411 Games Rumor Down-Lo 01.14.03 Part II

411 Games Rumor Down-Lo 01.14.03 Part II

411 FIGURES LO-DOWN! AWARD
Ladies and Gentlemen, your host… Bebito Jackson!

Bebito: We all grew up playing with action figures. It appears some of us never grew up. Or at the very least, some of never stopped playing with those cool figures. The guys in the 411 Figures Zone have continued to work hard at never growing up and thus have earned my respect. There aren’t many ways I can honor this section of 411, but at the very least, I can give out a Hardest Working Award because they ALL work hard. I look forward to giving out awards for more categories in the future. For now, here are the nominees for

411 FIGURES: HARDEST WORKING:

JESSE MATEJA
LORD ELOHIM
PK
MIKE BATESMEN

Bebito: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* PK!

[411 FIGURES: HARDEST WORKING – PK]:
“Wow, Hey, Thanks a lot!! But, I got to be honest with you, I’m only in this business for 2 things, the bitches and the money!”

(*crowd laughter and applause*)

The 2002 Lo-Down! Awards are brought to you by:

BMX XXX – Virgins of the world unite!

MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98: More usable! Less stable!

and, VIAGRA – Reach out and touch someone.


(411 DOWN-LO ONLINE: CONTINUE TRANSMISSION…)

AM2 IS GETTIN’ BUSY
This one once again comes from one of my most reliable sources, Famitsu magazine. In their newest issue, ‘a member of Sega AM2 hints that the company is currently working on a sequel to a series that hasn’t had a new release since 1995 (in Japan anyway). Among the titles the studio worked on in that year, Virtua Cop 2 is the only one that hasn’t had a true sequel.’ The Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers series have both seen follow-ups in some form or another. So Virtua Cop 3 seems quite possible.

That’s not all we can expect from AM2 land. Hiroshi Kataoka, of the aforementioned AM2 team, let loose that they’re going to release an arcade game in Spring 2003, which is not Virtua Cop 3. Great! The more games the merrier. What arcade game can we expect to storm our lives? The oft-rumored next installment of Out Run is the most likely candidate. It shouldn’t take us long to find out however. ‘Chances are it will be unveiled at the AOU expo in February.’

Good source. Solid rumors. Probable outcome.
DOWN-LO RATING: 8

CASTLEVANIA HAS NO SORROWS
Ah, Castlevania. That word is sweet music to Game Boy Advance players all over the globe. Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance were quite the awesome trip of gaming nirvana. It makes the system worth buying for those two titles alone.

Well we soon may have a third one on the way. GamesAreFun.com has ‘caught wind of the possibility of a new Castlevania game in development for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance, subtitled Aria of Sorrow.’ Lending some credence to this story, rumor has it that Konami of Japan has already trademarked the name “Aria of Sorrow.” If this is true (and it seems to be so), then there’s definitely something up here.

We should know everything soon enough because Konami is holding a press conference this coming Thursday to unveil their line-up for 2003. It’s here that we should find out about any future GBA Castlevanias, but I’ve also heard that Konami might he showing off their long-rumored PlayStation 2 game in the Castlevania series. Let us all wait with abated breath until this Thursday.

I have no idea what to make of the validity of this one. So it’s get the standard D-Lo Rating.
DOWN-LO RATING: 5

(411 DOWN-LO ONLINE: STANDING BY…)


411 MOVIES LO-DOWN! AWARDS
Ladies and Gentlemen, your host… Ron Yip!

Ron Yip: The 411 Movies section is the fastest growing section in the 411 community and it’s thanks to a couple of things. First of which is the quality movies and DVDs that have been launched this past year, secondly it’s due the work of the following writers. The next award is the 411 MOVIES: HARDEST WORKING AWARD and the nominees are…

411 MOVIES: HARDEST WORKING AWARD:

JACOB ZIEGLER
ASHISH
SCOTT KEITH
LIONEL BOHBOT

Ron Yip: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Jacob Ziegler!

[411 MOVIES: HARDEST WORKING – JACOB ZIEGLER]:
“I would like to thank whoever decided to bestow this award on me, I feel truly honored. I have to thank Widro and Ashish (who I guarantee works harder than me) for giving me the job. Once again, thank you.”

(*crowd applause*)

Ron Yip:

411 MOVIES: BEST DVD REVIEWER AWARD:

JACOB ZIEGLER
JULIAN CANTELLA
SCOTT KEITH
IAN CHALLIS
ASHISH

Ron Yip: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Scott Keith!

[411 MOVIES: BEST DVD REVIEWER – SCOTT KEITH]:
“Two awards in one night! I feel just like James Cameron, except that I don’t have a billion dollars. I’d like to thank all those who have been following along with me as I learn and hopefully improve on the fine art of writing DVD reviews, and hopefully someday my DVD review archive will be as extensive as my wrestling review archive.

Thank you and good night.”

(*crowd applause*)

Ron Yip: Many people make livings off of reviewing films. Our reviewers here at 411 Movies… make nothing. We all make nothing! What’s up with that anyway! We’ve got bills to pay! I know I do!! Excuse me I digress. As a way of recognizing our hard working movie reviewers, here are the nominees for

411 MOVIES: BEST MOVIE REVIEWER AWARD:

JACOB ZIEGLER
CHRIS MCCARVER
MISS GALATEA
ASHISH

Ron Yip: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Jacob Ziegler again!

[411 MOVIES: BEST MOVIE REVIEWER – JACOB ZIEGLER]:
“Thank you for recognizing my work on 411 Movies, it is very gratifying to be acknowledged for something you love. I have obsessed about movies for a long time, and hope to review movies for a living one day. Hopefully this will start me off on a long road of success as a critic. Thank you again.”

(*crowd applause*)

Bebito: Still more to come. Let’s take a second and check out these rumors. It’s what you really come here to read anyway…


(411 DOWN-LO ONLINE: CONTINUE TRANSMISSION…)

UPDATE: JET SET RADIO SEQUEL RUMOR
Let’s take a previous rumor and squash it, right here.

Remember I told not too long ago that according to Dorimaga magazine, Sega would release a Jet Set Radio game on Nintendo’s GameCube? Well, Sega’s own Smilebit announced that they do not have current plans to develop a sequel to Jet Set Radio Future, as opposed to the report in the magazine.

What’s up with that Dorimaga anyway? I’ve been getting reports that a lot of their stuff is crap lately. Hmm. I’m going to have to watch out for those guys. Too many more of these kinds of reports and they’ll be banned from the Down-Lo.
DOWN-LO RATING: NONE FOR UPDATES

NAMCO HAS A PS2 BIAS; THEY MUST LIKE MONEY OR SOMETHING
I sure hope you Xbox and GameCube guys enjoy your Soul Caliber 2 when it gets released, because you are about to get the shaft.

Do you know who Yoichi Haraguchi is? Not likely if you’re not Alex Lucard. Let me fill you in. He’s Namco’s Senior Executive Officer. And in the latest issue of Famitsu PS2 he commented that his company intends on focusing most of its attention on the Playstation 2 in 2003. ‘According to Haraguchi, new games for the Microsoft Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube will be released, but most of the games published this year will be for PS2. On top of that, while the company has a multi-platform strategy, Playstation 2 games get top priority when in development.’ So of the games that you XB and GC are getting, you’ll have to wait until the PS2 versions are done. Oh that just sucks.

Last time I heard something like this come from Namco, it was when the Sega Dreamcast was around. They made the incredible Soul Caliber for the system, and then said that they’d still support the thing, but that the Playstation was a top priority. What games did they release on the DC after SC? Mr. Driller and a PacMan game or two. That was it. Hopefully the GameCube and Xbox aren’t bitten as hard by the Namco “lessened support” virus.
DOWN-LO RATING: 9

(411 DOWN-LO ONLINE: STANDING BY…)


411 GAMES LO-DOWN! AWARDS
Ladies and Gentlemen, your host… Bebito Jackson!

Bebito: The year 2002 in the videogame industry was a weird one. Several reports of people dying from playing too many videogames spanned the news. Not to mention a news report of kids going around performing illegal activities and then blaming it on Grand Theft Auto. Thank goodness that idiots in the news weren’t all we had imparted upon us this year. Some of the greatest gameplay experiences you’ll ever see came out in 2K2. There was Metriod Prime, GTA:VC, Super Mario Sunshine, Phantasy Star Online: Ep. I & II, Splinter Cell, Tony Hawk 4, and so many more. It may have been a weird year, but it was fun one.

We here in the videogames section at 411 are here to cover every tiny bit of gaming news around. You guys know you love us for it. Next to the wrestling zone, our columns and News Reports are some of the most read on the site. Respect us. Love us. Read us. With that in mind, let’s check out the nominees for 411 Games Best Column…

411 GAMES: BEST COLUMN AWARD:

(411 Bleep Street) ~ ROBERT FLORENCE
(Retrograding) ~ ALEX LUCARD
(The Gamer’s Conscious) ~ FREDERICK BADLISSI
(My Perfect… Game) ~ MYLES MCNUTT
(The Gaming Opinion) ~ KEITH CHAMBERS

Bebito: Man. I like all those guys. The winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* (Retrograding) ~ Alex Lucard!

[411 GAMES: BEST COLUMN – ALEX LUCARD]:
“Wow. Best column. I’m speechless. Well, not really. I’ve got a big long speech planned.

1. Thanks to the 411 staff and the readers for making my column so popular, especially when I’ve only been here for a month. Thanks especially to Bebito for taking a huge cash bribe and a signed copy of Atlus’ Kartia for this honour. See folks? Always make friends with judges!

2. I’d like to thank King Hippo. Because you never see him anymore. Poor old Punch-Out character.

3. I’d like to thank the kind words I’ve gotten from Working Designs, Atlus, Capcom, Sega, Game Freak, and yes…even Square. Thanks for members of those developers/publishers for actually responding to my columns and letting me know that 411mania is being taking serious by not only VGfans, but by people
in the industry as well.

4. I’d like to thank my fiancée, for being the only human female on the planet who can not only put up with me being able to do the Pokerap in Japanese, but can stand here, ‘Let’s watch Robotech’ each night instead of horrible British TV.

5. Finally, I’d like to thank Nyarlathotep, Outer God, the crawling chaos, and voice of Azazoth. Because he gives me that warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy.

Seriously, I’m glad Bebito respects my work, and glad to see how many of you enjoy it too. Now I’ll just use my remaining few seconds to convince people to buy Sacnoth’s Koudelka, the best made terror game ever. And ex-square employees did the graphics. Double-digit hours of CGI graphics with good plot. Buy it! Buy it NOW.”

(*audience laughter*)

Bebito: Up next is the award for the funniest writer. Nearly every one of us here at 411 Games has quite the wit. But who’s got the most? Check it out…

411 GAMES: FUNNIEST WRITER AWARD:

BEBITO JACKSON
ROBERT FLORENCE
JASON MASTERS
POLECAT
ERIC WILLIAMS

Bebito: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* What? This must be some sort of mistake. Jason Masters?

[411 GAMES: FUNNIEST WRITER – JASON MASTERS]:
“WTF?”

(*audience laughter*)

Ron Yip: Heh. I think they both surprised each other on that one. Anyway, the review section in the Games Zone is home to some of our most talented writers. It’s a good thing too; because you know you guys can’t make any decisions without us telling you what to think. Here are the nominees for

411 GAMES: BEST GAME REVIEWER AWARD:

WIDRO
POLECAT
RANTMASTER MARK
Q BALL
FRANCIS MCCABE

Ron Yip: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Widro!

[411 GAMES: BEST GAME REVIEWER – WIDRO]:
“Wow thanks!”

(*audience applause*)

Bebito: “Wow thanks.” Boy, these award speeches are getting pretty elaborate. Moving along, the Down-Lo Spotlight has become one of the most popular segments to my column. Having stars from all over 411 Mania coming to sit down and chat about gaming with me has always been a blast. So it’s with great honor that I announce the nominees for…

411 GAMES: BEST DOWN-LO SPOTLIGHT GUEST AWARD:

CHRIS HYATTE
THE SCOTSMAN
ASHISH
JEFF MODZELEWSKI
LIONEL BOHBOT

Bebito: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* The Scotsman!

[411 GAMES: BEST DOWN-LO SPOTLIGHT GUEST – THE SCOTSMAN]:
“Wow. I’m the…*checks trophy*….Best Guest-Star on some column nobody reads. What an exciting award. How many other guest stars were there? 4? Wow. Such an honour. *cough*

I’d like to thank Scott Keith. Without his weight problem, I’d not be where I was today. I’d also like to thank……um, I dunno. This is a stupid award. Go f*ck yourself. SCOTT KEITH FOR PRESIDENT!!!”

(*audience laughter*)

Ron Yip: Time for the award for 411 Games’ Best News Report. Great, maybe I’ll get nominated for something… Here are the nominees…

411 GAMES: BEST NEWS REPORT AWARD:

(Final Continue) ~ JASON MASTERS
(SimColumn) ~ RON YIP
(411 Games Rumor Down-Lo) ~ JASON MASTERS
(Super Gaming News Alpha 3 Turbo) ~ ERIC WILLIAMS
(411 Games News Report) ~ CHRIS PANKONIN

Ron Yip: You know Bebito, you should be disqualified because you don’t actually do news. The winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Eric Williams!

[411 GAMES: BEST NEWS REPORT – ERIC WILLIAMS]:
“OMG!”

(*audience laughter*)

Bebito: I know Eric… I was shocked too. Apparently, I actually like your News Reports. Silly me. Speaking of Eric, there are a lot of lazy workers here at 411 Games. Sometimes we won’t hear from a writer, columnist, or reviewer for over a month at a time. But the ones that work hard… WORK HARD. Here are the nominees for

411 GAMES: HARDEST WORKING AWARD:

ASHISH
CHRIS PANKONIN
BEBITO JACKSON
ALEX LUCARD
WIDRO

Bebito: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award is… *opens envelope* Chris Pankonin!

[411 GAMES: HARDEST WORKING – CHRIS PANKONIN]:
“Thanks to everyone who voted for me, glad to see that people take note of the work I do. Thanks!”

(*audience applause*)

Bebito: Wow. I can’t believe it… I didn’t even get an award, and it’s my OWN awards show!
Ron Yip: Hold on there Bebito. There’s one more award to be given out… Ladies and gentlemen, from 411 Games, please welcome back our own Jason Masters!

(*loud applause*)

Bebito: Wait. Ron, what’s going on here?

Jason Masters: And the nominees for 411 Games suckiest writer are…

411 GAMES: SUCKIEST WRITER AWARD:

BEBITO
JACKSON, BEBITO
MR. B. JACKSON
BEBITO JACKSON

Bebito: This isn’t funny.

Jason Masters: And the winner of the whatever award is… *opens envelope* Bebito Jackson!

[411 GAMES: SUCKIEST WRITER AWARD – BEBITO JACKSON]:
“I hate all of you guys.”

(*crowd laughter and applause*)


(411 DOWN-LO ONLINE: CONTINUE TRANSMISSION…)

UPDATE: NINTENDO’S MEGATON ANNOUNCEMENT
I found out some info regarding Nintendo’s infamous Megaton announcement the day after I posted the Down-Lo last week. (See, I told you that stuff happens all the time.) Apparently our own Myles McNutt stumbled upon this info a little after I did, as he emailed me this in part…

‘That Nintendo is behind Megaton. This is not true. To blame Nintendo for the lack of Megaton is blasphemous. It’s not their fault. The rumor (That’s all it ever was) was started by V-Jump magazine in
Japan, printed around the one year anniversary of the GCN in Japan. It said that, around year’s end, an announcement will be made that will cause Worldwide GC Sales BOOM…the Megaton. Nintendo never said “Look, Megaton is coming!” They never said that Megaton existed, let alone delay it.’

Myles is correct. I was going to explain that to you all, but his letter does it nicely.

So what was this “megaton” announcement that “will cause a worldwide boom for the GameCube”? V-Jump, the guys who started this whole thing have revealed that it’s nothing more than a GameCube game based on a comic popular with the magazine’s readers. Yup. That’s it. No huge revelation. No earth shattering news. A comic book game… The megaton rumor is a load of crap.

Funny thing is, many of the things that the Megaton announcement was rumored to be is not crap. Nintendo kept announcement after announcement coming; they had all sorts of deals, and exclusive titles coming our way. But everyone had such high expectations, that they kind of looked past all the goodness being thrown our way. Funny thing is, according to Shacknews.com there are still ‘some rumblings of another reasonably large GameCube announcement that’s brewing.’ But as far as the exact “megaton” hokey pokey goes… we can forget about it and go buy Game Boy Advance SP.
DOWN-LO RATING: NONE FOR UPDATES

And that’s the Down-Lo.


411 MANIA WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD
Ladies and Gentlemen, your hosts… Ron Yip and Bebito Jackson!

Bebito: Well it’s finally that time. I didn’t think that we’d ever make it to here.
Ron Yip: I did. Did you see how short most of those 411 Games acceptance speeches were?
Bebito: I was trying to build suspense there, Ron. Nevermind. It’s time for the Lo-Down! Award for 411 Mania Writer of Year. I had this long speech planned about how it takes tons of work to even get nominated for this thing, but I’m tired and I want to finish all this.
Ron Yip: Amen to that.
Bebito: So without further ado, here are the nominees for…

411 MANIA: WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD:

SCOTT KEITH
CHRIS HYATTE
FLEA
THE SCOTSMAN
WIDRO

Bebito: And the winner of the Lo-Down! Award for 411 Mania Writer of The Year is… *opens envelope* Chris Hyatte!!

[411 MANIA: WRITER OF THE YEAR – CHRIS HYATEE]:
Bebito Jackson: And I’ll be the Hyatte fan accepting this award this time. The guy is awesome. I’m not even sure that 411 would be as popular as it is without him (and Keith). As always… I’m sure he could care less, but that’s what makes him great.

(*audience laughter*)

Ron Yip: Well that’s it.
Bebito: Thanks to everyone who participated in tonight’s festivities to help make this a great show, especially my buddy Ron Yip! I’ll be back next year with more awards and more categories! Goodnight everybody!


Hope you enjoyed all of this. I sure had tons of fun doing it. To the 411 Staff, if you didn’t win, try harder this year and maybe you’ll meet my standards (I’m just kidding. I seriously like nearly everyone on the site’s work). And to my readers… if you liked and appreciated the effort that went into this column, then make sure to NEVER miss another Down-Lo, and we’ll be even.

Read Lo-Down! Award winner Jason Masters tomorrow in his Final Continue column. He’s the funniest writer here if you didn’t know. See you next week, when co-boss of 411mania, Widro, is in the Down-Lo Spotlight. Peace. I’m out.

Go EAGLES!

(411 DOWN-LO OFFLINE: END TRANSMISSION…)


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