"Hype"

OK, before we get to today's primary topic, I'd just like to point out something I discovered recently that I thought was cool.
So I was in this library that's pretty much the nicest one near us, and I was looking over their comic book / manga section, which, to be honest, is really lame. They don't have Fullmetal Alchemist or The Amazing Spider-Man; it's heathenish (Yes, I do read both of those on occasion. Make fun of me if you must, but know that I would prefer being called geeky to childish.). Anyway, I saw this thing called "Vampire Hunter D" (which apparently is just a series of novels but was with comic books for some reason? Dunno). It didn't really sound interesting to me; the thing that stood out to me was the artwork. "Wow," I thought, "That looks just like Yoshitaka Amano's artwork." His stuff has this really cool style and is immediately recognizable; I know him most for his work for the Final Fantasy games, which, at the time, was what I pretty much thought was the only well-known stuff he did. Anyway, I thought about that for a while and was thinking "Well, maybe his stuff isn't that unique, I guess it's possible it's just a style I haven't seen much of before." As you may have gathered already, I just now learned that I was wrong; Amano-san did the artwork for Vampire Hunter D too. Cool! I mean, I really know nothing about these books. It was just one of those neat things, you know, where you find out something about something you had thought about a while ago and had forgotten.

So on to todays actual topic, which I may have to hurry up with since it's already ten and I need to be up "early" tomorrow (not really early, but whatever). Anyway, you may be wondering, what's hype? Isn't it the same as advertising? Well, I don't really think so. Firstly, hype (the definition I'm referring to anyway) is pretty much solely applied to movies and video games. Maybe books occasionally, but not as much. Anyway, hype is something media people try to generate when they're releasing something new. They announce it pretty early, and then they keep teasing people with new information about it, and bragging about it, and getting people to believe it's going to be really awesome. Smash Bros. Brawl, which I've been talking about a lot lately, is a great example. It was announced way back in '05, and it's not going to be released in the states until March. Sometime last year they launched the official website for the game, and announced one small feature or aspect of the game every day and explained it. This is actually a pretty neat idea, so people could learn new things about the game gradually. But they were really strategic in when they announced things, so they could create a lot of "hype." For example, one day they announced the game's release being delayed, but right after that they stated Sonic the Hedgehog was to be a playable character, and a ton of people went nuts over it. This was pretty sneaky of them; now everyone was saying, "Yeah, it got delayed, but who cares?! SONIC!" so it was a pretty clever strategy. That's basically how hype works. So how do I feel about it? Well, I think it's a very successful marketing strategy that doesn't seem "cheesy" and pretty much everyone accepts, so one can see why it's used in various ways all the time. From the perspective of being on the receiving end (which I am more often than not... or, OK, all the time), it's neat to learn a lot about something and get excited about it far before it comes out. Of course, nothing is worse than having something be over-hyped and having it turn out to be not as good as it one expected. For example, the latest console Zelda game, Twilight Princess, was hailed as "the next Ocarina of Time" by some, and a lot of people were really disappointed or even downright mad when that didn't end up being true (Of course, opinions were split and there are still people who think it's even better than OoT; personally, I think they're nuts, because OoT is something you just can't beat.). TP was announced a really, really long time ago. Originally it was going to just be a GameCube game. In fact, I think at the time the "Revolution" (as the Wii was then codenamed) had only just been announced, or maybe even not yet. It seemed really cool at the time, and I was thinking "Are they really going to try to outdo themselves?! This is cool, it really is going to be the first big, seriously themed Zelda game since OoT!" I thought all the graphics and artwork looked wonderful, and I kinda liked the new dark direction they seemed to be taking it. But then my expectations dwindled, and soon after they announced it as a "Revolution" game, my hopes pretty much completely plummeted. Of course, soon after that they announced Phantom Hourglass, for which my hopes were somewhat high, but not really great, and then when it came out I was totally astounded with how great the game is. Anyway, I never ended up even getting TP, since at the time I knew we wouldn't have a "Revolution" for a really long time, but I also knew we would probably be getting one, so I didn't want to get the GCN version. Now we have a Wii, and I still don't have the game. I may pick it up sometime, but I'm certainly not expecting it to be "the next Ocarina of Time." At the same time, though, I can't help but hope that someday they do really try to outdo themselves and make some kind of totally awesome Zelda game, so great it would almost be pointless to do any more.
So what about Smash Bros.? Is it going to live up to all the hype? Well, my opinion is: ARE YOU KIDDING? NO DUH! SSBB is going to be awesome. I'm thinking it may even become the way Goldeneye for the '64 was, where anybody who was anybody had the game, and it was the most interesting thing at any gathering (I used to think this was just around where I lived and the people I knew, until this thing on IGN described it in similar terms). Chances are, it'll be even better; like Goldeneye combined with Halo combined with the original Smash Bros. combined with a bunch of similar stuff I can't think of right now. People may just randomly start saying "I could pwn you!" and the "in Super Smash Bros. Brawl" would be understood. Of course, there's a teeny tiny chance that it doesn't live up to expectations, but personally I'm thinking that's not going to happen in even the smallest details. They've been working on this for well over two years (since October '05), so you can bet they've poured a lot of effort into it, and they've got a virtual "dream team" going.
I'm betting SSBB is going to be the greatest game of the decade.

...And, it's kinda ironic, because now you're probably thinking "See, this is how 'hype' effects people," and, ehh. You're probably right. But you just see if I'm right.

:::Source= Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
...lyk holy cow the nxt post is gonna ROCK!