Australia sure is taking its history as a prison colony seriously, as those in charge simply can’t trust their adult population with video games featuring sex, violence or drug use. Even after introducing an R18+ rating in 2013, Australia has still banned a significant number of video games, and the Aussie ban hammer has been very busy as of late..
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Greetings, mortals! It is I, Raiden, god of thunder and protector of Earthrealm. As many of you are prone to forgetting, mere mortals as you are, I wanted to remind everyone that the 26th anniversary of Mortal Monday is today. Yes, September 13th is the anniversary of the release of the original Mortal Kombat game for home consoles. But did
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Well, my plans of playing through every single Dreamcast launch title for the 20th birthday of the “little white system that should have” didn’t exactly pan out as I had hoped, but I got the good majority of games booted up and played on 9/9/19! Since I didn’t actually play EVERYTHING this time around, I thought I’d just give a
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Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. launch of SEGA’s final console, the SEGA Dreamcast. Released on 9 September, 1999 (9-9-99) for $199.99, the SEGA Dreamcast brought along 19 launch games on day 1, including Sonic Adventure, The House of the Dead 2, Power Stone, NFL 2K and Soulcalibur. The Dreamcast hardware would also introduce several innovative features
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On recent livestream, renowned comic book creator Ethan Van Sciver revealed plans for an upcoming comic book project titled Bastardized, a zombie apocalypse-esque story in which people infected by “bastardization” don’t turn into zombies, rather they become very angry, belligerent- well- bastards. Sounds timely. Van Sciver originally intended to publish the book under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint 2010. Van Sciver
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On Monday, the crowdfunding campaign for The Case of the Littlest Umbrella achieved the glorious designation of “six figures, young lady!” by crossing the $100 thousand threshold. Written by YouTube personality known as “That Umbrella Guy” (aka TUG) and illustrated by Keung Lee (Battle Maiden Knuckle Bomb), The Case of the Littlest Umbrella is a graphic novel intended as a Lovecraftian horror tale
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Hasbro certainly had a sensation on their hands with their new Monopoly Socialism board game. After it’s initial release, this new parody spin on the classic board game looks to be sold out at virtually every traditional outlet. What made Monopoly Socialism such an in-demand hit? To put it simply: the Streisand Effect. Despite the original Monopoly being a gamified
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Overnight, the crowdfunding campaign for Ardanna #0 ended successfully, crossing the fully-funded mark in the closing days of the campaign. Written by Wyatt Holliday and featuring artwork by D. Flores, colors by B. Salaberry and letters by the prolific Eric Weathers, Ardanna promises “classic sword & sorcery violence, suggestive themes, badass beautiful women, and is suggested for readers ages 13+.” Sad that
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Following their reveal at the Square Enix press conference at E3 2019, the character designs from Crystal Dynamics’ upcoming Avengers game received quite a bit of ribbing and well-intentioned ridicule. The latest footage of Marvel’s The Avengers from Gamescom, however, seems to indicate that the artists at Crystal Dynamics have taken the feedback to heart. Take a look at the
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Earlier this week, Dynamite Entertainment launched a crowdfunding campaign for a special, double-anniversary variant of Vampirella #1 featuring cover art by renowned comic book creator Billy Tucci (Zombie Sama). These limited edition covers feature Tucci’s own Shi character alongside Vampi herself. Here’s the pitch straight from the Indiegogo campaign page: It’s Vampirella’s 50th anniversary this year, and the newest comic
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Every now and again, we at The Splintering are going to lean on our mascot, Chomp the Termite, to go out into the world of myth and fiction to get the stories that we non-fictional types just can’t get. Since the Genesis 30th anniversary is the reason for the season, and since Altered Beast was the console’s original pack-in title,
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Welcome back to SEGA Genesis 30th Anniversary Week here at The Splintering! We certainly hope that you’ve been enjoying some of our retro gaming content celebrating the launch of our 16-bit friend! Every now and again, we at The Splintering are going to lean on our mascot, Chomp the Termite, to go out into the world of myth and fiction
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In an effort to inundate you with Genesis stuff on the 30th anniversary of its launch, I decided to barf up this click bait retrospective post showing some of the ads SEGA ran as part of their famous “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” campaign. My personal favorite ad is the Golden Axe one. Sure, you can find all of this stuff
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On Tuesday, comic book writer Blake Northcott launched an Indiegogo campaign for her upcoming horror book, Everglade Angels. Sound familiar? It should. Northcott set up a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter just last month. Now that the Kickstarter campaign is a success, Northcott has created the second campaign on Indiegogo for those who prefer Indiegogo as a crowdfunding platform. But what
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One of the more objective & insightful voices commenting on the comic book industry is Perch, an anonymous comic book shop owner who has appeared on several social media channels including the Larry King and Alterna Comics YouTube channels. Below are Perch’s thoughts on how Marvel’s editorial practices are evident in two of the company’s current events: Absolute Carnage and
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Today, The Splintering is taking a look at one of the original SEGA Genesis launch titles: Space Harrier II! Those who know me personally know that the original Space Harrier holds a special place in my heart. I own and have played thousands of games, and the original Space Harrier arcade game is my absolute favorite game of all time!
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The crowdfunding campaign for Jon Malin’s and Mark Poulton’s graphic novel Graveyard Shift Volume 2 achieved the blessed “Six Figures, bitch!” overnight, crossing over the $100 thousand funding threshold. Not only is that an impressive benchmark to pass, but hitting $100 thousand also means that the Graveyard Shift writing and art staff (Malin excluded) will receive a bonus for their
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Next week marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of SEGA’s most successful console, the SEGA Genesis. System launches were quite a bit different in 1989 than they are now, so details of the event are a little sketchy. What we do know is that the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive outside of North America) launched in both the
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On Tuesday, renowned comic book creator Ethan Van Sciver revealed his line art for an upcoming Vampirella #1 variant due to start crowdfunding later this week on Indiegogo. The cover features the titular Vampirella herself along with Van Sciver’s own Cyberfrog. Take a look at the full image below. It’s… something else. While Van Sciver previously crowdfunded a variant cover
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When Coffin Comics launches Lady Death: Blasphemy Anthem on Kickstarter tomorrow, it will officially introduce a new character to the Lady Death universe: Lady Satanus. After being revealed on one of the variant covers for Blasphemy Anthem, Coffin Comics has received quite a bit of positive feedback on the character from fans. This has prompted the creators to give Lady
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Welcome to yet another review celebrating Attack Helicopter Week here at The Splintering! Today we’re picking apart another retro arcade game port, this time it’s Steel Talons for the SEGA Genesis. Before we get going, however, I have to note that this game is ROUGH. I couldn’t play it through in a normal state, so the only solution was to
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In June, comic book creator Brenden Swan launched an Indiegogo campaign for Strangelove: I Want to be Chrome, an all-new one-shot graphic novel written and illustrated by Swan himself. We got a chance to have a friendly back and forth with Swan, who was gracious enough to respond to our questions on the Strangelove project.* As always, the answers below
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The Jawbreakers: GØD-K1NG hype train keeps on chuggin’, having already raised more than $100 thousand with 19 days left for the crowdfunding campaign. Earlier today, Jawbreakers creator Richard C. Meyer sweetened his sales pitch by revealing the artwork for the pinup poster included with every copy of GØD-K1NG sold. Illustrated by “Sashi”, the pinup features the return of Xaxi, a
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The crowdfunding campaign for Jawbreakers – GØD-K1NG cracked the blessed six-figure mark earlier today, with the graphic novel project having raised $100,242 at the time of this writing. Not only is that an impressive total for the first nine days, but it also unlocks the stretch goal for cover art by renowned comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver (Cyberfrog: Blood
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Last night, comic book artist Jon Malin launched a crowdfunding campaign for Graveyard Shift Volume II, and the project is already an instant success having raised more than $32 thousand at the time of this writing. Illustrated by Malin (Jawbreakers: Lost Souls) and written by Mark Poulton (The Savage Hawkman), Graveyard Shift is a superhero tale combining horror and science
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Disney recently re-released the first three Toy Story movies in conjunction with the theatrical release of Toy Story 4, but the company has decided that one of the jokes from Toy Story 2 was no longer acceptable and that it needed to be censored out. The removed scene is part of the end credit “blooper reel”, and features the film’s
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According to Japanese developer Spike Chunsoft’s website, two of the company’s upcoming releases will be censored on PS4, Crystar and Conception PLUS: Maidens of the Twelve Stars. Here are the disclosures from Spike Chunsoft: Crystar We would like to inform the community about a content change in the PlayStation 4 version of the title, the pre-title screen cinematic has had
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If you still need yet another example of how awful “news” organizations are at doing their jobs, look no further than today’s comic book coverage on CNN, who apparently believes that Marvel must publish every comic out there without a bat in the logo. As we (accurately) reported yesterday, Image Comics has ended the long-running series The Walking Dead this
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After 16 years, Robert Kirkman’s zombie horror series The Walking Dead ended this week. Kirkman hinted on social media that issue number 193 would be a big one, and that certainly turned out to be the case. Kirkman penned a farewell message at the end of this week’s issue, confirming the series’ finality. It’s certainly the end of an era,
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The biggest comic of July 2019 may not be Batman, Spider-Man, or The Walking Dead, it could very well be Vampirella. Dynamite Comics has announced that their upcoming Vampirella #1 is the company’s best-selling debut of all-time, with the initial print run totaling more than 130,000 copies. That also makes it the best-selling Vampirella book in the character’s 50-year history.
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