Two Trailers That Scare Me: Arthur and X-Men First Class

Here are two trailers of movies that I desperately want to be good. The clips also scare me, because there’s a chance that the movies will fail…hard. Above is Arthur, starring Russell Brand and Helen Mirren. On the plus side, Brand is awesome (yes, I have a man crush on him) and Mirren is legendary. Luis Guzman appears to have a hilariously understated role too. All that said, it’s going to be so tough to compete with Dudley Moore’s original, Brand’s Arthur appears sober, and the trailer reeks of a heavy handed “money can’t buy happiness” message.

Next is X-Men: First Class. On the plus side, Bryan Singer helped craft the story, there are a ton of babes in the movie, and several of the mutants look incredible (Beast, Emma Frost, etc.). Unfortunately, Singer isn’t directing the film, which is a shame because he did a nice job with the first two X-Men movies. There are also some portions of the trailer that are just wince inducing.

Still, I’m going to (naively?) hope that both of these movies will be fun. As a Russell Brand mark and a comic-book nerd, I want both to do well. When you have a moment, check out the trailers. I’d love to hear what you think of them.

Save Up to $35 on RPad.tv Merchandise!

Here’s your chance to save up to $35 on RPad.tv swag. Everything is on sale — shirts, coffee mugs, beer glasses, kitchen aprons, and more! The sale runs until Sunday night. All you have to do is enter these coupon codes and follow these instructions:

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If you can swing it, you can look absolutely awesome sporting some RPad.tv swag and help keep the site going. As always, your support is greatly appreciated.

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Coffee Talk #309: What Do You Want to See in the iPad 2?

The iPad 2 is set to be announced on March 2, 2011. Today I wanted to see if any of you are interested in an iPad 2 and what features you’d like it to have. While I’m sure it’ll have…

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the Miami Heat’s inability to beat elite teams, Charlie Sheen’s insane interviews, or when Miley Cyrus will go all Britney Spears, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

The iPad 2 is set to be announced on March 2, 2011. The original was a crazy success, selling 15-million units in less than a year. Some analysts have pegged the sequel to sell twice as much. Today I wanted to see if any of you are interested in an iPad 2 and what features you’d like it to have. While I’m sure it’ll have a front-facing camera, more RAM, and a faster CPU, it looks like it won’t have the feature I really want — double the resolution.

On a side note, what’s up with Apple taking all the heat away from gaming conferences? The iPad 2 announcement will be during Game Developers Conference 2011 and the rumor is that Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (think iPhone 5 announcement) will take place during one of the same days as E3 2011.

So have at it (please)! What features do you want to see in the iPad 2?

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

I have a ton to do before I head up to San Francisco for GDC 2011 on Monday. I’ve been missing DC Universe Online, but I don’t think I’ll be heading back to Gotham or Metropolis this weekend. My copy of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together finally arrived yesterday. This would have come in handy during my crazy Orlando trip. I shouldn’t play too much of it over the weekend…but I know that I won’t be able to resist. It’s my favorite genre and made by one of my favorite developers (Yasumi Matsuno).

How about you? What’s on your weekend playlist?

Gas Powered Games Developing Age of Empires Online

On a recent Facebook update, Gas Powered Games founder and CEO Chris Taylor announced that his company will be the new lead developer for Age of Empires Online. One of the best-selling PC-game series of all time, Age of Empires was started by the late Ensemble Studios. Robot Entertainment, comprised of former Ensemble talent, was originally slated to handle Age of Empires Online. While I’m still bitter about Microsoft shutting down Ensemble, I’m thrilled that the AoE will live on through an excellent developer like Gas Powered Games. Here’s what Taylor had to say:

Newsflash! Today we’re announcing at the MS SanFran event, GPG is now the lead developer of Age of Empires Online!

As Chris mentioned in our chat at DICE 2011 (embedded below), he had an exciting announcement to make in the near future. Yeah, this qualifies as exciting. Ha!

Anyone curious to see what Gas Powered does with Age of Empires?

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MacBook Pro Gets Sandy Bridge, AMD GPUs, and Thunderbolt

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro line of notebooks with new Intel CPUs, new AMD GPUs, and a rebranded version of Intel’s Light Peak technology called Thunderbolt. While the prices and form factors are the same as last year’s models, the under-the-hood changes are pretty significant. Let’s break it down (the Degeneration X theme song should be playing in your head now).

Intel CPUs: MacBook Pros are now armed with Intel Sandy Bridge processors, which are the the true second-generation “Core i” CPUs. These new babies are more powerful and more efficient than their predecessors. The 15-inch and 17-inch models get some quad-core action, while the 13-inch model “only” gets a dual-core update. The new CPUs are blazing. You want one.

AMD GPUs: The 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros are now armed with AMD GPUs, in addition to integrated Intel 3000 chips. The low-end choice is a Radeon 6490M with 256MB of video RAM, while the high-end option is a Radeon 6750M with 1GB of video RAM. The 13-inch model only has integrated graphics. The GPUs are more powerful, but what really interests me is how this will impact Nvidia, as the company struggles with stiff competition on multiple fronts.

Thunderbolt: This is a new i/o port with some fantastic potential. It allows you to connect multiple devices with throughput that exceeds USB 3.0 (in some cases 2x faster). Imagine transferring gigabytes of data in seconds — that’s what Thunderbolt offers. You’ll be able to connect multiple monitors, hard drives, video cameras, etc. on one Thunderbolt connection. There aren’t any Thunderbolt products on the market at the moment, but the space should blow up in 2011. As someone that edits video, the thought of a Thunderbolt external hard drive to use as a Final Cut scratch disk is drool inducing.

Those are the three major updates to the MacBook Pro line. What do you guys and dolls think? Anyone tempted to buy one? Any of you have a rich uncle that could buy me one?!? Ha!

Coffee Talk #308: Happy Birthday Steve Jobs!

Happy birthday to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who turned 56-years old today. Jobs is one of the most fascinating people that has existed in my lifetime. His approach to technology is unique and nobody gets people more passionate about silicon…

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Deron Williams going to the New Jersey Nets, Alyssa Milano’s place in the MILF rankings, or your favorite blue beverage, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Happy birthday to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who turned 56-years old today. Jobs is one of the most fascinating people that has existed in my lifetime. His approach to technology is unique and nobody gets people more passionate about silicon than he does. In addition to his incredible work at Apple, Jobs bought Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group and turned it into the hugely successful Pixar Animation Studios. It’s crazy that he helped kick off two companies that are tremendously successful from a financial standpoint and made a huge cultural impact.

To me, he’s just so interesting and different from his peers. I guess that’s something a lot of my heroes have in common. My dream dinner for four would be with Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, and Steve Jobs. How awesome would that be?!?

Anyway, let’s honor Steve Jobs today and share some stories. What’s your favorite thing about Jobs? Is it a specific product he announced? The time he asked John Sculley if he wanted to stop selling sugar water at Pepsi and join him at Apple to change the world? What’s your favorite Jobs catchphrase?

BioWare Hall of Fame Tribute Video

It was a tremendous honor to watch BioWare’s Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk get inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hall of fame. Check out what the BioWare Docs had to say about this accolade. The legendary Bing Gordon, Cerny Games’ Mark Cerny, Incomniac Games’ Ted Price, Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor, Blizzard’s Frank Pearce and Paul Sams, Microsoft’s Don Mattrick, and more share their feelings on these two excellent people entering the hall.

Side notes include:

  • Don Mattrick revealing why Canada produces excellent game developers and pro-wrestlers
  • The doctors revealing which one of them is still a licensed physician
  • An innovative Nintendo DS developer imagining the doctors living like Bert and Ernie

I’m such a huge fan of these guys, both professionally and personally. I get warm fuzzies from watching the video and remembering the standing ovation they got from their peers during the awards. These guys rock.

Junichi Masuda Reveals How New Pokemon Are Born

Eurogamer posted an excellent interview with Game Freak director Junichi Masuda, who has been working on the Pokemon series since the very beginning. Masuda covers many topics, including how new Pokemon are created. Here’s an excerpt:

At first I think of ideas about what kind of play I can include. I consider playing content at first, and then what kinds of new elements I can bring in, and the world and communication aspects.

I bring up all the ideas at first. Then I start to think about what the world will be like. Which region? What town should we have? What type of gym should we have? I start to map the world next.

Once those are fixed I can start to think, so, this gym should have this type of trainer, so we should have this type of Pokemon. Then we start to think about the Pokemon characters.

You might think we always start to think from the Pokemon first, but actually we don’t. We do it in this order.

Now you know how new Pokemon are “born”! Seriously though, Masuda is a very cool guy and I highly recommend checking out this interview.

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