When we last left the Doctor, we found out who River Song was, we found out who Amy and Rory were, and we found out how the Doctor died. And Whovians across the world were left with an agonising wait to find out what happens in the continuing adventures of the Doctor.
At San Diego Comic-Con, a Doctor Who panel attended by season runners Stephen Moffat and Caroline Skinner, 11th Doctor Matt Smith, and Companions Karen Gillan (Amy Pond/Williams) and Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), was held. With the line to get into the 6000+ seat auditorium already in progress at 8 pm the night before, many Whovians braved the night and entered the room to the sound of the Master’s drums.
It was already known that Amy and Rory would be leaving the show in series 7, presumably after an encounter with the Weeping Angels, but new news from the panel were as follows:
The series will open with 5 episodes, then follow with a Christmas Special. 8 more episodes will follow in the new year.
The first episode of the series is entitled Asylum of the Daleks, apparently with all the old Dalek designs thrown in it.
Toby Whitehouse pens the third episode cowboy epic, “A Town Called Mercy“. White house also wrote the second series 3rd episode, “School Reunion“.
Chris Chibnall writes an episode entitled “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, which Moffat explains that it is what the title exactly is. Chibnall is known for his work on Torchwood, but also wrote the episode “42″ for Doctor Who series 3.
Mark Williams, known for playing Ronald Weasley’s father on Harry Potter, will be appearing as Rory’s father.
Rupert Graves, known for playing Lestrade on the BBC show Sherlock, will also make an appearance in the aforementioned episode, “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”.
Other news is as follows:
Arthur Darvill will be appearing alongside former Doctor David Tennant on a new show called “Broadchurch”. It is produced by Doctor Who alumnus Chris Chibnall and is about the impact of what happens when the media sensationalism descends on a small town upon hearing of a murder.
Matt Smith’s favourite Doctor Who monsters are the Weeping Angels.
Karen Gillan to star opposite Stanley Webber in a Scottish Indie film called Not Another Happy Ending, then returning to America to work on a supernatural drama named Oculus.
Normally, all digital rewards through Club Nintendo come at the beginning of a month, and expire at the end like clockwork. This month is the start of something new however, as Elektroplankton has expired early (as of July 15th), and a new digital release has already taken it’s place.
Starship Defense is the latest addition, and is a DSiWare romp that plays exactly as you would expect. Players must stop enemies from approaching their base by upgrading their equipment in true tower defense style. You will also notice that this title has a very interesting, grid based visual design, with very little color. Sure, it looks a bit basic, but I am intrigued by the mass simplicity here and it’s a good thing we are seeing rewards such as this, as I didn’t even know Starship Defense existed until now. You can snag this title for 150 coins for a limited time, so get to it and give this smaller release some lovin.
At SMASH! 2012, Beyond Home Entertainment teamed up with SMASH! in order to bring Pokemon fans an arena in which they could battle one another and go into the running to win Pokemon prize packs provided by Beyond Home Entertainment themselves.
Hundreds of Pokemon fans congregated for the Battle Arena and competed in many battles throughout the day at the SMASH! Gaming Area. When all was said and done, the participating Pokemon trainers crowded around the booth for the winners raffle. Several prize packs were given away and some Pokemon fans left SMASH! 2012 with some PokeSwag for their efforts.
It was a great promotion that was enjoyed by all the Pokemon fans in attendance. What did you think of the Pokemon Battle Arena at SMASH! 2012? Let us know in the comments below.
At the San Diego Comic-Con this year, the Marvel booth revealed something extremely special – a brand new suit for Iron Man to be worn in Iron Man 3. This time around gold is the primary colour and the red is secondary. Above you can see the complete collection of Iron Man suits seen in the Marvel cinematic universe with the new suit in front along side the title. Below, you can see a much closer look of the suit along side director Shane Black and actor Don Chedle. I can’t explain why he’s grabbing the butt though.
Incase you haven’t heard, a new, realistic, and serious Superman reboot will be hitting theaters next year entitled Man of Steel starring Henry Cavil as Clark Kent himself as well as Michael Shannon as the villainous General Zod, and Antje Traue as Zod’s evil partner Faora alongside others. This year at Comic-Con, a brand new exclusive poster was revealed showing off the film’s impressive dark style and presentation.What do you think of it? Let us know in the comment section below.
Man of Steel is set for a June 14, 2013 release date.
SMASH! or the Sydney Manga and Anime SHow! is one of the largest and most popular conventions in Australia for Anime enthusiasts, gamers and Otaku. In this article I hope to have given out my entire impressions of the event, as well as giving you at home a rundown of what it’s like to be a participant in one of the best conventions in Sydney. I would also like to point out that much of the day was a blur of fun and awesomeness, and that some event times may seem a little out of synch. I’ve done my best to place my experiences of the event in order.
The event kicked off at around 9AM with the first in line being able to purchase entry to the event. Now, with most conventions, entry to the event is pretty much always going to be hindered by this gigantic and snaking queue. As media, we were able to bypass this queuing process entirely, but this does not mean that we didn’t go and take a look at it’s progress. What I particularly like about SMASH! is that their queues are almost always efficient for entry to the event and from what we could tell from this years convention, it had very similar queue times in comparison to years previous. I estimate that by the time of 10AM, most of the crowds were in the convention centre and ready to start viewing panels or browsing the vendor halls.
The first panel of the day in the main auditorium was the Sakura Tange panel (you can view our article here). Unfortunately, I had to go off to cover the Steampunk Panel and was unable to actually view the Sakura Tange panel but I heard from the guys that did cover it that it was pretty entertaining. You can view the article about the Sakura Tange panel here.
The Steampunk panel was amazingly insightful and gave me a while bunch of additional knowledge about a fandom that I didn’t really know too much about. What I took out of this panel is that Steampunk characters are pretty unique to an individuals own tastes and that most people that dress in this attire put a lot of thought into the aesthetics and functions of their characters. I also thought that the panels hosts were pretty charismatic and knowledgeable. You can read my full thoughts here.
What’s really fun about going to conventions isn’t really the panels that you see, or the way the queues progressed; it’s really the people that you meet and the familiar faces that you haven’t caught up with in a while. I mean, yes the panels are fun and are what sell the convention, but the best memories are always the shared ones. I, myself, caught up with a few old friends whilst between events and had a lark just chatting and catching up whilst checking out various stalls and cosplayers. I did this for a while before meeting up with Claire at the Cosplay Chess.
Now, Cosplay Chess is something that you would assume to be something played by someone who is actually good at chess. Unfortunately, this was not the case, making the whole battle rather cringe-worthy. I mean, I like cosplay chess as a laugh and a way of having attendees meet and interact with each other, but seriously, please get someone who actually knows chess to order the chess-pieces around. I feel that by having a much more intense battle, the Cosplay Chess can only benefit.
After a painful match, I met up with some of the others from Capsule and we decided on what to do next. As far as I was aware, Josh and Jess were checking out the Yuko Miyamura panel whilst the I was off dilly-dallying and Luke must have come out whilst the Voice acting workshop was underway. After we checked out some of the con and chilled for a bit, I joined Josh for the Shinichiro Miki panel.
Shinichiro Miki is probably one of the most awesomest Voice Actors, or Seiyuu, in the Japanese Animation industry and you could tell that people new this just by how packed the auditorium was when his panel was set to commence. The panel primarily consisted of the host, that seemed a little too reverent, asking Shinichiro a series of questions then interrupting the questions with some live dubbing. Apparently live-dubbing is a specialty of Shinichiro’s as we were told this by the host and really, Shinichiro only verified this claim by doing so well in front of everyone. My only real complaint about the panel was that the videos audio was cut so amateurishly, I’m sure they could have gotten an audio engineer or something to take a look at it beforehand. It’s nothing major, but I could hear a little unrest in the section that I was sitting in about it. Overall Shinichiro Miki’s panel was awesome and I know that everyone there was certainly glad that they sat in to watch it. You can check out Josh’s impressions of the panel here.
After the Shinichiro panel, Josh and his companions took a walk to get some lunch and I left them to hang out with some friends. After a short while of checking out some stalls and the like, I decided I needed something to munch on so I bought some food and a can of V from the neighbouring shopping centre.
Whilst Claire was at the Charity Auction (the full coverage for this can be viewed here), Luke and myself went around to check out some cosplayers and to record some segments for his Anime Say! series. Also, somewhere before this, Luke checked out the Madman Industry Panel and pulled out their acquisitions, which can be viewed here. Generally, when you stick both Luke and Myself together, fun happens. And fun happened indeed. For a glimpse of this fun, be sure to check out Luke’s Anime Say! Article here. Some of the antics that are included are ones such as this fine moment: Singing the Pokemon theme song around a generation that would have no idea what the hell the original theme even was. We also briefly checked out the Cosplay Competition, which Claire did the main coverage for (which is linked further down) and we can attest to the quality of Cosplayers in the competition.
At some point around here, it is really unclear when, both Luke and myself checked out the Maid Cafe. This cafe was pretty cool and we got some photo’s of and with the staff. This was probably a really unique experience for everyone that was able to book a session during the day. You can read about my experience in the Cafe here.
The main point of interest in our little adventure of being awesome was our stop over at the Hanabee panel. At the panel a bunch of great titles were announced and we learned a fair bit about Hanabee as a company. Be sure to check out our article discussing the Hanabee acquisitions here. We were also fortunate enough to secure an interview with the CEO and Founder of Hanabee, Eric Cherry and were able to ask him some really interesting questions about the company. You can view the video here.
The Cosplay Competition was also most probably the most popular event of the day with the convention centre feeling almost completely empty whilst the competition was taking place. The Cosplay Competition had a great turnout and was filled with lot’s of awesome cosplays, you can check out our photo’s here. It was also around this time that we filmed the interview with the amazingly awesome Ardella (who’s Facebook page you can check out here), which turned out really well. We hope to see more amazing costumes from her in the future. Also, be sure to check out our interview with her here.
The last point I want to talk about is how co-ordinated all of the staff were at this event. Unlike that other convention that is really big (not that one, but it’s a contender), the staff at this event were very informative and knew their roles well. I honestly don’t think I’ve heard any complaints about the staff at SMASH! ever, and this years show was the perfect example of why. There was also plenty to do throughout the day, one such example of this is the Gundam workshop. You can check out our coverage for that here. Another example was the Gunpla world championship, which you can check out here.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this year SMASH! offering and it has really proven itself to be the strongest Anime convention in Sydney. I’m really hoping that SMASH! are able to continue their streak of greatness and pull another excellent convention of this type next year. Be sure to check out all of the awesome photosof excellent cosplayers taken at the even throughout the day.
Ubisoft have released their trailer that appeared at Comic-Con for the upcoming Avengers game based on the comics Secret Invasion storyline. The game is titled Marvel Avengers: Battle For Earth and features many of the well known heroes and villains of the Marvel universe. In the trailer, we see many fan favourites, such as Iron Man, Captain America and many more.
This trailer was showcased at Comic-Con and it was probably pretty popular with the crowd in attendance. To quote the Youtube description –
The Skrulls have landed and now it is up to you to embody your favorite Marvel super heroes and defeat epic enemies during the Secret Invasion. Unleash your inner superhero in Marvel Avengers™: Battle for Earth!
Avengers Assemble! Be sure to check out the trailer embedded below and the Official Website.
NTV has released a trailer for the hotly anticipated upcoming story arc in the Hunter x Hunter anime series, The Phantom Troupe Arc otherwise known as the York New City Arc.
The trailer reveals the Phantom Troupe themselves and shows off the infamous ‘Gathering of the Troupe’ scene, that begins the story arc. It also gives us a look at Kurapika’s new fighting style which involves chain based weaponry. Fans of the manga, such as myself already know what to expect and look forward to it greatly. But for those who have never read the manga, let me be the first to tell you that you haven’t seen nothing yet. Hunter x Hunter takes a major turn here, so be excited.
Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think of the Phantom Troupe in the comments section.
Capcom recently announced they were remastering the classic fighting game JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for a HD release on the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network come August 21st. Following that announcement they released some glorious HD screenshots of the title and have now revealed some new details on the game.
It has been revealed that the game will include an online matchmaking mode similar to that of Super Street Fighter IV, with players able to select their opponents based upon a number of different customizable prerequisites like location or connection speed. It will also like other Capcom fighters will feature a points system that will integrate with an online leaderboard system.
Along side that it will also include eight player lobbies with spectator mode and give players the option to save replays and share them with one another through a sharing system within the game.
What do you think of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD? Will you ‘stand’ up and fight online? Let us know in the comments section below.
While we have heard a little bit about the Ratchet & Clank Collection, which is an HD upgrade to the first three PS2 Ratchet & Clank releases, but we haven’t heard about a release date for that collection as of yet. Well that all changed today when Sony revealed that the title will hit both the PSN and retail store shelves in North America on August 28th for a price tag of only $29.99.
It is worth noting that, since the game is going to be released in North America a bit later than anywhere else, Sony will be including a nice little bonus that will allow those who buy the game to receive “exclusive first access” to a demo which will eventually be released for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.
Now this is looking really super!
NTV has released a trailer for the hotly anticipated upcoming story arc in the Hunter x Hunter anime series, The Phantom Troupe Arc otherwise known as the York New City Arc.
