Righto. Could be awesome. The IP? Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog.

Yes, I’m serious, a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG, made for the Nintendo DS by BioWare.

Putting aside the feeling of being absolutely perplexed, there’s reason to be hopeful. BioWare has a pretty excellent track record with their craft, so at least in theory, the game shouldn’t have a tremendous amount of technical problems. The Nintendo DS and it’s retired counterpart, the GBA SP, seem to be smaller Super Nintendos, so at the very least, there will probably be an “old school” feeling to the just announced game. This is a nice aesthetic choice, since recently, as you may have heard, Sonic hasn’t really starred in games, so much as been whored out for snuff films, so putting an icon in the hands of a developer who appear to know what they’re doing is good news, no matter which way you look at it.

Also, as Nintendo and Square showed, you can have a genre-defining icon star in a game type that is completely anti-thetical to the original, and it can work wonders. In another form of art completely, Slayer took that kind of a leap with South of Heaven, and guess what, it’s a grower, and now full live performance of the CD is included on the reissue to their 2006 CD Christ Illusion.

It’s also an interesting bit of convergence. 10 years ago, I doubt you’d see anything like this, since Sega and Nintendo were bitter rivals. True, there have been Sonic handheld games on the Nintendo DS, but a full blown RPG made by a third party with no relation to either developer is especially interesting. I’m not excited, but at least interested and perhaps, perhaps hopeful.

Just saying that makes me happy. Hopeful for a new Sonic game.

To that end, I don’t think there’s a better way to inaugurate a new blog then with hope. To greater and greater things.