Play VVVVVV and tell us what you think.

How do you pronounce this? We have no idea.

VVVVVV is a 2D platformer built using flash by Terry Cavanagh. The main game-play hook of VVVVVV is that you can control gravity with a simple flip of a button. Once second you can be running across the floor and then next you will be running on the ceiling. Overall its a simple yet interesting design that makes up for some puzzle platforming goodness.

Now on the last episode of the podcast, Amado and I spent a good amount of time talking about the game and discussing the pro and cons its play control.

Amado reveled in the music and the gravity puzzling and found the game to be great fun. I on the other hand did not have the same experience and found that the controls ended up making the game more frustrating than it's worth. I must agree that the chiptune music is top notch and much love should be pushed towards the creator of the games soundtrack, Magnus.

Uh oh... Jersey Shore is on T.V.

So here is where you guys come in. We here at Who Burned My Toast want you guys to try out the demo and tell us what you think of the game and its play control. You can grab the demo for free online at http://thelettervsixtim.es/ or you can grab it on Steam for PC or Mac.

We want to know. Does the game make you want to punch babies or does it make you feel like your in 2D platforming heaven? And most of all tell us why.

Augmented Reality - Nothing is what it seems.

No not this...

Augmentation: The process of making or becoming great in size or amount. That is the promise of this new technology that's creeping into our lives. The above image is a representation of ... of ... Damn I've been caught again, I was just trying to get your attention. I feel dirty. Did it work? Do you forgive me?

The Ladies Vs. Gents Puzzle Challenge

Today I went down to Union Square in San Francisco to check out Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for the Nintendo DS. As described in my last blog post, the whole marketing gimmick is to have the ladies and the gents compete in a puzzle challenge.

Game on. We're divided into opposing forces for battle.

Who's smarter — Men or Woman?

That's what Nintendo and Professor Layton want to know. I woke up this morning to an email invite from Nintendo declaring a battle of the sexes in major cities across the country. Their solution to this age old problem is to take regular crazy people off the street, have them play some Nintendo DS and solve puzzles to settle this matter once and for all. Check it out and see if your city is on the list. Luckily one event is San Francisco's Union Square on Sept 7th, so I will be down there representing all the manly men out there with my puzzle skills. Watch out ladies I'm coming for you! (Man that sounds creepy).



So I must ask. Who is smarter, Men or Women? If you Men really are intellectual beasts I think you already know the answer to this question; if you want to live ;-).

Hudson and Child's Play make it easy for you to make a difference.

You already waste your life on Facebook, you might as well be productive.

Hudson and Child's Play have gotten together to help donate toys and games to Children Hospitals around the country. From August 30th until September 7th, you can go onto Hundson's Lost in Shadow Facebook page and "like" them. Each person that "likes" the page, Hudson will donate 10 cents to Child's Play. If your feeling particularly charitable you can go and change your profile pic to any image that contains a shadow. The reward for your clever imagery will rake in an additional 1 dollar donation to the charity.

We've been following Lost in Shadow and it's one of our most anticipated games coming up this holiday. So while your on their Facebook page being all helpful and stuff. Go ahead and learn a bit more about this unique puzzler.

Happy donating!

Love 8bit Music? Live around San Francisco? Then you better be at DNA Lounge this Sunday

This show is going to give you an acoustic seizure

This Sunday Aug 29th, 8bitsf presents a show that is going to tantalize your little 8-bit hearts. With bands like Anamanaguchi, minusbaby, crashfaster, and our friend Mr. Spastic, it's sure to be a kick ass show.

All you gotta do is get your tickets online (you save $4 bones) and walk your nerdy self down to the DNA Lounge.

If your still on the fence deciding whether another night of playing Call of Duty or WoW still sounds like more fun. Go to the 8bitsf website and download free tracks from each of the bands. Like I said before, Mr. Spastic is a friend and if you want to learn more about him and hear some of his music. We interviewed him on the on Episode 20 of the podcast.

So be there, be square, I'll be there.... you know just get you ass down there and pretend like its Friday night.

The Metroid Other M TV spot dresses to impress

If you want to see the HD version go to the Nintendo site here http://bit.ly/cXS5AQ

Normally I wouldn't highlight an advertisement for a game, but I personally walked away from watching this one really impressed. It's a blending of live action and gameplay that all comes together in a way that makes the game look not only fantastic and entertaining, but it also peaks your interest about the games story. I know I may have been duped by some fancy marketing, but it was just enough to push me into the "I gotta play this" category. And best of all you get to see a live action version of Zero Suit Samus. Wowza!

Now this isn't the first time I've been dazzled by a Metroid commercial, when the Metroid Prime TV ad came out, it also gave me the same consumerist instinct to buy it. I guess it just tugs on my dream that one day Metroid could make it onto the big screen and be a kick ass movie. Just keep that bastard Uwe Boll away from my Samus!

Are you planning on purchasing Metroid Other M?
Do you think this TV spot may entice people to play Metroid Other M?

Put your quarter up!

The Past.

I remember a day. A time when on a hot day, I could walk to 7-11, grab a Slurpy, and decidedly spend my whole day in a place of wonders.

Photo by Dan Coogan

This was a magical place. The building from the outside looked like nothing special. Just a little building at the corner of a busy intersection. The sign said “City Arcade”. Yeah I’m talking about the 80’s and Arcades. Let me take you there.

So in this place in particular you’d walk into the double doors and you’d first enter the “Decompression Chamber” is what I called it. It was the room before you are granted access to some of the most colorful, and amazing, arcade cabinets ever invented. In here you shed the heat from the sun, you shed your hatred of humanity, you shed your worry. In this decompression chamber you are renewed, and changed. Now lets walk in.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on 3DS please!

So if you’ve heard the podcast you probably know Den <3 Monster Hunter Tri. I really do, I’ve enjoyed about 160 hours worth of gamplay (so far) of Monster Hunter Tri.



I also played a lot of Monster Hunter Freedom 2 for PSP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. I believe I had about 300+ hours thrown into the ladder version. That said I can’t wait for Monster Hunter Portable 3rd! Seriously look at this trailer!!

That also got me thinking: Japan loves Monster Hunter. Japan loves Nintendo. Nintendo is releasing something Japan (and I) will love, which is the 3DS, very soon. Why not combine it all together!

So without further adieu here is a list or reasons why Monster Hunter Portable 3rd should be on 3DS!!

Play Bit.Trip.Runner and help an Indy developer out.

Every once in awhile I come across some small titles on Wiiware that I fall in love with. Granted Wiiware isn't know for tons of amazing games, but if you look you can find some diamonds in the rough. One of those diamonds is Bit.Trip.Runner by Gaijin Games. They have been responsible for all the other Bit.Trip games that have landed on Wiiware over that last few years. Just like the other games in the series Runners gameplay are based on simple old school game mechanics and music plays an interesting roll as well.

The game plays like a platformer but your main character CommanderVideo is constantly moving right across the screen. Your job is to jump, kick and duck your way past obstacles with out crashing into them. If you hit a wall or fall into a pit your done for good and need to start all the way back beginning of the level. It's painfully cruel, but the levels are short and every move you make is accompanied by some chip-tune inspired sound that somehow mixes with the background music. So as your jumping around and kicking the shit out of things the game produces some crazy music that all blends together.

Now it's seems I'm not the only one who has become a fan of the game and this blogger Gabotron wants to spread the word about  Bit.Trip.Runner. He wants everyone to make a video to help Gaijin out and sell some games. It's only $8 you cheap bastards, so check it out. See below.



So I'm here to help spread the word as well and I am going to use Gabotron's files to create my own video and post it back up here when I'm done. Who knows where me and CommanderVideo will go, but I bet its going to involve some booze.

If you've played Bit.Trip.Runner, what are your thoughts?
Have you tried any other of the Bit.Trip games?

Quote source: Kotaku

Metroid Other M has 2 hours worth of cutscenes. Hooray?

I'm alone... so... alone. OMG shut up!

From the very first trailer shown of Metroid Other M. It was obvious that Nintendo was once again trying something new with the series by including team Ninja into the mix. When Retro Studios turned the Metroid series into an FPS with the Prime series, many fans died of a brain aneurysm. But overall I think most people enjoyed the series new direction.

So here we are again at a crossroad with a new take on the series about to be released. News has slowly trickled about the game, but this bit of info caused my video game nerd type of spidey sense to get all tingly and sense danger coming.

Metroid Other M is going to feature a whole lot of back story about our heroin Samus Aran. So much in fact that the creators added a "Theater Mode" so you can watch all 2 hours of the story like a movie. This is explained in the quote below from Famitsu.

"The storytelling aspect of Other M continues to play a major role even after you beat the game, the way [Nintendo designer Yoshio] Sakamoto puts it. "There's a 'theater mode' that lets you view all of the cutscenes linked together seamlessly as a single movie," he explained. "We placed just as much weight on enjoying the story as we did on the action aspects of this game, but it's hard to fully communicate a storyline in a video game with just one playthrough. At the same time, though, it's asking a lot of players to beat the game twice to get it all, so that's where the idea for that mode came from. It lets you make a lot of discoveries, things you missed or dialogue that makes more sense in retrospect. I hope it helps people understand the story better."

So some of you may be asking yourselves. Why Butcher? Why would this incredible news be getting your spidey sense all in a bunch? I have one thing to say. Metal Gear Solid 4. If you've played MGS4 then you know of the ridiculously long cut scenes and story in the game. I felt like you were spending almost the same amount of time watching cut scenes as playing the game. Now, did any of you really know what in the hell was going on in that game? Be honest.

For me this could go either way in terms of really great, to totally horrible. I honestly don't recall Team Ninja being masters of storytelling. If the production values are bad and your forced to watch it, I'm going to have bad flashbacks from MGS4. I'm not saying it's going to be horrible, but it does have me a little concerned with Team Ninja at the helm. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that we'll see Samus in a bikini on a beach somewhere, holding a volley ball.

Would you sit down and watch all of the cut scenes in Metroid Other M's theater mode?

Capcom announces Street Fighter X Tekken. *Mind Explodes

It seems Capcom is single handily trying to revive the fighting genre on its own by releasing a mass amount of fighting games. So far we've gotten Street Fighter IV, Tansunoku Vs. Capcom, Super Street Fighter IV, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and now Street Fighter X Tekken is on the way.

Now if your like me, this announcement caught me by surprise and I'm really curious about how this one is going to play out. From the description on Capcom-Unity it looks to be a Tag style game with the Tekken character coming into the Street Fighter universe and graphics engine used by SFIV. I've was really into Tekken Tag back in the day, but really haven't been following the series since then. I will be watching this game closely to see what new features they may be adding to differentiate it from the others. The merging of brands and reviving retro games has been on Capcom's agenda for awhile now and it seems they aren't going to be stopping any time soon. I think that if anyone has a chance at bringing a series back into the forefront of gamers minds and be succuessful at it; it will be Capcom. They've spent a lot of time focusing on their rabid fan base and it looks like its paying off in spades.

Are you looking forward to another VS fighter from Capcom?
Do you still play Tekken?