[Our Blazing Destiny is a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games. And about mocking classic literature and about new games that spit on my childhood hero and make me cry.]

Here's Persona double-dealing the goods: "Sorry guys, school work is piling up already on me! It's only like the third week of classes and already we're animating things for homework like Thumper from Bambi saying, 'I triple dog dare ya!'. Anyway, to make up for the comic I didn't put up last week, I made two for this entry!

"The first comic deals with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, a Chun Soft mysterious dungeon game where you, a human, has been transformed into a Pokemon and recruit other Pokemon to help you traverse the various randomly generated dungeons. The story and illustrations are pretty cute and I like how the game asks you random questions about your morality that determines your Pokemon persona. They should implement that feature into the actual Pokemon games to determine your starter!"

"This second comic is about the new Sonic the Hedgehog game entitled Sonic the Hedgehog for PS3 and Xbox360. I really like Sonic but the way Sonic Team has been handling his games as of late makes me cry. The slipshod glitches of the new game is harkening back to Adventure 1 falling-through-hoops-and-going-straight-through-the-ground-like mess-ups. Not only that, shouldn't the levels be designed better by now? The on-rails, hopping on to random animals/objects to travel around, running and getting sucker-hit by an enemy you can't see style design still doesn't capture any sense of speed and doesn't even live up to the amazing level design of the original Genesis games. And worst of all: why are the Chao gone? Having a small Tamagotchi-like animal that I could raise on the VMU and plug back into the game was the only reason why I kept going back and playing the games on the Dreamcast!

Anyway, in the recently released Tokyo Game Show trailers for the game, there are snips of FMV segments where Sonic seduces a young princess and carries her off in his arms. This wouldn't be that bad except Sonic positively looks like a guy in an animal mascot suit as he grabs the princess by the hand. It's really creepy. In the trailer they also milk the Sonic 2 ending song, 'Sweet Sweet Sweet' by Dreams Come True, in a 'come on guys, this is SO totally a Sonic game' nod. So basically, the team working on the game is so insecure about this Sonic title that they need to name it after the original game AND use the original song just to get a reaction out of people. It's totally Sonical!"

[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 (which just came out with a new issue a week ago!) and his website on the awesome collective Mecha Fetus. A new website design is going to be put up pretty soon! And check out the forum; they're having a "Make your own dating sim" contest complete with help on how to use programs to make them!]

Posted by persona at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We've been asked by the folks at The PlayStation Museum to help solve a little mystery for them - which of course, we'll be able to do, right? It concerns the developer of the mysterious PlayStation 1 prototype 'Maniac Moons'.

The page explains: "Maniac Moons is a shooter game complete with 20 levels. The graphics are sharp and colorful. The animation is very smooth with very little draw-in. Your craft has access to various weapons including a bomb which when it explodes causes a jaw-dropping wave-ripple effect on the terrain. There are two different crafts to choose from. The game even features a playable two player dogfight. There is absolutely no programmer, developer, nor publisher information on the disc or in the code. The source of the prototype claims that it was obtained from an Acclaim bankruptcy auction."

If you know who made it, then contact the PlayStation Museum curator, of course. Also, elsewhere on the completely interesting but naturally borderline obsessive PSMuseum website, there are also lots of interesting videos of prototypes/unreleased titles on the website's YouTube page, including a video from the cancelled Titan AE for PlayStation 1 - hey, it's got colored lighting, at least!

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

Over at sister site Gamasutra, the 'Playing Catch-Up' column, formerly staffed by Frank Cifaldi to excellent effect, is back under the auspices of Alistair Wallis, and the first speaks to Mike Dawson, lead designer on classic PC H.R. Giger-licensed adventure game Darkseed.

Some fun/scary stuff in here: “The president of Cyberdreams made a shrewd move,” says Dawson. “In order to differentiate the small company from more established developers, he attached a high profile artist to each title – not only to use their art, but to leverage their celebrity. He also paid Giger cash. Lots of cash.”

“By the way,” he adds. “Giger is truly a dark artist. I visited him in Zurich and the stuff you see in the movie Alien is toned down from his original work. What else? He had a shrunken head just sitting on his desk. And, when he gave us a tour of his place, he casually referred to one room as the place where his ex-lover had killed herself.” Oh kaaay.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:03 AM | 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.]

The only kind of problems that you need to worry about are the ones you didn’t create. There’s a world full of hapless bastards that will fall into your traps, if you set them correctly, and provide you with hours of free entertainment. Hell, you don’t even have to know that you caused the problem to enjoy it. That brings me to Runebound.

I had wanted a new game to kick around, so we headed down to mall to look at their game shop. I regretted it immediately because malls, other than being a beacon for the insipid and dull, are full of things that are just begging to be smashed. It takes all of my willpower to not take a baseball bat to the limitless kiosks that have popped up selling cell phones and coffee mugs featuring dog pictures. The only way to get through it is to keep your head down and focus on your goal. My wife refers to my walking style as “soldiering.” I never liked that description.

Once I reach the game store, I was pretty pleased to discover that they have a very nice selection. What’s less nice is discovering that they’ve marked everything up to twenty percent more than any other store. The copy of HeroScape they had in the store was priced at sixty dollars, when you could go down to the Wal-Mart two miles away and buy it for forty. However, after braving the mall, I wasn’t going to go home empty-handed, even if it meant that I had to take an upswing to the jewels for it. Though notoriously generous, I have problems spending money. I’ve stood in a store for hours staring at something, deciding if it was worth it.

You know, there are certain types of people that wear their lifestyle. I’m not one of them, thankfully, but you can easily spot the ones who are. There are certain types, of course, but the easiest to spot is the geek. The geek is not only comfortable in his or her habitat, but is absolutely not self-conscious in the outer world as well. That’s why so many chubby people have ponytails. When I looked back to the counter of the game store, I saw the geek to end all geeks. Chubby, shoulders and glasses covered in dandruff, wearing the most impressive mullet/ponytail combo that the world has ever seen.

You could smell his distaste for us as we entered the store. It was fifteen minutes ‘til closing time and this man was ready for the booster draft. I had to think quick. The least ludicrous priced game was Runebound; it was actually marked at the MSRP. I’d been hearing good things about it, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. We quickly headed home. I had some serious drinking to do.

There’s something inherently wrong with letting the guy who’s drinking the moonshine read the directions. I’m quite capable of reading game instructions and teaching others how to play, but I’m usually sober when I do that part. After chugging down a few mason jars of magic, I wasn’t in any position to tell people what rule does what, but I was nominated so what the hell could I do? I’ll tell you what I could do, I could belligerently shout out orders to those who didn’t have the fortitude to take control of a situation. That’s what led to the incident.

You see, Runebound comes with two ten sided dice. I didn’t think much about it, so I threw one back in the box. “It’s a friggin’ back up dice”, I slurred to myself, “who the hell needs a back up D10?” I had seen nothing in the rules that said it needed two, so I just set it aside. After Brian had taken care of his usual game stopping habits, we began to play.

The idea behind Runebound is that you’re out to kill this Dragon Lord guy… or something. There are expansions that add more cards and quests, but I don’t have those. So, you go around the board, getting encounter cards and collecting experience to level up. Eventually you kill that rat bastard and its all money, baby. You see, you have to kill a monster to get the experience counter to trade in for stat upgrades. That’s where the incident comes in.

We were all starting out, stomping around the board and attacking the easy monsters. Well, this would have been great had the monsters been actually easy. We had been playing for about an hour and a half when we noticed that we had sure been dying a lot. Everyone had been dying a lot. On occasion, Voge would ask if we were supposed to use that other die. Hell no, I said, that would make the game way too easy. Eventually he grabbed the book away from me and read the bottom of page two. That’s the page that says you‘re supposed to use both dice. Everyone stared at me.

That’s why you should never let the drunk guy read the instructions.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for Gamasutra, GameSpy 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 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via WaxyLinks, a fun WFMU entry profiling a bunch of early '80s video game craze cash-in soundtracks, many of them rather crazed.

The blogger notes: "I enjoy the background music/video game combination so much that I decided to rename all of my cheesy Euro-disco and New Wave and Glam and Classic Rock. It is now, according to my iTunes, "Atari Music". Of course, I wasn't the first to think of this. Why, during the early 80s there was already such a genre...and it all revolved around quickie albums released to cash in on the booming video game craze."

Among the highlights: "Curtis Hoard, an "Atari champion finalist" (whatever that means), recorded Conquer the Video Craze, a spoken word album describing how to play the hot arcade games in detail. The excellent Dinosaur Gardens blog did a good job digging up a bit of information about this album, and also posted the whole thing for download."

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['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 "world vs. game" debate in Massive design, and how that applies to Star Wars Galaxies.]

A rose by any other name may not smell as sweet, but most Massively Multiplayer titles available right now are games, whether they like it or not. Spaces like Second Life aside, there are very few 'virtual worlds' out there that can legitimately claim the title. In my mind, that's a good thing; we refer to them as Massively Multiplayer Online Games, MMOGs, or MMORPGs, for a reason. The example I point to most often when discussing this topic is Sony Online's Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). I'm harsh on the game for many reasons, but at the root of the problem is the fundamental question of identity. Galaxies launched trying to be a world, when what all the people logging in were looking for was a game. Today I'm going to talk about how SWG launched differing from more game-oriented and successful MMOGs, how the recent changes to the game illustrate the need for 'gamey-ness' in a Massive space, and why the concept of a 'virtual world' is inherently flawed in the first place.

[Click through for more...]

Cue Titles, Cue Music ... Now What?

Galaxies launched in 2003 with a unique vision of what a Massively Multiplayer Game could be. Imaginative elements like fully-customizable player housing, non-combat dancing and crafting tasks, and the ability to create your character's own hybrid profession set it apart from the class-based MUD-derived games that had come before it. These elements were in many ways as successful as they were brilliant. The problem came from the context in which they were set: an attempt at a virtual world.

Players logging in within the first few months, especially those who hadn't been following the Beta testing process, were blown away by the experience. It seemed, in those heady first encounters, that almost anything was possible in the world crafted by SOE and LucasArts. Eventually, when it became apparent that reality did not meet those initial expectations, players became frustrated. The randomly generated missions were repetitive and meaningless. With no ships, mounts, or vehicles, travel was a chore. The world was beautiful, making your character exactly what you wanted was personally satisfying, but there just wasn't all that much to do.

The conflict between game concept and player expectation was a basic one: players thought they were logging on to play a game, while the designers had been busying themselves building a world. In the world we live in, no one crafts entertaining opportunities for our personal enjoyment or provides a tutorial mode. Likewise, Star Wars Galaxies at launch was a harsh experience. A title that had set out to pare down elements of grinding by design, had instead released with little more than meaningless grind to offer.

The realization of the problem was swift, though, and content immediately began flooding into the game. 'Dungeons', modes of travel, player cities, and eventually the space expansion stemmed the tide of customers leaving the game. The fundamental problem remained, though: the designers had built a world for a community that just wanted to play a game.

I've Outrun Imperial Ships, Not the Local Bulk Cruisers Mind You

The changes wrought last year to 'correct' this fundamental flaw were far-reaching and unmistakable. SOE set out to unmake what they had made, and transform SWG from a niche world into a mainstream game. One of the core changes was the addition of traditional levels. Pre-existing characters were translated from the skill-based system used in the original game, and pigeonholed into one of a few formal classes. Tradesmen and dancers remained as playable options, stripped of any combat abilities they may have once had. Those that enjoyed crafting, though, saw the writing on the wall: this was a game now, and in Massively Multiplayer Games you kill stuff for XP.

These changes, for better or worse, are a clear message from Sony Online about the role of SWG in the marketplace. Galaxies, as a world, didn't work. The most recent changes speak to this increased focus. By making SWG a game, they've applied meaning to elements that previously had none. For example, 'Smuggler' was a profession you could aspire to, both in the original version of the game and after the more recent changes. With the 'world' approach in mind, though, Smuggler characters were inaptly named. In point of fact, they had nothing to smuggle. The most recent game update finally corrects this, by introducing a smuggling system complete with challenges and rewards. Smuggler characters can now earn faction with an Underworld group, obtain contraband which must be moved to other locations, and can be tracked both by NPC assailants and player Bounty Hunters.

The lesson here is that because Massive spaces don't work as worlds, applied meaning is key to understanding a character's role. Where a character could be in the Smuggler class, he didn't actually do anything that would indicate that he was a Smuggler. He didn't actually smuggle anything. The only thing setting a 'Smuggler' apart from other ranged combat classes was his ability to sell things from his inventory anywhere in the game. Looking at SWG through the lens of a game it's clear that to be a Smuggler a character needs to perform certain activities. It seems like a simple statement; in other games, it would seem ludicrous to call a class 'Warrior' if they had no facility for combat. In the 'world' mindset, though, the meaning of a character comes from the player and not the world.

As high-minded as that may be, it's just not a feasible requirement in a medium that is primarily a commercial form of entertainment. Players need direction, focus, and boundaries, new players especially. Forcing a player completely new to the world of Massively Multiplayer games to decide what a Smuggler does can only lead to confusion. They did, it did, and players left the game as a result.

An Aside

It may seem like I have been encouraged by the Smuggler changes, and that would be correct. It may then be surmised my attitude towards the New Game Experience is a positive one. This could not be further from the truth. By changing the game so rapidly and essentially without SWG community involvement, Sony has proven that it is willing to sacrifice goodwill and trust in order to make a quick buck. While the community they were fostering was certainly unhappy at times, it was a community. Small or large, for better or worse, Star Wars Galaxies was the game they were playing. If that community had been consulted before implementing the changes wrought by the NGE, the SOE folks may have found significant devotion to the gameplay they were considering heaving out with the bathwater.

By wrenching the title into a new shape, by discarding the edicts of the original gameplay experience, Sony was effectively saying that it didn't care for the community it had created. It wanted a new one, with a greater interest in twitch gaming, a more mainstream audience which would hopefully boost sales and subscription numbers.

It's 23:25, Do You Know Where Your Meat Body Is?

This, in the end, is why the 'World vs. Game' argument is meaningless. Norrath, Azeroth, Tattoine, Paragon City: all have physicality only insofar as their data flows across networks and is rendered by graphical processors. There's no there there. What sets Everquest's Norrath apart from the beautiful enivrons of Oblivion's Tamriel is the community of people playing the game.

Despite some wide-eyed hopes and theories to the contrary, the term 'Virtual World' is inherently contradictory. A virtual space may indeed have definition, and substance. I'm even willing to believe that it has meaning, insofar as it's given meaning by the real people that interact with it. What a virtual space cannot be, however, is a world. 'World' is defined by dictionary.com a number of ways: 'a planet', 'a class of people', 'a sphere or domain'. What I think users of the term 'virtual world' are aiming for is 'any period, state, or sphere of existence'. The key word here is 'existence'. By definition, Massive spaces have no substance to them. They do not exist.

This is why Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft, in the end, are no more worlds than the communal chat program Habbo Hotel. The 'world' of Azeroth ceases to exist every Tuesday for a few hours while Blizzard messes with the servers. The community that forms around the game, that exists outside of the boundaries of corporate control, that's the real world of the game. The countless forums, fansites, and machinima creations are the marks that Azeroth has left on reality, and those are the concrete elements we should point to when we talk about 'Virtual Worlds'.

Second Life, in fact, is probably one of the few online spaces that can truly claim to be a world, by virtue of the inherent meaning of the individual. Like in Galaxies at launch, Second Life doesn't make you try to have fun. There are no quests in SL, no classes, no xp bar. What sets Second Life apart from Galaxies is that you can make long-term changes to the environment. Making your mark on the space like this, leaving a legacy beyond your community involvement, is fundamental to the world concept.

Even then, Second Life only exists as long as the power is on. Ask the players of Earth and Beyond, Asheron's Call 2, or even the infant community that formed around Mythica. Massive Games are powerful experiences, and they should be enjoyed while they can. Thanks to the realities of business, the whims of players, and the pressures of an industry, Massive Games are fleeting and fluid; the castle in the air only lasts so long.

[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 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our friends over at the Speed Demos Archive have released a special new speed run, as they explain: "Peter 'Dragorn' Branam-Lefkove has been working for many months on an improved Single-segment 100% run of Super Mario 64."

They continue: "By complete coincidence, the run is now ready to post during the same week as the 10-year anniversary of the release of Mario 64 and the Nintendo 64 itself in North America. So, celebrate one of Mario's birthdays by watching Peter's very impressive 2:09:40 run, available in six different flavors."

There are some notes on the Mario 64 page itself (scroll down!): "You'll notice early on that I seldom collect stars in the order in which the level presents them; this might seem random, but there's usually a method to the madness. Sometimes, it's necessary for strategic purposes; for example, in Snowman's Land, it's necessary to complete "Inside the Igloo" before "Snowman's Big Head" because I activate the cannon in the former star. Barring those restrictions, I also usually like to mix up easy stars and more difficult ones; that is, I like to use the easy stars as recovery periods between more difficult ones."

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Those VintageComputing.com chaps are at it again, and have posted an excellent interview with BYTE Magazine cover artists Robert Tinney, which OK, isn't _completely_ game-related, but is absolutely awesome anyhow.

As is noted: "As cover artist for over eighty issues of BYTE magazine — microcomputing’s first and finest major publication — and as one of the first men to illustrate topics related to the fledgling field of personal computers, he near single-handedly shaped the popular visual idiom of what computers were, could be, and would be for the for a whole generation of microcomputer enthusiasts."

As Tinney himself comments: "Magritte and Escher are two of my favorite artists, and fans have noticed their influence in many of the BYTE designs." I'd certainly love to own some originals of these.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['Game Ads A-Go-Go' was 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.]

This column was started back in March as a noble experiment into seeing whether I could say dumb things about video game advertisements with any sort of regularity. I'm sorry to say that I have failed miserably, as my commentary was almost always thoughtful, enlightened, and filled with rare insight, while typically leading toward the factual-analytical end of the bullshit continuum. However, this time -- in my last Game Ads A-Go-Go Column -- I promise that I will not fail you.

Why no more Game Ads A-Go-Go? Because this is my 16th entry in this series and I feel that it's time to move on to something fresh. It's been tons of fun, and I've really enjoyed writing for you, so don't be surprised if you see another RedWolf column on GSW soon about something actually serious, like analyzing structural motifs in Shigeru Miyamoto's fibrous navel lint (scientists have recently found that there's a surprising amount of stuff in that weird Japanese hole). Or, perhaps, I was thinking of doing a Jason Scott fan column. But in the mean time -- if you miss me -- you can always find me over at Vintage Computing and Gaming.

For now, however, we'll be looking at fighting game teaser ads! Prepare Yourself.

Not Actually Evil, Just Bad

The moral of this ad is simple: you can't tease someone with something that no one wants. So don't be pretentious enough to try it with Double Dragon V -- quite possibly one of the worst games of all time.

I would write more, but Shredder here has got them evil googly eyes that always make me nervous, even if in a facetious space-filler-writing kind of way. Besides, the people at TradeWest could have learned a lot from the following company...

---

A Little Bit Better

Now this is a game that many, many people wanted to play, even if it was the 15th minimally-changed version of a title released only three years earlier. Not since the likes of Mega Man have we seen such a case of sequel diarrhea. Coming Next Year: Super Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting Byzantine Champion Edition 2 Mini Puzzle Pals III.

Despite Capcom's "Adam, Prince of Eternia"-like attempt to act tough here, this ad still pales in comparison to our next contender...

---

Kome Kloser to the Kloset

Prepare Yourself to Kave into Kravings for Kombat (or for Kellogg's Krusty Killer Kobs of Korn). Ahem...I mean, only one out of the six ads above was not kreated by Midway, the master of all Teaser ads. But they all have to do with one thing: Qombat. Mortal Qombat, that is, the greatest fighting game series of part-time.

So let's see...we've got Mortal Qombat, Mortal Qombat Trading Qards, Mortal Qombat CD, Mortal Qombat II, a Mortal Qombat II (and Super Sleet Fighter II) rip-off controller, and another Mortal Qombat II. It took me forever to scan these ads because they were literally about 8 feet long by 11 feet wide, and I had to enlist the help of an entire Gnome brigade to carry the scanner across the pages.

This just in: after some careful checking, it seems that my measurements in the last page-size estimate might have been slightly inaccurate, but nonetheless, scanning the ads was still quite a chore since I am only four inches tall. It took me about three days to finish the task, and in the middle of day two, the elves (gnomes...whatever) went on strike over low wages. After that, it was up to me and my well-trained miniature oxen team (dragging a plough-like makeshift scanning device constructed of bits of scrap aluminum) to finish the job. But thank God we did, or else this kolumn would not be possible.

So by now, you've probably guessed that I don't actually have much to say about these ads, except for the fact that three out of six of them involve an electrostatic atmospheric disturbance known as lightning. Four out of six involve a circular dragon logo that some have rumored to not actually be an ancient Chinese fertility symbol. But I definitely don't believe them, because I've had seven immaculately-conceived butt-kids since 1992 thanks to repeatedly playing this game series. And three out of six ads involve the declaration "Prepare Yourself," but I have always been confused about this, as two of the six clearly state that "Nothing, NOTHING, Can Prepare You." So to find the true meaning behind this apparent set of mixed messages, we have to combine the two into "Nothing, NOTHING, Can Prepare You Yourself," which -- I think -- was the slogan for Mortal Qombat 3. That's probably why it didn't sell as well as the first two.

So until we meet again, live long and prosper, my friends. Thanks for reading, and have a great day.

---

[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. Have you ever chewed so much bubble gum that it makes your whole jaw and neck hurt? Well, he just did.]

Posted by Benj Edwards at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Via the ever wonderful TIGSource comes news of a couple of new projects from Alan Gordon; the man behind Zi. Vertical is currently unfinished, but is still oddly mesmerising – so far, the only aim is to climb as high as possible in a tower using a grappling hook.

More interesting, and making more of an splash, is RRRRRPG, which is, for all intents and purposes, like Final Fantasy but without the flashy graphics, music, plot, or characterisation.

As TIGSource note, it’s like “the purest distillation of the JRPG” - all that remains is the fighting and levelling, though you do get to choose between three classes of triangles to make up your party, and there is the ability to upgrade your equipment. Gordon summarises the game’s aim as simply to “kill some shapes, then defeat the Circle God. That's it.” At under 500K, it’s pretty much begging to be ported to mobile phones.

“Frankly,” Gordon writes on his blog. “I have no idea how this manages to be fun, but it does!” Just watch out for those spinning grey pentagons.

[edited by alistairw]

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

Obsessive Dreamcast blog The Dreamcast Junkyard recently took a look back at the UK magazines that focused on the console. Amongst them, Dreamcast - The Official Dreamcast Magazine, Dreamcast Monthly, DC-UK, Dreamcast Magazine and, finally, the very oddly titled Mr. Dreamcast.

“I only ever saw this monstrosity once,” notes blogger Tomleecee. “And only bought it on that solitary occasion because I was facing a long and boring bus journey. It was clearly aimed at the younger end of the market as this particular issue came complete with a Fur Fighters water pistol and prose that wouldn't seem out of place in a Puddle Lane Ladybird book.”

A quick hunt around reveals that the mag was edited by former DC-UK editor Caspar Field, who had previously been deputy editor at EDGE, and later went on to produce Argonaut’s Xbox watercraft racer Carve.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it lasted very long – “A case of drowning a retarded puppy to put the little fucker out of its misery, methinks,” suggests Tomleecee.

Still, best magazine name ever, for sure. Mr. Wii, anyone?

[edited by alistairw]

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Import store National Console Support , who’ve been at it since “spring or summer of 1989”, have just started a blog detailing their day to day sales and incoming stock, and it’s a pretty interesting read.

Aside from being a good way to get a hold of – and keep up with – import titles, there’s plenty of game related merchandise to spend your hard earned cash on. Of course, there’s the regulation very, very creepy DOA 3D breast mousepads, and even-creepier life size cushions and towels, but it’s evened out with some slightly less anti-social stuff too.

Still on cushions, there’s these Mario themed ones, or, even cooler, this Mario coin block that actually makes a noise when you hit it. Joy!

Personally, though, I’ve got my heart set on the pictured Chocobo plush, which ties in to the upcoming DS title Chocobo and the Magical Picturebook - which also has the most hypnotically entertaining website ever.

Just thinking about holding that toy while looking at the site makes my bitter black heart melt. Awwww.

[edited by alistairw]

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Gaming related romance is nothing new these days – hell, half of you are probably thinking about how best to get that feisty level 46 Night Elf on WOW to give you her number even while reading this. VH1’s Raina Lee posts about her own heart-warming story of gaming love, from 15 years ago:

“The year was 1991. His name was Chris, he was 15. His most attractive quality was that he was some kind of Nintendo Tournament champ. Chris responded to my posting on whether or not it was possible to play US CD games on a Japanese PC engine console. He not only knew the answer (yes, they were interchangeable), but in his first email uttered these sexy words: “I think gameplay is more important than graphics!” At 14, I believed I had found my soulmate.”

Their relationship continued via fax, hitting all the important topics – “why Vanilla Ice sucked, Beverly Hills 90210” - but came to an unfortunate end at the hands of her parents: “They took away my letters and forbade me to ever contact him.”

But is there a happy ending still on its way? “I found the curly fax paper years later,” she concludes. “And I wonder if Chris is still out there playing import games.” Anyone know this mystery man?

[edited by alistairw, picture via 4 color rebellion]

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

OK, I'm seriously out of time and brainjuice, but over at Gamasutra, we've just posted the complete set of my Japan-related game articles that I wrote over the past 10 days - traveling back to the States now.

The final report is an interview with Q Games' Dylan Cuthbert (Star Fox DS), who "...discusses a number of fascinating topics, including his company's work with both Nintendo and Sony, defeating the 'salaryman' ethic, and how foreign developers operate in Japan."

Particularly interesting: "Q Games was working with Sony in its early years "developing technology for an online MMO", including much use of generative landscapes and fractal-style constructed worlds... Cuthbert and compatriots immediately responded to a technology comparison with Will Wright's Spore, noting: "We developed a lot of that same technology." However, after Sony decided they wanted the tech to make a platform shift to PlayStation 2, Cuthbert decided to decline the offer and halt the project."

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

There’s an intriguing piece up on Wired News at the moment by Collision Detection blogger Clive Thompson, who asks: “Who the heck actually finishes a story-based game in 40 hours? Who are these mythical 40-hour gamers?”

Interesting question – Clive’s frustration comes from the fact that he picked up a copy of Eidos’ Tomb Raider: Legend under the impression that he was about to play a 40 hour game. Not so, he says.

“I plugged away at the game whenever I could squeeze an hour away from my day job and my family. All told, I spent far more than 40 hours -- but still only got two-thirds through. At some point, I sadly realized I just couldn't afford any more time. I've got a life to lead: Books to read, a day job, my infant son to hang out with, other games beckoning. That's why I've collected a shockingly large mausoleum of unfinished games over the years.”

Clive also asks whether the only solution is going to be a split in the way games are developed, in order to please those hard-core types who whinge about recent releases being too short, and “soft-core” gamers who just want a couple of hours of fun here and there.

I can’t help but sympathise – as much as Final Fantasy XII’s impending release excites me, I’m not sure that another 83 hour slog is what I really need to be doing with my life. Aside from arguably having better things to do, the guilt after spending that long on the previous one was pretty damned tangible.

[edited by alistairw]

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Over at VintageComputing.com, they have a fun feature on 'Trippy Computer Games', checking out some of the odder oddities out there, from the CD-ROM era and before.

One I was rather unaware of was Midway/Time Warner's Endorfun, of which the creator explains: "The music in Endorfun contains subliminal messages designed to help you feel good about yourself and the world around you, to help you enhance your state of well-being and personal abilities. In addition, after every time you play, a positive message appears on the screen to reinforce these thoughts…" I feel better already!

Also mentioned, and something I remember, was Galapagos, which "...starts off with the intriguing supposition that the main character (Mendel, a four-legged spider-like robot) cannot be directly controlled by the player. Rather, the player can only interact with the environment, and allow Mendel to form its own conclusions about cause and effect." Needless to say, hilarity ensued!

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

['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 Falcom's Popful Mail]

Funny story. Once I associated the company name Working Designs completely with Japanese Style RPGs. The first time I heard about Popful Mail it was introduced to me as that “new game from Working Designs,” and my brain instantly came up with an RPG about a mail delivery service. Warning: This game involves no delivering or receiving of any mail. I was so wrong it hurts. Popful Mail is the main character’s name. It is obviously just some kind of mammary joke, and this time it wasn’t Vic Ireland making it.

Ready for Delivery

While there were many version of Popful on many systems the only version of the game to get released in the US was for the Sega CD. The game was originally developed by Falcom, who is most well known for their Ys series of games. The first version of the game was released for the PC-8801, a Japanese home computer. That version's style of the game was ported over to the PCE Duo. They were released in '91 and '94 respectively. These versions of the game play most like Wanderer’s From Ys and the Xanadu series of games (which weren’t released in the US, but Faxanadu, which was loosely related to it, was).

The next version of the game was for the Sega CD and released in 1994 as well. This version was programmed by Sega instead of Falcom and the game takes a major turn in the gameplay department. This is also the version that Working Designs brought over to the US. No longer playing like “bumper-car Zelda 2” the game is much more like a traditional platformer. The story is mostly the same as the original games, and the structure and levels are very similar, but because of the new play method you have much more control over your actions and thus the entire game feels quite different.

Later in 1994, Falcom tried their hand at a similar task to what Sega accomplished by turning Popful Mail into a more traditional platformer for the Super Famicom. This version, unfortunately, is the weakest of the lot. The controls aren’t quite right, the response of the enemies is a little off, and overall the game has been reorganized. While the story remains mostly the same it doesn’t have the impact of the Duo and SCD versions. Perhaps I’m getting a little ahead of myself though, so let’s digress back to some basic explanations.

Nut's a Crackin'

The game is a light-hearted tale of a bounty hunter getting into many misadventures. The story follows a pretty clichéd and silly plot that sees the hero team up with a couple of outcast characters while chasing enemies like Nuts Cracker and Muttonhead. All versions of the game have full motion cutscenes, but as you could guess the CD format of the Duo and SCD opens those up to voice acting. Also, considering that the cutscenes were all done using in engine sprites and sounds, it is a very impressive technical feat when seen it in motion. While the SCD cutscenes can’t produce as many colors it still does an excellent job in the delivery.

All the games are good in their own right, but I prefer the Sega CD version. The US version is even a slightly different version than the MegaCD version in Japan. While Vic and company are up to their normal tricks of loose localization within the story, the Working Designs team also decided that the game was too easy in its original form. Now only three hits will kill you and the amount of invincibility you have after receiving a blow is quite short. While they may have made it a little more difficult than necessary it is a nice compromise from the fairly easy difficulty of the Japanese version.

Popful Mail was a very successful series in Japan. The game went on to spawn a large amount of followers with quite a few doujinshi being released for the series. Popful also received a five part series of radio dramas titled “Paradise.” These went as far as to write in an alternate realm where there is an evil/dark version of all the characters in the original game, and many other silly clichéd fantasy story elements. If you haven’t played any of the Popful Mail games I recommend that you track them down. I promise that you won’t be delivering mail or navigating menus.

[Matthew Williamson is the creator of The Gamer’s Quarter (which just had a new issue released!), 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 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Delighted to note that GameTunnel has its September 2006 Independent Games monthly round-up online, and yet again, it's a pretty darn smart one.

It's explained: "This month's article looks at twelve indie titles including Styrateg, a game that blends both Strategy and RPG, the retro-styled beat-em-up Beats of Rage II, and Gumboy Crazy Adventures, a game that reminds one of amazing Gish in both its quality and extremely unique gameplay."

Overall 'game of month' winner is the aforementioned Gumboy Crazy Adventures, though it does so on the basis of some seriously split marks - a 6, a 10, and a 'can't get working'! The generally reliable Russell Carroll raves, though: "Though somewhat similar to Gish (in the way that LocoRoco is similar to Gish) this game has a bounty of inventive innovation from its visually impressive and original theme to its 'keep you on your toes' and constantly changing gameplay (just remember to bring a joystick)."

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

OK, last set of pics from Tokyo Game Show, since it finished about 2 days ago (hey, I'm going as fast as I can, here!) But before I do, I just wanted to point at my two recent Gamasutra write-ups on the Japanese game market, since I'm fast approaching the end of my time in Japan.

Just posted is 'Special: 8-4's Ricciardi On The State Of Japanese Gaming', in which I go through the Japanese game biz situation with smart guy and ex-EGM editor. Probably a notable section would be:

"Sony's big hope LocoRoco, which even had an associated hardware bundle, "didn't sell nearly as well as I think it should have" in Japan, Ricciardi notes - a sentiment many observers agree with. He continues: "That shows there's a problem with the PSP... [LocoRoco] is clearly an A caliber game, but because there's so much stuff that people aren't interested in, it got lost in a cloud of crummy games. I don't know how they're going to get around that."

Also posted yesterday, a chat with Microsoft's XBLA supremo Greg Canessa in which he "explained the future of the Xbox 360 digital download service, including the concept of an 'Imports' area on XBLA to highlight the best foreign-territory titles." As you guys may recall, I'm a little of an XBLA fanboy at times, so it was nice to quiz Greg on how the service could be improved, since we already know what it's doing right.

Oh, so those straggling pics, or at least the highlights:

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've covered the insane and obscure Japanese 3DO games by Kenji Eno's Warp a bunch of times before, thanks to 3DOKid unearthing them - now he's discovered 'Old Man Hunter: Mahjong', which is similarly crazed.

3DOKid explains: "How about today's conceptual mental circus, where even having played it, I can't quite see what any member of the Warp team was thinking. Well perhaps other than: "Hee Hee, I wonder if we can get away with this?"... A Super Hero, who is called Old Man Hunter, flies about saving young short-skirted traditional Anime styled Japanese school girls from dirty old men by playing and hopefully beating them at Mahjong."

Of course, the game's morals are pretty ambiguous: "Was Warp showing its disgust and perhaps showing its solidarity with the girls? Was Warp trying to attract the female Japanese gamer? Or just perhaps drawing attention to the problem? What were they thinking and why do it like this? Yet the girls depicted in the game could well be accused by some as being the root of the actual problem. The skirts. The flashes of knickers. The long legs. Like I said, curved ball." Weirdness abounds.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, lookee what we've got here - news of a new issue for the ever-fun PDF-styled magazine (which also has a hardcopy available for ordering), The Gamer's Quarter.

Boss man and sometime GSW columnist ShaperMC explains: "The Gamer's Quarter is quarterly journal dedicated to printing personal, insightful and introspective videogame writing. We've just finished The Gamer's Quarter Issue #7 and it is now available for download."

What's more: "Within the 107 pages of Issue #7 you'll find 22 articles covering various Mario games, the Final Fantasy series, Dead Rising, the Japan-only Bit Generations series of GBA games, a series of Haiku about Dragon Warrior VII, and much, much more! You'll also find gobs of original artwork, including a unique look at the modern videogame store and an absolutely insane cover by Indianapolis artist Max Martin!" As always, this is well worth checking out

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know we already mentioned Seaman 2 briefly, but it's been pointed out that 1UP has some more information on the PS2 game, including screenshots of the awesome faux-documentary introducing it.

It's explained: "The premise in Seaman 2 remains largely the same -- you're still supposed to interact with a virtual pet -- except that this time around your creature is basically a mini neanderthal man. As the story goes, a species of these prehistoric mini-men were found to have lived in Peking China. A company in Moscow took their bones and created a factory to clone them and mass produce them as pets. 3,000 of them have been created so far. You're one of the lucky first to have one of them."

What's more: "The game was introduced in the form of an infomercial from the Russian company selling these men. A salesmen pitches you on buying one of these pets and shows how it could enrich your life." Completely awesome - and let's not forget that this marketing style actually helped make the first Seaman into a significant success in Japan - can it work again?

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah, a break before the final 'normal' Tokyo Game Show pics go up, since I managed to snap a couple of pictures of a special mini-chiptune concert at TGS, as part of the D4 Enterprise booth, and featuring, as is noted: "BEEP-BOY, DRM, hally and YMCK."

D4 (not to be confused with D3!) is an interesting company which deals mainly in digital distribution of retro Japanese gaming, particularly the MSX (though they also distribute Compile's RPGs and strategy titles for PC digitally, for example). Hally (who works there!) notes: "The first two performers play also as the demonstrators of 1-chip MSX, the brand new FPGA-based MSX compatible machine which will be released soon in Japan."

Here's what I managed to spot:

[UPDATE: I uploaded about 20 seconds of video of DRM's performance as part of this TGS chiptune showcase to Google Video - sorry, this is all the video I got!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Joseph White is the founder of Lexaloffle, a New Zealand based indie developer responsible for titles like Neko Puzzle, Zen Puzzle Garden and the recent Swarm Racer.

“What is it about Lexaloffle games that I love so much?” Queried Derek Yu on TIGSource at the time of Swarm Racer’s release. “Everything about them is so endearing, from the cute graphics and music to the easy-to-understand (but hard to master) gameplay. The 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.”

Quite a write up, certainly, but “earnest and polished” is pretty much a spot on description of Lexaloffle’s games. The bit about the “favourite sweater” isn’t too far off either – these are games with soul.

We got in touch with White via email to discuss Lexaloffle’s history and its future.

When did you start developing games?

I started out making ASCII games on a BBC Micro when I was about 10 years old. At that time I was trying to reproduce games I had seen in arcades like Moon Patrol and Elevator Action. I was happy just to get an ASCII guy with slashes for limbs running around though.

Where do you take inspiration from for your games?

All kinds of places. I think the most interesting design ideas come from things which have nothing to do with games. But in general if I want to think about games, I like listening to chip music and looking at pixel art.

I assume the idea for Zen Puzzle Garden came from things outside of games?

Yes. Originally the game was about placing objects in a garden so that they satisfied a set of rules. Trees must not be in line with each other, a stone lantern must have space around it etc. It was similar to the 8 queens on a chessboard problem. I couldn't get the rules of the puzzle to agree nicely with the theme though, and it eventually evolved into the Zen Garden idea. Once I had that theme it fell into place much more easily, because I wanted to do some kind of geometric puzzle, and raking lines in sand is perfect for that.

Zen Puzzle Garden, in particular, has had an amazing response – how does that feel?

It feels great. It's very satisfying to produce something that people can enjoy, and also it means that I can probably keep on doing what I love.

What kind of reactions have you had to your other games?

The only other Lexaloffle game which has been out for a while is Neko Puzzle. It did well as a cell phone game in China, but as a desktop game I think it mostly piggy-backs off Zen. More recently, Swarm Racer seems to be gathering a decent following. It was just a quick game for fun, but it's had such an appreciative response so far it makes me wonder why I spend so much time working on epic projects.

How did Neko Puzzle get released as a cell phone game in China?

I was doing some work with a company in Wellington which had contacts in China. We teamed up and made several ports in Java which they liked and licensed to a Chinese network. It was nice to see Neko reach its natural habitat - that game was really asking to be put on a cell phone.

What can we expect from the upcoming game, Jasper's Journeys?

Jasper was originally released in 1998 for DOS, so you can track down the old demo and find out! It's basically a mishmash of things we like about old fashioned platform games. Secrets inside secrets, quirky creature behaviour, frantic bullet dodging and a lot of leaping around. That sort of thing.

Why are you remaking it?

The DOS version didn't get around much, so it seemed worth giving Jasper a second chance. The new version is much slicker and will run nicely on modern operating systems, so hopefully it will reach a wider audience this time around.

How do you go about developing a title for Lexaloffle?

I tend to quickly prototype ideas as they occur to me, so at any one time I'll have about a dozen games bubbling away. Once I become sufficiently excited about one of them, I'll promote it to the pool of games that I work on regularly (currently Chocolate Castle, Jasper's Journeys, and one unannounced game). From then on it's just a lot of pixelling, coding, map designing, play testing and tweaking in no particular order. I think it's good to have a number of projects going on at once so that ideas can sort of cross-pollinate between them, and I can rotate around them if I need a break. The downside is that the ratio between released and unreleased games isn't so great.

What's Chocolate Castle?

It's a puzzle game which involves shifting blocks of chocolate around so that little animals can eat them. It sounds cute, but really it's a platform for designing mean puzzles.

Where does the name Lexaloffle come from?

I found it in a pile of old notes I was flipping through around the same time I needed to come up with a name for the company. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it down, but I liked the way it sounded. I was about to go with 'Modern Monster' or 'Yellow Rocket', so I was happy to get away from that whole [adjective] [noun] thing.

Given that you're distributing the games as shareware, do you get many people upgrading to the full versions?

In general about 1%-2%. It depends on the type of traffic coming through. People coming from a niche puzzle game site are more likely to buy the games than a stampede of download.com visitors, for example.

What made you decide to produce games for Mac as well?

Basically because I could, and because I like Macs. My games don't need much in the way of platform-specific code because I do most of the graphics in software. As long as I have a screen to blit to, a controller, and some sound, I'm happy. It's much easier to get exposure in the Mac world too. A good percentage of my customers are Mac users.

I notice you're offering discounts to schools that purchase your titles - have you had many takers on this?

Only a handful. After I heard back from a couple of teachers who were using the games to develop problem solving skills, I liked the idea and wanted to encourage it. I haven't done anything to target schools beyond that though.

Do you consider your games educational software?

Not really. It's not something I set out to do, but a lot of puzzle games are educational by nature just because…well…they're puzzles.

Finally, I almost forgot to ask about the awesome music in Swarm Racer. Who's the artist who does it, and how did you get involved with them?

The title music was written by Laszlo Vincze - also know as Vincenzo. He put out a great music disk called Emerald Box (with his demo group at the time Conspiracy), and later when I was working on Swarm Racer, one of the tracks sprang to mind as a perfect title tune. He kindly provided a copy of it that I could use, which made me very happy. It's just so damn funky.

Posted by alistairw at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Another email to GSW worth reprinting, from some Montreal-based game developers looking to do the indie thing for fun: "My Montreal colleagues and I have formed a group here to promote experimental gameplay, and games as art, called Kokoromi ("experiment" in Japanese)."

It's explained: "For our first project, we're throwing an event called GAMMA (Game Art Montreal), to be held during the Montreal International Game Summit and the Festival Arcadia. Our goal is to publicly showcase the potential of indie and "small games" as an artistic and cultural medium. And we'd like you to be a part of it!

"During the next two months, you are invited to develop a small PC game that responds to a particular design challenge (which I'll explain in a sec). In early November, we'll debut all the finished games at a city-wide social event (aka insane dance party) to coincide with the two consecutive Montreal conferences."

The folks behind GAMMA, which include Heather Kelley, Phil Fish, and Damien Di Fede, explain:"You are invited to create a game that translates a live audio stream into realtime game elements and gameplay. At the GAMMA event, the live music (DJs, bands) will be fed into the games to trigger the game content, and the partygoers will play the games live on large screens. Thus, gamers as VJs!" Interested parties can go to the GAMMA forums to say hi and sign up - we look forward to seeing the results of this boogiedown.

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

We featured info on the unique turn-based physics fighter Toribash a few weeks back, and now developer Nok writes to GSW to note that the first pay-to-play version, 2.0, has been released.

As he explains: "Toribash is a turn-based fighting game. Create your own martial arts movies in single player sandbox mode, or join the competition in the multiplayer modes. Focus is on tactics rather than reaction and button mashing. The game features physics, full dismemberment, decapitation and comic style blood... Windows, Mac and Linux Clients are available."

Now, whenever a game switches from free to pay, it's going to be a bit controversial (v2.0 costs $20 right now, and will eventually cost $25), but there's a demo available, and apparently the server fees alone for the free version of the game have been significant, so we wish Toribash luck. Actually, this would be an awesome XBLA/PS3 online title, if anyone is listening.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You may recall a confused but corrected post about a book on Cory Arcangel's game art we posted a few days back - well, here's the newly released info on a new book and exhibition also featuring him.

Matteo Bittanti's Videoludica site now explains: "GameSpaces. The Landscapes of Videogames is a group show featuring works by some of the most celebrated artists working with digital games: Cory Arcangel, Mauro Ceolin, Jon Haddock, Eddo Stern, and Carlo Zanni. The exhibition will open on October 12, 2006 in Monza, near Milan."

It continues: "Included in the exhibition are a video installation by Cory Arcangel, "Super Mario Movie" (2004), a series of paintings by Mauro Ceolin from the "SolidLandscapes" (2004-) series, Carlo Zanni's interactive installation "Average Shoeveler" (2004), Eddo Stern's neo-medieval installation "Fort Paladin: America's Army" (2003) and the entire series of Jon Haddock's seminal "Screenshots" (1999). Most of these artworks have never been presented in Italy before."

What's more: "Johan & Levi is publishing the GameSpaces catalog which features new commentary texts by Rosanna Pavoni, Matteo Bittanti, and Domenico Quaranta." Neat - a little more mainstream acceptance for game art, eh?

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever the Sony-baiters, UK Resistance has been pointing out the CG => realtime Lair difference, and then suggesting: "HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please vandalise the game's Wikipedia entry accordingly."

Naturally, some choice, evil vandalism occurred, including the revelation: "Premium will ship with 30 dragons but the Basic edition will ship with no dragons. One of the main features of the online package will be the option to purchase extra dragons via 'sonsactions'."

Also a BIG SURPRISE: "Lair is a upcoming game being developed by Factor 5 and published through Sony Computer Entertainment America for the Sony PlayStation 3 video game console. It uses the Wii controller's tilt functions for movement within the game." Y'know, vandalizing Wikipedia isn't big or clever, but this is tragically funny nonetheless.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which covers video game magazines from the late '70s all the way up to right now.]

If I'm any later submitting this it will no longer be Saturday, so let's drop the pleasantries (and the ferret pix) and get right down to business. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Since I'm still in Japan and on weird hours, it wasn't Saturday by the time this was published! But just wanted to praise Kevin on the amazing job he's doing with these round-ups. I feel like I learn things, and often useful things, too! Yay.]

Every other week, I cover all the game magazines that hit US shelves, complete with cover images and commentary I almost always regret on Sunday morning. Click on to, er, read on...

[Click through for the full column!]

Game Informer October 2006

Cover: Devil May Cry 4

Again, I don't care nearly as much about the cover story (which is looooooooong and not even a "World Exclusive" this time around) as I do about the news section, which continues to kick all sorts of ass. As far as I can tell, GI is the only magazine (besides Game Developer, of course) that regularly concentrates on serious industry news these days -- hell, if GameWeek or MCV US were like this back in the day, they might have actually survived.

I say all this because the top piece in Connect this time around is "Communications Breakdown," an investigative report (complete with sources speaking on condition of anonymity and everything) about how the culture of Japanese publishers often makes life difficult for their US branches. This is the sort of thing that Dean Takahashi might write, and I think any Japanese-major thinking about getting into games should read it.

Also: EIC Andy The Game Dandy McNamara writes the longest of the "E3 is dead" editorials in game mag-dom, and one of the only that goes beyond the whole "No more babes NOOOOOOOOOOO" humorous vibe and explains why it's a very good thing for the industry.

Classic: Is all about System Shock 2 this issue, complete with tons of commentary from Ken Levine. It's enough, in fact, to make me wish there was a SS2 Special Edition with Levine commenting on stuff as you play. (Why hasn't anyone done this with a game that I give a flip about? Huh?)

PC Gamer November 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Guild Wars: Nightfall

PCG has inneresting news of their own this month by going inside a Chinese gold farm and publishing photos of their immaculate offices and crappy youth-hostel-like worker dormitories. The news section doesn't last long, however, since there's 11 pages of Guild Wars: Nightfall coverage that takes up most of the magazine's midsection. (Buying this issue entitles you to a free quest and "mini pet" in the game, if such things are important to you. I'll give you my access key if you can find me 2001-era issues of Gamers' Republic. Reply below. Thanks.)

Nearing the holidays: Due to Future's breakneck 13-issues-a-year cycle, we're already into the November issues in September, and as such PCG is getting a little thicker. There still aren't too many games to review quite yet, however, and as a result most of the "Guide" section this month is previews -- everything from Battlefield 2142 and Shadowrun to Company of Heroes and the Left Behind RTS.

The have and have nots: As in the previous issues, the reviews are mostly of pretty crap games -- the highest scorer (space strategy game Sword of the Stars) gets 89%, but it's tempered by scores like 20% for Big Oil and 18% for shooter World War II Combat: Iwo Jima ("a waste of disk space and shelf space").

Computer Gaming World October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Team Fortress 2, part of a larger Valve piece that includes Portal and HL2E2

EIC Jeff Green confirms that this is the next-to-last issue of CGW -- starting in December, Games For Windows: The Official Magazine will be gracing our bookshelves, hopefully with great success. "It's an acknowledgment that PC gaming is here to stay, that it matters, and that it deserves its own official magazine," he writes in the editorial.

The main interview this time around: is with Epic's Mark Rein, a man who isn't afraid to say what's on his mind (especially if it's about anything that isn't utterly hardcore, such as the Wii). In this talk he picks some more on episodic content ("This is not an Epic interest thing. This is me, worried about the state of developers who think that they can survive by doing something crazy"), but his main reserve of venom is reserved for Intel, who he says pushed integrated-graphics solutions on cheap PCs that essentially render them unable to play modern games. "For some reason," he says, "they've decided an $800 PC shouldn't be as capable as a $300 game console." Considering I'm typing this on a $400 Fry's laptop, I'd reckon he's about right.

Best quote: From a thought piece on the state of AI in games comes this pull quote from Warren Spector: "I don't know if cheating AI will always be necessary, but it certainly seems to be necessary now."

PSM November 2006 (Podcast)

   

Cover: Skate or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

My Future magazine subscriptions finally kicked in this week (after I ordered them back in May, goddamn clearing houses mblgrmbl), and apparently just in the nick of time, since I haven't seen the Skate cover anywhere besides the newsstand. This is kind of funny since the top feature/preview inside the mag is neither Skate nor GTA:VCS -- instead it's EA's Def Jam 3 (working title), which gets eight pages of Kaiser Hwang text and pics of two impossibly well-detailed gangsters beating each other up silly. (PSM's designers smartly printed EA's art huge, although you can't help but notice that it's the same two dudes in every dang screen.)

And what's more: GTA:VCS's four pages of extra content (interview with studio head, sample missions) is pretty hot, too. PSM certainly has no lack of cover choices this month.

Amusing note: Def Jam 3 gets more pages than PSM's entire Fall Game Preview 2006, which only takes up six. That's, like, the opposite of EGM's approach.

Inserted in this issue: Is a set of coupons from Circuit City, somewhat similar to GamePro's Level-2 stuff. It's in OXM, too, and trying to take the insert out in one piece will cause the magazine to disintegrate, so don't try it.

Official Xbox Magazine November 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent

A somewhat lean month overall for coverage, compared to Future's other mags. The top page-grabber is a start-to-finish hands on with Double Agent -- I can't help but wonder what writer Paul Curthoys will have further to say in the review. If you bought this issue off the newsstand, you also get a Splinter Cell calendar. A staff "where are they now" piece reveals that old Game Players standby Dan Egger has passed the bar in Mississippi.

For magazine dorks: The top feature this month, as always, is the OXM fifth-anniversary blowout. All the usual bits you'd expect in such a feature are here, from the commented timeline of covers to a photolog of great moments in Xbox history, from Peter Moore's tattoos to that time Muhammad Ali showed up at the E3 conference. (Wait, were those both at the same event, or am I getting my years mixed up? I'm so old...)

On the disc: Is Dead Rising, in case you were too lazy to download it, as well as LOTR Battle for Middle-Earth II and some Project 8 stuff.

Scarface: Hey, remember Scarface? Scarface made the cover of EGM at one point; can you believe that? The game's coming out soon, and OXM devoted the most pages to it out of any mag this month -- an entir spread devoted to Ryan McCaffrey slagging off the story, controls, missions, the whole bit. It scores 4.5 out of 10, a shade lower than PSM's 5.0. (PSM only gave the game a couple paragraphs, which I suppose you could interpret as an even more devastating diss.)

Play Magazine October 2006

Cover: The Darkness

I haven't heard of The Darkness before now, but I really should have -- it's the newest from Starbreeze, makers of The Chronicles of Riddick, the game that kept legions of Xbox fanboys from committing hara-kiri during one dry-as-a-bone summer long ago.

If this were a Future or Ziff cover feature, you can bet the screenshots would occupy entire pages, but you know that ain't the way Play rolls. Screens are kept demure, and in their place, there's all sorts of Brady-text and dev/creator interviews. It's killer.

Best-of Series: This month's spread is on adventure, and once again, you've got a neato page of art from Dany Orizio. His Chinese comic-book-ish takes on Ico and Amaterasu are mega-rad.

Only in Play: Will you see a full-spread review of Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. Not that I'm complaining, mind. Dave likes it a lot, by the way.

Trainspotters Alert: Someone forgot to fill out a pull quote in a preview of Resistance: Fall of Man. The result: a very large piece of text on the page that reads, and I quote, "Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx x xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxx..." All mags flub now and again, but this is the first one from Play I ever recall. At least they didn't commit the error their forefather GameFan did and use the dummy text to talk about how wild and woolly those Japanese folks are.

Girls of Anime Volume 1

This isn't strictly games, no, but it's from Play Magazine all the same and is the follow-up to their three past yearly "Girls of Gaming" specials, so I'll give it a blurb here. Yes, it's anime chixxx all over your face for 100 or so pages -- and if you're feeling particularly ribald, you can download the mature-content Digital Edition from Play's website right now. Oh my.

Hardcore Gamer October 2006

Cover: Destroy All Humans! 2

I didn't think DAH!2 would get a cover, but HCG came through in the cluth. I like the expression on that hippy lady's face.

Features this month: On horror games and machinima. Oh, and there's some rad Awesome Possum fanart in the back. Why can't Newtype get cool art like that? It's all boring ol' InuYasha instead. Janet Jennings, if you're reading this, send some of your Awesome to us too, OK?

Game Developer September 2006

Simon Carless (ie. my boss) says the other really intelligent thing about E3's death in his editorial this month: it's bad for the rank-and-file developers who can't "get a comprehensive snapshot of the state of game development" any longer.

For the layman: You'll want to read the cover interview with Alexey Pajitnov, where he talks about everything from trying to start a development company in the USSR to how those YouTube Tetris: The Grand Master videos aren't that impressive. There's also a pretty comprehensive piece on the "state of the industry" in PC games, as well as another interview with Goichi Suda and a postmortem on NOM, a crazy cell-phone game I kinda wish I could play.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. He's also an editor at Newtype USA magazine.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 3:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's worth checking out the Game|Life weblog, more than usual, even, since Chris Kohler has been doing some neat photo updates for Wired News from Tokyo.

But I particularly liked his photos from the Vanpool offices, the creators of the ultra-bizarre Zelda spin-off Tingle RPG for DS - he noted: "But I had to ask the designers: was their game really intended, as I suspected, as a parody of Scientology?"

So: "As it turns out: no, but sort of. While they didn't know what Scientology was, they said they were inspired to create the scam-a-riffic religion of Rupee Land by voodoo bullshit like fake charm pendants and healing bracelets and all that." But man, bizarre real-life Tingle-style press-on nails, too? Odd odd odd.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now, we already covered the 'Airport Security' game done by Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games for Shockwave.com, but it's worth noting that this is just part of a bigger program from parent company Atom, according to a press release they sent us.

It goes like this: "Atom Entertainment, Inc. said today it has opened the first "NewsGames” channel at the fast growing online games destination AddictingGames and said it will develop dozens of new titles each year and promote the best user-generated games that mock the most popular headlines and cultural topics of the day."

Interestingly, they want to grab most of the titles for free: "Most of the content at the NewsGames channel will be harvested from user submissions. Today, users can create games just about as quickly and easily as they can shoot, edit and publish video Atom Entertainment expects to see much of the content in the NewsGames channel to come from user submissions and online gamers." Apart from Persuasive's games, of course.

So what do you get here? "Other titles in the NewsGame channel have already proven to be huge hits. The Zidane Headbutt game was an international sensation, generating almost 4 million games plays in just a few weeks online. Cheney's Fury, a game that mocked our vice presidents errant shotgun blast and has seen 1.4 million game plays, also joins the cast of games available here. And Bush Backrub, a game that lampooned the President's awkward massaging of a European head of state and has seen more than 1 million game plays, is also at the new destination." Hurray!

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The second of what will probably be three parts in alt.TGS photos. I've tried to stray away from the most obvious stuff (everyone is taking pictures of Devil May Cry 4, after all), but who knows, this selection may be just as predictable in a 'alternative stuff' way, right?

Oh well, please to enjoy anyhow:

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Via a bunch of people, including Waxy, we have an interesting weblog post about a musical theme from Super Mario Bros, and how it may possibly have been 'borrowed' from an older funk record.

It's noted: "A while back, while digging through LA’s now closed Aaron’s Records, I ran across a Record from “Friendship”, and I recognized the bassists name, “Abraham Laboriel”. I remembered a buddy of mine telling me that Abe was a “sick bassist”, and at 99 cents, i couldn’t resist. So I bring my loot home, and pop it on my technics. The very first track I played is called “The Real Thing”. I was instantly floored. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was listening to a funked out version of Super Mario Brothers “Underworld” theme."

The MP3 comparing them is there on the page, and commenter 'Olli' is the most intriguing of the blog respondents: "Video games really wasn’t considered that big a deal by anyone over the age of 20 in 1985, certainly not enough to sue over musical similarities. it wasn’t uncommon in those days for vg composers to borrow parts of pop melodies for game soundtracks because there was virtually no risk involved. this is only a small bit of the melody that’s similar though... koji kondo may very well be a fan of friendship, i know he borrowed bits of songs by three suns and other space age pop bands for super mario world and yoshi’s island."

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Something else I worked on for Gamasutra at TGS - I was one of the only Western journalists in a CEDEC Premium talk with Epic's Tim Sweeney, and it was great to see him being honest in the Q&A, freed from perhaps over-restrictive PR shackles.

Some extracts: Sweeney "...did comment specifically on how difficult it is to program for multi-core processors and the even more complex Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3. He noted that it "takes about twice the effort and development cost to develop for a multi-threaded CPU," compared to a single-core CPU. Even more than that, according to Epic's analysis, fully exploiting the PS3 Cell chip "required about 5 times as much cost and development time than single-core.""

But it's not all bad for PS3: "While Sweeney seemed to be disquieted by the complexity of developing for Cell, he did praise Sony elsewhere in his keynote for an "enlightened business model" when it comes to online PS3 capabilities - one that will apparently allow Epic's users to create Unreal Tournament 2007 levels and content on the PC, and distribute them via the PlayStation 3." Apples for everyone!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[New GSW contributor Henry Cao is going to be writing a video game music/audio column for us in the near future, but in the meantime, he happens to have written this neat guide to upcoming game-related events in New York City, so we're reprinting here. Contact us if you'd like to do the same for your city.]


Come Out and Play Festival
When: September 22 - 24, 2006
Where: Eyebeam, 540 West 21st St.
What: From the creators of I Love Bees, PacManhattan, and more, the Come Out and Play Festival seeks to celebrate new styles of play through street and alternate reality games. The festival kicks off with a performance of Modal Kombat - a game of Mortal Kombat played by using real guitars - followed by a game of Space Invaders on the side of a building with your body as the controller. Sonic Body Pong will also make an appearance; there’s no screen - you have to use your sense of hearing to hit the ball!
Free, but many games require registration.
http://www.comeoutandplay.org/

PulseWave
When: September 23, 2006 at 10 pm
Where: The Tank, 279 Church St.
What: Home to the scene of chiptunes, NYC’s latest show is headed by Nullsleep and Bit Shifter. If you’ve ever wondered why your Game Boy sounds like crap, run – don’t walk – to this show for an orgasmirific evening of bleeps and bloops.
$6 for all ages.
http://www.thetanknyc.org/spaceworks/

Wired NextFest
When: September 29, 2006 – October 1, 2006
Where: Jacob Javits Center, 655 West 34th St.
What: Alright, so this event is less about video games and more about the automatons who will one day subjugate mankind. And who cares about solar-powered cars, a glove that speaks sign language, or a digital camera that lets you see your own veins? “How am I supposed to rot my brain cells with these?” you ask. Well, you can, and look like a hamster in a cage while doing so! The VirtuSphere will be adopted by the future of arcades (heh heh. Look Beavis, I just made a dichotomy) and the military… but don’t tell Jack.
$15 for adults ($20 at the door), $12 for students, $5 for children. Adult ticket includes one-year subscription to Wired magazine.
http://www.nextfest.net

New York-Tokyo Music Festival
When: September 30, 2006
Where: Rumsey Playfield, Central Park
What: New York-Tokyo’s annual music festival seeks to bridge Japanese and American culture with live performances by some of the best artists from both countries, but don’t let the name fool you – anime and games get the full-fledged treatment too! Featuring newly-released titles like Xenosaga III, Hot PXL, and Eureka Seven, the fun never stops (unless these games suck). Afro Samurai starring Samuel L. Jackson will also premiere; a reliable source tells me that Sam yells “I want these motherfucking ninjas off this motherfucking plane!” before every fight. Okay, not really.
Free!
http://music.newyork-tokyo.com

8 Bit: A Documentary about Art and Videogames
When: October 7, 2006 at 8 pm and October 11, 2006 at 6 pm
Where: Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St.
What: Billed as a rockumentary of video game art, 8 Bit explores the “repository of the marvelous”, at least according to the press release. What’s that mean? It means you’re stupid unless you’re in this movie. Ohhhhhhh.
$20 for adult museum admission, $12 for student museum admission, free for children.
$10 for adult film admission, $6 for student film admission, free for children but requires ticket.
http://www.8bitmovie.com

Nintendo Fusion Tour
When: October 8, 2006 at 6 pm
Where: Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd St.
What: Who’s the star of this nationwide tour? Hawthorne Heights? Emery? Emo band #471? Non, monsieur. It’s the Nintendo Wii, or the “Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!” if you’re crowd surfing while slitting your wrists. In an unrelated note, there was a guy who wore a Halo 2 T-shirt when Shigeru Miyamoto visited the Nintendo World Store, and all the Nintendo fanboys hissed at him (at Halo 2 shirt-wearing-guy, not Shigsy). Man, you guys piss me off.
$22
http://www.nintendofusiontour.com

Digital Life
When: October 12 – 15, 2006
Where: Jacob Javits Center, 655 West 34th St.
What: Digital Life is mainly a consumer electronics event, but it does have a respectable game division – especially if you’re up for Star Wars: Battlefront II and Dance Dance Revolution tournaments. Highlights for this year include the premiere of Final Fantasy XII and appearances by a roster of as-of-yet unnamed B-list celebrities. Highlights for last year include a black Batman, an unplayable Xbox 360, and an appearance by Carmen Electra. Holy crap, I couldn’t walk through the crowd around her. I couldn’t even see her – she might as well have been Carmen Sandiego.
$12 for adults ($15 after Oct. 12th), $8 for students ($12 after Oct. 12th).
http://www.digitallife.com

Digital Play: Reloaded
When: Wednesday and Thursday at 11 am–5 pm, Friday at 11 am-8 pm (free after 4 pm), Saturday and Sunday at 11 am-6:30 pm
Where: Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Ave. at 36th St.
What: “Digital Play: Reloaded is organized around the theme of action in its different uses and interpretations. Music, dance, and movement-oriented video games originating in Japan constitute a shift from traditional, often violent game scenarios” is how this event’s described on its website. Here’s the summarized version: you get to play video games in a freaking museum! The bad news? There’s no “suggested donation” system (aka “show your significant other just how cheap you are”) that’s the bread and butter of other museums – you actually have to pay! Like if you were going to the movies. Except you’re not. Those Commie bastards!
$10 for adults, $7.50 for students, $5 for children ages 5-18, free for children under 5.
http://www.movingimage.us/site/exhibitions/mainpage/digital_play_reloaded.html

Honorable Mentions:

VGXPO
When: October 27 – 29
Where: Valley Forge Convention Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
What: I don’t know what this event’s about, but it seems to have gotten much bigger from last year; the recent cancellation of E3 is probably why. In any case, it’s close enough to NYC that it’s worth mentioning, and anything that uses Ben Franklin to promote itself is okay in my book.
http://www.vgxpo.com

Posted by henryc at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wow, TGS takes it out of you, and I'm sure you guys are inundated by reading all kinds of articles about the 7 zillion games exhibited on the TGS show floor. Well, I haven't even had time to catch up on other people's picks, but here's the stuff I got excited about at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show while wandering confusedly round the show floor:

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, I was at Tokyo Game Show all day - you'll see some pictures from it on GSW in due course, including some alternate highlights - but I did an in-depth write-up of Ken Kutaragi's Sony keynote for Gamasutra which perhaps doesn't even convey the semi-insanity of it.

Ken obviously has a grand plan around networking and shared metaverse-style information (!), yet as I noted: "But how do the two poles of a networked ecosystem and the PS3's extreme power get reconciled? Kutaragi freely admitted that the PlayStation 3 "may be called overkill" in terms of its "enormous computation power", but he explained that, over the next 2 to 3 years, "networking will live alongside packaged media."" If you understand this, please explain to us all!

Furthermore, the follow-up Q&A saw Mr. Kutaragi in even more flippant mode, particularly: "When asked about the expensive nature of the PS3, Kutaragi somewhat bizarrely claimed that in the U.S., the $499 pricing had retailers and publishers happy at "such a great function for that price", trying to paint a picture where Europe was similarly happy, and it was only Japan (where the lower-spec model is 59,800 yen ($515), and the higher-spec price up to retailers) that price came up as an issue." You should have seen the Westerners in the audience when _that_ comment came through via translation.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Man, the guys at GameTap are piling on the intriguing game content for their 'all you can eat' PC subscription stylee service - they just signed up Jordan Mechner's cult 'The Last Express' and Cyan's Spelunx working on PC for the first time - info follows below from their official PR.

"Among the highlights [of the new GameTap update] is “The Last Express,” Phoenix Licensing’s debut game on GameTap. When The Last Express was originally released, it received Editor’s Choice awards from Computer Gaming World, PC Gamer, and dozens of gaming websites, as well as being awarded the “Best New Adventure and Role Playing Game” by Games Magazine. Created by Jordan Mechner, the mastermind behind the incredibly popular “Prince of Persia” series, “The Last Express” is an indelible adventure experience."

"While Cyan is best known for its “Myst” franchise - with “Myst Online: Uru Live” debuting on GameTap this holiday season and “Myst,” “Riven: The Sequel to Myst,” and “Myst III: Exile” currently available in the network – one of their past game gems is “Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo.” This is an educational game cleverly disguised as a cave exploration adventure. Previously only available for the Mac, it is now making its PC debut."

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Cinema Pixeldiso' is a new column by Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins, which takes a look at movies that are either directly based upon or are related to video games, with a focus on the obscure and the misunderstood. This week’s selection hails from South Korea and was produced in 2002.]

RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL

So most video game movies are based on video games, right? Well here's one based on... an old Christmas story by Hans Christian Anderson?

Resurrection of the Little Match Girl tells the tale of Joo, a quiet, downtrodden regular Joe who spends his time either working a crappy Chinese food delivery job, or in the arcades playing various arcade shooters - which help fuel his fantasies of blasting away all the rude customers he has to deal with. His main aspiration is to be a pro gamer like his best buddy GG. Why? Women, naturally. In one of the film’s earliest scenes features both guys having dinner with two girls, and when GG tells the ladies about the StarCraft competition he’s set to participate in, along with all the money and fame that’ll come if he nabs the top prize, both get into an argument in the bathroom over the chance to bag him. Joo on the other hand is completely cast aside.

[Click through for more.]

Then after yet another evening spent in the arcade playing a few games as well as pining over the cutie who runs the place (but who already has a boyfriend and is clearly out of his league anyway), Joo is approached by a girl selling lighters (the titular character, though modified since no one sells matches anymore in this day and age), who not only looks like the arcade girl from before but also seems totally out of it. Joo then quietly follows the Match Girl in the shadows and watches as she approaches a sailor to sell her wares, who in turn takes her back to his boat for the evening. Then the words "GAME OVER" comes across the movie screen, along with "Hint: pay attention and be careful" and "Restart (YES/NO)". We are then transported back to the scene in which Joo received the lighter, and upon closer examination he notices a phone number (which also happens to feature a logo closely resembling the one for the Sega Dreamcast). He calls the it and a voice welcomes him to Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, a game provided by "the System".

How The Game/Movie Works

Joo agrees to play and the rules are immediately laid out: the goal is to allow the girl to die from the cold by "saving" her from certain individuals that are either willing to buy a lighter from her or want her for their own nefarious purposes. Also, in the original story, the Match Girl dies while thinking of her grandmother, so in the game Joo must make the girl fall in love with him before allowing her to expire. Joo is also informed that failure means he'll be stuck in the game forever. Thus the “game” begins.

The basic thrust of the film is Joo’s attempt at “winning” the game, which mostly consists of him dealing with the assorted video game conventions and the accompanying shift in reality; early on he acquires an ID card that he uses to attain weapons and health (i.e buy food). Graphics and explanations appear often on-screen whenever a new element comes up, or if there’s a chance in status. When Joo nails his first bad guy, we see his “stats” increase.

They also pop up whenever characters are introduced, which are the other major component he has to handle (some are friends but most are foes). There’s a wide and colorful cast, which includes a lecherous old man, five bumbling hoodlums which provides the movie's primary comic relief, Odeng, the obligatory weaponry provider, and Oh Sadness, the main bad guy, who also happens to be the one who killed the Match Girl's love (explaining why she's messed up), and has since been "cursed". Each time someone appears, you get information regarding their health, strength, hit points, et-cetera, as well as a brief biographical blurb, which provides as much insight as the ones you get from the attract screens in a fighting game. Though the best of the bunch and definite highlight of the entire film has to be the gun-toting Lara, whose bio says it all: "Remember Lara Croft. But here she's a lesbian. She's powerful but mentally unstable." It should also be noted that she is actually a he; the character of Lara is portrayed by Jin Xing, a real life Chinese transsexual actor.

Stage 1

The "game" starts out pretty strong. Early on Joo pairs up with Lara who helps the Little Match Girl escape the clutches of Oh Sadness’ men, who had kidnapped her away from the aforementioned goofy gang which had previously nabbed her from the streets and were engaging in a false-molestation scenario to help set up their boss’s grand entrance, with the idea being that he would kicks their asses and “save” her from them so she would therefore fall in love with the man, who also happens to be portrayed by a poor Korean imitation of John Belushi. The whole sequence of events can only be described as “wacky”. When Lara hits the scene, it's nothing but hard-hitting business; she shoots while running (both on the ground and up the walls), sliding, doing summersaults, jumping on and off her bike (which is called “Tom Cruise”, a nod to Top Gun perhaps), and even flat out flying through the air. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when people leap in the air, they defy gravity but it makes at least a little sense. Not here. And when a shot connects (which it always does; Lara’s an expert shot of course) the results are pretty gruesome, with blood flying all over the place as well; the movie doesn't pull back any punches with the outlandish action, which is all high-speed, visceral, cartoony, and, yes, very video game-like. And it’s very enjoyable to watch, especially when Joo and Lara take the showdown to a disco, where she not only shoots and jumps, but busts moves on the dance floor), in a scene where the director figuratively comes forward and says "I like the Matrix a lot and have no problems ripping it off because I LOVE BULLET TIME."

The rest of the first leg has the Little Match Girl passing out from inhaling lighter fluid, which brings upon a hallucination/flashback/music video sequence featuring her dead boyfriend singing some cheesy K-rock ballad and then getting killed by Oh Sadness. We also discover that Joo is a “virus” that the System considers a major threat, and calls upon Oh Sadness to seek out and eliminate the player. Oh Sadness in turn enlists his best agent, GG. The System is portrayed by a French man who speaks English, so his dialogue is not subtitled like the rest of the Korean dialogue, but his accent is so thick it’s impossible to make out 60% of what he's saying. And the crazy old guy who gives Joo cryptic advice, Choopung, also created the System but was “betrayed” by it, and now he wants to take it down (naturally).

Stage 2

The second “stage” begins with the Little Match Girl running around town with a gun, back to selling lighters. This time when folks say no, she just blows them away. This in turn makes her a media darling, and is dubbed the "LMG Bug" by the press. It makes one lead to believe that every denizen of the game's world knows that they aren’t real and are happy to see something screw up the system, but it’s an avenue that's never fully explored. Another scene that seems completely out of place has her storming into an orphanage where kids are used as slave labor, and killing the operators, who are so evil they bleed green blood. Unfortunately, she ends up taking a few kids out in the process. Whoops!

Soon there's a stand off between herself and Oh Sadness, who reveals that it wasn't he who killed her main squeeze, but the System, who ain't too happy about that revelation, so Oh Sadness is quickly snuffed while the Match Girl is finally subdued. Later we catch up with Joo who is totally weaponless and starving since he had to ditch his ID as the System was using it to track him. Joo eventually confronts Choopung who tells him to go to see Odeng, who then tells him to see Choopung again, but this time it’s the "real" Choopung, not the "game" Choopung. (I think... things get really confusing at this point). Joo also receives the Mackerel, which looks like a cheap kid's toy but is the movie/game's obligatory ultimate weapon. But it has limited firepower, so he’d better be careful!

Stage 3

End game finally begins kicks off with Joo storming the System's HQ that is a very long and costly looking action sequence with lots of stuff being blown to bits. This is the part of the movie that really begins to feel like the director’s checklist of “video-gamey” stuff to do. "Hey, our good guy is running down the hallway, shooting bad guys. Can we insert some cheesy FPS graphics here? Good." Then you have the inevitable Joo/GG confrontation where they engage in fisticuffs wearing trench coats, dodge bullets, move in slow mo, and even punch each other in a rain-soaked alleyway for no real reason. Eventually we arrive at the heart of the System, which is an all white room with crappy Matrix-gibberish computer code running down the sides of walls, along with a few grey arcade cabinets littered about.

The System says a few indistinguishable things, and a last ditch attempt to save the girl is made, but Joo is killed. Yet, he’s not really dead, because it was all just a game. So Joo gets up from his computer and continues on with his life as a lowly Chinese delivery guy.

The End

Or is it? Psyche! He had another credit, or something. And you can see where this is going... provided an overly symbolic-laden grand finale in which Joo must shoot it out with bad guys while the Match Girl runs on top of ocean waves while trying to destroy a golden moth is someone’s idea of an obvious conclusion. I'd like to think that it was a subtle reference to the game Rez, but a part of me doesn't want to give the filmmaker that much credit.

Is Resurrection of the Little Match Girl a good movie? No. Very much the opposite: the plot is completely incoherent, much of the action and violence seems completely unnecessary, all the characters are one dimensional, and it’s more or less an extremely awkward mash-up of parody, satire, and social commentary. The film tries very hard to say several things about the human condition, video gamers, and maybe our society, but all of it is very unclear. But ultimately it’s not bad in the same way that other bad video game movies are. At the very least, it’s different.

Though what makes the film truly special is that it’s practically the most embarrassing thing to come from the white-hot Korean film scene. Whereas virtually every single Korean film produced from 2000 has been a smash success in its home land, and the darling of whatever film festival it appears at elsewhere, Resurrection was a colossal disaster, and is perhaps something the entire nation might want to forget ever happened. According to New York based Subway Cinema, which was brave enough to host its US premiere (I think its safe to say that no one else had the guts or common sense to play it elsewhere), the movie was such a massive bomb that it single-handedly bankrupted all three of the companies that financed the project, which was apparently many years in the making. And it definitely looked like it cost three company’s worth of assets; the movie is visually stunning, and far more respectable than most other movies based on games, which often have shoestring budgets. At a time when most Korean directors are busy working on three films at once; Resurrection's director, Jang Sun-Woo, has yet to make another film.

Final Score…

Resurrection of the Little Match Girl may go down as a true forgotten classic in the realm of video game cinema, one that doesn’t deserve to slip away. At the very least it should be celebrated as a bad video game movie with a little bit of class, since it’s also a foreign flick, which has to count as something. And much like gender-bending Lara Croft, it needs to be seen to be believed.

Also…

Another film from Asia, from Hong Kong, which doesn’t deal with video games as heavily but has a few nice elements from them, and more importantly is a good movie, is Bio Zombie. It’s basically Dawn of the Dead, but in an urban Hong Kong shopping center, and instead of some SWAT team members, it’s just a pair of hapless VCD bootleggers fighting the undead (with skills honed via House of the Dead). The movie also happens to feature the absolute best use of a Game Boy Camera in motion picture history.

There’s also La Maquina de Bailar, the Spanish DDR movie that opens very soon. So Americans aren't the only ones looking from behind a controller for movie ideas.

[Matt Hawkins is a New York-based freelance journalist and Gamasutra contributor. He also designs games, makes comics, and does assorted “other things.” To find out more, check out Fort90.com.]

Posted by at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Since TGS is kicking off tomorrow, GSW posts may be slowing down a bit more, but here's my latest for Gamasutra - an interview with Ouendan and Gitaroo Man co-creator Keiichi Yano, discussing how independent developers thrive in the Japanese market.

Here's some neat bits: "How about hiring to add to the team at Inis? Yano commented baldly: "Hiring is really a pain in the butt in Japan", noting that for a company like Inis, "it's very hard to get [the right] caliber of person", despite the specialized game schools operating in Japan. However, Inis is starting to attract seasoned developers to bolster its existing staff - the Inis co-founder explains: "We have the lead programmer of Final Fantasy XI on our team right now", an impressive addition to the company."

And more: "So, what's in Inis' future? The company has shown elements from an Xbox 360 technical demo on its website, and Yano confirmed that they are moving ahead, and we will "eventually" see some kind of Xbox 360 game from his company - no publisher or game details yet, though. As for other possible projects, Yano commented enthusiastically: "I want to do a Wii game, like everybody else" - but it doesn't appear that any such title is in active development." Please to enjoy!

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:42 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.]

Arkham Horror isn’t the type of game you take on without a commitment to mind alteration and abstract thought. The brain has to be limber to follow the breadcrumbs that were left by the designers throughout the rule book for this game, and we all know what limbers the mind. So, I poured myself a glass of “brain tonic” and began my work.

When faced with learning something that abandons the standard rule set that we’re all used to, such as smashing windows, it’s always best to throw yourself in to it head first. With that in mind, we all sat down to go over how to play the game with only a modicum of actual game knowledge. A game like Arkham Horror, when not addressed as I’ve described, is always going to take twice as long to understand and begin to enjoy, and that’s its danger. If the learning process takes too long, the more casual players become restless and irritable and you will lose them. This will not do. That brings us to the only real complaint about Arkham Horror: the rule book.

The best way to understand these rules, and find your way through the book, as we discovered, was to have a council. We made the council out of the people we had present: Brian was the sober, hardcore gamer, Scott represented the sober, casual gamer and then me, the abstract thinker. Once the stage was set, we began to play and learn the rules at a breakneck pace.

Our characters would make a movement and perform an action, followed by a flip through the instructions. Anything that wasn’t played correctly was let slide and a promise to “do it right the next time” was laid out by all in attendance. This first game took us around four hours to play and, even after having to survive the rule book, everyone had a good time. This, by all accounts, is a minor miracle for our group. So, with that in mind, we decided to include some n00bs.

Luckily for said n00bz, there is absolutely no pwnz0ring allowed except by the Ancient Ones or their followers. On the other hand, though, is the fact that Ancient Ones and their followers really enjoy pwnz0ring n00bs and those of us with sk1llz as well. Arkham Horror isn’t an easy game by any definition, and that’s AFTER you understand the rules. That’s what makes it interesting, and oddly disheartening, to play. There’s always a “bottomless pit” waiting right around the corner to whisk you directly back to go without your ten dollars or wither spell. More than once, I’ve been swept into the void because of a lousy dice roll.

Instant death aside, the gameplay is somewhat similar to other systems. You can move an amount of spaces according to your speed and you use your different stats to determine the difficulty of skill checks and to decide combat. Items and allies can be acquired by completing challenges from location cards or by purchasing them in stores. Each player has life and, of course, sanity markers. It wouldn’t be a game based on Lovecraft’s work if you didn’t lose your mind. It’s all mostly standard board game fare with a few exceptions.

One of the more notable differences is the gates to other worlds. Each round, the locations on the board have a chance of turning into a gate to another dimension. If a player is on that space or lands on that space, they are immediately sucked through and must find their way out. Basically, the player has to be in the other dimension for at least two turns before they can leave (though there are a few exceptions to that rule). Once the player has left the alternate dimension, they can choose to close the gate, and if they use five clue tokens they can seal that area for good, which means that neither gates nor monsters can spawn there again. Which leads us to the question: what the hell are clue tokens?

Clue tokens are little items scattered around the board that represent bits and pieces of knowledge that can be used to turn a situation to your favor. For instance, you can spend a clue token to roll additional die or to close a gate. These tokens start off plentiful and then become rare later in the game when you need them the most. Hang on to your clues, people, you’re going to need them when the Ancient One comes back.

There are a couple of ways to end the game, but the most common by far is the return of an Ancient One. At the beginning of the game, when you’re selecting characters you also select or pick at random for an overall evil threat. This grizzly bastard is planning on destroying the world, and only the investigators’ sweet brand of vigilante justice will save it. You have to fight the Ancient One and send it back to wherever it came from. There’s something satisfying about blasting Cthulu back to hell with a 12 gauge pump and some holy water.

Most of the time, however, it’s not that easy. Most of the ancient ones come into the world packing a punch and the odds of survival are slim, but where’s the fun if there’s no danger? This time we lost the nun, who was devoured by some ancient evil, and then our gangster got tossed into the abyss. After all that, those of us who remained were cut down by Yog-Sothoth.

Oh, well, you can’t win them all. Hell, it’s how you get there that’s the real fun. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway, but deep down inside I’m a torrent of rage. I’ll get you next time, you fancy bastard.

I need a drink.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for Gamasutra, GameSpy 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 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The observant among you may have spotted that I posted a new Gamasutra editorial on the Xbox 360's chances in Japan, after attending the company's pre-TGS briefing yesterday.

Some highlights: "The 90 minute briefing, helmed both by Takashi Sensui, General Manager of Xbox Japan, and in parts by an ever-ebullient Peter Moore, was intended to show that it was business as usual in terms of Microsoft's Japanese strategy. And, in many ways, the company's admirable intent is still in place - but the results are starting to show, and it simply hasn't worked so far."

And there's more: "Now, let it not be said that Microsoft aren't going about things the right way by recruiting Sakaguchi to the cause, and there is certainly good support to a certain degree from major Japanese companies including Capcom and Bandai Namco. But it looks increasingly to me, from seeing the shelves in Tokyo game stores filled with Western-created games for the first Xbox, that the company's Xbox 360 efforts are being undone by what has gone before."

My conclusion? "Moore notes that Japan is "one of the most critical regions for our business" - well, the next few months will be a final chance to get the console off life support." Aw, poor MS. More from Tokyo Game Show (which starts tomorrow!), uhh, tomorrow.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm guessing you guys may be pretty bored of random Japanese arcade pics by now, but - good news - it's the last of the snaps I took this week. This final set deals with the Half-Life 2 arcade machine (yay!), other oddness, and walking the dog, arcade machine stylee (which isn't weird at all, right?) So, let's go:

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The ever-interesting Ian Bogost has posted in detail about his new 'serious game', and notes in an email to us: "My studio Persuasive Games just released a new game, in a new series of newsgames, on Shockwave.com. It's a game about airport security."

It's what? "They say the front line of the War on Terror is the airport security line. See if you’ve got what it takes to keep airline travel safe in this hysterical game of airport security. Better not let that tube of toothpaste get through your checkpoint — it could be a terrorist’s weapon against freedom (or maybe it just fights gingivitis)!"

WCG commenter Julian already digs it, commenting: "I just got back from a trip through the UK and Ireland, and the game is an accurate description of the level of confusion in air travel that results from constantly changing security rules." Social criticism and satire through games can be a powerful, neat thing.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Edge Online has done the good thing and has reprinted an interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi from the most recent issue of Edge Magazine, and it's got some fun stuff in it.

One of the neatest answers is comparing games and music: "Videogames are very much a firstperson experience. You are alone, facing the screen. But music has the advantage of being able to offer a firstperson experience when playing it and a thirdperson experience when you listen to it. A DJ, for instance, handles both these aspects of the music experience."

He continues: "When I started to make games using music, I had to play with these two aspects, so I used the music in the background in a thirdperson experience, but the game play itself could be compared to a DJ in action. Making music by pressing a button is an experience very close to a firstperson gaming experience." Lots more goodness within.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Functional Autonomy blog has an interesting post analyzing DS title Another Code, aka [EDIT: Uh, not Lost in Blue, duh!] Trace Memory, and comparing it to traditional adventure games.

The overall take, though? "Basic verdict: Does many tricks of old media while not playing to any of the strengths of games." Looks like this is usability-related, but some fine points are made: "# As the player, I often feel like I’m solely there to double tap in appropriate places to advance the decidedly linear action."

What's more: "# Dialogue is long winded, and interrupts the game without warning. Scripts initiate it far more often than the player, and it’s also so linear that the efforts at making it interactive are laughable... # It often won’t let you pick up items that will obviously be needed, until dialogue pertaining to the relevant puzzle has been activated and sat through." Too harsh? Some claim this is a 'hidden gem'.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

[‘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 machinima.]

Last week I was wondering about machinima in Second Life, and this week I decided to look at it. I have to be honest; I think that machinima is almost always terrible. Much like using video games to create architecture prototypes, it works fantastically to create quick and dirty mock-ups of shots, locations or even scenes, but to create whole movies? Gosh, no thanks.

I actually went to see a whole range of machinima at this year’s Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto and was sorely disappointed; that the best they could find was the laughably overwrought (if technically impressive) World of Warcraft movie The Return was a bit depressing.

So, now you know about my in-built prejudices against machinima, you can probably take my opinions with a grain of salt. But! I genuinely think that with so many interesting locations in the world, hundreds of players who really have nothing better to do than be extras and built in video capturing tools, Second Life really does seem to be the ultimate “game” in which to create quick and easy machinima.

And having watched quite a few machinima shorts created in Second Life by now, I’d say that the only problem that affects Second Life’s machinima is the same that affects most others; loads of technical ability, absolutely no creative talent. As per usual, it’s like asking C++ coders to write Shakespeare. I've taken a look at a few of the best and worst.

Silver Bells and Golden Spurs – Probably one of the best known Machinima films from Second Life, as it’s the main one linked on the Second Life webpage, this is an amazingly impressive piece of work with a massive cast, mature camera angles and great set, let down by freaky animation (particularly the mouths) and a lame voice over. Made with the help of Linden Lab and apparently cost $555 to make, though. (The live action El Mariachi was made for only $7,000. Seriously. You could just save up.)

Second Life: Get One - Best-of-show winner in the 2006 Second Life movie trailer contest, this is exactly the kind of thing they would pick to win. An absurdly overblown, if well edited, paean. Has a blustery voice over that'll sicken anyone who’s actually struggled against the many, many flaws of Second Life. Horrific.

Better Life – A man in a wheelchair escapes into Second Life, a “better life” in which all he seems to do is fall through the sky. Comes back to that “asking to C++ coders write Shakespeare” thing; the wheelchair is unsubtle to the point of being offensive.

Tour of the Solar System – Not a narrative, more a short educational film created by the well known Second Lifer Aimee Weber, it’s nice but I really don’t see what it gains by being machinima. Planets are usually fairly easy to create and animate in anything (Even I could probably do it in Lightwave, and it’s been years since I’ve used it). Some pretty incongruous music at points, too.

Lip Flap – An at least slightly funny, if far too self-referential (And therefore self conscious) film about a couple getting ready for a party. Has some character models perfectly representative of Second Life, too (i.e. hideous caricatures of what people think is attractive).

If you’d like to try making Machinima in Second Life, you should probably start at the Second Life page on it which includes a white paper written by Eric Call (creator of Silver Bells and Golden Spurs). It’s perhaps amusing to note that the best piece of machinima about Second Life is probably the Second Life episode of Tra5h Ta1k; it’s astoundingly true to the world.

[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, Plan B magazine, and Eurogamer. Check out his workblog, too.]

Posted by mathewk at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at the San Jose Merc News, the Buddha himself, Dean Takahashi has posted a fun little profile of developer Giant Bite, which is especially beholden to us at GSW because one of the principals, Steve Theodore, is the art columnist for Game Developer mag.

The pitch? "Hamilton Chu had what many people might consider a dream job in the video game industry. He was producer on both Halo and Halo 2. Then he left to strike out on his own. Now he's one of the four founders of Seattle-based developer Giant Bite, and he wants to do something just as big there."

Unfortunately, there's just a little bit too much vagueness here: "In fact, for now, Giant Bite is going to remain small. It isn't talking about its game. They're thinking about the consoles and the PC. The company is working on its concept. It has finished some of its demo and made it to the Leipzig conference to show it to publishers. Once it gets funded, the company plans to ramp up hiring and production." We want to know more, of course.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hm, I was hoping to do a Gamasutra post about 'The State Of Japanese Arcades' today, but it's late, and honestly, I don't have a great deal of amazing insight, other than 'the Japanese love their arcade games, music, fighting, and networked CCG games are big, and there are some damn cool arcades out there', heh.

So how about I just split it out and show you some more pictures I've been taking of the myriad of arcades here in Tokyo this week? Some of this stuff is pretty standard, but hopefully you won't mind:

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at his blog, Garage Games' Jeff Tunnell has been expounding in detail on XBLA financing, with some particularly interesting results.

Firstly, he notes: "Creating an XBLA game is taking most studios 6-12 months. Costs are currently ranging from $100,000 to $300,000... The industry standard arms race will quickly make the top end $300,000 budget a cheap product. Right now, I wouldn’t consider attempting to make an XBLA game with a $100,000 budget... I can’t give the exact figure, but the Marble Blast Ultra budget was at the higher end of the current budget range."

More stats? If Marble Blast Ultra hypothetically sold about 120k unites: "So, 120,000 units * $10 per unit = $1.2MM... Remember, Microsoft should make something for making this cool distribution channel available, and they do take a cut. The publicly available information on this is that the distribution fees for bringing a game to XBLA is 35-70% depending upon participation by MS, i.e. the publisher gets 30-65% of the money collected for game sales."

Therefore: "Let’s say you are a publisher or a developer that is able to fund your own development, so, a $10 game (800 Gamer Points) would net you $6.50, or 120,000 units * $6.50 per unit = $780,000." Good info, here. [Via Edge Online.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We may or may not have an interview with the Colors creators up on Gamasutra soon, but in the meantime, our obsession with the game extends to GSW co-editor FrankC's semi-gonzo game semi-review over at his Lost Levels.

He explains: "Colors is a game that was made for the Gizmondo handheld device, a portable gaming system made by a company in Florida that installed floors into houses and offices. The Gizmondo was really awesome. It took five minutes to turn on, overheated all the time, and had no good games at all. It was sold exclusively by mailorder and in ten hidden mall kiosks throughout North America that required a potential customer to push a series of crates to reveal. It sold for something stupid like $400, and then the CEO of the company crashed his million dollar stolen Enzo, and then the entire company just kind of disappeared after two months."

What's more: "The Gizmondo's only killer app was Colors which, despite being a (mostly) finished game, never quite made it to the mall kiosks, because Gizmondo's distribution center forgot how to ship things. In this exclusive Lost Levels review, we take a look at Gizmondo's GTA-killer, and review it accordingly." The game is pretty... extreme, and the capsule review (with direct screenshots grabbed via a Windows-Gizmondo connection!) explains why, if it had been released, there would have been quite a lot of Thompson action, we're guessing.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at GameZebo, they have an excellent interview with Amanda Fitch, in which they explain her interesting background as follows.

It's mooted: "The story of Amanda Fitch (also known as Amanda Fae) and Aveyond is as unlikely as any in casual games. A female (if you have ever been to a game conference, you will understand this is a rarity) with a college degree in English creates a role-playing game (RPG) that becomes one of the most popular casual games of 2006 so far."

What's more: "How'd she do it? The answer: by creating a RPG accessible to everyone with great depth and storyline (with over 250 pages worth, in fact!) We sat down with Amanda Fitch to discuss her unique background, the secret to the success of Aveyond, and the role of female developers in casual games."

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oop, it's getting late here in Tokyo, but I just filed my first report for Gamasutra since I got here, named 'Special: The State Of Japanese Game Retail', and concerning, uhh, just that.

As I explain in the intro: "There have been plenty of articles in the past pontificating on the Japanese game market. But very few seem to have taken things down to a granular practical level, by simply analyzing what is stocked on Japanese video game store shelves, and how it differs to what we see in North America." I then try to compare the two markets, talking about Ratchet's extra Japanese eyebrows, and generally attempt to make sense. Please to enjoy!

[Meanwhile, Chris Kohler is gallivanting around Akihabara, stalking genius Taiko No Tatsujin players and taking videos of them. Why does this not surprise me?]

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to the keen eyes of Atari Age, we've spotted that the latest issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is online, and #28 is another (albeit badly designed!) corker.

The most fun is to be had analyzing various home versions of Kaboom!, of which it's explained: "Based on Dennis Kolbe’s Atari arcade game “Avalanche”, Activision’s Larry Kaplan struck gold with Kaboom! Adapting the same game principles to the best of the 2600’s capabilities with a cartoonish mad bomber running back and forth across the top of the screen dropping bombs."

We can practically feel Alan Hewston's pain in his review of the Atari 5200 version, too: "My first reaction was I could not find a way to control this version. Kaboom! has possibly the fastest action, demands a good degree of precision and probably requires more focus to play than any other video game ever. You simply must have a great paddle controller. There is only a joystick option and no paddle option." Ouuuch.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

One of the best ways to learn about Nethack is from reading YAAPs ("Yet Another Ascension Posts"), descriptions of victorious games on the newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.nethack.

It may be an unusual impulse to write up a detailed report of a computer game, roguelike or not. It may be even more unusual to be interested in reading it, but it cannot be denied that they are fascinating. It is the same impulse, I believe, that causes people to want to watch speed runs. Most of them are typical wins (especially the first time someone prevails in this game infamous for its difficulty), but some are of difficult challenge, or "conduct" games. Some, such as the tale of Nightshade below, are written in the style of an actual story, with the player's character usually the protagonist.

In this first installment of Giant Eel Stories, we'll be looking at two classic victory posts of the past. Since many of you are probably not Nethack fanatics, I'll supply much of the necessary information needed to understand them, and understand why they're cool, including a brief glossary at the end of this article. All links are to the original post on Google Groups. Later Giant Eel stories may not necessarily be concerned with Nethack: these are, though.

[Click through for the full post!]

To give an account of a victorious game, it is necessary to describe things that happen during it, and the tactics the player used, so there are heavy spoilers to follow. Spoilers are much less dangerous to a roguelike game than a more typical RPG, since so much of them are randomly generated, but there are still some who want to figure out everything for themselves -- although in Nethack's case that would probably take many years. If you are one of those noble individuals, you may not want to read on.

(Oh, and giant eels are a particularly dangerous aquatic monster from Nethack's bestiary. Just so you know.)

3/20/2002: Nightshade, Chaotic Female Elven Wizard

One of the cooler features of Nethack is that characters can be polymorphed into the form of various other monsters in the game. When a character is polymorphed, he gains all the special abilities, and drawbacks, of that monster. Turn into a xorn and you can walk through walls, but you're too large to wear armor -- and will in fact destroy any you were wearing beforehand.

The new body assumed by the character is usually chosen randomly from the monsters in the game, but there are two exceptions to this rule. If the character has picked up a means of polymorph control somewhere in the game, usually from a worn ring, then the game will instead ask the player what new form he wants to take. Rings of Polymorph Control, thus, are excellent finds. And if a player is wearing colored dragon scales or a suit of dragon scale mail, then he will always turn into the type of dragon matching the scales: red dragon scale mail means a red dragon. The dragon scales are protected from destruction in that case.

Other than possible armor loss, polymorph is usually not that bad an affliction. While changed, the player is actually given a buffer zone of safety. If a polymorphed player runs out of hit points he doesn't die but turns back into his normal self, just a few hits shy of his maximum – meaning that polymorph can actually be an excellent source of healing. Further, after a while characters will always turn back into their normal selves, more quickly if their new body was much greater in power compared to their real form.

This is how it usually works, but in a recent version of Nethack introduced a new item: Amulets of Unchanging. A character wearing such an amulet is completely immune (and thus his armor is immune too) from polymorph effects. But more interestingly, an already-polymorphed character wearing an Amulet of Unchanging is immune from changing back. Until the amulet is removed, the character will remain, for better or worse, in his new body. The change will never expire naturally over time, and the character can remain in a cool powerful state the rest of the game if he likes. But if the character runs out of hit points he won't turn back all healed up: he'll actually die.

Now the interesting thing about Nethack polymorph is that, in the long run, the most powerful monsters in the dungeon are player classes. There are many monsters with powerful abilities, but almost all of them are rather low on hit points compared to a player, even if he's of only moderate level, and many powerful monster forms can't wear some of the most important types of armor. So although many monsters have nifty special abilities that can come in handy in special cases, including a few that cannot be obtained any other way, a permanently-polymorphed player is at a disadvantage in terms of general survivability.

But nyra was not dissuaded by this. After a traumatic, yet cool, experience in her youth, character Nightshade gained a strange aspiration for her life, even for elves: she wanted to be a black dragon. Black dragons, as far as polymorph forms go, are one of the better choices: they can fly, they have good armor class, they have more hit points than most monsters, female dragons can lay eggs and thus eventually gain an army of followers following them around, and best of all, they are the only monster in the game with a disintegration breath attack, which instantly kills, and very few monsters have disintegration-resistance.

You now know what you need to know to begin the Tale of Nightshade the Black Dragon. Have a look at the original post on Google Groups here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/8d5da2a4761b19a7

2/22/2004: Ciompi259, Neutral Male Human Tourist

Another relatively recent addition to the game of Nethack, which has overall changed little since version 3.1 was released quite long ago, is the idea of tracked conducts.

To explain. The jeweled drinking halls of rec.games.roguelike.nethack are filled with a wide assortment of player, both newbies and old demigods alike. Some of these people have won the game many times. In fact, some are so good at the game that they actually win (make it through and ascend to demigod-status) more often than they lose (die or quit or escape -- but usually die). A few players almost never lose, if the victory percentages on public Nethack server alt.org are anything to go by: the player named "Ascension" has won twelve out of the thirteen games he's played there.

And for the most successful of these players, the game inevitably became rather dull and niggly, until they hit upon the idea of playing conduct games. That is, the player would decide on some aspects of Nethack's vast array of features to avoid using that game, and see if he could still win. Nethack is a game in which things can be done in lots of ways, but very few things are actually required to be victorious. All a player really must do to win out is gain the three essential "key" objects (the Bell of Opening, the Candelabrum of Invocation and the Book of the Dead), use 'em properly and get the Amulet of Yendor, escape the dungeon with it, then figure out a way through the five final levels to offer it on the correct High Altar on the Astral Plane. Those things are required to win. Most others, it turns out, are not.

A fairly recent version of Nethack aided this elite pastime by tracking conducts, with the game itself keeping a record of which aspects of the game the character has not used. To get a list of these, the player need only start a game and quit on the first turn:

It may seem difficult to believe, even to a player with some experience with the game, but each of these has been done lots of times, and so have many combinations of them, although doing them all in one game is almost certainly impossible.

The two single challenges that are the trickiest are possibly Pacifist and Foodless. Pacifist is difficult because Nethack characters usually encounter thousands of hostile monsters during the game and the player himself cannot kill any of them, even accidentally. If the player manages to survive the monsters, one of the requirements to obtain the Bell of Opening is that the player must achieve experience level 14, and without the slaughter of monsters this is very difficult, although not impossible, to achieve.

It is Foodless, however, combined with certain other conducts, that is the subject of Robert Schneck's game. Novice players soon find out that, while it's nowhere near as bad as Rogue, it is still easy to run out of food on Nethack's early levels. Even when they learn about all the food options available to them they still often starve to death until they discover the game's panic button, Alt-P, the (p)ray command. A prayer to the gods in Nethack is always a request for aid, and if the player hasn't prayed too recently, his Luck isn't negative (not real-life luck but an invisible statistic tracked by the game), and isn't in an area warded from his influence, your deity will help you out of most predicaments you could be in if they're dire enough. Being weak from hunger (not just hungry) is one of those troubles. Although the player cannot pray for aid in the second half of the main dungeon, there are ways in Nethack to quickly get out of there to a region in which prayer works.

This method of subsistence cannot be used if the player is attempting a Foodless Atheist, who disavows all knowledge of the gods until the final sacrifice of the Amulet of Yendor is made on the Astral Plane. But there are other ways to avoid starving: a Ring of Slow Digestion decreases a player's food consumption to very low levels, though it's still not enough to enable a player to avoid starving before winning the game. Amulets of Life Saving, if worn at the moment a player expires, will bring him back to life and fill his stomach one time, then disintegrate. Players can polymorph into monsters that don't need to eat, but will always turn back to normal unless they wear an Amulet of Unchanging, which unfortunately introduces food consumption even if the player has no mouth or stomach. A polymorph-controlled player can request to turn into his own race, which will turn him into "a new man" or "a new woman," also fills his stomach, and won't even count as a polymorph to the game. That wasn't enough for Robert Schneck's character, Ciompi259, however.

The number in that name is the number of times he had to try this before he was successful. His character's epic story, that of a winning Foodless Atheist true-Polyselfless Survivor, in which he survived entirely on a Ring of Slow Digestion and the very slight nutrition provided by Potions of Fruit Juice and Water, can be read here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/a987da11a8df6d6b

Glossary of rec.games.roguelike.nethack terms:
!oGL or !GL: Potion of Gain Level
?oCharging: Scroll of Charging
/WoW: Wand of Wishing
/WoD: Wand of Digging
"oR: Amulet of Reflection
BoH: Bag of Holding
AC: Armor Class, the old Dungons & Dragons concept. Nethack may be the last game in the world to still use armor class that starts at 10 and counts down, heading past zero into negative numbers as it improves.
PYEC: Platinum Yendorian Express Card, a special artifact that can charge items indefinitely. Only Tourists can use it to its full effect, and they can always find it in their Quest dungeon.
Buc, or Blessed, Uncursed or Cursed: any item in Nethack can be any of these three statuses, with blessed items generally being better to have than cursed ones.
Mines, Sokoban, Vlad's Tower: Three branches leading off from the main dungeon, some of which it is unnecessary to visit. Sokoban is a recent addition, and has special rules.
Quest: A special dungeon branch that is different for each character class. The player must be at least level 14 to get beyond its first level.
AoY: Amulet of Yendor, the object sought in the game.
VotD: Valley of the Dead, a level deep in the dungeon.
VS: Vibrating square, an important spot very deep in the dungeon.
Wizmode: Short for Wizard Mode, a special debug mode included in some compilations of the game. Wins in Wizard Mode don't count, and scores won't be added to the score list.
Levelport: Short for "level teleport," a version of teleportation that moves the player vertically, to other dungeon levels, instead of elsewhere on the current floor.
Reverse genocide: A clever tactic to summon several of a specified type of monster.
Stash: A place the player keeps spare objects so he doesn't have to carry them around the dungeon, adding to his burdened status.
Bones: A level left behind from a prior game.
Sacrificing: Offering fresh corpses of defeated monsters on an altar, in the hopes of receiving favor and some goodies from one's deity.
Pet: A friendly monster that helps the player. Players begin with one, a cat, dog or horse, but it's possible to get more.
Artifact: Unique weapons with additional powers, some very strong and some less so.
Unique: A monster there is only one of, if killed once they never appear again (with a notable exception).
Rodney: The nickname of the Wizard of Yendor, the player's arch-foe.
Farming: Purposely creating an abundance of some monster, or infinite opportunities to kill one that revives (like riders), for player advantage. Considered an abuse by some.
Protection racket: A novel, though often foolhardy, strategy, through which a very low-level character can gain points of intrinsic armor class cheaply, although not without a fair bit of risk.
Ascension run: When the player gains the Amulet of Yendor, like in Rogue, the game becomes a race back to the surface before death strikes. Nethack makes this harder by limiting the player's ability to teleport, teleporting him back levels randomly, and sending in a certain powerful monster at intervals to harass him.
The Planes: The final levels of the game.
Riders: Three exceptionally dangerous monsters on the last level who cannot be killed permanently.
High Altars: The ultimate destinations. One of these three, chosen randomly, must be found to win the game.
YASD: Yet Another Stupid Death.

Thanks to:
Joe "Jove" Bednorz (who found and linked to ascension posts in a newsgroup message)
tg (additional links)
Roguelike Magazine (for general awesomeness, and for first coming up with the idea of a look at classic win posts)

Posted by John Harris at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Eager GSW readers may remember the work of Cory Arcangel, who has been producing often video game-inspired art for a few years now - here's a neat gallery of some of his work.

Anyhow, the Videoludica site, which is for the line of game criticism books curated by Matteo Bittanti, has been talking about a book featuring Arcangel and his work, and simply named 'Beige'.

[EDIT: There was some confusion here, and Bittanti has posted in comments to explain: "The monograph on Cory Arcangel is already available, and it is published by a publisher called JRP/Ringier. I bought a copy at Kid Robot in San Francisco a couple of days ago and it simply rocks tempo grande. However, I'm now working with Italian publisher Johan & Levi on various Game Art projects. The first one will be announced next week and it's pretty juicy." Neat!]

It's explained: "Arcangel, who is 27 this year, is a full-fledged member of the generation that grew up on home video games. With Beige, a collective of fellow programmers, he has embarked on a hacker'­s nostalgia trip: his return to Super Mario Brothers removes all of the action to leave a landscape of blue sky and puffy clouds; Shoot Andy Warhol is a working video game in which viewers gain points for hitting Warhol and lose them by accidentally shooting Colonel Sanders, the Pope or Flavor Flav instead."

And, lest we forget: "Arcangel'­s work was shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial" - making him by far the video game artist most accepted into the mainstream art world. Will there be more in the future? Hopefully so.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, we already started checking out the vaguely eerie (scary Sonic! scarier Michael Jackson!), but pretty popular location that is Sega's Joypolis amusement park in Odaiba, Tokyo - so let's finish off a look at some of the other sights viewable around the arcade/park attraction. (I'll try to take some pics in some more 'normal' Japanese arcades later this week, though they sometimes have 'no photograph' rules.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The mysterious and possibly certifiable 'Big G' has re-appeared, with his concept for what he considers the most evil 'survival horror' game concept of all time - a video game version of being forced to shop at U.S. retail emporium Bed, Bath & Beyond.

His intro explains it well: "Hell is a popular setting for video games. From the Doom series to Devil May Cry, everyone's least favorite afterlife destination has had its share of digital representations. Let's face it – so far, the video game representations of the unimaginable horror have been lacking in authenticity. Never have I been exposed to something frightening and painful that I have had to turn the game off in order to prevent soiling myself. The typical portrayal of hell is similar to Dante's Inferno. Although it is a classic work of literature, no literary scholar is going to argue that Dante really went on a journey to hell."

It's further mused: "Relying on the Inferno's fictional imagery is a crutch that prevents game makers from creating a vision so horrifying that gamers may suffer from heart attacks. That is why I present to you my personal vision of the unspeakable evil that is hell: Bed, Bath and Beyond." What's your own vision of hell that isn't, uhh, actually inferno-like? Robot hell not counted.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:01 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.]

   

"I'm in the position of building a game magazine, but whenever I look at the writers and editors around me, I can't help but feel that they really like what they're doing. They may all approach their work from different stances, but a lot of people around here try their best because they truly enjoy what they're doing...I think it's important in all aspects of life to be able to find whatever it is that you can find enjoyable."

-- Editor-in-chief Zenji Ishii in the final issue of Japanese arcade-game mag Gamest, dated September 30, 1999. The magazine's publisher filed for bankruptcy a week later, and most of Gamest's staff moved over to Enterbrain to found ARCADIA, which still publishes today.

"So, you've probably already noticed that this issue of ODCM didn't come with a demo disc. What's the deal? It's pretty simple, actually. Sega is working on developing a new way of distributing Dreamcast game demos. It's definitely a disappointment to us (and, we're sure, to you!) not be [sic] able to include the demo disc as standard...but I think you'll agree that as the console wars start to heat up this year, we all want Sega to win."

-- Editor-in-chief Chris Charla in the final issue of the Official Dreamcast Magazine (US), March/April 2001. Sega dropping Dreamcast support on January 31, 2001 (which isn't mentioned in the mag) probably had more to do with this decision on their part.

"In the three years I've been at Next Generation, I've always hoped that, one day, I'd be that guy at the front who tells you what the issue's all about. Never did I think it would be like this, though. You see, it's Sunday, I'm really tired and haggard, and I need to get this column in before the magazine ships...Honestly, though, I just had to see how Halo ended."

-- Blake Fischer enjoying his breakneck one-issue run as editor-in-chief of Next Generation before it folded with the January 2002 issue.

"It was brought to my attention via the Usenet newsgroups that another magazine took shots at editorials that say 'It's your magazine' to readers...All the other magazines can take their shots at us, but it's all vapor next to any letter from a reader who tells us we're doing a good job. And we'll keep working on making VG&CE the best for you. Thanks for reading -- and writing to -- VG&CE."

-- EIC Andy Eddy in the final issue of VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, August 1993. The magazine was drastically revised and renamed to simply VideoGames in the next issue, dropping Eddy and most of the original staff.

"A special thanks to our competitors, who despite all their flaws, mistruths, and downright empty-headedness make it that much easier for us to look good month in, month out. It's almost like we don't have to work some issues -- thanks!"

-- EIC Eric C. Mylonas in the final issue of GameFan, December 2000.

"Despite our tremendous growth and enormous popularity, the games market just might not be big enough to handle so many magazines, especially good ones."

-- EIC Tom Byron in the last issue of GameNOW, January 2004. He'd be presiding over the last issue of GMR a year later. He edits the Official US PlayStation Magazine nowadays, which as of today doesn't appear to have folded yet.

   

"With the new decade rushing up to meet us, the eyes and ears of Atariland are waiting for [Atari head Jack] Tramiel to pull a white rabbit out of his hat. Tramiel has promised new equipment, dealer promotions, hardware and software improvement and overhauled marketing to make 1989 the year of the Atari resurgence. The sheer variety of Tramiel's pledges makes one wonder if any of his ideas will materialize."

-- EIC Frank Cohen in the last issue of ANALOG Computing, December 1989, one of the last mainstream magazines devoted to Atari home computers.

"My prediction is that the industry is unlikely to emerge from the doldrums for several years, but when it does it will be more knowledgeable, more secure, and better able to take the strides necessary to grow in our increasingly information-oriented society."

-- EIC David H. Ahl in the final issue of Creative Computing, December 1985. His magazine, launched in 1974, was the first devoted entirely to personal computing, and its folding was the beginning of the end for non-business-oriented general-interest PC magazines.

   

"We terrorized crap games, appreciated many female figures, took over 100 pot shots at Daikatana, illegally used photographs, drank a shitload of beer, wrote 1540 folio fillers (sideways bits on each page), mentioned Pamela's breasts 18 times, insulted flappy-headed Canadians on 37 different occasions, made up at least 35 new words, insulted and/or offended pretty much every type of person on the face of the Earth, made you laugh out loud at least once an issue, and pretty much wrote whatever the hell was on our crackified, more-than-slightly-deranced, minds. More than anything, we never gave in to "The Man" and, I'll be damned if we didn't have a fucking blast."

-- EIC Mike Salmon making the most of his ability to curse in print in the last issue of PC Accelerator, June 2000.

"Out of a job again...I can't believe it! Four years ago, I ended my own newsletter because a new magazine offered me a wider forum...18 months ago, I gave it up for The Color Computer Magazine. Now here I am, out on the literary street."

-- Writer Dennis Kitsz in the last issue of The Color Computer Magazine, October 1984. The EIC of the magazine didn't mention the title's closing since Ziff Davis, who took over the magazine and immediately shut it down, didn't give him a chance -- only Kitsz had the opportunity to stick in a little text in his hardware column before the galleys went away.

"I love this dear magazine that was born so small, grew so large, and has become so small again. I am sure many of you few thousand who are still with us do as well...Weep not for The Rainbow. It forged a community of spirit. A commonness of purpose. A wonderful adventure. It was the instigator of lasting friendships. It touched us all, and we were all a part of it. It was the greatest."

-- EIC Lonnie Falk in the last issue of The Rainbow, the longest-lasting of the great 8-bit computer magazines, in May 1993.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. He's also an editor at Newtype USA magazine.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 5:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over at the super-fun Aeropause, there's what is simply described as 'An Interview With A Cheater' - someone playing Halo 2 online who can't resist cheating (by modding his Xbox, presumably).

So, Aero got him to talk about his fabulous cheating life, and boy, it's a little bit sh*tc*ck: "I play BF2 and some Counter Strike. I cheat at both but it’s hard to get away with in Counter Strike. People who play CS are such babies about that stuff. The other players are just jealous p***ys who wish they had the ability to cheat."

But wait, there's more, as he, uhm, complains about Bungie for letting him cheat and/or catching him: "Wow, I have been kicked off XBL at least 10 times, I have to be careful now because there are no more 2 month cards floating around. The people at Bungie are the worst. How can they complain about people like me. They should have built a anti-cheating engine in the game to prevent it. Its not my fault that modders cheat." Oh, Internet, what hath thou wrought?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Talking of ex-Gamasutra news editor and current Atlus localization guy Mr. N. Maragos, he's popped up at Insert Credit reviewing the manual to Cooking Mama DS in a terribly arch style.

Firstly, he loves up the credits: "Not only is it fascinating to me to see how other outfits divide up the labor, but any list of names past a certain length will yield some real winners. My favorites come from Majesco's QA division: Onix Alicea deserves (his? her?) own J-RPG, possibly by Tri-Ace, while Hunter S. Gollum evokes Tolkien gone Gonzo."

And the terrible conclusion? "Points off for the following: the paper's funky smell when you first open it up, writing "salisbury steak" in lower-case (Salisbury is a proper noun, guys!), slipping in a cryptic mention of apparent wireless multiplayer without ever really explaining how that works, and calling the freestyle cooking mode "Use Skill". (That last is an issue with the game, not the manual per se, but it's still irksome.)" Don't let it happen again!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to NichM, we have a link to a brilliant Japanese magazine pictorial named, simply and enticingly enough, 'The Youth Of The Mario Brothers'.

We've seen one or two of these pics scanned before, but with no explanation - however, blogger Patrick Macias sets us up the bomb: "Ok, vidiots. Not a lot of jokes here...here is some art by Goujin Ishihara (one of Japan's great pulp illustrators, 1923-1998) from an old ass issue of Famicom Tsushin magazine."

He continues: "The piece is called Mario Brothers no Seishun. "The Youth of the Mario Brothers." Don't blame me if you feel like eating a lot of hot Italian sausage afterwards..." Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, we started off our Tokyo sojourn in vaguely fun style with a visit to Sega's Joypolis amusement park, located in the rejuvenated harborside district of Odaiba, which also has an insane mess of kitsch and cute shops, restaurants, and miscellaneous arcades.

Joypolis itself has a bunch of arcade games in it, but mainly consists of small-scale motion rides and other semi-theme-park-ish pursuits - including 'enhanced' versions of The Lost World and House Of The Dead 4 arcade machines with extra motion effects. Anyhow, we wandered around, and here's the first part of two photo galleries looking through the park.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:04 AM | 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.]

There’s no such thing as a good drunken strategy, especially if that drunk involves making mixed drinks with something that resembles varnish. That’s why I don’t use strategies. I strive to provide a more entertaining experience for all of those involved or who are following along at home, and if it requires me to get drunk as hell and converse with giants or terribly clichéd game nerds, then so be it.

When it comes to board games, everyone wants a nice girl, but sometimes only a woman of ill repute will do. These are the games that you play when you don’t want any heavy thinking; the games that you take out for a good time. In this case, the painted lady to which I refer is HeroQuest.

Our game night started out in the usual way. Brian came over and brought Nick with him. Scott came over shortly after, and the game began. So did the drinking. What happened next was surprising to everyone involved: we won. I don’t know if I can really explain why, but we actually finished the dungeon and got out alive. Well, we almost finished it.

You see, HeroQuest, though not very difficult to grasp, isn’t exactly the most forgiving of games. One false move and you can kill yourself and all of your friends. This is the story of one of those mistakes that didn’t end in tragedy. This is the story of how Scott became “Johnny Go-Open-Doors.”

For those of you who have never played HeroQuest, there are a couple of unwritten rules. Rule number one is that you never search for treasure when your group is engaged with monsters in the other room. Rule number two, which is the most important rule, is that you never open a door until all the other rooms are cleared and checked. Rule number two is what earned Scott his new nickname. Thus the saga begins.

It was a perilous trip, one that most men would shy away from, like a close-talker in the men’s room or a drunken dwarf with a penchant for buggery. Once in the dungeon, we started frantically searching for treasure, much like a drunken dwarf searching for, well, you know. After turning up a few gold coins we headed out into the halls to see what was shaking. We happened upon a door and opened it up. There, inside, standing next to a very sensible, walnut-colored desk, was a goblin.

I noticed the desk first because it struck me as curious that they have pseudo-nice furniture. You know, when I think of dungeons, Ikea isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. I imagine shackles and bats. You know, the regular. So, admittedly I was shocked by the inclusion of such quality shelving and storage units. That’s when the goblin kicked me in the head.

I jumped to my feet and took a swing at the goblin, knocking him backwards. My elf friend stabbed him and he was down, but that just cleared the way for the other two who were waiting in the room. Suddenly, we heard the foot steps. The barbarian had run down the hallway and rounded a corner. That’s when we heard the sound of a door opening and awkward silence.

See, when you open a door in HeroQuest, anything that you can see from the hall in that room is activated. So, during the middle of our first fight, JGOD as we’ll call him, ran and opened a door down the hall. This let out a seriously angry guy, who then decided to run up our asses at full speed.

Luckily for us, we survived the fight, but not without injury. The rest of the game ended up being us sneaking around the dungeon slowly, holding back JGOD and making sure I didn’t steal any furniture. Finally we made it to the door outside of the boss’ lair. After taking a quick tally of our injuries, we decided to not try the fight. However, we did want to see what he was. It was time for JGOD to shine. He booted open the door and we all started running. Now THAT’S how you leave a dungeon.

So, the moral of the story is this: even drunk dudes know that it’s better to run away and keep some gold then to get stabbed in the head repeatedly by an unspeakably violent monster.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for Gamasutra, GameSpy 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 4:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sound the alarm - Kieron Gillen has returned with another in his 'State Of Indepedence' indie game series for Eurogamer, and you may recognize a number of the excellent indie titles he is passing on to the European populace, yay.

Firstly, there's Dwarf Fortress, on which we have mused, and on which he notes: "It'll reward you not just by challenges, but by some of the strangest anecdotes you'll ever hear. I still can't believe the forum post I read about the psychotic, incredibly-skilled leather-crafting dwarf who killed one of his peers after a particularly dark mood took him. Two days later a pair of dwarf-skin boots shows up in the storeroom..."

Also hanging out in there is the Pickford Bros' v.neat play-by-email strategy title Naked War - and I apologize to them that I didn't have time to take them up on a game, but as you can see from the semi-insane testimonials, the game is _big_ among naked Scottish people and odd English types, Plus, given how much I used to adore Zub when I was 11, they can do no wrong in my eyes.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Poking around the nooks and crannies of eBay still brings up some genius items - witness this Sega Dreamcast wine bottle being sold starting at a princely opening bid of $1.00.

And, folks, here's the pathos: "This is a Dreamcast wine bottle from Japan, made to celebrate the release of the Dreamcast console in 1998. The wine bottle is empty, the contents have already been drunk." Yep, and the bottle marvellously says on it: "I sincerely hope you have the opportunity to enjoy both wine and Dreamcast in the near future."

Finally, this will have ended by the time you guys read this, so hopefully the listing is still there - but a Seaman plush UFO Catcher doll is more my speed when it comes to Sega-related goodies. Roll on Seaman 2, which should be revealed even as we speak, I believe?

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Following my recent critique of Suda51's Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, it's good to see someone else probing the game from alternate perspectives - The New Gamer has a mini-article musing on the title with some aplomb.

G. Turner makes some film comparisons, suggesting the game "...has a strong director, the increasingly notorious Suda 51 (whom is most recognizable from last year's stylish & divisive Killer7), who wildly compensates for an unremarkable hack-'n-slash adaptation involving two samurais, plucked from the titular anime, whom find themselves embroiled in a land-war and end up fighting for their lives. How does he do this? By painting over the game with abrasive aural and visual elements; essentially scribbling all over the standards that come with an adaptation."

His conclusion? Though the game isn't THAT great: "Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked represents a rarity in current video games: a brash-but-cohesive audio/visual that's the director's vision. " Agreed!

[Oh, and while we're here, a Drunksaling garage sale update has also been posted at The New Gamer, containing a few gems, as per usual: "Ahh Chessmaster. Although I remember Chessmaster 2000, not his hyperactive brother Chessmaster 4000 Turbo."]

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:04 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 fording rivers and not being able to carry enough food back to the wagon.]

"My classes have started! I'll try to get the comic back on schedule next week so bear with me!

My friend had a copy of The Oregon Trail on her computer and I played it again out of nostalgia. It surprised me how easy it was to get to Oregon now that I was older and was more capable of micromanaging small virtual travellers. Maybe it was harder back when it only in green and black on the Apple II?"

[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. A new website design that's almost finished is coming soon! Also, the link to the Gamer's Quarter has finally been fixed!]

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

Over at PressTheButtons, MattG has spotted an expose of Street Fighter PC conversions, and has also heroically linked to it, hurrah.

PTB notes: "Yes, Capcom's famous fighting game has been ported to just about every kind of home console. However, back when Fighter fever was enrapturing the world, Capcom licensed the game out to PC developers to create home versions for computers. Scary Crayon takes a look back at these versions as well as the various pirated variations of the game."

Sounds like Hotel Keitel's SFIBM is the bootleg winner: "Have you ever wished that, instead of hurling mere spinning energy waves at his opponents, Guile threw clones of himself? How about wishing that Ryu's regular dragon punch were replaced by a modified version that entailed him doing the move twice -- the second time while already in the air -- and then coming back down with an inverted attack? Or that Ken's fireballs zigzagged or that Chun-Li could hop forward while doing the lightning kick or that Blanka could spit little yellow birds that electrify his opponents on impact?" Uhh... yep!

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wait, two Animal Crossing posts in a row? Anyone would think Tom Nook had been bribing us with oranges. Anyhow, Raina Lee (of 1UP-Zine fame) has a column on VH1 Game Break which talks about the auction market for Animal Crossing in-game items.

Lee explains how there's an in-game store in the DS version of the title, and then asks: "What about the items your store doesn’t have? What if you just can’t find the Robo dresser for the rest of your Robo décor? In real life, if you really want a something, you visit an auction site. So there’s Nookbay dot com, where you buy and sell items for bells. The rarer the item, the more the bells."

She then notes: "Just like I do on Bay, I browse the most expensive items first. A Metroid -- 2 million bells... A Carte Blanche to someone’s inventory -- 500,000 bells... A Royal Crown -- 9 million bells... A Complete Mario Set – 10 million bells.. And a Red Glitched Tulip... going for a whopping 30 million bells." I thought you couldn't move the tulips after they were placed? There had better not be Nookbay scammers around!

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The ever-furious Tony Walsh has posted on Clickable Culture about Nintendo's in-game method of promoting Star Fox DS within the v.popular Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Though subsequently corrected that the messages from Nintendo are optional, he notes: " Players of the online-enabled town-building game Animal Crossing: Wild World received a... marketing message recently from Nintendo, the game's maker. The message was sent through the game's email system, normally used to deliver inter-player mail as well as free virtual gifts from Nintendo such as home decor and furniture. According to Animal Crossing Ahead, the message refers to the recently released Nintendo game Star Fox Command: "Dear [name], Star Fox Command stats are live! We were going to give you Slippy, but take this instead! Attached to the letter is an Arwing!"

Commenter Dezro notes: "This is a pretty benign thing IMO. No illusion-shattering graphics, nothing you can't turn off... You can even throw out the letter without opening it, and still keep the rare item they send (which is already available in the game - Nintendo didn't just have it there for the express purpose of promotion)." But even more tragically, does this break the fourth wall? Oh my.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Over at Edge Online, they've got a smart article on Google and its gaming incursions, discussing how Google is wandering into gaming after its acquisition of 3D modelmaking firm Sketchup.

The article explains: "SketchUp is thoroughly integrated with Google Earth, meaning models can be uploaded and placed into the real world, letting you see how your dream house would look in situ, or create a parade of giant scissor people marching down Oxford Street."

What's more: "The possibilities for ‘mash-up’ games drawn in SketchUp and situated within Google Earth is self-evidently enormous. Automatically networked, instantly recognisable, full of resonance and quickly customisable, Google Earth forms an amazingly adaptive canvas. And it plays well with another growing branch of gaming – the kind of mixed-reality game made famous by the Halo 2 promo I Love Bees. Easily able to process GPS co-ordinates, there are substantial possibilities for games where the movements of real-world people are represented by the progress of SketchUp-created avatars across Google Earth’s surface." Is there nothing the Big G won't consider taking over?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, turns out there was a neat game in the IGF entries that most people haven't spotted yet - the Derek Yu co-created PC indie title Aquaria, which he is talking about at TIGSource.

The title, which is made by two of the people behind Jack Thompson wish fulfilment generator I'm OK, is described as "...an action-oriented, non-linear 2D side-scrolling game. Using an intuitive and fluid mouse control system, Naija can deftly swim through and explore a massive, handcrafted world that is teeming with undersea life. Along the way, she will encounter literally hundreds of different types of plants and animals and explore many ingame miles of hidden caves, lost ruins, and other strange places."

The official Aquaria site has more, including some v.interesting concepts: "In order to make the experience as engaging as possible, we created an interface that lets the player easily control Naija with just a two-button mouse. The HUD is minimal (restricted to only a minimap in the lower-right corner of the screen). In place of textual dialogue that most games rely on we used voice acting to drive the story without interrupting the gameplay." Looking forward to playing this...

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, you may find that GameSetWatch updates are a little slower than normal, because even as you read this, I'm off to Tokyo with my wife for a little rest and relaxation (possibly to include visiting Disney parks and Sega Joypolis, as well as actually seeing some more traditional sights, then wandering off to Osaka/Kyoto) before and after Tokyo Game Show (which I'm covering for Game Developer and Gamasutra, of course) starts next week.

Fear not, though, because I've posted GSW weirdness a couple of days in advance, and will keep things going through the pre and post-TGS period with links to our Gamasutra posts on the state of Japanese game development, any Flickr photos which have geeky game-related stuff in them, and any other posts on the blogosphere which catch our attention. And our regular columnists will still be around to 'entertain' you, yay. Have happy fun!

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still don't spot MTV News game stories as quickly as I should (this time prompted by Stephen Totilo himself!), but there's a pretty fun article on EA interns up at MTV.com right now, showcasing what Santa's little helpers do inside the Borg mothership.

It's set at EA's Redwood City offices, and notes: "Gwynne Olson-Wheeler, also 21, showed some of her intern work in a cubicle that wasn't hers — she was spending her final weeks of the summer working on a different floor, on EA's under-wraps "Simpsons" game. Meeting with her there would give away too many secrets. So instead she zapped some graphics work she did earlier in the season for "Sims 2 Pets" onto her iPod and plugged into a computer at a less-sensitive area."

But wait, there's a revelation that an obvious sequel is... obviously coming! "The room where she set up was darkened by dropped blinds, most of them dotted with spent ammunition from the floor's many Nerf gun battles. On the walls, signs addressed the staff of another under-wraps EA game: "Welcome 'Sims 3' team."" Any bets on Sims Infinity? There's also a weird DigiPen/Full Sail diss later in the article - time for some beef?

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just plain odd, but hey, they sent it to us and we're going to print it - UK company GamePaused has released the 'Two Tasty Consoles' poster series, and is telling the entire Internet about it.

The explain: "GamePaused™ loves creative gaming and so naturally GamePaused™ loves the Wii. When we first heard of Nintendo’s new console we were filled with excitement over the possibilities it could offer gamers. What with the Nintendo DS already stretching the boundaries of games the news of the Wii got us rolling. We were inspired that Nintendo was looking at games the way we were, and so we had to pay homage–and so comes two posters from GamePaused™ available from gamepaused.net."

But... how they they think of that? "As with every truly great idea it came spontaneously–during a regular lunch break–via text message ...And so we launch GamePaused™ product range in a somewhat creative fashion–just like a game." We're eagerly awaiting the Wii butter sculpture, now.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Slipstream Productions began work on Halo-themed Command and Conquer Generals mod Halogen back in early 2003. On the 8th of September, the team were asked to cease work on the project by Microsoft. “We always figured that since Halogen was such a different take on the Halo franchise, we might manage to make it without incident,” they commented on their site.

While a solid date was never set for release, the game had recently gone into a closed Beta. Various videos of the project had also been released, leading to the project gaining attention from sites well outside of the usual modding community.

We spoke to project leader and modeller Dispraiser about the project, the word from Microsoft, and the future of Slipstream.

What was Halogen? I gather it wasn’t a Halo mod.

Halogen was not a mod of Halo. The second half of its name, “gen”, comes from Command and Conquer Generals, which is a real time strategy game EA released. For those unfamiliar with mods, Halogen was a total conversion mod, meaning that we took the existing Generals engine and removed all of the art assets, then replaced them with our own models, skins and code to create what is, essentially, a new game.

How long had you been working on Halogen?

I had been working on the mod since April 2003, when it was started. Other staff is newer, but most of our hard workers have been around for at least two years.

How close to finished was it?

Halogen was actually VERY close to finished, which makes the attack by Microsoft even worse. We had begun to distribute a closed beta test, which is a pretty big indicator we were moving into balancing stages where all of the art assets are already in-game and functional, and release was just around the corner.

How many people had contributed to the game?

That depends on how much of a contribution is considered. We have many people such as Jared Hudson, Godwin and others who contributed amazing work to our soundtrack and game art, respectively. Unfortunately, they weren't regular contributors, because they had a busy lifestyle. Then, we have other staff such as SpyvSpy, Sc4, Adam Atomic and myself who have made dozens of things for the mod. I believe that Halogen has actually had at least 200 or 250 models created, counting the various scrapped units, civilian structures, and other models - that's a lot of work! In all, though, I'd say our team has hovered around nine true people who can be counted on as staff, and probably as many as a dozen occasional contributors.

Why did you start working on the game?

I don't know, honestly. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it kinda snowballed. Originally, I was interested in sticking one or two original units in the game and adding them onto one of the existing armies, then it grew into a plan to create the entire UNSC and reskin the existing buildings in Generals to be more suiting, and then eventually just grew into creating a complete mod.

When were you told by Microsoft to stop working on the game?

September 8th. I do have to credit Bungie for their handling of the situation. The community manager asked Microsoft not to send us a Cease and Desist, and instead asked to tell us himself, so he could explain exactly what was happening rather than an army of lawyers. I have been on mods that faced the army of lawyers before, and it is much, much less friendly.

What was the reaction of your team and fans?

I was amazed at the reactions. It's amazing that our team stayed intact completely, and so far no one has given up on creating a mod of some sort. The fans are the ones who really surprised me, though. I left my computer for a few hours and came back and had dozens of AIM windows from fans, and all over the Internet things are abuzz with talk of our mod getting axed. We popped up on Slashdot's news twice, on G4's website, dozens of messaging boards and we even (finally!) got our own OneOneSe7en comic. I was really proud to see that a lot of people came out with very eloquent, well thought out arguments for Halogen, and understood what we were doing. I was a bit disappointed to see the people who instantly called us "thieves" and claimed we should've asked Bungie in the first place.

Did you expect that you would, at some point, run into legal trouble?

We had our fingers crossed that we wouldn't. We knew from the beginning that Halo IP is theirs, and that if they wanted to, they could shut us down. At first it seemed like a gamble, but as time went on and we got mentioned on more and more major Internet and print news sources, we became increasingly certain Bungie was aware of us and chose to ignore us. In an effort to create that kind of relationship with them, we always tried to do everything with the utmost respect for Bungie's property. Where other mods extract Bungie's models and hard work from the game then re-brand it as their own, we ALWAYS created our own models and skins. In the past, we have even fought with two other mods that ripped content from Halo and Halo 2. I gather Bungie understood that respect we had for their work, and was respecting our work, but then big bad Microsoft told them to get rid of us.

Where do you go from here? Is there anything that is salvageable from the game?

Oh yes. More shocking reactions from fans were emails I received "What kind of leader are you!?!" They asked what kind of leader I was to just give up after three years of work. Well, I'm the kind of leader who does fear millions of dollars of fines and jail time. Luckily, though, everyone on our team is devoted. When I posted in the staff forums about the email, the thread was titled "What now?" not "It's over" or anything of the doomed sort. Most of our models are original units, including every structure but two, and even some vehicles. In fact, some of our most popular units, the Skyhawk, Hammerhead and Firefly, are all original units that we designed. Without saying too much, I hope everyone doesn't leave and miss the real show...Definitely keep your eyes on Slipstream Productions and the ex-Halogen crew.

Posted by alistairw at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Just because sister site Gamasutra runs so many darn articles recently that you might not have spotted this, we're pointing out an interview with Gastronaut Studios, creators of the upcoming Small Arms for Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

They discuss barriers to the original Xbox Live Arcade, for which they contributed Fuzzee Fever: "I think there were a lot of barriers to success with the original XBLA that more promotion couldn't have overcome. XBLA wasn't integrated into the Dashboard. Xbox Live accounts were pay only. And it was difficult to distribute the launcher disc. These problems were all fixed for the 360. The 360 also added a number of features that I didn't predict would help promote Arcade as much as they have: the Gamerscore/Achievements system and the more centralized nature of Dashboard. Of course, I really wish more people could have played Fuzzee Fever, especially the Live multiplayer."

Also notable is their approach to Achievements, which is progressive and laudable: "Xbox Live Arcade is different in this area. Our Xbox Live Arcade producer has spent a lot of time with us on designing and balancing achievements. I think that takes place with all of the Arcade games so that the achievements are really interesting. For example, I've always loved Geometry Wars' pacifism achievement, because it actually encourages you to play the game differently, at least for a short period." More pacifism in shooters, please!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another great scan-related post over at Vintage Computer, and this one looks at Tiger's obscure R-Zone LCD gaming system, which I don't even recall.

RedWolf explains this insanity: "Way back in the land before time (1995), when a little ole company you might have heard of called “Nintendo” was tinkering with its worst gaming experiment ever (Virtual Boy), another company called Tiger Electronics (famous for its handheld LCD games, if you’ll recall), tried to capitalize on the hoopla surrounding Nintendo’s red-headed stepchild."

He continues: "Tiger’s answer was the R-Zone, a LCD-based gaming system that used red-tinted game cartridges and projected them onto a HUD mirror strapped over the player’s pimply forehead (see picture). An extremely uncomfortable-to-hold detached controller held the batteries, and the player plugged the cartridge — each containing its own LCD screen — into the headset. It worked very poorly, as you might imagine; but what more could you expect for $30 (US) MSRP?"

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The folks over at RetroBlast dropped us a note about their wacky new retro competition, and since it's actually pretty geekyfun, we thought we'd pass it on to the faithful GameSetWatch readership.

It's explained: "Hey guys, James McGovern here from RetroBlast.com. I just wanted to let you know about a contest we are running this month asking readers to produce Video Game and Pinball Motivational Posters. Below you will find a link to the gallery so far, the original contest announcement, and a flickr tool that allows you to easily create your own posters."

The original post says: "The arcade champions of yesterday are the lawyers, doctors, engineers, tradesmen and women, and business professionsals of today. In this capacity, most of us, at one time or another have seen the very cheesy "inspirational posters" tacked up in offices all over the world that display a supposeldly motivational image and message that I suppose is intended to make us feel inspired while working in our little section of the Death Star. Frankly, I can't stand them and I know others feel the same way. These then will be the target format for our video and arcade game parody!" A good start is 'Respect', perhaps!

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

Being a bit of a synaesthesia fan, I couldn't be happier with Tetsuya Mizuguchi's output of late, what with music modes in Gunpey and the upcoming Lumines Live and Lumines II - well, now GameVideos.com has posted the 'Heavenly Star' music video from Lumines II for PSP, and it's uber-gorgeous.

I note that a recent 1UP preview explains: "One special song and video that Q producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi and the development team collaborated on is a track called "Heavenly Star." This will be a difficult skin for many people to complete, simply because the song is so insanely catchy (it sounds like a mix between Daft Punk and something off the Xanadu soundtrack) and because the video, which heartwarmingly portrays the singer as an alien from space looking for love on the planet Earth (and by "alien," we mean a beautiful young woman), is so alluring."

It continues: "The video for "Heavenly Star" was designed by renowned Japanese visual team Glamoove and was, according to Mizuguchi, inspired by the classic video "Take On Me" by the Norwegian pop group a-ha. You'll have to see "Heavenly Star" to appreciate it, but it's simply stunning." More 'Take On Me' J-Pop video pastiches, plz!

Of course, there's lots more Mielke-tastic Lumines soundtrack fanboy love over at 1UP, if you want more gushing but well-written context. [UPDATE: Ah, I see Mielke has made a lengthy blog post about the video, also identifying the song as composed by Genki Rockets.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[‘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's film culture.]

Well, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from Second Life this week, as I’ve been incredibly busy attempting to cover the Toronto International Film Festival. Film competes regularly in my affections with videogames, and I’m usually rather fascinated by the influence of one on the other. It’s worth noting, I think, that very little of Second Life feels “filmic”, unless you think the world feels a bit like virtual reality as imagined by early 90’s films like The Lawnmower Man, which it does, a bit.

Of course, the big news that I’ve kind of missed is that there’s been a massive security breach of the Linden Labs customer database, “potentially exposing customer data including the unencrypted names and addresses, and the encrypted passwords and encrypted payment information of all Second Life users”. While this obviously is a problem, no one seems to be quite clear on how much of a problem. It’s the first time I’ve felt “unsafe” on the net, however, which isn’t really a good sign.

Ahem. That’s slightly off topic, however. The truth is that despite not being a particularly filmic experience, Second Life also holds tributes to a variety of film and TV shows the same way that it has its own Little Silent Hill. For example, only a quick teleport away is Galaxy, where you can live your Star Trek dreams until your heart is content. I didn’t know the Starfleet Academy accepted furries, but there you go, I suppose! Like most areas, the play and fun is to be had in social situations, and without it, it’s a bit sterile, as nicely designed as it is. I only think I’ve watched maybe one full episode of Star Trek ever, and that was almost entirely on the Holodeck (something to do with Sherlock Holmes?) so I can’t really comment on this too clearly, but it seems… Nice?

I actually reallyenjoyed my trip to Nakama, however. Although just as quiet as Galaxy , this is an astoundingly (if near randomly) designed anime city featuring many aspects of anime films and TV shows. I was immediately impressed to have teleported into one of the most alive gardens I’ve seen in Second Life, with trees and plants swaying in a light breeze, but flying around and exploring the city was a pleasure, from spotting giant robots from Evangelion, through to strange and sweet little rainbow towns.

Looking around Nakama, however, I observed that what I noted about Little Silent Hill, that “it’s like wandering a movie theme park and seeing all your favorite props and locations, just slightly out of context” is as film-like as Second Life can get. It’s too easy to bump into a prop building and shatter your illusion, rather like a boom mike falling into shot.

Having said that, were you able to get your head round the logistics of it, Second Life must be one of the most wonderful playgrounds available for those interested in creating machinima. There are enough locations on Nakama alone that could form the back drop of practically any narrative that I hope that people are exploring the potential. I guess I should find out!

[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, The Gamer's Quarter, and Eurogamer. Check out his workblog!]

Posted by mathewk at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Nice to see the Patent Arcade blog getting blogosphere love after we linking it last week - and we note that it's posted another Nintendo-related patent, this one for Pokemon, believe it or not.

Lawyer blogger Ross Dannenberg notes: "Nintendo describes the multi-player, portable version of its Pokemon game in this patent. In the pokemon game, each player collects and trains pokemon. When another player is encountered, the pokemon battle each other and the winner captures the loser’s pokemon. Capturing a pokemon includes transferring information about its appearance, strength, etc. to the wining player’s game machine."

He further notes: "The patent also describes a system for allowing players of different versions of the game to battle each other: Whatever information about a captured pokemon is unavailable from the old version of the game gets made up (assigned randomly) at the time of data transfer." Forgive my ignorance - is this feature used extensively in existing versions of Pokemon?

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Forget about Halo 3, honestly - it's all about a new announcement regarding Extreme Hangman's extremely extreme mobile phone debut.

The official website has more, of course, but here's the lowdown: "Featuring a fun and animated take of the classic stick figure character we all love, EXTREME HANGMAN makes hangman come alive and asks players to save him from sudden death in a fun and furious animated free-for-all."

The hook? "Complete with dangerous environments, fierce foes, speedy multiplayer and the ever threat of certain demise, EXTREME HANGMAN asks the most from you in solving riddled tongue twisters and unknown words and phrases from categories like movies, cocktails and antonyms." Wow, antonyms! It also has mobile to PC multiplayer connectivity, which is kinda cool.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['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 Squaresoft’s Live A Live]

When I initially started this column I made up a list of the best games from the 16bit era, and asked some friends to make up their own. I have since thrown that out the window. Most of the games considered “best” from that time are too sterile, too safe. Most are looked at through the rosy-colored glasses of nostalgia. Great games sometimes aren’t the best: they took risks.

The results varied from good concepts and bad controls to interesting mechanics with poor presentation, but they were never perfect. Some of these are what we now refer to as ahead of their time (which is really just an excuse for why we ignored them in the first place). But what happens when one of the most routine game creators decides to go a little crazy? Live A Live.

After Squaresoft had released the three (or four) games that they would be most remembered for on the Super Famicom, a quirky little title appeared in Japan, but never made it to the outside world. While the basics remained a Role Playing Game, the story is broken up into a sort of novella format. The game contains nine unique scenarios that initially have no apparent connection to each other, and have varying play mechanics.

Even though the game is broken up into different stories, the divide is greater than just the main character. The stories range from primitive man, through old west and feudal Japan, all the way to a science fiction future. The game encompasses almost every range of time that is popular with modern fiction. Because of the theme it was very easy to have different popular manga artists do the character designs and write the stories for each chapter (the most popular of which, Yoshihide Fujiwara, went on to create and illustrate the Dragon Quest manga).

To Tell a Tale

I believe the stories are the focus of the game over everything else. While there is a generic grid based battle system that’s fairly malleable, but not really anything special, the combat isn’t the main focus. The battles range from a mild action to tactical RPG in style depending on the story, but never neatly fitting into any category. In one scenario, there is an arcade game called Captain Square that is designed to train you in the basics of the fight mechanics (I recommend playing “Mechanical Heart” first to get some time in training, though it is completely ignorable).

In “Mechanical Heart” the only combat for the entire level is at the very end. My small affection for robots spurred me to try this chapter first and it drove home that the game wanted to tell a story - nine of them, really. Each chapter is fairly short, and the overall game is a nice length if you have gotten to the point in your life that you can no longer devote 40+ hours to a single title.

Some of the stories are charming, others involve double crosses and revenge, and some even offer a little suspense. Often the game will leave you with little information on where to go or what to do to progress the story, but even then reflecting on the story will usually lead you to a clue.

The Great Divide

Many games are lacking in the story-telling department. Even recently such developers as David Jaffe have expressed their lack of interest in story. What separates most games from film is their length, as many will require ten or more hours of your time to get a story that is paper thin and offers little reward. Compared to novels, the modern RPG doesn’t have a leg to stand on. While the time lengths involved may be similar for completing a large novel as to an RPG, the depth of characters and plot are rarely comparable.

Live A Live tries to break away, and tell an engaging story in a short amount of time. Comparable to a film, and with better quality than most RPGs (though we aren’t talking masterpiece theatre here) Live A Live will engage you for each chapter despite it’s brevity. One of the touches that I enjoyed most was in the “Mechanical Heart” chapter, where you are given the opportunity to pull a lever while the other characters are talking in an air lock compartment. The overwhelming urge to pull the lever took control and I did it; the main characters were then sucked into space and the chapter ended.

Now, again, none of these stories are amazingly written. Some are heavily influenced by pop culture, and pale in comparison to outside contemporaries. But the game tried, and it was ahead of its time. Though we haven’t seen anything quite like it (Eternal Darkness comes to mind), I don’t think it will be too long before we start to see more chapter based, story heavy, structures in games soon. The translation of the ROM was done by Gideon Zhi of Aeon Genesis, and it is an admirable job considering it was completed in about two months. Pick it up and give it a shot - it probably won’t blow you away, but it may just open your eyes.

[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 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Kinda GSW columnist RyanS seems to have posted a new music video by Xiu Xiu to GameTrailers.com, and the vid in question, 'Boy Soprano', is, as he says, "very 16 bit indeed".

You may not know Xiu Xiu, but the handy Wikipedia explanation does: "Xiu Xiu (pronounced "shoo-shoo") is an experimental indie band originally from and currently based in San Jose, California, with time often spent in Seattle, Washington. The band is the sonic brainchild of singer-songwriter Jamie Stewart, who tours and records with his one and only current bandmate, and cousin, Caralee McElroy."

Oh, hey, and there's a Spin article about the vid, too: "Based on the epic journeys of the Mario Bros. and Zelda, California eclectic indie rockers Xiu Xiu have enlisted a world class video game designer to craft the clip for "Boy Soprano" off their forthcoming album, The Air Force." Rawk.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

You may remember GSW sometime columnist Jeremiah 'Nullsleep' Johnson making delighted cooing noises over Takayama Fumihiko's homebrew Game Boy Advance shooter Vulkanon a while back.

Johnson noted: "While [Fumihiko's predecessor] BulletGBA was mostly a training aid for familiarizing oneself with different bullet patterns, Vulkanon builds upon the "Shooting" side challenges found there and delves further into mini-game territory."

Well, now he's only gone and providing a Game Boy bleeptastic soundtrack to Vulkanon - the new release of v2.0 reveals: "The sound composed by Nullsleep was added... The stage composition of the barrage was adjusted, and the volume improved." We hear BulletGBA might get an aural update too - more on this breaking story soon!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my 'copious spare time', as some of you know, I'm also the Chairman of the Independent Games Festival, and the Main Competition deadline was last Friday. We've just posted the full list of entries, and there are a total of 141, a new record.

There's some really interesting games on there, needless to say - from awesome grassroots indie titles like Armadillo Run, Golf?, Gibbage, Eets, and Everyday Shooter through higher-powered but still very much independent Xbox Live Arcade titles such as The Behemoth's Castle Crashers and frenetic racing game Mad Tracks. I think it's going to be a great year. [UPDATE: Andy Schatz has done an excellent breakdown of just a few of the more interesting entries over at Indiegamer.com.]

We've also updated the judges pretty comprehensively, adding some indie stalwarts alongside neat people like Penny Arcade's Tycho, Foundation9's Chris Charla, and even, most likely, a few people who read this very blog (yurgh!).

I will also repeat the other half of the update on IGF.com, 'cos I want modders to take notice: "The next deadline for prospective entrants is October 13, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Mod Competition, which is allowing mods from any game to compete - from Thief to Half-Life 2 to Oblivion to The Sims and beyond, all mods are eligible. From the entrants, we will pick Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best 'Other' Mod finalists (each a $500 prize), and those winners will show at the 2007 GDC, competing for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize." Get to it, haw!

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bill Harris at Dubious Quality is a smart cookie, so it's interesting that he's raving about practically unknown PC game 'Dwarf Fortress', calling it 'one of the most complex and demanding games I've ever played'.

He commented of the title: "Think Space Rangers 2 came out nowhere? The graphics in this game are ASCII. In 2006, that qualifies as out of nowhere. It's in alpha (although it's already far more stable and complete than most commercial releases I've played this year). And it's free. It's also one of the most imaginative, multi-layered, detailed gaming worlds I've ever seen."

A good basic description is also provided: "In simple terms, when the game begins, you have a group of seven dwarves at the base of a mountain, and your goal is to survive. And to survive successfully, you'll have establish stable sources of food and create shelter. Each of your dwarves has abilities, and they can learn new ones, and you must use their skillsets to create a sustaining environment." There's are several follow-up posts on Bill's blog with more in-depth playtesting info.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A duo of random video-related links for a Sunday night, completely unrelated, but each rather interesting. Firstly, friend and Gamasutra colleague Jason Dobson has made a video guide to Atlus' Rule Of Rose, and it's... neeto.

He comments of it: "With Atlus' upcoming survival horror/action game Rule of Rose for the PlayStation 2 scheduled to ship next week, I figured a preview of this somewhat disturbing game would be in order. Atlus sent over the review build several weeks ago, and I can honestly say that while the game is not without its share of flaws, it is one of the most atmospheric games to come along in a good while. It's unapologetically psychotic, and is also a refreshing throw back to earlier days of PC adventure gaming." It's good to see footage with commentary like this.

Secondly, the fun Aeropause has a neat Tetris-referencing German car ad, of which it comments: "Is it just me or does it seem like there was way too much crap packed into that little car? It would probably take the average person an hour to pack a car like that." Never mind the bollocks, here's the TETRIS, man!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reprinted from the latest issue of CGW, 1UP has posted the excellent feature 'Looking For Videogames In The Muslim World' by Ed Halter, and it's a well-researched, interesting read.

Halter notes a planned 'Commander Bahman' game in which you have to rescue an Iranian nuclear scientist kidnapped by American special forces (!), explaining: "Spiked with the tensions surrounding U.S.-Iran relations, the untitled Commander Bahman project is not the first Islamic videogame to appear in the Middle East. In fact, in the past half decade a number of projects have emerged from the Muslim world, all sharing a similar goal: to subvert the typical gaming stereotype of Arabs as bad guys by replacing the typical American or European action hero with a recognizably Muslim protagonist."

He continues: "Like many of their American counterparts, these games often base their narratives on real-life wars and battles: While Westerners replay WWII and Vietnam, they twitch through virtual recreations of the Palestinian intifada and the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war. Though relatively small, Islamogaming is also a diverse field, ranging from amateur projects by students, unabashed anti-Zionist propaganda produced by an internationally recognized terrorist organization, religious games produced to teach Islam to kids, and a set of more sober games designed to explore the complex realities of Middle Eastern history." More nuanced write-ups of adult topics, please?

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few days ago, Julian Dibbell posted on Terra Nova about World Of Warcraft's latest Chinese TV ads, and has now updated his TN post with links to YouTube vids of the various ad segments.

He notes: "I'm posting from China, where two days ago I got into a taxi and saw, on the little TV set you get to watch in Chinese taxis sometimes, the most hallucinatory Coca-Cola commercial I have ever witnessed: We open with a vision of the hip Taiwanese girl band SHE lounging about in their slick apartment somewhere. Zoom in on a laptop sitting on the kitchen table, out of which, suddenly, emerge a big green World of Warcraft orc and his troll and Tauren sidekicks, who proceed to rampage through the apartment, raiding the fridge for Coke, then grabbing the bandmembers themselves and dragging them kicking and squealing back into the computer and the barren lands of the Horde."

Dibbell continues: "Cut to intertitle: Who will save the girls? Will it be... international hottie soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo? (Cut to CGI shot of Ronaldo kicking a gnarly looking spiked ball straight at a big green orc goalie.) Cute little punkette singing star and "Chinese Idol" winner Li Yuchun? (Seen riding to the rescue in stylish Alliance armor.) Or will it be, perhaps, the girls of SHE themselves? You decide! Go to this website and yadda yadda..." Here's the opening sequence (YouTube link), click through on the Terra Nova post for the alternate ending links.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The merest hint of drama in the game blogosphere sends the fanboys ravenous, and if you've been keeping up, this one is a doozy - Joystiq blogger Robert Summa originally posted a teaser earlier this week about "a scoop for some important news with one of the next-generation consoles".

This led to all kinds of crazed frothing on the Internet - which pretty quickly turned to wrath when it turned out the announcement was just the IBM 'Broadway' CPU for the Wii being shipped to Nintendo, not exactly front-page news. (As for being 'a scoop', everyone on IBM's game press list, including GSW sister site Gamasutra, was offered the info under embargo - but that's a whole other issue.)

Anyhow, the aftermath of this was that original Joystiq hyper Summa ended up being fired from his contract job blogging for the AOL-owned blog (what does that pay nowadays - $15 per post or something?), and is now ensconced over at the uber-tabloid (but quite fun!) Destructoid, where he posted a rant-ish post about his Joystiq departure.

His take? "I feel Joystiq takes themselves WAY too seriously and that’s evident in their over-reaction to the fan over-reaction to my post. Was I wrong in teasing to later events? Maybe, but that’s all subjective isn’t it? And let me tell you, my purpose was not to create undue hype or bring traffic to the site. All I wanted to do was let the readers know they could come to Joystiq for the news and not some other site. Where’s the wrong in that?" Where's the wrong, guys?

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The sharp-eyed among you may already be aware that cartoonist and musician James Kochalka is a bit of a major video game fan. Well, for the video for his new single, 'Spread Your Evil Wings And Fly', he's gone and proved it (YouTube link).

Why, you say? Well, the accompanying blurb explains: "James Kochalka Superstar video shot on a gameboy camera by James Kochalka and edited by Pistol Stamen". Not sure how the transferring to PC was done - there are some very odd interference patterns on the video, actually, but that just makes it look even more lo-fi. (The author of this very post is a bit of a Game Boy Camera fan, and has an old gallery of GBCam pics up on the Web somewhere or other.)

We also noticed an older Re:Retro interview with Kochalka about games, in which he notes: "I’ve been playing games for a long, long time. I think the first video game I ever encountered was something on the big mainframe computer at the Dartmouth hospital. A couple kids from my boy scout troop got to go check it out. They also let us freeze stuff with liquid nitrogen." Wow - games _and_ liquid nitrogen? [Vid via Fort90, ta!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which covers video game magazines from the late '70s all the way up to right now.]

Boy, I wish it was cooler outside so I could take my ferrets out, but no, it has to rain all day and be all smelly like a rainforest. So instead, I'm going to walk you through all fourteen game magazines that have hit stores in the past two weeks. One per day! The autumn one-off rush is most definitely upon us...

[Click through for the full column.]

Electronic Gaming Monthly October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Guitar Hero II

The cover for this month's EGM (as touted in the September issue) was meant to be a big, boffo exclusive on Spider-Man 3 for all next-gen systems, but apparently it fell through -- as EIC Dan Hsu puts it in the editorial, "you'll have to ask movie director Sam Raimi why he's such a jerk and pulled our story at the last minute." Ouch!

Still, the eight pages that Raimi snatched from EGM are now devoted to the most intense coverage RedOctane's little game that could has gotten in a game mag yet, and it's a neat bit of visual design, too -- done up like a headbanger's high-school notebook, all filled up in the margins with heavy-metal doodles. An extremely well-written article, too, as all the producers and developers come off like real nice guys who made it big doing what they love. The only real "exclusive" tie-in here is the unveiling of 12 new tracks in the game, from "Heart-shaped Box" and "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" to my personal favorite, The Police's "Message in a Bottle".

Bigger previews: Include Phantasy Star Universe, Resistance: Fall of Man, Kevin Gifford favorite Rayman: Raving Rabbids, and a Marvel vs. DC showdown of comic-book games.

Much more exciting: Are developer postmorterms on Dead Rising and Okami, as well as spreads on "the world's most dangerous gamers" (ie. cyberathletes) and the top 10 queerest characters in games. I'm glad Raphael Sorel made it on there, but Zangief? Come on! Since when is being 100% man such a sin?

Computer Gaming World October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Space marine :(

Forget about that cover for a moment. The real draw of this issue of CGW is two consecutive articles that cover politics in games in two different lights -- one's about peacenik griefing in America's Army, and the other is about the gaming scene, such as it exists, in the Middle East. Both are quite awesome and merit reading even if you don't care two ways about PC games. In fact, the two pieces exemplify why I like CGW more than any other computer mag right now -- it's doing everything a magazine needs in order to be unique in modern times, and I think it's doing a great job of it.

Five new inductees: Are welcomed into CGW's Hall of Fame in this issue: Star Control II, Ultima Online, Sierra's The Incredible Machine, Freedom Force, and Mr. Warren Spector himself. StarCon2 and TIM's inductions prove that 1992 was the best year ever for PC gaming.

Cover tit for tat: In the Crysis feature that most of the midsection is devoted to, Crytek artist Michael Khaimzon laments CGW's first Crysis cover in March '06, calling it "Charlie Sheen with a leaf blower" and saying "I'm going going to kill this artist if I find him". I dunno about that. To me, the only difference between that cover and this one is that the space marine looks less like Dolph Lundgren and more like The Guyver.

Official PlayStation Magazine October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Burnout 5 (pictured) or Army of Two (not pictured because of too many space marines)

Again, the cover subject is secondary to the real theme of this month's OPM -- to paraphrase everyone's favorite pudgy CEO, developers, developers, developers, developers. The top selling point is the spread on page 38 where EIC Tom Byron rounds up two vice presidents at EA and makes them respond to six common EA complaints culled from his weblog and the mag's message boards -- you know, they rush games, they're afraid to take risks, they made Catwoman, etc. Top response from one of them: "The games get better every year. And that's why people keep buying them every year." I know three Madden-hating reviewers over on EGM who'd disagree with that...

The feature moves on to the two coverboy games, with a focus on their respective dev houses, then continues with the usual sort of game-mag previews before concluding with a piece on the future of indies.

The disc: Has a new demo of Okami and a repeat of Lego Star Wars II, just in case you missed it last month.

Cutest page: The "OPM Kids Roundup", a collection of four reviews (Monster House, The Barnyard, Over the Hedge and One Piece: Pirates' Carnival) decorated with the most darling, Lisa Frank-ish art of a bunny holding his/her bunnylings. Kudos to Karen Chu, the artist -- and also to Chris Kohler for landing the Lois Lane-caliber assignment of reviewing every single game on the page.

PSM October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Final Fantasy XII

This month's PSM doesn't just have FFXII on the cover -- the issue practically is FFXII, since it's dominated by a fourteen-page review of Square's top game of the year. It's the first US (and presumably English-language) review of the game, and while it's early as hell (coming a good two months before the game hits stores), there's no denying that it covers the game in all sorts of depth. It's practically IGN-like, in fact, except with the benefit of nicer-looking page design. The final verdict: 9.5, which is coincidentally the same score Okami gets in its own two-page review.

The review: Also sets up Square Enix Circle, a new subsection of the News space that covers everything you'd care to know about the RPG makers. This month, Kaiser Hwang spends three pages talking to Kakuko Obinata (the game's "public relations manager") about FFXIII.

Official Xbox Magazine October 2006 (Podcast)

Cover: Tony Hawk looking somewhat "board" (kah hah hah, that killed 'em in the Borscht Belt) in his new game, Project 8

Dan Amrich oughta be right at home writing the cover feature this month on Tony Hawk's Project 8 -- if I recall, he wrote every Tony Hawk cover feature that GamePro did, too, and I think they did all of them until Game Informer scored the Underground scoop. The game looks great in the screenshots, and series nuts are bound to enjoy the well-learned depth Dan gets into in the text. Newsstand issues also come with a page of Project 8 stickers, suitable for slapping on your board or dog.

The disc: Definitely beats OPM's for fanboy excitement -- this time around you get F.E.A.R., Prey, and Lego Star Wars II. A demo of Japanese 360 roboshooter Zegapain XOR is unlockable, and you also get an on-screen index of every OXM review score ever. A superb package overall.

In other news: Microsoft is still purchasing two-page ad spreads for Perfect Dark Zero. Sony wasn't even that persistent with the Jak games.

GamePro October 2006

Cover: Call of Duty 3 (regular), World of Warcraft :( (Level-2 edition)

I get the Level-2 edition of GamePro super-early, so unfortunately I can't give you the Call of Duty 3 cover right now. Sorry. (The L2 cover is especially lame because Beckett Massive Online Gamer (remember them?) used the exact same art for their cover a couple of months ago. I really wish there was some sort of new editorial content in the L2 mag besides a worse cover. It was especially bad last month, when hapless Best Buy customers got a football dude on their GamePros instead of a bunch of bikini babes.)

Getting back to the subject: The CoD3 story is long and does a great job of pushing the game, especially the Wii version's subtleties. The other exclusives are a preview of Justice League Heroes and a review of Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2, which I'm playing right now for Newtype USA, actually.

There's also: A quick preview feature on 17 Xbox 360 games titled "17 Reasons The Xbox 360 Plays The Winning Hand." With Halo 3, sure, but with Gundam Mobile Ops and yet more WWE games?

A perfect 5.0: Is given to Okami and the 360 version of Madden. I think GamePro's gotten a lot stingier on the 5.0s in the past year or so...although the result of this seems to be a lot of games getting 4.5 or 4.75 instead.

Nintendo Power October 2006

Cover: Final Fantasy III

I don't know what it is (maybe it's that I don't slavishly read Matt Casamassina online), but every issue of Nintendo Power seems to bring me a new surprise. For this one it's: Hey, Pit's model in Super Smash Bros. Brawl looks pretty awesome. And: Hey, so does Lunar Knights (which is the centerfold-poster subject this month).

And: Wow, two pages on hairstyles in Animal Crossing DS (complete with strategic conversation flowchart) has never been more excitingly written.

Interviews this month: Hiromichi Tanaka and Nobuo Uematsu (FF3), Marcus Iremonger (CoD3, now that's a Teutonic last name if I ever heard one), Katsura Hashino and Daisuke Kanada (Trauma Center: Second Opinion), and Kensuke Yoshitomi (Lunar Knights). Extra bonus: John Schappert, another EA VP, for a feature on the company's Wii support.

Tips & Tricks October 2006

Cover: LEGO Star Wars II

T&T has the newest editorial column in game mags (just debuted around half a year ago, if I recall), but it may also have one of the most honest. This month, the editors discuss the Reader Art Gallery that used to grace the bottom of the tips pages. This gallery printed pretty much anything readers sent in, and since T&T's most ardent letter-writers are often on the lower end of the age scale, this resulted in (as the editorial puts it) "a lot of crazy bad art, some of it by little kids who could barely hold a crayon and had their parents write our address on the envelopes they sent in".

You couldn't deny this was true, and neither could the members of a focus group who felt embarrassed to read a magazine that seemed to cater to the kiddies with this section. So T&T dropped it entirely...but with mounds of readers asking for it back, it's been reinstated inside the letters section. And, as you guessed, most of it is from kids, with a couple drawn on lined paper and one which I'm totally unable to recognize what it's supposed to be.

"If it seems like the majority of our letters and artwork come from kids," the editors continue, "it's only because younger readers will always be more excited about corresponding with video-game magazines than adults who play Madden once a week with their buddies." True enough -- my own magazine gets a lot of fan art, after all, from young'uns presumably looking for someone who will appreciate their traced Magic Marker drawing of Kirara for what it is.

Hardcore folks: Will enjoy this month's Collector's Closet, the neatest in a while. One page is devoted to the spaceship on the box of 2600 game Star Voyager, a model kept by the programmer in his attic. The other: A massive collage of game T-shirts, including some I really wish I had (Zoop, Gex, "Sony PlayStation Launch Team"? Sign me up).

Beckett Spotlight: Cheat Codes October/November 2006

Cover: LEGO Star Wars II (some more)

Well, dog my cats! It looks like Cheat Codes has ramped up to a full bimonthly schedule, and I can even subscribe to it now. Massive Online Gamer is getting the same treatment starting with Issue 2, so I guess I gotta shell out for a subscription to both now. My postman hates me already, but for GameSetWatch, anything...

Breaking the monotony of codes in this issue are interviews with LEGO II producer David Perkinson (where he jokingly lets the cat out of the bag on his next big project, LEGO Willow) and the four lead producers on the Madden games (current gen, next gen, DS and PSP respectively).

Overall the mag is beginning to look like GamePro from a time gone by -- really text heavy and packed with lots and lots of random tips.

Two complaints: One, they reprinted the "Diary of a Sports Gamer" feature from last month's Beckett Sports Gamer one-off to fill space. Two, they accidentally used the same subhead and infobox for both LEGO II and Madden 07. Did you know Madden is now developed by Traveller's Tales and LucasArts apparently took over the NFL license? Smooth business deal there, George!

Unofficial PS3 Launch Handbook

Future, I curse thy name this month, for you literally have seven or eight one-off specials on the racks and my wallet canna take much more of this.

This first one: From the editors of PSM, arrives at a bit of an odd time -- a lot about the PS3 and its launch remains up in the air, something you can surmise from the fact that there's only one game ad in this issue (for NBA 2K7). As a result, there's very little concrete on the system itself to be found here -- in fact, if you subscribe to PSM, you'd be a right fool to buy this, 'cos nearly 100 percent of the content (including the interview with FFXIII's PR lady I mentioned above) is borrowed wholesale from its pages.

Wot a rip! Worst $10 I ever spent (after Patriotic Pinball)!

Interesting thought: Do you think Future will be distributing more of these than Sony will have PS3s in America during the launch window?

Ultimate Xbox Buyer's Guide 2006

OXM's one-off of the moment does a better job of hiding its content recycling, setting off with a top-20 for Christmas buyers and continuing with large (and, I think, original) features on 360 accessories, video gear and Live Arcade titles.

Funniest bit: The full-page preview of Grand Theft Auto 4 that consists of about 100 words of text and the GTA4 logo splashed over 75% of the page.

PC Gamer Proudly Presents Ultimate How-Tos For Gamers!

For the most part, this appears to be a compilation of the hardware section of the past year's worth of PC Gamers, with a few quick game previews and bits from Maximum PC thrown on top. This isn't as bad as PSM's PS3 one-off effort, though -- at least this is useful info that can be used as a reference and won't go immediately out of date once the PS3 launches.

Code Vault Powered by BradyGames Fall 2006

Cover: World of Warcraft (again?!)

I'm throwing the "Powered by BradyGames" into the title here because over half the mag now is reprints from Brady strategy guides. In fact, the whole mag is little more than an ad for Brady nowadays, and I can't help but feel a little sad for it, because I was a member of the team that tried to revitalize Code Vault when it went monthly in 2003. There was some neat original stuff in those monthly issues (strategies straight from the devs, wacky sidebars all over the tips page, a monthly spread on budget crap that I think features some of my most inspired writing), but it didn't help the sales, and CV went back to a quarterly in around 18 months.

Darn that Tips & Tricks! It was just too powerful for us. Ah well. Sorry to get derailed.

Ultimate Videogame Codebook (aka CHEATS!) Volume 10

You've probably seen these shrinkwrapped books in the stands before. Well, I actually bought it this time around, and I have to admit, they weren't lying on the cover. This book is nothin' but cheats...320 pages of them, in fact, from cover to cover.

The book may not get a whole lot of use in this house, but if anyone were willing to drop the other nine in my lap to complete the collection, well, I wouldn't refuse...

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. He's also an editor at Newtype USA magazine.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We mentioned Gamevil's awesome in-house mag a few weeks back, and thus, it's probably good that we refer you to the Gamasutra postmortem of the company's Nom 2, which we just published.

There's a companion postmortem for the original Nom in September's Game Developer magazine, but this postmortem is for Gamevil's "innovative 'one-button' cellphone title Nom 2, part of a series from the Skipping Stone developer which is a significant hit in the company's native South Korea", and "makes the player to rotate their phone to keep up with the action, and also allows the sending of user messages into outer space."

Outer space?! Yep: "Users can send messages to outer space by playing Nom 2. In order to send a message, the user has to clear all the stages and the story of Nom 2. After the user clears the last stage the user will see the ending of the game and will meet an existing creature (alien). Following that, there will be a short conversation between the characters about the importance of eternal love, and after that point the user may type in a message that is desired... Users will type in messages into the 16x16 box, where they can arrange dots and write or draw whatever they want. The message is then converted into binary bytes and sent to a server, and stored for months until other messages are ready."

What then: "Once ready, these messages will be sent to a NSAU (Ukraine Space Agency) satellite, which is the world’s second largest satellite, having a diameter of 70m. The messages will be sent to outer space using this satellite. This will serve the hope of mobile game users by sending their dreams to outer space. Isn’t that a great experience?" And the gameplay is pretty darn fun in an insane phone-rotating one button way, too. Mind you, I don't know which carriers yet have the game available in the States - anyone?

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Of course, it doesn't exist in real life, but the Ironic Sans blog has posted a great Pac-Man related merchandising idea, which perhaps, we don't know, could herald Namco's rise as the Ikea of the 21th century?

It's noted: "I’ve had this design floating around my head for the past few days", before the actual concept: "Pac-Man napkin holder with Ghost salt and pepper shakers", is revealed.

Certainly, Pac-Man is so iconic that it's great to mess with the designs for illustrative purposes - the Pac-Man themed cover of Game Developer mag that Derek Yu drew a few months ago is a great example - they even gave us the exact canonical RGB color values of all the ghosts, which was pretty cool. (Sorry, can't remember them!)

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

Over at Game Informer Online, they have some excellent hands-on impressions of Cooking Mama DS, which are very informative on why we should care, somewhat, about the Majesco-published DS cooking import.

It's explained: "Cooking Mama begins with absolutely no setup whatsoever. In fact, there isn’t really a story to be found in the game at all. You just select a recipe and start cooking. Players will start out with only a few dishes to choose from and then unlock new ones as they complete meals. All in all, the game has 76 different meals to make with a stunning variety of cuisines. Create tasty chow like fried chicken, rice dishes, pizza, sandwiches, spaghetti, dumplings, curry, kebabs, udon noodles, soup, shrimp, and even ramen."

However, it's also noted: "As far as complaints go, I really wish Cooking Mama had some sort of wacky story to go along with it. Who the hell is Mama and why am I making all of this food? We’ll never know, apparently. Trauma Center could have been just a bunch of surgery mini-games, but because the creators tied in some doctor drama, the game has a fair share of character that you can latch onto. What if you worked at a restaurant and a busload of kids came in and you had to make 15 cheeseburgers in two minutes? It could be cool." Close... but no celery?

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wandering around the Internet the other day, we checked out David Sirlin's website, principally because the Backbone Entertainment producer and EVO fighting game championship co-organizer put out his 'Playing To Win' book extract on Gamasutra this week.

But, poking around on his blog, we also found a v.informative post about Capcom Classics Collection 2, for which some great attention to detail is being lavished. We already kinda knew that "In addition to the original version of Quiz and Dragons, there is also a revised version (basically a 21st game) that has all-new trivia questions about Capcom history and games." Which rocks.

In addition, though: "The game also features almost 30 minutes of tutorial videos on Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Special thanks to ST player NKI for his help performing moves and combos and in editing. The videos start by explaining and demonstrating the concept of controlling space, the central concept of Street Fighter. They go on to explain everything from how to perform a fireball to 2in1s, meaty attacks, reversals, and even advanced concepts like “button up” reversals, “piano” inputs, and safe jumps." This is extremely awesome - more of these great extras in retro re-releases, plz!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've previously covered the Christian-themed RTS Left Behind: Eternal Forces, and are now being bombarded with enthusiastic press releases ranting about the game's release.

Apparently: "More than 10,000 retail locations are expected to carry LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces... Additionally, inspirational book stores across the nation have also indicated strong interest based upon the success of the LEFT BEHIND novel series." So this is an announcement that the game is _going_ to be popular? Riiight! But there may be some explanation for this optimism.

Over at Marketwatch, there's a 'Stupid Investment Of The Week' article by Chuck Jaffe dealing with, wait for it, Left Behind Games' publicly traded shares. He notes: "Two weeks ago, the stock more than doubled over five days. Next month, the company will start selling its new product. Sometime thereafter, management is expecting to start reaping big profits. It all adds up to the reason why the broker is suggesting you buy in now. But in the case of Left Behind Games, a California company about to release a video game based on a popular faith-related book series, what's being sold is a Stupid Investment of the Week."

Why so? Well: "Left Behind has spent more than $12 million in operating expenses since 2002 and has no revenues to show for it. The net loss was more than $2.6 million for the most recent calendar quarter and 60% of the firm's working capital was spent over the last 12 months... Even when the product hits shelves, it will be months before the average investor can draw any conclusion about whether the plan, which sounds so promising, has a real chance for success." Agreed - Left Behind may be nice folks, but investing based on this single make-or-break product would be pretty dangerous. Man, it must be tough being a Christian investor when stocks like these are around.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Hm - we're not really bored of random, glamorous Scandinavian girl gaming teams yet, so let's pass on this particular gem: "LES SEULES, the internationally acclaimed and cutting-edge group of female gaming champions, announced today the launch of their world tour with their first United States stops in New York City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles."

My God, their official website is incredibly high-end Flash bollocks, and Alice has blogged about them before, but there's more: "Champions of the most popular online game 'Counter-Strike, ' played by more than 100 million people worldwide, LES SEULES will be revamped into the best-trained and focused team in a male-dominated gaming world during their tour. "PLAY US" is the first-ever documentary series to concentrate on the life experiences of gamers rather than the games they play. Their tour spans across several continents and visits ten international cities. In addition to their domestic stops, the team will visit Tokyo, Shenzhen (China), Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, Paris and London. "

Anyhow: "LES SEULES will be making public appearances for gaming aficionados at the following U.S. locations: NEW YORK CITY : Thursday, September 7, 4pm, The News Cafe, 107 University Place... LAS VEGAS : Tuesday, September 12, 4:30pm, The Aladdin Resort & Casino... LOS ANGELES: Sunday, September 17, 10am, Cyber Java, 7080 Hollywood Boulevard." Oops, we missed the first one, but if any GSW-ers make it to the other ones, perhaps you could check in. We presume they won't be holding real guns in their personal appearances, though.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Our Blazing Destiny is a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games. And fulfilling childhood dreams of global domination stemming from a massive inferiority complex as well as massive guilt from having incestual feelings for one's sister.]

Wait, heeeeere's Persona: "Sorry for being so late again, guys. My school started this week and I had a bit of trouble moving in and procuring an internet connection and business of that sort. My schedule seems kind of busy this year so from here on out I'll probably make the comics just in grayscale or something simple like that. I hope you enjoyed all the beautiful colors! (Oh, and try to ignore that typo in box 4.)"

[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. He's also currently suffering from loan problems and other financial difficulties related to school. Make sure to never to send your kids to art school if you want to have some money in your pocket to retire!

Posted by persona at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, it's true, we at GSW do have a bit of a man-crush on Killer 7 developer Grasshopper Manufacture's airy, crazed approach to game design - for example, we were recently remarking hopefully on their latest Japanese release, Blood+: One Night Kiss.

Well, I finally got round to picking up a copy of the Namco Bandai published Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked for PlayStation 2, the only Grasshopper Manufacture game available in the U.S. right now apart from Killer 7 itself (the company's survival horror title Michigan got a European release thanks to 505 Game Street), and, well - Sidetracked has the absolute best, most stylish hack 'n slash combat system I've seen.

Don't write this game off just because it's an anime license - sure, this was clearly a straightforward work-for-hire job for Grasshopper, but, if you can grok the combat system, the game becomes plain awesome. Let's try a basic explanation - you have just two attack buttons, and have to match simple combos (displayed at the top of the screen, variable from level to level), also timing them to the hiphop soundtrack - you can change soundtracks to change up which combos are displayed.

If you can end a specific combo at the right time - say, heavy, heavy, light, light, where there's a red box around the final 'light', then you get to 'Hyper Mode' (screen goes red, you can go crazy for a bit).There's also a whole separate 'Tate Mode' if you max out your attack 'Tension Gauge' and hit an enemy with stars over his head, which allows you to button mash a specific button to slice and dice the enemy as a countdown occurs.

If you can get 100 slashes in _that_ initial 'Tate Mode' time limit, then you get to 'Trance Mode', where you get a silhouetted dojo-style mini-game to destroy more enemies and rack up a bigger bonus. In addition to _that_, there are special 'QTE'-style Counter Attack and Technique Counter moves for when enemies attack you. It's gorgeously multifaceted.

Now, here's the issue - the word on the street is that overall, Sidetracked gets pretty repetitive over time (despite having some awesomely crazy stages, mini-games, and characters), and I'm not sure I've played long enough to hit that wall. You probably don't even have to master all these intricacies to complete the game - you can just button mash in general to get through it in one piece. So, plenty of down sides, too.

But I think about this complex, clever combat play style being applied to games like Dynasty Warriors or Ninety-Nine Nights, and I drool. And most of all, Grasshopper Manufacture's riff on the standard licensed anime game drek is clever, stylish, and joyful - and that's why Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked will be one of the overlooked video games of 2006, at least for those of us with miniscule attention spans who like short, sharp bursts of hyper-stylized action to make up their action games.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Little more than a post of randomness, let's try to shoehorn two bits of greatness into one cogent set of paragraphs here. Firstly, my favorite game review line of the year so far, from the October 2006 issue of Computer Games Magazine.

It's actually written by Kelly Wand, who is reviewing CSI: 3 Dimensions Of Murder by Telltale, and who explains helpfully: "The game offers an appealing variety of scenarios. One set in the videogame industry involves a game designer who lives in his car and puts scorpions in the beds of his colleagues, which is obviously inspred by Sid Meier." Bravo, Sir.

Secondly, Jeremy Parish has added a fun blog post in which he notes: "So it appears that Will Wright, or at least a poorly-drawn caricature of him, will be working in an advisory role for players in Sim City 3000 for DS. Or as Kohler puts it, he'll be playing the part of Dr. Kawashima." So that's two evil (or just evil-looking) digitized game developers in one day, yikes!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, this was originally showcased back at E3, but an announcement just went out that Crave has grabbed the NRA license for a National Rifle Association-themed PS2 game named 'NRA Gun Club'.

According to the really darn exciting description: "This target shooter allows gamers to enter the shooting range, steady their nerves, and take aim at the bull's-eye and score in a wide variety of competitive environments." Yep, no people, no hijackers, no aliens - just responsible marksmanship, as befits the NRA's levelheaded executive. Or something.

GameSpy has a mini preview, for the intrigued, and WorthPlaying has some more screens.

We'll end with a gorgeously downplayed quote from Mike Marcellin, Managing Director of the National Rifle Association: "In keeping with the NRA mission, this game tests marksmanship in a sporting environment and emphasizes responsible use of firearms. This is a fun and exciting game, challenging all ages and all levels of firearms proficiency." Apparently no Charlton Heston cameo, mind you.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[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 have the kind of day schedule that allows me to spend copious amounts of time helling through the internet at unsafe speeds. I won’t usually censor myself for the sake of others outside of not playing the role of digital ne’er do well, leering through a smoke filled room at some chippie trying to send herself through school. This gives me quite a bit of leeway, and so I use it… to look up board games. One day, while cruising through Board Game Geek, I stumbled upon something called “Dungeon Twister.”

What the hell is a Dungeon Twister? It sounds like you’ll need a spinner and some elf ears, but the box isn’t even remotely big enough for that. The only other kind of twister I can think of, other than the kind that tear-ass across Kansas from time to time, is of the Texas titty variety. I can’t imagine a boxed game coming with instructions on what to do to a man’s useless mammaries while my friends have him held down on the floor. Besides, I have people that do that for me. So, what is it? I had to know, so I ordered it. As it turns out, it’s one of the more inventive board games to come around in quite some time.

There are plenty of new ideas in the world of board gaming. In fact, it’s hard to find a game that isn’t doing at least SOMETHING that’s out of the ordinary. What’s interesting, however, is when you find a game that manages to cobble together a concept that’s completely bizarre and yet is still playable. That’s exactly what Dungeon Twister does. It takes a pretty odd concept and makes it work. I guess that’s most easily demonstrated by a quick look at the rules and how an average game goes.

First of all, the players set up the board as illustrated by my lovely, under exposed picture to the side over there. The game board sections are shuffled up and placed in the illustrated fashion. Each player then takes his team icons and, behind the screen, places them face down on either side of the starting board. Each side has a number of tokens that represent characters and items, once the player chooses his starting team, the rest of the tokens are placed upon the board face down. Once the starting team for each player is revealed, the game begins.

The basic idea behind Dungeon Twister is that both players have a set amount of cards that have Action Point amounts that range from two to five printed on them. Each player uses all of his Action Point cards and then they start over. In fact, all the cards in Dungeon Twister recycle with the exception of a few attack and jump cards. Each player plays his Action Point card and then uses those points to either move his characters, attack another player, reveal a section of the dungeon or turn a piece of the board. That last bit will take a little explaining.

You see, each tile in the dungeon has a gear on it, and on that gear is a number and an arrow. If you move your character to that section of the board and spend an Action Point, you can rotate the board piece a quarter turn. Now, somewhere in the dungeon is another piece that corresponds to the number on that gear. You can also move this piece by a quarter turn in the direction indicated by the arrow on that section. This is what makes Dungeon Twister interesting. You can manipulate far off sides of the dungeon to try and stop your opponent from scoring by moving his pieces off the opposite side of the board. Of course, he can do the same to you.

There are no dice and absolutely no luck involved, this game relies entirely on strategy. I’ve heard to Dungeon Twister referred to as a “crazy” version of chess, but that’s a little too narrow of a view for it. Sure, each of the pieces has a special ability and movement capability, but that’s where the similarities end. It’s hard to define or categorize. The only randomization I can think of in this game is the placement of the dungeon tiles, and there are only eight of those.

Dungeon Twister is a game of skill in a world dominated by chance. For that reason alone, it stands out as a game that should be tried. Beyond that, however, is the fact that it’s a well designed game with a low entry cost for two to four players (with the expansion). I know I’ve spoken to a few people that have trouble finding people to play games with, so here’s your chance as it only requires one other person. Sally forth.

[Jason McMaster is a freelance writer who has written for Gamasutra, GameSpy 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 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Oop, time to go poke a bit at PC all-you-can-eat service GameTap again, since they've sent out some new info on their latest game titles - we covered the preliminary announcement a couple of weeks back, but now they've got specific.

Well, firstly, here's the really important news: "GameTap subscribers will get exclusive 15-day access to all "Sam & Max" episodes, beginning with the debut of the first episode on October 17th, 2006." Woo, only 6 weeks to new dog and rabbit action? [EDIT: Exit stage left, pursued by BEAR!] Count us in. The first episode involves "a group of former child stars [that] have become involved in nefarious deeds", and there's also new animated machinima "shorts" in production.

But elsewhere, he's the specifics for the themed weeks GameTap has been holding recently: "Space Combat Week: More than a dozen space invading games were released to commemorate the day we defeated the aliens. Among them were PC titles such as Battlecruiser Millennium, Descent II, Descent III, Descent: Freespace, Homeworld Cataclysm, Homeworld, O.R.B. (Off World Resource Base), Star Fury, Universal Combat Gold, as well as Star Ship and Star Voyager (New Star Voyager) for the Atari 2600 system."

What else? Well, Sports Week and Adventure Week are later this month, but we just had: "Ninja Week: The art of lurking in the shadows is finally given respect with this collection of games devoted to the art of stealth combat. Highlights include Ganryu, Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle, Ninja Combat, Ninja Commando, Ragnagard, Sengoku, Sengoku , World Heroes and World Heroes Perfect." Yay for Ninja Commando, indeed. Now, as we've howled a zillion times before, get this onto Xbox 360! We'll pay $20 a month, easy.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The folks at Vintage Computing have posted their latest 'Hacksterpiece Theater', "a regular column devoted to fun, odd, and interesting retro game hacks", and this one is devoted to the 'Super Metroid Redesign' hack for the SNES.

As he explains: "Super Metroid Redesign is exactly as its title says: a complete redesign of Super Metroid. It has a completely new world map, some new items, physics changes, and a few other new features." Looks like hacker Drewseph has gone to a lot of trouble to make a new version of the awesome SNES title - fun.

The best bit is probably Drewseph bothering to justify his changes in terms of series canon: "Something that always bothered me has been the horribly slow falling speed in this game. Every time I jumped I felt like I was wasting time waiting to land on the ground. My reason for changing it is backed up by a Pirate data in Metroid Prime that states Zebes total mass nearly equivalent to Tallon VI." Oh, well that's OK then!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)

[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 getting down and dirty with the latest HOT video game rumors, laying them to rest once and all - no namby-bamby 'BOGUS' or 'NOT BOGUS' guessing here, since Buzz is the original font of knowledge, and we're not talking Times New Roman, OK?]

RUMOR: With the PS3 right around the corner, Microsoft will be launching a third SKU for the Xbox 360. In a move that will shock many, rather than dropping their prices, they will have a more expensive model to attract the Idiot With Too Much Money demographic. This model will come with the HD-DVD add-on, and an even more gigantic hard drive. They might also throw on some gold or something. Anything to drive up the price.
VERDICT: Raising your price to give a sense of exclusivity and class is a time-tested sales technique. It worked for Lexus.
VERY LIKELY!

RUMOR: The Nintendo Wii will be released on November 15th, plus or minus 45 days, and might be as cheap as $175, but possibly more. Probably not less, though.
VERDICT: Based on all the confused and apparently ill-informed guessing from publishers and merchants, as well as the details Nintendo themselves have slipped, we’re able to nail the Wii release info down pretty firmly. You can bank on it!
VERY LIKELY!

RUMOR: Dead Rising is the best game on Xbox 360.
VERDICT: This is totally true.
SURE THING!

RUMOR: The PS3 will be shipping without an HDMI cable.
VERDICT: It turns out Sony had an official announcement about this before we were able to go to press with our Buzz Rumor Roundup. Still, it was pretty cool that I knew this two days ago!
SURE THING!

RUMOR: NintendOWNZ!
VERDICT: As a general rule, Nintendo invests in other companies without purchasing them outright. RARE, for example, was largely held by Nintendo, but was never a wholly owned subsidiary. However, they did buy Retro Studios.
IN A SENSE!

RUMOR: The PS3 is being delayed not because of problems with the Blu-ray laser, but because the aptly named Cell processor is based on illegal Stem Cell technology.
VERDICT: This rumor doesn’t really make any sense, since the PS3’s processor has been seen by dozens of people, and it’s repeatedly said that the architecture is very similar to eight of the hyperthreaded vector engines from the PS2 running in serially beautiful parallel. However, when we contacted Sony for comment, they refused to deny the rumor. You know what we say, here at the Buzz Rumor Roundup: “Not saying ‘No’ is a lot like ‘Yes.’”
POSSIBLY!

RUMOR: The PS4 will require surgery in order to install the Optic Nerve Upload Server, or ONUS, which will send display images directly to the extrastriate cortical areas of the brain.
VERDICT: For the last time: NO. I don’t know how this rumor was started, but it’s simply absurd. Any direct access to a users nerve system will be done near the base of the spine. It’s a far less intrusive surgery, and the results allow the game to send signals to all areas of the brain, rather than tacking simple video stream into the optic nerve.
NO CHANCE!

['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. He currently lives in Lacuna, Illinois.]

Posted by jberkley at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm trying not to feel faint, but Matt Sakey has posted another IGDA 'Culture Clash' column that I pretty much agree with - named 'The Next Level', and discussing 'the evolution of story'.

Sakey notes, fairly sagely: "No one would disagree that for every mature, involved Sacrifice there are at least a dozen trite Sin Episodes [pictured!]. We're still a long way from reaching the ideal deep-to-shallow equilibrium. But it's an organic process. And remember that not everything needs to be deep. Sometimes you want a puddle."

He concludes, drawing parallels to other media sometimes unfairly bashed: "I discounted anime because I found it hard to believe that I'd be able or willing to look past the stuff that irritated me, but Elfen Lied had lots of that and I did see past it. It's similarly easy to discount the potential narrative power of gaming, because we're still so close to the simplistic roots from which every narrative medium springs."

(But of course, the real answer to improving video games is to listen to your publisher - ta Jurie!)

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I also have a subscription to the rag in question, I noticed this too, but JVM at Curmudgeon Gamer actually bothered to scan it - the New Yorker's latest cover has video game references on it, blimey.

JVM notes: "My wife brought me the latest New Yorker magazine (dated Sept. 4, 2006) while I was waiting for my CT scan on Friday, and I was amused by the cover. The cartoon shows a kid walking to school and a color map of the various sections of his brain. Nestled alongside Algebra (yay, Math!) and Manga and Scarlett Johansson are PS3 (i.e. PlayStation 3) and Counter-Strike. Here is the relevant part of the image, since I couldn't find the cover online anywhere.":

Needless to say, the New Yorker doesn't tend to have many article related to video games - though it did have an excellent feature-length piece on medicinal leeches a few back, and is actually much less pretentious and a better font of genuinely interesting journalism than you might think - though it does insist on spelling co-operate with an umlaut, and covers modern dance in more detail than Game Informer. Oh, and JVM also notes: "Further on in the magazine (p. 74) is a cartoon featuring a Game Boy Advance (not the SP)." Wow!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to the v.mysterious V.Miller for writing in to point out a blip on his 'blog radar': "...an artist under the pseudonym JC Barnett has been writing about the realities of working as a Westerner in the Japanese game industry."

He notes: "The recent post about how game companies make a quick mint by releasing hentai games under different labels is interesting", and indeed it is: "I can guarantee you have played regular games by a large company that have under a different banner cashed in on the easy hentai market, or the “sticky yen” as I call it."

Barnett continues: "And why not? It is very easy money. I was once shown, by a lamenting boss, a new release of a hentai mahjongg game. Imagine it: a simple mahjongg structure would require one or two programmers at most... One such game, for PC, retails for as much as 8,000 Yen (approx. US$70, 55EU). Considering handheld games are about 3 to 4 thousand （US$25-35, 20-25EU) and console games 5 to 6 thousand （US$45-50, 35-40EU） that is a pretty decent profit margin considering the vastly lower budgets and shorter schedules compared to “real” games."

(Hey, if non-pr0n indie games cost that much here, we'd have a much more vibrant indie scene - though, to play devil's advocate to Barnett, a few Japanese hentai titles are actually quite technically advanced, such as the randomly pictured Sexy Beach 2, which G4 has previous lavished attention creepily on. Mainly, though - not so much.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those with a medium-term memory (not many?) may recall that we gave away a VGPocket handheld a few weeks back - well, now we notice the company has partnered with Taito and G-Mode for new handhelds, a rather fun prospect.

The new handheld is called the 'Caplet', apparently "because it comes with the recommendation to “use daily as needed.”" (ugh, kill me now!), but it "comes loaded with 35 fun 16-bit arcade game favorites, including Space Invaders and Bust-A-Move from Taito, and Burger Time from G-mode, among many more", for a recommended retail price of $39.99. (Oh, and G-Mode is the holder of the Data East back catalog, for those looking confused.)

However, the official VGPocket site reveals that, rather than being packed with a bunch of classic Taito titles like we'd hoped, it's literally only those 3 licensed titles appearing on the machine, alongside a bunch of more generic titles - unless 'Craig The Caterpillar' is a lost Data East classic we're not aware of. Oh, and 'Bubble Blaster' looks suspiciously like another title that PopCap should consider suing over just before Mitchell sues them - or something. But hey - all's fair in retro game repackaging and war. And it's got Sudoku.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Both a proof and the final version of this book have been sitting on my desk for a while, but now I've finally got to recommending it - Richard Abanes' new book, 'What Every Parent Needs To Know About Video Games', is a surprisingly excellent overview of the state of games, aimed at perhaps the key demographic behind a lot of the 'games are evil' confusion that seems to swirl regularly.

When the front cover says that the book is by 'the author of The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code', this may not fill you with hope for wisdom, but Abanes is both a gamer and a keen industry watcher (he mentions in the book that he plays Eve Online, and also references game biz influencers like CNN's Chris Morris deftly), and his well-annotated basic guide, though only just over 100 pages long, has one of the most balanced explanations I've seen for how parents should handle games.

In fact, a key passage is entitled: "Using Common Sense", and notes simply and baldly: "Video games are not inherently evil, destructive, or lacking in positive benefits". The final chapter is a list of recommended family-friendly games by the author, which goes beyond the obvious (Nintendogs) into the bold but fair (City Of Heroes) - though it does nod to Christian games, too, as befitting Abanes' previous work on religion and the Christian-friendly publisher. But overall, if people like Richard are writing sane books on video games and parenting, I'm beginning to feel a little better about how games are perceived by the world.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ugh, that's really an unnecessary and tragic Train reference. In any case, over at co-worker Brandon's site Inert Credit (haha!), GSW columnist M. Kumar (recently to be seen wandering around Second Life looking confused!) has posted an in-depth article on his trip to Virginia to check out a bunch of simulation studios.

Kumar is, well, pretty funny: "In Washington Dulles I am greeted by a stony-faced gentleman, in my memories played by James Coburn, one of the members of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. As we zoom along freeways, a decoration I’ll become accustomed to while in Virginia, he acquaints himself with me and the fact I’m a videogame journalist, a status that I still imagine is liable to get me chucked off the tour and somehow arrested for traveling under false pretences."

Well, he doesn't, and we actually learn some neat stuff about how Under The Knife for DS compares to an incredibly expensive 'serious game' that was designed for surgery training. You can tell this is New Games Journalism because it has footnotes (kidding, kidding!), but let's go along for the ride anyhow, huh?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Armchair Arcade has a fun post about various 'scene'-related dramas around Atari's retro hardware reissues, in which they explain why Atari's keychain plug 'n play devices are back to the tragic in terms of Atari 2600 emulation.

The post notes: "While this is hardly breaking news, it's been interesting to follow some of the drama around the "Atari 2600 Plug 'N Play Keychain" series from "Basic Fun". The first part of the drama involves the company's falling out with engineer Curt Vendel, most famous for being the lead on the "Atari Flashback" and "Atari Flashback 2.0" products, and launching "Awesome Arcades"."

The piece continues: "The second and more relevant part of the drama involves the simple fact that these products, amazing form factor and low price aside ($15 each), are awful simulations, seemingly ignoring all the progress made over the past few years in TV Game quality (in fact, reverting back to the NES-on-a-chip of the first Flashback, which has been proven unable to properly simulate Atari 2600 games!)." Wow, scene drama all the way to the bank! Talking of which, the Atari Flashback 2 console is pretty cheap now, and may be worth buying for hacking reasons.

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

Over at Andy Baio's Waxy.org, he's posted an in-depth look at Half-Life 2's in-game Developer Commentary system, which has been relatively uncommented on and he's very tickled by.

He explains: "Each bit of audio is a "commentary node," a little floating speech icon that can be activated by aiming at it and hitting the "use" button. The dialogue then plays, with additional information about who's speaking and the length of the clip."

However, Baio also notes: "Most of the game's 115 nodes are audio only, pointing out interesting tidbits about the scene you're currently in, such as the visual design, character dialogue, or gameplay... But a few commentary nodes do much more, taking over the player's view to show them something hidden or entirely new. I've captured video from some of my favorites." Some excellent videos follow!

His conclusion? "Sadly, according to Valve's game statistics, only 15% of players have ever turned it on. So, try it out and help raise that number (it's buried in the audio options). I really hope this feature becomes more popular in new games, or even as special edition reissues for older games. Hearing the original developers discuss, in context, games like Ico, Deus Ex, or (gasp!) Day of the Tentacle would be a dream."

Heartily agreed - oh yeah, and I just thought of another commentary example - The Adventures Of Fatman 2D adventure, which I helped host in CC-licensed form on Archive.org and LegalTorrents, also has a developer commentary for each game location. Neeto!

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

James Howell is the head editor and business manager of the recently-formed DELTAHEAD Translation Group. The group have recently worked on translating Konami's ShowMaybe? Magazine/pamphlet for E3 2006, and the continuing translation of Hideo Kojima’s official HIDEOBLOG.

Even more recently, Howell has announced on his own blog that DELTAHEAD have started work on a translation patch for Sega’s SegaGaga - a cult title that regular readers of GameSetWatch will no doubt be more than familiar with. For those who came in late, however, the 2001 Dreamcast swan song was a “Sega simulator” that referenced not only Sega’s own financial trouble, but also hundreds of their own characters. Unfortunately, since the game never made it to Western markets the only hope til now has been translation FAQs for anyone wanting to play the game. So DELTAHEAD’s translation is like a public service, really – though it’s certainly not aimed at the emulation kids. “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,” explains Howell.

GameSetWatch contacted Howell via email to talk about DELTAHEAD, and working on the SegaGaga translation.

What was the thought behind starting DELTAHEAD?

DELTAHEAD attained its status as an LLC (a Limited Liability Company) after a string of chance meetings, fortuitous circumstances, and hard work. I had met our Redactor, Jerel Smith, several years earlier through our mutual interest in the Metal Gear Solid series. I later met our Head Translator, Yoshiko Hayashida, while I wrote my plot analysis of the Capcom game killer7. She had contacted me to offer her translation of a companion book to the game, Hand-in-killer7.
We started working together and decided to make the translation into good quality public domain material. She sent me her translations, and I edited them for clarity. Jerel started helping both of us, and we figured that we had a good thing going. After our public domain translation of Hand-in-killer7, we kept with it, got an offer we couldn’t refuse, and later registered as an LLC with the state of South Carolina.
I realized that—with a few exceptions—the videogames industry has matured in most ways except in its attention to sophisticated language. I’m not even talking about bad translations that actually mislead players, like Final Fantasy VII’s gem, “Attack while the tail is up!” A reviewer might downgrade a game because it has polygon clipping, but bad English can get brushed aside or even coddled for its novelty.
DELTAHEAD’s ideals respond to this problem. We want to encourage a proportionate maturity in the videogames industry; we want the quality of English writing to become as important as the integrity of a game’s physics engine. I think that the task needs writers with an eye for originality, along with a classical grounding in the English language—its novels, plays, and (most importantly) poems. The Japanese games industry really needs to see translators who want to do more than “get the point across.” It needs people who love English as a literary language.
Recent games (like killer7 and Katamari Damacy) show a greater attention to these qualities. Players can see the games’ characters reflected in the language. DELTAHEAD recognizes that unless the games industry seriously invests in better English writing, we’re going to have exposition that reads like episode summaries from TV Guide, along with characters as well-written as Final Fantasy VII’s Barrett, who was one mohawk shy of a Mr. T clone. That sort of work becomes nothing short of embarrassing alongside graphics as stunning as we’ve seen in store for the next-gen consoles.

Are any games that you think handled their translations particularly well?

I'm glad you asked this. I don't want to appear as though we overlook the really good localization work in the industry.
Atlus does really solid work. Jerel vouches for the quality of the Shin Megami Tensei games. I've played their versions of Nippon Ichi's games, and those are great. Lesser talents might have fallen back upon tongue-in-cheek Engrish to make the dialogue funny, but they smoothly conveyed the charm of Disgaea. Comedy's hard to write, and it's doubly hard to translate. They deserve praise for doing that well.
Ben Judd of Capcom and Ryan Payton of Kojima Productions do excellent work. They're native English speakers who know how to run a professional show, and their hard work markedly improves their studios' games. I also respect the work of Scott Dolph, Hideo Kojima's international manager prior to the formation of Kojima Productions.
Proof of the quality of their work lies in how memorable characters from the Metal Gear Solid and Devil May Cry games are. English language players understand what's exciting about those games as well as Japanese players do. These guys have fresh perspectives on localization that more inward-gazing factions of the Japanese game industry desperately need. They know good writing when they see it, and they hunt that strong, final product.
Mediocre localization makes a game technically playable; good localization makes a game pleasurable; excellent localization makes a game pleasurable and conveys its original personality to its second audience. Payton, Judd, and Atlus have great results to show for their hard work, and those results make their attitudes worth emulating.

What level of understanding do you have of Japanese?

I recognize the phonetic alphabets—hiragana and katakana—and I can pick up very basic sentence structures. Beyond that, I’m wholly dependent upon the talents and skills of Jerel and Yoshiko. I have spent much time familiarizing myself with Japanese culture and history, however, which improves my comprehension of more idiosyncratic Japanese meanings.
I’d like to add a bit more about my associates’ skills to assure everyone that we’re no ramshackle group. Yoshiko was born and raised in Japan’s Kansai region. She left for America as a young woman and later moved to France (where she presently lives). She’s fluent in Japanese, English, and French. Her global experience, native intimacy with Japan, and enviable work ethic make her an ideal Head Translator. Jerel is bilingual and lives in California. He has both concrete and abstract linguistic interests, and—to be frank—he’s goddamn brilliant.
I’d probably shoot anyone who tried to steal these folks from me, or at least load the firing chamber slowly to give them time to run. I couldn’t ask for a better crew.

How many people are working with you?

In addition to DELTAHEAD’s usual staff, we have had the programming talents of Mr. Patrick Smith for our current public domain SegaGaga translation patch.
Patrick has been wonderful to work with. He’s currently in college, so his available time for work on SegaGaga has slimmed. Nonetheless, he still always gives a quick answer if I’m confused by some Dreamcast code nestled in the text. He’s been patient and considerate in light of our absent programming skills, and we’re grateful for his time. The SegaGaga translation project isn’t possible without his curiosity and enthusiasm.

What projects are DELTAHEAD working on now?

We’re handling the English translation patch for SegaGaga as well as revising our public domain translation of Hand-in-killer7. We’ve had one year of professional experience since we touched it, so we’re revisiting it to improve its accuracy, clarity, and writing quality.

How far do you see the company going? Would you like the company to move into games translation on a full-time basis?

During the most recent session of DELTAHEAD’s corporate minutes, we agreed to invest funds into the world’s first bilingual dog. Market analysis suggests that our best decision will be a large, sable Labrador retriever named Furaipan—Japanese for “Skillet.” I am using all my cut-throat jockeying skills to ensure that Jerel and Yoshiko take full possession of Furaipan’s fore and hindquarters, thereby leaving me wholly in charge of company petting without handling either (1) feeding or (2) the regrettable consequences of feeding.
We’d also like to get work localizing console games. It’s a tough field to break into, especially since we’re not physically in Japan. Large corporations like INTAC have a pretty strong presence with people in charge of translation outsourcing, so smaller companies have to work harder to get attention from Japanese studios looking for an NTSC market.
None of this deters us, though. Most success depends upon proving your worth when the opportunity arises. Providence is nothing if not coquettish, and work like SegaGaga keeps us flirting. We’ll meet the moment when serious attention comes our way.

Why have you decided to translate SegaGaga?

Beyond the fact that it helps raise awareness of our work within the videogames community, we wanted to give something useful to the English language audience. We see nothing wrong with occasional pro bono work, so long as we think it satisfies a real need. Rational self-interest and philanthropy don’t live too far apart in my mind, since the same level of passion drives each.

Where do you think the fascination with the game comes from?

SegaGaga has a strong appeal as an industry inside joke. It may be one of the few games that work as a satire of the videogames industry. I’ve even heard that Sega had to recall the initial release of SegaGaga because both the logo and corporate head of Dogma (Sega’s rival in the game) bore too much resemblance to the PSX logo and the head of Sony.
It’s also a one-of-a-kind piece of videogame history. Sega was one of the first companies forcing Nintendo to compete for the early console market. They’ve got a long-standing presence in the industry, and the brand name alone evokes a horde of memories for veterans on the scene. The Dreamcast’s demise broke a lot of hearts, and SegaGaga strikes me as Sega’s way to bid farewell to their old heft in the business—at least for now.

How did you first encounter it?

An old friend introduced me to the game a long time ago. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, and I only encountered it again when Patrick posted about SegaGaga’s final boss fight on InsertCredit’s forums.

Do you think it's something that you could recommend to someone not well versed in Sega history? To someone who hasn't played it - like me - it seems like something that might go over the heads of a lot of gamers - particularly Western ones.

SegaGaga definitely belongs in the hands of industry vets and Sega fanatics, though I don’t think it stands well as a game without its references. It’s not bad by any means—it just doesn’t do much original in the terms of the genres featured in it. In fact, it’s ironic that the game addresses a futuristic, fictional stagnation in Sega’s creative output, and it also features unremarkable gameplay in its RPG and shooter segments. Maybe the irony is intentional, but the game succeeds precisely because it takes full advantage of Sega’s presence in the industry.
With that said, the references are executed well enough to please Sega acolytes as well as folks who only read about Alex Kidd in magazines while they played the NES at home. A lightweight Sega fan may not understand that SegaGaga’s CEO, Hitomajiri, alludes to the actual Sega executive Shoichiro Iramajiri, but that material is there for the faithful.
The real test for players’ attention will come from the business sim portion of the game. Besides the fact that the genre doesn’t properly exist in the West (outside of perhaps some of the early Sim- games), the main rewards come through Sega references. If a player doesn’t see the comedy in spending half his budget to develop Super Wonderboy in the year 2025—resulting in a net gain of 5% of the market—he’ll likely need to get through the business sim on curiosity alone.

What problems are you running into?

Our main obstacles have been the lack of a half-width font and the difficulty of getting the Japanese text into readable scripts without the Dreamcast code. I have to go through each file and manually format them into legibility. That means hours of zombifying text highlighting, deletion, inserting carriage returns, and so on. I try to make the best of the work and use it to improve my recognition of kana syllables.

Posted by alistairw at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Thanks to Tim 'Walaber' Fitzrandolph for mailing us about his most interesting new PC title: "I have created a game called "Walaber's Trampoline", which is a 3D trampoline simulation game, where the player controls an athlete jumping on a trampoline, performing gymnastics maneuvers."

He claims, somewhat loopily: "The game has a "Tony Hawk" vibe to it, which I think is obvious in the official game trailer hosted on YouTube", also noting: "The game features realistic trampoline and crash physics, and multiple game modes that give it a polish and depth beyond many freeware sports games."

The game uses the Newton Game Dynamics system for physics, and the official description sketches out: "Utilizing an unique control scheme using only 7 buttons, players can perform almost every move possible on the trampoline- including multiple flips and twists in different positions." It's actually a pretty cool alt.gaming idea, and we look forward to experimenting with it - if we were less politically correct, we'd suggest a Man Show license might be in order.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We'd almost forgotten about Ross Dannenberg's fun Patent Arcade website, and have almost forgiven him and his colleague for suggesting that everything in the world ever should be patented (we jest!), so we can link to his new Nintendo-related patent analysis which deals with Star Fox, oddly enough.

He explains: "Remember StarFox? I do (I'm getting old). The '179 patent describes a number of gameplay aspects of a video game in the StarFox series. As the patent correctly professes, I always enjoyed the ability to select the level I played, instead of having to sequentially move through each level every time I started the game. Allowing the player to replay a level without resetting the game the player avoids being “burdened with unwanted labor, thereby losing his interest in the game or having a burdensome feeling….”"

Of course, some may find it a little seditious that Nintendo is trying to (and succeeding in!) patenting the concept of "a plurality of different courses through which a player can successively advance by successfully completing a current one of said plurality of courses" - basically, a branching level structure that you can play in any order. But they have, so kudos to Mr. Dannenberg for explaining it.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:01 PM | 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 Second Life's gamer culture.]

For some reason in the past week in Second Life my internet connection has been dropping packets like crazy, making coverage near impossible. That is, of course, not necessarily Second Life’s fault; it’s no better or worse at dealing with adverse network connections than anything else, and as much as I’d love to make a disparaging remark about how it doesn’t match up to World of Warcraft, having never played WOW, I can’t. Having said that, there are reports that the recent update is causing some major lag, so Second Life could be contributing to it, though I’m certain it’s not the root of the problem.

Network issues or not, I’m giving up on exploring the games in Second Life, because it’s become finally utterly and completely apparent that the games in Second Life are either absurdly primitive, depressingly broken, or sexual in nature. The latter, of course, not really requiring much in the way of HUDs, statistical systems or even really custom animations; a filthy mind seem to be enough.

It might be very hard to play a game within Second Life, but it doesn’t mean that the people who use Second Life aren’t gamers, and though they’ve perhaps learned to keep the activity of gaming separate from Second Life, they still bring their culture with them.


Little Silent Hill, for example. It's a strange experience; slap bang in the middle of some busy areas yet masked in a thick, strange fog, it’s a not entirely faithful recreation of everyone’s favourite small town horror. Complaining that it’s not entirely faithful, though, is a bit like complaining your local Chinatown isn’t exactly like Beijing. When you wander the streets of Little Silent Hill, entirely safe (well, apart from "griefers", who are running fairly rampant recently) there’s still that creeping fear, even if it's a bit like wandering a movie theme park and seeing all your favourite props and locations, just slightly out of context.

There’s the occasionally jarring moment; I don’t think I ever saw any neon signs in Silent Hill advertising porn magazines, but that’s Second Life for you.

The quirks of the engine also lead to some interesting fudges to get the atmosphere right; the fog appears to be giant semi-transparent polygons, but I’m not a coder so I can’t be sure. The fog does appear inside enclosed areas, however it’s done.

It’s nonetheless an interesting area to visit, and much like a movie set theme park they’ve got a nice range of merchandise, with my particular favourite being the “so darn cute!” mini pyramid head avatar – the stuff of my tiniest nightmares.

Using Second Life as a convenient way to go on sight-seeing tours of imaginary places is a nice way to waste some time, but it really only left me hungering only to revisit the "real" Silent Hill.

[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, The Gamer's Quarter, and Eurogamer. Check out his workblog!]

Posted by mathewk at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Leave it to VintageComputing's RedWolf to dig up one of those peripherals that we'd all tried to block out - the ColecoVision Super Action Controller, yikes.

RW notes: "And you thought video game controllers were over-complicated these days; this one requires five (slightly-pudgy child) hands just to use it properly. Take a look at this bad boy: four trigger buttons on the pistol-like grip (one per finger), twelve buttons in the overlay-friendly numeric keypad matrix on top, a one-dimensional “speed roller” wheel near the back, and an extremely flaccid red-knobbed joystick crowning it all."

He rants on: "Combine this with the futuristic look of a gaudy black space gauntlet that literally engulfs your hand, and you’ve got the ColecoVision Super Action Controller. This marvel of controlling technology came in sets of two with a “Super Action Game” included — in my case, “Super Action Baseball.” I’m lucky enough to have a pair essentially “new in box,” so I grabbed these scans off the box itself." We've all got a dozen!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer blog is getting waaaay into bat country of late, and has managed to pick up another super-obscure Kenji Eno oddity, named Flupon World.

He starts, very reasonably: "Eno Kenji was (is?) the Geoff Minter of Japan. They both have a weird animal fetish. They both make freakishly addictive games. They both try and tie music and gaming. With varying degree’s of success I might add. And of cause – they are to the casual observer both three-parts to the wind. Separated only by 6,000 miles, a gene-pool and language (unless Geoff speaks Japanese of cause) – practically twins other than that."

And the actual game (which doesn't seem listed on WARP's Wikipedia page)? "The whole disc can fairly described thus: If anyone remembers the PD (Public Domain) disks you could get for the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga by ordering from the back of the official magazines or perhaps the efforts generated by the guy labouring away on Net Yaroze (PS1 home DEV kit) then that is what we have here. Flupon World is a collection of simple games. None of them really shine, in fact the high light for me was the “Warp Rap” song but you can while away a lazy afternoon with the contents." Weeeird.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We seem to be heading into an entirely retro set of posts here, but what they hey - former GSW columnist RyanS passes on a YouTube movie of an Atari 2600 OS, as posted (but not created!) by Paul Slocum.

Slocum notes: "demo video of awesome Atari 2600 homebrew made by Dragnerok X. I'm moving the cursor around, and the Pong game is playable." It's a pretty fun idea, and people are already pitching in with ideas to extend it, so we'll see where it gets to - more info in this AtariAge post.

Meanwhile, visiting the AtariAge forums brings up an entirely unrelated post on the Nolan Bushnell signature series Atari 7800 - wow. The explanation: " A few years ago, we were contracted to assist in the production of NEW Atari 7800 units. They were to be emblazoned with Nolan Bushnell's signature (Nolan Bushnell founded Atari back in the 70's, if you don't know who he is), a large Atari logo on the front of the case, and "Signature Series" over on the right. Unfortunately, this project never entered production, and very few of these 7800's were built."

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Robotron and Defender creator Eugene Jarvis always seems like a pretty happy, goodnatured guy, and RetroBlast! has spotted more evidence of this, in the form of a video interview conducted with Coin-Op.TV.

It's noted: "Legendary game designer Eugene Jarvis interviewed! Jarvis speaks on both his classic creations like Robotron, Defender and Smash TV as well as his new company Raw Thrills Inc. Catch insider tips and hints on some of his classic games!"

As for what Mr. Jarvis has been up to recently, don't forget this recent GSW post, noting new arcade games such as The Fast And The Furious: Super Bikes. Oh, and further proof of his influence - we saw Crank yesterday, and there was an awfully Robotron-like (?) boot-up effect in the 8-bit intro sequence, heh. (Though we could SWEAR there was some guy playing Berzerk in a limo halfway through, so maybe that was the reference they were going for.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It appears to be Labor Day in North America, and while we're luxuriating and not, uhh, laboring, we were highly amused by eToychest's latest ' Schwag Attack!' column, named 'Foxes On A Plane'.

As eToy-er and Gamasutra news guy Jason Dobson notes: "While I put the finishing touches on our late (but oh so delicious) Star Fox Command review, I thought I'd share some of the goodies Nintendo was kind enough to send along with the game. I know I've said this before, but Nintendo PR is creative, and nowhere is this more evident than in their video game schwag. Be it chocolate or hamster food, we've seen all manner of goods arrive at our office stamped with the Nintendo seal of approval."

He continues: "However, Star Fox Command's arrival marked the first time we have ever been sent a barf bag. Yes, in celebration of the game's release, Nintendo sent over an appropriately labeled Star Fox air sickness bag, and accompanying Star Fox Command bags of dry roasted nuts. I suppose if playing on the Nintendo DS ever gets too nauseating, I now have the tools for the job."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over at Game|Life, Chris Kohler has presented impressions of Tingle's Rupee Land, the insane new DS title from Nintendo starring the very scary Zelda incidental character

The Wikipedia page on the character is hilarious: "Tingle is a short, paunchy 35-year-old man who is obsessed with "forest fairies" and dresses up in a green costume which slightly resembles that of the main character, Link" - but, as Kohler notes, in the game it's just as crazed: "Old Man Rupee tells you how to achieve your dream of going to Rupee Land, a land of plenty where you don't have to work, can eat all the food you want, and will be surrounded by beautiful women."

Kohler notes entirely sensibly: "I'm a little surprised that Tingle, who prances around in green tights and pointy green hat, wants to be surrounded by beautiful women, but I think that scene is honestly supposed to be ironic", and concludes: "It's a fun game thus far. It's not exactly packed with jokes -- the comedy just comes from the fact that it's all just so weird." A North American release is presumably pretty damn unlikely, though you never know.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at the official Second Life website, there's a new issue of the 'Second Opinion' newsletter (yep, new for September, tho the URL date is August!), and it has an interesting article on an architectural firm using SL for demonstrations.

A lot of Second Life-related marketing/promo stuff seems very contrived, but if this company is doing things right, it's absolutely genuine and smart: "We had a client, for example, who really wanted a small house. We tried to explain that it was a little too small and that he’d need more space to be comfortable. But the client held fast to the idea of small. So we built the house in Second Life exactly as he wanted it, and then we walked through it with him."

In other SL-related news, following Mathew Kumar's recent 'Letters From The Metaverse' column profiling game 'Numbakulla', and which has received a pretty vociferous response over at AOL-owned Second Life Insider from co-creator Caliandris Pendragon.

She suggests: "I'm a little fed up with people who can't be bothered to acclimatise properly coming in world and then being negative about the ways in which Second Life is deficient when compared with their favourite RPG/MMORG/FPS etc." Well, one of the reasons that we set up Mathew's column is to really independently evaluate some of the SL projects from a measured outsider's point of view - which is what I believe he did, and the SL Insider commenters seem (at least vaguely!) to agree with.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We obviously follow Killer 7 creator Suda51's games - we recently linked to an Edge interview with him, and the new September issue of Game Developer magazine also quizzes him on his gravedigging past (!)

In any case, Grasshopper Manufacture's new game, Blood+: One Night Kiss, was released last week in Japan, and NCSX has plenty of details, noting: "One Night Kiss is a full blown action game where the player has full control over Saya and at times, Aoyoma. ONK plays similarly to the earlier Blood+ in one respect however where sequence events require matching button presses to enact a kill or action. The new Blood+ is directed by Goichi Suda who transplants the stark and stunning art style of Killer 7 to the Blood franchise. Dark walls, deep shadows, and chiaroscuro throughout the world are the order of the day."

Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins also passes on some links from the game, noting: "Here’s the just launched homepage of Blood: One Night Kiss, that new Killer 7-looking game from its creators. And there’s a movie section that has a few commercials, as well as footage from a pair of boss encounters (at least, thus far)." Some initial impressions (relayed by Hawkins) have been potentially discouraging, but we'll see, huh?

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yay! Through a series of coincidences and the reading of Fort90's blog, we noticed that GSW columnist DannyC, aka Sardius, has posted the videos from terrible PS2 dance title Stepping Selection on his LiveJournal - well, he's posted the _links_ there, the videos are on YouTube, but you know how it goes.

Sardius notes: "My favorites are Ghostbusters, My Sharona, and Surfin' USA. Also Footloose, because it totally sounds like he's saying COME ON BEFORE WE CRAP" - but really, they're all awesome." I agree - Surfin' USA is a hoot for starters.

If you need to start with one, though, then try 'Ghostbusters', which comes complete with odious small children dancing around pointlessly with cartoon ghosts - and is actually one of the more professionally produced of all the videos, disturbingly enough - here's more info on Stepping Selection, which was a very early Jaleco-published Japan-only PS2 release.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Perhaps this isn't quite a _video game_, but it certainly looks the part - the Athanasius Kircher Society website (!) have details on Morton Heilig's 'Sensorama' device, patented in 1962.

The Kircher website cites a study which explains that Sensorama was "...an immersive 3-D virtual reality motorbike ride, in a form factor resembling an arcade game. Heilig saw Sensorama as the future of cinema, an immersive experience, complete with nine different fans to simulate the wind blowing on the user’s face, vibrating seat (to simulate driving over cobblestones), and the aromas of jasmine and hibiscus as the driver passed a flower garden, or the smell of baking pizza as one passed by an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn."

The pictured Sensorama machine clearly has motorbike controls, though I'm not sure if they were interactive - reminds a little of a Power Drift machine! Also noted: "In addition to the motorcycle film, Heilig created several other works for the Sensorama including, “Belly Dancer,” “Dune Buggy,” “Helicopter,” “A Date with Sabina,” and the provocatively titled, “I’m a Coca Cola Bottle." C'mon, world, you already gave us Pepsi Man, aren't you just being cruel now?

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may recall our interview with insane game box art parodist Handré de Jager, a few months back, and now he pings us to tell us you can buy prints of his art over at SomethingAwful's Awful Mart.

Mr. de Jager notes: " There are two pics [from the original series] that are not yet available on Awful Mart... namely Bomberman and Mario", but - good news - there are two newer pieces of art that we didn't cover in our original posts, and they're both as supremely, wonderfully disturbing as usual.

These are Balloon Fight ("A war is being fought in the night sky. A man of incredible party-balloon-piloting skills must protect us from an army of wicked, masked men who are equally proficient in the air"), and Platform Hero, which is based on former GSW cartoonist and SomethingAwful mega-goon Shmorky's parody Flash cartoon series. Jesus Christ, that latter one is scary.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

I apologize for the fairly dry reading last time, but now hopefully now you'll all able to actually play these things, should you at some point develop the urge to try them. So now that we've gotten some of the basics out of the way, allow me to say a few words on behalf of the second roguelike game ever made: Rogue itself.

I say it's the second, yes. The first one wasn't a computer game at all. It was the random dungeon rules published as Appendix A in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide, way back in the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Ultimately, the play experience that roguelikes seek to duplicate is that of a hack-and-slash roleplaying game, like those improvised sessions of D&D, and most of them are steeped in it. Hack-and-slash has come under a lot of criticism as lacking in story and character development, but a well-designed game of the type brings much more to the table than just the killing of monsters. (Click through for more.)

Foundations of the Dungeon

The first edition D&D books contained, within their poorly-organized pages, all the information a sharp DM with a dozen bookmarks needed to improvise such a game. What room is behind this door? Roll dice to find out. Is there a trap inside? Roll for it, and which trap it is. Are there monsters, and if so what are they? Roll on the appropriate level tables. What treasure is found? Tumble those bones. There are even tables that can be used, if the DM decides, to determine what kind of decoration is on the walls. r

The book admits that random determination is not usually the best way to play the game, but there is still a certain charm to those chaotic games. What made this interesting to players is that there are so many strange obstacles, and so many magic items with which to overcome them, that each game will have a wildly different character, and with good players and a better DM, many items can be put to use in such ingenious ways that there are actually not a lot of situations that cannot be overcome in some way. At its core, roguelike games seek to replicate that kind of play.

Since player ingenuity matters for so much, the developer must not shirk from the challenge of taking into account the unusual uses players might find for things. Nethack’s infamous devteam is so good at this that rec.games.roguelike.nethack has a abbreviation for it: TDTTOE, which stands for The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything. Even the more combat-oriented roguelikes, such as Angband, tend to have some element of this.

But I'm getting off the subject. It's time to settle some misconceptions, and of the many there are in the mainstream gaming press about roguelikes, the most serious have to do with Rogue itself.

But It's So Hard

There are still many things that Rogue does better than any other game, even its descendants. Although its days of ruling the computer lab are long over, people will likely still be playing Rogue twenty years from now. While it has been around for well over two decades, there are still many interesting things about it -- even when compared to other roguelikes.

Unlike many other random games that grant the player some static benefits to make up for the capriciousness of the Fates, Rogue doesn't do much to blunt the spiked edges of its random number generator. In a game of indefinite length, it's just a matter of time before there occurs a situation the player is ill-prepared to survive. The longer you live, the more likely you will die. Because of this, a properly-played game of Rogue is always a seach for treasure carried out at break-neck speed, where every move counts, where both ruthless monsters and the player's limited food supply drive a continual thirst for more loot. A game of Rogue that is not won as rapidly as possible is probably lost. (Well, games are probably lost in any case....)

The primary reasons players must be loot-happy are the 26 monsters from A to Z, the bloodthirsty residents of the Dungeons of Doom. Many of them are quite unwise to face in melee combat, no matter what level you may be. Most RPGs are balanced so that the player grows in power, through level gains and equipment, at roughly the same rate as the monsters' stats improve, so that he faces a constant level of challenge throughout. In a few games the player actually grows in power faster, especially if he's been building up his experience level and doing subquests for better equipment, so that at times final bosses sometimes seem easier than ordinary monsters faced early on.

The Subterranean Arms Race: MAD (Mutually Assured Dragons)

Distinguishing Rogue from these games, including other roguelikes, is that its monsters increase in power faster than the player improves. The player begins the game stronger that most of his opponents, but the average experience and equipment gain of the player on a given level is not enough to keep up with the increase in monster power. As the game continues this difference builds up, until near the end many monsters can wipe out a player in three, or even two, turns. Even if you were to take his time to build experience (and your food supply means you can't), you'll still be unlikely to survive fights deeper in the dungeon by merely pounding away at foes. While many RPGs almost seem like you could progress by taping down the 'A' button, it is impossible to win at Rogue by playing in a mindless manner. The high strength of monsters late in the game demands that players must learn to flee, or perish.

Even the weaker monsters pose serious dangers, some of them draining strength, armor, and even maximum hit points when they strike. To an experienced Rogueist, it is priceless to behold the look on the face of a console RPG fan playing and discovering that, when a Rattlesnake drains the player's strength, or an Aquator strikes and lowers his defense by one, that those penalties do not go away after the fight, but accumulate until a means is found to overcome them.

In addition to the controls, this is another reason Rogue is quite formidable to new players. As with random 1st edition D&D sessions, the game is not impossible only because of the great usefulness of some of its treasure. A single scroll of scare monster, properly utilized, can allow a player to safely destroy any number of foes.* A single zap from a wand of slow monster can allow even weak characters to destroy a Troll without risk. A scroll of genocide eliminates one entire species of the player's choice from the world, potentially taking care of all Dragons without even having to see one. So useful are some of the things that may be found just lying on the dungeon floor that in other games they would seem unbalanced. Here, they're just right.

These factors contribute to place Rogue, even after all the years since its creation, among the most difficult roleplaying games ever made. Although most other random games take greater steps to decrease the sharp-edged chaos of their dungeons, at their core they all deal with the same issues: how much loot to give out, how fast do the monsters get tougher, and how rapidly must the player explore? Rogue's answers to these questions are a lot less conservative than players are used to.

Some versions of Rogue rank among the hardest winnable computer games ever made, so hard that many play for score, with no expectation of victory. The following statement is astounding enough to risk a descent into boldface type: Rogue is much more difficult than its successor, Nethack. Nethack has a reputation as a player killer, but it also contains great helps if you know how to use them. Once one is aware of the true dangers, risks and resources in both games, it is obvious that Rogue is harder. In Nethack almost every game can be won, but in Rogue possible victory is never guaranteed.

Unavoidably this means Rogue is a less fair game, as a good percentage of games ultimately cannot be won even with perfect play... but that fact doesn't dissuade people from playing Solitaire, either.

This, at last, concludes out introductory look at Rogue. Next time, we have a look at the most popular player activity besides playing the games: telling stories about them.

* After the cliffhanger last time, I can at least spill the beans concerning scrolls of scare monster: to use one properly, one should not read it, but rather stand upon it....

Posted by John Harris at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One of the most-commented-on articles in GameSetWatch history has been this discussion about GameTesterGuide.com back in March, pointing out the website which asks: "How Would you Like to Get Paid $9 - $80 an Hour to Play Video Games?", and then charges you $35 for the privilege.

It's pretty clear that the site hasn't got most people video game industry jobs (though one or two people seemed to get a refund, oddly). Whatever the specifics, the site is certainly on the suspect side, since, as a commenter points out, full-time tester jobs only start at $9.50 per hour for THQ, so claiming up to $80 per hour just for testing is pretty dodgy - quite apart from the fact that very little 'freelance' testing takes place, and you shouldn't have to pay to receive information on it.

Anyhow, we noticed that the site is still paying for Google text ads, and also has an affiliate program set up to lure more people, but its site has been redesigned to remove Alex Lum as the named 'lucky tester' - perhaps because GSW's last post comes up first in a Google search for Alex Lum, hah! Now, there's a new tester, 'Matt Lankford' from Minnesota, who gasps: "Video games are my passion, and I have always dreamed of making a living doing it. I just can't believe that it came true."

Of course, the example check he proudly shows for 'Game Testing- Game Glitches' is from a company called 'Lumco, LLC', and the person signing it appears to be... Alex Lum? Oh dear. Poking around on the site reveals older example game testing checks that are clearly FROM Alex Lum to Alex Lum, and the company in that last check seems to be located in Holden, NC (not very good use of black marks in Photoshop!), so sleuths are welcome to find out more.

In addition, looks like Lum has very similar sites about getting paid for surveys, such as PaidSurveyNetwork.net and a host of more complex websites, but Game Tester Guide, due to its semi-plausibility, is probably one of the better revenue sites for him, unfortunately. In any case, feel free to post more about your experiences with GameTesterGuide.com here, and perhaps we'll shoot to the top of the Google rankings again and warn more people off a potentially inadvisable payment.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (81)

This has been percolating round the blogosphere (eek!) in general, but ARGN has an excellent summary of possible 'alternate reality game' LonelyGirl15 - well, ARG, or prank, or advertising campaign, or something?

ARGN explains: "The white-hot spark of a YouTube user named LonelyGirl15 has set the dry timber of the summer internet community ablaze. Ostensibly the video blog of a teenaged American girl named Bree, the 23 videos posted so far have chronicled a budding romance with a boy named Daniel, but there's a twist: Bree's family is very religious, she is home-schooled, and she has pledged a "purity bond" with her father."

It generally gets odder from there on out, and there's been plenty of detailed speculation into the phenomenon, which isn't a 'video game', by any stretch of the imagination - but is a great example of interactive storytelling using the Internet, which is why we're linking to it - besides which we tend to cover ARGs, and this may yet be one. Or not.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

['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.]

   

Back in June I wrote about PSE, a U.S. PlayStation magazine that ran for over a decade under assorted names and through all sorts of ups and downs. Recently I was fortunate enough to get some more mail from Mark Androvich, who worked for the mag since 1998 and was its last editor-in-chief. He was very nice to me considering all the nasty things I said about his magazine (though, to be fair, most of PSE's later woes weren't really anything that the editorial department was at fault for), and with his permission, here's a small interview that answers some of the questions I had behind PSE/PSExtreme's business.

Q: PSE getting distributed as part of Prima is, as noted in the article, a supposition. So was it the case that Dimension handled all of its own distribution for its whole history? What sort of distribution was available to the magazine after EB/GameStop fell out of the picture?

MA: Here is my understanding of the Prima deal; I was a freelance writer at the time and wasn't specifically involved, other than writing guides for Prima. Initially, Dimension Publishing created its own strategy guides in competition with both Prima, Brady, Millennium, and whomever else was out there. As a PlayStation-exclusive magazine, we had a good relationship with SCEA and were able to secure strategy-guide rights to many of their first-party franchises. We also had a good relationship with Eidos, and worked on their Tomb Raider guides (among others). So, that's what we could offer Prima. At the same time, Prima had better distribution of their guides, which is what they offered us. I do not believe that Prima ever distributed our magazine to retailers. There was some cross-promotion involved (guides had blow cards [subscription cards] for the magazine IIRC, or vice-versa; SCEA games had advertisements for our guide in the jewelcase, etc.) but that was about it.

For the debut of the PS2, Prima did print our PlayStation 2 "launch guide"--it looks like a Prima Guide with a PSE2 logo cover. I've seen it in three versions--normal, with a Toys R Us exclusive logo on the cover, and with a redesigned cover/interior for Target stores.

I know we had at least 2 distributors over the years; maybe more. I don't know what happened, because I used to be able to find PS Extreme everywhere (book sellers, game specialty stores, and even grocery stores) but then our distribution dwindled to the point that I wouldn't have been able to find it if I wanted to.

Q: As I noted, PSE stopped offering subscriptions for a while before folding. Was it the case that PSE continued publishing until 2006 primarily to fulfill outstanding subscriptions? Were they all fulfilled, or were refunds given out, or?

MA: To the best of my knowledge, the June 2005 issue was the last to contain the subscription blow cards. In April of 2005, we had changed the name of the magazine back to PSE, but the blowcards still said PSE2 on them. That was one reason we stopped including them -- we needed to print new ones. At the same time, advertising revenues were down, most game companies were losing money, and most gaming magazines were in the red. We had long discussions about our future, which included options such as becoming a multi-platform magazine or an online-only resource. It seemed inappropriate to continue soliciting subscriptions during this time, but Dimension cut costs to the point that we were able to continue publishing nonetheless.

I don't think our publisher would have continued publishing PSE for another year merely to fulfill outstanding subscriptions, but if he did, I wouldn't fault him for doing so. If I were the subscriber, I'd want to receive the magazine until the end of my subscription rather than receiving something else, or nothing else. I have no idea if, in fact, they were all fulfilled or if refunds were given out. The only "subscribers" I ever dealt with were the PR people, who immediately called to ask why they didn't receive an issue in May/June.

Q: Do you have any idea of circulation figures throughout the magazine's history?"

MA: Not at the moment...At one point, I saw rough circulation figures, but that was back in 1998 and again in 2000 when we were making the switch from PS Extreme to PSE2. I don't believe we ever had an official circulation audit.

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As if I had enough trouble collecting PSExtreme, Androvich also reminded me of Dimension's other magazine projects, which I'm similarly short on in my collection. Q64 I was familiar with, but I forgot all about VooDoo, a PC game/tech mag officially sponsored by 3Dfx during the