We went to the Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show on Sunday and spent the day wallowing in retro game nostalgia. We’ll be talking about it on the podcast this week, but if you can’t wait to check out some of what we saw you can see some of our pictures on our Flickr page including a short video of Steve “King of Kong” Wiebe playing his game of choice.

To continue with the retro computing theme, you can now get a Twitter client for the Commodore 64. This really makes me wish I still had mine.

more news under the fold

Anime

Seattle’s own Grand Illusion is lucky enough to be one of the 70 screens in North America that will be getting the Evangelion movie Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. It will be showing for one week only, July 3-10

Studio Ghibli’s Ocean Waves which originally aired as a TV special in Japan is coming to DVD in the UK August 17. No word on an American release date.

Comics

Comic fans may be familiar with Ed Brubaker’s amazing run writing Captain America that culminated with the death of Steve Rogers. Oddly, even with Cap dead the series has marched on with issue #600 hitting the shelves this month. Speculation has been rampant that Steve Rogers will be returning in issue #600 and Marvel has made a spoilerific announcement on that subject. WARNING – DO NOT click on the link if you don’t want to know anything about issue 600 or the five issue Captain America limited series that is starting this month. Link is TinyURL’d to avoid any accidental mouse over problems with the title of the article.

Books

The Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2009 Bram Stoker Awards.

Superior Achievement in a Novel
• Duma Key by Stephen King
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
• The Gentling Box by Lisa Mannetti
Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
• Miranda by John R. Little
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction
• “The Lost” by Sarah Langan
Superior Achievement in an Anthology
• Unspeakable Horror edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder
Superior Achievement in a Collection
• Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Superior Achievement in Nonfiction
• A Hallowe’en Anthology by Lisa Morton
Superior Achievement in Poetry
• The Nightmare Collection by Bruce Boston

The Specialty Press Award was given to Larry and Debra Roberts for their Bloodletting Press and Lifetime Acheivement Awards were given to F. Paul Wilson and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

MMORPGs

Neo Steam:The Shattered Continent a free-to-play part-magic, part-steampunk MMO adventure launched just last week. If I had time to add another game to my busy schedule I would check out. I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has tried it because it looks really cool.

Movies

The change in release dates for Harry Potter is going to complicate things for those wanting to see it in IMAX. Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the studio’s decision to move from a November release to a July release will mean that it won’t be hitting IMAX for two weeks after it opens in regular theaters.

In “dear god WHY?!?!?!” news, Bloody Disgusting has gotten word that 20th Century Fox is planning Donnie Darko 3. For those of you saying “wait… Donnie Darko 3? I didn’t even know there was a Donnie Darko 2!”, yes there was a straight to DVD sequel called S. Darko about Donnie’s sister.

In “mixed feelings” news, the live action Akira movie being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio appears to be dead in the water. The only thing that made me even vaguely hopeful about this movie was that it had been planned as a two-part movie which might have been enough time to almost do justice to the story in the Akira manga. Maybe. On the other hand I really couldn’t persuade myself that it was going to be anything close to good.

RPG

Wizards of the Coast is releasing the Eberron Player’s Guide tomorrow! I was always a fan of Eberron even though I never actually played a campaign set there. Maybe someday…

TV

Matt Smith may be starting his run as the eleventh Doctor by facing some familiar foes. Reportedly the TARDIS is also getting a makeover for the new series. Article may be a little spoiler-y but its really not that surprising.

Video Games

Magic: The Gathering hits XBox Live Arcade this Wednesday! Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers will go on sale on the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft points (about $10). In addition to 2-player duels the game will have a single player campaign mode, a multi-player co-op mode and “unique puzzles” to solve. There won’t be a collectible aspect to the game, but there will be unlockable cards available through single player campaigns and 2-player duels.