This Week In Media: Music, Games, and More

 The 3DS Final Discontinuation: A Look Back At the 3DS 9/28/20 Since the launch of the Switch, the Nintendo 3DS has been failing bad. Of course Nintendo wants to let go of the past and focus their time and energy on their shiny new HD handheld, and they did this by "discontinuing" it back in Spring 2019. When that was announced, they simply stopped making games for the system. A few days ago, however, Nintendo announced that their system would no longer be sold in stores or produced. I have a lot of memories with my red New 3DS XL, and I think the line of systems deserves as much respect as possible. Basically, this announcement made me pretty sad, so I wrote a relatively unprofessional essay about it. To be honest, the 3DS was never a very innovative or technically impressive piece of hardware. Sure when it played the original "Luigi's Mansion" for GameCube it felt like the system could do anything, but it's not a giant step up from the DS. All Nintendo han...

  September 24th, 2020: Fanboy Roundup #5 9/24/20 DISCLAIMER: I'm not discussing Nintendo in this one because I'm saving that for a later blogpost. Topic #1: The Series X/S Pre-Orders If anyone read my essay discussing the announcement of the Xbox Series S, you now know that my predictions were entirely wrong. These predictions included the Series X not launching until Spring next year, but that system's pricing and release date were announced in a dumbass Tweet that I didn't see. That out of the way, let's discuss the pre-orders. The console wars have been pretty big this year because with the Xbox Series S, Xbox poses some competition. A $300 dollar price tag on a system with its hardware capabilities is shocking, but Xbox knows it's the only way they can compete with PlayStation in unit sales. Though, actually making money is a completely different story. Xbox losing money on the Series S is pretty much confirmed, (or was officially confirmed), but they know ...

  A Very Smurt Retrospective Pt. 3: Fulfilling Expectations 9/21/20 December 21st, 2018 marked a very important date in the Very Smurt history; the release of his debut album "Meme God". This album had a large amount of hype surrounding before and after release, and the pressure would've been on Very Smurt pretty soon to start teasing a new album. The times between album releases vary from artist to artist, but seeing as Smurt had dropped an EP that had nothing to do with this new album only three months ago, fans were expecting something maybe halfway through the next year. Though, it was less than a week before Smurt announced his next album "Jeanyus" coming vaguely in 2019. Fans were shocked that any artist this big could already have enough ready to start promoting an album this soon after the release of his last one. To fans surprise, Smurt was totally ready, and when February 15th came around, "Jeanyus" was released. Though, there was a lot bridg...

 Bill and Ted Face the Music (Review) 9/18/20 DISCLAIMER: In this essay I'll have the first two paragraphs be reviews of the first two Bill and Ted movies so you all can get my thoughts on them and the rest be about the third. Second disclaimer: Our latest movie "The Legend of the Diehards" is releasing this evening. Really excited for everyone to see it, and I'll leave a link in our next post. But in the meantime, you can go check it out on our YouTube page (link in at the end before the images), and you can also watch our other movies.  Before Keanu Reeves was kicking ass in the Matrix movies and the John Wick trilogy, he was yet another adult actor who played a high-schooler. Keanu hit his adult high-school in the late 80s and early 90s. So did Alex Winter, and while these were Keanu's taking off point into Hollywood, they were arguably Winter's glory days. The most notable movie in this point in the two men's careers was a movie called "Bill and T...

 The Front Bottoms - In Sickness & In Flames (Review) 9/15/20 DISCLAIMER: This will be this month's last album review. After this, we might have a review of Bill and Ted 3, but anything else (and maybe that) will be discussed in the Fanboy Roundup on the 24th. This mainly depends on more game-related announcements. The Front Bottoms are a rock band known for combining elements of mainly softer rock and folk, but everything they make is more easily categorized under "indie". With five commercial studio albums and various EPs released since 2007, The Front Bottoms have a well-defined sound, and have grown to work better and better with their style. Expectations going into their latest record "In Sickness & In Flames" were no doubt high, but they certainly had reason to be. In 2018, I felt their improvement was clear especially since their first album. Especially with promising singles like "End of summer", and their EP "Ann". After that...

Why Ubisoft's Latest Information on "Immortals Fenyx Rising" Makes Me Slightly  Disappointed 9/12/20 DISCLAIMER: The fourth link in the "Image sources" section takes you to a page where people say part of what I'm saying here but maybe a little better. It's mainly nice to know people agree with me and you all should check out their thoughts. Also I sound kinda harsh in this review, but know this game still looks cool and interesting to me, and you can see my other points about it. Finally, I'm aware that the Xbox Series X release date and price were revealed the afternoon of when the Series S was revealed. Regardless, I think it was stupid for Microsoft to not post a YouTube video about it at the same time. Some might say that the September Ubisoft Forward was fine, but nothing to write home about. Personally, I thought it was a little on the dull side, with very little interesting or captivating about it. Though, if I hadn't already seen the tra...

  Discussing the Xbox Series S Announcement 9/8/20 DISCLAIMER: I know many of you who keep up-to-date on my @randomcrazystudios Instagram account were expecting more reviews, but I had to discuss this. It caught me off-guard, and it's looking like I'll finish the August reviews by the end of September... yikes. Prior to the rumors about the Xbox Series S, fans had already known about the company's big ninth-gen console: the Series X. It was revealed in June of 2019 as "Project Scarlett", which, granted, is a much better name. Though this year has brought with it new rumors of a smaller all-digital version of the bigger console. This was known as "Project Lockhart" alongside the older name, but was later found to probably be the "Series S". Since then, rumors have been wild and sporadic, but this global reveal trailer from Xbox themselves proves that we had basically predicted everything. Of course there are some slight tweaks to what we thought...

The Killers - Imploding The Mirage (Review) 9/4/20 DISCLAIMER: Sorry, but we plan to have a lot of reviews this month, (mostly if not all music), mainly covering the end of August. October should be a more game-focused month, and will bring some more interesting and unique essays. Everyone associates 2000s rock band The Killers with their first albums big single "Mr. Brightside". The song's known for a variety of reasons; some for its famous use of panning during the intro, and others for the songs catchiness and lyrics. Ever since said first album, The Killers have descended further and further into averageness with nearly every record they make. There may have been some highlights on their last album "Wonderful Wonderful", and more on other albums, but nothing quite reached the critical acclaim that "Hot Fuss" did. After a series of some forgettable albums, one never has the right to lose hope for a band. Tons of bands have come back from bad eras, w...

Bright Eyes - Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was (Review) 9/1/20 Conor Oberst has been making music since he was only thirteen years old. Though, if you compare that said first release to his band Bright Eyes' notorious magnum opus "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning", you can see that his music has varied in quality overtime. His interesting and unique indie style of songwriting can be as distastefully bland as it could be truly masterful. This band Bright Eyes has put out some bad and some amazing releases throughout the past, and here is why this latest release stands among the bands greatest. Bright Eyes' latest album "Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was" is a beautiful piece of indie folk-rock that released about a week-and-a-half ago, and it's hard to have enough of it. The album instantly starts you off with a pretty introduction over a sample of people taking throughout most of the song. This same staple can be found at the beg...