Rod, Karen, Lashonda and Louie discuss listener feedback, entertainment, Amazon pulls AI dubs for some anime, Zack Snyder projects ending at Netflix, Sega thinks definitive editions are harming sales, Call of Duty Will No Longer Do Back-to-back Releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops, More Switch Games Receive Compatibility Updates For Switch 2, Predator: Badlands highest grossing, WB for sale, Dragon Age Day comes and goes with no comment from BioWare, AI is driving up DDR5 RAM cost, Capcom plans to turn DMC, Mega Man and Ace Attorney into “core IPs”, CrunchyRoll kills free plan, The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora, The Game Awards won’t have a lot of developers there, Ubisoft No Longer Plans to Release a Second Assassin’s Creed Shadows Expansion, McDonald’s Pulls Down AI-Generated Holiday Ad After Deluge of Mockery and Xbox loses out in Pornhub battle.
The Nerd Off: (Protected Content)
Happy New Year, Rod & Karen.
I was hoping for Microsoft to do their version of wrapped for 2025, but to no avail, so far, but I will say, having a PlayStation 5 was one the best things to have for 2025. I played a lot of Days Gone, which is fairly decent game, but it hooked me in such a way, I couldn’t stop playing. It’s basically GTA-post apocalypse & the performances were pretty good. I even enjoyed playing the Wolfenstein games & still plan on giving the Young blood my attention in due time.
As for the new year, I’m sure it’ll be a good year for gaming, but I have the weirdest craving for the PS2 & might start buying physical disc to play those games again. This isn’t me abandoning the current hardware, not entirely, but with the amount of layoffs, financial upheavels with many companies, there’s no better time than to just go back & perhaps play things that made me a much happier gamer.
I will say, Shinobi Art of Vengeance was my favorite of the past year. Can’t wait to get back to that one.
Peace.
just so you know, I was half-joking about the Silverhawks & M.A.S.K. toys… There were some real beasts of action figures in the 1980s/90s. You had the super-articulated Power Ranger toys, you had the hyper-artistic McFarlane toys (I taught his nephew martial arts back in the day), the Voltron figures. There was a lot of innovation happening back then.
I imagine you’ll talk about this the next episode but people getting mad about a trailer they haven’t truly seen and deciding a movie is going to be “trash” before it has even come out is infuriating. Yes I’m talking about the Doomsday trailer and the Doomsday movie. Granted this can apply to many art forms within nerd culture.
How many times have people decided that something is going to suck before they even give it a chance? It happens with video games. It happens with movies, television shows and books. People have preconceived notions about what something will be and then get mad when it’s not what they thought it would be without appreciating things for what they actually are. Yes, I know some of them are bots but some are real humans who feel this way. I don’t want to say it makes things less fun because I’m still having a blast but it can be annoying at times.
Hope that makes sense.
If this is before the holiday season, Happy Holidays and if it’s after, hope you had an enjoyable holiday time.
TrailBlzr
TLDR
DUB AND SUB FLUB:
-The audio will say, “I can’t believe it”.
-The dub will read, “That’s untrue!”
When people have both (sub n dub) on?? ♂️ pick a struggle, love. If the voice and face don’t match to a believable degree, they shouldn’t bother, but everything in storytelling needs to be accessible…I guess. Watching Shin Godzilla with original Japanese audio slaps. You hear/see the same emotion and vocal register of that particular person. It draws you into the story because you’re reading, so you can’t look away, and your brain isn’t processing the disconnect. Take that, secondary viewing.
At least it was the same British voice-over troupe who did all the kung-fu movies, granted, a pocket genre with an established fan base accustomed to these voices, but the meek innkeeper had a breathy inflection (probably from working and running around). The protagonist always sounded like a white male authority figure or a Western hero (go figure). The woman sounded like Ms Piggy selling pink. The kids sounded like the instructional videos from the 50s, where they learn about hygiene. The henchmen were usually nasally, probably from the voiceover artist scrunching up their face to embody “grrrrr errrr anhhhh, I’m a bad guy, evil.” (This is why Kung Pao was a nod-worthy parody.)
Now that Netflix has a galaxy of foreign films and viewers need (including blind people), we can’t have the same obviously Italian man speaking English in every Norwegian cinema. Before the AI voice, can we at least get the authentic voices to match? I could be in the other room, and my partner puts on a new movie. After 3 minutes, I yell to her throughout the apartment, “Lemme guess, a foreign film?” And the answer is always yes. The inflections are off, and nobody should be able to tell the difference without seeing the screen or knowing what’s on it. Am I doing the most on this dub diving? Maybe…but the dub convo got me hot, because I know I’m not the only one rubbing their eyes with a hand behind their ear. I just bought Tenders of the Flesh. Thanks for the recommendation. Stay dope, y’all.
Debbie Allen Kicks