Coffee at Leblanc

  So Sonic Origins finally releases today. This title is a compilation package of the 16-bit Sonic games, Sonic the Hedgehog , Sonic the Hedgehog 2 , Sonic CD , and Sonic 3 & Knuckles . For those who never played these titles before or have lost them over the decades this is an ideal package to purchase, but their is a caveat. Some of the music from Sonic 3 has been omitted in this release. Back in the 1990s it was rumored that legendary pop artist Michael Jackson along with keyboardist and musical director Brad Buxer worked on the Sonic 3 soundtrack. It was said that Michael Jackson didn't like how the Sega sound chip sounded and how his tracks were integrated. Subsequent releases of Sonic 3 have replaced some tracks with a prototype version. It's been long speculated by fans that it was because Michael Jackson composed those songs and up until now it was just speculation. Today, Yuji Naka, a former Sonic team lead and the lead programmer for Sonic 3 posted the followi...

  Anime has risen a bit in popularity over the years and made its way into fashion. While I do enjoy some anime I don't consider myself an anime fan. Those who have consumed hundreds of anime or closely follow the production of upcoming anime, anime artists, attend anime panels, or purchase a lot of anime merch are the ones I feel more comfortable giving the label. Still, I would like to discuss how the popularity of anime in recent years has affected fashion. Back in the late 90s when I was first introduced to anime through Pokémon , Sailor Moon , and Cardcaptors they were just considered cartoons as the years passed the term anime got introduced to me. Then, it was really niche regulated to children who didn't know the difference between cartoons and anime and teenage and adult nerds. While I was in high school these groups did not particularly care for fashion outside of wearing graphic tees that had anime on it and for some reason around that time those horrible button-up ...

  So a few days ago someone leaked images of the starting roster of Street Fighter 6 just a day after PlayStation's State of Play. Characters from Street Fighter II, IV, and V were revealed along with eight new fighters.  It's no surprise that the original eight fighters are back, they are the most recognizable and have the nostalgia factor to pull in the older crowd. From Turbo we have Dee Jay who hasn't been seen since Super Street Fighter IV and Cammy and Akuma who I also feel are a given at this point. It's a bit surprising that M. Bison isn't on the base roster. He was on the base roster of both IV and V so I thought he was a given for every game since. That's interesting. What's also interesting are the choices for post Street Fighter II games. There are no Alpha characters or characters from III this time around and once again Juri is the only Street Fighter IV character to return. V brings back Ed and Rashid. Rashid I thought was popular enough, but ...

Yesterday, Sony held a livestream of their State of Play presentation for PlayStation. For those who are unfamiliar State of Play is a video presentation Sony puts out periodically to advertise upcoming games similar to how Nintendo has directs every few months. These presentations are always virtual and usually livestreamed. I caught the presentation as soon as I went home and got up to date on the news. I say this was definitely one of the better presentations they've had over the years. There were substantial announcements and not everything contained cgi cutscenes. Still, there wasn't anything that really stood out as amazing or a surprise announcement.  One of the first thing viewers saw was the jungles of the Horizon series. I was a bit surprised at first and then just thought "Oh, this must be a DLC announcement." It wasn't however, as the trailer continued and the game transitioned from dialogue to gameplay and I saw disembodied hands it was evident that t...