Zippo's Nonsensical Ramblings and Other Stuff

Here we are. Choo choo!  The month of June is about arrive to it's destination, which means non-stop video game news and announcements are coming our way. Let's speculate. You heard the four letter word, "SEGA", and your ears perk up, right? They should. As I'm hearing that SEGA apparently has a bunch of announcements to make this month, they are one of the big studios to look out for. Based on rumors and current public knowledge, here are some titles that you should (read: should) start to hear about soon. I've gone and put anything that's inside information from me in bold, that should make it easier to separate that from me speculation. Jet Set Radio: This was leaked by Bloomberg last year, and we now have a leak of an early version of the game in action, and I'm extremely impressed. I'm a huge fan of the original two games and I have a lot of faith in this, considering the creator of JSR is officially back at SEGA. The only thing I can add...

  It's a weird time for Nintendo right now.  We're on the cusp of their biggest game of the last four years, but at the same time, we're looking an extremely barren lineup of upcoming games at the moment. This is not something that normally happens. Nintendo' on the gaming side has been very quiet since February. Tonight, however, they'll finally start to speak up a bit.  That's because it's time for Nintendo's annual results to be shown. This is the time of year where Nintendo gives updates on sales numbers and how much money they've made over the past 12 months, as well as giving us an idea of their plans for the next 12 months. I decided to go and do a brief history lesson of the events. 2013: We start off with a bombshell. At 2013's meeting, Nintendo announced that they would not be having a formal stage conference at E3 2013, and would instead do a Nintendo Direct instead. This, of course, caused the entire Internet to lose their collective ...

That's been the million dollar question, hasn't it?   Nintendo not having some sort of new Mario release to go alongside the movie was very odd. It's a move I don't quite understand, but I'm also not a businessman, so what do I know?  That said, we're in unusual territory, there have been very few years where we hit the fifth month of the year with no new Mario game of some sort announced.  Not to worry, though. I'm hearing that Nintendo is actually sitting on multiple finished Mario titles.  There's of course, a New 2D Mario:  A New Sports Title:  And:  Yes, the rumors are real, as I alluded to at the very beginning of the year, there is indeed a remaster of Thousand Year Door coming, and it's already finished. Intelligent Systems truly live up to their name, I tell you. They are true miracle workers.  Also: There are very believable rumors and job postings pointing to a new game in the ever-popular Mario and Sonic series, which would make ...

This article actually took me a whole lot longer than I thought it was going to, so I've gone ahead and made it three parts, here's part one of this fun history lesson. Thank you for your patience. Credits from most of this archived art goes to the Super Mario Wiki, Super Mario Broth, and VGArtandTidbits. Check them all out. With their hard work, most of this would be lost to time.  Okay, here we go, before we get to talk about the future, I think it's best to start with the past. A history lesson for a lot of people who don't know this kind of stuff was something I thought of, recently. When you think of Mario, what's the visual you first think of? Is it this?  This?  Or possibly, this? Obviously, they're all Mario, but what a lot of people don't think about is how we got to this point, and I think it's best to start with where Mario started to star in his own franchise, the one, the only, Mario Bros.  Hah. Not what you thought of, eh?  Most people don...