If you’ve attended an anime, videogame or comic convention in the last two months, chances are you’ve seen someone wearing a Spirit Hood. The irresistibly soft and stylish nature of the Spirit Hood locks and pulls attention in like a tractor beam on a Star Destroyer. Not to mention Spirit Hoods are sexy to boot. With that said, I am going to go on record and say that Spirit Hoods have officially crossed the moat, broken down the gate and are taking the geek, otaku and nerd nation by storm.

A few days prior to this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) I received a press release announcing MMORPG publisher/developer Nexon’s first foray into the the industry-only event. The release also gave mention to Spirit Hoods, and stated that Nexon would be handing them out regularly to booth visitors in effort to promote their forthcoming title, Vindictus. Now, truth be told, the first thing I though to myself after reading this release was “what the hell is a Spirit Hood?” However, I found my interest peaked and decided to do a little research. One Google search later and I found myself shooting off an email to set up an interview.

My efforts proved fruitful and I managed to catch up with Spirit Hoods co-founder, Alexander Mendeluk at E3 to talk Spirit Hoods, fashion and being wild at heart.

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This is Shiro Suziki, a 72-year-old actor and announcer in Japan. His hobby? Kicking ass in Resident Evil harder than most of us. The video speaks for itself, watch through the end and see his score and rating. God damn! I’d adopt him as my grandpa but I think he’d hog the console. There’s another video of him playing RE4 on the ol’ cube over at Japan Probe.

Meanwhile at my grandma’s house I cant even bring consoles over because they’ll “break the TV”.

[Japan Probe]

Alas, this year I was not able to attend Comic-Con! As much as I wanted by body had other plans. Regardless of that here’s some fun Comic-Con coverage from Asterios Kokkinos (who ran a friend site to DDN back in our first days), where he tries to guess the anime plot based just on cosplayers.

To be fair, a few years back it was pretty easy to tell what kinda anime it was just from the character design. And yeah, demons and monsters were a lot more popular in anime in the 90’s. Man those were the days… without all this moe crap that’s killing us now.

[Comics On Comics]

It’s finally time. I waited more than 360 days for this event. Scheduled my vacations, scheduled my classes, and saved a lot of money. Moved contacts, asked favors, and even pulled some strings; Did things unimaginable. . .all to spend six hours inside the best nerd haven in existence, where everyone treats others with equality; everyone is polite and helps the ones in situations more dire than their own. A human mass of ample understanding, in which race, gender, and (most importantly) weight are tossed aside and everyone becomes one breathing organism, growing and gaining impulse by the means of our own common hobbies and imagination.

When director Joseph Kosinski revealed that he’d approached Daft Punk to score the Tron: Legacy film and that they’d said “Yes”, many heads exploded. Who better to score a Tron flick than Daft Punk!? (No answers on postcards please!)

Several pieces from the Tron: Legacy soundtrack have hit the web and you can listen to them here.

Now if you’re expecting a bunch of chopped up killer disco samples put through a filter with some four on the floor kicks chucked over the top and some super wicked mixing, then you’ll be disappointed. This is a film soundtrack score. Not a new Daft Punk album. Although watching a Light cycle race to “Technologic” would be pretty awesome.

I for one give a thumbs up for what I’ve heard of Daft Punk’s offering so far. Then again, I love Daft Punk so much I’d swear blind their work was awesome even if it sucked toes. I always dig when musicians do something outside of what they normally do and completely switch gears. No doubt their work on a Hollywood film score will colour their next studio album. God knows when that’ll ever see the light of day. I’ve given up all hope of a follow up to Human after all.

[Hypetrak]

With Capcom being in the business of making dreams come true, they’ve announced their forthcoming cross over game: Street Fighter x Tekken. Unlike Namco x Capcom this will be a beat ‘em up. Fans in attendance at Comic con probably had to run to the toilets to wipe up, with others heading to the 7 eleven to buy Pampers when Capcom dropped this bombshell. Or rather, bombshells. Because the Street Fighter and Tekken cross over will spawn two games.

Street Fighter x Tekken will be developed by Capcom and use the Street Fighter IV engine. Whilst Namco will be developing Tekken x Street Fighter, which will utilize the game engine used for their Tekken games. The fanboygasms rage on, and probably will do for some time.

You can check out a trailer of Capcom’s take, along with screenshots after the jump.

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Oh boy, it’s looking like a great year for gamer-friendly movies with Scott Pilgrim and Tron Legacy looking so good. Speaking of which, there’s a new Tron Legacy trailer out. It’s amazing how a movie that has two of the worst characteristics of bad cinema, namely being a video game movie and a sequel, can look so freaking good. I can’t get enough of the visual style and as much as I think 3D movies are a gimmick I’m definitely planning on watching this on 3D. Excuse me while I go change my underwear, nerdgasms aren’t clean.

This little infographic-like image up here is pretty old by internet standards, however I came across it again today and so here we are! Back when I was 12 and Pokemon was all the rage I read the Pokedex description and didn’t think twice, it didn’t even register in me that they would be so ridiculous. Sure you know they exaggerated but come on, Machamp throwing 125 punches every second? You’d think the newer Pokemon games would do away with these extreme stats but it seems we now have Pokemon twice as hot as the surface of the sun and ones that can stand lower temperatures than ever recorded on earth. It’s not that I expect realism in Pokemon but this stuff is just silly. Nicely done Nintendo, nicely done.

Boy marketers don’t waste any time do they? It’s barely been a few days since the debut of the Cat Shit One series and there’s already figures planned out for the market. These here appear to be some sort of limited edition deal and as you can see the detailing on the weapons is spot-on. Then again, given the appeal of these cute killing machines I’d say plushies are in order. Give me elite trained special ops rabbits that I can hug.

[Kickoff]

Mario is from the streets, yo! Or rather… on the street. Do people from the street still say yo? I digress.

This nifty small clip by Andreas Heikaus, a graduate from the Hannover University of Applied Science and Art (sheesh they have universities for everything nowadays) shows a really cool composite of a Super Mario Bros. speed-run merged on a sidewalk. A very common motion-tracking trick nowadays and yet it seems to add a lot of depth to the game. Who knows, maybe in a near future with augmented reality we could play Mario Kart while driving or play a vertical shooter on a roll of toilet paper. Ah, the future.

[Tokyomango]