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I suppose Ice Climbers have to make an appearance as DLC, right? Hm, well I'm still disappointed at their absence. Aside from that, the roster seems fine. I like the alternate costumes. Bowser Jr. looks fun to play as, but I'm an old fogey who will always be swapping him to one of the Koopalings.

I was pretty pleased to see these pop up on twitter. These were such a weird thing when they first popped up, and they're still weird today. Also, for anyone wondering where Luchadeer's last name came from:

That weird stick thing looks like a chore to use. But hey, cradle that bad boy in a circle pad pro case and get ready for a new era of triple joystick gaming?

YUP

@ripelivejam: You may want to take another look at what Luigi is driving in that top set of screenshots.

Well, count me in. Looks like that'll probably run at 10 bucks USD, and I'm assuming that price is per pack rather than for both. Since it mentions a bundle though, hopefully there will be a way to shave a couple bucks off that price. I'd definitely pay for all that up front if the bundle was discounted. MK8 has been a pleasure thus far, and I like the idea of tracks from other franchises even if the inclusion of characters from other franchises doesn't really interest me.

Perhaps my biggest concern is potential fragmentation of the online community. Hopefully that doesn't cause any issues.

Dave Lang is easily one of the coolest dudes in the industry. Awesome article.

@equitasinvictus: Yeah, that forum search isn't terribly reliable. As for ads that have been willingly clicked on, I remember Jeff mentioning once a while back that he saw a banner ad, understood what it was communicating, and willingly clicked on it. He found it to be a very strange experience. The same thing even happened to me recently, but I can't for the life of me remember what the ad was for. I guess that's maybe good though? I generally find the trend toward targeted ads to be a good one, as I greatly prefer those to the obnoxious catch-all ads that used to populate the internet.

Yeah, there was some chatter about that in another topic a couple days ago.

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/ads-for-giantbomb-on-other-sites-1492687/

To echo what I mentioned there, this ad seems like it was likely designed a while ago. It uses the old site logo that was retired in early 2013, and the prominent Luchadeer suggests that it's even older than that. I suppose they probably just had that old design sitting around and decided that it would be easier than making a new one. It certainly isn't a bad design.

Holy cow. Max popping out still feels so recent. Congratulations, Vinny. I wish you and your family the absolute best.

@dixavd said:

Yeah, the new logo popped in around February 2013 when Giant Bomb got the big redesign. If memory serves, the original logo was Dave Snider's work, while the redesign was done by Alexis. I recall Dave having some very kind things to say about Alexis's work. So the ad is probably at least that old. Still, that Luchadeer makes me think that this is probably from 2009 or 2010. The whole ad just has that early Whiskey feel to me. And that's certainly where I would expect the link to go, but I appreciate the clarification. Maybe @rorie knows a thing or two about Giant Bomb's advertising strategy and can give us some further info. This behind the scenes stuff is fun.