Warning: This post involves an angry fanboy rant. Those who do not want to read such, avoid reading further. You have been warned.

Okay, so its 5 am... I'm going along on one of my occasional Dark Magician Girl image searches since I can't get to sleep and I always want to find new art of her. I come across a new Japanese Promo card:



Those who know me the best, know that I am a major fan of Mana/Dark Magician Girl. I mean MAJOR... Anyways, when I saw this I just about flipped with joy... At last a new DMG card! Its from the Jump Fiesta Annaversary Pack, a set of 9 cards all in one pack. Allegedly they all have special art by Kazuki Takahashi (the creator of the series) and feature his signature in the corner... a feature no other card has ever had.

Now we get to the 'I hate UD' part...
I go to the YGO wikia to try and get more info: http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Anniversary_Pack

I find out that the Annaversary Pack is getting released in the US... with a total of 8 cards... wait... one's missing... I dig deeper...

"'Dark Magician Girl' was excluded from the English print of the Set."

I stopped right there and couldn't believe what I just read. "Why in the hell did they do that?", I thought. "They left the strange and pointless dog card in, but removed the DMG?"
At this point, I was, needless to say, quite upset. I rarely get angry, but this really just hit hard.

I guarantee you it was due to UD's hated pentagram... way to go again on cultural tolerance there... Why must the pentagram be edited out? Thats like removing the cross out of Christianity, or the Star of David from Judaism... It's such a shame... the Hexagram & Pentagram are major parts of old world religions and not to mention parts of Mana-hime's outfit... and 4Kids & Upper Deck remove them every chance they get. Yes its a minor thing, Yes I can get over it but the fact is that it saddens me that modern religion spits on the religions of old... (I could go on and on about that but that isn't the main point here.) Upper Deck has always removed the Pentagram/Hexagram from all her other cards as well... but this is the first time they rejected printing an entire card just for that one reason.

So with this, I increase my displeasure of what America has done to Yuugiou,  I'm ordering myself one of the Japanese ones, and I'm heading to bed.

I just recieved this email this morning:

Comrades,

If you are receiving this e-mail then you are officially registered for the Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Multiplayer Beta Test and are in our queue. Soviet Kirov’s bombed our beta test satellite communications around the launch of Kane’s Wrath in a deliberate attempt to halt our initial beta test communication e-mails to you upon your registration. While they were successful in their attempt, we were still able to retrieve all data and have continued to collect Beta Test registrations in numerical order since Kane’s Wrath shipped. We’ve recently reconstructed our communication technology with far better systems and defenses and will now be sending you frequent updates throughout the course of our multiplayer beta test. So fear not Comrade, we did not forget you!
 
The Red Alert 3 Multiplayer Beta Test is set to launch publicly very soon. When we activate your registration, you will be sent an e-mail with your Red Alert 3 Beta Test key and instructions on downloading and installing the beta. As previously mentioned on our website, we will activate registrations for the beta test based on the date & time in which you registered on our beta test website with the serial key from the insert contained in your copy of Kane’s Wrath. We may also consider the country in which you reside as a component for when you will be activated in the queue as we are aiming to get global feedback in as much as possible for our beta test. If you registered for the beta test within the first couple of weeks, it is very likely you will be activated close to our first public launch. We will then continue to ramp up and activate registrations weekly, and potentially even multiple times a week. We will activate registrations primarily based around the status of our software. Certainly if we are experiencing any super critical issues, we will halt activations until they are resolved. It is our intent to start the beta test small, and make every effort to quickly ramp up to thousands of players in a matter of days and weeks throughout late-July and August.
 
We’re committed to collecting your technical/bug and balance feedback and improving Red Alert 3 before we ship later this year. If you are receiving this e-mail, you will absolutely be a part of the Red Alert 3 Multiplayer Beta Test. This is the first of many communications. We wanted to give you a general update that the Red Alert 3 Multiplayer Beta Test is slated to go officially public very soon.
 
You may have heard that we have actually already started an internal-only testing period this week called “EA Friends and Family” where we are using a few hundred people to work out any potential technical issues with connectivity and the state of the game. It is our intent to collect constructive feedback from you during the beta test; however, we’re spending a few days doing an internal-only trial run with friends and family of our development team, including all studios of EA.  If you’ve heard rumors about our beta test launching today or even this week, they are referring to the process noted above. We have not activated any keys in the public queue yet however, so don’t worry…you’re not late to the party!

We have also opened up our official Red Alert 3 Beta Test forums where you will be encouraged to post your constructive feedback to help us improve the game. Since the beta test is starting to trickle out, we chose to open up this forum section early during our trial run. We will make sure to keep it updated with sticky threads and updates and certainly the moment we start to activate people in our public queue, you will hear about it on our boards and via e-mail communications (hopefully one of those e-mails will be your activation key if you registered early!)

Get ready to wage a crazy war with the Soviets, Allies, and the Empire of the Rising Sun, the Red Alert 3 Multiplayer Beta Test will be activated soon.

-The Red Alert 3 Development Team