Hope it turns out well, despite... well, Tamsoft, fans of the series didn't get a game in forever... outside of a mobile one i never investigated in.
You mean this one? [Link] it actually seems to play closer to Tecmo's Captain Tsubasa games, since they both use the "RPG-style" of having to choose from commands when you approach a player, and then showing you the result. [Link]

Eventually you'll be able to get a Switch, do conserve the receipt because joycon drift is a pain in the ass, for the last months i managed to wrestle the issues (literally fought agains the drift) until i got sick of it and sent it for repairs. for a Switch and controllers i got in 2017. Now they work, but it's just a frustrating struggle to deal with.
I'm glad they offer free repairs on the matter. I just wish they'd actually do something about the drifting (and not just fix it). it's getting to be as com as 360's RRoD at this rate. recently, they announced that Switch production will return this summer.

BTW, not too impressed with the PS5 reveal, not bad, but this feels like the move from PS3 to PS4, again. Just the fact it started with the announcement of GTA V, AGAIN
Yeah, I don't get that; they should have started with an original game or something. it reminds me of when the PSP was new; looking at the early days, it felt like every other game was a port of some kind.

Looking back, I've never gotten consoles on launch day. it's always been several weeks to years later; for example, I didn't get the PS4 until March 2016.

And that's not getting into Tak Fujii's accidental Nazi salute when he tried to quiet down the crowd.

Someone made fan art of the event; some of Konami's moments are near the bottom. [Link]

if you look into it deeply, it's also kinda sad, because these two guys weren't newcomers; they were veterans. Naoki Maeda joined Konami in 1995 and was the composer/sound producer for Salamander 2 [Link] and Twinbee Yahho [Link] before having his biggest success in the Bemani series. Tak Fujii joined in 1997 and was the sound producer for games like Suikoden, Sexy Parodius, Symphony of the Night, and even obscure stuff like Poy Poy and Silent Scope 2. and yet, this conference will be all that they're known for outside of Japan.

Yeah, the Azur Lane anime is surprinsingly kinda ok, despite everything going against it. Baffling.
It had luck on its side.

Season 3 is either a huge misstep or a preview of what to expect from Season 4, we're gonna find out. I'm willing to go along for this ride, despite this crud of a season.
Here's hoping that it's the former.

There's no manga where I live (as far as I know), but if I find the anime online, I'll keep it in mind. recently I found out that GITS served as part of the inspiration behind The Matrix.

after the not great start, i became intrigued, i wanna know where Season 2 will go, since it ends with a cliffhanger. Safe to say it's better than Arise, not bad overall, but as a Ghost In The Shell opus...that one had a bit of identity crisis.
Sounds like there's room for improvement, at least.

I've seen other people interested, especially here, were Captain Tsubaba is know as Holly & Benji (because they americanized it or we were sold some american version here back in the day)
I doubt it as we (NA) didn't get the show back when it was new. apparently, Enoki Films brought over the 83 and '02 anime to the US with an English dub, but they were both renamed Flash Kicker. the characters kept their original names, though. so the Italian dub might have been its own thing.

Neople (Combat Arms) did the defunct online FPS GITS SAC First Assault Online, as well, but who cares, it wasn't great, and the game is dead now.
This one? [Link] looks kinda generic...

(new Lana banner, nice!)
Yeah. might stick with this character for a while.

Hello again.

Honestly, i don't remember ever seeing that "hug a chinese" stuff (there was some "Cina and Italy together" motivational banners around), i'm willing to guess it wasn't exactly so wholesome in intent, because this is Italy, after all. Then again, i live in the city with the biggest chinese minority in the country, of course nobody talked about it, we're used to each other by now.
So I guess the event didn't happen where you live, or didn't really played a big impact at all. huh...

Btw, now we ARE in Phase 2, but i'm not lowering my guard too much. i go to work, i go out when i can, but they decided to open back gyms and discos (yeah, so much for that "we're gonna reopen in march 2021 - not 2011, lil typo XD -), so... i'm not willing to trust the average citizen, since many act like it's over. It ain't.
We're unfortunately having issues here thanks to a rise in cases; doesn't help that I live in one of the epicenters, so I'm at risk.

Also, this sounds like a silly thing for me to say, but I didn't know there were discos in Italy.

the US apparently caught wind of a potential pandemic months before, and did nothing.
Someone I talked to told me that a while after I posted that. honestly don't know what to feel about that. even worse when you consider that Bill Gates warned about a potential pandemic back in 2015...

Because profit always
Profit played a factor?

Did you heard about that the Sonic movie is getting a sequel?

oh, boi, the Konami E3 2011 conference was definitely on the same level of cringe, with Naoki Maeda (and Tak Fujii, to a lesser degree) talking in english like he channeled the ghost of Mickey Rooney, the Dance Central show-off, the embarassing moments of live-feed silence (even worst because it wasn't due to technical hiccups) as he or other people that clearly weren't trained for PR.... were dragged into the stage anyway. And the awkward wrestling match. XD
And to make it even worse, it had problems even before it started; you needed an account just to watch their conference and it would keep refreshing itself unless you change your time zone to where the E3 takes place.

With some luck it's quite good and maybe we'll get a new good GITS videogame out of it, as well!
I saw that there were three games (four if you include the online game). I'm shocked that I can recognize all of the developers, too; Exact (Jumping Flash), Cavia (Drakengard 1 + 2 and Nier) and G-Artists (Intelligent Qube).

yeah, it was hard to find a copy, i ended up getting BG 1 and 2 on Amazon.co.uk via a third party seller, waited a fuckton of time, but they arrived.
You got lucky, then. my copy of Bakumatsu Rock has been delayed, since the seller was based in Japan and shipped via Japan Post, who are temporarily closing due to the pandemic. other postal services might get affected, too, if this keeps up.

Aside AC NH and Pirate Warriors 4, i guess... Ghosts Of Tsushima looks cool.
I see. barely heard of Ghosts of Tsushima.

I'm mostly just picking up what's ended up in the "bargain bin", so to speak. although I'm interested in seeing if the new Captain Tsubasa game that's coming out this year will be any good, since I'm getting into football (soccer) thanks to Starlight teaching me some terms and stuff, and the only real option nowadays is FIFA (which has microtransactions and... other problems [Link] ). it's being developed by Tamsoft (yes, the same devs behind Senran Kagura, Oneechanbara, Battle Arena Toshinden, etc), so I'm worried that they'll screw it up, since the only sports games they've done were in D3's Simple series.

Would have gotten myself a Nintendo Switch for my birthday this month and buy a copy of Smash Ultimate later on, but thanks to the pandemic slowing down production of new units, scalpers selling them at high prices, and the fact that the joycons can still drift, that's pretty much off the table.

i'm looking forward to see the move to the next gen, even i feel it's time to move forwards, for better or worst.
Well, I know the PS5 will only be shipped in limited supply due to the pandemic.

totally, but it doesn't explain the propensity for embarassing crapfest, like their 25th anniversary show, with live musician, dj, weird audience interactions, continuous audio and video bugs, one almost wonders if it was just destiny at this point. Jim Sterling's supercut of it it's great, almost unbelievable, even for Sonic as a brand.
I think Starlight linked me that before, but after experience the horrors of this pandemic, had to watch it again. still as hilarious now as it was back in 2016. "What's that [silence]... that's the sound of 25 years of Sonic!" and that damned feedback echo will never fail to make me laugh. reminds me of the Konami press conference back in 2010, but its failure was less to do with the stream and more to do with... everything else. [Link]

(i don't know if yet to dread the sequels to the Sonic movie that we'll have eventually to see. Not yet)
The production might have to wait thanks to the pandemic...

The whole premise and characters are basically chomping at the same flavor, but with worst designs way too much oriented on "legally worrisome horny".
I've heard of Kantai Collection, but... yikes.

anime is alright, all things considered, given what the source material is... you can do worse.
It honestly sounds like it should have done worse.

Season 3 is a big pile of crap, in every way, from too many characters (including new ones that are disposed of in a random way or never actually explained and/or explored), really random stuff done for the sake of "edgy", a narrative that is basically just killing time and setting up potential plot points for Season 4.
Oh, okay, I get it. I wonder if it's because they changed writers or something after the second season.

i feel not many people are familiar with the brand outside of Oshii's 1995 movie and the SAC, definitely more to that than the original manga.
Well, I'm definitely unfamiliar with the series.

On this subject, i'm quite excited to see the new SAC 2045 series on Netflix, just 3 days away!
There's a new series?

I've also red the recent multi-authorial takes, with many comic book authors from different countries and with different styles giving their take on GITS, the comical ones we're surprisingly good.
They've got multiple authors doing their own version of it? when was that? also, someone made a comedic take on it? that's new to me.

Yeah, a guess like that was fairly logical, given we were having a huge death toll
I heard that Italy had a "hug a Chinese" event back in February to show that they were not racist. I wonder if that partly played a role in there being so many deaths.

[and we're still yet to be in "Phase 2" of the lockdown/recovery
Still not at Phase 2?!

and according to the plan (as it's laid out for right now), cinemas will open back in dicember, basically next year, while entertaiment venues like discos are gonna be able to re-open March 2011.
Over here, they're planning on easing some restrictions in May... but I'm not sure about other stores and what-not. I assume you mean March 2021, though? that's almost a year away...

YEah, it's gonna be a long ass summer of reclusion, and insanity. It's gonna be tough, but i also find it even more insane to feel we're almost mid-way into this crisis, far from it. Worlwide is gonna take even longer, for sure.
The whole thing likely would have been avoided had the Chinese government hadn't kept the virus under wraps.

I've read the PM, i'll reply after writing this.
Okay.

Heard of his rebuttal/explanation years ago but didn't bother to search for the entire article, but that specific quote still....it's very badly worded, i think he meant to say that they tried too hard to shoehorne elements from the game into the movie, at the cost of the movie working as it's own thing. Which is odd given how different the movie is and "had" to insert more stuff from the games in order to alienate less the public.... and i want to believe Miyamoto knew the movie had this conflicting issues, but i don't know.
Well, I know Nintendo wasn't involved with the film the way they were with the animated 1986 film... so I don't know if Miyamoto even knew about the film's problems during production. he was probably too busy producing Link's Awakening (which was in production at the same time).

Nice read, thanks! Honestly, i'm glad we didn't get that Sonic live-action movie back in the day, but nothing of value seems to have been lost, besides another media artifact for future generations to rediscover.
I wonder if the live-action movie would have really caused damage to the brand. I mean, it didn't stop Mario (worst it did was leave behind an inkstain), but then again, that series already had multiple successful games and spinoffs under its belt at the time.