04 | July | 2013 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

As usual, Aggronautix hits me on the head with another nostalgia surprise from the 80’s. This one’s in a limited edition of 2000, ships out in September and you can pre-order directly from Aggronautix HERE or at Seeofsound HERE. I hadn’t listened to it in ages, but seeing this news in my inbox had smile and break out the Freedom of Choice CD and yup, it still holds up as a great collection of tunes that had appeal outside the confines of the “new wave” pigeonhole it got jammed into.

Of course, trying to put DEVO into any sort of box is a foolish endeavor, kids. They’ve always done what they do in a memorable enough manner that makes for some fine E-Z Listening no matter what the critics say…

(Thanks, DEVOvision!)

While the Ketars and keyboards lent a synth-pop feel to the record, the stellar drum work (from the late Alan Meyers) and hard guitars throughout the LP made for some interesting cross genre airplay. “Gates of Steel” and the title track popped up on some heavy metal radio stations, “Whip it” was also a huge “crossover” hit on a few stations (and totally misunderstood by some thanks to that hilarious music video), and some of the other tunes (“That’s Pep!”, “Planet Earth”) make for pretty nice and subtle social commentary you might not grasp on that first listen. Anyway, let me shut up and get back to the present before I end up breaking out some more “oldies” from that era…

Today’s the big day for some gamers in Japan as Earth Defense Force 4 is out and getting furiously played by many. Those of us who’ve imported copies will be waiting patiently around their mailboxes like vultures for our copies to show up and it’ll be hiding away from the sun for a bit as we plow through the game and see what developer Sandlot has done with the series in the five or so years since they last worked on a home console EDF game.

From some poking around on GameFaqs, a few users who live in Japan and have the game are loving the changes so far (a good sign) and combined with the positive Famitsu scores (a 34/40 average), this one looks like a keeper.

Of course, when the game hits US shores next year, you WON’T be seeing these wacky Japanese ads for it at all, so I’m doing my civic duty as an EDF patriot and running them here.

I don’t know what D3Publisher of America’s ad plans are, as they generally don’t run a ton of ads for their games anyway, but it would be nice to see some sort of equally oddball campaign here that’s inexpensive yet equally amusing and effective.