Pop culture news of the week!

a new format for one week only!

SUPER MARIO THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Per this news article, Shigeru Miyamoto thinks the 40-year arms race of console development may be over. “I think that customers are no longer just looking for specs. I think the ideal is that ‘if you buy the software, you can play it on the device you have at home.’”

This views consoles as commodities: your Sony Blu-Ray player works about as well as my Toshiba. Except the analogy isn’t perfect because game consoles can’t play each other’s titles. Nintendo has never been the most technical robust console; its fame has come from its killer software, even more amazing since it’s running what’s usually a previous-gene console’s machine, specs-wise.

What Miyamoto is maybe hinting at is that thanks to the years-long chip shortage due to AI deathplants (not his words), it’s not going to be possible to promise twice-as-good graphics, or twice as dense gameplay. The PlayStation 5 is not exactly a Street Fighter 2 cabinet: its capabilities are not what’s preventing a merely good game form being great.

The way games began 50 years ago was unbelievably limited. I was recently reading about how Steve Wozniak reconfigured the individual ones and zeroes of a Pong-chip square in order to “vibrate” in a different order: instead of 1-0-1-0 to vibrate at 1-0-1-1 or 1-0-0-1. Each different vibration, he discovered, registered on a color TV a bit differently.

In doing that, he’d invented color. On a black and whip Pong chip.

The next decade of game design might look like this: robustly creative use of existing applications. Maybe we’ll get the next screw-sorting game out of it. Maybe we’ll get the next Stardew Valley. Maybe we’ll get the next Myst.

Limitations are great!

PRINCESS LEIA NEWS OF THE WEEK

Mark Hamill was interviewed recently, (okay, it was six months ago, but the dead-internet churn machine brought it up dressed as a new story) and said he has asked director JJ Abrams for a 30-second bit in one of the Star Wars sequels, where Luke, Han, and Leia are all reunited.

JJ refused.

The tide has turned on JJ Abrams: the guy who a decade ago brought in 2 billion bucks with The Force Awakens is now called Jar-Jar Abrams. That’s not fair to him or to Jar-Jar.

What Hamill wanted is a classic example of “fan service,” introducing something to the plot not because it has to be there but because audiences want or expect it. Done right this can be thrilling — Cap holding Thor’s hammer. Done wrong, it’s resurrecting Christopher Reeve for a cameo in The Flash.

Star Wars has no shortage of fan service: you could make a solid argument the requel idea itself of bringing back an old franchise is the fanniest of fan service. But JJ refused. He said the story wasn’t about Luke, Han, and Leia anymore. So they never reunited on-screen.

Then Carrie Fisher died and a reunion was impossible.

SPIDER-MAN NEWS OF THE WEEK

Nope, no news I can think of. Nothing much happening in the world of the web-head this week.

MICKEY MOUSE NEWS OF THE WEEK

The Mickey Mouse Club is coming back!

Talk about a requel!

In every generation, a mousekateer is born.

The first Mickey Mouse Club was back in 1930, and was basically a punchcard. See enough Mickey shorts, and you got a free dish, or a giveaway book. The real innovation was business adverised around town, giving away the equvalient of free Mickey Mouse punchcard punches if you bought a soda or an ice cream from them. it was advertising an advertisement for the short before the actual movie.

The one most people remember was from the 1950s. That’s where Annette Funicello comes from, and Doreen and Cubby and the rest of the gang. Ask a Baby Boomer; they each had a crush on a different kid.

It was revamped in the late 1970s, in time for airing on the Disney Channel, a then-new idea.

Revamped again in the late 1990s. Whoever was the casting director needs some sort of award: this is where Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell, and Ryan Gosling all came from.

And for the last 20 years there’s been a cartoon for little kids.

Now it’s time for a new “MMC.” I look forward to whoever they cast becoming the biggest film actors and pop stars of the 2040s.

ME OF THE WEEK

I got interviewed a few weeks ago for what I was told would be an experimental film project. It’s great, and under a minute long!