[This is cross-posted from Insert Credit, where I very occasionally turn up to post something that Brandon said he was going to post but didn't. Like this one!]

IC regular Professor Scissors has posted the full version of Zombie City Tactics, his game which he describes as "a turn-based strategy game about outsmarting and defeating massively superior enemy forces... perhaps!" Sure, the art is a little programmer-y, but the gameplay is present and correct, so you should check it out.

Also, the good Prof says: "If you want to you can also mention that I am looking for brave warriors to be artists and musicians and stuff for my next project", which appears to be Zombie City Survivors, which "is going to take some elements from Zombie City Tactics, Fire Emblem, Resident Evil, and an obscure freeware Gameboy Color demo called Hungry are the Dead." Sounds yummy.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I know a few other sites have covered HPANA's account of rabid Harry Potter fans visiting Electronic Arts to find out about the game version of Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix - but they've completely missed the sheer hilarious rabidity of the fans in question.

Says Charlotte, a forum moderator at Harry Potter fansite Immeritus: "'It had been mentioned to me that [EA] were HP fans and, although I thought they'd probably read the books and seen the films, I was sceptical that they'd have the same kind of knowledge and enthusiasm as we do (the kind that comes from analyzing a single sentence to several pages of discussion).'" Yes, several pages!

It gets better, really: "The team working on the OotP game (currently about 85 people) are all sorted into houses and they sit in those houses for regular meetings. Points are won for individual houses and collected in jars, and there's even a sorting ceremony whenever a new member joins the team!"

What if you don't like Harry Potter? Is there some way you can opt out? Is this an HR-related matter? Is your house fined for crash bugs you cause? Honestly, screw Will Wright's 'cells', we hear this is the new game development organization method EA is aiming for.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Game Ads A-Go-Go' is a bi-weekly column by Vintage Computing and Gaming's RedWolf that showcases good, bad, strange, funny, and interesting classic video game-related advertisements, most of which are taken from his massive game magazine collection.]

While thumbing through old video game magazines, it's inevitable to find ads for some games that you've never even heard of. But I have done one better: I have found ads for games that nobody has ever heard of. That's right; no human being living on Earth knows that these games exist (Don't even bother to challenge me, because I don't count undead zombies as "human beings living on Earth"). In fact, these games are so obscure that they don't even "exist" in a traditional sense -- they occupy a slippery, hazy nether region of space: half here, half there, phasing in and out of our reality and into worlds unknown. Which brings us to the all-important question: if a game falls in a forest, and nobody is there to play it, does it make a sound?

Absolutely Not Derivative in Any Way

Ok, so you're creating a new video game, but the "creating" part is just too hard. What should you do? Not to fear; you can pull a time-tested maneuver that game developers continue to use today: simply combine disparate elements of established pop culture and forcefully cram them into the most popular game genre of the time. Before you now lies only one result of that very popular practice: Socket. One part Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons, and one part Sonic the Hedgehog, Socket is a bad dude with a tude just itchin' to be rude. Did I mention that he's blue and can run really fast?

As far as ridiculous obscure games go, this one takes the cake, freezes it with liquid nitrogen, and smashes it with a sledgehammer. Then eats it.

---

Slip Slip Slippin' Through Tiieeeiiime

I have absolutely no idea what this game is about; I've never played it. But if I were to guess from the ad's imagery, it's probably about an insectoid alien robot with a gun who forces you to travel through time, blowing enemies away, to work off your intergalactic bar tab. Sounds kinda like Contra, but shitty.

---

Vasteely Dan: The Impossible Game

Just about every game for the TG-16 Turbo CD platform is obscure, mostly because only around 5-6 living, breathing, non-zombie humans own a Turbo CD unit. But this game (like the others, I might add), is not even listed on MobyGames -- that wonderful oracle of gaming knowledge -- so there's no telling what really goes on inside its twisted code. The very fact that this game purports to combine "arcade action" and "intense strategy" sounds a little suspicious to me. That's like combining the words "slow" and "fast" into a new unspeakably self-contradictory word that brings the universe to a halt and makes every atom in your body vaporize simultaneously. It's almost as if this "game" was a practical joke by the Japanese on the western video game market. "Ha ha! Lazy Americans will be so mind-boggled, their heads will explode!" Well...consider my head exploded.

But if what this ad says about the game is actually true, then humanity has a long way to go before we're ready to wield such awesome, concentrated power in a single video game. It's best to seal it away in a deep, lead-lined vault and mark it "Do Not Open 'Til 3264." Maybe then we'll finally be ready as a species to play the marvel of gaming that is Vasteel.

[RedWolf is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Vintage Computing and Gaming, a regularly updated "blogazine" that covers collecting, playing, and hacking vintage computing and gaming devices. He has been collecting vintage computers and game systems for over 13 years. He also loves tacos.]

Posted by Benj Edwards at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

GSW and Gamasutra editor FrankC is a man of obscure game KNOWLEDGE, since he founded Lost Levels and is often to be seen drooling over a particularly obscure prototype - so we squealed when he pointed out a copy of 'Miss Peach World' for Famicom/NES, created by Hacker International, on Yahoo! Japan Auctions.

Of course, when Googling for information on the game, the very first result is a page about the game from TSR, aka GSW's very own Kevin 'Mag Weasel' Gifford - showing that we know a scarily large amount of people with extremely obscure knowledge, perhaps. Frank already told us that the title, which is obviously Mario-aping in its artwork, is "a hack of Menace Beach, a Color Dreams game", and Kevin has more: "Oh no, it's Menace Beach! With Color Dreams' original cart, its rerelease in Sunday Funday and its rererelease in the Maxi-15 multicart, what may be the worst "made with pride in the USA" game ever now may be the most rereleased NES game ever!"

Kevin notes: "The only changes in this game are graphic ones. Although Hacker laid the Princess upon our eyes in the label, the game itself doesn't feature her. Instead it seems that Marilyn Monroe has quit her day job of being dead and joined the Skateboard Police to become a "Super LA Cop", along the way defeating kung-fu dudes, guys in T-shirts and the sumo wrestlers from the original game." And yes, the distinctly unlicensed game has got naked pixelated ladies in it, and actually has little/nothing graphical or gameplay connections with Mario, despite the cover art. Nuff said, really.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Our Blazing Destiny is a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games. And about little black and white pixel animals that poop and die.]

Here's Persona to update us on whatever the heck this week's column is about: "Sorry guys, I was really late with this comic! To compensate, it's really, really long!

You see, I went up to the mountains to train with the yaoi priestesses like I mentioned last week, but when I got there they made me pass through thirteen trials in order to gain access to the scroll of all whispy knowledge. I was able to clear the first thirteen or so with no problem but the 'Jam your p****s into a giant bear' trial had me really stumped. I eventually realized something was wrong when all the priestesses kept on giggling when I asked them what a 'p****s' was. It turned out all the priestesses were actually just some furry perverts renting out a shack in the woods with no knowledge at all over the ancient techniques of the whispy lines!!

The whole ordeal left an unsatisfying taste in my mouth so I tied them all up on to the trees surrounding the area and covered them with honey. As I heard the snorts of bears approaching, I ignited the priestesses' temple in the all-erasing flames of justice with an explosive technique I learned from the Great Otter of the South Sea: mix pure water with two parts acorn jelly and dandelion roots and light. As I looked back to the site, a sereneness passed over me and I realized an important lesson: don't check Craig's list for secrets of the ancient arts."

[Jonathan "Persona" Kim is sometimes a character animation student at the California Institute of the Arts, other times a ninja illustrator, but in his heart, a true comic artist looking for his destiny in the sea of stars. His path on the torrid road of comics include a quarterly manga on The Gamer's Quarter and his website on the awesome collective Mecha Fetus. His adventurous soul will never die!

Posted by persona at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over at Wired News, columnist Clive Thompson has an excellent column about Dead Rising's save system, explaining both the problem and some alternate views on why, perhaps, there shouldn't be a solution.

Thompson explains the basic problem well: "In Dead Rising, you're trapped in a Romero-like mall, trying to complete dozens of mini missions to unearth the mystery behind the ghoulish invasion... You've only got one Save slot, and the save points -- the places where you can save your progress to return to if you die later on -- are few and far between. The upshot is you're always walking on eggs."

But then, an IM friend points out an interesting question to Thompson: "If I'd been able to save the game whenever I wanted, would the game have been easier -- or just more boring? He was right. Save mechanisms are key to the emotional stakes in a game." So, is he playing devil's advocate by pointing out that a lot of the game's edginess is _created_ by not being able to save anywhere you like, or is he right, and this is actually a good thing for suspense in a zombie game?

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['MMOG Nation' is a regular bi-weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week's column is about the 'relaunch' of the game EverQuest.]

Not too long ago, my feelings about Sony Online's Everquest (EQ) were mostly frustration and disappointment. Despite its position as a genre-defining title, the release of EverQuest 2 signaled to me that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was no longer going to be focusing on the game. My assumption was that, with a shinier and more solo-friendly big brother around that the original would fall by the wayside. After a time I even began to become frustrated by the fact that Sony kept releasing expansions for the game. I felt that they were leading EQ players on, that they were short-changing EQ2, and that they were pouring effort into a no longer relevant title. I can now say categorically that I was wrong.

I recently had the opportunity to take a tour of the upcoming expansion, Serpent's Spine, with EQ Lead Designer Travis McGeathy. I've seen the light. Today I'm going to look at EverQuest's past, the reason for my reversal of opinion, and where the game is going. Finally, I'll talk about why I think the direction Everquest is headed (and the revamp of Ultima Online) signals nothing but good things for the future of Massive gaming.

(Click through to read the full column!)

It Worked Out Okay

From everything that I've heard, the creators of EverQuest were quite nervous when they began taking applications for the game's Beta. Ultima was fairly successful, but a 3D graphical online world was not yet a proven concept. There was some fear that people wouldn't 'get it', that their years of hard work would end in frustration and commercial failure. Seven years later, and on the cusp of the release of the twelfth expansion for the game, I thinkit's fair to say that EverQuest has done alright. It hasn't always been a smooth ride, to be sure. Conflicts between the designers and players over class balance, zone population and itemization, and high level encounters are legendary. There's been a lot of negative press about the MMOG genre in general, and a lot of that has focused on EQ because of its recognizable name. There's even some reality to that press, with EverQuest's level-focused gameplay leading to sites like EQWidows and the burgeoning RMT market.

Despite that, while UO and Meridian 59 can claim earlier launch dates Everquest is in many ways the template on which most modern fantasy MMOGs have been based. Looking at MMOGChart.com, though, it's easy to see that the age of Everquest's primacy is over. From a height of about 550,000 subscribers in the summer of 2004, the game now has less than half of that number logging in to play. Newer games have come along, learning from the lore of EverQuest. The globe-spanning phenomenon that is World of Warcraft would almost certainly not exist if many of its designers hadn't cut their teeth doing corpse runs, raiding Nagafen, or getting keyed for the Planes. EverQuest 2 is doing fairly respectably as well, with a 'spiritual' sequel also planned in the form of Brad McQuaid's Vanguard. As nice as it must be to know that your game spurred such creative works, SOE has to be disappointed with where EQ's numbers are now.

Hence my frustration and confusion: Why continue a service that is losing players? Why prop up a game world that seems to have offered its all? Today, I have the answers I was looking for last week. On Monday EQ's lead designer casually mentioned to me that over the last seven years something like five million people have played EQ. Just about the number of people living in my home state of Wisconsin have trod the earth in Norrath. That seemed like an impressive but mostly anecdotal figure at the start of my tour of the Serpent's Spine expansion; by the end of that experience I came to realize it meant far, far more.

EverQuest Redux

You see, Serpent's Spine is nothing less that a relaunch of EverQuest. Sony Online isn't couching it in those terms, but the players understand what's going on. Referring to it as 'EverQuest 1.5', there is a lot of excitement among current players and lapsed veterans about a new way to experience EQ. Looking at their falling subscription numbers, SOE isn't trying to 'take on' World of Warcraft. Instead, they've made an expansion that focuses on what EverQuest has always really been about: the players. Essentially, Serpent's Spine is a game within the game. The Serpent's Spine mountains enclose a huge swath of territory, and the expansion explores those zones for the first time. Though technically a home to the new player race (the Drakkin) all players creating a new character can make their way to Crescent Reach, the city zone in the new area. From there, characters can move out into the new adventuring zones. A player can level a character from 1 all the way to the new cap of 75 entirely within the zones including in Serpent's Spine. SOE hopes that, by providing a clear quest path incorporating all of the innovations and upgrades the game has received since launch, players will be able to experience the best of what EQ has to offer.

Though this may seem like they're short shrifting the mountains of content in the rest of Norrath, the goal is more to guide than force. McGeathy seemed to believe that older players will return for the new adventure path, but would stray at appropriate levels to revisit favorite zones and quests. Thus, they're making returning players the focus of the expansion. Even distanced from the game, this focus gives old players a very definite idea of what they should be doing at each level. "I'm level 20, so I should be adventuring on the Moors." Beyond that, a player can go exploring in the wider world of Norrath, always knowing the more focused content of the new expansion will be awaiting their return. Even within the 'focused' adventure path, there's some variation. At the higher levels there is a split between two totally disparate quest lines. You'll be able to follow clues to the home of the last intelligent giant race, or work against a crazed half-dragon and his mighty armies. Interesting stuff, in the grand tradition of EQ.

This focus on the players, rather than shiny new features or systems, is what sets Serpent's Spine apart. SOE seems finally to have come around to the idea that they should be spending time and effort on the players. Everything in this new expansion touches on or fleshes out what has come before. There was no wasted time developing new technologies that might look good on the back of a box, but that players might not enjoy. The goal, then, has always been about allowing the players to have a good time. Ie: what games are always supposed to be about.

It's Not Rocket Science

For me, it's frustrating that such a simple idea has to be something of a watershed. Most MMOG expansions are excuses to include new technology, prettier graphics, and increased difficulty. By putting boxes on the shelves people are reminded that your game exists, and you hopefully get some new players. By upping the difficulty at the high end, you hope to retain your current crop of end-game players. Serpent's Spine is a digital download -only love letter to the lapsed Everquest player, with no ulterior motives attached. That new commitment to the community they've created is incredibly refreshing. Ultima Online, too, appears to be looking to reintroduce old players by giving the game a fresh look. Both of these titles, pillars on which the modern MMOG industry is built, have finally come to a place where player satisfaction is #1 on their list of goals.

Perhaps this is a natural evolution of any Massive game, should it survive long enough. Once they're past the hype of features, graphics, and subscription numbers, designers and producers can finally focus on the people that make the hype worthwhile. If so, I think it says great things about the future of the Massive genre. Though there will be always games that fall out of favour and are shut down, some games can live on long after uninformed observers think they should be put out on the ice. More than just 'bread and circuses', by trying to reintroduce past players to Everquest SOE is recapturing great memories, reconnecting old friends, and perhaps rubbing some of the cynicism off of otherwise very jaded MMOG veterans.

At the end of the day it's nice to see a product that reaffirms we we already know about Massive games. What makes them special isn't the technology, the graphics, the press, the number of people playing, or the number of hours you've played. What makes them special is the way that we play them: together. A reality where a 40 year old housewife and a 16 year old schoolkid hook up with a 30-something programmer to slay a dragon is unique. For ignoring market pressures and staying true to the ideals of the genre, I can't help but salute a company that's willing to make sure that reality stays fresh even for people that aren't paying it anymore.

[Michael Zenke is also known as 'Zonk', the current editor of Slashdot Games. He has had the pleasure of writing occasional pieces for sites like Gamasutra and The Escapist. You can read more of Michael's ramblings on Massive games at the MMOG Nation blog. ]

Posted by mzenke at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (45)

We just got a totally amusing press release regarding a new Australian TV show about games - it's called 'Good Game', and the official website for it has a highlights reel that shows its firm grasp of yoof culture!

The PR handily explains: "Hosted by Junglist (Jeremy Ray) and Kapowski (Michael Makowski), Good Game is filmed in the Den of Gaming (DOG); a gamers’ paradise fitted out with just about every gaming device ever invented and complemented by a huge plasma screen – every gamers’ dream screen! Junglist and Kapowski are supported each week by Dr Daneel, Good Game’s technical wizard, and P_Nutz, the computer-hacking ape."

Dude, P_Nutz! Wait, there's more: "Junglist first picked up a controller at the age of six and has been a passionate gamer ever since. Until recently he ran a successful Counter-Strike: Source team. Junglist now trains younger gamers in online sportsmanship as well as war-gaming tactics. Kapowski started gaming at the age of five. At the age of 13 he built his first computer to satisfy his love of gaming. Dr Daneel (Miles Tulett) built his first computer at the age of eight and hasn’t stopped. He recently won two major competitions for computer design. Dr Daneel is currently studying and plans to embark on a career in computer design." But is Dr Daneel really a doctor?

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You guys know how much we love articles from German developer Schadenfreude Interactive (Cthulhu Karts, Accordion Hero, Grand Theft Ottoman) on sister site Gamasutra - well, there's a new one named 'Copy Protection Racket' online, and it's just... yaaay.

The piece "discusses how to find appropriate copy protection for your game, from dongles through 'scratch 'n sniff' to startling modern Russian methods", and starts out: "Lothar (our art director) came to me one day with a problem. Ordinarily he would go to our chief technical officer, Bruno, with these things, but Bruno was away attending the Beard & Mustache World Championship in Berlin (just attending, not competing – my mother can grow more of a mustache than Bruno can). Anyway, Lothar had found copies of our games available for download on BitTorrent."

Thus, the Germans venture deep into the PC copy protection world, discovering Russian firm, uhh, NovaHammer: "NovaHammer’s CEO Sergei Glazunov arrived with three hulking assistants in matching black Members Only jackets and sunglasses. They declined to take them off (the jackets or the glasses). Mr. Glazunov introduced the men as Dmitri Karamazov, his brother Dmitri, and his other brother Dmitri. We offered them coffee cake, and since it was just after 10 am, beer. I began by asking them a little bit about their business. “We protect your things. That is our business. Protection.” “My things?” I asked. “But we make computer games.” “Oh, of course. We can protect those too.”"

We're sure those NovaHammer guys remind us of someone, we just can't put our fingers on it...

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We totally adore the beardy weirdy guys over at Digital Eel - heck, their very own Rich Carlson is the only IGF winner I've ever spoken to at GDC while that person was strumming a tiny banjo - isn't that recommendation enough?

Anyhow, they have great news, in association with Greg Costikyan and the Manifesto Games chaps: "To celebrate their upcoming and highly anticipated launch, Manifesto Games is offering Plasmaworm for free! Yep, you heard right, and not the demo but the whole darn Digital Eel FULL VERSION!"

But wait, there's more! "How can they/we do this, you ask? Because Manifesto Games is dangerous and Digital Eel is insane. Only dangerously insane people would make such an insanely dangerous game available to unsuspecting gamers in this way! Note that this offer only lasts until September 15th, so be sure to head on over to Manifesto and check out the pre-launch shenanigans, ASAP."

Other than that, if you haven't checked out Digital Eel's weird-ass 'short' space game Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space, please do so immediately, if not sooner - Kieron Gillen got pretty addicted to the IGF winner earlier this year, as did a non-game biz friend of mine, and its borderline surreal Star Trek-ish randomized explorations are tragically enticing. That is all!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Jozef Purdes, late of the Independent Adventuring blog, and DIY Games before that, will be writing a column for us on graphical/text adventures in the future - but in the meantime, he'll pop up from time to time with well-informed posts on adventure games such as this one!]

Christopher Brendel, the maker of Lifestream and Shady Brook, has recently announced a delay in his new game, Stonewall Penitentiary. Aside of the fact that independent games are not often delayed (actually, they may be, but since most of them have a “When it’s done” release date, nobody notices), it was surprising to learn the reason for the delay: a switch from 2D to 3D.

2D and 3D are very vague concepts in adventure gaming, and some – including me – don’t fully agree with Brendel’s definition of the terms. Originally, the game was designed to support a first-person view. To move around, you used the arrow keys or clicked with your mouse when the cursor changed into a directional arrow. The scene was redrawn, and you suddenly found yourself elsewhere. This interface was used in the author’s previous two games, as well as such independent adventures like Dark Fall and the Delaware St. John series. Brendel considers this to be a 2D view.

After applying the new 3D engine, the player will be able to move freely around the environment, also in a first-person look. This interface is typical for modern first-person shooters, and it combines mouse and keyboard controls. I personally would call both views 3D or - more appropriately - first-person, and leave the number of dimensions out. But that’s just me; I considered Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder to be 3D as well…

Brendel paid close attention to alleviating adventure gamers’ biggest fear: that with the change of the interface he’d also introduce action elements. There are still plenty of adventure gamers, such as me, who prefer solving complex mathematical puzzles involving Base-4 and Base-12 alien numerical systems to fighting a dragon in a real-time sequence. The author also wrote that he didn’t feel the game felt right with the old interface. This is an author’s prerogative, and I fully respect it.

The announcement provoked some interesting reactions. The loudest response was a complaint about using both hands to play an adventure game. I feel the pain, too. Being able to eat a hotdog or hold a glass of beer while attaching cat hair to my character’s face in a game is vastly superior to a seamless first-person world. Others compared the new interface to that used in Dreamfall, and this was reason enough for them to reject the game. On the other hand, the ability to fully explore the environment was listed as a positive element.

I personally see the new interface as a mixed blessing. I don’t mind involving both of my hands in controlling the game. However, I am afraid the game’s graphical presentation will suffer. Using a seamless view means no hand-drawn backgrounds. Typically, this view requires computer-generated textures, even though hand-drawn (and repetitive) textures are also common. Still, keeping to reasonable hardware requirements may force the author to design objects and backgrounds to appear very flat and unrealistic. The good news is, as was mentioned by others, that this interface would allow players to explore the environment in a much larger detail. Considering that the game takes place in a prison, I can already imagine finding important clues and items under the bed or on the back side of a poster. That is, of course, as long as the author decides to remain family friendly and doesn’t hide these items in the prisoners’ orifices.

Posted by jozefp at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It pleases us greatly that sarcastic cellphone game site QuicklyBored exists, having only found out about it recently, and we noted with interest their NSFW review of 'College Girls', a terrible chauvinistic mobile game we covered back in January.

To explain again: "The point of the game is to walk around trying to have sex with girls and learn new positions. If you learn 20 positions you become a “good lover.” In order to get a girl in bed you have to make contact with them. Once you’ve made contact, a status bar comes up and if you do it repeatedly, then your status bar will fill. I guess this is supposed to simulate the necessary dialogue needed to get a girl to sleep with you. At this point it becomes obvious that you’re playing a game developed by nerds who have never slept with a girl before."

But here's the best bit: "You have to say about three words to the girl and then she gives you the option to sleep with her. If you have some protection then you can follow her to her room and proceed to do the humana-humana. Sometimes you have to bring her a present, like a Bryan Adams disc set (no joke)." Wait, so it's _actually_ and specifically Bryan Adams? Wow. Also, that's not how we spell humana. Maybe that's just us.

[If you want to know what a sarcastic cellphone game site actually digs, in an unrelated review, QB raves about Time Crisis 3D, believe it or not, explaining: "Time Crisis 3D has the innovative user interface that we’ve been looking for. The screen is divided into 9 squares that correspond to the number pad on the phone. When an enemy appears in one of these quadrants, pressing the corresponding button will automatically shoot them." Neat idea!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Walter Day has been running Twin Galaxies since mid-1981. On the 9th of February the next year, Day launched the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard – a collection of gaming records gathered by Day from over 100 arcades over a period of 4 months. Twin Galaxies quickly became acknowledged as the world authority on game scores. The next year, on January 9th, in conjunction with ABC-TV, Twin Galaxies held the world’s first videogame championship in Day’s arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa. Following this, he put together, and captained, the US National Video Game Team, who challenged Italy and Japan, and toured Europe.

Day was also contacted by the Guinness Book of World Records to work as assistant-editor of the videogame scores section of the 1984-1986 editions. By 1985, Day and Twin Galaxies had been featured in LIFE magazine, Marvel Comics, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Stern Magazine, the Washington Post and had nearly 100 TV appearances.

In 1998, Twin Galaxies released the first edition of the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records - a 984 page compilation of 12,416 records dating back to 1981. For their 25th year, they plan to release the second edition, a three-volume set, which will feature console and PC gaming. Twin Galaxies also continues to contribute to the Guinness Book of World Records, with 68 records in the book’s new videogame section.

GameSetWatch spoke to Walter Day via email about the history of Twin Galaxies, and what it represents now.

How did you become interested in videogames?

I was an oil broker in 1980 and I began work on a book called Day’s Who’s Who in the Petroleum Industry. After some weeks working on biographies, my partner said: “I can't work anymore on this stuff, I have to go play Space Invaders.”
So, of course, I had no idea what Space Invaders was so he took me along to a major arcade in Houston, TX, where I became addicted to Space Invaders. Then, I became addicted to Pac-Man and then Centipede. Today, I don’t play because Twin Galaxies takes up all my time.

What are your favourite games?

The three mentioned above plus Galaxian, Make Trax, Crazy Taxi and Tutankham.

Have you ever been tempted to try for a record of your own?

I once held the world record on Make Trax, back in 1982.

Your site says of the scoreboards beginnings that "Day's real passion was to visit as many video game arcades as possible and record the high scores he found on each game" - what started your passion for recording game scores?

I was fascinated with the pursuit of excellence, as manifested in the video game player. I wanted to excel. So, to do this, I sought out the best of the best players to learn their tricks. This was the birth of the scoreboard.

What was it like to be recognised as the worldwide "official" record keepers of scores back in the early days, and how does it feel for that to have continued?

It was overwhelming in the beginning because I would be interviewed everyday from some city around the world. Everybody was going for records back then. It was a very big deal. Now, it’s more quiet and easier to handle. But still very popular.

Are there any records that stand out as particularly impressive for you?

Nobody will ever beat the records on the classic Pole Position [67,310 posted by Les Lagier on the 11th of June, 2004] or Crystal Castles [910,722 posted by Frank Seay on the same date]; they may actually be maxed out.

How were the early days of Twin Galaxies different to now?

I can breathe now, not as much pressure.

Do you feel like you played a part in bringing gaming into the professional arena?

The entire Twin Galaxies family of players and referees are responsible for planting a seed that is now coming to fruition everywhere. Many leagues, many contests, many champions – they all had their spiritual roots in what Twin Galaxies started 25 years ago.

How do you feel about gaming these days, as opposed to when you began?

It’s getting exciting. There wasn’t money available back then. The modern prize structure is making the activity become a legitimate sport.

How do you feel about emulator, or tool assisted, speedruns?

Emulators are fine. They are not mixed with original game systems, however: treated as separate. Speed-runs have breathed life back into games that had faded from the public eye.

Where do you see professional gaming going in the next five years?

Many, many leagues. Many, many contests. And a return to high-score based games in a big way.

Finally, what can we expect from the new edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records?

The book is so big that it is splitting into 3 companion volumes, each being 740-pages in length. The volumes are:

1. Arcade
2. Console
3. PC-Gaming

Posted by alistairw at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of neat China-related things I'm gonna smoosh into one post, so there. Firstly, sister site Gamasutra recently debuted a new column named 'The China Angle', which is written by the excellent Shang Koo from Pacific Epoch, and is probably the finest English-language column on the Chinese game market (in a rather small field, but nonetheless!)

Anyhow, the second column is up, and is fascinating because it deals with Chinese MMO companies making money via the third Valentine's Day this year (!) in China: "Activities for this week include special Valentine's Day quests, virtual roses and presents, and in-game weddings... Virtual weddings are cash cows for online game companies. The wedding itself can take several hours, making it the perfect activity for China's predominantly pay by the hour online game industry. Many companies also charge for virtual wedding dresses and flowers." Wow.

Though this would probably make more sense as a Gamasutra follow-up, there's nowhere sensible to put it - so on GSW it will go! After our recent article on IGE, who are China-sourcing item/gold traders of some repute, the owner of Allakhazam.com has chimed in on his website's relation to IGE, given that as item-sellers, IGE are reviled by a lot of his readership:

"Maybe it is just semantics, but I don't consider us owned by IGE. The initial sale of the company was done through IGE, but it was done as part of a larger deal that included a large influx of cash from a group of prominant institutional investors, which was meant to form a new, larger and more diverse corporation with zam as one of several divisions... The sale took place 6 months ago and I can say uncategorically that not one time has anyone dictated to me what to do with the new network. I have had 100% autonomy in every decision regarding Zam.com." Interesting!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We only reprint, as you know, the most important stuff here, so here goes: "NBC’s the Office brought home the coveted “Best Comedy Series” award at last night’s Emmy Awards. The drinks and short-codes flowed at the official “Office” after-party—where guests were treated to complementary downloads of NBC’s the Office Games mobile phone game."

There's more: "Stylish cigarette girls demoed the 6 mini-games and distributed downloads. NBC’s the Office Games is available on Verizon, Cingular & Amp’d Mobile and will be coming to T-Mobile & Sprint in September. The mini-games include, Waste-paper basket ball, Paper football, Chair races, Stack-o-files, Office golf and Paper war—everything you’d expect from a game inspired by this award winning, tongue -in-cheek comedy!" We're really just printing this cos of the horrific 'cigarette girls' outfits, and Steve Carell looking tanned and confused.

[IGN has reviewed the game, which was formally a non-licensed title called 'Office Games', noting: "Sadly, having played both the before- and after-license editions of the games, the addition of the Office crew does very little to boost the concept above the level of mediocre. The only things that connect the game to the television show are some renaming conventions, the constant appearance of tiny character portraits quoting appropriate dialogue, and the redesign of the "goalie" in the paper football game to look like Pam, the receptionist. Otherwise, the game is still an uneven assembly of a few good games and some downright dull ones."]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[‘Letters from the Metaverse’ is a regular weekly column by Mathew Kumar about his adventures in the massively multiplayer online world of Second Life. This week’s column covers Second Life as a game development platform.]

This week I’ve been talking to ghosts.

There’s been an unusual bug that has appeared, at least for me, in the most recent version of Second Life; version 1.12. Occasionally other Second Life residents don’t appear, and I’m left holding conversations with only ghosts. They’re not completely anonymous; I know their names but nothing else. It hammers home, in a way, how important the avatar, the chosen form of another person, is to understanding them. As it is, I’m left only with what they said, no sense of who they were.

You see, I’ve been struggling with Second Life, recently. Not using it; I’ve been struggling with what my expectations were, based on the Linden’s efficient PR machine, and what I’ve found when I’ve been in world. I don’t want to turn this into a list of complaints, but when you hear of a thriving online world that’s not only a sterling example of free market capitalism but also the creative sandbox of our dreams, it’s not hard to find yourself disillusioned. Last week I explored a lovingly created island, Numbakulla, and was so utterly turned off buy the reality of the way Second Life forced my character to interact with it.

But the ghosts have told me I’m not the first to feel this way.

The first thing the ghosts told me about was an article by Thomas Robinson on the Black Library. In the article, Thomas laments the death of Primmies, his Second Life game. The winner of a game development contest held by the Lindens and judged with the help of Doug Church, and what killed it? The very next patch to Second Life! It’s actually a rather beautiful article, if a little complex with jargon. The following discussion on the Blackbored is almost as essential, with Thomas Robinson hammering home his point, that Second Life is a failure as a development platform.

The ghosts linked me to a fairly recent post on the Second Life forums. The Second Life forums, not only soon to be closed, are only readable to people with Second Life Accounts. One well known member of the community, Clubside Granville, takes such umbrage at the closure of the forum that he literally leaves Second Life in the post. He has far more reasons to leave than that, and can’t resist scathing comments like “In the end there is nothing to do here if you are not into creating or want something more than a crippled version of IRC in a 3D world”, and states “Second Life runs under five year old physics technology on a platform it was never fully developed for at the time, using a highly inefficient and poorly designed scripting model.”

The most depressing thing about this, the ghosts confided, was that Clubside wasn’t just a naysayer. He was trying to accurately point out the flaws for the good of Second Life. For example, they said, he, and a team of individuals, decided to try and create the FPS “SL Conquest” after discovering a Linden sponsored banner ad which stated “Last week I created a multi-player FPS in Second Life... ...This week I'm charging people money to play it.” Clubside himself explained “The goal was to demonstrate the difficulty in implementing this very basic banner ad's premise, both because of technology limitations and cost. It's hard to charge someone for something they can essentially play for free, and it's hard to get people to develop in a system where people aren't ultimately interested because the content can't be compelling owing to those same technology limitations.”

I visited Carnage Island, the remaining home of SL Conquest. Given a pistol by the nearest passing furry in camo gear, I took part in yes, a comically broken FPS experience. Carnage Island is without game balancing (the aforementioned furry attacking me with a helicopter seconds after he gave me a pop gun) and hampered by the slow character movement, jerky animation and weird collision detection of Second Life. The game does, at least, have random spawn locations, but when you consider that a plus point you’re probably getting desperate.

The last time I logged into Second Life it seemed to have more ghosts than ever.

Maybe one day I’ll be one of them.

[Mathew Kumar is a freelance journalist who’s dabbled in MMORPGs, but is too cheap/strong willed to play past a free trial. He got his break with Insert Credit, and his work has been featured in publications as diverse as The Globe and Mail, Broken Pencil, and Eurogamer. He's just started a workblog. Why don't you visit it if you want to find out more?]

Posted by mathewk at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New Gamer continues to do some marvellous stuff, the latest thing being a scan of the Space Invaders Atari 400/800 manual, as part of a 'Gamephemera' series.

They note: "Exquisitely detailed, the cover (illustrated by Bob Flemate, an Atari graphic designer) is stunning. I love the rigid rows of aliens marching towards the station, as well as the flourish of their lasers colliding with the mountainous embankment. Sure, it's a bit hyperbolic considering the simple game it's meant to visually describe, but it's still very impressive and terribly gripping."

But: "The rest of the manual is pretty scant. I mean, it's Space Invaders - there's not much that needs to be documented. However, my favorite part of the manual has to be the 'Space Invaders Games Matrix', which details the various changes in the 12 different types of Space Invaders game modes." Haw. And yes, there's a PDF you can grab.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We linked to the smart Dslyecxi's uber-gigantor-post on tactical shooters a few weeks back, and now he's come up with a neat update referencing the UT2004 mod 'Infiltration' - we'll paste you what he says!

"Shortly after publishing my "Tactical Gaming Done Right" article, I received a good number of e-mails urging me to check out certain games that I hadn't covered. The game that was most heavily cited, time and time again, was an Unreal Tournament mod called "Infiltration" that I had never seriously played before. Wanting to be as thorough as possible, and mindful that I would likely do follow-up articles in the future on this topic, I went ahead and dug out my UT CDs to see what all the fuss was about."

He continues: "Here we are, a few months later, and I can now clearly see that not having had Infiltration in the original article was a gross oversight on my part. I must plead ignorance for having neglected it. From what I can see now, Infiltration must be considered as the mother of all tactical realism games - or at least the first to implement a vast number of what at the time were brand new concepts. That Infiltration so solidly implements so many features that had never seriously been seen before in the genre is a tribute to the skill and vision of the developers." So there - realism lovers should probably go read this article now. [Via Shack News.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Parallax Memories' is a regular weekly column by Matthew Williamson, profiling classic '16-bit' games from the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and other seminal '90s systems. This week's column profiles some not-so-great fighting games]

Mortal Kombat

You can lie to yourself all you want, but it’s a fact that many of the fighting games for the Genesis and Super Nintendo were terrible and, at best, gimmicky. Others were only poor ports of good arcade games. For the sake of simplicity I am just going to focus on the Genesis and try stay away from honestly good fighting games. Looking back on the 90’s and it’s fighting game line up compared to now, we are really only slightly better off with girls that kick high.

It is probably best to begin with what started a trend of mediocre fighting games with style over substance: Mortal Kombat. The release of this game on home consoles was probably one of the largest videogame-related media events since The Wizard was released. Videogame critics were quick to speak up about how this trash would ruin our children. Because of the "realistic" violence Joe Lieberman was brought into the forefront as an upholder of public morality. I’m pretty sure that all it did was sell more games.

Using digitized people and borrowing many elements from the seminal Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat won its way into many people’s hearts with excessive and unrealistic gore. Blood would glob out of the characters with as little as a slap to the face. Heads could be rent from their torso, spinal column included. It was fantastic. The Genesis port was fairly competent and faithful to the original: I played it to death. Though the controversy over the game caused the game to be released without blood there was a code for the Genesis version which would unlock it, a code almost as infamous as the Konami Code.

For the record I turned out to be fairly balanced person and have never once tried to reproduce an act in the game other than for comedic effect.

Primal Rage

Atari followed suit shortly thereafter with Primal Rage. The game pitted Draconian gods against each other for the control of Urth. Rather than use live-action digitized humans this game went with clay figures. PR feels just as cheesy as MK does and goes even further for an attempt to gross out - or play up to - immature audiences. You fight to a gory death while occasionally gobbling up or tossing human worshipers at your feet. The brutality ranged from stabbings to crushing, and one of the gods could even melt the flesh off enemies with acidic urine in his "golden shower" fatality.

On the Genesis the game lost little of its “charm.” As to be expected from a port to an under-powered system the game doesn’t look or sound as nice as the original. But aside from a few missing combos (for no apparent reason) the rest of the game is pretty much intact: even all the censored items which were removed from the SNES version. Yet Primal Rage is not the end of these inadequate games.

Eternal Champions

Eternal Champions was the first game for the Genesis where I finally thought I had an excuse to buy a 6-button controller. I spent a good amount of my time playing vs. fighting games in the arcades, so I didn’t need a 6-button controller for Street Fighter II (nor a copy of the game itself really), but Eternal Champions was something new, and ultimately even more of the same.

Buying into the hype I got the game and the controller but shortly thereafter gave up on fighting games in general for a while. While EC was a decent game and controlled well it was just jumping on the bandwagon of overly violent games. The only unique quality of the game is the “overkills” (stage specific fatalities), but even that had been in other games, just not to the same extent. Seeing these overkills usually involved trying to find them with your friends. You have to have an opponent land on the ground in a very specific spot when they die. Sometimes it was fairly obvious where this was to happen, where others it was nearly impossible to land right. The overkills ranged from drive-by shootings to chest explosions resulting in the outpouring of bowels.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed these games a lot when they came out. I would spend many summer days and weekend hours playing the games with friends. Many times my friends would come over and I would end up playing while they went off to go fishing, or what ever it was that normal kids ended up doing. But they just don’t hold up well at all.

When I started to collect arcade cabinets for my game room a few years back I managed to get a Primal Rage cabinet exceptionally cheap. I tried to rekindle the love for these b-movie games with some friends. We made a party of sorts out of it: pizza, beer, and women (well, my wife at the least). After a good hour (or less) of laughs and drunken hilarity the thrill wore off, the games showed just what they were: bad. In a half-hearted attempt to see if the console ports were somehow better than the arcade originals I revisited many of my favorites (with other baddies not mentioned such as TMNT:Tournament Fighter and Cyborg Justice). The experiment was a failure and, in retrospect, I find it hard to believe that we thought of these as looking real or even close at one point. The memories remain and the fight goes on. 2D fighters are all but extinct now and many of these games are the reason why. Strangely enough Mortal Kombat is coming up on its possible "final game," I can only hope that really is true.

[Matthew Williamson is the creator of The Gamer’s Quarter, an independent videogame magazine focusing on first person writing. His work has been featured on MTV.com, 1up.com, Chatterbox Radio, and the Fatpixels Radio Podcast.]

Posted by Matthew Williamson at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

One of my favorite blogs that normally has nothing to do with video games, vintage synth geekout zone Music Thing, has just updated with news of a Pong hack for the MPC1000 sampler, wow.

As the Wikipedia page for the MPC series explains: "Akai MPCs (originally MIDI Production Center, now Music Production Center) are a popular and well respected series of electronic musical instruments originally designed by Roger Linn and produced by the Japanese company Akai from 1988 onwards."

Apparently, some Japanese hackers, named 'Japanese Jenius', or JJ for short, have done this _alleged_ non-hoax: "The unofficial OS has given the MPC1000 most of the functions of the more expensive MPC2500, and more. JJ are planning to sell a finalised version for $35, which will - apparently - include this version of Pong..." Yay, Pong for tea, pong for everything!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at Gnome's Lair, the aforementioned Gnome has an excellent post about Mike Bithell's freeware PSP/PC title Visiting Day, which is a seriously fun super-simple indie title.

He explains: "Visiting Day, Mike Bithell's soon to be released freeware PSP game (already mentioned here), has moved to BETA stage. And a publicly playable BETA it is. Weird thing though... it's a PSP game currently playable on the PC (& Mac). Still, it will definitely give you a good idea of what to expect: a refreshingly simple, innovative, beautiful and intuitive game."

Trying it out briefly, it's a series of mini-games, of which the first is a little like a Wario Ware mini-game meets the EyeToy mini-game where you have to keep the soccer ball aloft, with super-fast Shen Mue-style button pressing mixed in, and has an endearingly cute art style, too. Then there's another one with tentacles and shooting, and another with tentacles and running and someone called Simon (yay!), so.. seriously, this is a v.neat indie title, we'd love to see a 50-mini-game version sold commercially on PSP.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Of course, Sega make other things than video games, and messing around on eBay, we notice a reduced-price auction for one of the oddest in recently memory - Sega's 'Near Me' life-sized cat robot, so hideous that the auction seller actually describes it as 'creepy' while _still trying to sell it_. (It's going for $200, half of its original price of $400.)

The auction explains, somewhat vaguely: "Near Me - Robotic Android Cat by SEGA NEW IN BOX HOM-1000... Near me that has a pretty face like a real cat, Can take various poses with the real movement by 15 parts and 7 different sensors, There are two colors ; one is the white version, another one is the grey version (American short hair) Grey color version is also available, Please check my auction!"

The official Sega Toys 'Near Me' website has plenty more, but you will learn all you need to know from this demo video of the robot cat, which is so far in the Uncanny Valley, it may never get out again. Of course, if you're particularly goth and are in the market for a zombie cat...

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's an interesting and random email we got about the Binary Picture Show machinima videocast, and we shall reprint it while pointing at it.

It's explained: "'Gaming News with Lady Mainframe' – the unique weekly online news show is finally back with a second series after a huge overhaul to its appearance as well as its format. 'Lady Mainframe', the show's virtual presenter, has received a much needed graphical renovatation, and now presents weekly games sales charts, as well as the latest word in games and technology."

The site has full download links, and notes: "To open the new series we have an eight minute show highlighting a few noisemakers from the Leipzig GC, and the usual rundown of other cool news events of the week, including 'Resevoir Dogs', 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance', 'Hospital Tycoon', 'Just Cause', and more. Of course the biggest change is in Lady Mainframe herself who's had a bit of an identity change." Someone needs to YouTube this for easier watching, we think - but it's not unpromising?

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over at super-smart casual game blog Jay is Games, they've got the games from their first Flash puzzle game design competition up - and there's all sorts of fun stuff.

As for the first set of entries, there's some pretty neat stuff in there - Wulfo raves: "Wow, every single one of those games was unbelievably brilliant. I assumed that they were all going to be simple Bejeweled rip-offs or something like that, but every single was highly original and enjoyable. Sigil of Binding was really enjoyable and I was really surprised that a (brilliant) new edition of Submachine was submitted."

The second batch of entries also has plenty of highlights, with Erico Monteiro providing a neat summing-up of these games in the comments: "All puzzles are neat.. I particularly enjoy those with sound puzzles, but the best here I guess is GATEWAY, nice set of puzzles, excellent atmosphere that somehow reminds me of GROW."

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Poking around GameSetInterview-er Alistair Wallis' Little Mathletics site, we found this amazing interview with Alex Prins-Stairs about 'saving' Sonic The Hedgehog (both the cartoon and the games) from 4Kids' voice actors - even pinning petitions to telegraph poles to make his point!

Here's some rhetoric in action from Prins-Stairs: "My main complaints are the 4Kids voices of Sonic, Cream, Vector, Rouge and Charmy as are in the opinions of others I have met as well. Sonic’s old voice actor Ryan Drummond gave Sonic personality and attitude. He made Sonic sound excited when needed and serious when needed as does his Japanese voice actor Junichi Kanemaru. While with Jason Griffith from 4Kids Entertainment, he hardly gives Sonic any emotion."

But wait, it gets worse: "With Cream the Rabbit, originally I was not able to tell the differences between her game voice actor Sarah Wulfeck and her 4Kids voice actress Rebecca Handler (known as “Rebecca Honig” when voicing Cream) until I played Sonic Battle... She makes Cream sound very high pitched and screechy making her very irritating and very hard to understand." I'm sure that Commander Zorg has something to say about this!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (66)

Even though they're technically some kind of competitor (or bits of them are!), we're still naturally fans of Future's UK print pub Edge magazine, and it sounds like they've managed to set up a new subscription deal of interest to American readers.

They explain: "For those looking to subscribe from the USA, we're announcing a new service allowing you to pay direct in dollars. This link will take you through to our new partnership with International Media Services, allowing you to buy a one-year, two-year, or quarterly subscription."

It turns out to be $75 for a year, and a little less for two years - quite a lot cheaper than previously: "Representing a 28% saving on the cover price, and delivered direct to your door, the deal also includes a free gift of your choice from one of three limited edition Edge T-shirts."

Of course, this is still at least twice as much as the most expensive U.S mag subscriptions, even Official PS2 and Xbox Magazines with the disc (and don't forget to use eBay for the non-disc U.S. subscriptions for even cheaper prices!) but you pays your money, you takes your choice, eh?

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Keyboard Bashing' is a new GameSetWatch column by Tales of a Scorched Earth's Andrew Smale which discusses the history, present and future of PC gaming.]

Crack dot Com's one and only published game was Abuse (1995), which was released to hype that called it "the Doom of platform games". Combining the precision aiming available to first-person shooters that use the mouse and the jumping and climbing puzzles familiar to platform games, its darkened atmosphere and dedication to fast-paced action garnered a page in PC gaming history. But was it for the right reasons?

Crack dot Com was founded by programmers Dave Taylor (formerly of id Software) and Jonathan Clark. The demo, while essentially a beta of the unfinished game, provided network play and an easy to use level editor in the package. The mouse and keyboard control scheme was enough to get people talking - what seemed like an odd combination for a platformer ensured the game would at least be talked about. The company found a publisher in Origin Systems shortly before they were absorbed by Electronic Arts, and the game was made available to the masses in 1995.

Linux had not reached the levels of acceptance it's at now, and the game was released for DOS and Linux concurrently making it the first published game to take this approach. The game's source code would be handed off for free two years later under the GPL. Crack dot Com disbanded in 1998 after going bankrupt, making all of the assets for what would have been their next game available to whoever wanted to download them. With no hope for an official sequel, Abuse would be relegated to PC gaming cult status.

The premise of Abuse is that you are a wrongfully incarcerated man looking to escape a prison facility that has been conducting biological experiments on its residents. It's up to you to fight your way out, battling an assortment of alien creatures, robots and automated weapons. The influence of the Predator and Aliens films on the player character and enemy design is completely obvious. The game's environment was similarly inspired by these science-fiction landmarks. Though it's not like we hadn't seen run and gun platforming before: Turrican (1990) and Duke Nukem (1991) had already shown us the side scrolling key, switch and door hunt while blasting away at waves of monsters. Had the features of Abuse stopped there it would have been dismissed as an also-ran, at a time when the reigning genres of PC gaming were still being defined.

It was the controls that secured the place of Abuse in PC gaming history. It marked an evolution of the control scheme for the side scrolling platformer. No longer were you limited to shooting up, down or at an awkward angle while running - the "freelook" available through using the mouse allowed complete control over the player's aim. What's more, you could actually run one way and shoot in the other - perfect for those overwhelming firefights in Abuse's many darkened corridors. Also similar to the FPS standard was the focus on weapon acquisition: Abuse had a large arsenal of weapons available, modeled after their first-person counterparts - including a lightsaber-like laser sword. So what happened to this sub-genre? Was it simply an isolated case of experimentation before the rise of the graphically intensive first-person shooter?

Examining the mechanics of the first person shooter since its ascent to PC gaming's most prevalent genre, it has shown no real maturation beyond the formulaic hallway navigating run and gun switch hunt. Instead, the genre has developed in terms of presentation: better graphics, better sound, more epic setpieces and cutscenes. The basic principles have stayed the same: kill anything that moves.

This increasing reliance on graphical fidelity made "gimmicky" side-scrolling shooters almost unnecessary, or something that would be better suited for console gaming. With Abuse, its potential for genre trailblazing on the PC was basically a matter of timing. The highly modifiable Doom was still on everyone's mind, and the fully 3D engine of Quake was just around the corner.

The view offered by Abuse made jumping puzzles easy, providing a logical challenge to progressing through a level. Its assortment of powerups (such as the Jetpack) added some flair to getting past these obstacles. Ironically, jumping puzzles remain a staple of most FPS games, despite their impracticality.

Most importantly, Abuse lacked an identity. Focusing on the control scheme only avoided the fact that it wasn't much more than what was offered by the standard shooter. This prevented long-term association with the title from the PC gaming community. What would you even call the game? A precision-shooter-platformer? Abuse was beyond categorization, and as such probably contributed to its lack of success in inspiring any followers aside from the hardcore fans that aimed to create a full-fledged sequel.

Abuse showed what a first-person shooter would be like as a side-scrolling platformer, but despite its critical acclaim failed to produce any notable descendents. Abuse would end up as one of those games we all played, and remember well, but ends up more of a title you mention when working towards something else. Abuse would be absorbed by the pages of PC gaming history, a victim of the constantly changing tastes of gamers and the company that produced both a cult classic and one-hit wonder.

Editor's Note: Since the release of the game's source code, there have been numerous projects started to revisit it either through creating a sequel or simply porting it to modern-day PCs. The original DOS game can be found on many abandonware sites (such as The Underdogs), while Win32 versions are available via the fRABs (Free Abuse) project, or Jeremy Scott's port. I have had more luck getting the DOS version to work, because the aspect ratio of the Win32 version doesn't work very well with modern hi-resolution monitors.

Posted by andrews at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The only website whose logo has a joystick with some spectacles on it, TIGSource, has updated with info on a new Lexaloffle-designed game named 'Swarm Racer', from the same folks who created the v.endearing 'Zen Puzzle Garden'.

As the official description explains: "What do you get if you cross a hive of pixelated bees with a remote controlled car and put them in a plasmatronic dream? Who knows. While you're thinking about it, why not play Swarm Racer? It's a new type of racing game." There's even both a Mac and PC download of the shareware title, of which Derek Yu notes: "It’s a simple idea that is executed just perfectly. My only qualm is that there aren’t enough levels, although trying to get on the online leaderboards extends the life of this game some."

Also, how's this for TIGSource's fevered overture to the developer's entire output? "The[ir] games are just so earnest and polished. Playing one is like putting on your favorite sweater and having some tea and a scone on a blustery fall afternoon. It’s like what I imagine New Zealand to be like. Or maybe getting nuzzled by a unicorn." Honestly, just get a room, you guys! Then again, Swarm Racer rocks, so I may have to join you.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Game Informer has a new interview with Valve's Doug Lombardi online, and in it, he reveals that the Old Man Murray writing team are back together at Valve and working on the previously GSW-mentioned Portal - explaining why the Portal trailer was actually pretty damn funny.

Portal itself, as we pointed out, "is a great 'rags to riches' story (OK, maybe mild wealth!), since, as we mentioned in our Gamasutra report: the "spatial portal dropping concept, using a gun for placement... is based on IGF Student Showcase winning title Narbacular Drop."

Valve's Lombardi discusses the process of hiring the Narbacular Drop developers, and also reveals: "The writing for that is being done by Chet [Faliszek] and Erik [Wolpaw] who used to be Old Man Murray. They’re at Valve now and one of their first projects they’ve been tasked with is to do the writing for Portal. So if you were a fan of Old Man Murray you’re going to be a fan of that voice in Portal because it’s the same wry cynicism."

Chet has been at Valve for a while in some technical role, we thought (?), and Erik previously worked on Psychonauts for Double Fine before hopping on board the Valve train, and we'd like to point out a couple of things - firstly, that Valve hires some great writers _as_ pure writers (Marc Laidlaw being the other great example), and secondly, that OMM was more influential than they might have ever imagined on the game biz, given their elevated state of sarcasm at any given point.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For me, at least, the singlemindedness in the face of obscurity of the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer blog makes it the best single-format game blog around - and now they've unearthed an interesting rarity, Riverhillsoft's Japan-only survival horror title 'Doctor Hauzer'.

Poking around elsewhere online, there's an ancient text-only review which explains it well: "Anyone playing Doctor Hauzer on the 3DO is likely to experience a distinct sense of deja vu. One of the first batch of japanese - developed 3DO games to be released in Japan, Dr Hauzer bear an uncanny resemblance to Alone In The Dark from Gallic developers Infogrammes - in fact, the similarities between the two games are so pronounced that Dr Hauzer could almost pass of as part of the Alone In The Dark series itself." (It's worth noting that there's no actual combat, though!)

We also found another handy review on a 3DO website, about the only other documentation on this 1994-era title - and 3DOkid sums things up nicely: "To call it “scary” would be a push, perhaps mildly creepy is better phrase but it does belong in the survival horror genre – just about. At the end-of-the-day Dr Hauzer is clearly another rung on the ladder that was ascending to Resident Evil and perhaps worth investigating for that alone."

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]

   

It took two man-days of work and I think I threw out my back, but a long-overdue task is finally completed -- I have inventoried my magazine collection, more or less.

Why haven't I done this now? Well, because it's a hell of a lot of boring work. I mean, I knew generally what I have and don't have in my head, but actually going through every mag in the collection to amass physical proof is a pretty dull job -- one highlit with the occasional exciting discovery (I am only five issues away from completing my collection of 99'er, an extremely obscure and haphazardly-published computer magazine), but still pretty dull overall.

Still, I have completed it, and now I can pin a few numbers on my hobby. All told, I own 1989 video-game magazines and 2049 computer/PC game mags, for a grand total of 4038 issues. This doesn't count a lot of things, though -- I didn't bother tabulating the British and foreign-language mags, and individual issues with multiple "collector's edition" covers count as one. I also haven't counted up my list of duplicates, which is growing worrisomely large; I'll list that up tomorrow so I can hopefully get some more trading action going on.

Regardless, 4038 is a very large number, about 1000 more than I was expecting. Even so, I'm still lacking in many areas -- I need a lot more issues of PC Gamer and Game Informer, for example. In due time, however.

If you're interested in looking at exactly what I have, here are Excel files of my video-game mags and my computer mags. If you see a title in the lists that you'd like me to talk about in this column, by all means comment or email me.

Anyway, enough horn blowing -- it's time to check out all the game mags released in the US for the past fortnight. Click on below to see the whole spread.

One thing of note if you're reading all the mags that I do: Atlus has a half dozen or so advertisements for Ring of Rose running this month, each in a different magazine. That's the first I've heard of someone doing that, and while it'd take someone like...well, me to appreciate it, appreciate it I definitely do. The one on the back cover of Play (and in Game Informer) is my personal favorite, though Hardcore Gamer's is rad too.

Game Informer September 2006

Cover: Bully

This magazine wins the Top Cover Design Sweepstakes for this month, hands down. It's especially surprising because covers based on Rockstar titles are usually boring as all 'ell. However, the true identity of the game kind of got leaked out with Rockstar's online trailer before the mag was released, which puts the "World Exclusive" status of it into some question. But the details inside! While the article is in the usual looooooooong Game Informer style, it succeeds in pushing Bully as a really innovative game and makes me hugely excited for it, even though careful analysis of the meticulously-crafted screenshots reveal that the engine still suffers from a bit of that GTA floppy-arm syndrome.

The other feature: Is for Battlefield: Bad Company, the new DICE/EA console game. This features a big pic of a bald Marine on the front page and I'm therefore not quite so interested in it.

Inneresting: GI's 8.5 review for Xenosaga III, which is quite a bit happier with the game than many other players (and myself) were. They're also a bunch of Yakuza hatars, giving it a 6.

Connect: Magazine-dom's best news section is also exciting as ever, especially thanks to the two-page feature on game localization -- a topic near and dear to my heart. Several folks are interviewed from Nintendo, Square Enix and Atlus, all three of whom absolutely know their stuff in this area.

Odd: A full-page advertisement for Bowflex. I heard that GI raised their ad rates lately to more closely reflect their circulation; until now, they had been charging around the same rates as other mags despite having triple the circulation. Maybe they're making more of an effort now to nab non-endemic advertising as a result.

Official PlayStation Magazine September 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Original illustration from Stuntkid (in newsstand editions, this is completely covered by the polybag with illustrations of LocoRoco, Yakuza, etc.)

OPM's continued timely coverage of PS3 controllers continues unabated in this month's Hype section, which kicks off with an interview with Immersion prez Vic "We're not charging a premium for this" Viegas. The cover feature is your typical Ziff-ish preview-a-rama article, and (IMO) not all that noteworthy.

The top interview subject this month is Amy Hennig -- 17-year game veteran, producer of the Legacy of Kain games, and now working on Untitled Naughty Dog Game. I haven't seen this month's CGW yet, but barring a dark-horse miracle from them, this is the best interview of the month. This is a lady who has a ton of neat stories (her first title as designer was Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City) and a ton of intelligent crap to say about game design.

The disc: Is Lego Star Wars II and nothing else of major note.

The review system: Has changed subtly for the second time in half a year. Six months ago the mag went from the "discs/dots/stars/whatevers" system to a straight score out of 5.0; now, in an apparent move to synchronize with 1UP and EGM, they're going for the plain ol' score-out-of-10 system. The first game reviewed under this system is an "exclusive" dossier (even though I got EGM's review in the mail first) on Okami. It got 9/10, as well as a 1-page interview with Atsushi Inaba. I want that Amaterasu plush on his desk.

In the back: Is a smart feature on a topic that's immediately appealing for me as a lover in obscurity: A look at the estimated 30,000 people who still play EverQuest Online Adventures. Lord, this game was still running? I literally had no idea. I had to review the expansion to that years ago, and it was the most painful experience of my life.

PC Gamer October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Some army dude

There isn't a great deal to say about PCG this month. That's partly because there isn't much going on with PC games right this very moment, but it's also due to a fair bit of laziness behind the production of this issue. It seems like the majority of the previews (including over half of the pieces in the "RTS Revolution" feature advertised on the cover) are 100% based around plain-jane, online-site-style interviews with random developers -- which is good enough when readers can discuss it in realtime on an online site's forums, but not when there's no one else there to point out why this chat is interesting.

It's also a slow month for reviews, with the top scorers all being RTSes and wagonloads of games getting under 50%.

And another thing: The typo and misplaced-caption count shot into overdrive this issue.

One highlight, though: The interview with Anshe Chung, who banks over $150,000 a year by selling imaginary real estate on Second Life, is pretty interesting. She seems like such a cold, business-like lady.

Oh, and another thing too: The binding on this issue is already falling apart on me. This happened with last month's Official Xbox Magazine, too. Who prints Future's mags?

GamePro September 2006

Cover: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2

I covered the Level-2 version of this issue last time (the inside content is largely the same), but I just wanted to post up the "real" cover since you really can't go wrong with Tecmo-ladies on the front like this...

...unless, of course, you cover up part of their bodies with a box-out for the comic book packed inside. Boo. This comic commemorates Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (the upcoming MMO), and it's a full-sized one-off, with two stories of blood and/or lust for you to lust after.

Hardcore Gamer September 2006

Cover: Disgaea 2

It's the usual full-page GameFan-style preview-review hijinx for HCG this month. It's nice to see Mr. Wolfinger back to drawing the cover. I still think that we could do with magazine covers having a more uniform art style from month to month...but maybe that's just the old fuddy-duddy in me speaking out.

There's a good eight pages of Disgaea 2 review and strategy here, which is great. (Nine, actually, if you count the scrapbook-style page of scary cosplay in the back. Urgh.)

Standout features: Include a piece on game music (written by Daniel Kayser of Gametrailers and a spread filled with suggestions for your next game party, including such winners as Soul Calibur III with fishing controllers and a new take on Halo Warthog destruction derbies.

Official PlayStation Magazine September 2006 (Podcast)

Play September 2006

   

Cover: Just Cause and Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising

Play decided to have two unrelated covers this month, a decision that reminds me of the glory days of GMR and Xbox Nation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time a PC game has received a Play cover, and both titles get long, extensive reviews. My favorite feature, though, is once again on Rayman: Raving Rabbids -- I can't get enough of the look of this game.

Kicking off this month: Is a "Best-of series" (their capitalization). This is a two-page spread where Page 1 is some original art and Page 2 is a checklist of top games in a certain genre, designed up to look something you're supposed to clip out and keep somewhere for safekeeping. Dave Halverson covers platformers this month, with separate lists for 3D, 2D and 8-bit titles. Kind of smart-looking, and while it sounds pedestrian in text, in practice it's fun to read and I look forward to future installments. (#1 for the 8-bits is Ghosts 'n Goblins, which makes me worry about Halverson a great deal.)

Top review: Is the Bit Generations lineup, the first time I've seen a mag so much as mention 'em in print. Play devotes a spread to them which is, of course, superbly designed.

Tips & Tricks 2006 Video-Game Codebook Special Zombie Edition

Cover: Dead Rising

Tips & Tricks puts out two Codebooks a year; one in May and one in October. The October Codebook hit my mailbox a couple days ago, which is pretty darn early for an October cover (assuming you aren’t a Future mag with their wacky 13-issues-per-year publishing schedule).

These codebooks are essentially long lists of codes printed on poor paper stock; the cover feature is a four-page (small by T&T standards) piece on Dead Rising. Another four pages of cheat codes from “zombie games” followed, and then it’s off to the codes for about 80 straight pages.

But to finish off: T&T has thrown in seven pages of “pencil puzzles”, Picross-type jobbies where you fill in dots on a grid to build pictures of video game characters. These timekillers were a mainstay of T&T’s nether regions for several years, but were dropped from the mag in 2004 -- to the extreme anguish and dismay of readers, it seems. “It’s hard to believe that it’s been exactly two years since they disappeared from the pages of our monthly magazine,” says the editorial, “and that during those two years, many of you never stopped writing letters and asking for them to be reinstated. Thanks for keeping the faith!” Some people really, really love their pencil puzzles, it seems.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. He owns enough magazines to smother himself with should the need arise, and his secret fantasy is for someone flush with game-publisher stock options to give him a monthly stipend so he can spend a year researching their full history and finishing the site. In his "off" time he is an editor at Newtype USA magazine.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at 1UP, J.Parish has posted an extremely readable preview of Squenix's Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, which includes an interview with the game's director Yoshiki Watabe.

Of the action-adventure almost Zelda-like DS game's insane name, Watabe explains: "One of the biggest things we were worried about was the image of a slime. In Japan, [the smiling Dragon Quest monster] is what people think of when they hear 'slime,' but in the West if you'd never played Dragon Quest you'd think slime was just a blob."

He continues: "We wanted to give the idea that he's more solid than just a pool of bubbles and that he can actually snap around like a slingshot. That's why we gave him the name Rocket. The juxtaposition of 'rocket' and 'slime' makes you think, 'Well, why did they call it that?' and when you see the game you realize right away that he shoots around like a rocket."" Don't get it, but I love the justification.

And really, when the plot for the game is like this, who cares? "Rocket's mission is to rescue 100 of his slime friends from the Plob, a mafia-like mob of platypuses whose rank is determined by the number of tails they wear. The lowest ranks wear a single tail, while the Plobfather himself wears seven." I'm actually sold - there's relatively few good DS games in this genre (the multi-tail platypus boss one, of course!), for some weird reason.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We seem to be linking to Matt Barton's Armchair Arcade posts quite a lot recently - but hey, they're fun, and the latest is a massive overview of Her Interactive's Nancy Drew series, shining a light on some games that aren't really talked about by most video game sites, uhh, ever.

Barton notes: "First, a few admissions. I'm addicted to Her Interactive's Nancy Drew adventure game series, even though it's ostensibly intended for girls aged 10-15. I've played through every one of them up to the 13th game, Danger by Design, and intend to grab that one soon. The reasons why I like the game are simple: They're extremely well-designed, full of colorful characters and wit, and highly playable. They basically take everything that's fun about graphical adventure games and strip out the junk that makes most of them so frustrating."

Then there's a little 'girl gamers don't like pink!' ranting (though to be fair, one of GSW's female co-workers was salivating over the pink DS Lite yesterday), and a handy conclusion: "As far as acquiring these delightful games, I'd recommend starting with Dreamcatcher's 75th Anniversary Collection, which includes the first five games as well as a Nancy Drew novel." Though it's not quite the same game style, it's notable how the Mystery Case Files series is insanely popular as PC casual games, too - the whodunnit is back, baby.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yes, yes, we've been following The New Gamer's 'Drunksaling' garage sale pictorials for a while now, but in the latest, they actually found some Xbox and PlayStation 2 games, a rarity in a world (in a woorrrrld!) where crappy FMV PC titles are much more the norm.

G. Turner drools: "Delicious modern games. There was a portly fellow eyeing them right in front of me, but just as he opened his mouth to ask the proprietor how much they were, I jumped right in and beat him to the punch! They were certainly worth the two bucks he was asking." I bet that portly fellow reads GameSetWatch. Or maybe just Fark.

Other highlights include some ancient handhelds, disturbing old books, overpriced strategy guides, and pretty much anything else you would expect to find when poking around weird-smelling old places. Worth noting: "Time for our local Village thrift store! Yes, these are the folks who scream & shout whenever I photograph anything in their store, which is why this copy of Space Quest 4 was photo'ed in the car." We love the Roger Wilco paparazzi!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The ever-reliable Fort90 points out the first 10 minutes of Senko No Ronde X for Xbox 360 in video form, posted over at gigantic video site Xboxyde.

Writer BlimBlim explains: "Senko no Ronde Rev X. is the second japanese Xbox 360 game I get to play this week-end... This game is a strange but interesting mix of a fighting game and a "Bullet Hell" Shoot'em Up, and at first it's really confusing. But after a few minutes everything starts to make sense and it get really enjoyable."

He continues: "The game system is quite simple: A for boosts, X for simple attacks, Y for special attack (guided projectiles, or temporary power ups for the simple attack), B for the secondary attack (bullet hell, mines...), right trigger for the shield and the lest trigger for the mega attack. It doesn't take more than a minute to get used to the controls, as expected from an arcade game. This is a really enjoyable but of course quite limited in scope title, old school gamers should love it." But the question is - who's bringing it to the States? Atlus? D3? Ubisoft? Mastiff? Aaaaanyone?

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark Wallace's 3PointD.com has a post revealing that there's an official Second Life guidebook being released in hardcopy form this December.

The blog notes: Due out in mid-December, the Sybex-published volume “explores in detail every aspect of Second Life’s rich and multilayered virtual world, explains how it works, and offers a wealth of information and practical advice for all Second Life residents.” The book was written by Michael Rymaszewski, who in the past has penned official guides to such popular video games as Age of Empires III, Zoo Tycoon 2, Rise of Nations and others."

Further commentary: "On first blush it seems an odd choice, since game guides usually focus on getting from start to finish as easily as possible and uncovering hidden corners of the game in question. But Catherine Smith at Linden Lab tells me that it was the publisher who approached the company about doing an official guide. In addition, “LL has had lots of input into the content, the look and feel and the writing of the book,” she says." I'm presuming the adult areas will be studiously avoided, mind you.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

OK, a little cross-promotion here, since the first feature I've written for Gamasutra since returning from China is up. It's called 'IGE: Inside The MMO Trading Machine', and it talks to the COO of the world's largest MMO item/gold trading company. I actually chatted to him while I was in Shanghai, but it's taken a while to get the piece (which is a rare on-the-record statement from the often shadowy company) properly written up.

I've previously written on GSW about the wackiness that is power leveling (go give your WoW character to a 'babysitter' who levels it up for you!), and IGE clearly have their eye on this market: "[IGE COO James] Clarke also noted that, in pure economic terms, paying people to level your character is "a market which tends toward commoditization." Of course, those handing over their character have "a high degree of sensitivity" to what's happening to their virtual avatar - the COO quipped: "It's almost like day care... you'd be amazed how much they check in.""

The controversy over who own in-game items also continues to rage - Blizzard claims: "The World of Warcraft Terms of Use clearly states that all of the content in World of Warcraft is the property of Blizzard, and Blizzard does not allow "in game" items to be sold for real money." However, IGE claims: "We very much stand behind the concept of in-game property being owned by the players" - meaning, of course, it can be sold and traded to others.

Of course, in-game gold farmers are arguably ruining the fun for many by camping, and they sell things on to IGE, no matter whether they're 'officially' allowed to pass on items or not. But people pay for these items, and to level up easily, and so the cycle continues, at least until there are definitive legal challenges to item selling in or outside the U.S. But these are challenges that, even if there are possible, will be confusing enough that they might go against the MMO firms? Fun all round!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a fun bit of Gamasutra-related hilarity - a little earlier this week, our UK news editor David Jenkins posted a [since edited] news story about a new Japanese game award show, and compared it to the Academy Awards in the news title - or rather, cited a GameSpot article which translated a Japanese media report which quotes someone as comparing it to the Academy Awards.

Anyhow, we got a very polite email this afternoon from a legal-type person: "I am writing on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As you will no doubt be aware, the Academy annually presents an Award of Merit statuette, commonly known as the OSCAR, to people who make outstanding contributions to the motion picture industry... As a result of the long and continuous use of the Academy Marks in conjunction with the granting of awards, the Academy has gained valuable goodwill and strong recognition in these trademark in the U.S. and worldwide."

So what was wrong? "A Gamasutra article... has recently come to our attention. The headline reads [well, it did before we edited it!] "Japan Plans 'Game Academy Awards'." It refers to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to create an award for the country’s video games industry. Regardless of whether or not this ACADEMY AWARDS reference was derived from an outside news source, it is nonetheless concerning to the Academy. We consider the use of the ACADEMY AWARDS name in Gamasutra's headline as damaging to our rights by tending to dilute the ACADEMY AWARDS mark's unique identification with the Academy or incorrectly implying these awards are in some way connected with or endorsed by the Academy."

So yes, they asked us to change the headline. It's an old story, the change doesn't break the meaning in any way, and we didn't really feel like arguing with Uncle Oscar, so we did. Here's our reply: "Well, I find this one a bit of a puzzler, because as you rightly note, the original comparison was made not by us, but by the Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shinbun, whom we are merely citing. Nonetheless, we're tickled that you noticed, somewhat understand your point, and we're happy to amend the article, which we have already done." Has this post made you see the Oscars differently? If so, the Academy's lawyers have done their job!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson's somewhat-vaunted Manifesto Games indie game portal is now open for a 'Beta' version, and it's, well, not unreasonable-looking!

There's the amusingly-named Dispatch From The Central Committee weblog, which is "something equivalent to "Outgoing Mail"; it's where Manifesto's management and employees will post about our plans, our thoughts, and what's going on with the company", and a whole bunch of games to check out, the featured choice right now being IGF finalist Mudcraft.

One notable thing is the good-quality descriptions: "Dune II, WarCraft, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, and Empire Earth--real-time strategy games have always been about warfare and conquest, right? How could you possibly do a peaceful RTS?... Mudcraft is no high-end high-poly high-budget high-def extravaganza; it's a simple, pleasant, goofy, fun little art game that engages you and brings you back for one level more. And yes, you come to care a good deal more about the mud people than you do about, say, the minutely-detailed soldiers of a big-budget RTS title." This type of rhetoric makes me want to care, amusing communist allegories aside.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The good people at Atari Age handily pointed the way to the August 2006 issue of the Retrogaming Times, which features a whole bunch of quirky articles in a pseudo-newletter stylee, yaaay.

This particularly includes a neat article on attempts to redeem Pac-Man on the 2600, with the intro: "Many people have claimed that the official Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, programmed by Tod Frye, was responsible for the beginning of the end of Atari’s market dominance before the crash. This most anticipated home version was, to some, the most disappointing. I’m not here to debate the merit of those claims. What I am here to discuss is another effect that 2600 Pac-Man has been responsible for: inspiring some of the best hackers to provide the 2600 playing community with something that it has always lacked, a decent arcade conversion of one of the most beloved games in video game history."

The absolute best? "The programmers at Ebivision were determined to show the world that an extremely accurate port of Pac-Man could be done for the Atari 2600, and in only 4K of ROM. They started programming the game from scratch, and planned on releasing the result commercially. But since we live in a world of litigation, Ebivision was concerned that Namco or other copyright holders would attempt to sue them for their efforts, so they decided to convert the game in to something Pac-Man-ish and named it Pesco. Nukey Shay decided to take what they had released and convert it BACK in to Pac-Man."

Thus, we get Hack 'Em, and Pac-Man's ghosts (haw!) are finally laid to rest. Lots more fun articles in the Retrogaming Monthly too, all endearingly obsessive.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[The Gentleman Nerd is a weekly column written by Jason McMaster and is dedicated to the more discerning tastes of the refined dork. Due to Jason's extreme nature, most of his columns will be subtitled 'Why I Love...' or 'Why I Hate...' - in case you were wondering.]

I am, usually, not so fond of economy games. In fact, I’m what most people would call a fan of killing stuff. Unless something is blowing up or I get to remove a piece from the board, then I’m not really into it. That’s why I approached Puerto Rico with a fair bit of skepticism.

On the surface, Puerto Rico appears to be a boring, counter-based game. That notion carries on throughout opening up the box for the first time. Oh boy, a ton of cardboard squares and circular counters. I wasn’t particularly excited about playing this game at all. The only thing I knew about the game is that it’s the highest rated game on Board Game Geek, and my friend Brian wouldn’t shut up about it. So, I gave in to the pressure and we set up the board. I must admit that when you set up all the pieces, it looks completely baffling and dense. Then we started playing.

Have you ever had a moment in your life where, after struggling with something, it all makes perfect sense, and that realization happens in a second’s time? It’s happened several times for me throughout my life. The first experience I can remember like that is when I was a kid and my dad bought me the full version of Quick Basic for my birthday.

My dad began programming in the seventies and I wanted to follow suit. So, I would sit in my room on my 8086 and try to figure out how to program stuff in BASICA. I eventually lost interest in it, and had forgotten all about programming until I received that gift. I’m not sure if it was just that I was older, or that I had access to more helpful documentation, but it all just started making sense. I completely understood the logic. That’s what happened with Puerto Rico.

My initial shock wore off and the game started making perfect sense. Each of the gameplay mechanics manages to be clever but not too complex, and there’s only one way to interpret any of the rules. The game’s layout is no-frills and concise, but for Puerto Rico, that works. In other words, I’m very pleased to say that all of my initial reactions were dead wrong. Puerto Rico is one of the strongest board games I’ve every played.

Let’s take a quick look at how the game plays. On each turn, you choose a role card. These role cards decide who is what for the rest of the round. Once the round has ended, the role cards go back into the center and can be chosen again. These different roles allow for different actions, and whoever chooses that role gets a bonus to that action. The actions vary, but mostly have to do with the production of goods, purchasing of buildings and manning of farms. The game continues until all of the victory points have been given out, someone fills up their building spots or all of the workers are gone. Whoever ends the games with the most victory points wins. It’s a very easy game disguised as a complex one.

What the instructions don’t tell you, however, is that the real fun in Puerto Rico is screwing your friends over. There’s nothing better than taking the last farm that your friend needs and not even manning it. There’s this look that people get when they realize that you just took something from them just because you can. It’s like manna from heaven. Who ever thought that human suffering could be so fulfilling?

That’s why I love Puerto Rico.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for GameSpy, Firing Squad and several other publications. He’s currently working on a few small projects and updating his blog, Lamethrower, as often as he can.]

Posted by jasonm at 4:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Square's much-awaited Final Fantasy III remake for Nintendo DS was released in Japan this week, and NCSX has impressions of the game alongside some startling prices for the DS hardware FFIII bundle.

The site reveals: "Speculative vendors got gouge-happy again this week and shot for the stars by boosting the price of the FFIII DS bundle to ¥41,921 or US$362.22. Against our advisement, customers still confirmed their preorders and we are shipping those orders today. Everyone who confirmed as of 5:55PM EST yesterday will ship this afternoon." Yep, so almost $400, and a bunch of people still paid up - youch.

It's further noted: "We are aware of sizable supplies of the FFIII DS Lite Bundle being hoarded by traders. If sellers can't get their asking price within the next week or two, lofty valuations will get dumped as the speculative froth dies down. We've seen it many times before and we'll see it again in the future." Oh, and IGN has impressions of the game, too, for the interested - looks like it could be a big DS hit in the West, too.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at Insert Credit, Brendan Lee has posted an excellent feature on playing and adoring Japanese arcade game he Idol M@ster, which is coming to the Xbox 360 in Japan pretty soon too, it was recently announced.

Lee explains the cost of failure all too well: "You can see that she's not going to make it, a few games back. You're keeping up with all of the various statistical meter-o-trons and reading her fanmail, and things are going along reasonably well, and then it all goes to hell, rather sharply and suddenly, and she starts failing audition after audition, and you can see her slipping away, and they don't just fade the screen black on you and flash the Game Over, no, you've got to keep slotting the coins just to keep her from being in a state of limbo, to give you both some f*cking closure on the thing . . . Then it's too late. Then the Last Concert begins."

He notes of the endgame: "Deep pockets or no, it gets harder and harder and harder as the game goes on. There's a time limit to get to the next level, and the game keeps counting down the weeks on you, and sooner or later the Director of your talent company lets you know that he's tired of dumping money into your sorry ass, and then you start the worst game of The Idol M@ster that you will ever play."

Sega has networked the game, so you play to make The Idol M@ster leaderboard, too, alongside people who've "always got full ninja regalia or Taiko no Tatsujin outfits or other full item sets that you need to spend hundreds of thousands of yen to get." This article make me want to play the game. But judging by the despair, maybe I shouldn't go there?

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We don't much like linking to the lovely chaps at QT3, because they're nice private guys who don't like the entire Internet turning up at their door (though they let Sparky post, apparently!), but Gary Whitta gives us no choice, by linking to [NFSW for language!] pictures of Jeff Minter's XBLA title Space Giraffe, without revealing which of the Yak's 8 billion blogs/messageboards it came from.

As is explained: "Many of you will be familiar with Jeff Minter, author of such 8-bit classics as Gridrunner, Trip-a-Tron, Mama Llama, Hover Bovver, Iridis Alpha and Meta-Galactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time. And of course Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar. Most recently he co-authored the Xbox 360 music visualizer. Well, he's just posted some screenshots from his latest game, Space Giraffe, due to be released on Xbox Live Arcade later this year."

And why, pray, do the screens have swearwords all over them? Commenter 'Naked' explains: "Yak (Jeff Minter) uses the foul language to prevent sites like IGN posting shots like this (essentially WIP/Tech Test images he posts on his blog/forum) as "exclusive shots of Jeff Minter's new game" when they're not exactly representative of everything he's going for. It happened on Unity, leading to a bunch of silliness, so now he throws in some NSFW language as a (tongue in cheek) safeguard." Also, the dummy score is Pi - v.clever.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at the recently relaunched Playthrough blog, they've posted up a link to the awesome (but sadly not playable online) turntable-controlled Flash game 'Wicki Wicki', as co-created by Swedish design student Patrik Berg.

As Playthrough notes: "24 year old student of design, Patrik Berg created a brilliant prototype for a musical video game named Wicki! Wicki! where the player ’scratches’ along to various electronica and hip-hop tracks using a special turntable peripheral."

It continues: "To create the peripheral, Berg merely refinished an old Technics turntable, mounting an optical mouse as a pickup, which was then hacked to be controlled by a PC running a Flash game developed by Berg and his school team. So far only used in a school competition, this is definitely a fun little game for those budding DJs out there who are tired of scratching up their record collections."

Reminds a bit of Sega's Crackin' DJ, which actually used a turntable properly, unlike the still-fun Beatmania - though I guess this probably doesn't measure the length of the scratch, so it's more like Beatmania in that sense? Brain... cloudy!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SiliconEra has the most detailed gameplay info I've seen so far (not that I've been looking!) for D3's WTF for PSP, which we've previously covered in-depth under Japanese title Baito Hell 2000.

Among the mini-games: "In Private Number players take a stab and guessing a girl’s phone number out of the blue. When the game starts her profile tells what she likes and the four numbers used in her phone number. If you’re on the right the track she will give you signs like “Bingo” or act surprised. If you have the right number, but in the wrong place she’ll give a different sign. The faster you guess her number the more money you’ll earn. Also after you guess her number you can “call” the girl."

Also, uhh, 'Restaurant Bill Splitter': "One of the most useful tools in WTF, the restaurant bill splitter asks for the amount of money on the check and how many in the party to split the bill with. Then it divides the bill evenly or you can set it in “gentleman mode” so all the ladies pay less for the meal." Yes, this game is crazy - and reportedly not actually that great.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay, it's the latest GameTunnel indie game round-up for August, and it's revealed: "This month's article looks at ten indie titles including the perhaps Katamari inspired freeware game The Blob, Kudos, from the same mind as last year's amazing Democracy, as well as DevastationZone Troopers, a 3rd person shooter that lets you redefine your landscape with your weapons."

Top marks go to DevastationZone Troopers, of which Seth Robinson comments: "This game has you running around shooting robots in generic looking levels. It plays like a gorgeous 3D Crimsonland. You collect cash to upgrade your weaponry and by the end you're a virtual tank clearing a swath of glowing death through not only the enemies, but walls and dirt as well. Anything that might slow down the action has been removed - you aren't damaged by explosions, you never get lost, and a good offense is always the best defense. It's simple. It's primal. It's fun."

Also doing well is Kudos, which we've mentioned here before - Brian Clair likes it just about the most, noting that it's "a nice indie-take on the success of the Sims-dominant life-simulation genre that’s become so popular. While not graphics heavy like the Maxis franchise, Kudos proves to be just as addictive without so much meaningless fluff thrown in."

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh my, a whole batch of fresh randomness for this fragrant Wednesday night - many of which you may not even have SEEN before. Links are crazy like that! Here we go:

- Gunpey Synth Fun? - the ever-observant Jiji notes that, if you go to the official Gunpey-R for Nintendo DS site and choose the bottom link (never mind that it's in Japanese!), you'll see a demo for 'Pico Pico Machine', where you "can create music in your own style" - it seems to be an entire extra Electroplankton-esque synth music creator built in to Q Entertainment's new puzzle remake? We LIKE!

- Splat Splat Revolution: Indygamer is still digging up the gems - witness a new post on Extermination Disco Nation, which is " a sample project by Kyle Gabler, developer of Super Tummy Bubble and Tower of Goo. Not much of a game but it does demonstrate the use of a dance pad very well. Controls are mapped to the QWEASD keys while pressing 3 skips the instructions." Yep, basically - step on things with the dance mat!

- Digidrive Test Drive: Still somewhat fascinated by the GBA Bit Generations titles, and over at Silicon Era, Spencer Yip has tried out Digidrive in some detail, explaining: "Of the intentionally-simplistic bit Generations titles, DigiDrive has been said to be the most complex, that it just has to ‘click’: suddenly, players confused by the minimalist (and all-Japanese) fold-out manual and a demo totally undemonstrative of the game’s true capabilities, who have then found terrible fortune with FAQs (this could be me)… suddenly, they just ‘get it’. So, in its dissimilarity from just about everything, DigiDrive is not for the easily-frustrated or faint-of-heart." Sound neeto.

- Spin, Mutilate, Recycle: Over at Vintage Computing, they've posted the ominous-sound 'Eric’s Look at Recycled PC Game Ideas', and it's full of hiiilarious anecdotes. Like: "In my first year of college (1992), I started dating a lovely young woman — as compassionate and non-violent a person as you could ever hope to meet. She wasn’t much of a computer geek, but… well, nobody’s perfect. One weekend we made a trip to see my parents, and my dad showed her this new game that he was hooked on: Wolfenstein 3D." It goes on to talk about the evolution of game styles, not dads playing Wolf3D, but nothing's perfect!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[GameSetWatch is extremely proud to debut this latest scoop from veteran game journalist Joseph 'BUZZ' Berkley. Not content with pioneering the video game journalism scene as we know it, he's now getting next-gen, presenting an EXCLUSIVE SCOOP on the PlayStation 3's hitherto unpublicized extra features.]

It’s been over a year since Ken Kutaragi announced that PS3 games would be able to run at a stable 120 FPS. While some might assume it was an empty marketing claim that simply doubled the current industry standard of 60 FPS, Kutaragi stood strong. Never mind that even the newest HDTVs cap out at around 60hz - some day in the future these TVs would exist, and the PS3, despite being a few decades old at that point, would be ready.

However, the human eye can only process input with an upper limit of around 75hz. Now, if Mr. Kutagari’s claims were just meaningless hyperbole designed to create a new bullet point for arguments about which hardware has the biggest numbers, one could assume that he didn’t realize this. But since we know from personal experience that he’s a serious man, Buzz Investigates asks: what are the other 45 frames for? They’re going by too quickly to be perceived consciously, but our minds will process them and mull them over subconsciously.

After speaking to sources so secret that it’s possible they don’t even exist, we’ve found no reason not to post this unsubstantiated speculation. After all, none of my sources could tell me for sure the PS3 wasn’t designed with so-called 'brainwashing' in mind. And not being told “no” is a lot like being told... well, you know how cutting-edge journalism works, right?

What does this mean for consumers? At its most innocuous, the relatively harmless: subliminal advertising. In fact, this method of advertising would likely be legal! The developer would simply add a notice to the End User License Agreement, which you never read anyway. It could be as simple as a notice that the User understands that the game contains advertising, with no mention of the fact that it will be delivered through the will-dominating method of Really Quick Images Flashing on a Screen, or RQIFS. These RQIFS-es could even be updated with new, possibly fast-food related ad campaigns using the PS3’s online capabilities. Could this be the entire reason that no concrete details about the service have been announced? The Buzz thinks so!

There is currently an alternate theory spreading across the Internet that, rather than planning to force the gamers of the world to obey their every whim, Sony will be looking toward the PlayStation 4, in around 10 years, to release some kind of Optic Nerve Clamp, somewhat like the scientific documentary Inner Space, that would allow the system to send video signals directly to the extrastriate cortical areas of the brain.

Obviously, this is wishful thinking at its best. If Sony is going do anything with Optic Nerve Clamps for PlayStation 4, it’s going to involve totalitarian mind control via altered perception. In the mean time, consider your mind altered, Buzz-style.

NEXT TIME: Buzz Investigates asks the hard questions. Does Peter Moore not know what lucid dreaming is, or do all his lucid dreams feature people with distressingly unrealistic facial movements?

['Berkley's BUZZ' is a regular column from veteran game journo Joseph Berkley, whose illustrious career extends from the formation of Video Game BUZZ Monthly back in 1982 all the way to the founding of seminal teen game mag 'GameBUZZ - For Kids!' in 1992. More recently, he was a regular columnist for much-loved late '90s game mag Big Important Thing, and the author of self-help manual: 'BUZZ Says - Less Drugs, More Games!' His column appears regularly on GameSetWatch and is rarely true. If he did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.]

Posted by jberkley at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at his personal weblog, Cabel Sasser (who makes those darling Katamari Damacy T-shirts as part of his company Panic), has posted a fun call-to arms named 'The State of American Videogames' ("As illustrated by the last three covers of EGM").

He comments: "Are you like me? Do you yearn for American games to reach the diversity of other American mass media, like, for example, movies? Right now I can go to a movie theatre and see a quirky indie comedy about a dysfunctional family, or a ridiculous action epic about snakes (that happen to be on a plane), or a screwball comedy about NASCAR racers and baby Jesus, or a documentary about global warming, or a terrible animated film about farm animals, etc. etc... But if I step into Electronics Boutique, these days I can pretty much only buy "Two Guys With Guns"."

Ending up, Sasser muses: "The thing is, while it's really easy for me to sit here and implore all game developers to try new things (yay blogging!) — and, to be fair, many developers are, like Telltale Games, Keita Takahashi, the Xbox Live Arcade, etc. — I have to wonder: are there simply not enough gamers, non 15-year-old male gamers I guess, to financially support new and different gaming styles?" Well, aren't there? [Via Wonderland.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Realtime Games Software Ltd.’s Carrier Command was released in 1988 for the Amiga, Atari ST, PC, ZX Spectrum, Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC. The game is, more or less, a cross between an aircraft carrier simulator, and a real time strategy game, where the goal is to pilot the carrier around an archipelago of 64 islands in an attempt to colonise them before your adversaries carrier does. Apparently, there’s some sort of story about scientists making the two carriers, and one of them falling into the hands of terrorists, but it’s not really important.

The most amazing thing about Carrier Command at the time of its release was the ability to pilot different vehicles stored in the carrier: WALRUSes, the amphibious assault vehicles, and MANTAs, airborne attack planes. Plus, it was all rendered in glorious filled-in vector 3D and looked slick as anything.

Then there was the depth of gameplay – islands were through a supply network that needed to be taken in to account when colonising and attacking, enemy islands could be defended by autonomous drones, and the enemy was a hell of a lot faster than your ship. If you can get past the look of it, it stands up remarkably well, even now.

In January of 2003, Martin Bell decided to start work on a remake of the game, and started a workblog to document his progress, commenting in his first entry:

“Decide to finally get arse in gear and learn 3D graphics that I 'always wanted to learn'. Find that DirectX LPHURTSMYHEAD with SILLYUPPERCASEHORRIBLENESS, and decide to take the 'true and righteous' OpenGL path ;) Oh, and also decide on rather ambitious first project.”

Three and a half years later, he’s still going. GameSetWatch contacted him via email to find out how things are progressing, and to talk about how awesome the original was.

What inspired you to start work on the game?

Ever since reading the Amiga reviews and thinking 'what an amazing concept!' I've been kind of unhealthily obsessed with the game. At that time the Amiga & ST were out of my price range by a long way (£399 for an Amiga 500!), which probably only added to it's aura in my eyes. Around the early eighties, there were a series of magazines (I forget the name) that showed state-of-the-art renders of (probably really simple) geometry in 3D that just amazed me. A few years ago I decided to get my head down and finally learn how to create such 3D worlds. Carrier Command was the obvious engine for doing so. It also coincided with the birth of my son, so I was in an umm...productive frame of mind.

Did you ever play the sequel, Battle Command? I hear it was pretty bad.

I briefly played it on the Amiga - it looked quite nice (parachuting tanks!), but was a step back from CC in many ways - not really worthy of the title sequel. Off topic a bit I was influenced by Armourgeddon about the same time - really cool game but needed discipline to play it properly (a bit like CC really).

What is your experience with the original title?

I originally played the Spectrum 128 version first, which was an amazing achievement on such a diminutive machine. While pared down a little, some of the gameplay aspects were actually more refined than the original 16-bit versions, which was nice. When I finally bought an Amiga, CC followed soon after... the name Thermopylae will always remind me of a great battle I had, which confirmed my thoughts that the game was way ahead of its time.

It seems like you've had a few restarts on the project - did you realise the game was going to be so difficult to make when you started on it?

I knew there'd be difficulties - not being at all familiar with 3D mathematics was the main stumbling block. I've not actually re-started the project, just had to re-think some of the design decisions I never really made or thought about enough in the first place. Design is an iterative process though; the code is in a much better state as a result. My programming and software engineering skills have improved during the course of managing such a large project - it would have failed before now otherwise. The hardest thing to handle has been a few periods of self burn-out, where I was simply doing too much. I'd sit there willing myself to code something up but my mind was refusing to think straight - swamped with CC overload. While such fervour is probably required to see this project through to completion, it was ending up counter-productive. Just recently I've been amazingly productive by taking this into account and having more time out.

Early on, it seemed a lot of the problems on the project were related to your attempts at perfection in terms of collision detection and accurate damage representation - and especially physics modelling.

Yes my knowledge was severely lacking in those areas, hence the eventual decision to 'outsource' physics & collision to 3rd party engines. I suppose I do tend too much towards perfectionism sometimes, which can be a good and bad thing. Accurate damage representation is a personal bugbear. As I say on my site, this is a chance to put my code where my mouth is. It's safe to say that without the internet at this point, the project would have faltered badly. Thanks to a few key people and game development resources (mainly gamedev.net and the gdAlgorithms mailing list) I managed to finally get things done.

The whole project seems like it's been a huge learning experience for you - has this been one of the enjoyable aspects?

Oh yes - the learning was the main aim of the project really (that and try to get a job in the games industry, which it succeeded in doing). The old cliché surfaces - I wish I'd paid more attention at school – but nothing can beat ones own personal interest as a driving force for learning. There have been hard times, but I don't think I was ever going to give up - I'm too stubborn really. I've learnt to leave my code in a good state at the end of each day though!

Where are you working?

I'm currently working for Bizarre Creations - they of Project Gotham Racing fame. Xbox 360 stuff at the moment - quite similar to PC dev as it turns out.

Have you run into many problems that you didn't see coming? That is, are there things in the original game that you expected to be easy to include or emulate, but have turned out to be more difficult?

The original game used some clever mechanics to compensate for lack of processing power at the time. I don't have that luxury with today's gaming expectations. So really the main problems have arisen from bringing the thing more up to date. Proper islands (not squares!), physics, random world generation are the things that spring to mind. I can't comment on the AI yet though - that should be a challenge! I want to get the game mechanics as stable as I can before starting on the AI though.

On the other hand, have there been things that you've found easier to implement than you expected?

Umm no, can't think of any... I didn't really start with a preconception of how hard or easy it would be - I just began.

You had someone else helping with the modelling a while back; are they still on the project, or is it back to just you?

That's kind of ongoing, though he's busy with a lot of other projects. The code will take a lot longer than the models I suspect.

What's keeping you occupied with the game right now?

I've had some problems integrating the physics engine - I've just ditched the buoyancy functionality and implemented my own instead, which works much better for me.
Just checked out the state of fragment shaders again as I periodically do - they progress so fast I've been leaving graphical bits to the end. I'm also looking at writing some music too - it'll be strings and classical sounding judging by what I've come up with so far - trying for a Williams Fantasia theme without sounding too similar.

How is the AI coming along?

Funny you should ask - it's just beginning now with the Island defence AI taking shape. Not strictly AI I know, but it falls into that category nowadays. I have a large document with ideas for the main campaign AI - just have to organise them into something coherent for the next step.

A few years back you commented that you knew why the original game paused while travelling between islands, but you never actually explained why.

Ah yes, I believe that due to floating point limitations, the islands were separate 'localities' and all game entities were transferred to a new locality when travelling between the islands. I could be wrong though...

Finally, and I know you probably dread this question, but when can we expect to see the finished product?

I don't think it'll ever be finished! No really, I can see myself improving and adding things to it long after any kind of formal release. As to the question you really want answering, I'm not sure. The development has proceeded in bursts of inspiration followed by slower periods, also depending on my RL situation. If pressed, I'd say my milestones are:

(a) Alpha: Get the game playable by a single player + Island defence AI + graphics improvements (i.e. everything but the enemy Carrier).
(b) Beta: Get in the enemy carrier + campaign management AI.
(c) Possible: Networking?

I'd hope to make the alpha stage by the end of this year, but my predictions before now have been somewhat optimistic!

A networked game of Carrier Command would be pretty amazing.

Networking is firmly in the 'possibility' category, though given enough time...

Posted by alistairw at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

TIGSource points out that the formerly pay-to-play indie PC title Fleafall is now free, and can be downloaded for gratis from its official website.

Derek Yu notes of the title: "Fleafall is a pretty fun little action game where you play a flea competing against other fleas in a variety of orb-collecting challenges. It supports multiplayer via Internet or LAN." [The game was co-written by Berbank Green, who did an excellent article for Gamasutra on one-button games last year, actually.]

Berbank himself pops into the comments to sigh: "FleaFall was never really completed in that there was so much more we (myself and Francis) wanted to do with it, but time and money didn’t allow. What I released I thought was a pretty good game and planned to add to it once the money started coming in. It never did." Aw - well you should all give it some love now, at least?

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You know what? Uwe Boll makes for some damn good stories, and GoldenPalace.com's official press release revealing that it is sponsoring his showdown with critics of his video game-based movies, calling it 'GoldenPalace.com Presents Raging Boll', is really, dunno, icing on cake?

The PR handily explains: "Uwe Boll, the German filmmaker best known for several video game based films like 'Alone in the Dark', 'House of the Dead', 'BloodRayne' & 'In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale', is considered by many critics to be one of the world's worst filmmakers. His movies, however, have made him more money than his critics will earn in several lifetimes."

It continues: "After receiving a slew of horrid reviews for his latest film BloodRayne earlier this year, Boll was incensed and did what any successful filmmaker would do -- challenged his detractors to a boxing match to knock some sense into them and settle the score." Challengers include "Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka from Lee's Summit, Missouri, Webmaster /CEO for Something Awful... Jeff Sneider from Los Angeles, California, Journalist for Ain't It Cool News", and a number of folks we haven't heard of.

What, no video game critics stepped up? I'm sure you guys knocked Mr. Boll as bad as the film folks and Something Awful-ites. Oh well - we're guessing Uwe may be pretty mean with a boxing glove, otherwise he wouldn't have suggested it, so watch out, Lowtax!

[Oh yeah, and worth pointing out GoldenPalace's heritage: "GoldenPalace.com has devised some of the most exciting and outrageous advertising campaigns in the past few years. Items such as the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Britney Spears' Pregnancy Test, and William Shatner's Kidney Stone have garnered extensive worldwide media attention for the casino." Marvellous!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

OK, apologies for the delay, but the GameSetCompetition winners for our Dead Rising contest are finally upon us, and gorging happily on the flesh of the living, while stopping occasionally to boot up their X360 and stare at the lovely graphics.

So the first 3 winners, who will get both Capcom's Xbox 360-exclusive Dead Rising and a Dead Rising T-shirt, are:

Paul Palmer, John Guerrero, Tim Hunter (not the Books Of Magic one!)

The next 2 winners, who will just get the game, and will have to find their own clothing, are:

Alex Brock, Henry Kropf

As for the answer to the question, for anyone who didn't get it right or have a clue, it was as follows:

Q: "In the zombie-docious movie 'Shaun Of The Dead', which Prince album _is_ considered of sufficiently bad quality to be thrown at the heads of the rapidly approaching undead?"
A: The Batman soundtrack

There we go - more exciting GameSetCompetitions, hopefully again for something you will care about winning, coming soon! Watch the bat-phone!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[‘Letters from the Metaverse’ is a regular weekly column by Mathew Kumar about his adventures in the massively multiplayer online world of Second Life. This week’s column covers adventure games in Second Life.]

Oh Second Life. We’ve had some interesting times, you and me, over the past 8 weeks we’ve been together. Mostly, I must admit, I’ve been complaining about the games I’ve played with you. “Too glitchy!” I’d think, bemoaning a lack of polish, or “Not user friendly!” I’d sigh, wishing for a better interface with the world the game was trying to present to me. I’m beginning to think I’ve been a little too harsh on all of those bedroom coders and Second Life architects. You see, maybe it’s not them. It’s you.

Numbakulla is the adventure “sim” that is (kind of) supposed to be a Second Life version of Myst or Riven – a gentle mystery that you must unfold while exploring the island.

It’s set up quite wonderfully – when you teleport to the island you find yourself stood in front of a ship wreck, and can grab the notebook object required to play, and (if you choose) wear some game specific clothing. From that point on you begin exploring, anywhere or anyhow you wish, picking up objects such as keys, and using them in other areas.

The Pot Healer’s adventure relies quite heavily on “tooltips” (those small pieces of information you see when you hover your cursor over something) as otherwise you’d never have any idea what was of use, and it has a nice collection of notes and text fragments scattered around the island to help you unravel the plot, which is admittedly still somewhat obscure to me now.

The island is incredibly nice and well constructed (visually, at least). There are flaws, here and there (the odd spelling mistake, and so on) but by and large it does feel harsh to blame the problems I experienced on the creators, but the unfortunate fact is, however, that a litany of errors simply made me give up in frustration.

To list only a few, climbing any stairs or high slopes looks ridiculous as my character bobbles about, bashing into them until he miraculously manages to glitch himself over them. There’s a waterfall that there is no escape from. Second Life seems to allow the ability to ‘sit down’ on doors and warp through them; I did this by accident, actually, and found myself trapped inside a boulder. It’s just all so glitchy and ruinous, that compared to the cold, immaculate (and in my case, alienating) perfection of Riven or Myst, the illusion is completely destroyed by my regular battles with the interface and Numbakulla’s battles with the engine.

The plus side, of course, is that in this case, it’s free, and if you take a ride around the island on the flying ship you can see it all without having to deal with the glitchy movement of your character. If you can put up with it, however, Numbakulla does seem to feature an in-depth (if a little obscure) adventure that is probably better played in a group.

[Mathew Kumar is a freelance journalist who’s dabbled in MMORPGs, but is too cheap/strong willed to play past a free trial. He got his break with Insert Credit, and his work has been featured in publications as diverse as The Globe and Mail, Game Reactor (translated into Danish!), and Eurogamer. He's just started a workblog. Why don't you visit it if you want to find out more?]

Posted by mathewk at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Wow, OK, it's Tuesday afternoon and a bunch of these links are actually left over from THE WEEKEND, which shows how busy it's been getting in the GSW/Gamasutra offices this week - but there's light at the end of the tunnel, and it comes in the form of the following posts:

- Toribash, Factory Pinball Physics: Our favorite physics blog, Fun Motion, has posted a couple of excellent new entries - on wacky humanoid-as-pinball physics game Factory Pinball, and for turn-based physics fighting game Toribash, of which it's raved: "Although newer titles are incorporating motion blending and even including layers of physics simulation, the underlying motion is still keyframe based. Toribash does away with keyframes entirely, and the results are fantastic." And it does look super-smart, too.

- Segagaga, Translated?: So, this is interesting - the 1UP blog for James Howell, who has a recently founded company providing game translation services (looks like their completed work so far is mainly translating Hideo Kojima's blog and other related Kojima Productions material), indicated that he's working on a fan translation of Sega's awesome 'Sega simulation' for DC, Segagaga. He indicates: "My translation group and I have teamed up with a really good guy who goes by SixFortyFive on the InsertCredit.com boards, and we're working on an English patch for the Japanese game. The idea is that you'd make a backup copy of your Japanese copy of Segagaga, add our patch to the backup, burn the patched backup on a CD-ROM disc, and play the English language version on your Dreamcast." Definitely a game many would like to see playable in English [Via Fort90.]

- Idolmaster Mini-game Smut: OK, we're so behind with the Indygamer blog, it's ridiculous - Tim W. is really showing how much indie content there is out there (a LOT!). But here's a random piece of oddness, a dojin Idolmaster (unofficial!) Wario Ware-esque title, of which he reveals: "There's a trial version playable through your browser, but unfortunately carries a limitation of three minigames. One requires the player to arrange cards with pictures of girls in their swimwear, in the order of the largest cup to the smallest starting with the left position." Oh dear.

- GameSpot's Curves Explored: I really wish I hadn't written that subhead as some kind of terrible segue. Anyhow, Metafuture has done insane amounts of number-crunching on GameSpots review stats, revealing: "You might notice is how certain scores tend to not be represented in the expected curve. In particular notice how no matter which console platform you look at, it seems particularly difficult to score a 7.7 or a 7.8." And other fun stuff. Obviously there's a global 7.7 conspiracy going on here.

- Iwai Iwai Iwai: Eek, did I forget to link a Toshio Iwai interview? Cubed3 has an excellent in-depth chat with the Electroplankton creator, and we don't see why we shouldn't link it. Most interestingly, discussing the decision to have no save capability (curses!), one of the reasons cited: "The first reason is that I wanted players to enjoy Electroplankton extemporarily [externally?] and viscerally, and I thought if the save function was added, the software would become more like a tool." Aw.

- GameTappity Tap Tap: We got the August GameTap newsletter, and here's a few rather non-specific highlights, alongside news that Descent 2, Descent 3, and Descent Freespace are all appearing on the service. Next week is: "Strategy First Week: Prepare to wage some epic battles and build some burgeoning empires with next week's deep, strategic suite of games." Then: 8/31 - "Ninja Week: GameTap's been infiltrated by these stealthy martial artists and they're coming after you! Karate Chop!" Then: 9/14 - "Sports Week: Golf, Soccer, Bowling, Snowboarding, Fishing, Paintball, Tennis, and did we hear someone say something about Tony Hawk?" Finally: 9/21 "Adventure Week: Get set to embark on a journey for strange new worlds and solve some brain-bending puzzles with this week's complement of adventure titles." All a bit vague, GameTap, we want GAME NAMES!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Our Blazing Destiny is a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games. And about lovesick dramas between little super-deformed animal people and little super-deformed people-people.]

This week, Persona's words of wisdom are as follows: "I liked Animal Crossing better on the Gamecube than on the DS for some reason. I think there was something nice about leaving messages behind for a theoretical other player to see, presumably someone that lived in the same house and could access the game anytime. Of course, in my case, there was no other player so I was leaving clues behind for no one, except for occasional asshole friends who would come and chop all my trees down and bury mounds of trash everywhere.

I originally had in mind a more wispy color style for this comic but then soon realized that I didn't really know how to color like that. I think I should go up to the mountains and rededicate myself to learning how to draw wispy lines and delicate colors from women living in rock cabins who draw yaoi doujinshi while fighting bears and eating salmon!"

[Jonathan "Persona" Kim is sometimes a character animation student at the California Institute of the Arts, other times a ninja illustrator, but in his heart, a true comic artist looking for his destiny in the sea of stars. His path on the torrid road of comics include a quarterly manga on The Gamer's Quarter and his website on the awesome collective, Mecha Fetus. Excitement is burning!

Posted by persona at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Honestly, Armchair Arcade, did you think you could talk about what a great game Ian Bell and and David Braben's Elite is and not have us link to it? Clearly, this was never going to fly.

Matt Barton notes: "If you were lucky enough to play Elite back in the mid 80s, you'll probably remember just how big this game felt. You literally had whole galaxies on a floppy disk, just waiting for your Cobra to make that hyperjump to them. There were suns and planets and moons, and an almost infinite expanse of unexplored territory."

He continues: "Of course, to some extent, all this size is merely an illusion. It's becomes pretty obvious that the near infinite number of planets is achieved by algorithms. Planet names might be randomly generated, as are their types of governments, populations, and exports. It's a pattern familiar to folks who grew up playing games like ROGUE and HACK, "role-playing games" that traded linear storylines for replayability."

Right, but as he points out: "Elite was and remains a masterpiece because of its grand vision, bold ambitions, and utterly uncompromising emphasis on building the player's own competence." In other words, Elite. Is. Hardcore.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That terrible oik and New Game Journalism pater familias Kieron Gillen (yes, yes, his Phonogram comic is out now via Image) has posted an explanatory link to what he describes as 'the hefty 4000 word feature I wrote about SHODAN from System Shock 2' for PC Gamer UK. And it is!

Thus, we get things like this: "Shodan is, as far as videogames go, an original. Most games fiction is hopelessly derivative. System Shock, and Shodan especially, was /hopefully/ derivative. She’s taken from some obvious sources – 2001’s HAL primarily - but she’s something else, something more and something unique. She’s more than just a gender-switched HAL, and it’s a disservice to treat her as such. She’s, essentially, a pulp villainess."

There's also some nice comparisons of the first game and the sequel: "While the first System Shock opened the game with her in complete control and a petty little God in her own floating world, just a few days before the beginning of the story of System Shock 2, she didn’t even exist." The full feature looks really nice when laid out, FWIW, and is the kind of thing it's delightful to see magazines running, honestly. [Also, a shiny round penny for whoever gets the terrible Commodore Amiga-related game pun in the post title.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Now, we're not saying that Keita Takahashi is having a little weep into his morning cornflakes, but the franchise-ation of Katamari Damacy continues, with news via eToychest that there will be a special Katamari Damacy track in the upcoming Pac-Man Rally.

The 'Chesters note: "The track, titled 'King’s Kourse', will feature not only a cameo by the King of All Cosmos himself as he watches the race from the horizon, but also a pair of roaming katamari that patrol the track and try to squash racers as they pass! Plus, with previous confirmation that the Prince is to be a playable racer in the game, this latest news is proof positive that Namco does not need Keita Takahashi to suckle from his teat."

Oops, we missed the Katamari kart / Pac-Rally announcement, but that's probably for the best, after the distinctly disappointing Katamari PSP. I guess when you have a good thing going, it's always tempting to run and run with it?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's definitely something in Hudson Entertainment's water recently, as can be concluded by the recent Bob Marley deal, and now they're going further off the edge with the revelation of 'Bee TV Episode 1', a videocast starring Hudsonites.

There's a Google Video streaming version up for maximum fun, and it's explained: "So you wanna know what we've got cookin'? How about an office visit to Konami! In our debut episode we discuss everything from Rengoku 2 to Bomberman Act: Zero to eating burgers?! Guaranteed to bring lots of laughs, this is the Hudson crew at its finest!"

We particularly like the Bee TV logo sequence, which involves both Bomberman and Bonk messing with the Hudsonsoft logo in evil manners - but there's also fun inside the videocast, which seems to have the Hudson crew comparing fast food to help promote BurgerTime for cellphones. The next Game Life, only with actual people, not bizarrely molded puppets? Almost certainly.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vedrashko's 'Brands In Games' blog points to something we'd missed - an Ars Technica article noting the Dungeon Siege 2 expansion's promotional hilarity.

It's revealed: "In Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World, our forum goer Scero found an NPC that told him about the Dungeon Siege PSP game and offered him a code for it, as well as saying the PSP game had a code for items in the game he was playing." And a related screenshot is procured!

The Ars Technica guys get all shakey-fisty-y about this, ranting: "Way to help us suspend disbelief. Even worse, this "ad" was voiced by the character. Wanting to advertise in a game is fine, but I think this is kind of sick; characters in games should not try to talk to you about other games the developers want you to buy. I've just put Broken World in my "do not buy or play" folder."

So do you guys care about this? Is it fair game in a world where branding is increasingly important, or is it EVIL cross-promotional in a world GONE MAD? Inquiring minds want to know.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over at Kotaku, Wagner James Au has a fun write-up from last weekend's Second Life Community Convention, in which he imparts the amazing news that somebody in Second Life actually looks like their avatar.

He notes: "The first time I met Nethermind Bliss, she was a woman with fire engine red hair, WWI flying ace goggles, and Wolverine wrist claws. The next time I met her was last weekend at the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco, so this time, the meeting was in-person, and she was more or less the same, just flesh-based. (Though she still had the goggles and claws.)"

We also got Mark Wallace to cover Mitch Kapor's keynote over at Gamasutra, which was pretty interesting stuff - but what I find most fascinating right now is how Mathew Kumar's GSW column on Second Life is presenting a much more unvarnished view of the world from a newbie. Who is 'right'? Everyone!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, the ever-shmuppy Postman, whom you may know from Shoot The Core, has co-founded a new blog called A Day In The Life Of Video Games with a co-worker.

He explains of it: "Myself and my friend work in a small mom+pop type game store, and lots of crazy/funny stuff happens almost daily. I told him we should blog about it, he started the project so naturally I joined in." Yay - now, mind you, none of this is explicitly hilarious, but it does give a good insight into the kind of issues the average video game store runs into.

They're well illustrated in the 'Don't hustle a hustler' post, which shows a fun little scam in action: "There's a demo PS2 running in the store, and at the time we had Need For Speed Underground playing. A guy comes in with a NFSU box, and says the disc is missing (this is a variation of scam #1). He says it must be the one in the demo [console], and we forgot to give it to him. So I check the receipt first, and it lists a NFS game... [but] it's not the Underground one listed, it's Hot Pursuit or something. DING, my scammer sense is tingling. "Check the demo [console], man, just give me the disc from there, you guys must have forgot...."

The coup de grace? "Lemme tell you the feeling I had next was close to an orgazism when I got to tell the guy "THE PS2 DEMO SET HAS A HARD DRIVE AND THE GAMES RUN FROM THAT!" This guy just got PWNED! and just walked out of the store." PWNED, I tell joo!

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

GameSetWatch sister website Gamasutra (and the GSW folks in general!) have been somewhat enchanted by the South Korean cellphone game company Gamevil (pronounced Game-Ville, not Game-Evil, incidentally!), who you may probably best know from the addictive one-button mobile game Skipping Stone, but also make the totally awesome screen-rotating Nom, a subject of a postmortem in the next issue of Game Developer - with a Nom 2 postmortem to appear on Gamasutra.

Anyhow, because we've been talking to them quite a lot, now they're moving into the U.S. market (here's a short interview with them Brandon conducted at E3), we got added to what is essentially their internal company newsletter, but also sent out to mobile phone carriers/distributors, the media, and select consumers who buy their games in South Korea.

It's monthly (!), 64 pages long (!!), and gorgeously laid out (!!!), making it pretty crazy for what is kinda Gamevil's outward-facing company rag - the company's Kyu Lee explained to us: "We try to bind the customers to increase the brand loyalty through this media. It has been a good method to educate the customers, and make the word of mouth spread out."

Of course, the darn thing is all in Korean, but that doesn't stop us showing you a couple of the pages that we scanned in quickly (hope you don't mind, Gamevil folks!), just to show the kind of neatness they're up to - this is actually a really good idea for developer loyalty from multiple points of view, if it makes any financial sense, hah:

    

The cover - featuring Skipping Stone, I think - and the birthdays/Gamevillains (!) special awards for company employees!

    

Yes, a PC adventure game Gamevil employee review (cool!), plus wacky phonecam pics from Gamevil's messageboards!

To end up, thanks to the Gamevil U.S. guys for translating the full table of contents to an average issue, listed below:

10 : GAMEVIL Note : Birthdays, New Employees, Monthly Gamevilians (Award given to monthly best employees)
11 : GAMEVIL In the Media : News
12-13 : New Employee interview
14-15 : In depth interview with existing employee
16-17 : Interview with Famous people (in the industry or celebrity)
19 : Famous dining places
20-21 : Monthly Theme
22-23 : In depth on GAMEVIL games
24 : Column on the Mobile Game Industry
25 : Recommended Books
26 : Global Topics
27 : New Phones
28 : New Terms (WCDMA) for introduction to people who don’t know much about mobile games
29 : Cartoon
30-31 : Focused Articles on Events etc.
32 : Awards Won
33 : Mobile Game Review (non-GAMEVIL games)
34-35 : In depth on GAMEVIL games
36-37 : Game vs Game : Comparison on games (usually non-mobile games)
38 : Game Theatre : In depth review on GAMEVIL games from GAMEVIL Mania (GAMEVIL Fan Group)
39 : GAMEVIL Graphic Design
40 : Pictures within GAMEVIL
41 : Pictures from GAMEVIL Mania
42-43 : Interview with Customer (Mobile Gamer)
44 : Talk About (anything)
45 : Top Ranker Interview on a particular GAMEVIL game
46-47 : Visiting Schools by GAMEVIL Mania
48-49 : Interview with GAMEVIL Mania
50-51 : Interview on the Road (random popular places)
52 : Quiz (We give prizes to winners)
53 : Epilogue

Yep, so it's agreed - all game companies should do big monthly magazines like this to increase community. Foundation 9, Double Fine, BioWare, Obsidian we're looking at you! You clearly all have lots of time to do it!

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delighted to note that The New Gamer folks are back with their latest round of 'Chi-Style Drunksaling, trawling Chicago's garage sales for the best in gaming goodness - only this time, they're cheating, 'cos a garagesaling friend of their is leaving town, and bequeathing his best stuff to them.

They explain that the aforementioned Dave "... was trawling the local thrift stores for finds years before unitdaisy and I even me", and that: "We had agreed to help him move what he wasn't taking with him to his storage unit and, in turn, he was off-loading much of what he no longer wanted to us." Sounds like a good deal to us!

Choice parts of the swag includes "An early Sears-published Pong set", as well as the best prize of all, "a huge binder stuffed full of computer game manuals and documentation. While it mostly includes Atari 400 game documentation, there are a number of other interesting game manuals and literature" - as they note, including the docs for Chris Crawford's Scram, "based around a scram, or emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor."

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

S-s-Sunday is upon us, and therefore, it's only fitting that we should kick off today's GameSetLinks round-up with a little bit of religion in your gaming:

- Birthing Jesus: The Game!: Thanks to USA Religious News for passing on an important press release, revealing: "For those who still labor under the misconception that Christian video games are boring, expensive and uncool "Faith Explorer" has arrived just in the nick of time!" That's right: "Faith Explorer takes some of the most inspirational Bible stories from both the Old and New Testaments and creates a 3D environment that pulls kids actively into the story. Stories include Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, Noah and the Ark, Moses and Pharaoh, and the Birth of Jesus. Players solve puzzles and avoid adversaries (always non-lethal!) as they explore the location and events of a particular story." Hurray, please suggest control schemes for playing the Birth Of Jesus.

- France, Center Of The Lumines World: GSW and Game Developer co-editor Brandon is gallivanting around Europe on holiday, and posting about it at Insert Credit, including this piece of fun: "I went to the Centre George Pompidou museum, which had some decent exhibits, and a pink room occupied by flowing silk (billowing with air from accompanying wall-mounted fans), and a giant red high-heeled shoe. But that's not the point. The point is, I saw the series of paintings you see [pictured here], by françois morellet, born 1926. Check out the identifying card here. The card says that this is a series of six (I didn't capture them all) variations of repeating black and white squares based on the even multiplications of the number pi. But really it's just the only combinations you can make with those squares. And really, it's freaking Lumines. Awesome (and frankly, maybe where he got the idea?)."

- Ultima Online, Prettied Up: Good ol' Kotaku has spotted that "massively multiplayer online role playing game Ultima Online will see a considerable graphics overhaul and a reworked UI" in 2007, apparently under the name Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. The official blurb notes: "We are completely re-building the Ultima Online client with new graphics and a new easier-to-use interface... It is an in-place upgrade. That means you will be able to keep your characters, items, houses and everything else you've earned over the past nine years... We are committed to maintaining extremely low system specs. They will be higher than what UO launched with in 1997, but will still be far lower than almost any other MMORPG on the market."

- Blizzard Pwnt At Gen Con: Another fun post from Broken Toys, spotting that World Of Warcraft players mounted a semi-mock protest, holding up signs such as 'No Lag On Rag' and 'WTB (Lag-Free Server) PST' in front of the Blizzard booth at Gen Con. Apparently, the lag they're protesting is a genuine issue, even if their method of protesting was pretty sarcastic/amusing. As Scott notes: "I’m sure the community people present were vastly amused."

- Bay Area Arcade Sale Alert!: Since it's the Bay Area, and all, the prices will probably be a little horrible on some of this kit, but RetroBlast has spotted a massive arcade auction going down in Emeryville (right near that massive Ikea, for local types!) this Wednesday. As noted: "Escapade! Arcade located at 6001 Shellmound Street, Emeryville, California" is closing and "has had a policy of updating and renewing their inventory which has allowed them to consistently offer the latest and greatest arcade equipment year in and year out is now closing their doors. This will be your only chance to bid, at Live Auction, on these incredible video games and pinball machines." It all goes down this Wednesday, August 23rd.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at Scott 'Lum' Jennings' blog Broken Toys, he has a new post named 'Today’s Clueless Mass Media MMO Story Brought To You By The Washington Post', which does... exactly what it says on the tin.

Scott notes a particularly odd WaPo claim: "Several of the MMO researchers interviewed for this story pointed out that many game companies employ psychologists who analyze the games and suggest ways to make them easier to play over long stretches of time", commenting: "Um, OK. I don’t know of any psychologists employed by an MMO company for that purpose (or at all, actually). Maybe they’re kept in dungeons. When the topic comes up around me, I keep trying to explain that we’re not nearly that bright, and simply try to write up our D&D campaign from high school, over and over again. No one ever believes me."

There's some very interesting discussion in the comments by 'Pander', who wrote a university paper on Internet/MMO addiction, and extracts the key points from his paper, very worth reprinting: "For a myriad of reasons, including empowerment, anonymity, and escapism, there are some people who turn to the Internet to fulfill their lives instead of real world activities, such as spending time with friends or family, or working at school or a job. These people develop a compulsion to use the Internet, and find themselves suffering from the same symptoms and engaging in the same patterns as those who are addicted to other items, such as drugs or alcohol."

It does us no good to pretend that addiction isn't a problem with MMOs, or the Internet, or any pleasurable and potentially escapist task. But at the same time, most MMO companies aren't hiring psychologists to help them hook youngsters ever more clinically. And, to be fair, the WaPo article does have a number of counter-arguments: "According to tvturnoff.org, Americans spend an average of 28 hours a week watching television, a fact that has yet to spawn a bevy of dependence clinics." So it's not all demonizing here.

But as a final point on this - I was highly disappointed to note that the Online Gamers Anonymous site, whose spokesperson Elizabeth Woolley, quoted in the article, has certainly had a heartbreaking experience with MMOs, has an almost entirely Christian twelve-step program for kicking online games, including: "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." Let's go with sensible secular discussion, and not muscle God into this, shall we?

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['@ Play' is a bi-weekly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.]

This week, we are going to talk about something very basic, yet of vital importance to getting involved with these games -- hopefully including some of you. Whenever I've attempted to explain them, by far the most frequent barrier I've encountered in transferring my own enthusiasm to other people is not, as one may think, the graphics, the difficulty, or permanent death. Almost every time, the primary reason initiates find to categorize roguelikes as Other-People-Things is the control scheme.

(By the way, if you'd like to play along at home, I suggest beginning with one of the modern ports of Rogue. Rogue Clone IV and the Roguelike Restoration Project's conversion of Rogue 5.4 are among the foremost DOS/Windows versions. Debian Linux users can get it from the package bsdgames-nonfree. ClassicRogue is a port with a couple of extra features and both Windows and Linux binaries. You can also get Rogue for Java, the Sega Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance, and the Infocom zMachine!)

As noted last time, roguelike games haven't changed much in their presentation since the days of playing on dumb terminals in college computer labs. There were no mice or joysticks on those systems. Many of 'em didn't have a numeric keypad, and some had no cursor keys.

What they did have, I'm sorry to say, was vi.

[Click through to read the full '@ Play' column!]

Behold the wonders of vi

*

vi is an infamous Unix text editor, in which lots of different keys do many different things. I know I'm gonna catch it from some people for dissing it, and it's certainly great for some things, but I don't think anyone can claim it's easy to pick up. Back in the days when lab students were the primary players of computer games, it could be counted on that many players would know vi, so it was natural to use its cursor movement system as the basis for Rogue's interface. Its legacy persists in Nethack to this day, although it and all the other major roguelike games tend to default to using a number pad for movement.

Also like vi, there are special keypresses for everything, and it is not a trivial matter to learn them all. And again, just like with vi, it does turn out to be an excellent interface when you know the keys. Many people still use and even swear at by vi's descendants. If you want to read a scroll, you don't fumble around with icons and menus, you just press R then the letter of the scroll in your inventory.

This is probably the thing that prevents most people from learning these games today. While most computer games take pains to simplify their interfaces as much as possible, to an initiate it may seem like Rogue and its progeny go out of their way to make things hard for the player. In Nethack, some keys do as many as four different things: pressing P (p)ays your bill in a shop, holding Shift and pressing P lets you (p)ut on an accessory such as a ring or an amulet, holding Ctrl and hitting P displays (p)revious pages of the message buffer, and Alt-P (p)rays to the gods for aid. It is true that these keys are all listed out, twice, in the game's help files, but who wants to run to Help every time he wants to have a meal or open a chest?

News (or rather, Keys) You Can Use

Since most of these games are based, to some degree, on Rogue, the commands of that game tend to have precedence over any new ones introduced, so learning those will take a player quite far. Learn those keys, and the whole genre opens up to you. And the commands Rogue has tend to follow a logic that makes them easy to remember: press W to (w)ield something, press E to (e)at, and so on.

Here, then, as a tutorial intended to get you playing these games instead of just reading about them, are the important keys of Rogue. All you need to win that game are on this list, and a few others besides. Other games will almost certainly have more than this, but these are usually the most commonly-used commands in those games too, so you can generally learn the others as you go along.

Movement: HJKL and YUBN (or number pad)
H and L go left and right, while J and K are for up and down. Y, U, B and N are used to travel diagonally if possible. But take my advice and stick with the numpad.

(Matt Matthews of Curmudgeon Gamer informs me that using J and K as up and down keys also works in Gmail and Google Reader! vi's roots are set deep indeed...)

Combat: same as movement
In most roguelikes, you attack a monster by merely attempting to walk into it. This is more than just a convenience. When a character is confused, that state of mind is represented by randomizing some of his moves, which could result in unintended attacks under this system.

> (Shift-period): Travel downstairs
< (Shift-comma): Travel upstairs
When standing over a staircase, these are the commands used to go to the next/previous dungeon level. In Rogue the upstairs and downstairs are on the same spot, but in most other games they are usually located in different rooms on the level. Nethack uses these keys as a general way to indicate down and up as directions.

(comma): Pick something up off the floor
Your character will automatically pick a thing up when moving into its space, but there are times when this doesn't happen, like when that feature is turned off or your inventory is full when you moved there. Pressing comma is an explicit request to grab loot at your feet.

(period) : Rest a turn
S: Search for things
These two commands are almost identical in apparent function. Both will pass exactly one turn, and neither will usually print any message on the screen. The only difference between them is that the period key will increase the chance that you'll regain some hit points that turn, and the S key will silently check all eight spaces around your character for hidden doors or traps. There's no guarantee that you'll find anything hidden even if it is there to find, so S is usually pressed several times in a row to reduce the chance that something has been missed.

Space bar: Clear [more] prompts
When a message appears that's longer than the width of the screen, press Space to see the rest. Simple.

Esc: Cancel a command.
If you hit a key that you suspect you'll regret, so long as you haven't specified an inventory item yet you can usually abort the command without penalty. Just press Escape.

Shift-S: Save the game
Shift-Q: Quit the game
These are both Shifted commands to reduce the chance that they're hit accidentally, and they both further ask if you're sure. Remember, if you Quit, you can’t go back to your last save! Saving the game in a roguelike always ends the current session, and restoring it later (usually by entering your saved character at the name prompt) will delete the save file.

I: Inventory
This is a very important command to remember. It not only prints out all the objects your character is carrying, but the letters assigned to each of them, which are used in all object request prompts. Most commands that require an item to act upon will offer a list of appropriate items if you press a particular key (either asterisk or ? depending), and there is nothing wrong with relying upon this feature, but if you happen to remember the letter you can just press it and save a step. Asking for a list of your inventory never spends a turn: it is a “free action.”

D: Drop (an item)
The Drop command asks you for an inventory letter, then drops the object you picked. Good for dumping useless or bad stuff.

C: Call (an item)
If you think you know what an item is, you don't have to wait for the game to name it for you. You can name it yourself with the Call command.

Shift-D: Discoveries
This lists everything you've conclusively learned the identity of, or Called, in your current game. It is worth noting that, in Nethack, this command is mapped to the backslash key instead.

Q: quaff (that is to say, drink, applies to potion)
R: read (a scroll)
These commands use up the object specified. After use the object is gone, leaving behind only its effects upon either you or the rest of the world.

W: wield (an item, usually weapons)
Shift-W: wear (armor)
Shift-T: take off (armor)
Shift-P: put on (rings)
Shift-R: remove (rings)
In a console RPG all these would probably be grouped into a single Equip command, but there are reasons to keep them separate. For example, you can actually wield any object in your inventory, not just weapons. This can be useful depending on what game you're playing. Since you can wear up to two rings, the ring commands will ask you which hand is to be (un)adorned.

T: Throw (an item, usually missile weapons)
Z: Zap (a wand)
These commands first ask for a direction to throw or zap in, then the object to throw or zap. You can throw anything, but since most thrown objects carry a risk of being destroyed it's best to only throw things like darts. Note that arrows do more damage when thrown if you're wielding a bow, and bolts do much more damage if you're wielding a crossbow. Zapping a wand will expend some of its power, and if the wand is out of magic nothing will happen (or, if it’s the impish Wand of Nothing).

Ctrl-P: Previous message
Sometimes messages get accidentally flipped past before you can read them. Holding Ctrl and pressing P repeatedly will flip back through the last few displayed. Note that some versions of Rogue may use different keys for this, such as F4.


either * or ? (asterisk or question-mark): List appropriate things from an inventory prompt
Pressing this (varies between games but usually one of the two) at any prompt that requests an inventory item will give you a list of things carried that are obviously relevant. If you press it after a (r)ead command, you’ll get a list of scrolls, but after a (q)uaff command the game will list potions instead.
The asterisk list is sometimes presented automatically, without you having to ask. Sometimes, the list is misleading. Several items in Rogue may be used in ways that aren't obvious at first, and the item prompts will not give away the secret. If you want to, say, throw an item that is not commonly thought of as suitable for throwing, you can specify its inventory letter even if it's not listed on the asterisk list. This isn’t used all that often, but is very helpful in specific circumstances.

You're probably wondering about those items that are used in special ways! Well you're in luck, for here follows a complete list of all the items with clever uses -- but no, wait, it seems I'm out of space. Maybe next time!

Posted by John Harris at 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Art blog We May Money Not Art has ventured into the game space once again, with a post discussing a forthcoming German art installation which seeks to imitate a graphical pecularity that normally appears only within virtual racing games.

WWMNA explains: "Speed, by Aram Bartholl, is one of those projects that bring virtual game elements right on to the street. Bartholl aims to install the big flashing arrows from the computer game Need for Speed Underground 2 to real space."

Apparently: "The installation will be realized in September 14 to 17 at Bohnestrasse, in Bremen (Germany - other artists participating to the show). The 4, 24m high arrows are animated like in the game in three steps. In total there will be 9 arrows but only 3 at a time will be visible." Crazy stuff.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]

Simon recently ran into a few copies of Blip, the video game "magazine" put out by Marvel Comics in 1983, and he excitedly AIMed me about them, assured that he had found something I didn't have. It had been a long week, and my ego needed some assuaging, so I informed him as conceitedly as possible that no, not only have I heard of Blip, but I have all seven issues (the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, until fairly recently, thought there were only four).

Blip's a pretty queer mag in the gaggle of titles that launched and faded away between 1982 and 1984, from boom to bust in the game industry. Edited by Joe Claro (who wrote lots of quickie children's books for Random House all during the 1980s), the title was comic-book sized and printed on plain old comic-book stock, making it the cheapest national video-game mag ever (only a buck an issue!) but also the cheapest-looking, as screenshots and color photographs all tended to be washed out and ugly. As a result of this, Blip concentrates less on game strategy and more on "lifestyle"-type things -- comics about games, jokes, stories, and so forth.

I'd be lyin' if I said Blip was a must-read for all gamers, but then again, the mag never really had a chance to find its niche -- it launched February 1983 and published its final issue in August, thus becoming the first magazine "victim" of the Atari crash. Back issues are pretty easy to come by (if your comic shop has them, they're usually in the 25-cent boxes), so it's arguably the easiest and cheapest classic-era mag to amass a complete collection of.

Here's a quick guide to all seven issues (click through for the full rundown!)

  

#1 (February 1983) featured TV star Matthew Laborteaux on the cover, opening up a piece on celebrity gamers like Randall Brooks, Grant Cramer, David Wallace, Nicholas Hammond, and Bruce Boxleitner. Bruce I've heard of (he was in Tron), but the others were completely alien to me -- Matthew was apparently on Little House on the Prairie (IMDB claims he did voice work on the .hack series but doesn't mention his role), Grant and David were both regulars on The Facts of Life, Nicholas played the title role in the '70s live-action Spider-Man, and Randall (who's a girl) was playing Little Orphan Annie on Broadway at the time. "I may not ever find [a game] to compare with Space Invaders," she tells Blip, "but how could anything ever compare to bring a Broadway star, either?"

There's also a comic section featuring "Vic Video" interviewing Mario, which is the latter's first-ever appearance in comics. He later got an entire line of comics from Valiant once the NES came along.

#2 (March 1983) has Spider-Man (is that Nicholas inside the body stocking, you think?) and the Green Goblin playing Parker Bros.'s hot new Spider-Man 2600 cartridge. The feature includes tons of photos showing the guys crowding around a 13-inch TV screen in some Marvel office, ending with (for some reason) a shot of Spider-Man diving into someone's swimming pool afterwards.

In the comic section, Gobby is a little angry at this video game (maybe 'cos they used his face without permission) and crashes "the biggest trade show of the season" to beat up our hero, who's demonstrating the game to fans. Imagine having the Spider-Man at E3. The crowds would be even worse than they were in 2005.

   

#3 (April 1983) is sadly lacking in comics, but does have a profile of Eric Ginner and Mark Robichek, friends and fellow World Video Game Champions. Mark had the world record for Tutankham (244,920), while his pal Eric was top of the charts for Moon Patrol (573,480) "I used to spend 20 or 30 hours a week in arcades when I was in high school," Mark recalls in the article. "Even so, the games never cost me much money. I was always good, and a quarter lasted me a long time. If I spent five dollars a week, it was a lot." Man, the way games were by the early 90s, five bucks wouldn't last me an hour at the arcades.

#4 (May 1983) has a somewhat scary video-hallucination on the cover and a fanciful "exclusive Blip preview" of a possible game based on Laverne & Shirley ("Put caps on bottles! Answer ringing doorbells! Fall asleep on the couch!").

   

#5 (June 1983) has a cover story on video games "going Hollywood" (I think Video Games magazine had nearly the exact same cover around this time, too) and a bit on computer camps. By this time Claro is already being forced to fill excess pages with full-page comic gags.

#6 (July 1983) is the first issue to have an actual game on the cover -- Imagic's Microsurgeon, a title way ahead of its time in graphics and gameplay. The "Player of the Month" is Mike Zeck, veteran comic artist and (at the time) world record holder in Omega Race.

Finally, #7 (August 1983) features the first full-sized comic in a few issues. In it, the Incredible Hulk is smashing up the city as usual, and the cops decide to refocus his energies by giving him a game where he can smash up cities without actually causing any damage. Sweet.

Sadly, I couldn't tell you what readers got their subscriptions replaced with. Hopefully, though, it was something with a bit more speculator value to it.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. He owns enough magazines to smother himself with should the need arise, and his secret fantasy is for someone flush with game-publisher stock options to give him a monthly stipend so he can spend a year researching their full history and finishing the site. In his "off" time he is an editor at Newtype USA magazine.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Our favorite import store NCSX has a mammoth pictorial on the Tomy/Takara 'Pocket Dream' handheld this week, notably because they're not even stocking it due to the price (6900 yen plus mark-up would probably make it $85+?) - but it looks _really_ interesting to gamegeeks such as ourselves.

It's explained: "Tomy and Takara released a handheld gaming system on August 3 called the Pocket Dream Console. Basically a closed system with 30 built-in games and an AV port for output to television, the PDC is about the size of a Gameboy Micro. The unit runs on three AAA batteries with a 15-hour play time. The PDC also features a 2" backlit TFT screen."

The every-anonymous NCS writer notes: "After fiddling around with the games for an hour or so, NCS consensus: Decent collection but some of the games are unabashed copies while others would fit in some public domain game CD. There's a Loderunner clone with penguins and a near 1:1 copy of Taito's Puzzloop." Looks like there are some Arkanoid, Sokoban, and Bomberman clones in there too, and something where you have to "Guide a robotic horse around and eat fruit while avoiding enemies", and a Nintendogs clone, etc, etc, ad inifinitum. High japery!

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

From a 1984-era hardboiled DC detective comic named Nathaniel Dusk, I found some rather smart ads for Atari 2600 era games as advertisements within the comic - both Joust for the 2600, 5200, and associated Atari home computers, and Masters Of The Universe: The Power Of He-Man for the 2600 and Intellivision:

    

The Joust text is kinda fun ("Joust. You don't play it... you live it"), but the Masters Of The Universe text (with some really high-end screenshots from 1984, apparently from the 'Intellivision with Supergraphics') has more Rights Reserved, Trademark, and licensing *s in the text than just about any other ad I've seen.

Maybe this betrays the series' origins as a merchandising line first and a coherent universe second - sorry, MOTU fans. Both ads are neat, though - I'll try to dig out some similar vintage game ads as time goes on. [Via PopCultScanFun.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, 1UP are the kind of dorks who will celebrate the opening of Samuel L. Jackson's maaaahvellous Snakes On A Plane with a feature called 'Games On A Plane!', explained thus: "The portable revolution is well underway, making these perfect games... on a plane! Until Homeland Security gets all hysterical and outlaws electronic devices, anyway."

The plane playing shenanigans are split into 'Regional Flights', which names games such as Capcom Classics Remixed ("Short flights are made for short games, and when it comes to instant gratification it's hard to top the classic arcade"), all the way up to 'Flying Overseas', which marvellously names Card Fighters Clash for NGPC ("Dust off that forgotten Neo Geo Pocket Color -- Card Fighter's Clash is still one of the best and brightest card games ever created.")

And actually, probably the best thing are the witty faux-safety tips running at the bottom of each page, starting out with 'Passengers in coach class should not play Warioware Twisted', and going downhill hilariously from there. More dumb features, plz! (Elsewhere in scary Snakes-related fun, the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has the 24-hour 'Snakes On A Day', which is the movie played over and over from midnight to midnight. Jeez.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's totally Friday, which means that it's totally the weekend. More GameSetLinks tomorrow, when there's a chance to catch up on RSS feeds, but in the meantime, here's some random randomness we ran into:

- Maddentopia On Earth: Really, there's no better thing to do that cite eToychest's report on this particular tragedy: "EA's PR agency fired off this a tasty morsel this afternoon letting us know that the little town of Madden, Mississippi – population a staggering 74 – will be celebrating “Maddenoliday” on August 22 to celebrate the release of Madden NFL 07 for the Xbox 360... Jerry Rice, Marshall Faulk and Warren Moon will be on hand to give away Xbox 360 consoles to all the residents of the village." Hurray, PR stunt!

- Locked Up: The MMO: A co-worker just pointed out the PrisonServer MMO, subtitled 'The Online Prison Game', and for which the U.S. game info explains: "Make your way from just a rookie to gang leader or boss, meet new friends and get a life while becoming stronger to gain real respect! Players unite, collaborate & fight creating their own gangs and ranks within the prison confinements. Sooner or later you'll go Player versus Player forever. You can decide when or begin your character in a forced PvP server."

- Automator-ing NBA 2K7's Soundtrack: They reprinted a little of this at GameSpot, but MP3.com has a big interview with Dan The Automator which touches on his neat-sounding custom soundtrack for 2K's upcoming NBA 2k7. The full soundtrack from the Gorillaz, Deltron, and Dr. Octagon producer looks rather awesome, to say the least: "The Automator created these tracks for many of hip-hop’s finest emcees, including Fabolous, Ghostface, E-40, Mos Def, Slim Thug and even a remix of the Tribe Called Quest Classic, 'Lyrics to Go.'"

- Civilization Burns Book: Well, OK, not _burn_, as such, but Idle Thumbs reveals the following: "British newspaper The Independent is reporting that notoriously grim Fiction / Science Fiction novelist Iain Banks has missed a writing deadline for the first time because of video game addiction... Banks’ latest book which was due in time for Christmas, will be delayed until some time next year because Banks, like many before him, fell prey to the evil of Sid Meier. "It's all because I became a serial addict of the computer game 'Civilisation' [sic]” Said Banks, “I played it for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD. It is very unprofessional of me. I had to ask for an extension for the first time, which made me feel just like I was a student again."" Damn you, Meier!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, having mentioned jealousy of Dan Amrich's Um Jammer Lammy guitars in a recent semi-unrelated post, who should email us but GamePro/Future veteran Amrich himself, who has given us a complete guide to how you can also obtain real-life versions of Lammy's guitars, if you are crazy.

So, take it away, Dan: "The kidney bean one (pictured on top) is a Fernandes Zo-3 (in the US, the model is called the Nomad; the circle on the front is a small battery-powered built-in amplifier) and the yellow one (which hits my love for replicas of fictional objects as well as my gaming pride) is the Fernandes UJL-2000. [After some other eBay-related shenanigans] I decided to get serious about finding the 2000, and with the help of a friend who spoke Japanese, I contacted Ishibashi Music in Japan. They're one of the few retailers there who do business internationally (most of the Japanese guitar shops online sell to Japan only). I told them exactly what I was looking for and--amazingly--had it in hand just four weeks later (and part of the delay was that I'd written over the new year break). If you want to drop them a line, it's web-shop@ishibashi.co.jp."

What's more: "The surprising thing is that these guitars are more or less novelty guitars for girls, and therefore moderately priced. Each retails for about $300 (the UJL-2000 was 26,820 yen plus another 12,000 yen for insured international shipping - Global Express Mail) and you could probably get them easily from Ishibashi. They were never released in the US. They made a PaRappa ZO-3, too. It's blue. I've been tempted. And that one's actually still listed on their site." Holy smokes, that's cool!

Finally, Dan pointed to his unsorted directory of Lammy-related guitar pics, and says he intends to build a proper shrine at some point - as he should! In the meantime, he plays the yellow Fernandes UJL-2000, in heavily modified form, in his '80s tribute band Fast Times, who are playing the Dirty Martini in SF next month, should you feel the need to gawk at a Lammy guitar in real life. Fun - and thanks to Dan for sharing!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The ever-smart Shack News has pointed out The Rabbit Snare, a good site translating lengthy Japanese-language interviews with important game designers and random game crazies, and of which we had not heard until now!

For starters, there's 'Secrets Of The Katamari', translating an old Dengeki Online interview with Keita Takahashi in fine style, explaining of Katamari Damacy: "Specifically, I think it was going to be an action game with some driving elements in it. I thought up the King and the Prince as part of that game’s back-story. And, well, it was rejected, of course…(laughs). It’d always seemed like a waste of a good idea to me, so when we started development on Katamari Damacy, I thought it might be possible to use it this time around."

Oh yeah, and he also translated the voiceover/text for the Ultimate Ghosts N Goblins promo movie, which would have been really useful when we were watching it: "I was taking it easy, you know... I left Demonville, where I had fought for so long, and was living on my own out in a backwater town... You know…back in Demonville, I’d been busting my butt day in and day out... So I started to think that it might be nice to just loosen up and not take things so seriously." Yay, awesome.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every now and again the GSW office gets spasmodically, tragically happy over a _particularly_ crazy cellphone game license. Last time this happened, was, of course, Lil Jon's Crunk Golf, but now we have the announcement of 'Bob Marley Burnin'' from Hudson Entertainment.

Not content with giving the world Bonk, the details page for the Hudson-developed mobile game explains: "Hey Mon! Enjoy the tropics as you play as Bob Marley in some fun mini games. This game celebrates Marley's passions, from island life, soccer, and of course, music - Reggae style! Juggle the ball in the air like a pro, and rack up combo points for hitting special power-ups. See how far you can kick a ball while timing the bounce to Marley music. It's simple yet addictive fun, all set to your favorite Marley tunes including "One Love", "Stir It Up", and "Could You Be Loved". This game is the ultimate tropical experience!"

OK, very speechless, and yes, one of the subgames is called 'Extreme Juggling'. Dude, it's extreme! Meanwhile, John Greiner, president of Hudson Entertainment explains: "Marley's ideas and beliefs are more powerful than ever, and to be able to bring his own unique culture to a new generation of people is truly an honor. We wanted to create an interactive experience that captures the Rastafarian spirit and all the elements that Marley loved, from music, to island life, and soccer." No juggle no cry?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[The Gentleman Nerd is a weekly column written by Jason McMaster and is dedicated to the more discerning tastes of the refined dork. Due to Jason's extreme nature, most of his columns will be subtitled 'Why I Love...' or 'Why I Hate...' - in case you were wondering.]

Most people have heard of Magic: the Gathering, the undeniably popular collectible card game from Wizards of the Coast. When it was released in 1993, Magic took the gaming world by storm and hasn’t slowed down since. I must admit that I cashed in on Magic as well by hustling people for cards at one comic shop and selling them at another. Ah, the heady days of youth.

Well, Magic isn’t the only game that its designer, Richard Garfield, made. Mostly he stayed in the CCG arena with games like Star Wars, Jyhad and Netrunner. The only games that he made that didn’t fall into that category were The Great Dalmuti and RoboRally, the latter of which is the subject of today’s column.

RoboRally is a fairly simple game. Each player is dealt a certain number of cards with different directions or turns on them and they have to choose five that their robot will execute that turn. The point of the game is to be the first player to touch all the flags. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it is.

What makes the game really interesting is when you have several different people competing for the same goal and they don’t know which way anyone is going to move. The real kicker is that once you have all your cards put down in the order you’re going to move, you can’t change them. So, if someone knocks you off course, you could very well fly into a pit instead of making it to your target.

Then, on top of just programming your robot, you have to deal with the built in game mechanics and the board environment. There are walls, lasers and pits as well as conveyor belts that can throw you off track. That’s only part of the danger involved in playing ‘The Rally’.

It takes most people a while to understand the exact series of events required to play RoboRally to its fullest “jackass” potential. Most people, when they first start participating in any competitive activity, avoid direct confrontation. Everyone wants to go for the goal and the overall attitude is fairly light hearted. This all changes the second someone accidentally knocks another player off course and that player dies. Then it becomes a game about revenge. One sure fire way to keep people doing something is to encourage their competitive nature.

That’s why I use RoboRally as my gateway game. I like to get people to try something out that’s fairly simple and isn’t all that bizarre as their first time playing board games. The simple rules coupled with the sheer amount of chaos that can be caused by one collision usually keep people entertained.

Once people are playing and generally enjoying themselves, I have to tell them the horrible truth. You are one step closing to becoming a nerd. The second you begin cackling at what you made a little figurine do to another one, you’ve passed over the threshold and are ready for induction. Welcome to Thunder Dome, where Thunder is Nerd and Dome is… Dome. Never mind.

Either way, it’s a good tool to show people that things that are normally considered reprehensibly dorky and pathetic are actually quite fun if you give them a shot. I was once among the washed masses that looked down upon my smelly brethren. I was a football player, for God’s sake.

That all changed, though, and now I stalk through the night with my Ziploc bags full of game pieces, just looking for my next victim. All the cool kids are playing Puerto Rico and Ticket to Ride. Don’t you want to be cool? The first one’s free….

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for GameSpy, Firing Squad and several other publications. He’s currently working on a few small projects and updating his blog, Lamethrower, as often as he can.]

Posted by jasonm at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ah, yes, those games, sets, and links - a rollicking Thursday evening would be nothing without them, eh? Here we go:

- Get Lamp Gets Press: We've mentioned Jason Scott's 'Get Lamp' text adventure documentary before, and now Wired News has done a story on it, noting: "In his upcoming documentary, Scott plans to add filmed interviews of the games' early developers to the collection of archival material. Interview subjects include developers of Zork and Adventure, the first interactive work to gain a following." We've heard of those! Looking forward to the final doc, whenever it's done (probably not for a little while!)

- Zoe Flower Goes Slant Six: You may remember Zoe Flower from her Electric Playground gig or Official PlayStation Magazine column. Well, we got a rather over-hopeful PR note pitched as revealing to us: "Zoe Flower, Coolest Girl in the Video Game industry", which reveals that she's working over at Vancouver developer Slant Six Games, which is cool, and another good example of the journo => developer nexus. And there's some neat info on the developer, too: "Slant Six Games is a video game development studio located in Vancouver , BC that specializes in developing games for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PlayStation 3 (PS3) game consoles. Slant Six Games created the graphics rendering engine for Sony Computer Entertainment America’s (SCEA) massively popular Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror , and is currently developing a new PSP title for SCEA, scheduled to ship in late 2007. " Did not know that!

- Frets Of Fire Insano-Controller: We at GSW got a fun email today: "I'm the Games Ed on PC Format magazine UK. I've just made a USB guitar for the open source Guitar Hero clone Frets on Fire out of an old joystick and a toy axe." Uh, SUPER neato! Apparently: "Games Ed James Carey... took an Early Learning Centre toy guitar (you know, the ones that play annoying bleepy sounds) and ripped its guts out. He then stuck some guts from an old Logic 3 joystick into the body, did some wire magic and hey presto, insta-USB Guitar!" We can't make stuff, we can only buy stuff - we're not practical enough.

- Gearbox Tells Stories: Over at Gearbox, the Brothers In Arms writers have been talking about storytelling and games, and even making plenty of sense, talking about the lack of a shared experience: "In a lot of interactive mediums the story telling is much less effective when left up to the player. No one is ever truly in love, married, wounded, dead, blind, etc because the experience could vary so greatly from one game to the next. This is compounded by the fact that the player could choose to play through a second a time and have a completely different experience all together where different people are married, dead, or turned into fish." Or all of the above!

- Highway Stars, Lost Dawgs: Gamasutra and Lost Levels' FrankC is, to say the least, a rabid fan of awesome DS title Ouendan, and he's just uploaded a new Elite Beat Agents video to YouTube which shows (minus sound, sadly) a whole bunch of the 'lost doggie' animation and gameplay from the Deep Purple 'Highway Star' level of Elite Beat Agents, Inis' Western adaptation of its 'let's stick together' DS rhythm game - I think this was from Comic-Con? Someone also recorded a bunch of 'Walkie Talkie Man' from Steriogram, the only other level showcased at E3 and other events thus far. Wherefore a full song list? We're waaaiting!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cruisin' on the Internet superduperjunkyard that is eBay, we ran into the awesomeness that is a vintage Pac-Man motion lamp, yum - and it's 'only' $37 thus far.

It's explained: "You are looking at a PAC-MAN MOTION LIGHT, I think it is from the early 80's. The light is in very good condition, the pictures do not do it justice. The light is not perfect, but is very, very nice. There is a couple small slits in the black area on the side, I think this would be a very easy repair with a little tape, but it is not necessary. The light stands 13" tall, and 6" across. The logo says: 1980 Bally midway mfg. co. tm Bally mfg. co. all rights reserved."

Elsewhere on eBay, there also seem to be a bunch of people selling Pac-Man prize packages, featuring: "Black and Orange Leather Back Pack w/Clip-on Watch, Wool and Orange Leather Pac-Man Jacket Size L, Pac-Man Polo Shirt Size L, Pac-Man Fleece Throw Blanket, Pac-Man Twill Cap, Pac-Man Neon Light Umbrella", if you have a tragic lust for Pac. Which we don't, honest.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Game Ads A-Go-Go' is a bi-weekly column by Vintage Computing and Gaming's RedWolf that showcases good, bad, strange, funny, and interesting classic video game-related advertisements, most of which are taken from his massive classic game magazine collection.]

Welcome back, my game ad-loving friends! I thought I'd follow up on a popular previous edition of Game Ads A-Go-Go with another exciting installment of the same thing. Just like last time, I have assembled a selection of out-of-context illustrated faces from video game magazine advertisements. On each question, you will be presented with a number of choices, only one of which is the correct answer. After you've thought hard and written down your answer (no cheating!), you can view the correct answer by clicking on each link below the question. Doing so will reveal the full ad and put the faces in context. Then see how you stack up against your so-called friends. Good luck!

Question #1

Look at the picture above. This man is...

a. Selling hotdogs at a football game
b. A cherubic baseball player with a stiffy
c. One of Santa's helper elves
d. Catching a gigantic fish without realizing it
e. Both a. and c.

Click here for the answer.

Question #2

Look at the picture above. This man is...

a. Bono from U2 getting elbowed in the face
b. A patient who just got his eyes dilated at the optometrist
c. David Copperfield's stunt double, circa 1988
d. A mysterious master of martial arts, partially obscured
e. Eating fuzzy, fuzzy wieners

Click here for the answer.

Question #3

Look at the picture above. This entity is...

a. An exciting new Disney villain
b. A flaming ping pong ball with a face
c. Estonia's national flag come alive
d. A ghost trapped in a pinball machine
e. Some fat dude in an oven

Click here for the answer.

Question #4

Look at the picture above. This man is...

a. Traveling through space and time in slow motion
b. Getting his face sucked off by the Nothing
c. Trying to remember where he put his glasses
d. A famous golfer violently swinging a club
e. A chess player on an Atari 2600 game box
f. Bleeding mustard

Click here for the answer.

Bonus Question (Extra Credit)

Look at the picture above. This man is...

a. Fighting in a karate tournament
b. Getting blasted in the face with Skittles
c. A vivid allegory of drug abuse
d. Experiencing a tingling of his spider sense
e. A happy Olympic diver

Click here for the answer.

Making the Grade

So, how well did you do? Tally up your score (one point for each correct answer), add five to that, then subtract 3.828. The resulting number you get will be completely meaningless, but you can post it on your refrigerator and feel proud.

Well, that's all for now. Until next time, this is the RedWolfster saying, "Don't forget to cry like a tiny hurt child when your momma tries to blackmail you into buying beer for her and her hairy lover."

[RedWolf is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Vintage Computing and Gaming, a regularly updated "blogazine" that covers collecting, playing, and hacking vintage computing and gaming devices. He has been collecting vintage computers and game systems for over 13 years. He is also a professional expert consultant in turnkey solutions to corporate feasibility stratagems.]

Posted by Benj Edwards at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow - we just got a note from artist and designer John Freeborn about his awesome new Flash game, 'Skatefall', which is, obviously enough, "a game mashup of Pitfall with skateboarding", and "inspired by Dave Crane, of course."

The info page for the free-to-play Flash game reveals: "This game has been in and out of the works for over two years. I am proud to say it is done. Skatefall!, inspired by David Crane’s Pitfall!, with 255 screens, many gold bars, silver bars and more to collect. This game also has a scoreboard, so you can see where you rank."

Playing it briefly, its 'Pitfall on wheels' game play also reminded me of Namco's Metro Cross, and we note that John has also been making Nintendo Wii icons for Mac OS X, so really, there's no excuse not to go try out his game now, right?

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[So, I just got an Epson scanner, and you'll see a random collection of paper-based ephemera (much of it not game related!) on my personal Pop Cult Scan Fun weblog. But I'll be reposting the game-related stuff here, starting with a neeto Sega arcade flyer.]

It must be said that I don't really have a spectacular collection of flyers, and most of them are from 2000 onwards - but here's a nice beginning, a stylish flyer for Sega's 2004 skateboard arcade game 'Ollie King' which isn't even on The Arcade Flyer Archive yet.

    

From the folks at Amusement Vision who absorbed Smilebit's staff, this seems to have been developed by the Jet Set Radio creators, and is described as follows: "A street wise skateboard action racing game set in the modern day urban jungle. Players can race up to 4 other contestants to set the record time for the course. The more stylish the skateboard tricks are preformed then the faster you go. This is the first skateboard game that concentrates more on racing and speed than special tricks."

[The game uses the Xbox-based Chihiro hardware, but it sadly never got an Xbox conversion, presumably due to it being designed specifically for the skateboard controller, as earlier titles Top Skater and Air Trix also had in differing forms.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tom “Tsquared” Taylor is one of the brightest stars of Major League Gaming. He’s currently aged just 18, and is already on a three year, $83,300 per year contract with the MLG – and that’s before prizes. In his most recent season with the league, Tsquared made a cool $250,000.

In 2005, he started Gaming-Lessons, a site dedicated to training those interested in improving their Halo 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee skills. Taking the lessons are such MLG luminaries as Alfonso "Fonzi" Chartier, and 7 year old Victor "LiL Poison" De Leon III, amongst others. So far, Tsquared estimates that over 1,000 students have received lessons, which range from 15 minute one on one sessions, right up to one hour scrimmages against the best teams that MLG has to offer.

GameSetWatch contacted Tsquared via email to find out more about the site.

When did you start Gaming-Lessons?

Gaming-Lessons started in September of 2005 so it is almost 1 year old. Sundance DiGiovanni, co-founder of MLG, and I came up with the idea of Gaming-Lessons during a conversation on how to generate more competitive gamers and open up new windows and opportunities for casual gamers looking to go pro. The Gaming-Lessons website has gone through 3 versions and we are currently working on Gaming-Lessons v4 with tons more features to add.

How difficult is it to become a professional gamer?

Very difficult, it took 4 years to get where I am at now. Hopefully I can pass on a load of tips and tricks so the student can skip the 4 year process that I had to go through to make it in professional gaming.

Why is a service like this necessary?

Lessons for a video game are just like any other lesson. If you want to improve in something where lessons are offered, for example, golfing, surfing, or snowboarding, then you would jump on the chance to do so. The only difference is we have the best instructors and professional gamers in the world brought into 1 website.

What kinds of people receive lessons?

There has been much diversity amongst our customers. We have given lessons to girls and guys alike from NBA Star Richard Jefferson, 48 year old business men, a 30 year old Psychologist mother of 2, college students, and teenagers still in high school. It really shows the interest and reach of pro gaming.

What sort of people do you employ as instructors?

Only the best professional gamers in the world give lessons at Gaming-Lessons. We have 10 instructors, currently adding more to fit the demand of lessons, who aren't only the top gamers in the world but the best instructors.

How easy is it to run a service like this as a viable business?

Back when the site first started it was very difficult running it all by myself. As the website grew I started to bring in more money, which allowed me to hire staff members to take a little bit of the work load off my shoulders. We have been going strong for about a year now but it is everything but easy.

How do the lessons work?

I actually am working on a new system right now for lessons to be purchased. The way it will work is you will purchase a lesson off of www.gaming-lessons.com, after you have paid for the lesson the site will take you straight to a information sheet that asks you about your gaming history (this helps your instructor understand where you are at skill wise). After that it takes you to a calendar of dates that are available for your instructor that you purchased the lesson from, once you select your date you hop on Xbox Live and your instructor will be there waiting for you with a smile.

Why are you offering lessons for Super Smash Bros. Melee, as well as Halo 2?

Whatever games are the premiere games for the MLG circuit are the games we will give lessons for. MLG has been the leader in pro gaming for years now. They have been able to identify the most competitive and fair games, and have built strong communities around them. They are also the leader in taking pro gaming mainstream (with their TV show debuting on the USA Network this fall), which can open up more opportunities in the future.

Will you be branching out into other games in the future too?

If or when MLG changes games from Halo 2 to another or SSBM then Gaming-Lessons will also.

The site seems to depend a lot on community - do you think the competitive gaming scene is the same?

I try to offer a common ground for people who are looking to go to tournaments or meet new people who share the same passion of gaming that they do. Gaming-Lessons is everything I envisioned in the first place and more.

Posted by alistairw at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Yay, an evening GameSetLink-age is upon as, and thanks to friend and GameSetWatch reader Jon, we've re-laid things out a little bit with an exciting bold headline at the start of each item, which will hopefully make these linkposts a little more readable. Well, more scannable, very probably not more readable - that's impossible! Here we go:

- Bad Day LA Demo: Aeropause has the info on the PC demo of Bad Day LA, noting: "American McGee is back and he is packing his brand new game, Bad Day L.A. You play as a homeless man who must save the city of Los Angeles from horrible zombies and terrorists. Hmmm, sounds familiar. Well now you can get your hands on the demo and give it a whirl." Unfortunately, Edge really didn't like it (4/10), despite the awesome Kozyndan artwork, and McGee seems to have finished working with publisher/developer Enlight on the game already, which doesn't bode well - but go poke anyhow.

- World Of Warcraft Guild Size Musings: The much more 'thinky' than us ThinkingGames has a good post on mooted World Of Warcraft changes, particularly "the recent announcement that Blizzards ‘Burning Crusade’ will limit raid sizes to a maximum of 25 players". It's noted: "Perhaps a smaller limit to raid sizes will force a re-organisation of these social groups, narrowing the gap between hardcore and casual players. There is a counter argument that casual players have difficulty organising themselves and gearing up for even small limit instances." All very confusing, but social dynamics in MMOs are pretty damn interesting.

- Bad Songs In Games: Error Macro has a list of the worst songs ever created for video games, which has a wonderful 'not a top X list' justification: "No "top whatever" here; the Internet has too many of those and the rankings are always arbitrary anyway. The list is, however, divided into three categories. Think of them as the three circles of musical hell." Dante would be proud! Among the reviled - 'The DK Rap' from Donkey Kong 64: "I've actually heard people defend the DK Rap before by saying that it was tongue-in-cheek, and that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. They act as if this makes it better." Apparently not!

- Blender Physics Games: TIGSource has some useful info on the Blender 3D engine's physics capabilities, noting of a new competition featuring it: "The advantage of using Blender (in addition to the whole it-being-free thing) is that the creator can model, animate and script all within the same package. None of the entrants are particularly great games, but the winner, Club Silo, is the most visually impressive Blender game project to date." Clunky, but interesting.

- Wright, Miyamoto... Burnett?: Clive Thompson's latest Wired News column has an interview with reality TV supremo Mark Burnett about game design, bizarrely enough. '"Nobody talks about it on this level, but that's what I do," said Burnett, nattily dressed in a tieless pinstriped suit. I met him at Trump International Hotel when he came through town to talk about [his new game] Gold Rush. While tweaking Survivor, he closely studied John Nash's game theory in order to better engineer the hysteria and emotional blowouts of each season's finale." We've actually previously covered reality show-related game design, outlined in a neat Skotos.net series, so it's not as crazy as it seems.

- GameTap Impressions GET!: We're not indentured servants of GameTap, honest, but The New Gamer has been trying it out, noting: "I've been skeptical of GameTap ever since it was announced. I just couldn't get over the fact that it was the spawn of the Turner Broadcasting Company." G.Turner then notes: "First impressions of the service? I'm rather taken with it. I expected a junky client that I'd have to fight tooth-and-nail with in order to perform the simplest task. I expected to have gaudy, non-game oriented ads shoved down my throat the entire time. Instead I found a surprisingly engrossing and attractive client (although it did take awhile for it to download and set itself up)." But will he pay money for it, after the trial? Stay tuned for more fun.

- Perplex-ing Board Games: We haven't heard from Eric-Jon since he covered the Perplex City 'event' in SF on Saturday, so we presume that he's been squashed and turned into pigment for the next set of trading cards. In the meantime, Ogre Cave notes that there's a Perplex City board game coming out, which "will feature fairly simple puzzles by PPC standards, Trivial Pursuit-esque gameplay (here's hoping that play on the board gets a little more fun than that), and a $40-esque price tag." What's next - a TV show? Fluffy dice? Cuddly toy?

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You know, it's on obscuro fansites that some of the most incendiary writing about games really happens - such as The Dreamcast Junkyard, which presents a list of ' Common Themes in Dreamcast-Land' which rounds up all the important Dreamcast game memes.

The best example (also because this is where we are typing from right now!) is San Francisco, described in Dreamcast form thusly: "Ah yes, the city with all those steep roads and palm trees. Firstly, we have the superb Crazy Taxi. Super Runabout, a game that plays very much like Crazy Taxi (only with more modes of transport and lousy controls) is also set there. San Francisco Rush 2049 is set in a futuristic (and somewhat void of human life) version of the place, but is still San fran none the less, and then there’s the first level in Sonic Adventure 2, which was also directly inspired by the city."

There are also _EXACTLY 7_ Dreamcast games with fish in them, and elsewhere, uhm, Michael Jackson makes an appearance ("On the Dreamcast... [Jackson] has popped up a few times in very unexpected places. He first popped up out of nowhere near the end of Space Channel 5, in which you save him from aliens so he can join your posse. In Space Channel 5: Part 2, he is part of your team from the very beginning, and has more of his trademark moves. He also begged Midway to add him to the line up of Ready to Rumble: Round 2, although I can’t really imagine him being all too tough in a real fight, to be honest.") Scaaary.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['MMOG Nation' is a regular bi-weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week's column is about player expectations in advance of the launch of a MMOG's launch.]

Last week, I spent some quality time among my adopted people. While playing videogames may have become an accepted part of American culture in recent years, I've been doing the hard stuff (Hunt the Wumpus, table-top RPGs, even tactical wargames) for a long, long time. Indianapolis, IN was the adopted home of the nerd last week, and along with my hearty band I braved the obstacles of gamer funk and three dollar sodas for the chance to reconnect with my roots. This year, as at the last few Gen Cons, several Massive developers had their wares on display. The Burning Crusade stood cheek-to-jowl with the World of Warcraft CCG in the Upper Deck booth, while Mythic was displaying that title's illegitimate lovechild across the hall.

The MMOG I was really there to see, though, was Pirates of the Burning Sea. Pirates is an upcoming massive title that weighs more on the side of Jack Sparrow than the YoHoHo experience you're hopefully already familiar with. Once the title is out of testing, players will sail the waters of the Caribbean, accomplishing many and sundry nefarious deeds. There are three Old World nations to tweak off, a whole bunch of rum to run, and almost two dozen ships to captain. It's a yarring good time ... but it set me to thinking about the realities of a Massive game pre-launch.

With development times measured in years and half-decades instead of quarters, nothing will break your heart as badly as a crappy Massive game. Today I'm going to be talking about the inflated expectations that long MMOG development times can build, why I think Pirates has fulfilled player expectations, and what future titles can do to ensure that high hopes stay grounded in reality.

(Click through to read the full column!)

Expectation Trauma

As game development schedules and budgets grow, the trauma of failed expectations is becoming more common. Just a few years ago, though, Massive games were the only way you could be sure your hopes would be dashed if the end result didn't measure up. Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) is often trotted out as a prime example of this, and I have to grudgingly raise my hand in the SWG Anonymous support group. SWG was in development for over three years; SOE was still named Verant Interactive when the game's name was announced, if that gives you any perspective. The amount of potential the title had, the extremely long development time, and the rabid Star Wars fanbase made the resounding thud when it hit the pavement that much harder to stomach.

As much a disappointment as SWG is, what really stung for many fans was the four long years of waiting. With such a long time-span to get their hopes up, any title would have had a hard time measuring up. The problem here is not so much with the fans, unfortunately. You can't help but get excited when developers are promising you the world and some cake on the side. Every modern game title has this problem, to a greater or lesser extent. PR firms and marketing people get carried away, and push the developers up front to talk about what they're working on.

Fans and the enthusiast press take their words, usually couched in terms of 'we're not sure this is going to make it into the final game', and spin them into rock-solid promises. Who remembers when Fable was going to be the greatest RPG ever? Or when World of Warcraft was going to have 'Hero' classes and player housing? The same people the marketing folks are trying to get onboard will turn on the game, and quickly, when the feature list is much shorter on release day.

The modern MMOG industry also faces the reality that a game may be worked on for a considerable amount of time before being changed drastically or cancelled. Microsoft's Mythica had a fervent fanbase a few years ago, and the cancellation of the instancing-heavy norse fantasy left a large community with nothing to rally around. Tabula Rasa, too, had begun to attract a good-sized crowd when Garriot and Co. began their drastic revamp of the title. In an industry whose entire purpose is to foster community, the danger is ever-present that the players will feel betrayed or let down by the actions of the developing company.

Drink Up, Me Hearties, Yo Ho

The enthusiastic crowd surrounding Pirates of the Burning Sea, though, seems to have little to worry about. Pirates is a great example of a game that has followed through with its numerous claims. Seeing the demo at Gen Con, the element that came through most strongly was the freshness of the ideas these guys had developed. More than just a checklist of features, Pirates is shaping up to be a truly unique offering in the Massive space. Combat, for example, combines some of the best elements of the real-time and strategic genres. Instead of 'hit A and walk away', a pirate captain will be simultaneously piloting his craft, keeping an eye on the wind, making sure his target is within range, working to keep his target in his firing arc, and trying to stay out of the firing arcs of other ships.

It sounds complicated, but this involved situation manages to be challenging without being confusing. Likewise, the gameworld itself exhibits signs that design goals have been met. Questing and player-run businesses are already in the game, and the folks at Flying Labs' booth were happy to discuss the intricate process by which a port's national allegiance can be overthrown.

The key here is that the developers haven't made any promises they couldn't keep. Pirates has been in development for quite a while, to be sure, but as far as I can recall almost everything they've promised since the game was announced is now there in the Demo to try out.

Keeping it Real

Keeping community expectations realistic is, in my view, the key to making sure there is as little disappointment as possible when the game is finally released. As a comparison let's quickly look at Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes as examples of how this can be done correctly, and how this can be done badly.

Galaxies launched, finally, after several release dates were suggested and then missed. A badly restrictive NDA kept Beta players buttoned up until about twenty days before the game launched at retail. Player complaints flowed into the community, but by the time they were allowed to speak openly the discs were already being pressed. Fully community examination of the game effectively didn't happen until everyone was in and breaking things.

The game launched without Mounts, Vehicles, or Player Housing, three features that the community had been assured since almost the first week that the boards were up. An entire class was added to the game mere weeks before launch; Beta tester complaints centered around the fact that they were not, in fact, being allowed to test the game. The launch of Galaxies reflected the entire period of time pre-launch (and many would argue post- as well): lots of big promises with no follow-through.

City of Heroes (CoH), on the other hand, learned its lesson early. While an early version of the game was applauded by fans of the title, developers quickly realized they'd promised too much on an untested concept. So, after announced they would be making massive changes to the game, they shut their traps. Months passed with very little information coming from the Cryptic Studios mouthpieces. While the community waited they theorized and debated; what they did not do was inflate their expectations. When the information did begin to come, the phrasing was not 'this is what we plan to do', it was always 'this is what we have done, it's in the game already'. The NDA on CoH Beta testers was lifted a full seven months before the game was released to retail.

Players inside the Beta, and outside in the community at large, were able to fully examine the state of the game before the company put discs on the shelves. The beta even ended with a surprise: the Rikti invasion. The event, while a little rough around the edges, will probably go down in the annals of MMOG history as one of the most entertaining end-of-Beta moments ever. Right up there with the death of Lord British, the CoH Beta event is still talked about by players to this day; an unpromised event that was simply done, keeping player expectations low and allowing everyone to be pleasantly surprised.

The Best Policy

The combination of honesty and surprise is what future Massive titles should rely on to ensure the loyalty of their community. If you can step onto your boards and say that you have just implemented x, y, and z, the players can move forward knowing they'll see it in the final game. Don't reveal everything, of course; that's why surprise is such an essential element to success. In most Massive games, every last detail is catalogued and indexed. Offering new experiences should be what the genre is about.

The appeal of the unseen is very strong. Gamers become fans very easily: just mention a new style of PvP, or promise an interesting twist on raiding. Despite the temptation, the goal of game developers should be to manage player expectations. Don't promise what you can't deliver. If you can help it, don't promise anything at all: the marketing people may hate it but your players will love you for it. The bottom line is that games live and die on player perceptions. Promise the galaxy, and only deliver the solar system, they'll never let you live it down.

[Michael Zenke is also known as 'Zonk', the current editor of Slashdot Games. He has had the pleasure of writing occasional pieces for sites like Gamasutra and The Escapist. You can read more of Michael's ramblings on Massive games at the MMOG Nation blog. ]

Posted by mzenke at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We know it was a few days ago, but we noticed that we never really highlighted Seth Schiesel's New York Times article on the game biz, which is provocatively titled 'The Video Game Industry Has an Image Problem and Mostly Itself to Blame', and is as close to fiercely opinionated activist talk as you'll ever get from the NYT.

Talking in the context of the Ziff Davis exec summit held last week, Schiesel suggests: "Think about it. If someone asks you what you did this weekend, and you respond, “Ah, I was kind of tired and just hung out at home and watched a bunch of movies,” that’s normal. If you say, “Ah, I was kind of tired and just hung out at home and watched a bunch of sports on TV,” that’s normal. But if you say, “Ah, I was kind of tired and just hung out at home and played a bunch of video games,” that is simply not a normal adult response in most social circles." Is it in Japan, either, though?

He continues: "People in the game industry are fond of blaming the mainstream media for that reality, and it is certainly true that most media outlets treat games as a fringe activity rather than as a dynamic part of the modern entertainment landscape. But in that sense the media is only reflecting broader society’s view of games, at least in this country. As a whole, most game companies do not seem to recognize that rather than whining all the time about how misunderstood it is, the industry itself has the power to change how it is perceived."

Schiesel agrees: "Innovators like Nintendo get it", but I feel pretty underwhelmed by his claims of similar for the comic book industry: "In Japan, by contrast, it is totally normal to see middle-aged businessmen reading graphic novels in public."

Well, I guess, but they're not really 'graphic novels', and I think anyone would be remiss to directly relate this to the suggestion that game companies have in any way majorly misdealt the hand given to them. It was probably a single country-wide success - that of the Famicom/NES - which did most to make games culturally appropriate to a _slightly_ wider demographic in Japan, and casual games and other forces are swiftly bringing games to a higher level in the West. I guess that I broadly agree with Schiesel, but I think he's overplaying _his_ hand in order to make a point.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Keyboard Bashing' is a new GameSetWatch column by Tales of a Scorched Earth's Andrew Smale which discusses the history, present and future of PC gaming. This inaugural column looks lovingly at a classic LucasArts title.]

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992) was the seventh LucasArts game to use the venerable SCUMM engine. It fell in between Ron Gilbert's influential The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and adventure game fan favorite Sam and Max Hit the Road (1993). It could easily be considered among the hallmarks of adventure gaming, at the peak of LucasArts' influence on the genre.

It is also the best game I have ever played.

I can install it again as if it was the first time, and still get the same enjoyment from it. I can honestly say that it's like watching a favorite movie - but a movie that actually is as good as I remember it - and enjoying every moment spent re-solving the game's challenging but intuitive puzzles and listening to the wonderfully crafted dialogue. I'd even call the whole thing "cinematic."

In game criticism's search to find itself, the term "cinematic" is thrown around quite a bit, as if it was the only way to describe a game's presentation. Combining an appealing visual aesthetic with an engaging storyline keeps the player involved, who will return to the game simply to find out what happens next. As games approach levels of visual realism only dreamed about 10 years ago - with the hardware to produce it seemingly driving the industry - has the definition of "cinematic" changed?

It has, but only unwittingly. Back when there was nothing better to compare to, computer games were often described with the same terms they are now. But looking through my old copies of Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer is downright embarrassing to see what games the descriptor was attached to. A game can be cinematic without obsessing over excessive amounts of visual detail or immaculate sound, because it's about supplying a package.

When I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark as a young lad, I immediately wanted to be an archaeologist. Not because I was interested in history, but because it meant I would get to travel the world searching for ancient artifacts while trying to stay one step ahead of the Bad Guys. The Fate of Atlantis recaptured this feeling. You weren't supposed to be Indy; you were following him on one of his adventures. To this day I am convinced that in the right hands, a film based on this game would feel right at home in the Indiana Jones saga - it is so in touch with the mythos.

While made up of standard adventure fare like navigating dialogue options, puzzles, and the occasional pixel hunt, each are presented to be seamless with the surrounding storyline. The opening scene involves Indy looking through the archives of Barnett College for an Atlantean artifact, which is subsequently stolen by a Nazi spy to set the game's story in motion. What follows is an introductory sequence of sorts, where Indy must get in touch with Sophia Hapgood, an old friend who will aid in the search for the truth about Atlantis. It turns out Atlantis really does exist, and its location is buried in Plato's Lost Dialogue, an ancient text that was thought a hoax. Once the Dialogue is obtained, the game presents the player with some options.

Do you partner with Sophia, and hope that she can provide some valuable insight for the remainder of the adventure? Or do you fly solo, and go against Indiana Jones tradition? Perhaps silly puzzles aren't for you, and the road to Atlantis is paved with blood and lost teeth. Each path touches on key points of the story, but take slightly different routes to get to the Lost City, some of them exposing areas only available in a particular path. Like any adventure game, you can't expect too much freedom, but the presentation of The Fate of Atlantis doesn't allow you to dwell too much on it.

The superb voice acting and the great sense of humor shared by all of LucasArts' early adventure efforts added some depth to the experience. The dialogue feels naturally constructed, and carries over well between cutscenes and when you have the option to choose what to say. The iMUSE system, which was first introduced by the version of the SCUMM engine powering this adventure, controls changes in music when the action on screen changes. The game's artwork is practical for the majority of the game - it's simply recreating the films' familiar time period. The Lost City, once found, is successfully conveyed as an ancient place that was still capable of developing technological marvels. It's all fantasy, but it's completely convincing.

Part of what made LucasArts' classic adventure games so family-friendly is that your character could never die. In The Fate of Atlantis, Indy can die. There are few ways in which this can happen, but they are situations in which death is a perfectly logical outcome. Allowing Indy to mutter "over my dead body" to his Nazi counterpart in one scene results in exactly that. Once inside Atlantis, you have to sneak by the wandering Nazi guards that have control of it. If you walk by them, it triggers a simple fist fighting mini-game that you have to win, or Indy will die. The final confrontation at the heart of Atlantis involves navigating a very intriguing amount of dialogue options, one of them resulting in Indy's death. I really felt like I had outsmarted my adversaries once I beat the game. While not essential to the story, Indy's mortality adds a sense of danger to the adventure. It's not meant to be serious, because we all know the hero isn't supposed to die. It simply mimics the nature of the films.

While the game does not chronicle the hunt for a religious artifact - the basis for every one of the films - there is still something spiritual about the quest. Sophia Hapgood is shown as a performing psychic and renowned authority on Atlantis at the beginning of the game, with her Atlantean necklace clearly her most prized possession. According to her, the necklace allows her to speak with a long dead resident of the Lost City, a talent that ends up providing a bit of assistance along the way. Sophia's belief in the power of the necklace blinds her to the truth of what really went on inside Atlantis; in a crisis of faith she realizes that there was a reason the Atlanteans didn't survive their so-called advanced civilization. Once again we are taught that some things are probably best left undisturbed.

The Fate of Atlantis provides a glimpse of what the marriage of a well-known property and good storytelling can do to a graphical adventure game's overall effectiveness. It is also an excellent example of cinematic presentation, without relying on the ultra-realistic visuals that are expected of games developed in last few years that are so arbitrarily assigned the term. Indeed, The Fate of Atlantis is an adventure game for the ages.

Posted by andrews at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

All kinds of fun random links up for GSL today, from the deepest of downs to the highest of highest, so we'd better whip them out for you, eh?:

- NeoGAF Depression GET!: Yes, we all know that NeoGAF is a den of iniquity, but following Microsoft's announcement of user-created Xbox 360 games, there was one particularly depressing reply that's worth pointing to, for its unique mix of truth and cynicism: "As someone who bought the commercial program from Garage Games and have been in the so-called 'indie game community', I can guarentee you that this move will fizzle just like the other proclaimed 'indie game revolutions'. Most indie game makers have no interest in learning the business. They want to make games for themselves. They want to make THEIR 'dream games'. I have no issue with this except watching these guys go through the highs of their 'ideas' and run smack into the wall of reality is pretty funny." And lots more!

- New Escapist Issue: Hey, the latest issue of The Escapist is up, and it's all about Ubisoft! Lots of fun stuff, and it also gets an interview with the previously GSW-featured UK Fragdoll that I Lazywebbed should be interviewed, yay. Here's the full rundown: "Feature contributor Spanner sets out to reveal the secret identity of Ubisoft in “Everywhere and Nowhere.” In “Ubisourcing” Allen Varney looks into outsourcing and how Ubisoft utilizes it more than most. Joe Blancato speaks with a former Frag Doll to find out what it was like, and why she would want to leave in “Frag Doll on Frag Dolls.” Russ Pitts examines the videogames of Tom Clancy and his formula for writing in “Red Storm Writing: The Ghost Writer Behind _Ghost Recon_.” And Jim Rossignol discusses the central character in one of Ubisoft’s more prominent games in “Green-Eyed Grrl.”"

- IGF Australian Exhibit: This will be announced on IGF.com with some nice pictures (hopefully!) in due course, but just wanted to point out to any Australians in the immediate area that the Australian Center For The Moving Image in Melbourne has an Independent Games Festival exhibition running until November which features a lot of the best titles from the 2006 IGF, playable for FREE - there's a fun essay on the IGF. Which quotes me, but don't let that worry you.

- Game Careers Books: Via some random surfing around, spotted a new book, 'Paid To Play', subtitled 'An Insider's Guide to Video Game Careers', and with illustrations by Penny Arcade. It claims: "Currently there are NO OTHER video game career guides with over 100 interviews from current, working game professionals. They are fully candid and give readers an unvarnished look inside the industry. The biggest secret? It's actually work." Out next month? Fun!

- Ewok Developer Blog?!: 1UP has a host of developer weblogs, and the funniest so far is from Wicket W. Warrick, who is plugging the forthcoming LucasArts-published Lego Star Wars II, as follows: "Wicket's friend at LucasArts just let Wicket know that LEGO Star Wars II site finally live! Yubnub! And you know how Wicket's LucasArts friend did it? With this e-mail that has Wicket both excited and a little confused." It then shows a character generator, and we're also a little excited and confused. But not furry.

- Eve Online Love-In: Over at Eurogamer, Jim Rossignol has an excellent interview with the Eve Online chaps talking about their upcoming Kali expansion, though it does expose just a bit how much the man adores Eve: "I began by asking Richardsson how it is that Eve seems to have evolved immeasurably since its launch, and yet manages to keep the core aspects of the game intact. Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies, launched at around the same time, are now comparatively messy affairs, riddled with disparate and ill-conceived elements. Eve meanwhile has carefully constructed a world of vicious PvP combat and intricate trade - ideas that were articulated from the outset and then slowly etched with detail as the game evolved." Still, if you like that type of game, it's totally true!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There's a whole insane mass of news stories popped up at Insert Credit, partly thanks to our co-worker Brandon being too damn busy to approve stuff at his spare-time gig, but a highlight is Chaz's round-up of Comiket-related PC dojin games.

Some of that dojin stuff is rather smart, and Chaz has a nice overview related to the Tokyo event: "The doujin game scene is mostly fueled with shooting games, fighting games, and fiction such as visual novels and kinetic novels... The doujin market is getting more and more important in Japan and, as a logical consequence, a few circles went professional and a few games crossed the frontier between doujin and regular circulation."

He then busts out the link stick, and we shamelessly borrow it, thanks Chaz!: "Most of the important doujin games are of course released this weekend for Comiket 70, and I invite you to investigate on Tasogare Frontier's Higurashi DayBreak (based on the highly popular horror series Higurashi), Blood -Over-, Record of Rozen War Alibat, Hinokakera (version 2.01 released for C70, trial & video available), Acceleration of Suguri (sequel to the popular Suguri), AiMasu Champ! (more on that one here), the demo of Chantelise+ (by the makers of Gunners Heart) and a new patch for Subtle Style's jawdropping fighting game Akatsuki Denkou Senki." Liiiinks!

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[‘Letters from the Metaverse’ is a regular weekly column by Mathew Kumar about his adventures in the massively multiplayer online world of Second Life. This week’s column covers melee combat games in Second Life.]

It's something to be said for the power of numbers going up that when I logged back into Second Life after filing my last column I couldn't help myself from getting my character to level up one more time before I said goodbye to the island of Navora.

This week I fully intended to check out Numbakulla, a “sophisticated quest sim” in the vein of Riven or Myst, until I got distracted by a flashy video of samurai combat on Wager James Au’s New World Notes. As a person who enjoyed Aquire’s PS2 title Way of the Samurai, this looked promisingly similar.

Samurai Island is split up into two sections – a facsimile Edo-period Japanese town, which takes up most of the island, and small walled off area, Combat Samurai Island, where the game takes place.

Samurai Island has to be one of the most beautiful areas in Second Life I’ve visited, with great colors, textures, and a cohesive theme. It also manages to load fast enough that blurry or missing textures don’t break the illusion too fast. What does break the illusion, of course, is the fact that like everywhere else in Second Life that’s rated mature, it’s full of sex shops. It does include a kind I’d never seen or paid attention to before – porn video stores.

This is a digression, but it’s actually a clever idea. The videos are probably cheap at $300 Linden for a day’s rental, and I can see people, or more accurately, the perverts of Second Life, stumping up the cash for this. They even had Debbie Does Dallas!

I wonder, do the adult movie studios have a Second Life presence? Can you rent videos that aren’t porn in other stores? Both, I imagine, are also good ideas.

Moving on, however. If you walk into the combat area, you can pick up a bokken – a wooden practice sword, which allows you to see the HUD, practice blocking, and perform one attack.

It’s a nice freebie, but is limited to the point of uselessness if you want to actually spar with someone. If you decide you really want to play, you have to run off to find the one very small store at the back of the island that sells “real” swords, that come in at the not to be sniffed at price of $800 Linden, which is nearly $4!

Yikes! You might be saying, but on the Gamesetwatch expense account it goes, and Seven Kikuchiyo was standing tall with his very own blade, featuring 15 different animations/attacks and an inventory system.

Surprisingly, once you’ve got a fully working sword, it really does play a lot like the aforementioned Way of the Samurai, with the addition of a little lag and Second Life’s ridiculously unsuitable movement controls. Sparring mostly takes the form of slow battles featuring a lot of blocking, with both combatants taking their time to look for an opening to make their decisive strike, though it can get a bit scrappy at points due to lag.

Scrappy as it is, it’s very playable, and much more immediate and better integrated with Second Life than, say, Dark Life, featuring as it does a HUD and an inventory system. Sadly, of course, once you’ve learned how to fight, there really isn’t anything to do other than smash boxes and fight practice dummies unless there are other players interested in sparring, and that can be a really limiting factor.

It’s probably not the intention of the designers, but if Combat Samurai Island was expanded into a fuller RPG experience, it’s something I could imagine returning to repeatedly. As it is, yet again something full of promise in Second Life is little more than a fun , though pricey, diversion.

[Mathew Kumar is a freelance journalist who’s dabbled in MMORPGs, but is too cheap/strong willed to play past a free trial. He got his break with Insert Credit, and his work has been featured in publications as diverse as The Globe and Mail, Game Reactor (translated into Danish!), and Eurogamer.]

Posted by mathewk at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We already know about EA's bizarre habit of getting famous pop/rockstars to sing in fictional Sims language Simlish, thanks to The Black-Eyed Peas and, more recently, a bizarre episode from Depeche Mode, turning 'Suffer Well' into well-intentioned gibberish.

This time, it's teen pop 'sensations' Aly & AJ (no, me neither!) who are doing it, and MTV News' Stephen Totilo, clearly a teenybopper himself, explains in the subhead: "Pop sisters already knew how to speak video game language before being approached for translated 'Chemicals React.'" Apparently, the Simlish version, which MTV News has a video excerpt from, is to promote "The Sims 2: Pets", which debuts in October.

Aly commented to Monsieur Totilo: '"AJ and I are huge 'Sims' fans. When we were asked to sing the song for the 'Pets' version, we were totally stoked." Their secret weapon? "We already knew how to speak Simlish."... The girls explained that carefully listening to the "Sims" games of old had put them in a good spot by the time EA approached them to sing in a non-native tongue. "They do speak it on the actual CD-ROM [of the game]," AJ said. "If you listen closely you can figure out, 'Oh, "chemicals" would be this.' OK, this is 'chobe and ashashnah.' " (The spellchecker is once again weeping.)" Yay!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just checked out the official website of 'Edge Bomber', which is "an interactive installation / a 'Pervasive Game'" created by a group of German developers that seems particularly good fun.

It's explained: "The player uses tape, stickers and scissors to create his own playground on a wall; the system grabs the scenery and creates a virtual level for our jump-n-run video game based on our game-engine "Z100". The grabbed playground is extended with items and enemies and is projected back to the original scenery. Thus a mixed media / augmented reality level is created, where our hero "ozkar" has to resist the attacks of hubert and the evil flying sausage."

There's a very neat video which shows the concept in action - somewhat like a Kirby/Yoshi-like DS title with regard to drawing on the screen, only using tape in real life!

Also, creator Susigames has an English-language projects page which reveals another recent subject, a Symbian game called, in SPECTACULARLY unfortunate fashion, '5 Glory Holes'. It's nothing to do with that - "you have to smack down as many opponents as possible for every single level" in a Whac-A-Mole stylee. Stop giggling at the back!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Parallax Memories' is a regular weekly column by Matthew Williamson, profiling classic '16-bit' games from the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and other seminal '90s systems. This week's column profiles Konami’s 1994 game: Castlevania Bloodlines]

In the Family

The Genesis Castlevania is called Bloodlines. If you had a Mega Drive it would have been called either The New Generation (PAL) or Vampire Killer (JPN). The game is Konami’s only Castlevania title for a Sega console, and was their most original up to that time. Because the game was designed on a secondary console, Konami’s designers let their hair down and changed the standard platform-jumping, vampire-slaying, and black-and-white-horror-film formula.

Bloodlines’ story attempts to bridge a gap in the canon. Where the series previously had only a loose connection to the novel by Bram Stoker, there is now a direct connection with Dracula. The game has two selectable characters: John Morris, wielder of the Vampire Killer whip; and Eric Lecarde, wielder of the Alucarde Spear. If you are unfamiliar with the novel, Quincy Morris is the American who helps Van Helsing defeat Dracula and is killed by Gypsies during the final confrontation in Transylvania. John is the son of Quincy and a descendant of the Belmont family, and he keeps the bloodline going as owner of the Vampire Killer. Eric is his friend who seeks revenge for the death of his girlfriend. The Countess Elizabeth Bartley wants to resurrect her uncle, Dracula, and in her attempt starts World War I. (Yes, Castlevania: Bloodlines has World War I skeletons with helmets—let’s just get that out of the way.) Eric and John travel Europe to defeat her before she can resurrect Dracula.

European Vacation

I know that is more background than I normally give, but for a Castlevania game it’s quite unique. Many Castlevanias retell the first game, and few are set outside of Dracula’s castle. But almost all of Bloodlines takes place outside of the castle and its estate, and the level variation sets Bloodlines apart. It was one of the last action-style Castlevanias (before they became Metroidvanias), and Konami expanded greatly on what had been considered a stale formula. The levels range from an homage to the original title to a trip up the slanted Leaning Tower of Pisa. Some levels also have slight variations depending on which character you have chosen.

The largest difference from previous games is Eric Lecarde, the Spear toting sidekick. Eric is implemented very well, and makes the game both easier and slightly more challenging. His spear attack is versatile, fast, and accurate, making enemy disposal fluid and painless. In contrast, John’s whip is still the same as in previous incarnations—slow and plodding.

Igavania

Bloodlines was the goriest game in the series at that time. When you whip a zombie, his upper torso is knocked off and his lower torso falls over, spilling his blood and guts. Killing a crow will leave it twitching on the ground before it disappears. The Hellhound sub-boss explodes sending blood, flesh, and gore flying everywhere. And this is only the first level. Unfortunately, if you played the European version of the game, you probably don't remember it this way. The PAL version is heavily censored, the zombies are green, there is less gore, and the pool of blood in the intro screen was changed to a pool of water.

Bloodlines symbolized change for Castlevania. Almost every aspect of the series was changed while preserving the mechanics and horror-movie feel. Three years later, two-dimensional Castlevania got another overhaul with Symphony of the Night, which was then carried on to the Gameboy Advance and into the Nintendo DS, by Koji Igarashi, the current caretaker of the series. Igarashi's next game will be a sequel to Castlevania: Bloodlines. Perhaps this means Castlevania is in need of a change once again.

[Matthew Williamson is the creator of The Gamer’s Quarter, an independent videogame magazine focusing on first person writing. His work has been featured on MTV.com, 1up.com, Chatterbox Radio, and the Fatpixels Radio Podcast.]

Posted by Matthew Williamson at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Our Blazing Destiny is a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games. And more drama within the office of Silph Co.]

This week, Persona comments tragically (also, note, this comic is SLIGHTLY NSFW due to swearing fun and bizarre smuttiness!): "My plan to turn this comic into an all Sega comic has failed. Woe! Also, my last few comics have been drawn on an LCD monitor and I'm really noticing that it's ruining the colors on other screens. I'll return to a CRT for the next comic!"

[Jonathan "Persona" Kim is sometimes a character animation student at the California Institute of the Arts, other times a ninja illustrator, but in his heart, a true comic artist looking for his destiny in the sea of stars. His path on the torrid road of comics include a quarterly manga on The Gamer's Quarter and his website on the awesome collective, Mecha Fetus. Hm!

Posted by persona at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Over at the Indie Gamer forums, there's a fun post showcasing Boom! Boom! Driller!, whose official site reveals that it's yet another of the wacky Scandinavian games showcased in the Assembly '06 game competition.

The author, Sol_HSA, explains of the title: "The game is a 2d explosive drill-mining game in the feel of lemmings or worms. Kind of... As an additional twist, I decided to add a indie music soundtrack, and managed to sign on four bands, making this game (as far as I know anyway) the world's first freely distributable game with licensed music, and also such a game with the best soundtrack ever :)"

Commenter 'whisperstorm' seems to like it, noting: "This reminds me of that hell of sand java game. The music rocks and the gameplay is great! You should make a sequel with more kinds of traps, explosions, etc." Also, we want a puppy! But the game is indeed pretty neat, as far as we can tell - go check it?

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All kinds of madness has invaded our minds on this fair Monday, although our main concern in live is whether there's going to be an Xbox Live Arcade game released this Wednesday - yes, we've seen the list, but is it actually true?

Meanwhile, there's this:

- We forgot about Segagaga Domain for a while, but in checking out this retro Sega paradise again, we note all kinds of fun scans and updates - or at least, fun if you want to find out about the Japanese DC version of NFL 2K1, for which "Sega released this and NBA2K1 in a special pack containing a in-depth rule book". Oh, and the Retro Core web video show is good stuff, too.

- We Make Money Not Art has more information on the 'SIMVeillance' art project at San Jose's ZeroOne Festival: "SIMVeillance: San Jose, by Katherine Isbister and Rainey Straus in collaboration with SIM consultant Chelsea Hash, uses surveillance cameras and the video game The Sims 2 to re-present passersby within a game environment that mirrors a "real life" public space: the Fairmont Plaza in downtown San Jose." GDC attendees will know the area well!

- The2Bears has a write-up on an awesome-looking new PC dojin shmup, as follows: "ourtesy of Danmaku Gata comes the news today of a new release by Hikoza’n-CHI X. Hikoza, developer of Warning Forever and Shooter’s Solitude, now gives us the mouse driven game Ray-Hound, coinciding with Comiket." Must get!

- Alice's Wonderland Blog has info on 3D printed World Of Warcraft avatars - this is a claimed feature for Spore, too, right? Alice moons happily: "Won't it be fantastic when you can print out and collect avatars as souvenirs of your gaming experience? I'd love to have a shelf load of avatars - Quake marine alice, Star Wars Galaxies alice, WoW alice(s), Second Life alice, Halo alice ... talk about memories ..."

- The 'From Sun Tzu to Xbox' war and games blog has some enchantingly jingoistic America's Army fan wallpapers posted - we like the one that says 'America's Army - Bad Boys - Together We Stand, An Army Of One', but you may also enjoy the one that looks like a GoldenEye loading screen. Any way up, they're there, and they exist, so there.

- Dean Takahashi at the Merc News got his 9-year-old daughter to review Loco Roco, as follows: "This game is for younger kids such as five- or six-year-olds. Older kids might not like it. The music is for two- or three-year-olds. It gets annoying with the baby singing. If you beat the level, you get a prize. I haven't beaten the whole level yet so I don't know what the prize is. I'd give this game a one out of four star rating." Youch - apparently Japan is similarly dismissive, though my money is on it doing reasonably well in the States.

- UK Resistance is making fun of IGN's UK operations announcement news post, and rightly so. Cmdr Zorg, attempting to whittle away the few friends he still has in the biz, insists: "It makes Gamesradar look good", also, haw. As someone who appears to be British and also appears to live in America, I concur - either you do properly separate European sites and MAKE SOME EFFORT (yay, Eurogamer!), or you go home.

Enough of this dodgy semi-integration of UK and US editorial, which makes almost no sense given the worldwide nature of most games, and is just to have a reason to redirect all European traffic to new ad servers so you can sell them to UK publishers. [But I guess IGN UK could 'rock the bells', having said that, tragic opening announcements notwithstanding. I'm just opposed because the reasoning behind opening it is Machiavellian, rather than editorially-led.]

- We've just mentioned this over at Gamasutra too, but GameSpot have spotted a new EA compilation for PSP that compiles a bunch of SNES and Genesis EA titles, as follows: "B.O.B.--1993--SNES and Genesis; Budokan--1990--Genesis
Desert Strike--1993--SNES and Genesis; Jungle Strike--1993--SNES and Genesis; Haunting Starring; Polterguy--1993--Genesis; Mutant League Football--1993--Genesis; Road Rash--1992--Genesis, later on 3DO; Road Rash II--1993--Genesis; Road Rash III--1995--Genesis; Syndicate--1995--SNES, 3DO, Jaguar; Ultima: The Black Gate--1994--SNES; Virtual Pinball--1993--Genesis; Wing Commander--1993--SNES; Wing Commander: The Secret Missions--1993--SNES." A pretty odd lot, but presumably they're using a Genesis emulator for most of this, and hey, beats a kick in the teeth, huh?

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There's no time like the present for a GameSetCompetition Reminder, since our compo deadline for Dead Rising, the zombie-tastic mall-carnage-y Xbox 360 exclusive is Wednesday, August 16th at 12 noon PST

As previously mentioned, we have 5 copies of the game and 3 Dead Rising T-shirts to give away - the first 3 winners will get both the game and the T-shirt, and the next two get the game - rawk! Again, here's the question:

"In the zombie-docious movie 'Shaun Of The Dead', which Prince album _is_ considered of sufficiently bad quality to be thrown at the heads of the rapidly approaching undead?"

Please send your answers to editors@gamesetwatch.com any time before Wednesday, August 16th at 12 noon PST. There will be five winners randomly picked from the correct answers, the judges' decision is final, and that's that. Have fun!

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We at GSW are big fans of New York artist and Parappa co-creator Rodney Alan Greenblat - sister site Gamasutra did a pretty canonical interview with him last year about his work on the Parappa/Lammy games - and now we see he's emailed us with a new gallery show he's putting on.

Greenblat unfortunately seems like he won't be doing any more game work ("I basically decided to retire from games after the [Parappa Japanese animated] television show... For the past two years I've just been doing paintings and sculptures, redeveloping my art and ideas", he told Gama last year), and his recent exhibits have tended toward the abstract, with his new Arizona exhibition, "at Gallery Centella in Tucson Arizona, opening Friday September 15th", showcasing that further.

Further notes on the exhibit are as follows: "Rodney Alan Greenblat - "Universe" - September 15 - October 21 2006. Opening reception Friday September 15, 5-8pm. Gallery tour by the artist: Sunday September 17, 2-4pm." We especially like the 'Moon Robin' sculpture and the completely awesome 'Comet' ornament, but all of them are wonderful.

[Parappa fans jones-ing for a less abstract fix should go check out the limited-edition Um Jammer Lammy postcards, which are probably a bit cheaper than the original art.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is somewhat, though not spectacularly game-related, but all kinds of cool - Mark DeLoura points out what "looks like a full-color hologram on a roll-up translucent film" - here's the page, showcasing Final Fantasy: Advent Children animation on a sheet of film, with LOTS more animation frames than we're used to from this kind of optical effect.

There are even better examples in the same directory - a soccer player and a Terminator II cyborg head mounted on a board, and a little poking around reveals the XYZ Imaging website, advertising "the world’s first holographic printing bureau capable of creating production ready multi-resolution, full color, reflective holograms from pure digital media."

Interestingly, this is a company recently acquired by XYZ RGB, a firm that's used extensively by the video game and film industries for super-high-res scanning, so one wonders if there will ever be any gaming crossover - would it be possible to get a screen to reproduce these effects? In the meantime, you can order your own holographic poster based on your own image via the site - with prices up to $3300, and the rendering needing to be done yourself. Anyone gonna try it?

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Since it's important to cover only breaking news of paramount importance to the game biz on GSW - we spotted that Dustin Diamond almost got mugged for his PSP games - by a female fan, no less - in Omaha, Nebraska last week.

It's explained breathlessly by E!: "Dustin Diamond, the irrepressible Samuel "Screech" Powers of Saved by the Bell fame... says the unidentified fan attended his sold-out Sunday night gig and, in the wee hours of Monday, accosted him at his hotel room before trying to make off with his precious PSP videogames."

Apparently, she may have been trying to steal his gig money, and "...then, he said, "she grabs my PlayStation Portable games, said, "This will have to do," and goes running out the door. "I'm a big gamer and you don't mess with the D-man's videogames," he said." Thus, a scuffle, and then the police, and OH MY. No charges were pressed. What PSP games is Dustin into, though? Ape Escape? Lumines? I think we should be told. [EDIT: Eek, I'm informed that I used almost the same headline as IGN. Is there something I can take for that?]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Matt at Press The Buttons has a little news story up pointing to Chris Kohler's 1UP article on Donkey Kong, which is rather excellent in itself.

But super duper duper excellent is PTB's pointer to a YouTube vid of early '80s show 'LiveWire', which features a concerned PTA member talking about the danger of arcade games putting your kids into massive debt (not sure the term 'Shylock' is actually allowed nowadays!), before, OH JOY, Buckner and Garcia pop up at about 5 minutes and 40 seconds into the clip, in order to rock out to 'Do The Donkey Kong'. Absolutely awesome.

Of course, there's another clip which starts with Buckner & Garcia (or is that Luke Smith on the mic? We reckon so!) rocking out to 'Pac-Man Fever'. Seriously, next time anyone has a corporate party with a sensible budget (which Sony would have, next E3, but OH WELL), hire Buckner & Garcia - we'll be all over it.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dude, it's totally Sunday, which means it's totally time to take a wander around the blogosphere and come up with a whole bunch of fun, random links, including inevitable 3DO references up front, of course:

- Continuing our proud tradition of linking 3DO Kids, he's now posted about an obscure Sanyo title for 3DO called N.O.B., or 'Neo-Organic Bio-Form'. As he lovingly explains: "It was so big and shiny. I just had to pop it in and let it spin around. When it came up it was so big and impressive to begin with. And it was so hard too! I kept playing with it and playing with it and it just got harder and harder. Until I had to eject it." Oh dear. Anyhow, it's terrible, and you should read about it.

- 3PointD.com has pointed out that "Virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red is busy these days. Having recently announced they’d be bringing hit pop band Duran Duran to the virtual world of Second Life, the news is now that they’re bringing the metaverse back home, so to speak, by working with publisher Penguin to create a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, to be distributed in Second Life, a world largely inspired by the book." Is this cool? I'm starting to get a bit Second Life-d out, to be honest.

- Over at Broken Toys, Scott J. has rounded up the new World Of Warcraft interviews released on Friday night to collective wibbling from about 6 million WoW players. He notes: "Interestingly, although perhaps expectedly (is that a real word?), both interviews concentrate less on new content from the upcoming expansion than in news of interest to the millions of people hanging on word from WoW’s live team." And then explains it all, and it's a bit complicated, but "limiting expansion raids to 25 people" seems to be the most controversial. Have at it!

- Following controversy over a Geometry Wars clone being 'cease and desisted' (or, rather, getting a polite pre-C&D letter) from Bizarre Creations, Indy Gamer has compiled a big list of Geometry Wars clones for PC - v.useful. He notes: "Why did Bizarre Creations stop at one when there are at least ten other efforts probably infringing on their rights? It was never clarified properly as to which of GridWars designs were similar, since all the games mentioned in this article also bears some semblance to Geometry Wars." Well, now they have all the URLs in one handy place, doh!

- Planet GameCube has reviewed Cooking Mama, which will be released in the States by Majesco later this year, and explain the gameplay handily: "Actually making the dish is split up into multiple mini-games, all of which are very WarioWare-ish in nature. Using only the stylus, you’re required to complete tasks like cracking an egg over a bowl, stirring a pot, or moving the temperature slide on a stove to prevent your meal from over-heating." However, it's noted: "My main complaint about Cooking Mama is that, while the mini-games are fun at first, they’re used pretty frequently, and sometimes it’ll seem like you’re just making a different meal in a jumbled order."

- Finally, Armchair Arcade has a longish article about 'Revisiting SSI's Legendary Gold Box Games'. I never really played these, but I know that ".... It’s hard to exaggerate the kind of nostalgic reverie that these words are able to evoke in true fans of SSI’s legendary computer role-playing games (CRPGs)." In other words - instant fap time for some, quizzical looks for others - and I presume that the titles are kinda hardcore for today's market, but boy, a lot of people still love 'em.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's another interesting post from elsewhere in the blogosphere, from science fiction writer Charlie Stross, in which he suggests that the rise of gaming has all kinds of social ripples that perhaps many aren't thinking about.

Stross starts by noting: "Sad to say, the political landscape of the early to mid 21st century has already been designed -- by Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary didn't realize it (D&D predates personal computing) but his somewhat addictive game transferred onto computers quite early (see also: Nethack). And then gamers demanded -- and got, as graphics horsepower arrived -- graphical versions of same... Which leads me to the key insight that: our first commercially viable multi-user virtual reality environments have been designed (and implicitly legislated) to emulate pencil-and-paper high fantasy role playing games." Sounds right!

Oddly enough, this overlaps somewhat with the recent GSW post in which I discussed how the oldest of oldskool Western RPGs influenced Japanese ones more than we might think. Anyhow, Stross is particularly interesting when he says: "An environment developed implicitly for gaming/playing, then re-purposed for acting/doing in real life, offers all sorts of interesting possibilities for behavioural traps equivalent to not understanding that location bar at the top of the browser window."

Like what? "The two general failure modes will be: (a) thinking that something is a game, when in actual fact it isn't, and (b) thinking something is real when it's just a simulation. These will also interact with a population who take longer to reach "traditional" adulthood (if they ever do so), and who therefore may engage in game-play or learning oriented behaviour inappropriately." Uhoh, Blizzard, now everyone is a perpetual kiddie, thanks to you!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As some of you may recall, as well as running GSW, Game Developer, Gamasutra, and balancing plates on my nose, I'm the Chairman of the Independent Games Festival, which is in its ninth year - and I'm trying to get the word out early this year about the first deadline.

As we explain on the official website: "The IGF Main Competition, a resounding success in 2006, has received a few minor tweaks (slight category name changes, a demo is mandatory to enter the Audience Award if a finalist), but continues with the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and multiple $2,500 awards for innovative design, audio, technical, art, and best web game. We're really looking forward to your entries, and the deadline this year is September 8, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT." Which isn't really _that_ far away, y'know?

We already have a few really sharp entries this year, and welcome a plethora of indie games into the IGF, if you guys are up for entering - from the quirkiest freeware PC titles, through shareware, downloadable, and even niche retail titles - any of you indie XBLA titles up for entering, too? We'd also love to see more web browser gamers entered this year, following the triumphant win of Fulp and Paladin's Dad 'N Me in the inaugural Best Web Game compo.

In addition, we have a Mod Competition deadline on October 13, 2006 - after a succesful first year, it's "...going even more freeform this year, and allowing mods from any game to compete - from Thief to Half-Life 2 to Oblivion to The Sims and beyond, all mods are eligible." Let's get some really obscure and cool stuff entered, huh? Also, the always popular Student Showcase has entries due November 10, 2006, and even has a Best Student Game category this year - so don't delay, enter today! We'll remind again before the first deadline.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the Internet, the ever-dangerous SomethingAwful is a verdant source of netculture, often game-related (such as their support of the Mega64 folks, for one), so their latest 'Flash Tub' from former GSW-cartoonist Shmorky, a game named 'The Stupid Room', is the latest shenanigan to debut.

'The Stupid Room' is a 'Choose Your Own Adventure'-style game with highly ironic voiceover and scary text/graphics adventure type occurrences, and now FrankC recommended it to us, we also noticed that TIGSource linked to it a coupla days back.

They claim that it's a "...kinda-fun adventure game that features some not-too-annoying voiceovers and some decent video game references. Two very mediocre thumbs sideways!" Well, video game humor being on the tricky side, we liked it a bit more than that - apparently there are a whole bunch of endings and even overcomplicated secrets enclosed, huzzah. So go poke around, now.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the arrival in yesterday's mail of Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 5 (the 1990 buyer's guide issue), I've achieved an important milestone for any game-mag collector -- a full run of all 207 issues of (possibly, arguably, you never know, it might be) the greatest console magazine of all time. I was so proud that I couldn't help but take a picture.

They say that EGM enjoyed national distribution from the beginning and had a circulation of 64,000 by 1991, but honestly, the first 20 or so issues are damned hard to find these days. Issue 5, in particular, I've been relentlessly pursuing for literally years -- Ziff Davis doesn't even have a copy (not that I was gonna steal it from them) and I literally know only two other people who do have one, neither of which were about to give it up. I finally found one available for trade last week, though, and while I gave up a ton for it (and am not particularly fond of the condition it's in), I'm extremely happy to have EGM done and over with. Now to tackle Game Informer, which I'm sure will be even more painful.

Going back to the modern age, a total of eight game mags hit the stands in the past two weeks, two of which have Shaun Alexander on the cover. Find out which (and a lot of other interesting things besides) by clicking through.

Electronic Gaming Monthly September 2006 (Podcast)

I know I completed the set and everything, but I have to admit that I don't have much to comment on with Issue 207 here. There's a crew-cut space marine on the cover, but I'm willing to forgive it 'cos the game it's for, Bioware's Mass Effect, looks superb. The main preview feature this time around is "Tough Guys", covering badarses like Tony Montana, the Sopranos, and that guy from Yakuza -- all rated with the "Thompsonometer," with one Jack Thompson head being benign and five being the subject of a guest appearance on Hannity & Colmes.

The big draw this month: Might be the reviews section, which is the liveliest in several months -- not only are there some actual good games on the block this month, but the disparity in ratings between reviewers can get pretty dramatic in certain games. Deep Labyrinth gets everything from 2.0 to 7.5, for example.

I keep on forgetting: To mention Seanbaby's two pages in the back, which are also the funniest he's been in a while as he tackles games set in a postapocalyptic world that was supposed to happen around now -- for example, Revolution X, where the new world order comes along and outlaws music (and also Aerosmith) on November 11, 1996.

PSM September 2006 (Podcast)

You can tell there was a whole lotta nuthin' going on around PSM Towers when it came time to put this issue to print. I can feel their pain, definitely -- the PS3 is ostensibly coming out three months from now, but there still isn't much to cover about it yet, and in the meantime the PS2 review lineup is getting downright laughable (this issue came out before Valkyrie Profile 2 or Okami was available; they both got reviews in EGM).

The result: This is the most random-filler-laden issue of PSM I've ever seen, arguably more so than later issues of Amiga Power and other late British mags. Features include two pages on the future viability of the PS2, a spread speculating on the PS3's online interface, and full pages on Metal Gear fan favorite Meryl Silverburg and a bikini-laden Japanese PSP commercial. There's even four pages on Pelican's TiltForce 2 pad -- a PS1 controller released in 1999, but dredged up in an attempt to fill space see how tilt functionality could affect a wide variety of future PS3 games.

The cover: is Resistance: Fall of Man, the Insomniac game that many say looks better than Gears of War. There's 12 pages of coverage on it, including 4 devoted to an interview with company head and all-around nice guy Ted Price.

Nintendo Power September 2006

This issue of NP feels remarkably thick, and that's thanks to two things: a big pamphlet-like ad for Nintendo's Touch Generations lineup, and an insert Pokemon comic (part 1 of 6) to celebrate Mystery Dungeon. The poster this month is also a beaut -- it's for Rocket Slime and I'm seriously debating the merits of putting it on the wall. I'm at the point in my life where it really doesn't behoove to put video-game posters on the wall any longer, but...

The cover: Is for the Wii Rayman, which doesn't say much new but succeeds in making me (a) much more excited for the game (b) a massive Michel Ancel fanboy. Seriously, he's a nutter.

There's also: A big preview of Red Steel, but seriously, with this game, mag previews are becoming a case of fool me once, fool me twice...

NP-only interviews this month: Include Takeshi Horinouchi (Mega Man ZX) and Nobuyuki Inoue (Magical Starsign)

I just noticed: that Nintendo Power and EGM now have the same number of issues (207) under their belt. EGM's gonna have to put out another "holiday" issue like they did in 2004 to get ahead again.

Tips & Tricks September 2006

Tips & Tricks may have the highest number of regular features of any game mag today. It's getting almost Famitsu-like in size. In this issue, we have 2-page spreads on: game figures/toys; game-based anime and cartoons; gear; Mega Man; game-based comics; games on film (making its debut this month); Final Fantasy; mobile gaming; online gaming; sports games; Halo 2; classic game collecting; and finally Japan news. That's 13 columns, and it almost guarantees that no matter what game you wanted tips on, there's got to be something here to strike your fancy.

Naruto update: T&T was nice enough to follow up on last month's Naruto: Ultimate Ninja strategy, in which the editor ran out of time to finish the game's final challenge of playing through over 18,000 matches. This month it's revealed that your reward for doing this is...an S-rank certificate screen. Wooo.

Computer Games September 2006

CGM has it pretty rough these days. It skipped its August issue (the last ish was "July/August", similar to what Game Developer does and what CGW did a year ago); the beta test access code for MMORPG Vanguard in the June issue became useless after the game got delayed (and switched publishers); and Donna Collins wrote in to the letters section to express her disgust at June's feature on sex-oriented games ("I will be filling as many complaints against your company as humanly possible").

The cover subject is Sid Meier's Railroads!, and it's a great excuse for CGM to pick Meier's mind on all sorts of things, including lost 3DO classic CPU Bach ("CPU Bach...umm...is a piece of software... that creates music... somewhat in the style of Bach").

Also worth noting: A very nice introductory feature on EVE Online. If this is what Massive magazine (still due out September) is going to be like, my hopes are definitely up.

I noticed: That the console-game coverage is almost gone from the mag. There used to be several pages on it, but this issue there's only one roundup-type article. Maybe it's been gone for a while and I hadn't noticed, but man, that didn't last too quickly.

GamePro September 2006

GamePro's "real" cover this month is a hot world-exclusive on Tecmo's DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2. However, I seem to be getting the Level-2 edition of GamePro about two weeks before the regular edition, so instead the cover's a big heaping bowl of Shaun Alexander in my face. Thanks, Best Buy.

Regardless, DOAX2 is a surprise cover for GamePro in my eyes -- especially considering Wataru Maruyama, ex-GamePro staff and a man who was obsessed with the first DOAX, left the magazine years ago. As you'd expect, the six-page feature is packed with ladies, and while the game really doesn't look all that different, I'm sure Team Ninja fans won't mind much. There's also a hot-sclusive on Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam for the Wii.

Top Itagaki quote: "[With] a game like this, you have to respect your characters and show love for them...you want to capture the girls in a natural environment, acting the way they'd really act. If you were to show a naked girl jumping on a trampoline...it's obvious they'd been forced to do that. It loses any sense of sexuality that it could possibly have had."

Strangely familiar: A preview feature that covers violent, crime-oriented games, headed up by John Woo's Stranglehold. Each game is rated one to four bullets based on the level of carnage. Funny how EGM came up with basically the same preview-feature theme this month...and even most of the games covered are the same, although GamePro's got more of a movie theme going. Great preview editors think alike, obviously.

Beckett Spotlight: Sports Video Gamer

I know I've spent the past few months trashing everything Beckett prints, but I'm letting up with this latest one-off 'cos it's actually pretty good if you can ignore the molecule-thin paper. For one, most of it's written by video-game freelancers, IGN folks, and the editors of Beckett's assorted sports mags, so it's all people who (at the very least) have picked up a controller and/or football once in their lives. For another, it's filled with quick little features that're fun to read even for a non-hardcore sports freak myself. Chief among them are IGN Sports editor-in-chief Jon Robinson's six-page overview of the the history of sports games (from Atari 2600 Football to Blitz: The League); a similar history of the Madden franchise; and an utterly enormous litany of articles on Madden strategy, Madden websites, Madden team profiles, Madden this, and Madden that. If you're a year-in-year-out Madden buyer, I can absolutely see the worth in buying this mag.

The best feature of all: Four pages of quotes from NFL players about video games and playing as themselves in Madden. Reggie Bush admits to being a Tecmo Bowl man, while Jacksonville QB Byron Leftwich whines about his stellar speed rating of 48 ("Even the long snapper is faster than me").

Game eveloper August 2006

And, of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't start covering this mag -- I never could find it at any local newsstand, but my subscription has finally started up, so all's well again.

I have to admit that I'm running out of time and this just arrived in the mail a couple minutes ago, so I can't cover the more techy articles in much depth right now. There's a postmortem on Tomb Raider: Legend and an interview with Masaya Matsuura, so it can't all be bad.

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Now, we don't always reference sister site Gamasutra here, partly because we presume that you already read it (plug!), but yesterday's feature is totally worth mentioning - a postmortem of Wideload's Stubbs The Zombie from Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian.

The piece was originally printed in the January 2006 issue of Game Developer magazine, and Seropian notes: "To be an independent developer in the current climate of publisher consolidation and rising costs seemed impossible, but somehow Wideload was created. I challenged myself to create a company with a set of commandments essential to my personal and professional happiness."

They are: "First Commandment: We shall establish our game’s creative direction... Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property... Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who’s doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals... Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don’t want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don’t want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects." Lots, lots more neatness if you click through.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The TI-83 series of graphical calculators from Texas Instruments was first released in 1996, and was the first in the TI series to support assembly language. It was later superseded by the TI-83+ in 1999, which included a flash ROM. The calculator is probably best known to anyone who took – or is in the process of taking – a high level maths in secondary school.

Spencer Putt has been programming games for the TI-83+ for a number of years. His first public release was a port of Harvest Moon in 2004 – an astounding effort, considering that most people familiar with the unit wouldn’t have played anything more complex than Lemonade Stand. In early July he announced his latest project would be a Zelda game, complete with accelerating scrolling camera, rain effects, and wavy camera effects (for lack of better term).

GameSetWatch spoke to Putt via email about his interest in the TI-83+, and exactly how you make a Zelda game for it.

What's your background with programming?

I started off with TI-BASIC in middle school, moved to JavaScript when I was into web development, then to C (not understanding it), to z80 assembly, then back to C (really understanding it this time around). I've been writing games since I started programming.

What is your fascination with the TI-83?

I never had gaming consoles growing up, so when I saw that my brother's calculator had games, it just stuck in the back of my mind, lingering. Poisoning my thoughts.

What inspired you to attempt converting Zelda and Harvest Moon for the TI-83?

Harvest Moon for SNES and N64, and any and all Zelda games. Link's Awakening is a true testament to what can be done on a limited system. Ocarina of Time is simply the best game of all time. My goal was to recreate the feel of the games on this crappy little system that every student has.

Is the Zelda you're working on a conversion of any game in particular?

Nope. Though I'm using the Link from Link's Awakening (and if you've seen some of the videos, many other characters as well), all of the tiles are new, the dungeons and puzzles are new, and story is new.

How is this possible on a TI-83+? My understanding has always been; the more your try and do graphically, the slower it's going to be, but the videos suggested things were moving exceptionally smoothly - especially the camera movement, which was amazing.

Yes, it is programmed for the lowest common denominator: the black [standard] TI-83+. Most people have dabbled in the built in TI-BASIC, which gives them an impression that the calculator is slow. While it's astounding that TI has made such a complete language on such a weak device, when you get down to the assembly level things are a lot faster. The video you saw was recorded on an emulator, a copy of a TI-83+ running on a computer. The game will run faster on the real calculator.

Well, that said, what problems have you encountered?

Managing an assembly project this large has been difficult. I'll go a few months and totally forget how a particular section of the game works. It's currently hovering around 25,000 lines separated into 30 some files
As the project got bigger, the assembler most people use began to slow down, it took around 10 seconds to build the project. It was getting the point where it was annoying waiting to test, since sometimes I'd only change a byte or two between assemblies. I wrote a new assembler which can build the project in far less than a second.

What advantages does the system have?

Unlike programming for a PC, with a calculator you have complete control over the system. Any code that runs while Zelda is open is mine. It makes errors easy to track down because you know whose fault it is.
Of course, the biggest advantage is audience. Even if it is just middle schoolers, a lot of people will play this.

What exactly is inside the TI-83+?

The black edition has a 6 MHz Zilog Z80 CPU, 32k of RAM and a 96x64 pixel B&W LCD display. There's also 512k flash, of which Zelda uses 64k, or four pages.

How do you go about writing a game for the TI-83+?

It isn't hard! I encourage anyone interested to get started -- it's a very cheap hobby. I write in symbol machine code, known as z80 assembly language. An assembler converts it straight to binary that the processor understands, unlike higher level languages, like Java, which filters down through several levels before being run by the processor. While assembly language is more difficult to grasp at first, it becomes so straight forward that it’s very easy to write.

How far into the process of producing the game are you?

I'm in the scenario stage. Dungeon and story work is all that's left, with the game well over half complete. I've been working on in gradually over the…holy hell...past two and a half years. I won't stop until it no longer entertains me.

Posted by alistairw at 3:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

Over at Armchair Arcade, there's a reasonably interesting post named 'Kawaisa!: A Naive Glance at Western and Eastern RPGs', which looks at how RPGs have evolved differently on different sides of the Pacific.

Author Matt Barton has a relatively simple thesis: "In short, what I see when I compare games like Pool of Radiance and Dragon Quest, or Neverwinter Nights and Final Fantasy, is a great cultural rift. It seems to me that folks who grew up playing Japanese games on their NES and later SNES systems probably developed an affinity for Japanese style art and themes that have created a sort of "East/West divide" right here in the US." In other words, some Western players love JRPGs, and others (presumably the 'D20' types?) love Western RPGs.

But I think the evolution of the RPG is actually a lot more complicated and interesting than that. The fact is that, despite the sometimes adorable graphics, the play systems in Japanese RPGs seem much more heavily influenced by the old, old-school Western computer RPG, particularly the Henk Rogers-designed JRPG grandaddy Black Onyx, which was tremendously influential even on the creators of Final Fantasy.

In addition, we've previously mentioned JRPGs being influenced by the early '80s-originated Western-sourced Wizardry series, which is still popular in Japan, and shows the hardcore turn-based grinding battle system which is the core of many a Japanese role-playing game in today's market. Meanwhile, the Western RPG, such that it still exists, has evolved into the supple story-based automation seen in many a BioWare title - the roots seem significantly more blurred across multiple genres.

So what are we trying to say here? Mainly that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and that despite distinctive anime or manga-influenced visuals, the clearest evolution from the roots of the Western role-playing game genre is, I'd argue, in today's Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, and not in the genre-blurring West itself, where the RPG is practically an orphan genre at this point.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

You guys probably read Chris Kohler's Game|Life blog over at Wired News (newly acquired by Wired Magazine ubercompany Conde Nast, incidentally, after a long period of website/printmag separation, so the power of Wired is back in one company's hands, muhahaha), so you'll know about his latest San Francisco thrift store escapades.

As for 'the art of thrifting', chez Kohler, he helpfully explains: "Technically it's not as if I am just ridiculously lucky or anything. It's kind of down to two factors: 1) I do not, technically speaking, have a job; 2) I know what is and is not valuable."

His haul? "There aren't that many Sega Master System games that are worth a lot of cash -- even the sought-after Phantasy Star isn't worth more than $40 or so -- but Golvellius: Valley of Doom is in the upper tier. Apparently it's a quirky but fun Zelda clone, with a bug that resets the game if you buy a certain weapon. Hot!"

What's more: "Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 is much harder to track down than Space Squadron or whatever it's called, I can't be arsed to scroll up and look, but it sucks. Herzog Zwei, meanwhile, not only does not suck but is the rarest game in this pile. Whoo." C'mon, Chris, Herzog Zwei is the FATHER OF SOMETHING OR OTHER. That must count for something!

[Anyhow, Kohler's post was also useful because the comments alerted me to the fact that Dan Amrich, aka Dan Elektro for those GamePro fans (and nowadays over at Future U.S.), has a new weblog up, in which he's apparently considering making a random quote generator for classic things said by Andy Eddy's wife. This, folks, is what happens when you're a game journalist for too long, and I, for one, like it a lot. Also, he has two Um Jammer Lammy guitars, and I'm still jealous.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Our buddy Jiji ran out of stuff to post for his 'Compilation Catalog' column, so we're calling it 'A Life In Obscurity', and he'll alternate random D3 musings with compilation round-ups and other odd reviews, bi-weekly. Only on GSW! Because only we're crazy enough!]

Japanese budget publisher D3 haven't slacked off during these hot summer months: they've kept up a steady flow of information on new titles, and they've ticked off some of the entries on their busy release schedule. Let's get started!

Simple Series

• The Japan Special Forces has received its own dedicated site, with some gameplay footage and screenshots. It might end up being a bit stiff - and limited, of course - but as the game's closest precedent in the budget-tactical-shooter genre is probably the Special Ops series for PSone, the bar is set very, very low. GAME Watch has a preview.

• While Vingt-et-un Systems does their take on a reduced Rainbow Six, Tamsoft trying their hand at the style put forth by Grand Theft Auto. Vol. 110: The Escaped Prisoner puts the player in the shoes of Alex Turner, wrongly imprisoned and newly escaped, who has ten hours to prove his innocence. The player must evade police and mobsters in a freely-traversable metropolis known as "Los City" (the name likely being responsible for Play-Asia's "Escape from Los Angeles" listing) while searching for evidence to clear his name. Rakuten has a cover image and more screenshots. True to the usual conventions of this genre, vehicles can be stolen, and the game's CERO D rating and red splotchy warning seem to indicate that there will be plenty of violence and gore to go with the game's hard-boiled atmosphere. Tamsoft aren't known to be one of D3's better developers, but this one might be worth keeping an eye on (for the wrong reasons, possibly). It's due out October 12.

• The Maid Uniform & Machine Gun has just hit stores, and - somewhat surprisingly - Weekly Famitsu has only seen fit to give it a score of 16 out of 40. That might be enough to throw just about anybody off the scent, but there's still something so charming about its design and characters that it begs to be given a chance. Here's a video to help you make up your mind, in any case, as well as a feature at ITmedia and NCS's notes on the game. NeoGAFfer Lyte Edge had some negative things to say about it, though, so caution might indeed be warranted. Developer Rideon put up an official site for their game this week, but strangely it disappeared within a day. Did they violate one of the stipulations in their contract with D3?

• The Let's Make a Robot!, just released, is looking like it's going to be the highlight of this summer's lineup, having received a - surprisingly high, for a D3 game - score of 25 out of 40 from Famitsu. National Console Support lays the game bare in their game notes.

• Our friend (indeed, everybody's friend!) duckroll picked up The Earth Defense Force Tactics, and has posted some...semi-positive impressions! Apparently, despite its wretchedly lazy presentation and painful battle scenes, it's actually a competent hex-based strategy game. It just happens to look a lot like a Genesis game. You can see a demonstration of both aspects of the game in this YouTubed video: part one, part two. You'll probably have to switch off all of the battle scenes and find your way in with very low expectations, but there may be some fun to be had.

• Just announced is a PSP version of the rather well-executed mahjong-against-girls game Love Mahjong 2. Called Simple 2500 Series Portable: The Dokodemo Gal Mahjong, this version of the game is not far removed from its predecessor, but the featured girls have had their attributes made even more pleasing to the eye. Their facial features have been made more rounded and cute, too, which is probably a concession to the portable medium. And if you're still not sure what this game's all about, well, take a look at that cover. This one is scheduled for release on October 26.

• Japanese Simple fansite MO-GOS has compiled the results of a poll on the best and worst Simple 2000 releases yet this year. The top picks this time are The Genshijin (38 votes), The Investigator (DS, 33 votes), The Oneechanpon (15 votes), The Zombie vs. Ambulance (14 votes), and The Anywhere Mystery (7 votes). The least-liked were The Men's Machine Gun Platform (no surprise there - 55 votes), The Oneechanpon (Oneechanbara games often show up in both rankings - 10 votes), The Pirate (7 votes), The Right-Brain Drill (D3's half-hearted attempt to cash in on the brain-training craze - 2 votes), and The Tennis (PSP - 2 votes).

• Finally, if you're like this writer and have always wanted to see the majority of D3's titles at a higher resolution than that at which they can be seen on D3's site, GAME Watch has just the thing for you. They've put up a listing of every Simple-series game released for the PS2, complete with high-res screenshots and cover scans.

Full-Priced Titles

• The first of D3's long-awaited Xbox 360 titles has gained its own website. Oneechanbara X seems to be returning to the red-on-red-on-red gore found in the original Oneechanbara, rather than that pinkish hue featured in Oneechanbara 2. This one's probably due for a CERO Z rating (which restricts sales of the game to customers 18 and up), the same rating Oneechanbara and Oneechamploo retroactively received. (Oneechanbara 2 and Oneechanpon ended up CERO D (17+). It's a fine line, apparently.) There's not much else to see on the site except for Tamsoft's experiments with pixel shaders and the same sorts of environment seen in the first two games (plus upgrades). We'll have to wait a little longer to see video footage of THE DEVIL EVOLUTION HUMAN.

[Trevor Wilson is a web developer and amateur game developer who indulges his unhealthy obsession with obscure, strange, and unique video games over at his weblog, namako team.]

Posted by trevorw at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

OK, so last night's GameSetLinks was just a little bit mammoth, and we're also being deluged by entries for the Dead Rising competition, unsurprisingly (you sick, zombie-loving freaks!), so let's try to kick back with a slightly more relaxed edition for a Thursday evening:

- Casual site GameZebo (which is good, and doesn't seem to get much love, sadly) has a neat interview with Arthur Humphrey of Last Day Of Work Software, explaining: "If there is a "Cinderella" story in casual games, it would be Last Day of Work ("LDW"). Starting with handheld games, LDW have launched not one, but two PC casual game hits, Fish Tycoon and Virtual Villagers, in the past year. And no one can accuse LDW of creating clones. Fish Tycoon and Virtual Villagers are both based on LDW's proprietary real-time game environment, so the game plays even when you are not there." V. cool, and a fun read.

- We've got the ever-tall Eric-Jon Waugh covering the big Perplex City event in San Francisco for Gamasutra this weekend, in what must be the climax to the CCG-funded ARG title thus far, but in the meantime, sniffing around eBay for trading cards (don't ask!), we noticed a rare Perplex City card going for a large wad of cash - that's right, the "Special Edition Perplex City #P01 A Call From the Past" is at $190 right now with 14 hours to go, wow. Read the Wikipedia entry for Perplex City if you're confused - cos it's pretty mystifying at times.

- Virtual world Second Life has announced it is closing down many of its forums, explaining: "When Second Life first opened we at Linden believed that it was important to support a web-based, asynchronous community, and so the SL forums were born... However, they require significant maintenance and we have been working on developing other communication channels that will be as useful, informative and conversational (more on that below). In addition, Resident-run blogs and forums have mushroomed, offering a wealth of discussion choices." Wait, I feel a Mary J. Blige reference coming on...no more drama?

- Yay, TIGSource, yay, posted another great link, yay, discussing ' Somewhere Beyond Cassette 50', which is a website collecting the worst games on the internet. Derek Yu notes: "The site actually brings up the question “what makes a game good or bad?” Because some of the games featured, like Pillar Killer (a game where you kill pillars), are more amusing than a lot of legitimate shareware titles out there. And free, to boot! So I guess, like for movies, there is a point where games become so bad they are good." Is Pillar Killer a sequel to Driller Killer?

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You may have seen this on a few other sites, but 1UP has written it up in super-cute style with nice screenshots and everything, and first-ish - the full info on Sega's Genesis Collection for PS2 and PSP, due out later this year, and sporting 30 pretty darn cool classic titles.

1UP's Sam Kennedy notes of the titles: "There are the games that birthed franchises that live on today -- Sonic the Hedgehog, Shinobi, Phantasy Star, and Golden Axe (which will see a sequel on PS3 and 360) -- but also the greats that have for one reason or another long been forgotten -- Vectorman, Sword of Vermillion, Comix Zone, or Alex Kidd. There's also a lot of great history to many games found in the collection."

Like what? "One of the titles, Ristar, was once planned to be the next Sonic the Hedgehog-style success story for Sega (in fact, the idea for the character Ristar actually predated Sonic -- he evolved from the character designs of what Sonic was originally to be: a rabbit). Unfortunately, the game never achieved such success, but it's interesting to now play the game that was once supposed to be the next Sonic." Also, it's nice when that character doesn't own an Uzi and rotating rims!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tom Coates, who 'thinks up neat stuff for Yahoo!' and is a long-time weblogging figure of note with his Plasticbag.org site, has posted a particularly interesting post on reaching Level 60 on World Of Warcraft, querying, well, the basic make-up of why we play games.

He notes: "I've started wondering whether a game could still be considered good if you want to play it a lot but at the same time resent the time that it takes from you. What if you find it boring but still somehow can't put it down. Can you love and hate a game at the same time and still call it 'fun'? Can a game be a narcotic, or a guilty secret or an addiction? Can it be a fruitless activity without value that still feels good?"

His conclusion: "Apparently you can get a character on World of Warcraft to level sixty in about three months of consistent after-work play. Personally, my experience has taken me three times that length of time, and has been squeezed around long hours on work projects and more travelling than I've ever done before.... Let me put it this way - while I feel no massive compromise to my life is occurring now, while my relationship with the game is merely grudging at the moment, I can imagine coming to hate the game and yet still wanting to play it. Is that an extraordinary statement?"

In fact, Coates is genuinely concerned that "we as a culture [could be] starting to construct toys that are too effective and end up hurting people", and that exact issue continues to be a source of fascination, to me and everyone associated with the game biz, no doubt. [Via Andy.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We've covered GP2X-related material before, checking out a bunch of homebrew for Game Park's latest handheld (and one of the two follow-ups to the GP32, confusingly enough!), and now Brazilian game creation software Game Editor is helping things along with a promise to make a GP2X version of their software.

They write to us: "Due [to] users and industry requests, Game Editor developers will release a new version of Game Editor engine for the GP2X console. With this addition, Game Editor will be the only tool that generate games for a wide range of platforms including Windows, Linux, Pocket PC / Windows Mobile, Smartphones and the GP2X console."

Oh, and they also note: "The new engine will be released before the GP2X game contest deadline", citing a Game-Editor.com thread discussing the conversion. Prizes aren't bad for the GP2X competition, too, including a $5,000 first prize - hopefully we'll see some original game designs and not just clones, though!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There seem to be ever-more interesting links popping up from day to day, but hey - I'm learning about the man opossum while watching Mega64, so it's as good a time as ever to teach you about the educative stuff I ran into today:

- Over at the Rocky Mountain News, Kotaku's Brian Crecente has a more detailed write-up on Rockstar's Bully than previously seen. Actually, we at Gamasutra received an email from the delightful Jack Thompson today after our brief Bully news story, CC-ed to Anderson Cooper, among other people. Apparently Crecente got some Thompson lovemail too, and also a rare Terry Donovan quote in his article: "I think if the entertainment industry had always chosen the path of least resistance, I think we would have missed out on some incredible films, a load of life-altering records and a host of books that changed literature forever." Rockstar execs on the record? Amazing.

- This is just a leetle bit on the self-centered side, but it's undeniably fun to hear about James Mielke's interactions with Kenji Eno with regard to favorite music albums, etc. "The fun thing about Eno and I, is that despite the six year span between when I was last able to have a good conversation with him, it feels like no time has passed at all. And what's even curiouser is that we're both only children, and were born within two months of each other." Maybe interlocking horoscopes are in order? Some good overall music recommendations in here tho - YMO and Ultramarine, for starters.

- Following a GSW post yesterday about PopCap's multiplayer service ceasing, we see Aggro Me got a follow-up from the PopCappers, noting: "Unfortunately, the economics for the small (but devoted!) user base simply don’t support significant upgrades to these games." Still, a well thought-out explanation, even if it's a little bit sad.

- Dean Takahashi is sorta video game journalism's Droopy, I think, and he's got a pretty good write-up on Electronic Arts and original IP. This is a little cheeky, tho, from EA's Frank Gibeau: "We just decided to zig when the rest of the industry is zagging... We are getting radically more selective in choosing licenses for video games. You could argue it's risky, but you could also say that the time of the licenses has passed.'' But didn't you zag before when some other companies zigged with regard to _more_ licenses? Either way...

- Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins made it out to anime convention extraodinatire Otakon, and has put up a series of two posts showcasing a massive bunch of cool game-related cosplayers from the show. Is it our imagination, or has the infusion of female-friendly manga and anime into the mainstream in the U.S. meant that North American cosplayers are looking a whole more... normal nowadays? Not that we're saying... you know, we're not saying that. Also - Zelda & Link-themed Day Of The Tentacle cosplay? Oh. Em. Gee!

- Game academic baiting isn't yet an Olympic sport, but Grand Text Auto is certainly upset with The Escapist's article on the issue, commenting: "Either the editors are desperate for material, or have a worrisome misunderstanding of how academic study operates. So much for the idea of well-informed journalism. (Note, my primary gig is not as an academic, so this shouldn’t be interpreted as a defensive statement.)" Eh - the post is vaguely defensive, but it's also vaguely correct, so it all works out.

- Ah yes, something from sister site Gamasutra! Sometimes people don't notice Jim Rossignol's new 'A Journalistic Bent' column, and the latest one is a pretty constructive column about game writing. Of course, we said game writing whinging was verboten, but hopefully Rossignol is a tad more positive, noting: "Perhaps as people learn to deal with greater and greater volumes of information the truly versatile games writer will appear - one for whom all of play is informed by everything else in life."

- The2Bears has spotted that Bizarre Creations is cease and desisting PC clones of its delightful Geometry Wars Reloaded, commenting: "We’re beginning to feel the effects of the Geometry Wars clones on our sales via Microsoft now and are beginning a process to begin to more robustly protect our copyright and intellectual property." Personally, I think that's fair enough - the clones are pretty darn exact. Others may not concur, of course.

- Kotaku spotted a fun CliffyB interview conducted by his older brother at a Gears Of War fansite- including totally amusing questions such as: "You were quite the hellraiser as a kid as I probably kept you from killing yourself with stupid stunts on several occasions. Do you think that your personality helped you develop an "edge" which translates to games?" It's the spiky hair and the MTV appearances driving Tim Sweeney's sports car too fast, man! Also fun: " I suppose you don't remember you and I working our way through Contra together, do you?" Definitely a close relationship between interviewer and interviewee, there.

- Heisei Democracy has a creator spotlight on 'doujin game developers’ duo Momo Pax', including "details (and exclusive screenshots!) from their upcoming STG/ADV hybrid Soft Landing." Nice - a shooter and a visual novel all at once, and being developed by Western dojin-heads in Seattle and Australia respectively? We definitely approve. [Via T2B.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Thought this was, to say the least, interesting - book publisher Addison-Wesley Professional has announced a book named 'Exploiting Online Games: How to Break Multi-User Computer Games' - well, OK, that's the link to the pre-release 'condensed' version PDF, but the book itself will debut in 2007.

So, what's it all about? "Written by two of the security industry’s premiere authorities, Greg Hoglund, founder of www.rootkit.com, and Dr. Gary McGraw, CTO Cigital, Inc., Cheating Online Games sheds light onto the multi-billion dollar, high stakes online gaming industry, and explores ethical issues surrounding piracy, cheating, and corporate measures to stop both."

Apparently: "Readers learn how a program designed for one game, World of Warcraft, keeps watch of your game-play by scanning your computer for open processes and mails the information it collects back to its creator, Blizzard Entertainment. The authors demonstrate how to run a program named “The Governor” to keep watch of the watchers and know exactly what Blizzard Entertainment is doing on your computer."

So it's not clear to me, since I've seen the preview PDF and it mainly deals with finding out what World Of Warcraft is doing to your machine - by the title of this book, will the final version advocate actually 'breaking' MMOs, by creating exploits to cheat in various ways? If so, isn't that rather... unnecessary? Why would a book publisher advocate cheating or breaking multi-user games when it affects other users, too? Or is this all ethically justified because Blizzard is spying on us? Answers on a postcard, please!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Yes, yes, it's time for another GameSetCompetition, and this time, thanks to our buddies at Capcom again, it's the game pretty much the entire world has been waiting for: Dead Rising, the zombie-tastic mall-carnage-y Xbox 360 exclusive that has _absolutely nothing_ to do with George Romero, as the box notes sternly!

And here's the official Xbox.com website's story: "Dead Rising follows the harrowing tale of Frank West, an overly zealous freelance photojournalist on a hunt for the scoop of a lifetime. In pursuit of a juicy lead, he makes his way to a small suburban town only to find that it has become overrun by zombies. He escapes to the local shopping mall, thinking it will be a bastion of safety, but it turns out to be anything but." Damn those overly zealous photo journalists!

Anyhow, we have 5 copies of the game and 3 Dead Rising T-shirts to give away - the first 3 winners will get both the game and the T-shirt, and the next two get the game - rawk! Here's the question:

"In the zombie-docious movie 'Shaun Of The Dead', which Prince album _is_ considered of sufficiently bad quality to be thrown at the heads of the rapidly approaching undead?"

Please send your answers to editors@gamesetwatch.com any time before Wednesday, August 16th at 12 noon PST. There will be five winners randomly picked from the correct answers, the judges' decision is final, and that's that. Have fun!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[The Gentleman Nerd is a weekly column written by Jason McMaster and is dedicated to the more discerning tastes of the refined dork. Due to Jason's extreme nature, most of his columns will be subtitled 'Why I Love...' or 'Why I Hate...' - in case you were wondering.]

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I love board games, but absolutely hate collecting them. Wait, no, it’s not that either because I actually love collecting them. What the hell am I talking about? Maybe I should start from the beginning.

I’ve always been a sucker for games and puzzles, but my obsession with figurines and cardboard didn’t happen until I was in my late teens. I moved out of my home and into an apartment with one of my friends. He worked at a comic book shop that held Warhammer tournaments, and offered to teach me how to play 40k. That’s where it all began.

In my younger days, I had quite a large collection of Games Workshop games. From Tyranid Attack to Talisman, I had them all and their respective expansions. Then ‘The Great Board Game Disaster of 99’ happened. I had moved to another apartment and left my collection at a friends place for safe keeping. While I was getting my place set up, he was evicted and they ‘cleaned’ his apartment. For those of you who don’t know, ‘cleaned’ actually means ‘we threw everything into the dumpster because you are a low life’. I was notably depressed. So much that I didn’t start collecting board games again until a couple of years ago.

I started off slow by purchasing a few social games that everyone knows before ramping up to my old, eccentric ways. I don’t think that I’d even planned on starting up again, but I found my old Space Hulk box and started getting the itch to collect again. There are two places to go when you need your board game fix: eBay and Board Game Geeks. Oddly enough, these are also the two places you go when you want your wife to call you a nerd and get mad at you.

So, the first game I look up on eBay is Talisman. That was a mistake. The board game that I had (3rd edition with all the expansions) now costs well over 200 dollars for the base boxed set. I immediately feel that same nausea that I felt back in 1999. Not only had all of my games been thrown away, but most of them are now worth at least five times the amount of money that I bought them for. You see, while I took my hiatus, most of the games I really liked went out of print. Now, we’re getting to the part of board games that I hate: the complete lack of game stability.

That’s not to say that there aren’t other collectibles that are the same way, but with board games it seems worse. If you find a game you like, you had better purchase it and any expansions it has immediately because it may be gone tomorrow. Let’s just take a quick look at Talisman as an example. There were three different versions of Talisman and two had different expansions. Same thing goes for Robo Rally, Cosmic Encounter and any number of other games out there. Even though this is frustrating, it’s not even the worst part.

I recently purchased Cosmic Encounter from a friend’s comic shop in my hometown. After my wife and I got back home, I opened it up to discover that one of the templates is missing. Normally I wouldn’t think this is a problem, but boy was I wrong this time. I began my replacement piece quest by trying to contact Hasbro. Hasbro sent me to Wizards of the Coast who, in turn, sent me to a random board game retailer. The retailer never responded to my inquiries, so I then started emailing enthusiasts and hobby shop owners. No one could help me. I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I’ll have to make my own. What a nightmare for an obsessive like me.

Really, much like all of my other hobbies, it’s a love/hate relationship. I take great pleasure from tracking down and acquiring cool games, but the obsessive nerd in me can never rest because there will always be a game out there that I don’t own. Maybe one day, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’ll find sweet repose. Until then, however, if you have the green planet template for the Avalon Hill Cosmic Encounter, drop me a line.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for GameSpy, Firing Squad and several other publications. He’s currently working on a few small projects and updating his blog, Lamethrower, as often as he can.]

Posted by jasonm at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Rely on TIGSource to dig out some of the cooler indie games around - they've now spotted the return of some indie greats, and they note: "I was wondering what artist/game designer Edmund McMillan was up to after finishing Gish. Apparently he ran off with a few Chronic Logic members to start up Cryptic Sea."

Derek Yu claims: "Their first game, Blast Miner, looks pretty lackluster for someone with an imagination like Edmund’s. I mean… it’s Tetris, right? With physics and stuff. I dunno." Well, I disagree lots, check out the video - I'm excited to play this, esp. if it ever got on Xbox Live Arcade (please?) - oh, and the weird non-physics-like effects in the vid are when the blocks are being manipulated by the player, btw.

The boy Yu also notes: "On the other hand, project number two – Book of Knots – sounds freaking awesome and I wish they’d stop working on Blast Miner and get going on that! C’mon now!" Well, we'd like them both at the same time, but hey, we don't think Cryptic Sea can reverse time just yet.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Well, there's a wonderful amount of game-related randomness in the world today. And I'm currently kicking back and watching Mega64 Version 2, which is basically the best video game skit show evah, and has a fun animated intro sequence from former GSW cartoonist Shmorky, to boot! Anyway, on with the liinks, hey?

- They weren't really getting much traction, but GamesRadar are starting to run some fun-ish features, starting with a look back at E3, year by year: "To celebrate the relatively short - but always raucously enjoyable - lifespan of the show, we look back and remember why, for one week every year, gaming was directly in the spotlight of the world's media and E3 was one of the most exciting places to be on the entire planet." It's like a VH1 show! Lists! Stuff!

- Talking of goodbyes, the ever-irascible Greg Costikyan has a barbed au revoir to CGW, which includes the claim: "What I do blame Ziff for, however, is the sequel: essentially, they turned CGW into an inferior imitation of PC Games, with a lickspittle attitude toward the publishers, a desperate and ill-fated attempt to be fanboy hip, and a tolerance of sheer bad writing." If Greg ever offered any paintings for s