April Fool’s Day: Mario gets canned

I’ve rescued one more piece from VidThru.com. This one, published April 1, 2011, was part of a joint April Fool’s writing effort. All of the writers submitted topics. I pooled them, and we each voted on the ones we liked best. The writers who proposed the winning topics wrote up the final products. I wish I had thought to save the others – they were much better than mine.

Iconic video game mascot Mario addressed paparazzi today from atop a girdered building under construction, minutes after being fired from Nintendo for well-cited misbehavior during the past few weeks. The Italian-American plumber “celebrated” the event by waving the hammer he had once used to defeat Donkey Kong and chugging a bottle of Fire Flower energy drink.

LEGO Star Wars III: Clone Wars Review

The site VidThru.com has now disappeared, and although I had a slight warning, I didn’t have the time to get most of my work off it before it left, so I have only a few examples of my articles from that site. Most of it was news anyway (including breaking news and E3 reports), but I was proud of what I did there – I developed the editorial standards and the tone, and oversaw the written news operation. Unfortunately, that proved unprofitable, so I also uploaded PR videos from different companies. Apparently, I never backed any of my work up, which is unusual for me, so this is the last of what remains.

This review was published about three years ago, but I don’t have any information on the actual date. Also, my images have disappeared because they were on my VidThru.com homepage, and this may affect other of my VidThru.com articles as well. I like to think sometime I’ll go through and replace them, but let’s be realistic – that probably won’t happen.

Top 10 Most Anticipated Games of 2012

This article first appeared at Vidthru.com on January 20, 2012. I wrote it after a period of voting by contributors to our website via a Skype conversation.

It looks like 2012 is going to be another great year for gamers, thanks to the sheer number of awesome releases coming up. We’ve even got a couple of new console systems to look forward to – the PlayStation Vita handheld, and Nintendo’s next generation Wii U. 

Over the past week or so we’ve been battling it out here at VidThru.com, but we’ve somehow managed to get a consensus on the titles we’re most looking forward to in the months ahead. Start saving up those dimes you found under the couch cushions, ‘cause you’re gonna need them!

Interview: Kilroy Fx, Creator of BloodyCheckers

This article was originally published August 9, 2011, on VidThru.com.

If you’ve ever imagined you’d like to create a video game of your own, take some inspiration from Irvine, Calif.’s Kilroy Fx, whose game BloodyCheckers has been topping the charts on Xbox LIVE Arcade’s Indie Games channel since it was released in June. Out of the blue, this sleeper hit has gotten waves of great reviews from industry critics as well as gamers, and it keeps getting better thanks to Kilroy‘s updates (a big one, his fourth, is coming soon). And it just goes to show that one guy with a good idea and a whole lot of persistence can still make a difference.

In case you haven’t checked out the game yet – why not? Part of the appeal of this game lies in its price: 80 Microsoft Points – that’s $1. Another part of the appeal lies in the story of its creator, who was a gamer and film industry veteran with zero programming knowledge a year and a half ago. He spent hours and days and months learning and researching everything from the Middle Ages to board game strategy and creating fonts, developed his own game in 10 months – often in a self-imposed cone of silence – and is now making his software and his techniques available for free to anyone who’d like to use them. Bucking the industry’s norms can be a difficult proposition, and Kilroy Fx is doing it with style.

News Feature: “Red Faction: Origins” airs Saturday on Syfy

This article was originally published on June 13, 2011, at VidThru.com. It can currently be found there at my VidThru.com homepage.

THQ’s Red Faction: Armageddon is set for release Tuesday, June 7. In the meantime, fans can sate their cravings for the Red Faction universe with a Syfy Channel movie, airing Saturday night, June 4, at 9 p.m. ET.

The screenplay’s writer, Andrew Kriesberg, told VidThru.com through a conference call interview: “Red Faction Origins isn’t a specific adaptation of a video game. It’s a brand new original story that takes place in the universe of Red Faction and there are plenty more stories to tell.”