Do you remember the game Battletoads? It is one of the most difficult games I ever played in my life, and like Contra, you need a second player if you want to get through it without cheating or dying excessively.
The reason why I am mentioning it is because there has been a sudden explosion of rumors regarding a new Battletoads game for the Wii. The second I saw the YouTube trailer, I immediately suspected it was false. At first, I noticed that their fake trailer is simply composed of other Wii-related video clips and stolen 3D videos slapped together, with a announcer talking as if he was a monster truck derby. Also, they took clips from a Red Steel trailer, so a player is slashing the Wii remote like a sword, then they show a clip of one of the Battletoads jumping in the air. This makes no sense. They even mentioned that Battletoads would be on Virtual Console soon, which also made it seem more like a scam.
Battletoads was developed by Rare, who has left Nintendo, and is now making games for Microsoft! There was talk of having GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console some time ago, however there are many legal rights between Microsoft owning Rare, Nintendo owning the game made by Rare, and Activision now owning the James Bond franchise itself. So in order for Nintendo to get GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console, Microsoft, Rare, Nintendo and Activision must come to an agreement which they must all abide to. This is no different than if it was the Battletoads game, or even Banjo-Kazooie or Perfect Dark. They even made Perfect Dark Zero and currently working on a new Banjo-Kazooie game for Xbox 360 with no legal issues since Rare owns all the characters and they are both new games and not remakes or ports.
On the fake preorder website, there is a phone number that changes randomly every time it is refreshed. Each number is a Church of Scientology in multiple cities. The idea is that the unsuspecting person calls their church, and when they say "Thank you for calling the Church of Scientology", the person would say "Scientology? I thought this is the number for preordering Battletoads" Can Scientology still operate if they get all these calls about Battletoads? Yes they can! Scientology.org survived a wave of Denial of Service attacks and they'll survive this wave of annoying calls.
I decided to write about this because this actually brought back good memories of when I used to play Battletoads & Double Dragon on SNES. I loved the soundtrack and it was cool to have more players to choose in this one. The giant toad fist that finishes off an enemy is always entertaining and never gets boring. The beat-em-up style and weird punk-style characters made the game stand out very well in an already-crowded video game market.
In summary, I don't believe a single word until Nintendo or Rare makes a statement proving otherwise.
I smell 4chan. I also have to wonder how annoying this really is, assuming that the CoS has a halfway decent voicemail system installed. (I'm not gonna call and find out, though.)
The punchline reminds me of a hack that was perpetrated on the most recent MIT Mystery Hunt, last January. Some perfectly legitimate-looking folks infiltrated the lobby where the hunt begins, filled with hundreds of eager puzzle-solvers waiting for the first announcement, and proceeded to distribute sheets of paper labeled "Puzzle Zero".
Solving the fairly easy puzzle it contained resulted in a phone number. If you called it, you found yourself talking to the Caltech admissions department. Oh, well played.
HABEEB IT!!
i loved Battletoads, did this ever get released for the wii, i would really like to buy it.
It have been already released. You can buy in the most store now wii..
I've heard both excellent and terrible about Scientology. I will believe some of every mainly because I've seen it. But let's talk about that. When compared to Christianity, Scientology is rather bland about controversy and bad deeds. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the murder on the Cathars, the Salem witch trials. Heck, also the house arrest of Galileo was pretty awful. That's not me going to dispute some of the awful things I've found out about Scientology which may perhaps or may perhaps not be true. All I can say is, I really hope the church cleans up its act. Any organization is made up of persons, and some persons get carried away.