Day one of SDCC wraps up tonight and what a day it was! My 6000km trek across the continent that was full of trials standing between me and Comic Con, from barely connecting flights to lost luggage and no hotel room. But, patience and perserverance wins in the end and I was able to join fellow con-goers in enjoying day one (and writing about it on no sleep. It’s all about the con experience!). On that vague note, please excuse any crazy spelling errors or icky photo placement. My SDCC posts will all recieve a cleaning up once I return home from my trip.

As today was preview night for 4-day badge holders, press and professfionals, there wasn’t anything in the way of panels occuring but that didn’t mean the thousands of people who flocked to San Diego to attend didn’t find exactly what they were looking for. Open to the public after a slightly disorganized, but still very smoothly executed, registration, Comic Con International’s exhibitor area (“San Diego Comic Con”) was officially open to its eager audience.

You can read about my initial manga finds on the floor and see some photos after the jump.

On the exhibition floor of SDCC, there’s more than enough to keep even the most genre-defined member of geekdom in sheer awe. You can’t see one side of the convention floor from the other, and just as well since the sea of people is as difficult to traverse through as it is to see through. The crowds prove the most trying part of the big-convention experience, but with so many different boothes to explore, it’s easy to find something else to entertain you when the occassional mass-grouping, or extensive wait line for free goodies, gets a little too long to manage.

 

Most of the big manga publishers hit the floor this year, with Viz leading the pack for most impressive display. They went all out, further showcasing the company’s refreshing confidence amidst the shaky economy. A large Viz Media sign made their booth easy to find and the whole area is adorned with giant posters of their big properties. There’s also a wall dedicated to their new titles for the recently revealed Shonen Sunday. Goodies at the booth include free posters and postcards with enthusiastic staff on hand prompting attendees to try out the UFO-machine, pose with the life-sized Naruto statue or pluck a coin from their treasure chest for the chance to win some prizes.

Nearby, Dark Horse has their booth and purchase area set-up. Many attendees scrambled to get one of their complimentary bags that sport CLAMP’s 20th Anniversary logo. The manga selection at their booth includes nearly their entire catelouge, great for picking up titles both new and old to fill in collections. They won my first purchase of the convention with a buy of MPD Psycho (Vol. 09).

More moderately designed, and unfortunately much harder to find in comparison, Tokyopop and Yen Press both had booths on floor as well. Tokyopop’s had a healthy supply of their most recent titles, with a distinctly shoujo-majority, and were handing out free copies of their Fruits Basket fanbook, along with a DVD of the first two episodes. Also available were some posters including Fruits Basket and Bizenghest. Yen Press’s booth is a duel set-up with their parent company, Hachette, and has a small assortment of their recent titles. The biggest draw for their booth when I was there was undoubtedly the posters that sported the manhwa designs for Edward and Bella, the two leads of Yen Press’s upcoming adaptation of the popular Twilight novel series.

Del Rey manga had a set-up near the two with a healthy assortment of their titles available for purchase and friendly staff to offer them to you. They were also giving away some free goodies including keychains sporting artwork from their upcoming shoujo X-Men series.

CMX was present at SDCC as well, buddying up with their parent company, DC. Their portion of the booth is easy to spot with big eye-catching posters of some of their currently running manga titles. Employees there were offering nice-sized CMX sampler books that are certainly worth a pick-up.

Alas, boys’ love giant Digital Manga isn’t present at this year’s SDCC, nor is Aurora Publishing or its supporting imprints. Several vendors were present to make sure that all companies had their titles out for purchase however and I left day one of the convention a very manga-satisfied individual. For a fantastic assortment of artbooks and manga titles, I recommend finding the booth for ‘Comic CEllar’ down around the comics section. Great stuff for sale e with no taxesther to worry about!

Of course there’s tons more than just manga to enjoy, including a vast array of video games to demo, tons of fashionable boutiques willing to strike up a bargain and company after company offering up loads of fun swag guaranteed to make you the envy of everyone (prepare to be asked numerous times where you recieved certain freebies). Funimation also has a spiffy sized area with the majority of their recent boxsets for sale, along with a bunch of high-quality posters, postcards and bookmarks that’re free to take. Don’t forget to check out their wall-art too, including the-hard-to-miss giant Super Saiyajin Goku.

Another section of the exhibition floor you want to make sure you don’t miss is the Small Press and Artist Alley. Tons of studios and individuals are there selling their wares, showcasing their skills and offering tons of beautiful work you may not have the opportunity to find anywhere else. Also nestled within these areas is Aimee Steinberger, artist of the fabulously adorable Japan Ai. She offers copies of her book for sale along with some prints and artbooks, one of which I was quite happy to recieve with a free sketch inside! Thanks again, Aimee :D

Suffice to say, it was a busy day one in San Diego and it only promises to grow expenientially as the 5-day convention continues. I’ll be keeping Kuriousity updated with more SDCC info over the next few days, including converage of my first industry panels. Exciting stuff! A hello to fellow con-goers as well, I certainly hope to have the opportunity to meet you and hope everyone’s having fun thus far. Lots more to come I’m sure :)

For anime and manga specific information on events at SDCC over the weekend, you can check out AnimeNewsNetwork’s handy guide on the matter.

The long-hinted at online game, OPlay, has finally been released today over at the Go!Comi website. Those who sign up (it uses the same log-in as the site’s forum and account system), can play the prolouge chapter for free, with a $7.99 fee for the first episode.

I think it’s a neat concept for sure and it’s fun playing that kind of choose-your-own-adventure-dating-sim-esque game with such beautiful graphics (Hunter and Julie did wonderful work on this) and with the ease of online play (no downloads required). But is it $7.99 an episode good? While I thought the prolouge was neat, the episodes are going to need to be a lot longer than that to come close to being worth the cost. Can this online-play manga be worth nearly the price of a regular manga book? I’m too broke to say for sure right now but if anyone else gives it a shot past the prolouge, I’d love to hear about it!

In celebration of the first volume release of Kosen’s new title, Daemonium, they’ve updated their website with a firey new layout. They’ve also created a mini-site dedicated to the series which can be seen here. There’s some info, artwork, downloads and a link to Tokyopop’s manga viewer with a look at the first chapter.

And over on DeviantArt the other day, *lone-momo posted some preview images of their work on GoComi’s upcoming online game, OPlay. You can see the pics here, here and here! OPlay, which stands for Online Play, will be a play-for-use game that will work in a similar fashion to dating sims/choose your own adventure sort of deals. The staff of GoComi plan to launch it in the near future and have told people to keep their eyes peeled for the “virgin episode”.

 While I plan to write up a full review for this in due time, I’m taking a minute of this slow Saturday to plug one of the best games I’ve played in ages: No More Heroes for the Wii (nothing like you’ve ever played on the Wii, not for the kiddies!). You play as the main character Travis, a fan of anime and Mexican wrestling, on his way to becoming the top assassin. It’s a hilarious, beautiful stylized and over the top action game that makes great use of the Wiimote’s capabilities, taking the hack and slash action platform to a much more entertaining level. Extra recommendations if you like a challenge; this game has some of the toughest bosses I’ve ever faced in a video game. It’s also a bit of a parody, poking fun at the game genre stereotypes with both plot, dialouge delivery and in-game play actions. Much more shortly put: I loved it and cannot recommned it enough for a good time (and finally an anime fan representation whose really awesome, once you get past the 27 year old virgin part).

And completely unrelated but added for my purely anime/manga visiting fans: Amazon has a new listing for an exclusive complete Inu-Yasha series set, $419.99 f0r 3900 minutes of Shikon searching action. Glad I’m not really a fan. I have trouble enough getting past $70 boxsets! Ouch. Good for those who’ve been waiting to get it all in one go though I suppose.

 Also apparently there’s rumours going around about a possible second season of Ghost Hunt. Let’s hope so, really well done series. The Ghost Hunt manga is currently being released in English by DelRey.

Company: Majesco
System: Nintendo Wii
Release Date: April 2007
Rating: E (Everyone)
Players: 1-8

Description: Launch colourful bubbles to make a match in more than 500 puzzles bursting with challenging fun! The ultimate 8 player bubble bursting bash!

Attempting to capitalize on the popularity of the Bust-A-Move franchise and integrate more of the Wii’s motion-sensitive capabilities into their sparse lineup, Majesco and Nintendo teamed up to give us this, Bust-A-Move Bash!

The basics of game play are held intact. The goal of the game is still to shoot randomized colored bubbles in order to make sets of three, thus eliminating them and keeping the screen from filling up and crushing you. Some changes players will is the addition of new specials such as the slip technique that causes the bubbles to slide along the other bubbles until it hits a matching colour. Though it sounds really neat, you receive this special technique so often that many times you’ll end spending most of the game with this advantage, dramatically destroying any sense of difficulty or required skill. Then on the rare occasion you are without it, many players will find they’ve suddenly been desensitized to the need to perfectly aim and thus difficulty playing arises. Other returning special bubbles include bomb bubbles for destroying anything it touches, the Star bubble that destroys all bubbles of whatever colour it hits on the field and various others with a variety of abilities.

In terms of hardware, playing the main game play using the Wii is simple, though at first may feel almost too sensitive to veteran and new players alike. However players will probably be able to get the hang of and it doesn’t generally cause any real headaches as long as your Wiimote is working properly. The game can be played with the classic Wii Controller for those who prefer controls used in previous console releases of Bust-A-Move.

As you play through the game, be it Puzzle Mode or Endless mode, players will be faced with repetitive levels that do nothing for repeated game play. Even at the game’s highest levels, there is no real challenge and the entire game can be beaten in a very short time. Previous console versions of Bust-A-Move, which had weird stylized creatures for players’ choice, are now replaced with a variety of anime-inspired people, including fairies and a werewolf. The familiar dragons are choosable as characters. They have no storyline and no plot and though Bust-A-Move games don’t rely on such things, in a release like this, which offers nothing else in their place, the lacking story and plot is all the more evident. At the very least the Playstation versions of the game had their weird characters to act as some sort of neat quirk, which doesn’t work in the slightest for these new designs.

Another new addition, placed in simply to take advantage of the Wiimote’s capabilities is Shooting Mode where you simply switch your cursor to the colour you want and go about shooting that colour of bubble off the screen as it flies by. While it may prove a little fun for a while, it quickly becomes just more of the same thing over and over. This same game play is executed much better, and more interestingly, in other games such as WiiPlay. With an automatic locking system, even this simple shoot and hit has the fun sucked out of it.

The greatest change in the game, and also beyond a doubt it’s greatest downfall, is versus mode. The marketing for this game concentrated heavily on the fact up to eight people can play against each other at a time, and though this is true, the versus mode itself is absolute chaos. Generally it can be won by randomly hitting the shoot button with little regard for anything else. Players all share one screen, their little shooter in still positions along the bottom of the screen. The goal is to be the person who hits the most diamond bubbles. With so many special bubbles flying around and flying saucers carrying the diamond bubbles, there’s nothing here to pose any real challenge or entertainment past flashing colours, and even those just become painful very quickly. The previously enjoyed, and much more sense-making version, of versus mode where two people would play the regular game against each other, one players’ good shot causing more bubbles to appear on their opponents screen, is completely absent.

Overall, Bust-A-Move Bash! is a huge disappointment to fans of the franchise eager for a new-generation version of the classic. It’s too easy and too short to play anymore than once, and even that first time through will offer little. The Gallery of unlockable extras is nothing but music and pictures which you see and hear more than enough while playing so they are no insentive. It’s versus mode is ridiculous and loses all appeal after the first discovery of how it works. This reviewer was among the unhappy and has gone back to playing the badly translated, glitchy PS2 version because it still manages to offer more entertainment.

Written by Lissa Pattillo

Watch it here.

The video can be watched in high-definition here.