Shake It!

Have you seen this Wario Land: Shake It business? It's a pretty startling thing -- an honest-to-goodness home-console 2D platformer, complete with full-out traditional 2D cell animation. (By Production IG, no less!)

Now don't get me wrong. 2D games with 3D graphics -- like, say, Viewtiful Joe -- are all well and good. But man... it's always good to see some actual honest-to-goodness 2D game art back on one of the major systems. Relegating these kinds of games entirely to handhelds makes about as much sense to me as relegating traditional animation entirely to television. Sprite-based games can be so pretty... especially when they aren't being drawn for screens that are as wide as my thumb and as high res as your average calculator.

But now here's Nintendo, not only making a new game with 2D art, but actually putting some real money and effort behind how that art is made, by getting a proper animation studio to handle it. I, for one, am impressed. In fact, this is almost enough to make up for Mario Party 327: Mario Harder.

Almost.

Sam Logan

Catapult

As of this weekend, the very last of the Conscience Cat Limited Prints have been signed, personalized, and mailed out. So, if you ordered one and have yet to receive it, you should find it at your doorstep very soon. Hooray! It took some time, but I had a lot of fun coming up with unique slogans for everyone.

It's worth noting that, while the limited prints may be long gone, our two other new posters are still available, either individually or in bundles. And of course, anyone who is still craving Conscience Cat can always look for him in t-shirt form.

Sam Logan

Love at the end of the world

Happy holidays, America. You might not know this, but up here in Canada we don't have Independence Day. All we get is Co-Dependence Day. (Officially celebrated on July 17th.) You don't get any actual time off, but you do feel like you really, really need some.

This has been another addition of Real True Canadian Facts!

Sam Logan