Thanos the Mad Titan has a Zen Pinball 2 table of his own dedicated to the Infinity Gauntlet and its gems which includes all kinds of experience-warping tricks such as an inverted playfield, time slowing to a crawl, and much more. Watch as I challenge Thanos and try to come out on top.
Consistently entertaining webcomics about video games are hard to find. So many of them drop off in quantity and quality so quickly, so to find one that updates on a regular basis with hilarious ideas at heart is rare. That's why I feel it my duty to point you in the direction of a new favorite comic when I find one, and today I have to tell you about The GaMERCaT, a webcomic created by Samantha Whitten about a game-playing cat and the challenges he faces trying to pursue his hobby in a human world. I'm not really a cat fan, but the characters in the comic are endearing. Some strips focus on Gamercat and his little kitten buddy, Glitch, trying to procure the latest and greatest games, while others place the characters into popular games of the day such as Super Mario 3D World, Assassin's Creed, The Legend of Zelda, and Watch Dogs to play with the expected conventions. There's a sizeable archive of strips, but be sure to check out a few of my favorites.
What will we find on Mars? A high score! Today's pinball moment is from the Mars table of Zen Pinball 2 on the Sony PlayStation 4. It's another long play requiring two videos to capture the entire session thanks to the PS4's fifteen-minute buffer for recording video, so be sure to watch both parts to see it all.
Batman! Spider-Man! Superman! Cole MacGrath! Many heroic video games for the Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PS Vita are on sale this week at the PlayStation Store, so assuming you don't mind owning your games in digital format, you can clean up with some major deals, and if you're a PS Plus subscriber, the discounts are even more impressive. Check the store listing for the complete details, but I recommend (all Plus prices here) Batman: Arkham Origins for $8.20, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham Origins: Blackgate for $4.20 each; both main PS3 Infamous games for $9.79 and Festival of Blood for $2.44; Marvel vs Capcom: Origins for $3.75; and best of all, Injustice: Gods Among Us - Ultimate Edition for $8.40 (PS3 and PS4 versions) and $4.20 (PS Vita version). I couldn't pass up the Vita version of Injustice for that low price, meaning that I've bought that game three times over now. The obsession/sickness runs deep with that game.
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Here's the second hour of Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition for the Sony PlayStation 4 in which I gain new abilities, visit new areas, take on bosses, and outrun a rampaging beast that knocks down walls and crushes monsters (and me!). I'm enjoying this game immensely when I make the effort to play it, but I find that it's not a game that I crave spending time with. There are some games (and I'm sure you know this feeling) that I can't wait to play and that consume my free thoughts when I'm busy doing other things. This isn't one of them. At least, not yet. I get the feeling it's about to kick into gear now that the preliminaries are over.
I'm back in the mood for Zen Pinball 2 for the Sony PlayStation 4, so today we're going to take a moment to watch as I take on the Thor table. Watch as I fight Loki, dodge the Destroyer, enter Asgard, and rack up the points. There's many more pinball moments to come in the days ahead, so ready your flippers and watch out for the drain.
According to official Capcom sources (e.g., the character bio from the Super NES version of Street Fighter II), today is Street Fighter protagonist Ryu's birthday. Born July 21, 1964, today marks the World Warrior's fiftieth birthday. He's in pretty good shape for a fifty-year-old considering his prowess with Hadokens and Shoryukens, but what really makes me wonder about the realism of the Street Fighter series is that his weight as of Street Fighter II was 150 lbs. 150?! Earlier this year at my absolute weakest and sickest, I dropped down to 160 lbs. and I was very skeletal. I can buy into the franchise's crazy martial arts antics and supernatural attacks, but I just cannot believe that Ryu weighs a mere 150 lbs. Pixels must be less dense than actual muscle, or perhaps Ryu lied on a registration form he filled out when entering the tournament.
Funny; my tweet of this image went super viral and picked up over 9,000 retweets. My podcast pal Blake Grundman warned me that I'd probably never achieve this level of Internet fame again. If I have to be known as "the Ryu birthday guy" when the history of Twitter is written, then I can live with that.
Power Button Podcast
Tip JarHappy 50th birthday, Ryu! pic.twitter.com/zkhy9BYAJy
— Matthew Green (@PressTheButtons) July 21, 2014(via Reddit)
The recently released Shovel Knight from Yacht Club Games has made quite a splash in the gaming community thanks to its 8-bit inspirations and solid challenge, and soon you'll be able to immerse yourself in the world of Shovel Knight and the Order of No Quarter beyond just playing the video game. As YCG's Nick Wozniak explained on Episode 138 of the Power Button podcast, the company has big plans for Shovel Knight merchandise. They already have a deal with popular online retailer ThinkGeek to produce toy shovels, for instance. Here's the what Wozniak had to say about merchandising (where the real money from the game is made!) on the podcast:
That's the stuff that we're trying to do right now, actually. It's another facet of making Shovel Knight a part of your life. We're working on figures... I'm not totally if sure if they're going to be action figures, we're still working on figuring that out, but we have figures in the works. We also just announced ThinkGeek is doing some of those foam shovels in the same vein as those Minecraft foam swords. We want people to be doing stuff with the property just like having fun with the toys.
We would love to inundate everyone with as much Shovel Knight as possible not because that's the best way to make money, but because it's coming from a place of wanting to just have Shovel Knight be a part of your life, like you can own anything Shovel Knight.
Even though technology has progressed from the Nintendo Entertainment System era, characters rendered in that style still have a lot of personality and the Shovel Knight cast are the latest crew to be brought to vivid life with mere pixels. I bet the toy shovels will prove to be popular among fans. Wozniak also talks of YCG's plans for marketing domination with ideas for Shovel Knight bedsheets, action figures, shampoo (where the bottle has Shovel Knight himself for a cap and you'd unscrew his head to open it), and a breakfast cereal. I really hope that the commercial for Shovel Knight cereal features an antagonist called Breakfast Knight who is already trying to steal the village's cereal. For more on Shovel Knight's future, be sure to listen to the podcast in which we discuss future free updates to the game that will add more playable characters & game modes, when we can expect to see the game arrive on other platforms, and what it would take for the company to move on to Super Shovel Knight developed in a 16-bit visual style.
Shovel Knight from Yacht Club Games for the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and PC has taken the gaming community by storm thanks to its mix of retro 8-bit sensibilities, enjoyable level designs, and memorable characters. This week on Power Button, Blake Grundman and I are joined by YCG's Nick Wozniak to talk about the making of Shovel Knight, the upcoming free update to add new playable characters & game modes, bringing the game to additional platforms, the future of marketing & licensing Shovel Knight (breakfast cereal!), material left on the cutting room floor such as a killer piano boss, how Kickstarter influenced the design, and so much more. Can you dig it? Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via
, you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton.
Congratulations to winner Shawn Sigurdson!
Do you like pinball? Do you own a Sony PlayStation 4? Then have I got a contest for you. Thanks to Zen Studios, I have a PSN code to offer up as a prize that will unlock fourteen pinball tables for the company's Zen Pinball 2 for the PS4. Here's a list of what you could win:
Not a bad deal, eh? All you have to do to enter use the handy widget below that so many sites use these days for these kinds of contests. The widget helps me better manage entries and automates so much of the process. It's easier for me, basically, so I thought we'd try it here. If it turns out to be a hassle for me or for all of you out there, then that'll be the end of that experiment. I want to hear your comments, so please speak up if you have something to say. There are ways to enter via Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube plus a daily bonus entry option. Good luck!
Zen Pinball 2 PS4 Code Giveaway