We've posted a few times about the Christian PC RTS Left Behind, and for some reason, some folks from maker Left Behind Games have chosen a November 2005 GSW post (in which we said nothing rude about the game!) to paste a slightly aggrieved message, which goes something like this.

"This statement is posted from an employee of Left Behind Games on behalf of Troy Lyndon, our Chief Executive Officer. There has been in incredible amount of MISINFORMATION published in the media and in online blogs here and elsewhere.

Pacifist Christians and other groups are taking the game material out of context to support their own causes. There is NO “killing in the name of God” and NO “convert or die”. There are NO “negative portrayals of Muslims” and there are NO “points for killing”.

Please play the game demo for yourself (to at least level 5 of 40) to get an accurate perspective, or listen to what CREDIBLE unbiased experts are saying after reviewing the game at www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/controversy.htm. Then, we’d love to hear your feedback as an informed player. The reality is that we’re receiving reports everyday of how this game is positively affecting lives by all who play it. Thank you for taking the time to be a responsible blogger."

Oh wait, I guess they pasted it on all of our blog posts about the game, even those semi-defending it. Also, apparently: "Many of the technical issues these reviewers experienced were with a non-updated version of the game." Is one of the 'technical issues' that the game is no good? Cos that's what the reviewers seem to be saying, Left Behind folks. And why don't you people be responsible blog responders and reply in the context of the original post, ahem?

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

You may have already spotted the news over at Gamasutra, but "representatives from Microsoft have released information on ten of the Xbox Live Arcade titles set to hit the service in 2007", and several notable indie titles are buried in there.

In particular, we previously hinted at the possibility of Eets: Chowdown for XBLA, and it looks like it's made it - there's a special page about it on Eets' site, with the folks commenting: "We’ve completely revamped the control scheme to work smoothly with the controller (in fact some of us even prefer it to the mouse), it’s presented in HD glory, it’s got new items, new levels, new action-game, new special effects, new scoring system… the works."

With Metanet also working with Klei to bring N to Xbox Live Arcade, with "a number of enhancements as well, including a level editor that will allow players to make and exchange their own levels", it's looking like XBLA should be great fun for indie lovers in 2007.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interesting phenomenon recently has been book publishers trying to pitch/sell books via the game press - and here's the latest one, for hacker novel 'Daemon'. Here's the blurb I got: "Somewhere there's a computer program scanning the web - searching for one man's obituary. Only then will it activate. . . and begin to tear civilization apart. That's the premise of 'Daemon', a new techno-thriller by Leinad Zeraus."

Game relevance? "A serious gamer himself and veteran IT consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, Zeraus has written a book as technically accurate as it is terrifying. Daemon is a fast-paced, gripping novel, that's already being stocked at the MIT University bookstore. Since you're an opinion-maker in the gamer community, I'd like to send you a free review copy of Daemon."

Wait, what relevance? "Daemon is about all the things gamers love: Action, MMOG’s, hacking, sex, weapons, power, and the dark crawlspaces beneath the modern world." You're right, I do actually like most of these!

Anyhow, I found it most interesting of all that the lead quote praising the book was from 'Tom Leonard - Lead AI Programmer, Half-Life 2 (Valve Software)', who said: “Daemon is a thought-provoking novel that presents real technologies in a new and terrible light. It's a hard book to put down.” Yes, game developers are now cooler than authors for recommending books.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Marc-André Caron from Ubisoft Montreal for pointing to Stefan Eriksson's appearance in Business 2.0's '101 Dumbest Moments In Business'.

Really, the article itself is a rehash of what we already know ("After leading videogame-console startup Gizmondo to nearly $400 million in losses and a bankruptcy filing, edgy entrepreneur Stefan Eriksson wrecks his $1 million Ferrari Enzo in a crash in Malibu in February... Eriksson pleads no contest to embezzlement and drunk driving charges and is sentenced to three years in jail"), but that picture is... kinda priceless. It's the orange jumpsuit that does it?

Meanwhile, I was looking for extra 'flavor' for this article, and OH MY GOD, it's Gizmondo's ridiculous street-scene exhibit space, which I remember walking through at E3 2005, I think? Anyhow, original cost was $2 million (ouch!), and it's now selling for just $110,000. This really would be the ultimate Gizmondo collectible, wouldn't it?

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The inestimable Russell Carroll pointed out that we'd forgotten to run anything on Game Tunnel's Top 10 Downloadable Games for January, so now we're linking to it, come hell or high water.

The 'gorgeous' opening blurb explains: "January starts the year off with not one, not two, but three Gold Award winners! Independent, Casual, and Downloadable games seem to be getting better all the time, and this month's round-up starts the new year off right with PopCap's RPG meets word game Bookworm Adventures, Cryptic Sea's explosive puzzler Blast Miner and the return of Grubby Games' ever popular Professor Fizzwizzle in FizzBall. It's 10 games you may not have heard about...but should definitely check out." Of course, we've heard of them, but we're smartypants.

Overall, Mike Hommel is suitably happy about IGF finalist and excellent Game Of The Month, Fizzball: "Hey, it's what I wanted! A breakout game that actually does something new! I won't say what it's a cross between, because the other round-uppers will. Also, at long last, somebody has borrowed the Gravitron from Breakquest! Only it's in reverse, in the form of fans." Fizzball is well worth checking out, if you haven't already.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Hello campers! Just wanted to point this one out - not quite so much through rampant self-promotion, but more through a 'don't forget' type of logic. As we mentioned on Gamasutra earlier, the early reg. deadline for the 2007 Game Developers Conference (run by my compatriots in the CMP Game Group!) is fast approaching, so you have til the end of Wednesday, January 31st to register at significantly reduced rates.

So, and I quote massively here: "This year's GDC is confirmed as having two major keynotes, featuring Sony's Phil Harrison, the President of Worldwide Studios for the PS3 creator, on "Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Video Games", and Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto making a rare Western appearance to talk about "A Creative Vision" and Nintendo's plans.

Some of the highlights of the main conference itself, which runs from Wednesday March 7th to Friday March 9th, include recently announced lectures from Warren Spector on 'The Future Of Storytelling', talks on Alan Wake's tools, the physics in MotorStorm, and making The Sims for Wii.

Other top talks still include Tsutomu Kouno presenting a postmortem of LocoRoco, Castlevania's Koji 'Iga' Igarashi discussing the 'Light and Darkness of 2D Gaming', and Id boss Todd Hollenshead talking on games and the piracy problem, as well as Ubisoft producer Jade Raymond on Assassin's Creed, Rare discussing Viva Pinata's unique graphics shaders, and Elite Beat Agents' Keiichi Yano on making the cult DS title. Also featured are lectures by Killer 7's Goichi 'Suda51' Suda, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, and a rare postmortem of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII.

Special events and other highlights at GDC 2007 (which is created by the CMP Game Group, as is Gamasutra) include the Game Developers Choice Awards on the Wednesday night, two separate expo floors including a multitude of game-related companies and international pavilions, as well as the Independent Games Festival Pavilion, the Suite Night event, and many associated events.

Also noted on the GDC schedule at a glance are the subconferences running on the Monday and Tuesday of GDC week, including GDC Mobile (featuring a keynote from Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins), the Serious Games Summit GDC (with a keynote from Square Enix's Ichiro Otobe), as well as the Casual Games Summit and the new Independent Games Summit (sporting a keynote featuring Llamasoft's Jeff Minter).

Further information on new lectures and existing highlights is available on the GDC news weblog, and the GDC pass options page has full information on pass prices and savings before January 31st." So there!

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Roboto-chan!' is a fortnightly column by Ollie Barder which covers videogames that feature robots and the pop-cultural folklore surrounding them. This week's column covers the Another Century's Episode games.]

Those of you may remember my low-down of the Armored Core series and a nod to the developer, that of From Software, who created it. As of 2005 From Software have branched into more licensed gaming fare and whilst that may sound like terrifyingly bad news, they’ve approached the task with similar otaku fervour and created a whole new franchise that epitomises their nerd-like stranglehold on all things mecha.

More after the jump…

Lots of people around these parts know about Banpresto’s seminal strategical wonder that is the Super Robot Wars series. As the title implies, the game covers covers “super robots” rather than “real robots”. The difference between the two is an important one in terms of how mecha are classified as a whole.

Super robots are pretty much responsible for the genesis of modern Japanese mecha culture. Almost indestructible pieces of machinery, they can summon immense power capable of drop kicking planets and are piloted by almost feral teenage boys with thick unkempt hair. The structure of the narrative that often frames these fearful robots is that of strength through immense adversity and an almost indomitable sense of honour.

The drawback with supers is that they lack a more tempered human sincerity in terms of the setting that surrounds them. Towards the late seventies, the super robot template had been pretty much saturated. Many were getting sick and tired of the total lack of realism and more importantly the blatant glorification of apocalyptic warfare.

Circa 1979 Gundam entered the public view and the real robot was born. One of the reasons Gundam and it’s real robot ilk have been so successful is down to complex characterisation, a more believable narrative and most iconic of all; robots that actually get destroyed. Real robots are fragile, very fragile indeed. So the complex tapestry of neurotic war-hating characters fighting for their very survival makes for compelling storytelling.

Banpresto nailed the super robot in terms of gameplay but repeatedly failed when they branched into the realm of real robots. In 1995 SEGA created the first Virtual On game, very much inspired by the lateral approach to real robot dogfighting it managed to capture the sense of piloting a potent yet fragile mecha. Banpresto, along with many others, decided to outright copy Virtual On’s vectored based combat mechanics and released Real Robots Final Attack at the beginning of 1998 on the original PlayStation.

It bombed, horrifically in fact. This wasn’t helped by Virtual On Oratorio Tangram’s then imminent Dreamcast port released in the same year, showing up the derivation even further. In all fairness, Banpresto were onto something but it took them another 7 years to cotton on to that.

Cue Hideo Kojima’s desire to enter the mechanical fray with the Zone of the Enders games. Again, very heavily “inspired” by SEGA’s Virtual On it managed to offer something a bit more coherent despite having a broken implementation of linking melee and distanced combat (something that Virtual On’s fixed length dashes originally negated).

What probably caught Banpresto’s attention in regards to ZOE was Konami’s fevered attempt at hyping the series further by creating anime tie-ins to the games. The real robot had come of age in games; it was now producing anime as a consequence of its success.

All the while From Software were producing successively successful iterations of its Armored Core franchise. Shortly after the release of Armored Core Ninebreaker, From Software announced an alliance with Banpresto where the latter would act as a publisher to the former’s development of a real robot action game featuring mecha from close to 15 years of anime.

Another Century’s Episode (PlayStation 2)

Released at the beginning of 2005, the first Another Century’s Episode (or just ACE) featured real robots from 9 different series and movies (including some of From Software’s and Banpresto’s own back catalogue). The gameplay was comparable to that of Konami’s ZOE but greater emphasis on a more rigid boost system and consequently a more ballistic approach to weapons fire.

Now, this may sound more akin to Virtual On but it’s considerably more subtle than that. Virtual On was based around fixed length dashes that offered homing attacks if the player fired a weapon mid-dash. The dashes also could be linked together to position the player in range for melee attacks.

ACE approached dashes as a very fast but of a much longer duration. In addition, the player had less control in terms of the turning circle, due to the increased acceleration. This meant you had to boost at the correct angle to allow your shots to connect. It also links ranged and melee combat in a far more efficient manner compared to that of ZOE, due to the player’s focus on achieving a stable firing solution in relation to their target.

In many ways it’s a subtle change over Virtual On’s initial implementation and more akin to the anime combat that inspired SEGA’s real robot franchise in the first place. In many ways, ACE picked up the gameplay torch from Virtual On. Interpreting the rigid, almost digital, dash system in an analogue form.

The original ACE had its faults though. Melee combat had to be initiated on the same level of the target you were attacking and the game speed was a little on the slow side, which effected the overall responsivity of the combat.

Regardless of these faults, ACE was a successful release for both Banpresto and From Software. So successful in fact that many of the anime series featured in the game were given new leases of life, with Metal Armor Dragonar’s subsequent releases of a DVD boxset and several artbooks being a notable example. Now realising that they were onto something, Banpresto decided to commission yet another game.

Another Century’s Episode 2 (PlayStation 2)

This was released the following year and despite appearing to have the schedule of a very hasty sequel, ACE2 was a considerable improvement over the previous game. Addressing the two main faults of the original, the game made allowances for initiating a melee attack from a greater distance regardless of whether the player was level with their target and the game speed went a bit, well, bonkers.

In addition, the game’s scope was far greater. In that, the mission roster was far larger and there was a very potent levelling up system in place. In the previous game you only levelled up abilities at the expense of others, ACE2 instead offered a far more linear progression of upgrades, which produced some interesting consequences in game.

As you played through, you would invariably come up against mecha from series that were actually of a higher level than you, which meant that you were at a disadvantage pretty much all round (attacking the GP-02 up close early on in the game is a bit suicidal because Gato can counter pretty much most attacks you throw at him). Consequently, you could return to said missions once you had ubered up a favourite mecha and kick much ass. This was unlike the previous game due to enemy hero mecha being treated as outright bosses, so they were always tougher than you were.

The HUD also got a considerable re-working, mainly due to the addition of a larger menu of attacks per mecha and the presence of "combination attacks". These were linked to chaining enemy kills, which consequently maxed out your combination attack meter. If you had one or two wingmen then you could initiate a powerful attack that would do "massive damage". A nice touch with this was that certain pairings of mecha produced wholly different animation sequences for the attacks. Admittedly, the attack itself produced the same damage but the effort that went into the eyecandy was appreciated by this particular gamer.

There is one major fault ACE2 suffers from though, is that it is almost too focused on combat. The original had very varied mission objectives that were a more cerebral affair in terms of how you approach them (in that protecting a palace during a political speech but without being seen by the press helicopters, because death robots make for bad PR). Many of the missions in ACE2 are full on combat with little else, admittedly the respective series' narrative is framed more competently (with lovely cel shaded renditions of the pilots) but from a pure gameplay point of view ACE2 did err on the side of being a tad repetitive.

This may sound somewhat damning but considering the wealth of work in other places within the game, the repetition can be oddly satisfying and the huge roster of mecha to choose from does add further diversity to the omnipresent combat

High fiving for the win...

Much like Super Robot Wars the main allure of ACE is to have mecha from disparate series high five their way to victory. As such, knowing where each of the mecha come from often helps in appreciating the game more. This is not to say the game can't stand on its own merits but that it was always meant to be subservient to the various anime licenses the game almost tearfully champions.

In all fairness, the series is a young one, barely even two years old, so it may seem a bit presumptuous to be covering it now. That being said if Armored Core and Super Robot Wars are anything to go by, the fact that the two ACE games currently available really hit the mark in terms of gameplay it's safe to say that this tie-in series will be around for a long time. Considering From Software's unique insight into making robots explode, I have absolutely no problem with that.

[Ollie Barder is a freelance journalist who's written for The Guardian, appeared on BBC Radio 4 and contributed to Japanese mecha artbooks. He lives at home with an ever growing collection of Japanese die-cast robot toys and a very understanding wife.]

Posted by oliieb at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some info on this has already surfaced on TIGSource and IndyGamer, but the Tomus Files weblog has posted a summary of the Becherovka Games 2006 winners - an indie PC game competition organized by the Czech herbal liquor, of course!

The folks at Tomus Files, who evidently help judge the competition, have a neat blog post summarizing 'must-play games' from the history of the competition, such as 2005 winner Space Merchants: Conquerors ("Elite-like space sim game with trading and fights and RPG elements.")

Or, indeed, there's Space Becherovka ("Absolutely great, absolutely funny adventure game. Parody on Star Wars, Space Odyssey, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and many other sci-fi classics..."), or even Becherov ("Overall winner in 2004. Looks like GTA 2, plays like GTA series. You may not act that evil there, but it's still very funny.") I'm guessing most of these are Czech-language only, but it's still interesting to look, right? Please comment if you find English-friendly highlights.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Brian Baglow of Indoctrimat pinged me with a neat item on his ScottishGames blog: "I've just posted an interview with Gordon Rennie, noted comics author and the BAFTA nominated writer behind Rebellion's Rogue Trooper game. It touches on comics, games, writing in games and why so much of it sucks."

And it's fun reading! Here's Rennie on his introduction to game scripts: "Someone at Lost Boys Games - now Guerrilla - really liked this nasty future war comic strip called Glimmer Rats that I'd written, and tracked me down on the interweb thingy to ask me if I was interested in working on the script for Killzone, which was still in early development then. That experience ended slightly unhappily - I was one of the thousands crushed beneath the wheels of the Killzone juggernaut as it slowly inched its way along the road to completion - but I did get to hang out in Amsterdam, meet Rutger Hauer and get a peek behind the curtain at the surprisingly half-arsed way some games are put together."

He also talks about his perfect game licenses - a lot of which revolve around the rich 2000AD universe, handily owned by Rebellion, of course: "Sticking close to home, I think there's a lot of IP potential in the 2000AD stable of characters. Rebellion's initial Dredd game was a misfire, but Rogue Trooper benifited from the learning curve on Dredd - hiring a professional writer being part of that curve, and paid off by getting them a Best Screenplay BAFTA nomination - and from having more love and attention lavished on it."

He concludes of the 200AD experience: "Classic series like Strontium Dog, Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, Robohunter and perhaps more recent ones like Nicolai Dante and Sinister-Dexter could all make great games, having distinct, visually-interesting lead characters and an immense amount of backstory and strongly-realised fictional universe concepts to draw on." Heartily agreed.

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

["Beyond Tetris" is a column from Tony "Tablesaw" Delgado about puzzle games that transcend mere abstract action and instead plunge deep into the heart of problem-solving. This installment looks at the classic handheld puzzle game Lights Out.]

The best puzzles hide great complexity in simple packages, but Lights Out turned out to have more surprises than I bargained for. I thought I'd write a bit about the handhelds, write a bit about the puzzle appearing in videogames, and be done with it. When I sat down to do the research, though, I discovered that the small game was tied up in some big things like linear algebra, patent law, and the collectors of rare mechanical games.

Lights Up

Lights Out was first produced by Tiger Electronics in 1995 (Tiger was bought by Hasbro in 1998). It was a very simple device with a simple puzzle. You were given a 5x5 grid of buttons, each of which concealed an LED. Some buttons were lit, and others were not. The goal, as one might expect, was to turn all the lights out. But every time you pressed a button, you wouldn't just toggle on or off that one button, you would toggle the buttons above it, below it, and to its sides. If you pressed a button that wasn't on an edge, it would create a pattern like a cross or plus sign. Every button had undesired consequences, and going from a given pattern to lights out became difficult. The game contained a set of fifty patterns of increasing difficulty, and another set of one thousand solvable patterns.

Tiger developed several version over the years. There was Mini Lights Out, which used a 4x4 grid. Lights Out Deluxe had a 6x6 grid, and had puzzles where the buttons you were allowed to press were limited. On the Lights Out Cube, the edges weren't boundaries, so the cross pattern applied everywhere (sometimes wrapping to an adjacent face). Lights Out 2000 added a third state to each button (that is, instead of going from off to on to off, you cycled through off to red to green to off). Lights Out even appeared as an actual, honest-to-goodness, console-based videogame. In 1997, Tiger released the Game.Com to compete with the Gameboy, Lights Out was available as a pack-in for the system.

Unsurprisingly, Lights Out became a quick hit among puzzle fans. And since puzzle fans make puzzle games, it didn't take long before imitations appeared in videogames. Clones and solvers hit the web quickly, and they continue to be popular. Sigil of Binding, a popular entrant into the first Jay Is Games Game Design Competition, is simply Mini Lights Out with a new skin. Lights Out was also incorporated as a puzzle in puzzle-oriented adventure games; one of its most recent appearances was as the green wall in Mystery of Time and Space. By 1998, the interactive fiction Usenet groups considered it a cliché and encouraged authors to avoid it. In fact, it became a puzzle standard so quickly, I stopped noticing it years and years ago. And when doing the research, I was surprised that such an old chestnut had only surfaced twelve years ago. I should have expected that the truth would lay much farther back.

A Long History

Though Tiger received a patent for Lights Out, they were not the first to produce this type of puzzle. Merlin, produced by Parker Brothers in 1978, played several games on its lit electronic keypad, including "Magic Square." It was similar to Lights Out, but it was smaller (only 3x3) and different buttons had different effects. The corner buttons toggled the 2x2 square in that corner, the edge buttons toggled the three squares on that side, and only the center button toggled values in the familiar cross shape. Moreover, the goal of Magic Square wasn't to turn all the lights out (or on), the goal was to create a specific pattern: lighting up all squares except the center. The pattern may seem odd, but some puzzlers might remember Magic Square's appearance in The 7th Guest as the coffin puzzle. And Magic Square may be even older than that. Google's puzzlesmith Wei-Hwa Huang suggests that it appeared on mainframe computers under the name "Enigma."

But perhaps you're looking for a more direct predecessor, a puzzle that uses the distinctive cross pattern in its puzzles. If so, you need only look to the Vulcan XL-25, first exhibited in London in 1983. This handheld device features the same 5x5 grid that reacts in the same way, creating toggling squares in a cross shape. The only difference between the two is that the XL-25 asked you to turn all the lights on, instead of turning all the lights off. Moreover, it allowed the user to switch from "cross" mode to "knight mode." Knight mode was a variant where pressing a button toggled that square and any square that was one knight's move away. The Hungarian patent, by the way, isn't mentioned by Tiger (Merlin was).

And that's not all. In a post to rec.puzzles, Gary Watson claims to have come up with a close variant in the mid '80s, which he implemented in Basic and called Flip. So, leaving aside the question of whether or not the Lights Out patent is remotely enforceable, where do all these puzzles keep coming from?

Enter the Matrix

The answer to that question probably comes from the same place as the simplest solutions to Lights Out: math. If you (like me) know a little bit about matrices, it's pretty easy to see how Lights Out can be considered a binary matrix, with lit squares as ones and unlit squares as zeroes. If you know a little more about matrices (unlike me), then you'll be able to find the solution to a level using linear algebra. In fact, there are several journal articles detailing methods for creating the best solutions, and asking questions about general cases. Lights Out even merits its own page at MathWorld.

Jaap Scherphuis maintains a massive site detailing the specifics and and mathematics of many mechanical puzzles. His information on Lights Out and its variants include how to find the maximal solution to every type. He also has a very large page on the mathematics of Lights Out, which explains how the maximal solutions and the methods for finding them were developed. It's not for the layperson, but it contains lots of information including an abbreviation bibliography on the subject.

One of those articles is by Klaus Sutner, building on an earlier paper that's important to thinking about Lights Out. At the time, he was writing about the Merlin Magic Square, but to discuss it, he proposed something called the "Sigma+ Game." The Sigma+ Game is played on a directed graph of any shape. See, Lights Out can be thought of as a directed graph where every square is a node that points to every node that is adjacent to it. And in the Sigma+ Game, like Lights Out, picking a node changes the state of the chosen node and every node it points to. Sigma+ is the metagame of which Lights Out, Magic Square, and the XL-25's knight game are merely specific cases. And when the realm of Lights Out puzzles is expanded to include the Sigma+ game, things get pretty weird.

A Full Spectrum of Variants

David Singmaster's copious notes on recreational mathematics includes a section on "Binary Button Games." In addition to the grid-based games I've already mentioned, there are several unusual Lights Out variants that work with nonstandard directed graphs as in the Sigma+ Game. For example, there's the entirely non-electronic predecessor to Lights Out: Game Jugo, or the Jugo Flower. This was apparently made in Japan, and is one of the most sought-after mechanical puzzles in the world. Reportedly, only seven were made. In Jugo, when you manually flip one petal of the flower, four other petals rotate with you. It's the same puzzle as Lights Out, in a totally different presentation. The Orbik is also noncomputerized puzzle around a circle, but in Orbik, each node can be in one of four states. And if you're wild about having extra states, there's always Rubik's Clock, an incredibly complicated puzzle where each of fourteen clocks (and four duplicates) can be in any of twelve states.

These kinds of variants are now a bit more common in adventure and puzzle games. The cross of Lights Out has become too recognizable, so creators are looking for something a bit trickier. For example, the Mystery of Time and Space, in addition to having a blatant Lights Out puzzle, has another, more subtle variant later on. In the colorful level 14 puzzle shown below, there are six tiles with four states, and each tile affects a different set of tiles. This variant was also common in Cliff Johnson's 3 in Three. Still more complicated variants appear in Deadly Roooms of Death, like the "Eight Gates of Bill," where switches don't merely toggle; some will always open a gate, and some will always close it.

And yet, the simplicity of the Lights Out has remained constant. When Milton Bradley rereleased Merlin in 2004, it changed the Magic Square game so that it toggled squares like Lights Out. And while seasoned puzzlers may find it to be a bit overused, it's still a satisfying puzzle, no matter how many times its solved.

[Tony Delgado is a member of the National Puzzlers' League, and a solver and creater of puzzles of all sorts. He also works as the copy chief of The Gamer's Quarter.]

Posted by tablesaw at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Following the example of Slamdance, which has obviously had a whole bunch of fallout from the controversy over its judging/deselection choices, looks like another film festival is trying to jump on the gamefest bandwagon - albeit from a horror and sci-fi angle: "Horror and Science Fiction gamers and developers have something to howl about now that the Eerie Horror Film Festival has added a game competition to their annual search for dark themed films and screenplays from around the world."

What ho? "Established in order to encourage the development and growth of horror, science fiction and mystery themes within the gaming industry, the Eerie Horror Film Festival is proud to be one of the first of its kind to offer such an opportunity to game designers, developers and conceptual artists. Amateurs and pros alike can enter the competition though some categories, like “Game Concept”, “Character Development” and “Environment Design” require no knowledge of game development what so ever.... Original scripts, artwork, drawings, descriptions of characters, as well as fully functional games, will be accepted into the competition this season."

It's revealed of the game competition for the fourth Annual Eerie Horror Film Festival, which takes place at the Erie Playhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania, October 10 – 14, 2007, and offers five days of independent films, special celebrity guests and thousands of attendees: "Awards will be offered to the winners in several categories and will be judged on originality, concept, detail and entertainment value.... The competition is open to an international audience with a special discount for students ages 10 – 17. Deadline for the Video Game Competition is September 1, 2007." Limiting entries to horror and sci-fi is a little bit odd, but who knows - it might be genretastic fun?

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Via PaidContent, I note there's a Forbes cover feature on 'Murdoch 2.0', discussing the various website-related purchases for Fox, and headed: "MySpace was just the start. Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants are betting big on the Internet."

However, the business magazine takes a close look at the stats for game (and tech and moves and 'babes', nowadays) site IGN, and doesn't like what it sees: "Murdoch paid $650 million, even more than MySpace, for ign, a collection of Web sites aimed at the electronic lad-mag set. It has underperformed; the number of unique visitors has grown a flaccid 21% over the last 14 months. In the race to exploit the Internet before it ravages his media empire, Murdoch and his lieutenant, Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin, have moved faster than their competitors--which also makes it easy to stumble."

A little further on, there's some attempted justification for the sluggishness: "Chernin says the company expected the site's numbers to dip as gamers stopped buying titles for their Xboxes and Sony PlayStation 2s, while saving up for the next generation of machines." I mapped IGN, major competitor GameSpot, and a few of Fox's other sites using Alexaholic, to give you a vague idea of what's going on.

Personally, I don't think the console transition is a major excuse for sluggish traffic - advertising, maybe, but not so much traffic. The problem may be that IGN's userbase is so relatively large already that it's difficult to jump up massively unless your users are, say, doing all your social networking through the site - which isn't the case for IGN, though both it and GameSpot are clearly trying to add more and more 'Web 2.0' features to increase stickiness.

As a comparison, major blogs like Joystiq and Kotaku are surging up despite the console transition, but are starting much lower. But then, MySpace is doing that surging on the high end. So, I'm not sure $650 million was really remotely a good deal for buying IGN, given that the company had lost money all the way through to its late 2005 purchase, which saw Fox pick it up with "...an accumulated deficit of $23.3 million."

It's going to be interesting to see GameSpot's financial results (or more accurately, parent company CNET's), which will be filed later today, as another comparison point - the most recently available results had the company overall making a loss, though it's possible that GameSpot itself turns a modest profit. Sometimes I think that one of the odd things about the high-end game sites is that big companies like Ziff Davis and Future are rushing from relatively profitable (but tanking!) consumer print and straight into the web, but to where? MTV's sites like GameTrailers have a similar issue from a web perspective. Their role models at IGN/CNet are hardly coining it in, bloated with staff and complex multimedia operations as they are - and they rarely stand out editorially (with some exceptions, particularly in GameSpot News).

It's all they can do, of course, with staff and shareholders to support. But the web - I just don't think - is a medium that supports you throwing resources at it like that from a stumbling start. The ridiculous efficiency of sites such as Joystiq (whose entire editorial staff of 10+ costs about as much as 2 employees from a major site), and the careful organic growth of sites like Eurogamer is a far smarter approach than people who are trying to wade in at the deep end.

All this scrabbling desperation to scale rapidly toward sites that, themselves, just don't stand out that much editorially or financially? There must be another way. It's just odd - but maybe someone can build a better model by throwing the right assets as the problem, and as the Net continues to scale... this post could look really dumb in 5 years, eh? Perhaps the Dirty Digger will be laughing at me by then.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Looks like it's Sunday night, and I have a whole bunch of completely random links to hand out, some of which you may even be interested in:

- Fun-Motion has been clever enough to point out Flash game Double Wires, and Matthew Wegner explains it's "...a small Flash game by d_of_i, a Japanese developer best known for his Falling Sands game (as well as Cat Sledding and some other physics games and experiments). Despite its small scope and limited production value, I think Double Wires does some things very well."

- Brandon has been doing some really fun updates at Insert Credit recently, and I had to motion at an edible retro treat: "Can't get enough NES chocolate? Didn't win the cart? That same fellow mailed me to say he has a new product up, though this one's a bit more mass-produced. This time it's a NES controller-shaped chocolate bar, of which he has 50 for $15 each." Only the auction already ended, and only 1 was bought? DOH!

- Posty at Shoot The Core has done a brief PC dojin shooter-related update to note that Freams / sectionS "have released the full version of Overray for download, again on Vector. It's nice to see doujin developers continue to support older games and share them when their time in the sun has passed." Oh wait, The2Bears has pictures, too, and it looks great in a side-scrolling Gradius/R-Type-y fashion.

- I already knew about the PSP version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, but the QT3 folks have been kind enough to notice that it's only $19.99 at EB Games - only one review so far, but the Xbox version was lots of fun, so it should be similar japes. Personally, I'm looking forward to Sid Meier's Penguins!

- A random and very justified complaint from a GSW confidant. Hey, Capcom, why didn't you proofread Phoenix Wright: Justice For All for DS properly? Our anonyfriend notes of the icky typos: "The worst one I remember was a dialogue window that said: "Hmm, where there any other clues you could gleam from this piece of evidence?" But also: "This is the only place that the snow has been trounced upon." And: "For someone who's father was just murdered, she seems awfully perky..." Uhm, YUCK.

- Over at Wired News' Game|Life blog, Chris Baker has mentioned the Mindcandy Amiga DVD, something which I have been remiss in doing (partly cos it's only a little bit game-related!) "I'm really happy that a collective of crackers and geeks have transferred some of the most amazing Amiga demos to DVD. The Mindcandy disc features 30 great examples of chiptune techno and lo-res 3D grafx that transport me back to the olden days... this disc also has a documentary about a demo festival in Germany from as recently as 2003, plus commentary tracks on each demo from geek luminaries like GameSetWatch guru and pal of the WiredGameblog Simon Carless." I really wish I'd done more commentaries (ran out of time!), but the disc is awesome, and game folks like Remedy (Max Payne) and Io Interactive (Hitman) cut their teeth on these kind of demos, so buy the disc and check them out if you have a chance.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is quite fortuitous timing, given that the new Ghost Rider movie and the 2K Games-published game based on it are just about to debut, but the PlayStation Museum site has unearthed an unreleased Neversoft beta of an earlier Ghost Rider game - as a 2D sidescroller! - from way back in 1995.

It's explained of the game, which was in development from the Tony Hawk/Gun creator early in its history, and to be published (oddly enough) by Crystal Dynamics: "Ghost Rider never reached alpha stage. A demo was created to showcase the 3D environment engine, lighting effects, algorithmically generated fire routine, algorithmically generated chain mechanic, and the developer's ability to capture the mood and feel of the licensed character. Ghost Rider was to use the Skeleton Warriors engine."

The results: "The PlayStation Museum was fortunate enough to play the exclusive demo of Ghost Rider [yes, there's a YouTube video]. We are very impressed to say the least. The chain mechanics are truly amazing. The chain swings and whips with fluid motion and with ease. Being able to swing to higher levels was easy. The Ghost Rider's flaming skull is amazing. It will increase in flame with more power and the fire effect is breath taking. The gameplay feels similar to Castlevania which is a plus. It is a travesty that Crystal Dynamics didn't pursue the game."

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

[Tom Kim heads up the Gamasutra podcast for our sister site, and every now and again sends out group emails such as this one, which we thought was worth reprinting here. Again, Tom and GSW aren't saying that all U.S. game retail employees suck. But it looks like these guys kinda, uh, did.]

This ever happen to you?

I mean, We've all seen gaming retail employees lampooned in Penny-Arcade. And every gamer seems to have heard a story about know-nothing store managers. But to date, my experience with most of them have been pretty good. Many of them seemed to know their product, and most have treated me with politeness and decency. In fact, the two store managers at this location, Mark and Monica treated me very well. Alas, they have since left for better paying jobs and have been replaced by these chuckleheads. I don't know... It's enough to make all of the apocryphal stories seem true.

-Tom

P.S. Some background: The following is very close to how things really went down. I haven't substantially changed anything. In hindsight, it is pretty funny. But when I walked out of the store, I was pretty upset. Enough to vent to my wife about it for 10 minutes. Gah! The only reason I was hanging around for that long was because my wife and I were going out to dinner, and she agreed to meet me at the EB beforehand. Otherwise, I would've been out of there pretty quickly... As you'll see, things were pretty uncomfortable.

---------- The Wisdom of EB Employees: A Play in One Act ----------

Players: Me, EB Manager, EB Lackey
Time: Around 6:30pm on a Tuesday evening
Place: A strip-mall Electronics Boutique somewhere north of Chicago

(SFX: Electronic *ding* as door opens)

EB Manager: Welcome to EB. I can help you with anything you want, except getting a Wii. We don't have any so don't even bother asking. (Note: I kid you not -- this was the greeting I got when walking in the door.)

Me: I'm good. I already got one.

EB Manager: You did? Where'd you get it?

Me: Here. I pre-ordered for launch. Actually, I was able to get four of them.

EB Manager: (Conspiratorially) eBay?

Me: No. I had my wife pre-order one at another store. And I got another couple from a friend.

EB Manager: Did you eBay those?

Me: No. I kept one for myself and a friend of mine got the other one. And I sold one at cost to the 1UP network for their holiday giveaway, and the other to the Evil Avatar online community for their holiday giveaway.

EB Manager: Where?

Me: Have you heard of 1UP.com? It's a big gaming news website... And Evil Avatar is a pretty established gaming community site.

EB Manger: Nope.

Me: (Walking up to the counter to look at their new inventory.) That's cool.

EB Lackey: Can I help you find anything?

Me: Yeah. I'm looking for Hotel Dusk. It's a DS title.

EB Lackey: (Blank stare -- doesn't even check the shelf.) What?

EB Manager: Never heard of it. What was it called, again?

Me: Hotel Dusk. It's a point-and-click adventure for the DS. It should have come out yesterday. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're sold out.

EB Manager: (Gives me a funny look.) Are you sure that's what it's called?

(I spot some empty display packages of Hotel Dusk sitting on a shelf right below the front counter)

Me: (Picking up a preview package and holding it up to the manager) Pretty sure.

EB Manager: (Now displeased with me -- doesn't even bother to turn around and check the shelves) No. We don't.

Me: Can you check your inventory?

EB Manager: (turns head to monitor without typing anything on the keyboard) No. We don't.

Me: Okayyy... Thanks. I'm gonna look around a little bit.

(EB employees ignore me. I wander over to the used games section. Meanwhile, another customer walks in.)

EB Manager: Welcome to EB. I can help you with anything you want, except getting a Wii. We don't have any so don't even bother asking.

Customer: Can you tell me when you're getting more?

EB Manager: I don't know. Can I help you find anything else?

Customer: When does Halo 3 come out?

EB Manager: This summer, I think. But if you pre-order Crackdown, you get a Halo 3 demo with it.

Me: (Turning to customer.) You don't actually get a demo. You can get a chance to enter the Halo 3 multi-player beta test. Still, there's no guarantee you'll get on the beta list. You just get an invitation to register.

EB Manager: You sure? The box says that it comes with a Halo 3 demo.

Me: I'm pretty sure.

EB Manager: (Checks the display box.) Yeah, you're right.

Customer: (Addressing the question to me.) Can you play that on Xbox?

Me: Halo 3 is only for the 360. Do you own a 360?

Customer: No. I got Xbox 1.

EB Manager: You should pick up a 360. Especially if you like Halo. It's backwards compatible, so you can play all of your Xbox games on it.

Me: Uh, not all of them. But it'll definitely play Halo and Halo 2.

Customer: You got any 360s?

EB Manager: Yes. We have the Core Version, which doesn't come with a hard drive and the deluxe version. I'd recommend you go with the deluxe one. You can download hi-def TV shows and movies on it.

Customer: Does it come with BluRay?

EB Manager: You can play HD-DVD on it.

Me: Um, to do that, you have to buy a separate player that plugs into the 360. The stock console will play standard def DVDs, but not HD. Though, like he said, you can download HD programming.

Customer: (Addressing me again.) How much is that?

Me: I think the HD-DVD add-on runs a couple hundred bucks.

Customer: What's the difference between the Core and the deluxe?

Me: Well, essentially he's right. The Core Version costs $299. It doesn't come with a hard drive. For another hundred bucks, you can get the Standard Edition which includes a wireless controller, an Xbox Live headset, an ethernet cable, and a component video cable. Along with the 20GB hard drive. You can buy all of the same stuff separately, but if you plan on eventually buying all of that anyway, you'll save some if you get the Standard Edition. If you're gonna buy a 360, I'd get the Standard Edition. The hard drive is important if you want to download content and some Xbox Live Arcade games. Do you have an HDTV?

Customer: No, but I'm gonna get one soon. You seem to know a lot about this stuff.

Me: I used to make games. I also do some work for a gaming news website. You ever heard of Gamasutra?

Customer: No.

Me: Gamasutra is more about the business of making games. If you're interested in the game industry, you should check it out.

Customer: Thanks, man. I'll check it out. (Leaves the store -- without a 360.)

EB Manager: What's that website again?

Me: Gamasutra.com. I also produce their podcast.

EB Manager: Never heard of it. No sir.

(Phone rings.)

EB Lackey: Thank you for calling EB Games where you can buy, sell and trade used games. This is Jeff. Can I help you?

(Listens for a while.)

EB Employee #2: (Looks puzzled.) What do you mean? (Listens some more. Covers phone receiver and turns to Manager.) This guy wants to know if there are any Wii games that don't require "line-of-sight."

EB Manager: (Gestures for employee to hand over the phone.) Hi. This is Mike. Can I help you?

(Listens for a while.) Well, there are some Wii games that don't require that you point at the screen. Some of the games just work by sensing the movement of the controller.

(Listens.) Uh, like some of the driving games, like Excite Truck. And some mini games on Super Monkey Ball and Rayman.

(Listens.) You want to have four Wiis in the same room?

EB Lackey: Why the heck would he need four Wiis? (Manager ignores him.)

EB Manager: I think you can do that. But you might want to pick up a PS3 instead. You can have up to seven wireless controllers all on the same console.

(Listens.) Yes, the PS3 has wireless controllers. And they're motion-sensitive, exactly like the Wii.

(Listens.) Yes sir. They work just like the Wii. And, you can download full games on the PS3 if you have Internet. They have, like 10 on there already. Plus old classic games like Crash Bandicoot. The PS3'll also play all of the Sony games going all the way back to original PlayStation one.

(Listens.) Yes. You can download them right now. You just need Internet.

(Listens.) Okay. Thanks. And I'll definitely be switching my dentist to you.

(Listens.) Yeah, I got a dentist, but I'm gonna be switching to sign up with you, man! (Gives "thumbs up" sign to me and Lackey.) Okay. Bye.

Me: A dentist's office? That's a cool idea.

EB Manager: Yeah. He wants to let his patients play Wii or PS3 in his waiting room or even during procedures.

Me: That's cool. But it probably wouldn't be possible for them to play the Wii while undergoing a procedure. Plus, you might want to tell him if he comes in that you'll still need line-of-site to operate the console's interface. Not to mention in-game menus. Also, for the cost of one PS3 and one game, he can pick up close to three Wiis, each with Wii Sports included. And the Wii games would probably suit a family-based practice better.

EB Manager: Uh, yeah.

EB Lackey: You used to program games?

Me: A little bit. But I worked as a producer and designer, so I didn't do a ton of programming. Mostly, I managed the artists and programmers making the game.

EB Manager: What games did you work on?

Me: Uh, some licensed-property tie-ins to some Disney movies, and a few other titles you probably haven't heard of...

EB Manager: (Chuckles and crosses arms.) Disney games? So you didn't work on PlayStation?

Me: Uh, no. But I used to help Bungie out with their marketing and advertising before they moved to Seattle.

EB Manager: Who?

Me: Bungie Software. They make Halo.

EB Manager: I thought Microsoft made Halo.

Me: Bungie's the developer. They're a first-party dev for Microsoft.

EB Manager: What?

Me: Never mind. You're right. Microsoft made Halo.

(EB Manager gives me the "stink eye." By now, I'm thinking, plans be damned. I don't want to wait in the store any longer.)

Me: (Dial my wife on my mobile phone.) Hey there. They don't have the game I'm looking for. Can you meet me at BestBuy? Yes? Great! See you there. Love you, too.

(As I'm leaving the store.) Okay. Thanks guys.

(The two employees completely ignore me.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (50)

We've previously posted about Jake 'Virt' Kaufman, a game soundtrack composer and longtime .MOD scene geek whose work "spans all kinds of randomness, from the excellent Shantae for GBC through Legend Of Kay for PS2 and The OC and Lumines for mobile."

Anyhow, a perusal of his blog reveals that he has released his 'FX3' album for free, and it's downloadable at 8BitPeoples.com, which explains: "A young boy trapped between warring nations stumbles through a time rift, and upon a terrible conspiracy spanning generations! He finds safety in the warm embrace of a tall, handsome vampire who helps him return home and shows him how to love again. But is there anything left of his world? virt answers this question, returning to his absurdly detailed progressive NES sound for a long-awaited 8bitpeoples debut."

Anyhow, if you like freewheeling, absurdly virtuoso NES-style rawk-outs - and who doesn't - then I would highly recommend grabbing FX3. (And - just so people don't accuse me of nepotism - yep, I released FX1 and FX2 on my own Monotonik net.label, also for free and Creative Commons-licensed. But fortunately, whichever way you slice it, Jake's output is just plain great, so I don't have to feel too bashful about the 8BitPeoples folks putting this one out (with my blessing) on 8BP. Yay.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may recall that we recently wrote about Dave 'The Shivah' Gilbert's new AGS game, The Blackwell Legacy, and now Gnome's Lair has pointed out that there's now a demo available for the game.

The title is also one of those featured prominently at Greg Costikyan's Manifesto Games indie game website, where it has its own page, and is referenced in a recent Manifesto blog post named 'Focus On: Adventure Games', which is a good overview of the genre as represented at the site.

Costikyan also has a good capsule review of The Blackwell Legacy: "It's got better graphics and takes a little longer to complete than The Shivah, but has the same excellent voice acting, and a stronger dollop of humor. We don't expect it to sell as well, since the subject--a medium with a ghost sidekick out of a Damon Runyon story who helps ghosts come to peace with their deaths and "move on" to the next world--doesn't have the same easy promotional hook. Which is too bad, as this is an excellent game, the kind of thing that any fan of the Monkey Island series or Grim Fandango will enjoy (though it's much shorter than those games)."

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Slightly bonkers Japanese-based blogger Marxy has just updated his Neomarxisme site with some additional explanation on the naming of Donkey Kong, based on Japanese cultural knowledge and all kinds of alternative thinking.

He starts by fixing the broken: "Before the internet could assume its fundamental duties of myth-busting and old-wives-tale-wrastlin', there was a rumor going around that Nintendo meant to call the gorilla from landmark game Donkey Kong "Monkey Kong," but the "M" got changed into a "D" along the way." Or that Miyamoto "found the word "donkey" in a (completely worthless) dictionary as a synonym for "dumb."" But no: "Snopes debunks the stuffing out of both theories and explains that Miyamoto picked "Kong" from "King Kong" (but not King Kong, legally speaking) and "Donkey" to "convey a sense of stubbornness.""

But Marxy goes further: " I also seem to remember quotes from Nintendo that they wanted to make the character a ridiculous and laughable version of King Kong. So, what word acts as an antonym to the grace and divine providence represented by a king? A donkey makes sense looking back onto the problem, but why pick a donkey out of all the second-class creatures that could possibly denote the opposite of a king?"

Apparently: "In Japan, almost everyone is familiar with the old story - "The King's Got Donkey Ears" (王様の耳はロバの耳）- which comes from an unnecessary add-on to the King Midas "everything I touch turns to gold" myth. A god gives King Midas donkey ears to visually mark the king's idiocy, only his hairdresser knows... The name of this myth perfectly sets up the "King - Donkey" binary. The King gets goofy looking donkey ears until he starts acting with a little more class. So if you are going to make an opposite of King Kong, what do you name the guy? Donkey Kong." I have no idea if this is on the money, but it's fun thinking.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['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.]

   

The first issue of Rocket is available on newsstands right now. There's barely any video-game coverage in it, but I thought I would give it a mention anyway because it's a product of Fusion Publishing, edited by Play boss Dave Halverson and featuring the usual gang of Play and GameFan standbys (Casey Loe, Nick Des Barres, Greg Orlando) on its masthead.

In terms of content, the bimonthly Rocket is an extension of the non-video-game stuff in the back of Play each month -- namely, in-depth coverage of hardcore fanbase-oriented movies, TV shows, anime, DVDs, and a little music. It's all done in the classic Play design, so it should be familiar to fans of Halverson's game mags. (As should the occasionally lazy copy editing -- at one point, "inaugural" gets misspelled "innagural.")

Rocket is interesting not just because it's an expansion to Halverson's publishing enterprise, which also includes the plainly successful Girls of Gaming/Girls of Anime one-shots. It's significant because it's the second time in recent years that a game-mag publisher has tried to branch out into the entertainment-publication business. Computer Games tried it first by introducing Now Playing, a "magazine within a magazine" that launched as a 16-page insert within CGM in 2004, much to the consternation of its readers (who were presumably too busy playing WoW 16 hours a day to watch movies). The title spun off into its own seasonal magazine in 2005, but Strategy Plus (publishers of CGM) decided to sell the title the following year, and two more issues were published independently by an outfit called Now Playing Entertainment LLC.

Despite covering largely the same turf as Rocket, Now Playing wasn't a great success, perhaps because of its traditional Computer Games-like text-heavy art design. It was nothing new in that field, in other words -- but Rocket, with its highly visual look 'n feel, might just be. (That, and it's already got a great deal more advertising support than Now Playing ever received.)

Getting back to games, click on for a look at all the US video-game mags of the past two weeks. We're getting close to February now, so it's back to the wafer-thin issues until next Thanksgiving...

Electronic Gaming Monthly February 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: 2007 previews

I'm beginning to see a pattern in the redesigned EGM's covers. As seen last month, EGM's going for a very sparse cover design, with some central piece of art smack-dab in the center of the page and small packs of coverlines on the top-right and bottom-left. It's a very unique look that seems to run afoul of many mag-design conventions. With game mags, the idea up to now has traditionally been that the more ostentatious the cover is, the better. Loud and flashy this obviously ain't, but I like the style regardless -- hopefully the people upstairs at Ziff don't see it as too demure to get noticed on newsstands.

Inside: The big-arse 2007 preview feature is about what you'd figure -- a whole bunch of mini-looks at all the hottest games of the next year, bla bla bla, you've seen this before. If anything, the main selling point for this ish is that it's got four "Afterthoughts" interviews -- Cliffy B for Gears of War, IGA for Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Hiromichi Tanaka for Final Fantasy III, and Bill "We couldn't get Miyamoto or Aonuma, but I'm more interesting to talk to anyway" Trinen for Zelda. Hell, EGM's giving Game Developer a run for its money at this rate.

Game Informer February 2007

Cover: Blue Dragon

I was kinda wondering what happened to this game -- it didn't seem Microsoft was pushing it much in the US up to now. This month, GI has 10 pages on it -- and what's more, the art designer went with a Cooper Black-heavy look for the feature that I can't decide whether it's the best thing I've ever seen or the most eye-stressing.

There's also a four-page feature on Command & Conquer 3, which you have to wonder if GI was angling for that cover until PC Gamer got an exclusive on it first.

As usual: The real highlight in GI is the "Connect" news section, which kicks off with an interview with new SCEA head Jack Tretton, who's a wonderfully frank and fun-to-read guy. It continues with a look at all three next-gen consoles' designs (as critiqued as the head of a large-scale design studio); a guide to making good licensed games by some dude from Vivendi Games (who should know a thing or two about them); a bunch of man-on-the-street interviews about the PS3/Wii launch; and (most memorable of all) a full-page photo of Gabe Newell holding a chaingun-like object in a setup that could be titled "Nerd's Revenge".

Also worth noting: This month's GI is 124 pages versus EGM's 114. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the first time GI's been bigger than EGM in a given month. Ooh, burrn.

Official Xbox Magazine February 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: Shivering Isles

In a move that reminds me of Super Play and other British console mags that reviewed mounds of grey-market imports each month, OXM has decided to one-up Game Informer's extensive Blue Dragon coverage by simply giving a full-on review to the Japanese retail version. It's the lead review, and at four pages it's quite an extensive one -- largely positive, too.

The review's a fair bit more interesting (IMO) than the coverage of the new 360 Oblivion expansion, which is mostly design sketches and posed screenshots. A better highlight is "How to Get Kicked Off Xbox Live," a hilarious look at Microsoft's anti-dumbass team that features Dan Amrich trying to be as much of a prick on Live as is possible to report in a family magazine. Remarkably, he fails to get banned after 11 days of crotch-grabbing and a 94% negative Rep, which leads Dan to wonder what the heck the "thousands of thousands" (to quote MS) of people banned from Live had to do to earn it.

Also worth looking at is OXM's Game of the Year awards, which features an enormous variety of silly categories from "Best Game You've Already Forgotten About" to "Best Graphics If They Were on a PlayStation 1". There's also a piece on game engines co-written by our very own Simon Carless that I'd be remiss not to mention.

The disc: Is probably the top attraction for gamers this month, however. It includes the Wizard's Tower and Thieves Den extensions to Oblivion -- both pay-to-play downloads over on Xbox Live and both, unlike the infamous Horse Armor, actually worth fooling around with.

Hardcore Gamer February 2007

Cover: Burgertime, Pac-Man, Bomberman, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter II, Kirby, Sonic, Yoshi, Kaboom!, Popful Mail, Bonk, Earthworm Jim, Dig Dug, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros., Bubsy, Blaster Master, ToeJam & Earl, the guy from Rocket Knight Adventures

I guess the HCG gang figured that obscure PSP action RPG Gurumin (despite being the lead preview) wasn't quite cover material, so instead we have a retro explosion the way only Terry Wolfinger can draw it -- and I do mean that literally. The feature inside is pretty loosely themed, including a hall of fame, a long feature on MAME sticks and cabinets, and 11 pages of retro-game recommendations from the entire staff. It's quite nice, if not exactly the the tightest of features.

By the way: Wolfinger has also drawn the box art for Agetec's Raw Danger, due out in February, and you can tell from a mile away. I bet Tom Cruise will be surprised to see an airbrushed likeness of himself on the cover next month!

Beckett Spotlight: Cheat Codes Issue #15

Cover: The next generation, I suppose

More of the usual from the Beckett folks, including some really old reviews (they just now get around to reviewing Guitar Hero 2 and Red Steel) and a big mess of codes. For mag-brats, the main draw might be their "exclusive" look at Pokemon Battle Revolution, a Wii import.

It would also seem that 3.6 out of 5 is about as low as BCC's rating system goes, since that's what Superman Returns gets despite some pretty harsh review text.

I know I'm down on Beckett a lot: But there's no external advertising from any company in this issue, so I guess I'm not the only one.

[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 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Just spotted that Jonathan Mak has updated the official Everyday Shooter website with a new trailer video for his multi-IGF-nominated abstract shooter.

I've been playing the IGF-entered version of the title (sorry, no public demo for now - here's the YouTube trailer link), and I think it's particularly striking because it feels like a 'whole piece of art' - sorry if that's vague, but here's Mak's description of the title:

"Everyday Shooter is a collection of shoot-em-up games with each motivated by a single inspiration that ranges from games like "Every Extend", to Hayao Miyazaki's film "Porco Rosso", to a moment of childhood wonderment when I first saw earthworms surfacing during rainfall."

The game, which has sequential 'themed' levels with very different gameplay, also has some notable synaesthesic music/art links - here's some info from Mak's IGF entry readme:

"All the sound effects in the game were made to be musical and harmonious with the background music. For example, in the first level, when you destroy the little red robots it plays a note from the song. And when you destroy the spinning yellow shooter it plays a riff. So as you play the game, you might sense that your bullets carry the power to make things sing!" So sure, this is still 'just' a shooter', but it's a particularly interesting one, by any yardstick.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, this is partly an observation, and partly a call for ideas and suggestions. I rented Touch Detective for the Nintendo DS the other day, which is a decent, but very very Japanese adventure game where you randomly run around solving crimes and trying to combine/use objects in an illogical fashion.

The game itself is, you know, OK - but what I was excited about was the fact that a picture of the main character (Mackenzie) fills the top screen, alongside location info, and her internal monologue is actually timed to what's going on in the game. For example, in this screenshot, you can see another character talking, but if you want to glance up to the top screen, you can see what Mackenzie is thinking at that exact time.

This mechanic (which, for this game, is just icing) wouldn't work so well without the dual screens. There are actually some great gameplay possibilities spinning off ideas like this. I could imagine it being integrated into a detective game where you could interrogate people, turn on your special mind-reading powers, and see their thoughts pop up at the top of the screen. You could then speak to them and try to divine their true motives. But you could only use mind-reading for particular periods of time so you'd have to pick when to turn it on, etc.

So my GameSetQ is - what has been the best use of the DS' non-interactive top screen you've seen in a game so far (here's a list of DS games to help you out.) Have you guys got an idea for using it in an even more clever way that hasn't been done yet? Don't worry about spilling the beans, no game developers read GSW or, uhh, anything.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Ditto with Japanmanship, who is on a roll with awesome Japanese game development-related posts, and this time looks at the issues with organization while working on game development teams in Japan - and comes to some fascinating conclusions.

He very interestingly explains the issues with both Western and Eastern game dev processes from personal experience, noting of Western processes: "The code base to build on isn’t quite as solid as it should have been because the previous project was rushed. But there is something there, at least. Design continues throughout and results in a feature creep, Content and code are constantly effected by design changes and require some overtime to get fixed. QA starts at some point and delivers stacks of bug sheets. The publisher eagerly waits until the game reaches “shippable” level and then immediately ships it."

However, in Japan: "Once the idea for the project is dreamt up everyone shoots off the starting line. Due to the hard-coded nature of most Japanese games there is little or no real reusable code-base so essentially a complete reset is required. Though design has hardly had a chance to get going, content needs to be created unless you are left with half a team bored out of their minds. So the art department shoots off and gets roped back down when the inevitable design changes occur. QA starts late and the bugs brought up by it cause further design changes and masses of overtime for all concerned. Once the game reaches “shippable” level people are too tired and don't care much about getting to “complete” and the game gets stuffed in a box and released." This is smart, and well-analyzed, and I like it a lot.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In our continuing quest to link everything The New Gamer posts, ever, we present their latest idea, 'The Wii Bowling Project', a definitely endearing concept which promises "to see how our Wii Sports bowling performance rated against our league bowling performance."

Blogger G.Turner, whose significant other unitdaisy also belongs to their 'Thar She Bowls!' Chicago-area bowling team, comments: "With the league on my mind all this month, I couldn't help but think of my real-life bowling average while playing Wii Sports. I was quite surprised to see just how closely my Wii Sports bowling stance, curve and scores mirror my actual lane action."

But how? "What unitdaisy and I decided to do was to bowl two sets of games a week: the two games our normal league bowls on Sunday, and on Wednesdays we'll bowl two Wii Sports bowling games... At the end of the league's season on April 15th (as league seasons go, it's rather short, running a brief 14 weeks) we'll pick apart the scores and see just how well our Wii bowling improved (or declined) compared to our league bowling. Who knows, maybe we'll see some other interesting results too!" GSW promises to update daily with the latest stats.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Stephen Totilo has once again written a story interesting enough to make me venture within MTV's Stygian halls of autoplay videos and interstitial gum ad hell, and this one talks about Windows Vista's (lack of?) chilling effect on indies, cuing off a Gamasutra opinion piece by WildTangent founder and CEO Alex St. John.

St. John had claimed: "We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming, especially for online distributed games", pinpointing specific issues with the cost of rating games with the ESRB and lockdown issues around parental controls. Totilo cornered Chris Donohue, the director of business development for Games for Windows, who downplayed St. John's concerns:

"I don't think we're artificially restricting anyone, he said. "But on the other side of it there's a yin and a yang to allowing anybody to publish anything on your platform. You're going to get a lot of good stuff and some not-so-good stuff." He also added on the cost of getting a game rated: "A couple of thousand bucks doesn't necessarily work for the casual guys." So what's the end result? Probably that Vista is more of a pain, but Microsoft claims it's a survivable and necessary pain in the interests of locking down PCs from evil content. We'll see, I guess.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Gamasutra news contributor Jason Dobson is still going with his Etoychest site, now switched around to have an Escapist-style weekly posting schedule, and I just spotted the last part of the excellently named 'The 30 Year Old (MMO) Virgin', written by Edward Pollard for the site.

Fortunately, there are links to the other parts, starting with the first, which grins of World Of Warcraft: "For the last 20 minutes I've been running the installer (Disc 3 of 5) and it crossed my mind that I was on the cusp of something. Jaded, cynical, and about to take the plunge into the MMO phenomenon that has dominated the industry for the past 2 years. Not only haven't I played it, I don't know a damn thing about it. I figure there has to be some other brave or stupid souls out there who have yet to answer the seductive siren call of the MMO but are like me tempted to do so."

So? "This one is for you. I don't know how long this can last, but I'm inviting you to come along and experience it with me. My name is Edward Pollard, I am a World of Warcraft virgin, and this is my story." And the conclusion to this fantastic voyage?

"Is World of Warcraft worth this price? The answer is an unqualified yes. While I can't compare it to other online games, World of Warcraft provides me with a totally unique game play experience that has nearly limitless game play. I can't even imagine how long it will take me at the current rate of progress to reach the level cap, but I do know I'll have a lot of fun doing it." Score 8 million and one for Blizzard!

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sorry, a little more Japanmanship linkage came a-calling, because it's in the form of a post on 'Forgotten gems' of Japanese gaming - specifically: "Some absolute classics that many people should play but that have never made it across the language barrier."

The obscurities include Guru Logic Champ for GBA ("This is, by far, the best puzzle game I have ever played. Created by the sadly deceased Compile this game never saw a western release"), and Kururin Squash for GameCube, which I did at least know about ("Kururin was a special little GBA game that not enough people played. Kururin Squash is the home console version and though not noticeably different in essence it’s still a worthy purchase, especially as it was released at the mid-price range in Japan.")

Also noted (and I've heard great things about this from someone - maybe Toasty?) is Mr. Driller version Drill Land for GameCube: "Though Mr. Driller isn’t unknown to western audiences this particular outing never made it to foreign shores. I once had a chat with a Namco localiser who told me he had begged his boss to let him translate this game; he would even do it in his spare time, such was his righteous love for the product. The boss, however, declined; as, with all things great and misunderstood, the game never sold well enough to even consider starting a localised version. This is too bad because this version is by far the very best Mr. Driller game of all."

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Those crafty types at 'all you can eat' subscription PC gaming site GameTap (or more particularly, XAmount, who co-runs unofficial in-house GameTap user design blog Angled Whiteboards), have revealed that there's a special Easter Egg in the latest GameTap update, if you look real hard.

It's explained: "You know how you guys have been all eagle-eyed with the email announcements and the Coming Soon ring? Not letting any game slip through the cracks? Well it’s certainly helped us step our game up. So this is pretty sweet: we’ve got an Angled Whiteboards EXCLUSIVE easter egg for you, our devoted readers (and your friends, and hopefully your friends’ friends…)."

How so? "Hidden in today’s new GameTap catalog is [awesome Activision '70s-set car combat game!] Interstate 76. Only you won’t find it in the New Games ring. In fact, you won’t find it anywhere under the name Interstate 76. Head to the search ring, search on “Groove Champion” (star of the game), and BOOM. There’s your game. That racing/hot-rod week is still on the books (now slated for late Feb.), and we’ll be officially releasing all the originally promised games then. But you can play Interstate 76 all you want in the meantime." This is a bit like Pimps At Sea, or something? Woo!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This one was a little hidden away on sister site Gamasutra, so I'm happy to point at it - Alistair Wallis' latest in his awesome-o 'Playing Catch-Up' column ends up talking to Castle of the Winds creator Rick Saada.

The thing I like about 'Playing Catch-Up' is that I enjoy reading the column even when I don't know much about the game in question (as occured this week!), and it turns out Saada's game was part of the shareware halcyon days: he "...had been planning to use the shareware model, he notes, though was inspired what he refers to as the “sequelware” model, where a shareware game would be quickly followed by a commercial sequel – used at the time by id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D. Saada briefly thought about releasing the game himself, but reconsidered when approached by Epic MegaGames founder Tim Sweeney."

Nowadays, he joined up with Flying Lab Software, working on a game concept that ""...would eventually develop into Pirates of the Burning Sea, an MMO set in the Caribbean in 1720 that combines ship combat with the ability for players to explore sea and land areas. “It's been several years of steady work and growth,” says Saada, “and at this point we've got over 50 people pushing towards a June release.”" Interesting!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You may recall that the IGF also has a game modding-specific competition, but the folks at ModDB, who helped us out a bit last year, have expanded their slightly more mainstream-styled competition significantly, and have just announced their 2006 Players Choice Awards.

As they bubble happily: "80,000 votes. 4,000 mods. Over the course of 2 months, gamers from across the globe came together to decide which mods rank as the epitome of what our hard working community can do. Now, gallons of blood and sweat later, we tell you what triumphed in 2006."

There are lots of very worthy mods in there, plenty of which don't get so much mainstream coverage, and I guess I'm giving it away a bit to reveal: "Point of Existence 2, for Battlefield 2, has won Mod of the Year for 2006. Point of Existence 2 manages to extend the gameplay of the original game into a new setting with a complex and believable storyline. It manages to have stylish art assets while remaining within the bounds of realism and enforces teamwork without feeling like a chore. It takes a popular formula to the next level of balance, flow and fun." Still, go check the whole thing for a great countdown.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matt Barton of the excellent Armchair Arcade has just completed the second in a series of 'History of CRPG' articles, this one to be published on Gamasutra in a couple of weeks, and has posted a really interesting companion piece discussing how Computer RPGs are archetypically defined.

This explains: "I just finished my "Golden Age" article that covers the years between 1985 and 1993, and I've been thinking more about what makes a "CRPG" a "CRPG," and how different developers have modified the concept over the years. What I've noticed is that a few perennial questions really dominate the discussion, and even if I'm not sure where I come down on all of them, I think it's worthwhile to put them on the table."

He then wanders through a bunch of the staples behind CRPGs, one of my favorites being 'The General Store': "There are few CRPGs indeed that don't have some type of blacksmith that sells arms, armor, and adventuring equipment. Often enough, these will be the only types of stores in the game, which makes one wonder how the various towns and villages of the world manage to get by!" I dunno, I'm sure you can buy donuts in at least a few RPGs!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at SiliconEra, they've got an interview about D3's localization and U.S. version of Earth Defense Force X for Xbox 360, now called Earth Defense Force 2017 - and yes, we're guessing the fanboy pressure to release this game did help!

Unfortunately, the producer doesn't really say anything that interesting, though the most interesting query is as follows: "Q: I heard that you're considering to keep the Japanese voice acting in Earth Defense Force 2017. Why?" And then: "A: We had considered it for a time. Since we know this game has a cult following here in the US, we wanted to keep that level of authenticity."

But, unfortunately: "However, after some discussions, we decided that the voice-over was too important to leave the player in the dark like that. Your squad members are constantly shouting out advice and pointing out incoming enemies. We felt that it might make the game too tough if you weren’t given those clues, so we’ve now reverted to recording all of the VO in English. It really adds a lot to the game." How about having both, guys? [Via Jiji.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we just realized - there are not one, but two classic arcade documentaries at Sundance and associated festivals! We already reported on Chasing Ghosts, but a Variety article reveals another documentary, 'The King Of Kong', has been picked up from Slamdance by top firms Picturehouse and New Line.

Apparently: "In a mid to high six-figure package deal, Picturehouse won rights to distribute the documentary in theaters this summer, while sister company New Line gets remake rights and control of docu distribution rights outside North America." Blimey - this should be a high profile deal for classic gaming fans, then.

It's explained: ""The King of Kong" chronicles a rivalry between two gamers, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, as they battle for the title of world champ of the arcade game... Picturehouse president Bob Berney, New Line Prods. prexy Toby Emmerich and chief operating officer Richard Brener found irresistible appeal in Wiebe's struggle to stop a personal losing streak, and the ruthless tactics of record holder Mitchell, who routinely compares himself to Helen of Troy and the Red Baron."

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tom Fronczak over at The Last Boss have been talking about a neat 'virtual reality' college project related to games, and which uses a wraparound screen and a shopping cart (!) to help out patients.

It's explained: "Last week my Virtual Reality college class headed out to a local hospital where an eye and ear virtual reality studio is set up for motion balance research to help patients that suffer from vertigo (constant dizzy attacks, just like in a bad RPG). The research they do extends to several other medical conditions, such as height phobias."

How did they do this? "Using their $5,000 medical grant they bought $3,000 Alienware dual processor PCs late last year and paid someone to use Unreal Tournament to make them a simple grocery store environment that patients could literally walk around in for therapy."

And what are they trying now? "Using the Unreal Engine we'll be making a level for their patients who have a height phobia - basically making a huge ass map that scares the crap out of them. Using the facility's habitual therapy sessions and facing their fears in a safer virtual environment several times a week, hopefully their brain can let them overcome their fear." This is... interesting!

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

Some of you may recall that, although I'm not involved in organizing the bulk of Game Developers Conference this year, I am programming the 2007 Independent Games Summit, a new indie-specific subconference taking place on the Monday and Tuesday of GDC week (March 5th and 6th), before the Independent Games Festival Pavilion opens from the 7th to the 9th.

Anyhow, just wanted to note that I was previously worried that the Indie Games Summit (here's a good GSW rundown of the speakers, headed by Jeff Minter) would sell out, and we would have to stop registrations. But we managed to switch it to a room that's double the size, which'll stop us having to turn away all-comers, unless you guys manage to flood the double-sized space too. (I'm not hyping 'WILL SELL OUT SOON' here, incidentally - this was genuinely an issue!)

There have been a couple more additions to the speaker list, too. We've added Sony's E-Distribution supremo John Hight to the 'Console/PC Distribution Gatekeepers' panel, alongside Ross Erickson, Microsoft; Jason Holtman, Valve; and Sandy Resnick, GameTap. We'll be chatting to these guys "...who evaluate submissions for some of the major indie game distribution channels on both console and PC, talking about how to pitch your game to get on these services, exactly what the gatekeepers are looking for, approaches to royalties, and much more." Should be a neat way to compare and contrast how indies are getting onto these bigger portals.

In addition, we've rounded out the final panel, 'Building The Future of Indie Games', with two new neat indie (or indie-influenced!) types. There would be Bit Blot's Derek Yu, co-creator of multi-nominated 2007 IGF title Aquaria (and TIGSource writer to boot!), as well as Sony's David Jaffe, best known for God Of War, but currently working on a small, 'indie-style' title Calling All Cars for PS3 E-Distribution. While he works at the resolutely non-indie Sony, it should be pretty interesting to hear his perspective on why small teams can make for focused, fun games. (Also on the panel: Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games and Mark Morris from Darwinia/Defcon creators Introversion!)

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

David Edery, nowadays one of the acquisitions guys for Xbox Live Arcade, but also a prolific blogger at Game Tycoon, pinged me with a neat piece from Obsidian's Chris Avellone guest-posted on his blog, and called 'Game Design Research, ala Avellone'.

There are multiple good threads in that (and some great sketches!), but here's one highlight from the designer: "Over the past ten years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with licenses like Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons (in multiple worlds), Star Trek, and now, Aliens. I think I know more about some of these settings and their inhabitants than I do about Earth culture. Which is pretty shameful, now that I think about it."

Avellone continues: "But for our industry, having that knowledge saves you a lot of time. Knowing all the sub-plots that took place in comics, novels, all the nuances of why Giger concepted the aliens the way he did, the history of the Weyland-Yutani corporation - this minutia of science fiction licenses is actually a valuable knowledge base. There’s a reason they have fact-checkers and historians at LucasArts and Blizzard and other franchise houses - knowing the setting in and out is a paying gig... So my advice for any aspiring members of game development is pretty simple. If you’re a nerd, keep being a nerd." Done!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Having stumbled upon this while checking out a webpage of a GSW commenter, I'm delighted to present Dave and Nihongonauts' '6 Annoying Trends in Games 2006' article, as petulantly readable a piece of writing as anyone could hope to expect, yay.

One of the highlights is 'Unwarranted Paranoia Over Microtransactions', for which it's noted: "The public has reacted with complete panic and paranoia, insisting that publishers will soon ship “incomplete” games that require additional purchases to fight the last boss, finish the race, or otherwise do what has heretofore been considered a part of a normal retail game. This is, needless to say, complete and total bullshit and a waste of time to even think about."

Also zinged, 'The Games As Art Debate': "Look up the f*cking word “art” in a dictionary! Any dictionary! See that part about the “conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements”? How about the “human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature”? This means that all games are art. Period. If my interpretation of the arrangement of a brick in an otherwise abandoned lot is aesthetically pleasing, then it fits the definition." Why do I get the feeling that this isn't the last word on that subject?

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Eek, this tangled miscellany of game links has been hanging around since last weekend, so it's time to unleash them on the slavering world. Apologies if a couple are approaching a ripe vintage:

- The New Gamer's journal has spotted something neat and game-tangential - "Seemingly in order to promote the recent Canadian paperback edition of Douglas Copeland's latest novel JPod, Showcase has made available a short, five minute, film adapted from the book." For those not aware, the book "...concerns a group of video game programmers whose last names all begin with "J". They live and work in a development "pod", which they refer to as the "jPod", within a company that Coupland has described as "resembles, but legally no way is Electronic Arts"".

- A little while back, 1UP posted an excellent article named 'Clash Of The Cultures', which explains: "New ideas are always being bounced around, warped, and remade, creating concepts that are both uniquely tailored to the local culture while still maintaining a feeling of familiarity. But why do gamers in each of these markets like the games that they do? Why are American sales charts dominated by the likes of big, burly men with guns while the Japanese flock towards fanciful RPGs?" This is a sophisticated, smart multi-interview feature, even chatting to Keiji Inafune about the concept, so... yay!

- RetroBlast! has spotted that Stern is building a Family Guy pinball machine, and what's more, the game is "...designed by Pat Lawlor, his team at Pat Lawlor Design, and the engineers at Stern Pinball." You may remember my Pinball Hall Of Fame feature lauding Lawlor, noting: "Why would you know Lawlor? Uh, try Whirlwind, Funhouse, The Addams Family, Twilight Zone, and many more - he was responsible for multiple games in most pinball fans' Top 10." So... at least the sole remaining pinball firm is doing it in style!

- In many cases, successful publisher-owned studios are kept at arm's length from their corporate overlords, and this seems to be a major theme behind Edge Online's article about life inside Bungie published last week Prime evidence: "Head of production Jonty Barnes, a slender Englishman very recently arrived from new stablemates Lionhead, was stunned. “Actually, it’s very much like a publisher-developer relationship. Lionhead and Bungie are equally intermixed with Microsoft, and that’s quite incredible considering the geographic locations.": Didn't know that Bullfrog/Lionhead super-veteran Barnes had jumped to Bungie, either.

- This is cute: LJ user 'Jokeyxero' has been listening to a recent GDC Radio podcast at GSW's sister site, explaining: "The follow quote has been transcribed from the GDC Radio podcast episode "How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days"... The speaker is Kyle Gabler from Carnegie Mellon University's Experimental Gameplay Project and now with EA." The punchline is: "I think the lesson we learned there is to stop hitting your head against the wall, just use the magic key", and I'll let you click through to read the preamble - but it's head-smackingly good advice.

- All this time, I was figuring that adventure game maker Vince Twelve was using a pseudonym. But an comment in a recent GSW piece about him reveals his similarly named, famous pater, since his dad, Otis Twelve, comments: "I must say, I am a bit miffed that no mention has been made of Vince’s roots. Do people think that such off-center innovation, staggeringly clever story telling and Dadist flair for the poetic title, spring spontaneously like flies from the cerebral dung of our intellectual byways?" There, Otis, we mentioned you now - you might know him as part of "the Omaha-based Ogden Edsl... who recorded deliciously tasteless novelty numbers like "Kinko the Clown" and "Dead Puppies" of Dr. Demento fame", and nowadays writes award-winning fiction. Blimey.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matthew Wegner at physics blog Fun-Motion has unleashed a handy review of another PC indie physics game gem, Pluto Strikes Back [.ZIP], "a great [freeware] solo project by Petri Purho, who has been rapidly prototyping games in the spirit of the Experimental Gameplay Project."

It's explained: "This title was created in seven days, and the concept is awesome: Pluto, angry at being reclassified as a “dwarf planet”, takes a bat to the rest of the Solar System to act out his jealous revenge." Hah, awesome concept. Matt adds: "I’m impressed with the elegant minimalism of Pluto Strikes Back’s design" - and creator Purho has an excellent blog discussing rapid prototyping, too.

Finally, Wegner elaborates: "Pluto Strikes Back utilizes a simple planetary gravity physics model. As the asteroids get closer to the planets, gravity’s influence exponentially increases... It may seem, at first glance, that designing a simple game would be easier than producing a feature-laden one. In my experience, though, the opposite is true: It’s really hard to create a tight, simple design." Indeed!

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since this is a CMP blog, and I'm allowed, I'll let you in on a bit of the inner workings of Game Developer magazine. Sometimes when we're making mock-ups of the cover for our next issue, we'll use the template from a former, just to see how everything fits. I thought this one was too good to let go, for obvious reasons.

The image is from Resistance: Fall of Man, which is our February postmortem, and the text is from the September issue, in which I got to interview Alexey Pajitnov, who created Tetris, and is Russian as all get-out. I also interviewed Suda51 in that issue! I must say, I was pretty pleased with it.

Anyway, what you see to the left is an odd amalgam. Certainly looks like a heated interview! The question remains though, who is who in this picture? Am I the alien creature, lifitng Pajitnov up in order to extract crucial block-related information? Perhaps I'm angry because that line never comes when I need it. Somewhat unlikely though, as he totally has a beard, which means he can survive in the cold, and probably spits vodka acid.

So I find it more likely that Pajitnov is the gun-toting aggressor, blind with Russian rage at my insolent questions. The more I look at it, the more I realize it also fits the middle and rightmost coverlines in cute ways. Hooray!

By the way, there's a very nice interview in the Feb issue too, but I can't say who it is. MYSTERY! We'll let you know when it's released though...it's pretty far up there in my personal list of 'interviews I've enjoyed doing.'

Posted by bsheffield at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a neat story from 2K Games: "Gaining inspiration from Sid Meier's Railroads!, Tom Symonds, an artist at Firaxis, and 4 friends created a train shaped "aircraft" and entered it in Red Bull's annual Flugtag Event which took place in Baltimore on October 21, 2006."

What's more, over at the Railroads! siste, there's a really neat 7-minute movie that "...shows you the story of how their train shaped "aircraft" was created and how they ultimately won the People's Choice award." Here's an explanation of Flugtag, for the confused.

In addition, there's a page on the Flugtag site explaining more of the 'ambience': "On the flight deck, the trio will be joined by pals Phil Sullivan and Sean Hart for some inspired dancing to a railroad-themed mix including “Night Train” and “Come on Ride a Train.” All will be dressed in “sexy overalls” (oxymoron?) and engineer hats." Choo choo?

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another Hardcore Gaming 101 feature of note, they've done a really fun rundown on The Goonies games, noting: "There were a handful video games made around the time of the movie in the mid 80s. Four different games, to be precise, which is rather astounding consider they're only based a single movie."

What's more: "Three of these versions were created by a fledgling Japanese company called Konami, who had yet to flesh out their soon-to-be-popular Castlevania and Contra franchises, but still possessed some pretty interesting game ideas. Nearly all of them featured some rendition of Cyndi Lauper "Goonies R Good Enough", which naturally is awesome to hear in old school PSG synth."

Wow, and there's some obscurity near the bottom: "Despite not technically being a Konami property, the Goonies make an appearance in Wai Wai World, a 1987 Famicom game featuring characters and levels based off various Konami titles. The Goonies stage starts off on a pirate ship and eventually weaves its way through an underground maze, filled with evil squids and what appear to be Metroids... Other games represented include Castlevania, Life Force, Twinbee, Getsufuu Maden, Goemon and King Kong."

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

["Beyond Tetris" is a column from Tony "Tablesaw" Delgado about puzzle games that transcend mere abstract action and instead plunge deep into the heart of problem-solving. Today is the conclusion of a two-part article on one of the most grueling puzzle marathons available, the MIT Mystery Hunt.]

(In Part I, I gave a brief overview of the MIT Mystery Hunt, written while I was still in the middle of helping to run it. Since then, Dr. Awkward won at 2:14 a.m. Sunday morning, and the puzzles were made available. And now, the rest of the article, about the 2007 Mystery Hunt itself.)

Welcome to Other-People.com

To open this year's Hunt, teams gathered in Lobby 7 to watch a badly planned introduction. But before teams could be roped into tedious groupwork, Michael Fauntleroy, a dashing man with infomercial panache, told them there was an easier way. By signing a simple contract, all teams would be able to find the location of the hidden coin after solving only five puzzles. And sure enough, the teams were given access to a set of five relatively easy puzzles that led to a location on campus.

But when they arrived, Fauntleroy was there to tell them the truth. The contract that they'd signed only told them to the location of the coin (safe inside his own pocket); it didn't give them the right to take it. And in return, each team had bargained its collective soul, which now belonged to Mr. Michael Fauntleroy (M.F.) Stopheles. They were working for Hell now, and so they had to complete M.F. Stopheles's infernal instructional videos to become "really, really evil," find their way into Hell proper, and maybe have a slight chance of becoming as evil as the Devil himself.

They were then given their first video course, and a link to the Hunt's real puzzles on the website of Hell: http://www.other-people.com.

By watching the instructional videos and solving the puzzles, teams would learn what really, really evil actions they would have to perform to prove their worthiness to the minions of Hell. For example, after the course that taught teams "How to Succeed at the Performing Arts by Being Really Really Evil," they were given the instruction to "Create a bad sequel to Wordplay." (Wordplay, of course, is last year's documentary about another yearly puzzle event, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Several of the major and minor characters in the film also attend the Mystery Hunt every year.) The "Writing" round told teams to "Almost plagiarize Dan Brown work," and the "Mass Manipulation" round asked teams to create an Illuminati card for the current president of MIT.

Adding to the theme was a schedule of special "sin events," each thematically tied to one of the seven deadly sins, where team members would take part in a real-time puzzle event. At Lust, "dominants" given cheesy pick-up lines had to find "submissives" who'd been given irreverent responses. ("Baby, you take my breath away." "Finally, somebody else into erotic asphyxiation!") At Sloth, solvers had to lie down in a dark room at 4 a.m. and listen to someone spell "somnambulist" very, very slowly in between a bad MIDI version of "Rock a Bye Baby."

Serves Us Right

As I mentioned in part one, although most of the puzzles in the Mystery Hunt are meant to be printed out and then solved, there is quite a lot of technology running behind the scenes making that happen. The process goes something like this: At the beginning of the Hunt, all teams get access to a certain amount of puzzles. When a team believes they have an answer, they click a button on the puzzle's webpage marked "Check Answer." The server then puts that team in a "call queue." In HQ, callers can see which teams are in the queue, for how long, and for which puzzles. From the call queue, the HQ minions pull up a page with the team's phone number and an entry field for the answer to a puzzle. The team is called, and the answer is taken. The server logs the guess and tells HQ whether the answer is correct or incorrect, and then the caller informs the team. If the answer was correct, the server then goes about seeing whether or not it needs to make more puzzles available to that team. And thus the spiral leads down into Hell.

When The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb at Midnight won the 2006 Hunt, one of our biggest concerns was how we were going to put together the complicated server technology to make this work. Our team's greatest strengths lie in the realms of trivia, wordplay, and logic, not in engineering or programming. Thankfully, the team that ran the Hunt in 2006 graciously lent us their Hunt-running software to use as a base for Hell. Then, the co-captains rounded up a web-savvy Hunt newbie to adapt it to our needs.

We had some minor problems. At the opening of the Hunt, although teams were able to see the puzzles easily enough, the "Check Answer" mechanism had collapsed under the weight of teams solving puzzles very quickly and at the same time. But once that was cleared up, everything moved smoothly. In fact, most of my time in headquarters was spent manning the call queue: pretending to be a demon and asking teams for their answers.

Breaking It Down

One of the things we tried to do this year was make the Hunt more accessible to more teams. In recent years, every Hunt has had some events packed in at the end of the Hunt: a campus runaround, an elaborate endgame, and the location of the coin. But because these things only happen at the end of the Hunt, and because Hunt HQ traditionally shuts down after the coin is found by the first team, only a few teams ever get close enough to see these things.

So we moved all of these events earlier in the timeline of the Hunt. Finding the coin happened first, and every team got to take part. (Small and first-time teams that were having difficulty were given hints or possibly even "put on the fast track of success" to ensure that everyone knew the true theme of the Hunt on Friday.) The runaround occured in the middle of the Hunt. As teams solved puzzles and attended sin events, they filled their "Evilometer"; and at a certain point, they were deemed evil enough to gain access to the directions to Hell.

The endgame was a massive puzzle that spanned the entire length of the Hunt. When they completed a course, each team received a finely crafted certificate recognizing their acheivement. They also got a certificate when they reached Hell, along with seven blatantly unsolvable puzzles (like a sudoku without enough given numbers). But by completing a sin event and then completing five of seven sin-themed puzzles, teams unlocked instructions that made one of the Hell puzzles solvable. The answers to these Hell puzzles combined to create a series of instructions regarding the twelve certificates. Without giving away the intricacies of this beautiful puzzle, the instructions guided teams to create a dodecahedron out of pentagrams found on the certificates and then to throw the "snowball in Hell" at the Devil for their souls back.

Finally, instead of closing HQ after Dr. Awkward found the coin, we continued running the Hunt until late Sunday afternoon. Our hope was that many "middle tier" teams would take advantage of this extra time to work their way to the end. Fewer took advantage of this then we'd hoped, but long after the top teams reclaimed their souls, an intrepid group of solvers calling themselves Team Lactose completed another eleven puzzles and two courses. They ultimately completeld the entire endgame at about 4:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Oh Yeah, There Were Some Puzzles Too

The majority of the 2007 Hunt is currently archived on the MIT website. There are still a few things missing, most notably the course materials which include videos and other information necessary to solve each round's metapuzzle. But there are about 100 individual puzzles available for solving. Clicking the "Check Answer" button will lead you to a page that tells you the answer and explains how the puzzle works.

There was only one playable applet this year, a golf game called Going Out Clubbing. But there were a few puzzles that required special videogame knowledge. The first was Unsound Effects, which reveals itself to be about a particular game after decoding the massive cryptogram. (I won't spoil it here, but you can check the answer to see which one. Incidentally, the creators of the game were also on a Hunt team, this year.) War Dances has one of our co-captains dancing in a manner that should be instantly recognizable to some readers. (If not, the Eastvale Logging Camp shirt is a good a tip-off.) And text adventures make another appearance in Embezzler's Quest. Finally, the Notpron style of website riddle makes its Mystery Hunt debut in The Domino Theory.

As for the others, there are a lot of good puzzles to work on. If you're new to Hunt solving, the first round of easy puzzles is a good place to start (though you'll need to know the MIT campus to understand how the answers fit together). Fans of cryptic or British-style crosswords will like solving Pyramid Scheme. Cinephiles shouldn't have much trouble with The Continental DiViDe, sports fans will appreciate Rewriting the Record Books, and music buffs will enjoy Got It Covered. I personally enjoyed (and recommend to you) Negative Ad Campaign; The Usual Suspects; and One, Two, Three, Shoot! And finally, there's the one puzzle that I worte single-handedly: You Don't Need No Stinkin' Cue Cards

Running the Hunt was both stressful and rewarding, but I'm glad to have my life back. Of course, shortly after the hunt was over, I agreed to help write a smaller online puzzle hunt with Greg Brume for the fall, so maybe I speak too soon. Regardless, I'm glad that it will be my friends at Dr. Awkward, and not me, in charge next year, so that I can just solve the puzzles.

[Tony Delgado is a member of the National Puzzlers' League, and a solver and creater of puzzles of all sorts. He also works as the copy chief of The Gamer's Quarter.]

Posted by tablesaw at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, when Jeremy 'Toastyfrog' Parish stops writing about pleasingly frivolous, often Servbot-related things, he can also turn a mean critical eye to today's games, and his recent Gamespite.net post about new movie Children Of Men is a wonderful example.

He notes of the stark, Clive Owen-starring film: "All throughout Children, I was dogged by a single nagging thought: I hope Valve is taking notes, because this movie is basically crib notes for Half-Life 3. Or HL4, if those Episodes are really supposed to be HL3. Whatever. The point here is that Alfonso Cuarón basically created a big-screen rendition of the world seen in Half-Life 2."

How so? Parish notes that it's "...a dystopic future in which humanity has succumbed to an outside force, venturing beyond the confines of a few fascist-run cities is deadly, an underground resistance with a meaningfully Greek symbol has arisen, and no one can have children -- but actually made it interesting. Convincing, even. Sure, the agent of humanity's downfall is different; it's aliens in one case, a flu pandemic in another. But the results are the same."

In some ways, his conclusion is a little depressing: "Games just don't feel dangerous. Even though you're actually more involved in the events of a game, Children was far more harrowing. The hero and his companions seemed vulnerable at every moment. You know how Gordon Freeman's supposed to be this everyman, a nerdy physicist who manages to battle his way through improbable odds through sheer adrenaline-fueled luck? Children's Theo actually is." And heck, HL2 is one of the _more_ nuanced games out there. But... things can only get better?

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thanks to a cavernously large Fort90 update at some point last week, we were alerted to the existence of Gadget Trial, a Japanese-created PC indie dojin-ish game "that apparently mixes Advance Wars with anime girls."

Originally discovered via SelectButton (which has been getting all kinds of hyper-intelligent whiny fanboy postmodern in a GOOD way of late with Barkley's Shut Up And Jam Gaiden RPG game and a The Wire vs. the game biz rant), Fort90 notes of this particular title: "I know… At least its a bit more original than all the idol simulators that are glutting the doujin market. Anyway, here’s the trailer, which has been described by one person over at Select Button as “surprisingly dark”, whatever that means."

He continues: "Anyway, for those that are interested by such a premise, an English patch was recently released." There's also a handy FAQ on that page which explains: "Gadget Trial is a turn-based military strategy game by Studio Kogado's Team Kumasan... Gadget Trial is suitable for all ages and contains nothing that couldn't be shown on saturday morning TV."

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

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

It is well known, among those who know of the genre at all (honestly if I see someone misidentify dungeon crawlers with roguelikes one more time I think I might break my tether and start trampling circus handlers*), that roguelike games have random dungeons, but it is not often that this is elaborated upon beyond just the statement. What does it mean to have a "random" dungeon? The meaning of this term is not as obvious as it first appears.

When people talk about a dungeon being "random," they rarely mean truly chaotic, but instead that the layout of rooms and passages, and their contents, are unpredictable enough between games that the player can be surprised to discover what lies in wait for him. This actually demands, not pure, nonsensical randomness, but a well-honed generation algorithm that can turn the output of the random number generator into something consistent and explorable.

If we just set each cell of that grid to an equal probability of being a floor or a wall, what we would end up with would not be playable; we would not be assured of being able to explore the whole thing, or find the stairs to the next level (if we even thought to throw that in there). Random dungeon generation schemes must interpose an algorithm between the generator and the map, and of course that means it is not, strictly speaking, completely random.

Typically, for a dungeon exploration game, it is enough for the game's purposes that the player not be able to deduce the layout of the unexplored portions of the dungeon, but this is itself interesting because Rogue, the first game of the type, did not actually have all that random a dungeon.

Rogue generated its levels according to a fairly simple scheme by which the map was divided into a grid of nine sections connected by corridors, each being either a room, a longer corridor piece, an intersection, a dead-end, or (rarely) a maze. See if you can pick them out from this screenshot. Almost every Rogue level follows this nine-sector pattern.

This is significant because, if the player was in a room that was in one corner of the screen, he could know for certain that there was no passage in the walls facing the screen edges. A major part of Rogue's strategy had to do with knowing when to search walls for secret doors and when to move on to check another room. If a room is near an edge of the screen, then that's one wall the player need not waste time checking. And if the player has found nine rooms or room-analogues on the level, he can be sure he's gotten all the treasure, and it's okay to head for the next level, and its nine fresh opportunities for more loot.

Oddly, this doesn't make the game any easier for the designers took its predictability in account when balancing th game's food supply. Learning how to game the level generator became an essential skill for success.

Some mazes, too, present tactical advantages, such as doors that can be closed, or even locked, to discourage pursuers, and loops that wounded characters can travel indefinitely, slowly healing until one has regained enough hit points to make a stand. These things are important to realize because all these games place a high emphasis on coming up with an efficient exploration plan. In roguelikes, time is the greatest enemy. Every move wasted is one second closer to starvation, and that Troll with your name on it could be halfway across the level or just about to walk through the door. The longer you live, here, the sooner you die; the only way to survive is to win.

More recent roguelikes may have more chaotic dungeon layouts than Rogue, but they, too, have design quirks and tendencies that can, indeed must, be exploited by a canny player. Sometimes the game chips in with hints to help the player decide whether to explore or not; Angband provides "level feelings" that can clue players into whether there is a good item on the level, and both Nethack and ADOM provide noises to alert the player when there are certain special rooms nearby. Canny use of knowledge of the game's dungeon generation algorithm, coupled with items like scrolls of magic mapping, often mean the difference between a dead adventurer and a live one.

Novice players think of the slaying of hundreds of monsters as being the primary element of roguelike play. Advanced players realize they should think beyond that, and learn to optimize their resources and figure out item identities. The first step towards mastery is to recognize the importance of this kind of exploration risk-management.

Here are screenshots of typical levels from some of the more prominent roguelikes, and what makes them unique:

ANGBAND
Size: Very large
Chaoticness: Low
Opportunity: Moderate

The image above is of the "compressed" map produced by the game's level overview command; each cell of the above represents several in the actual level, and it feels yet larger in play. On the other hand, while it has much bigger mazes, its level generator doesn't seem too much different from Rogues, just with more sectors and a greater reluctance to leave some empty. But those vast, scrolling levels make up for it, and the shape of its rooms are more varied than most other games as well, with a good number of variations upon the theme of rectangular box (one innovation Nethack has never adopted).

The most interesting thing about roguelike dungeons is the stuff contained within it, and Angband levels have lots of that. They also sometimes supply these incredibly horrible-wonderful things called vaults, which may well have the greatest challenge/reward ratio in the genre. Vaults are large rooms that contain many dozens of monsters, generated far out-of-depth (that is, much harder than the standard for that level), frequently with multiple uniques (think bosses) all in one room. But vaults are generated with treasure to match, frequently containing multiple artifacts. They are such over-the-top challenges that it is difficult to resist trying to clear them out as much for the fun of testing one's self as for the prime loot, but many games end in these places.

NETHACK
Size: One screen
Chaoticness: Moderate
Opportunity: High

Nethack levels are minuscule in comparison, but they have a much greater variety of special rooms that can be found. The most common of these are its famous shops, which have more logic powering them than many games have at all, but there can also be found temples, swamp, throne rooms, army barracks and beehives to pick some of the more interesting types. Also, unlike Angband and ADOM, Nethack does not bias item generation based on how far the player has gotten in the game. He is as likely to find Greyswandir on the first floor as the twentith, which in the end helps ensure that every room is worth exploring.

In addition to a large number of non-random, special levels, Nethack is also known for having three other types of random levels besides standard dungeons. Cavern levels, which are wide-open and irregular in shape, are found in the Gnomish Mines and are best known to beginning players. Some way down is the rogue level, a single area that is built like Rogue's distinctive floors. (It has some subtle rule similarities as well, and uses Rogue's ASCII graphic scheme, even in graphic versions of the game!) But most important, and most annoying, are the mazes, which make up the full second half of the main dungeon. Since they take forever to explore and contain few special rooms, they are widely considered one of the game's greatest weaknesses.

ADOM
Size: One screen
Chaoticness: High
Opportunity: Moderate

ADOM has multiple dungeons connected by an "overworld" area, but many of them look suspiciously similar to each other. Players looking beneath first appearances will find lots of variety however. One dungeon regenerates levels every time they are entered like Moria and Angband, and one level is unique in that the higher the player's level, the greater the danger he'll find, as it generates monsters of a level that is a multiple of the player's: if the player is very strong, then the monsters seen there will be very very strong! Add in room-shops and a good selection of special levels, including several towns, and you have a game that looks a lot like alternate-universe Nethack. Yet, its random level do not vary all that much, resulting in an impression of sameness at times.

MYSTERIOUS DUNGEON: SHIREN THE WANDERER
Size: Small (seems larger)
Chaoticness: Low
Opportunity: Moderate

Shiren's levels seems to be larger than they really are. Unlike the other games listed here, the size of one "space" is much larger than one character on a text screen, so less territory can be seen at once. Reduced in scale (as in the illustration, which is a copy of the game's translucent in-game map Photoshopped to remove the background), the map is about the same size as a Nethack level.

Shiren doesn't have many special level types, Monster Houses (similar to Rogue's Zoos, a room with a lot of both enemies and random objects) are just about it, but this is made up for with its many level generation types. Depending on the player's progress through the game, there can be anywhere from four level to fourteen scattered around the board. It isn't too hard to recognize the level types after a couple of exposures, and some (especially the 14-room one) are as simple to exploit as Rogue's.

*Finally, here is a word on the confusion, often seen of late, between dungeon crawlers and roguelikes:

Roguelikes are randomly-generated, overhead-view games about tactics and strategy, with a strong emphasis on gaining information and resource management, and usually featuring some form of "permadeath."

Dungeon crawlers are, technically speaking, a large class of RPG that includes any that involves exploring a dungeon, and thus could be honestly considered to include Rogue and its ilk, but most precisely refers to a type of game that has its ultimate source in the likes of Wizardry and Akalabeth. They tend to provide a first-person interface, although one that may switch to overhead when not actually in a dungeon. The dungeon itself is pre-made, not random at all, and the player controls an entire party of adventures, but if one dies he can typically be revived in town, although usually for a fee.

Both game types were inspired by old-school Dungeons & Dragons, but each focuses on different aspects of that seminal game. Roguelikes focus on the specifics much more, and the idea of surviving general types of situations, such as those provided by the random dungeon, monster and treasure generation tables in the back of the first-edition AD&D DM's Guide, while dungeon crawlers are more like the experience of playing through a specific adventure, with monsters and treasure carefully placed to produce a challenging, but fair, experience, and typically with much greater emphasis on following a story.

In other words, playing a roguelike is like playing an improvised game thrown together on the fly by an expert DM, while dungeon crawls have, as their hypothetical basis, the kind of world that a DM has spend days and weeks inventing, or got out of a guidebook. As far as play goes, crawls are about overcome specific encounters cooked up by the designers, and thus favor linear thought and puzzle solving, while roguelikes are about dealing with whatever comes up, which is more non-linear thinking and problem solving.

Now that that's over with, you guys have no excuse. The next time I see someone calling Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja a mere dungeon crawl gets trampled beneath my huge, circular feet.

Posted by John Harris at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

We're not vain enough to claim that GSW is the 'best' of game weblogs, but we do know we go off the beaten track, and cover a lot of alternative material that other game blogs don't touch. So, we got to thinking - what are the GSW equivalents in other media? Here are a couple we can suggest:

- In film, TwitchFilm is absolutely a favorite for offbeat, generally foreign (Japanese, Korean, Eastern European, Russian) film tips, though it also includes some of the U.S. indie flicks and even a good selection of UK-specific comedy news at times. If you want to know about major Malaysian film releases for 2007 (pictured!), for example, Twitch is your site. Most enjoyable.

- In comics, a site we're totally in lurve with is Dirk Deppey's Journalista, the official news weblog of The Comics Journal. Oddly, it just operates on one absolutely gigantic daily post, but it covers everything from the indies to the big guys, with plenty of detail for foreign comics scenes, manga, archival pieces, obscurity, and a lot more - plus some fun invective at times. Plenty of erudition here.

- In music - oddly enough, we don't really subscribe to the RSS feeds of many major music sites, but it sounds like Stereogum probably has the right blend of tastemaking and lack of excessive music snobbery to make it the kind of site that isn't afraid to wander out there, somewhere. Oo, they have info on the latest Chemical Bros experimental track, for starters. Must... set up... feed.

Anyhow, you may disagree with these picks! You may also know other genres of creative endeavor (for example - books, television, theater, music video, spoon playing) which also have blogs covering them in slightly alternative ways! If you do either of the above, please post in the comments, and if we get enough good suggestions, we'll do another post with a 'recommended' list. It's like having a twin town in another country, sorta?

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This one's a little wacky, and I can't quite recall how I found it, but I'm going to run with it - the very very odd Ulillillia.us has a page devoted to the multiple games the author is working on, including "my 2D high-speed action game, The Supernatural Olympics, and my 3D high-speed platform game, George Game 13."

As for 'The Supernatural Olympics', it's explained of the 2D construction-kit made game: "Ever wonder what it's like to go the speed of sound or cruise the stratosphere? The Supernatural Olympics is a high-speed action game that allows you to do both!" And there's probably almost 10,000 words just in _this_ part of the extremely 'focused' site, such as the super-detailed FAQ, which even discusses ESRB rating. (Try the 'About Me' page to get a further idea of the author's detail-oriented attitude. It's fascinating.)

Regarding future concepts, well, let's just say he has plenty of ideas: "I have three additional worlds thought of at the moment. Adding new worlds allows for more challenges. Worlds, however, take an extremely long time to make, close to even two whole months, likely more from having to redo things due to improved techniques. The first world I plan on implementing next is one with water. Thing is, when using the flash attack in water, the effect is seriously amplified. Rather than 100 mph in a given direction, it's the 4th root of the density difference compared to air (thus around 550 mph in any direction). I have such a world planned and well-envisioned. Another world is the endless mudlake dream, one that would take just a two to three weeks to do due to its simplicity. A third world is one of the arctic with snow and ice, even ice water. With 100 times the motive than neutral, there's a very high certainty I'll implement such a feature."

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to James for passing on the following handy tip: "I just stumbled across something neat that seems to have flown under quite a few radars in October - Arcadeflyers.com has scanned a bunch of really interesting Capcom design booklets, the "Secret Files" series."

He continues: "The covers are all neat pastiches of other kinds of products - Power Stone chocolate, a Skullomania action figure and a Lego Strider II playset! The X-Men Vs Streetfighter one even mentions the Archie vs The Punisher crossover on one of its text pages."

Looks like the first set of Secret Files brochures (which are really mini-promotional magazines for each arcade game - were they given away in Japanese arcades or with Arcadia or similar?) were put up on Arcadeflyers back in 2003 or so, but the new ones only just arrived a couple of months back. Wonder if there are any newer unscanned ones since Strider II, which was back in 1999?

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[“Might Have Been” is a bi-weekly column by Todd Ciolek that explores the ways in which promising games, characters, and concepts failed. This week’s edition looks at Konami's Bucky O'Hare, released for the NES and arcade in 1992.]

For the discerning, irony-fed geeks of today, it might be hard to understand what Konami ever saw in Bucky O’Hare. A line of early-'90s cartoons and action figures, it revolved around a garish vision of intergalactic wars between huge-eyed animal people in an alternate dimension, and it barely lasted a year on the market. Why would a major game developer even bother?

But while it’s now a blip on whatever radar tracks old toy-commercial franchises, the Bucky O’Hare of 1991 had a lot going for it: a line of crude plastic figures, a comic book, plenty of merchandise, and a syndicated TV show. That was reason enough for Konami to turn it into not just one game, but two: an arcade side-scroller and an NES action game. Both faded quickly, yet they were hardly throwaway efforts on Konami's part.

Where no ordinary rabbit would dare

Though the arcade game deserves some examination of its own, the NES game proves the more intriguing study. A rebel space captain and bile-green rabbit fighting the surprisingly goofy Toad Empire, Bucky’s tasked with visiting four different planets to rescue four members of his crew: cyclopean robot Blinky, psychic catgirl Jenny, the four-armed gunner Deadeye Duck, and the annoying, dimension-hopping, shoehorned-in human kid: a laser-toting nerd named Willy DuWitt.

Once rescued, the other four characters are all playable at any time, and each gets a unique ability, from psychic homing shots to ice-melting gunfire. Bucky fans might’ve noticed the absence of the hulking Bruiser Baboon, who was in the cartoon but not the original comic book. Perhaps his sprite would've been too large.

Surprisingly, the game doesn’t really pursue the atmosphere of Bucky O’Hare, with not even a synthesized 8-bit title arrangement of the cartoon’s obnoxious, catchy theme song. The game is perhaps all the better for that. If the four worlds and the later stages reveal the typical action-platform standards of fire, ice, forest, desert, and mechanized enemy fortress, players will find that each sub-stage has its own unique conceit, including mine-cart rides, ice-block puzzles, and a chase through a fleet of frog-faced imperial bombers. Not all the ideas are its own, but Bucky steals from good sources: the Red Planet has the heroes outrunning quick-flowing lava much like the lasers from Mega Man 2’s Quick Man level, while the Blue Planet includes a snake-riding sequence straight out of Battletoads.

Bucky's TreasureLand

It’s not surprising that Bucky was created by some of the soon-to-be Konami expatriates who’d go on to form the cult-favorite developer called Treasure; the offshoot studio’s future President Masato Maegawa was the game’s director and lead programmer, and artist Kaname Shindoh served as a graphic designer, with two other Treasure names, programmer Hideyuki Suganami and designer Kouchi Kimura getting “special thanks.” As one of the last Konami projects undertaken by future Treasure staffers, Bucky O’Hare shows off a few clever advancements of the basic 8-bit action-shooter ideal, even if it’s closer to one of Treasure’s unremarkably decent platform games (Silhouette Mirage, Dynamite Headdy) than a revered classic like Gunstar Heroes.

The game runs contrary to Treasure’s usual design, however, by being a little too hard. The levels are filled with instant-death hazards, and some boss attacks can kill Bucky and his crew in a single hit. The game spares players too much repetition by giving each level half a dozen checkpoints, but when some sections of the planets require countless attempts and strict pattern memorization, the creative layouts lose their charm.

It’s the opposite of the looser approach to game difficulty that Treasure would later take (Buster's Scary Dream excepted), and, more importantly, it wasn’t well suited to the 10-year-olds who’d fire up Bucky O’Hare carts after long Saturday mornings of Bucky cartoons and Cap’n Crunch. Then again, few such children actually existed.

Like X-Men, but with only four players

Just as the Bucky O’Hare hit the NES, Konami also shipped an arcade game (right). Though it’s largely a beat-‘em-up in the vein of Final Fight and Double Dragon, Bucky and the three other playable cast members (Willy DuWitt is mercifully sidelined) emphasize shooting over hand-to-hand attacks, which are triggered only when players are close to enemies. Though it doesn't advance the limits of the genre too much, Bucky's a solid enough example of it: the characters control well, the enemies are diverse but never too smart for the game's own good, and there are even a few flying-level breaks from the usual grounded processions of enemies.

Like Konami’s arcade treatments of The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and, uh, C.O.W.boys of Moo Mesa), the arcade Bucky O’ Hare does an amazing job of capturing its cartoon source, with animated cutscene, bright graphics, and dialogue from the show’s voice actors. It’s also another showcase for some Treasure staffers-to-be, and anyone who’s spent long hours on Gunstar Heroes, Alien Soldier, or Bangai-O will find Norio Hanazawa’s Bucky soundtrack familiar.

At least it outlasted Camp Candy

Promising as they were, both the arcade game and its NES cousin were doomed by the license itself. Bucky O’Hare was a failure across the board for fairly simple reasons. Although the TV series and toys premiered in 1991, writer Larry Hama’s original Bucky O’Hare comic dated back to the ‘80s, and the entire franchise was very much a creation of that decade’s toy-promoting cartoons, complete with a straight-faced hero, corny attempts at humor, an awkwardly introduced human kid, and catchphrases like “Let’s croak us some toads!”

The children of 1991 already had the friendlier and amusingly self-aware Ninja Turtles, and didn’t take to a bile-green space bunny billed in his theme song as “the funky fresh rabbit who can take care of it.” It was too much, too late.

Bucky O’Hare’s name was already fading when Konami’s games hit, making them fairly obscure even in their own time (Nintendo Power didn’t even cover the NES game). However, they’re surprisingly enjoyable titles that could’ve done well, if only they’ve been stuck with a license that was, in the end, only slightly more marketable than, say, Denver the Last Dinosaur. Hints of a cartoon remake have been dropped by comic artist Neal Adams, but for now, Konami’s lesser-known games stand among the best things that ever came Bucky O’Hare’s way.

[Todd Ciolek is a magazine editor in New York City. He'd also like to thank the SF Kosmo website for pointing out the Treasure connection to Bucky O'Hare.]

Posted by Todd Ciolek at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Having finally got round to doing the first half of a massive Bloglines crawl, here are some of the most interesting random gaming links I ran into, as pasted all over the blogosphere over the past few days:

- Posty at Shoot The Core has spotted a new PlayStation 2 shooter - "Ocean Commander from BigFishGames will be reaching a whole new audience of shmuppers this May thanks to Phoenix Games. Phoenix is a European Budget game publisher, which means this game probably won't be ported to the US, and will also be dirt cheap." Interesting! Phoenix also do the recently NeoGAF obsessed-over White Van Racer, among other ultra-budget oddities, of course.

- Treyarch exec. producer Stuart Roch (who is currently working on the Activision Bond game, his LinkedIn profile says!) has posted his favorite games of 2006 on his blog, and they're perky and interestingly categorized, so I pass them out. For one, 'Best Game Nobody Played' was Condemned ("OK, of course I am inferring here that Condemned was “sell-through challenged,” but I think through my straw poll of speaking to one person or another that not many people played Condemned. Like many Monolith titles over recent years, I think you have a case of a great game here that just didn’t generate buzz for one reason or another.") And he liked Saints Row, too.

- An extremely miscellaneous post at the Dreamcast Junkyward is interesting to me because of his pic of a third-party 'Uno' joypad for the DC that I'd never seen before - "One last Dreamcast thing I did actually pick up was a fighting controller for $15. It's third party, but the only time I had seen a controller like this for the DC was one released in Japan by ASCII, which sells for a lotta money. This one is pretty much the same thing, but a lot cheaper. Score!" I own the ASCII Dreamcast pad, and it's _excellent_ for fighters.

- Finally, there's a preview of Pocketwatch Games' PC indie title Venture Arctic over at GameTunnel, and the ecosystem simulator sequel to 2006 IGF finalist Venture Africa is looking agreeably sharp, also sporting some really _alternative_ gameplay mechanisms: "In Venture Arctic, inhabitants pass on after their material form has ceased functioning, one way or another. Each inhabitant comes back in a spirit form that players can capture and re-use to further change or alter the ecosystem." Sorta Sim Safari meets Ghostbusters, then!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at the stately Edge Online, they've reprinted a magazine article on the making of Dropzone, the Archer Maclean-created '80s shooter that's inspired by Defender and blasts things even crazier.

He reveals how the early hype for the title started: "In an inspired piece of guerrilla marketing, he attended a PCW show at Earls Court and surreptitiously slipped his work into a conveniently-placed drive on the Atari stand. "People started picking up the joystick and soon hundreds were crowding round. The aisles were packed. It was an incredible buzz.""

Also, a neat anecdote at the end: "I was at the California Extreme show this summer and Eugene Jarvis was there on a Q&A panel. He was describing what he had to do with the code back in the late '70s to make Defender work. He was explaining how he had to invent solutions to link his four code file blocks without a linker/compiler/Macro assembler, and devised self-loading jump vector tables to make files talk to each other. I sat bolt upright. That was precisely what I had to do. As I listened, I realised he'd come to the same solution as I had for so many things. I got talking to him afterwards and he'd played Dropzone on a MAME cab. He thought it was pretty 'neat'."

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just realized that I have an entire bookshelf in my magazine/ferret room (plus part of another) devoted to nothing but Japanese-language magazines, but I have yet to write about any of them. I figured I'd put a stop to that this week and write up the history of Famitsu, Japan's most prestigious console-game rag, as well as give you a quick look of its very first issue back in 1986.

Famitsu is a shortening of "Famicom Tsushin", or (as it called itself in English) "Famicom Journal". It actually began in March 1985 not as a magazine, but a column within LOGiN, a title published by ASCII that specialized in computer-games coverage. (LOGiN is still published monthly in Japan by current Famitsu owner Enterbrain, making it the oldest Japanese-language game mag still in existence.)

The first issue of Famicom Tsushin (dated June 20) hit Japanese newsstands on June 6, 1986, arriving smack-dab in the middle of the country's massive obsession with Nintendo's Family Computer, Japan's NES. It started as a biweekly publication, switching to weekly in 1991 and officially shortening its name to "Famitsu" in 1995, long after the Famicom passed out of the marketplace. (The mag called itself Famitsu for most of its existence, but the new name didn't become official until this point.)

Famitsu is still the largest game mag in Japan, although its claimed circulation has dropped mightily -- from 800,000 in 2000 to 500,000 today, although in a marketplace dominated by newsstand sales, the number of copies actually sold is undoubtedly much lower. It's the only game mag routinely on sale in newsstands and train-station kiosks in Japan, and its name is so trusted that Famitsu's editors have written game-industry articles in the past for national newspapers in Japan. This prestige is mainly thanks to a revolutionary (for its time) page structure and its weekly sales rankings -- Famitsu was the first mag in Japan to attempt to estimate actual product sales instead of simply giving a general game ranking. (Just like with NPD sales figures, there is some controversy that Famitsu's figures underreport Nintendo game sales, since important Nintendo outlets like Amazon and Toys R Us aren't inculded in their tabulation.)

Being the number-one mag in Japan has naturally made Famitsu an enormous influence on magazines elsewhere in the world -- most famously in its multi-writer "cross review" system, which was borrowed wholescale by EGM starting with issue 2 and remains that mag's trademark. Like with EGM, Famitsu's reviews generate all manner of controversy on an almost weekly basis, but the stakes are even greater with Famitsu, because its reviews are said to have a major impact on game sales -- much more than any US mag could hope for. Here are a couple of game-review incidents from 2006 alone:

- Famitsu's reviewers gave a straight 40 score (10-10-10-10) to Final Fantasy XII, only the sixth perfect score in the mag's history and something that many Japanese forum nerds cried foul against. They weren't the only one, either. Hikaru Ijuin, a Japanese radio broadcaster who writes a column for Famitsu and used to host their TV show, even commented about it publicly on his radio show: "No matter how generous you want to be, this can't possibly be a perfect-score game. All I can think is that something's screwed up with the Cross Review system. Me, I could be as nice as I possibly can and maybe I can give it an 8." Ijuin later tempered his statement by reminding himself that he's a game dork and probably not FF12's target audience, but

- In the September 1, 2006 issue, one of the reviewers for horror/adventure game Ayakashibito criticized a section of the game's play system that didn't actually exist. In response to this, developer Propellor wrote on its staff weblog that "we don't mind being told straight up that the game's not fun -- just don't try to back up that logic with points that don't exist in realisty."

Still, the review system has helped relatively no-name games become massive hits, so it's not all that bad. (Example: Capcom's Resident Evil had almost zero ad push in Japan before Famitsu gave it a total score of 38.)

Anyway, the cover of the first issue of Famicom Tsushin features a guy named BASIC-kun (who had a four-panel comic inside) going "Whoooa! This is exciting!" There's also a special number printed on the bottom right corner; if my number matches the set they printed in issue 2, then I could one of 10,000 prizes -- 2000 game carts and 8000 bits of Famitsu-themed merchandise. That must've been a fun contest to organize.

   

Here we have the first Top 30, with numerical figures based on numbers provided by only five stores (three in Tokyo, two in Osaka). Top this time around is Gegege no Kitaro: Yokai Daimakyo, which got rebranded to Ninja Kid in the US. Super Mario Bros. is number two even though it's been eight months since its Japanese release.

On the right is the USA news page. Famitsu actually had a US correspondent (a guy named Tom Randolph who also contributed to LOGiN) way back in 1986, putting it way ahead of rags like EGM and GameFan who did the same thing the other way around. The textbox on the bottom actually covers the test-marketing Nintendo did for the NES in New York late 1985, which is more than any English-language publication did as far as I can tell.

   

And wahey, it's the magazine's first review, this one for The Legend of Zelda. The Cross Review didn't debut for another dozen or so issues, so instead we have these long-form reviews combined with a smattering of ratings (based off some kind of crazy weather-themed system) from four writers. As you can see from the pix, the Famitsu of the time was completely unafraid to spoil endings -- something that got it in hot water with Enix one issue later when it published a strategy guide to Dragon Quest that took the player all the way to the end.

   

Most of this issue, however, is much more boring -- filled with combination intro feature/strategy guides for the games of the day. Here's one for Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese one, that is). On the right is an arcade-game strategy Q&A column co-written by Satoshi Tajiri (that's his portrait on the upper-left of the page), who later became much more famous creating games like Pokemon and now doesn't have to write copy for a living the way schlubs like me do. Sniff.

[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 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Every now and again, there are some GSW-relevant articles on our big sister B2B site Gamasutra - and _its_ sister sites (we have Serious Games Source for 'serious games' and Game Career Guide for students/education, lest we forget!) Thus, I will pass them on to you:

- In particular, Alistair Wallis popped up over at Game Career Guide and put together "a comprehensive overview of Microsoft's XNA for PC and Xbox 360, including a summary of the best XNA resources online and multiple interviews with Microsoft staffers and XNA creators." Interesting to see what people are actually making for XNA - Rocket Commander is great-looking.

- Over at Gamasutra, we posted two lawyers' looks at 'The Ten Most Important Game Patents' yesterday - which lists a number of hardware and software patents related to the game space, from the original Pong patent through slightly more 'suspect' stuff such as the Crazy Taxi or Dynasty Warriors patents (and yes, there are some!) As we comment: "While patents are still a controversial subject in the game industry, we still think it's important that Gamasutra covers them. "

- At Serious Games Source, we have a new Gonzalo Frasca column, 'Playing with Fire: When Advergaming Backfires' - discussing an Intel advergame from 2004 that "...was infected by a far more interesting form of glitch -a cultural bug- one that only affects serious games. The actual problem was that the IT Game was not compatible with 50 percent of the player population. Believe it or not, this work environment simulator would not allow players to hire any female employees." Oops.

- Finally, this week's 'Playing Catch-Up' column at Gamasutra talks to Gex creator Lyle Hall about his history in the game biz, and he reveals: "The game was designed by Hall to “to take advantage of both the graphics prowess and the CD audio capabilities” of the 3DO, and was, at first, packed-in with the console. “The bar was set to make the best platform game ever and put the coolest character I could come up with in it,” he explains. “I wanted the character to be able to break the 2D plane, literally jump onto the background and play in a different dimension so to speak. And he had to talk, like he knew he was inside the game and could entertain you with commentary along the way.”"

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If in doubt - we run a random story that cartoonist, musician, game weirdo James Kochalka mails us - only this one doesn't have an accompanying illustration of Zelda with some Cool Ranch Doritos, which is most disappointing. But it does have something PS3 related, so we forgive him! Here goes:

"Here's a link to the official theme song [.MP3 link] to the SuperF*ckers comic book by James Kochalka. It's got one awesome gaming-related line, "Our dicks are stuck in the Playstation 3"." Uhh... right! Here's the lyrics:

"SuperF*ckers (Theme Song)
© 2005 James Kochalka

We're always in our clubhouse getting high
SuperF*ckers!
Everybody wishes we would die
SuperF*ckers!

Here we come, like a bomb,
everybody run and hide.

Our dicks are stuck in the Playstation 3
SuperF*ckers!
Everybody wishes they could be
SuperF*ckers!

Here we come, like a bomb,
Everybody f*ckin' run and hide."

Kochalka ends by explaining, handily: "Of course I wrote it about a year before the Playstation 3 actually came out, so there was no way to predict the lackluster response that the Playstation 3 has actually received. I think that just makes the song funnier now, though." I don't know, I'm not really sure Phil Harrison is laughing?

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['MMOG Nation' is a weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week's column looks back and forward via the lens of World of Warcraft's new Burning Crusade expansion. Why aren't you playing right now?]

Since its 2004 release, World of Warcraft (WoW) has been the MMOG. Everyone either wants to play it, is playing it, or has played it. At this point, for good or for ill, WoW is the Massive gaming standard against which all other titles are measured. Last year marked the game's second anniversary, and Blizzard has marked the occasion by finally releasing the much-anticipated Burning Crusade (BC) expansion.

It raises the level cap from 60 to 70, and introduces an entire new extra-Azerothian realm which players can now sink their content-starved teeth into. 'The Outlands' not only expands the surface area of the game (by some 15-20 percent), it introduces hundreds upon hundreds of new quests, monsters, dungeons ... and all of it was unleashed on the world this past Tuesday.

Today I'm going to take a brief look at what this launch means for the game, and for Blizzard. I'm going to look at some reactions to the launch, and I'm going to look ahead a bit to theorize on what the future might hold for the 8 Million strong Massively Multiplayer Monster. I know this is kind of light material, but hey ... I've got to ding 62.

It Took You Two Years To Set This Thing on Fire?

Even if the expansion wasn't any good, Burning Crusade would be an important moment for WoW and its players simply because it took so darn long to be released. Blizzard's incredibly high standards for quality have ensured that the road to expansion was a long one, but not a barren one. Despite not putting out an expansion proper, the game has been anything but a closed system since launch.

Refining classes, releasing content on an almost monthly basis, world events, PvP contests ... World of Warcraft has been in motion since the first week of retail. In comparison, Everquest had two expansions the year after it was released, with an average of one expansion every six months every year thereafter. In that game content is mostly released in those large dollops, making expansions almost a requirement. By providing more frequent content updates, Blizzard has eased the wait for high-end gamers wanting the next big thing.

Thankfully, for both Blizzard and WoW gamers, Burning Crusade appears to be good. Very good. Not only does the obvious quality of the art and quest design mean that WoW will be a fresh experience for gamers again, but the direction this expansion is moving the game says volumes about Blizzard's intentions for current game concepts. Here are some current game elements that are expanded in BC:

• The Integration of PvP with PvE - One of the things that was a pleasant surprise once I began exploring the new zones was the 'PvP bonus' I seemed to be getting everywhere. All of the Outlands zones, it seems, has its own micro-war going on. Hellfire Peninsula offers a trio of captureable landmarks, for example, while the Zangermarsh has more of a CTF motif. This tightening of the integration between questing/PvE and Player vs. Player combat is a great idea, with overtones similar to what is likely to be offered by Warhammer Online. I think the ideas are great over there too, and hopefully we'll continue to see more of this in future WoW offerings.
• Smaller Raids - Thank the maker, right? Instead of you and 39 of your (not-so) closest friends, we'll only have to put up with 24 other yahoos in the quest for epic lootz. Level 70 raiders make for much heavier hitters, and the fact that Blizzard is tuning for that in their new offerings is tremendous. Raid instances will also now have 'heroic' options that will make raiding even tougher ... and net even phatter loot. This seems to be a common thread through everything in Outlands: faster, tighter, more fun experiences. 2 hour raids instead of 4, 5 and 10 mans the norm, with 25 needed for the biggest tasks.
• Alliance And Horde Uniting - At the same time we're beating each other over the head in the zone-related PvP quests, we're interacting in new and (hopefully) peaceful ways as well. Both factions have a lot of quests in common in the Outlands, and as a result we're questing right on top of each other in a lot of areas. In the (awe-inspiring) city of Shattrath, the factions are disallowed from attacking each other. Alliance races may be buying or selling to Horde merchants in the refugee villages of the Undercity, while Horde players might align themselves with the Dranei members of the Aldar faction. It's the first time that Blizzard has even thematically began moving the two mighty factions together, and it speaks of a time in the future (possibly) when players will able to do more than just emote at each other.
• Many Factions And Reachable Epics - Even moreso than back on Azeroth, who you befriend in the Outlands matters a great deal. Every mob and quest, it seems, earns you a higher reputation with one faction or decreases your import with another. From a world perspective this is invigorating; as a player it's fascinating to see the interplay between these new and sometimes arcane layers of society that are already in place. What's even more invigorating is the material benefits of allying with these factions. The BC expansion introduces a myriad of new outlets for purchasable epic gear. From what I've seen, some of the items obtainable by becoming friendly with High Hold or the Scryers is on par with what is being pulled from the dungeon instances. As with the revamped PvP offerings from the last patch, these raid-less epics are a godsend for those looking for emo-free high end gear.
• Outdoing Art - With graphics-intensive titles like Vanguard and Age of Conan on the way, World of Warcraft might have begun to look a bit dated. In response, Blizzard has more than 'kicked things' by a notch. They've outdone themselves in almost every way possible. From the techno-beauty of the Dranei architecture, to the floating towers of the Blood Elf zone, to the alien mystery of the Outlands, every new element to the game outshines what we've previously seen from Blizz's tireless artists. It may not push your machine as hard as the new games will, but Burning Crusade has proven that WoW can still wow with modern titles.

It's also important to quickly point out the importance of the game's overall stability. Many people (including myself) were convinced that BC was going to result in horrendous wait-times and crashed servers. I can happily say I was wrong about that. I personally have had almost no problems whatsoever. Certainly, I've had the occasional queue, but it was much better than I expected. Your mileage will vary by which server you are on, of course, but the general buzz seems to be overwhelmingly positive. There hasn't been a backlash against an unprepared Blizzard, because this time they were actually ready for us. It's great to see, and definitely worth pointing out, the difference that two years can make for a product's stability.

You Can't Please Everybody

I'm not the only one playing, of course. I don't have a monopoly on opinion. Other folks have opinions different from my own ...

Brandon Reinhart -

Blizzard shows a clear understanding of how to reward the player's expectations with new content. Example 1: I'm a new Draenei and I won't get a mount until level 40. Blizzard hands me a quest at level 12 that lets me ride a mount for 15 minutes. A super freaking fast mount. That was very popular with the nubs, by the way. I was a _king_ for 15 minutes.

Kill Ten Rats' Oz -

We’re having some slight techincal issues … There’s quite a few, many of which will cause the much questioned lack of digital download question to be thrown around a lot in the next few months. From the issues of upgrade keys that don’t work, to their patcher having to repatch 3 patches back and then sticking at 72%.

Tobold -

In the waiting time I did one dungeon trip with some guild mates, to the Hellfire Furnace. Yeah, I know, that is actually the second of the Hellfire dungeons, and not the first. But we did allright, with no deaths. Perfect party mix, my priest, a druid, a warrior, a mage, and a warlock. The mage + warlock combo is perfect crowd control in a dungeon full of orc warlocks, because you can sheep the orc and banish the demon. First mob dropped a paladin libram, and of course on the first day of BC in a Horde group we didn't have a level 60 paladin yet.

Foton -

Me, I’m still level 60, not even sniffing 61 yet. I remember clearly now, why I hate leveling so much. I want to enjoy the journey, like so many around me, but I won’t until it’s over. I’ve always been more of a destination kind of player, and, I’m not sure if that’s just me or if that’s how past games trained me. One thing I do know for sure, if I can’t get that cello music out of my head, I may be level 60 forever. In a Warcraft guild full of ex-EverQuest players, that’s a bootable offense.

Gamers With Jobs -

One might imagine that negating two years of work for long-time World of Warcraft players in the span of an evening might alienate hardcore players, but instead most have reacted with a lust for vaulting the bar, which was so quickly raised so high. Instead of jealousy there is giddiness as the anticipation and enthusiasm for new content, new skills and new equipment vastly outweighs any sense of futility. With so much to look forward to in Draenor, Blizzard makes it very hard to feel any regret for the lands, creatures and equipment you leave behind.

Kill Ten Rats' Ethic -

We created Blood Elves, one male and one female. We spent some time laughing at the odd hair styles and default clothing. We logged in and while busy, it was not nearly as crowded as I thought it would be in the newbie area. The running, jumping and fighting animations all seemed weird to us. The way they stand looks unnatural to us. Perhaps it was just because it was new, but we really were turned off by the whole thing. Looking around, some of the scenery seemed less polished than we had grown to expect from Blizzard. I’m not saying it was crappy, but it certainly seemed below the standards Blizzard had set.

Timothy Burke @ Terra Nova -

A few of the extremely powerful bind-on-equip green items I've gotten can be equipped by level 57 characters. I would think that these would now command premium prices on the Auction House once things settle down in a bit as they will allow a level 57 character to dominate the pre-Outland quests and so on that they must complete. Any portal mage could probably open portals 24/7 to the capital cities back in Azeroth and make huge amounts of money.

I Call Dibs on the Stuffed Murloc Head

With all this 'newness' now inserted into what has become a somewhat venerable title, it's exciting to start thinking ahead again to what the future might hold for World of Warcraft. As always, Blizz is holding its cards pretty close to its chest when it comes to future plans, and there's not much that anyone knows for sure. Here are some educated guesses about what we might see in the distant future for WoW:

• Housing - This one, at least, we know for sure is coming at some point in the future. Jeff Kaplan admitted as much: it's not a question of 'if' but 'when' Player Housing makes it into the game. (It's semi-been there since launch; go look for the gated-off instance portal in Stormwind some time.) The reason it's not out yet is, again, the extremely high level of quality Blizzard demands from its products. They want housing to be amazing and fun before they'll release it. Given the release of jewelcutting with the BC expansion, it's possible we could see a new crafting skill to deal entirely with housing items. At the very least, we're sure to see the ability to take trophies from momentous kills, and perhaps the chance to show off our impressive loot in our homes. What will be interesting to see is whether WoW can elevate housing from a simple pleasant distraction to something with impact on your game experience.
• Guild Bennies - I haven't heard anything about this specific, but it seems incredible that Blizzard isn't considering offering more support for guilds. A tabard and a chat channel are nice and all, but compared with the red carpet guilds get in EverQuest 2 it's somewhat stingy. If housing goes in, we're sure to see guild housing, but to be honest I hope WoW cribs fairly liberally from EverQuest's playbook. "Levels" for Guilds, special guild-only items, discounts for gear for higher level guilds; I look forward to the day that big-headed guildies can put up by displaying their coat of arms on the walls of Stormwind ... or whatever.
• Heroes - So-called 'hero' classes have been talked about in the background ever since WoW was in the development stage. The addition of new classes has fallen by the wayside as Blizzard moves to refine the already existing content and playstyles. This is a good thing, to be sure, but the day will almost certainly come when we see new classes introduced to the game. The original plan to provide high level alternative advancements may be re-implimented at level 70, if the developers are leery of raising the level cap again any time soon.
• Zone Rehashing - Again, not something I've heard specifically mentioned, but something that I hope is at least in the background in San Diego. Now that WoW has begun to expand beyond its original borders, it will be interesting to see what Blizzard does to keep the original areas of the game 'fresh' for players. Whether that means including new content into old zones, reworking the art for a given area, or even closing off sections of the world, keeping Azeroth a 'living world' will ensure interested players. One change I'd love to see sometime down the line would be the introduction of proper home cities for the gnomes and trolls. Gnomeragon isn't one of the better dungeons in the game anyway.
• Expansion - Blizzard has said they're now resolved to produce one expansion a year. Assuming that Burning Crusade is their expansion for 2007, hopefully around this time next year we'll be talking about whatever new content they're aiming to introduce in bulk. In all likelihood they'll be announcing the new expansion sometime soon, to give us all a year to wonder and speculate about what they're going to do. My hope is that the next expansion will be the one we've all been expecting since the Warcraft III days: Northrend. As much as I like the Outlands, I hope that expanding Azeroth proper is the company's next priority, and the undead-ruled frozen land to the north would be the logical place to go next.

The Burning Crusade has only just begun. Despite the very public arrival of a level 70 character, most characters are probably only 61 or 62 after a week of casual play. Developers interviewed about the leveling curve expected it would take most people around a month to two months to reach level 70. Between now and then we'll see a return to pick up groups for non-raiding content, plenty of fellow questers in the field, and a general sense of camaraderie as the grind commences. It's like the launch of WoW all over again, only this time people generally know what they're doing. In a month or so everyone will be back at the level cap, exploring the high-end dungeons and griping about loot.

This time around, they'll be doing it in a much more relaxed setting and with much cooler gear. After that, it's just a matter of making sure that the content keeps rolling for Azeroth and the Outlands. That, at least, is one area we don't have to worry about. Blizzard has proven that they know what needs doing, and the result is a constantly fresh World of Warcraft experience. This newest chapter in the incredibly popular game's life can only be the start to bigger and better things, and it's a rush to be able to participate. Here's hoping the next expansion can capture as much of the 'Blizzard magic'.

[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 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We're all about the video game documentaries (and Matt Hawkins has been tasked with checking out some more for his 'Cinema Pixeldiso' GSW column), so were delighted when RetroBlast! pointed out that retro game doc 'Chasing Ghosts' is debuting at next week's Sundance Film Festival.

A blurb at Unofficially Sundance explains: "The last place you'd expect to find the video-game capital of the world is Ottumwa, Iowa--but in 1982, this tiny town's Twin Galaxies arcade served as the shining beacon of pixilated pop culture, attracting the best of the best in the highly competitive world of arcade video gaming... Culminating with the nationally televised 1982 Video Game World Championships, director Lincoln Ruchti takes us on a wild ride through the lives of the first arcade celebrities."

The RetroBlast! report references a CNet article on the doc, and I also spotted an IndieWire interview with the director that's pretty interesting: "Finding 12 guys from a 1982 LIFE magazine spread was just about as hard as you'd expect. The Internet was a huge resource. We created spreadsheets of possible names and phone numbers for the players and started dialing."

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

This is Tablesaw, popping in on a non-Monday to clear up some mistakes and changes regarding my most recent Beyond Tetris articles.

First, in Part I of my MIT Mystery Hunt article, I mentioned the definitive article about the Hunt: "The Great Annual MIT Mystery Hunt," from the July 1991 issue of Games Magazine. I also talked about the author of that article, how he had run the Hunt in 1988, and how this year he was on Dr. Awkward, the winning team.

Unfortunately, instead of correctly identifying that person as Eric Albert, I incorrectly identified him as Eric Berlin, a different member of Dr. Awkward. Fearless editor Simon Carless made some quick deletions to preserve my integrity, but since I've known both of these Erics over the past few years, my chagrin goes beyond a mere revision. They are talented puzzlers, and I've enjoyed my time with them both, and I have no excuse for my mental typo other than a lack of sleep.

Second, one week after it was featured in the article on Deadly Rooms of Death, and on the same day that article was noted by the DROD forum, my record for the room in "Halph Has a Bad Day" was beaten. A player with the handle Rabscuttle bested my solution of 48 moves by turning in his own 47-move demo on January 8. The original entry has been modified to reflect this. I wanted to make special mention of it because I discussed the room and the record in particular; I do not intend to make further updates about people being better than me at DROD.

Rabscuttle's accomplishment is appropriate, though. In the article, I also included a screenshot of a room I hold the record for in "King Dugan's Dungeon." The previous record for that room had been held by Rabscuttle, and I had beaten it by a single move.

Finally, not an erratum but an important addendum: there will be an official release of an easy DROD hold called "Smitemastery 101." Intended as a version of DROD suitable for kids, "Smitemastery 101" will likely also be a good opportunity for older puzzle gamers who want a more gentle introduction to the game. It will be released as a Smitemaster's Selection, which means it will available with a CaravelNet subscription for a limited time, and it will be available for individual purchase thereafter.

I am still recovering from the Hunt and preparing for the GameSetWatch synopsis, so Part II of the article should appear shortly. I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Posted by tablesaw at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're certainly still fans of the Japanmanship blog, described as 'the unremarkable life of a videogame developer in Japan', and a recent post discusses the lack of Western developers in the Japanese game market.

Blogger JC Barnett notes ruefully: "When it comes to the number of Western development staff, artists, planners, coders, musicians, etc. there are no exact figures but from experience I’d say we are few, very few. I’m not terribly well connected, but I have a few ears spread around the industry. There are a few companies with their own foreign worker, some even have more. But what’s worse is that every so often a few of us just raise our hands, admit defeat and move back home or onwards to another country. We’re maybe not a dying breed, but we’re certainly coughing up blood."

Most interestingly, he explains why this might be: "Though the games made in Japan seem to have this exotic aura of excellence, the reality of working here is, thanks to scaremongering blogs like mine and others, not a secret anymore. Or rather, most of the interested people already had a pretty good idea about it, but it’s always a little daunting to have it confirmed from the inside. Bad pay [see pictured graph!], bad hours, bad working practices; the Japanese industry has an image problem. You can’t attract good staff if you aren’t offering an attractive deal."

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Arcade Obscurities is a bi-weekly column by Solvalou.com's Arttu Ylärakkola, probing some of the most interesting and obscure arcade games yet to be covered in the geek gaming press, thanks to Arttu's JAMMA board collection, and our insatiable quest for knowledge. This second column does an awesome job of describing Namco's relatively obscure 1998 game 'Tenkomori Shooting'.]

What would David Attenborough say if he found out that monkeys rescue their offspring, who've been kidnapped by an overweight sorceress, by scoring points in miniature shoot 'em up video games? Don't know if that's scientifically accurate, but that's what happens in Namco's Tenkomori Shooting.

There's lots of minigame collections, but Tenkomori is squarely aimed at the shooter crowd: absolutely every and each one of the games available contains shooting and/or bombing in some form or another. The majority of the games are original, but included is also some classics - and the great thing here is that when the classics are referenced, they are exact duplicates of the originals, and not some watered-down 3D remakes.

When you start the game, you can select one of three difficulty levels. The more difficult level you choose, the more options you have when it comes to choosing the first minigame, and the more minigames you have to succesfully complete to reach the topmost level of the sorceress' tower where the final fight (no pun intended) takes place.

Each minigame requires the player to shoot or bomb certain number of targets in very limited (only a few seconds!) time. Fail, and your monkey alter-ego loses some health. Succeed, and our monkey hero climbs to a new level of the tower, where you can select from four new randomly selected mini-games. Well, actually only three new games are available, as you can always select the just-completed game again. The idea is that the more times you select a certain game, the more difficult it will be.

Tenkomori Shooting runs on Namco's System 12 hardware and utilizes it extensively. While the classic games look very basic, some of the 3D sections look absolutely awesome. Unfortunately for console gamers, Tenkomori Shooting is a Japan-only arcade exclusive. A rare English version exists, but it seems that it was never released to the public.

Anything else? Oh, the minigames! Well, here goes - end-boss levels not included - in no particular order:

1. A giant bug is causing general chaos and chasing your battle helicopter. Shoot the bug in the mouth and avoid its beam and bullet pattern attacks.

2. Dig Dug! Bouncing Pookas try to squash you - shoot them with your gun to inflate them but watch out: the bigger the Pookas, the more difficult it is to avoid them.

3. Your cherub must shoot apples of the correct color and avoid the wrong ones. Your wrong color is the correct one for the second player, and vice versa. More difficult than it sounds!

4. Shoot everything that moves, but concentrate on collecting medals that the enemies carry. Feels like a 2D Raizing shooter, only faster.

5. Shoot down a big mothership by breaking all its weaponry, one by one.

6. Protect your precious rice bags from crows, but make sure you don't get crapped on.

7. Simple mathematical equations are displayed, and you have to first figure out the answer and then shoot at the bouncing balloon which contains the correct answer at the same time.

8. Shoot invading UFOs with your rocket launcher. In order to get enough points, shoot UFOs that are close together, to get big chain explosions that take out multiple enemies in one go.

9. Use your spray can to kill all giant cockroaches. Make sure you don't miss the ones who decide to scuttle under the furniture.

10. Blast all cells, but avoid the bullet swarms they shoot at you. The colorful graphics remind me of Nichibutsu's shooters, particularly Armed Formation Z.

11. Shoot all totem poles. This is difficult, as they fire swarms of bullets at you, and just when you thought it couldn't get any more difficult, they start trying to catch you with their super elastic tongues!

12. This one is like a manic version of 1942. Shoot as many WWII planes as possible.

13. Shoot your hearts at the lady singer, but avoid shooting the male waitresses (who, when shot, rip out their clothes and run to you with hearts in their eyes), Elvis impersonators and the dogs (dodge them to keep your pants unsoiled!).

14. You have couple of bullets to shoot a shogun - only problem is that he's protected by his bodyguards. Try to slip one bullet thru a gap between the guards, or wait for the second player to accidentally shoot one of them to make the shogun easier to hit.

15. Your boss in the sushi shop asks you for a type of sushi which you must shoot in the moving converyor belts.

16. Galaga! This is an exact replica of the bonus stages of Galaga. Luckily you have the dual ship power-up from the start.

17. You're a volcano - a video game first? Build up pressure by making circular motion with your stick (stop snickering!) and press fire to launch smouldering boulders at the swarm of UFOs that fly above you.

18. Avoid the busy traffic while simultaneously throwing bombs at the Waaru building until it collapses. Waaru, the PayPal of Tenkomori Shooting?

19. Aim at the slowly moving aircraft and attempt to shoot as many of them down with the few missiles you've got. In order to succeed, getting big combos is a must.

20. Shoot down three battleships, at the same time making sure that the smaller popcorn enemies don't get you.

21. Xevious! Shooting down the Andor Genesis mothership might have been difficult in the original arcade game - in this version it's even more difficult: you have all the same enemies but only couple of seconds to do it!

22. Shoot the many tanks that pour out the the enemy base. Maybe it's the helicopter, but this feels like Twin Cobra 2.

23. Tasty insects gather on the plants that grow around your pond. You, as a fish, must first spit on the insects so that they fall into the water. Then eat them before they float off the screen. Very difficult!

24. Destroy the tank, avoiding its weaponry. This game plays, looks and feels exactly like the games in the Raiden Fighters / Gun Dogs series.

25. The screen is filling with flying bugs. Avoid them with your biplane and when you think you can't handle it any longer, press a button to drop a screen-clearing bomb. Drop it too soon, and you don't kill enough bugs. Don't drop it soon enough and you collide with a bug. A very simplistic game, but in my opinion the best of the bunch!

Can you go wrong with such variety?
No, you can't!

Posted by arttuy at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firstly, a disclaimer - any GSW editor's individual experience at a game store is obviously not precisely symptomatic of the situation throughout North America. But nonetheless, figured you might want to hear about the hardware availability at a certain major Bay Area game store branch that I visited this evening.

This particular store is located in a major mall, and the fact that there was a paper notice with 'We have PS3s' on it pasted to the open front door of the store clued me in to one important fact - they had PlayStation 3 consoles! In fact, they had two of them left. I couldn't get the kind clerk behind the counter to discuss exactly when this latest shipment (which I believe was of 3 PS3s) had come in, but he did reveal that the previous PS3 shipment, which arrived last week, took a total of about four days to completely sell out.

As a comparison, this particular GameStop (there, I said it!) had precisely zero Nintendo Wii-s in stock, and more than one person asked for a Wii in the quarter of an hour or so I was in the store (though, to be fair, there was also one phone query about the PS3.) I then asked how long the previous Wii shipment (which I think had also arrived the previous week?) had taken to sell out. While I was openly wondering if it took days or hours for the Will hardware to disappear again into the hands of hungry consumers, the clerk grinned and simply said: 'Minutes!'

So there you have it - more anecdotal evidence that the PlayStation 3 is a little slow to sell through when it gets to stores - IMHO at least partially because of the marginally eye-watering $599 price for the 60gb model that most retail stores are selling.

Even though GameStop offers $100 toward trade-in if you swap your PlayStation 2 and some extras at the time of purchase, this is the second time that I've avoided buying a PS3 when GameStop/EB has actually had one in stock - and I'm the EIC of a game magazine/website. And it's really the price (and the amount of unplayed X360/Wii games I have) which is personally holding me up - though we have a work PS3 to keep me ticking over.

So, a question to GSW readers - if you saw a PS3 in stock at a game store, the next time you walk in, would you buy one? And if not, why not? (Having said all this, I'll probably get my PS2 packed up and trade up to a PS3 some time in the next couple of months, likely when MotorStorm and downloadable Tekken 5 debut in the States.)

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I had some thoughts on this too, but MMO veteran Damion Schubert beat me to the bunch with his post on Second Life: 'When 10 Hours Is Not Enough To Appreciate True Awesomeness', specifically referencing Wagner James Au's GigaGamez article backlashing against the backlash.

Schubert explains: "For a while, the Second Life backlash was going so strong that I was considering, albeit briefly, actually whipping out a couple of posts in defense of the Linden Labs boys and sticking up for them, just to be contrarian. But to be honest, I can only take so much of the fanbois who keep trying to explain, in patronizing terms, that we simply don’t get the vision of Second Life. I get it. I read Snowcrash. Second Life is no Snowcrash. Second Life is a marvelous experiment with some real potential behind it, but it has severe issues holding it back in both design and technology, and until it actually addresses them, it will never even get into the same ballpark with its own hype."

He particularly seizes on complaints that Second Life criticizers haven't played the game long enough: "That’s right - 10 hours is not enough time to make an honest assessment of the Second Life experience. By comparison, my games rack is full of games that didn’t survive an HOUR of playtime. Electronic Arts (and most other companies) force their designers to obsess over the first FIVE MINUTES of gameplay, because most games don’t even survive THAT. Okay, someone reviewing the game should probably give it a tad more time than than but… 10 hours - not enough!"

Schubert's conclusion: "I personally played it for about 5 hours, most of which was a bewildering struggle with the interface, and a desperate attempt to find any player created content that wasn’t broken, partially textured, furry in theme, or so whimsical it was clearly an inside joke to its creator... I’m a professional game designer. I work in this space for a living. I have a vested interest in finding this information. I failed miserably. What makes you think that Joe Sixpack will make even half the effort?"

For what it's worth, GameSetWatch deliberately paid a game journalist to check out Second Life from the in-world game perspective, and what he found was interesting, but ultimately didn't keep him around.

In fact, I noticed a recent blog post from the journo in question, Mathew Kumar, which reveals: "It is amusing to me that I haven’t logged in once since finishing my Letters from the Metaverse column for GameSetWatch... I guess I find this funny because despite all the hype, as far as I can see, Second Life hasn’t made any of the improvements that are required for it to sustain the interest (I’m sure that 90% of the “residents” logged in a few times, got bored and left) or even give me the urge to log back in." So - not case closed, but I think it's a valid viewpoint.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['A Game Collector's Melancholy' is a bi-weekly column by Jeffrey Fleming that follows the subtle pleasures and gnawing anxieties of video game collecting. Recently IGN’s Best of 2006 feature listed Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army as a runner-up in the “Best Game Nobody Played” category. As collectors know, the games “Nobody Played” typically become the games “Everybody Wishes They Could Find”.]

Shin Megami Tensei

The Shin Megami Tensei series got its start back in 1987 with a Japanese RPG called Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei, which could be translated as “Digital Devil Story: Goddess Reincarnation”. Based on a series of novels by Aya Nishitani, the game was first published by NAMCO for the MSX computer and later that year for Nintendo’s Famicom. A sequel followed and then Atlus took over publishing the series. Subsequent games added the word Shin to the title, which is read in Japanese as “true/genuine” but is also homonymous with “new”. In the years since, Atlus has made Shin Megami Tensei a cornerstone of their business, releasing a bewildering assortment of remakes, sequels, side stories and spin-offs. However, only a handful of these games have received English language releases.

Persona

America got its first taste of the Shin Megami Tensei series in 1996 when Atlus brought Persona over. One of the Playstation’s early RPGs, Persona was unusual for its contemporary, urban setting that was far removed from the fantasy worlds that most other RPGs inhabited. Its “dungeons” were shopping malls and schools that were explored from a first person perspective. Persona’s “world map” was a middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, complete with crosswalks and subways.

In other respects, Persona stuck close to well-established RPG conventions. It had a party of intrepid adventurers, magic, swords, monsters, and a lot of turn-based combat. Fighting was enlivened by the ability to parley with enemies in order to wheedle items from them or avoid combat altogether and characters had the ability to transform into powerful “Persona” entities. Despite its unique presentation, Persona was a slow and somewhat tedious game that involved a great deal of stat management. Some described it as a good game for budding, young CPAs. Persona was also marginalized by a sloppy translation and odd changes to its content made by Atlus in an awkward effort to make the game more appealing to a Western audience. Persona is not too difficult to find as most who have it find it fairly easy to let go of. Expect to pay about $40.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

Released in 2000, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was a much more successful game (at least artistically) than its predecessor. Although the translation remained a little dodgy and its graphics were well behind the curve for a game arriving at the end of the Playstation’s life span, Person 2: Eternal Punishment was a complex and mysterious RPG, filled with interesting characters and a distinctly grown-up story.

Eternal Punishment was actually the second part of a two game series, the first being Persona 2: Innocent Sin which was never released outside of Japan. However, it stood well on its own and was packed with enough content to keep players busy for many, many hours. Once again set in a modern, slightly sci-fi, urban environment, Person 2 turned a darker shade with serial killers, demons, and a satanic mega-corporation lurking behind a veneer of steel and glass, air-conditioned normality. Persona 2 was also noteworthy for featuring as its main characters adults with jobs and responsibilities. Perhaps the long-running success of the Shin Megami Tensei series can be attributed to a willingness to grow along with its audience.

Persona 2 came with a second disc that featured an animated trailer for the game and a short video interview with producer Cozy Okada and illustrator Kazuma Kaneko. This is one is also relatively easy to acquire at $40.

Nocturne

Longtime Shin Megami Tensei producer Cozy Okada left Atlus in 2003 to form a new studio called GAIA (creators of the upcoming Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner for PSP). However, before leaving he oversaw the development of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne for the Playstation 2.

At first glance Nocturne was a little underwhelming. The cell-shaded graphics were well-crafted but subtle. The story seemed vague with few characters to interact with. The combat was frequent and punishing. After spending a couple of hours wandering through Nocturne’s lonely hallways many asked themselves “Is this all there is?”

Well, yes and no. Nocturne was an esoteric game that discouraged casual players but could be very rewarding for the initiate who was willing to invest the time to understand all of its intricacies. The game was a bit of throw back to an earlier age when RPGs were exacting dungeon crawls rather than elaborate interactive novels. Progress through Nocturne was dependent on one’s ability to navigate convoluted mazes as well as understand the combat system and exploit enemy weaknesses. Conversing with demons assumed a new importance as they could be recruited into the party and combined with one another to create exotic, new creatures.

The game was released in America as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in 2004 and includes additional “Director’s Cut” material as well as a CD soundtrack. Now out-of-print, Nocturne sells for around $60.

Digital Devil Saga

Digital Devil Saga found the Shin Megami Tensei series moving back to firmer narrative ground with a somber sci-fi tale. Set in a grim, post-apocalyptic landscape laced with imagery from the Vedic Hymns, Digital Devil Saga had a look that was unlike any other RPG. The combat system from Nocturne was reused although demon recruitment was no longer an aspect of play. Instead, characters could transform into demons themselves and devour enemies.

Digital Devil Saga was an ambitious, two part game with the first volume released in 2005. It came in a slightly higher priced deluxe box that would hold the second DDS when it was released later that year. DDS I included a CD soundtrack but DDS II came with a soundtrack only as a pre-order bonus. Fortunately, Atlus still has extra copies of DDS II’s soundtrack and it can be ordered separately from their web site. The Digital Devil Saga deluxe box is no longer available and sells online for around $60. DDS II can still be acquired new.

Devil Summoner

The latest Shin Megami Tensei game is the currently available Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army which was released late in 2006. This time the setting is Taisho era (around 1932) Tokyo and Atlus put a lot of effort into depicting that uncertain period in Japan’s history when traditional culture was being swept aside in favor of rapidly advancing modernism. Despite its realistic backdrop, Devil Summoner is a fairly breezy game with a much more forgiving difficulty level. Combat is played out as a fast paced hack ‘n slash with most engagements over in a manner of seconds. Demons can be captured for use in battle or combined together in a system very similar to the one in Nocturne.

Spin-Offs

The Shin Megami Tensei franchise is very broad and encompasses many spin-offs that have only a tenuous connection to the main series. Over the years Atlus has made a few of these available in America.

Beginning in 1995, even before the release of Persona, Atlus brought over Jack Bros., a little known action game for Nintendo’s Virtual Boy and in 1999 they published Revelations: The Demon Slayer for the Game Boy Color. Revelations was part of a fantasy themed Shin Megami Tensei series called Last Bible in Japan. Also, in 2003 Atlus released two games for the Game Boy Advance called Demi Kids: Light version and Demi Kids: Dark version. These were monster collecting RPGs intended for younger players.

Although Maken X for the Dreamcast was not specifically part of the Shin Megami Tensei universe, it had much of the same look and feel. Published by Sega in 1999, Maken X was an interesting first person melee game that was hampered by a dreadful localization and frustrating game play. However, it is worth owning for Kazuma Kaneko’s decadent and bizarre character designs which seem to reference the fashions of both haute couture and S&M dungeons. It is easily obtained for about $10.

[Jeffrey Fleming is an East Bay writer. To read more, please visit Tales of the Future.]

Images: (C) 1996-2006 Atlus All Rights Reserved

Posted by jfleming at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Jane McGonigal of 4orty 2wo Entertainment/ARG 'fame' has a very interesting post on Nintendo's Wii on her blog, urging to game developers of all creeds and Cheeto-consumption levels : "I want to suggest that we ought NOT to be talking about the wonders of Wii in terms of "simulation.""

But to what is she referring? "Consider the latest issue of Game Developer Magazine [PLUG: available online as a free sample, go subscribe if you like it - ithangyou!]. There's a great post-mortem of a Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam skating game for the Wii console. In general, a really excellent read. But I was troubled by part of the article, in which the developer (Toby Schadt) discuss why the Wii is so great and how the game sought to take advantage of the new controller."

She then references Schadt's comment that "That's why the Wii is so compelling--the way you control your character in a game is a more realistic analog to what you would do in the real world, as opposed to pressing buttons", before suggesting: "I certainly get that the Wii controller is way more fun and cool because it's not just pushing abstract combinations of buttons. But you know what? I think it's way more fun and cool because MOVING VIGOROUSLY--shaking, waving, pumping, pointing, and so on--is more fun than pressing buttons."

Her conclusion: "Indeed, the fact that there is a real, live, embodied performance happening when a player engages the Wii games creates the kind of gameplay legibility that enables "non-gamers" to get in the game, and that creates a setting where you can really cheer on other players... So when you play Wii games, are you simulating? Or are you REALLY playing and performing? I say the Wii does not simulate. The Wii is real." This is a subtle but interesting point.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Time to switch gears back to geek collectors (the life blood of GSW, of course), and Jiji kindly pointed out the Super Nintendo obscure game review site RVGFanatic.com, newly unleashed upon the Internet.

The site is filled with really nice quality reviews of obscure SNES games, such as 'King Of Demons'/Mayjuuou, which "could be described as "Castlevania with a gun" or "Resident Evil meets Castlevania"", and I've certainly never heard of. Alternatively, one of my personal favorite SNES titles, The Firemen, is also represented: "a 1-player top-down action game where you navigate a top high-rise fire fighter through the burning Metrotech building."

There's also in-depth (possibly excessively in-depth!) collection stories, such as a 9-month saga to get some Super Play magazines: "January 17, 2006 is the official comeback date for yours truly. And so I began actively pursuing a complete Super Play set from that day forth. The following journey I took is simply unbelievable. I always had confidence I would one day own Super Play, but I had no idea it'd be anything like this...." It's practically a Viking Saga!

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

A completely random find, this - I was checking into what David 'DC' Collier, one of the GDC Mobile Game Innovation Hunt presenters, is up to - he's a mobile game expert who used to work at Namco and presents a World Mobile Games Tour most years at GDC.

Well, his company, Pikkle, seem to be doing some wacky mobile phone Flash portal stuff in Japan called Charajam, but separately of that, I found an excellent description of Korean social networking game/site CyWorld on the Pikkle Wiki (!) - well worth sharing, as it's part of Collier's research into social gaming.

As the intro explains: "Korea's CyWorld is like an SNS + personal home page builder + Flickr all in one. It's also the 17th most popular site in the world and 20% of the Korean population is registered on it. It also makes tons of money by selling avatar add-ons and accessories... I have been following it for awhile, but it was hard to decipher as a foreigner. Luckily my friend Charles Forman moved to Korea and soon became a celebrity on CyWorld, creating media-art for the front page. I talked to him about the service..."

Forman engagingly explains: "You know how in high school you'd see the most popular kid walk by.. you’d think “hey what does that guy have that I don’t?” and then you'd realize.. Ah yes: clear skin, cheerleader girlfriend, sports car. Now the playing field is level and youre out to get a large piece of that infinite social real estate! Cyworld is an ongoing community of Koreans measuring their popularity and constantly advertising who they are."

While it's not explicitly a game, it does have RPG-style stats for how famous, kind, and erotic (!) you are, and there's a very game-like room that you can outfit to show people your, uhm, l33t style:

"The owner of the minihompi designs that all themself. Its basically like a visual expression of how you feel through making a comic about it. There is a mini room designer application. You have a collection of things you can place on your miniroom. You buy these things for real money." I know Cyworld has been around for ages - but this is the first good English-language explanation I've seen, and therefore, I'm passing it along to you folks.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There really _is_ a lot of Xbox 360 Live Arcade-related news swilling around today, so maybe it'd be best to lay them all out on the table at once, and poke them a bit to see if they're still moving:

- XBLArcade.com has spotted that " the German version of the ESRB, the USK, has just rated a game for the 360 called 'EETs Chowdown'... could this be the first signs that [neat indie puzzle game] Eets could be making it's way to XBLA like many have asked for?" I'm gonna hazard a guess of 'Yes' - and it's nice to see the game, which was one of the most worthy titles not to make the IGF finals this year, getting an XBLA conversion.

- We've got a postmortem of Naked Sky's Roboblitz for XBLA up on Gamasutra today, huzzah - here's the blurb: " Among the first games to utilize Epic's Unreal Engine 3, Naked Sky's RoboBlitz squeezed a great deal into 50mb for its Xbox Live Arcade release. In this Gamasutra postmortem, we learn firsthand the joys and pitfalls of the self-funded indie team's first title."

- Some amusing chap on NeoGAF spotted that today's XBLA release, PopCap's Heavy Weapon, is rated E10+ but includes the content descriptor 'Tobacco Reference' - smokin'! Which led me to check the ESRB website to see which other games had the warning - mainly those louche Europeans (SingStar: Rocks!, Cold War), and also Ratchet & Clank clone Ruff Trigger - The Vanocore Conspiracy, and even more bizarrely, Disney DVD Game World: Disney Dogs Edition. I bet that's Cruella De Vil's fault!

- Electronic Arts have announced a new XBLA title, 'Boom Boom Rocket', produced with Geometry Wars creator Bizarre Creations, and also on Gama, we have a chat with EA's Chip Lange about EA's plans for the service. The game itself sounds neat, too: "In Boom Boom Rocket, players both solo and multiplayer are made to trigger rockets to the rhythm of the game's soundtrack... Different colored rockets are mapped to different buttons of the Xbox 360's controller." Looking forward to it.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having just got the newest February 2007 issue of EGM (you guys should subscribe and keep print alive, it's wholesome and woody!), perhaps the most interesting tidbit is hidden in the middle of a story about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. Specifically, it comes from Todd Howard, talking about the PlayStation 3 version of Oblivion.

Howard notes: "Drive speed matters more to me [than capacity], and Blu-ray is slower", with EGM revealing that "the PS3 Oblivion team compensated for the slower drive by duplicating data across the Blu-ray disc, making it faster to find and load."

Well, I say ugh - that sounds like a terrible kludge to have to do. What happens if you don't have your pieces of data correctly sync-ed and one of them is an old version of an object/piece of code and one is a newer version? Unless this was well-dealt with, it could lead to some nasty issues, I'd imagine.

OK, so apart from you wags who are now proclaiming: 'So _that's_ what the Blu-ray's extra disc capacity is used for!', it's worth mentioning that Oblivion for PS3 has now been pushed out to March 2007, even though it was officially going to be a launch title until November 8th or so of last year - that is to say, very close to the PS3 launch date.

Not sure if this was unfortunate planning on Bethesda's part or technical difficulties, but I noticed a bunch of two-page adverts for Oblivion, specifically mentioning the PS3 version, in the holiday issues of Official PlayStation Magazine and EGM - so I'm guessing that marketing was booked before the game was pushed back. Ouch. Still, I imagine that the final product will be up to scratch.

[UPDATE: A perceptive comment from 'Marvin' is worth reprinting: "You'd automate the duplication at the image creation stage to avoid any stale data problems. People have done this on other platforms before for the same reasons - particularly the PSP, with its horrible UMD seek times. However, it does rather negate the whole increased storage capacity advantage."]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Since we seem to be turning GSW into the 'PC indie adventure game Watch', I don't see why I shouldn't mention that Dave 'The Shivah' Gilbert released his new AGS game, The Blackwell Legacy just before Xmas, and I haven't seen much game blog press for it.

The Shivah itself is in Wired Magazine this month, actually, but The Blackwell Legacy also looks intriguing, "the first case in a miniseries of games that stars a medium named Rosangela Blackwell and her spirit guide Joey Mallone."

Unfortunately, there's no playable demo yet (looks like it'll be along in a few days!), but the game itself is a quite reasonable $14.99, and there's already a Gameboomers review of it which highlights some of the interestingly dark themes of the game (suicide, for one), and comments: "All in all, I found the game to start rather slowly but become much more enjoyable after a short while. The attention to detail is noteworthy. I thought it an unusually compelling psychological study for an independent game to undertake, and I’ll certainly be looking forward to more from this talented developer."

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

[This week's Beyond 3DO column is a look into the modern 32-bit homebrew mines. Not the swanky, well lit Sega and Sony mines, resplendent with running hot can cold water and matching water feature. Oh no - these are the dank, dark, dismal mines of the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO Multiplayer, where the Motorola and Arm dwarves mine - perhaps too deep?]

“He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.” – Douglas Adams.

I often wonder - do the likes of Trip Hawkins or Sam Tramiel put the name of their long forgotten consoles into Google from time-to-time, just to see? Do they grimace or grin? Do they care? Do they suffer the same pangs of nostalgia – the memories – the same love that we do?

The 3DO multiplayer and the Atari Jaguar have been dead twice as long as they were alive – yet a handful of e-Necromancers keep the spirits of these long since gone consoles alive. In the dark places on the web, past the Xbox 360 groups, beneath the PS3 and the Wii - the fans of early 32bit generation hardware keep these machines alive.

So what support, some 10 years on, do these consoles enjoy?

Let us start with the Atari Jaguar's afterlife. In fairness, this has been more prosperous than its actual life. It’s living the games console equivalent of heaven, packed with saucy scantily clad female angels, fluffy clouds and a free bar. So, where to begin? Well the first thing you notice about the Jaguar is how well it is supported online. The forums aren’t easy to find - however, the Atari Age network acts as a central hub for all things Atari. Fair enough. But the Atari Jaguar forums really confound me – there are still people on there chatting. Chatting about the Atari Jaguar. Incredible.

Fine. I admit it. Atari has a rich history, sure, but the Jaguar was not its proudest moment - surely? It was a closed system with a proprietary architecture. It had very very few games. It was a cartridge-based system. It had no I/O to speak of. Face it, they can't have sold more than half a dozen worldwide. Hey - Atari fans - it was the Jaguar that sent Atari "Chapter 11" - that and bad management. It’s difficult to imagine anything much could have be done with it, especially now that even Atari (not the re-branded software publisher we see today, but the old Atari) has stacked all the chairs on top of the tables and turned all the lights out.

So, assuming the Jaguar forums are not full of Rev. Johanasson Blithe-s from Nigeria, trying to offload $1 million or endless Viagra adverts, the questions begs – what the hell do they talk about? After gabbing on about Tempest 2000 and Alien vs Predator, the conversation must have ran dry after 14 years?

Prepare yourself for a shock. There is homebrew hardware and software, and commercial hardware and software still being released for the Atari Jaguar. Yes, that’s today, in 2007. Yes – you heard me right. Yes - my flabber was ghasted too …and that’s a lot of ghasting. It’s not a steady trickle either – it’s a bloody flood.

So assuming you want to run some Atari homebrew, you are going to have to prep your Jaguar to do so first, right? So how do you get homebrew running on a 15 year old cartridge based games console? As it turns out, there are plenty of ways. The cheapest most effect way for you and I, at the moment is the BJL Chip. This stands for 'Behind Jaggy Lines' – you will need to open the Jaguar, solder in a chip and know what you are doing. Oh, and perhaps even flash your own EPROM chip. I studied computer science at University and I’ve been a geek all my life. Still, I baulk at the very idea of doing this, but I’m reliably informed that it is easy and relatively cheap.

It is sort of tempting. This kind of thing can be more fun than actually playing some of games out there – especially when considering Jag's back catalogue of games – but I can understand the fear others may have.

If you do bite the bullet, this modification will open access to a world of homebrew for the Jaguar. Your PC, assuming it is old enough because of such things as parallel port speeds and the like, will be able to talk to your Jaguar via a cable, allowing you to upload, download and execute homebrew straight to the Jaguar's RAM.

Other alternatives, for those terrified of the smell of solder, can be via an Atari ST, Mega ST, TT or Falcon. With these you can use Jag server to do much the same thing - or if you are really lucky, you could use the Alpine development kit

Other means of getting homebrew working is by the moderately hard to come by Jaguar CD-ROM and an Encryption bypass cartridge, both of which are expensive and rare - but homebrew can be run from CD. Occasionally discs get distributed without the need for bypassing the encryption, but the need for the elusive CD-ROM remains the same.

For those of a nervous disposition, or less of a geek disposition, or a financially restricted disposition, I would recommend you wait for the JagCF. Coming in ’07, the Jaguar Compact Flash cartridge to be used with the optional USB Catnip cable will remove the caveats, and bring Jaguar Homebrew as close to the mainstream as it is ever likely to get. You will simply copy the homebrew game or application to the CF card using a standard PC and then plug it into the Jaguar. Hopefully it will be easy, painless and risk free.

Also in 2007, new homebrew games are to be released, targeted at the JagCF. Project Apocalypse and Seaplane are shoot ‘em ups for the Jaguar due to be released in 2007, and even a port of Another World has been promised. Because obviously, for the talented, porting Atari ST games to the Jaguar is, I hesitate because you know what? It’s not, but I’m going to say it anyway – “straightforward”.

You can also buy new stuff for Jaguar. That’s right. ‘Buy’. Proper cartridges, not homebrew, not made in a shed - well not obviously made in a shed, anyway - proper-proper games, proper hardware, with a manual and stickers and everything. And you buy them using money. Not trading for shells or high res pictures of Carrie Fisher in a gold bikini, or other esoteric geek items. 'Buy'. From a commercial business. Insane? Perhaps. There are those still releasing commercial hardware and software for the Jag. Yes – it’s true.

Local lad, well local to me in Cambridge, UK, anyway, has released a Multitapfor the Jaguar! There are other hardware vendors releasing a Rotary Controller for the Jaguar – so you can enjoy Tempest in the way the Minter always wanted, or Worms the way Team 17 envisaged. This is the tip of the iceberg.

…and of course, there are games still being released. Battlesphere, now something of a holy grail for Jaguar owners, was released in February 2000. So what, you cry? Graphics equivalent to a second generation PSX game? 32 player options? And the game play is said to be equal to Tempest 2000? Isn’t that tantamount to Atarian blasphemy?

Telegames and Songbird Productions sell shrinkwrapped games for the Jaguar online, releasing games that were still in production when the Jaguar was alive. Songbird released a game called “Protector”, for which the owner of this garage based company did 20% of the coding. He also designed the cartridge, took the order, stuck the stamp on the box and popped it in the post – and also has a full time job and family!

The icing on the cake is E-JagFest and JagFest UK. This is where a few like minded souls gather together to play games and indulge in their favourite hobby. Jagfest UK ’07 is promising the only Jaguar VR Headset in the world as the star attraction.

Now - It would be easy for a chap like me to pour scorn on this, and I probably will at some point ,but surely this is equivalent to a Morris Dancing Club or the Real Ale society. But... hmmm. Hell, I might even go to Jagfest UK just to see that VR headset. Damn - stupid - geek impulses. I'd organise a 3DOFest for the same day as the Jagfest, if I could stomach all the pointing, staring, laughing and verbal abuse. From the wife. ...Yeah - I will just go to JagFest UK.

As the facts stand, then: the Atari Jaguar is alive and kicking.

…so what of Trip's mighty machine: the 3DO?

You know, even summoning the mighty powers of 3DO fanboyism – the 3DO’s life after death is far from the glamour the Atari machine enjoys. If the Jag enjoys heaven to the max, the 3DO has got a job there cleaning urinals. With its own toothbrush.

...but it's still there, clinging onto digital heaven for all it's worth. And it's all thanks to one group of people, namely... the Russians.

You see - the 3DO still enjoys popularity in certain parts of the world. The reason being that it is, all things being relative, an exotic system. Exotic in Russia, where it was upon release hideously expensive, and exotic in South America, where it wasn't released at all. And other parts of the world too - but a quick scan of Google, and the number of 3DO websites in both Russian and Brazilian is formidable.

The hub of 3DO homebrew development of any kind hinges on the guys over at Freedo. Their Russiandeveloped emulator is streets ahead of the Virtual Jaguar emulator or Project Tempest Jaguar emulator. In terms of compatibility. In the fact it works. And the fact it is still being developed for. Also it has played host to the first and only 3DO Homebrew work. Although considerably less homebrew is available for the 3DO - it does exist.

OK. It may only be a Sonic sprite running down a street, and it has no interactivity whatsoever, it does suggest that homebrew on the 3DO is possible and means the 3DO ain’t quite dead yet. More impressive when you learn that this homebrew was developed without the aid of an SDK or an official developer's kit. So - although the 3DO's vital signs have something of Elvis Presley about them, 3DO homebrew may still be alive.

The homebrew hardware side is equally ambitious, if somewhat undersubscribed. Mnemonic - the user handle for the Russian chap responsible for the first ever 3DO homebrew - also offers a guide on how to build a 3DO to PSX pad converter – ideal if you find the 3DO pad inadequate. Sadly, it's in Russian.

The only other hardware device is also on a promise – the ability to connect an IDE drive to a 3DO multiplayer. Details are sketchy, but the developers over at Freedo have promised that if I, that’s me, 3DO kid, can drum up 100 pre-orders, I get one free. So – what are you waiting for? Chop-chop. 3DO Kid likes free add-ons for his stuff.

Joking aside - this device might bring Linux to the 3DO and other utilities. Fitting a hard drive to enough 3DO machines, for the right price, might breath life back into the 3DO ARM architecture yet. We can but hope. There are also rumors of an SDK to allow homebrew development for the 3DO, again from the Freedo chaps. It's at that acorn stage for the 3DO. Or perhaps the 3DO is truly dead? Dammit, not while Cell flows through 3DOkid's veins, its not.

The developers.

I pinged an email over to an independent Jaguar hardware developer based in my home town of Cambridge - a company called SgM Electrosoft - and asked - why keep developing for the Atari Jaguar?

The answer was simple: He had been a fan of Atari since the early arcade days and the days of the VCS 2600. He also believes the Jaguar is a good system. He says he saw people at Jagfest UK playing Worms (Yes, worms on a Jag!?) passing the controller around and thought he could make an elegant solution to fix that. He then did. Frankly – that’s amazing. He also wishes to continue supporting the Jaguar.

Asked what he would develop with unlimited resources the answer was simple. A VR Headset. He also talked of a lightgun. It’s difficult not to get enthusiastic – a lottery win and I’d happily hand over the money for a VR headset or a lightgun to be developed for the Jaguar – I really would. But this chap isn’t the only one. There is a small army of homebrew hardware developers laboring away in the Atari hardware mines.

But there is a problem. Money. It costs to make this stuff, yet some people don’t seem to appreciate this. Charge too much and people won’t buy it. Charge too little and you won’t cover your costs. It is perhaps the way of the world – still, it would be nice if something could be done.

The ambitions of the Freedo guys are well documented on their forum: A Dreamcast port, an Xbox port, a Freedo hardware machine – that’s right, Freedo running on dedicated Freedo hardware. Close your mouth. But again money and time stands between these guys and their ambitious dreams. Perhaps someone could support these homebrew developers? They could provide a pool of cash and marketing. It would be a hot bed of recruitment potential if nothing else. Someone to offer a gentle nod of approval to these guys that keep the original 32-bit dream alive.

The only conclusion.

The 3DO gets a bit of a kicking in the homebrew department. The Jaguar is truly king of the two, but in my honest opinion, all the 3DO needs is support.

Which brings me on to my final topic: an unholy alliance. Devin from the CDi Interactive network and yours truly, 3DO Kid, famed for the last truly great 3DO blogs, have formed an alliance – in part to defeat the evil Atarians, in part to start a online forum. It's something like the AtariAge site and the Jagware site combined?

The new 3DO Zero forum includes general 3DO related chit-chat, information and 3DO-related chin wagging, and a private forum for anyone with esoteric 3DO curios, ARM, Oprah or Cell programming experience, or something to share. “Join us”, or bow to a world with a blood red fountain.

…Trip? Trip? Are you there…?

So - Round 3 in this epic battle of 32-bit hardware goes to the Jaguar. Bugger.

Jaguar: 2. 3DO: 1.

Posted by 3dokid at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

The current glut of Web 2.0-related funding for 'social media' and aggregator sites of many and ridiculous kinds hasn't extended too far into the video game biz, thus far - and that's probably good, because the last thing we need is VCs targeting the game biz with dubiously overoptimistic aspirations of Google-size greatness. However, game search engine Wazap has just announced a $7.9 million round of funding, presumably by dangling some choice game industry demographics in front of investors.

According to the WebProNews report: "Wazap is scheduled to launch in the United States in February... Vertical and niche searches are becoming all the rage, and with the video game industry ripe for takeoff in 2007, the timing for a U.S. launch of the gaming search engine couldn't be better." Hmm... you know what, I'm going to call shenanigans on this one, and here's why.

Firstly, as you guys may remember, Ziff Davis launched Gazerk last E3 - a branded game search engine with the might of editorial sites like 1UP behind it. That went just about nowhere, I'm afraid - interestingly, I just found a discussion of Gazerk and Wazap on the Search Engine Lowdown website. This doesn't augur well for Wazap, which has no such editorial sites to drive eyeballs.

And more to the point, check out this Alexa graph showing the major Wazap sites - as can be seen, it's Wazap.jp which is driving most of the traffic, and a visit to a game page on Wazap.jp reveals a site (running since 2001 or so!) that has little to do with search engines - it's much more of a GameFAQs-style site, with messageboards, cheats, and release info for each game. It's a really nice site, but 'search engine'? Nope.

However, Wazap.de, the much newer site (here's a results page for Children Of Mana) is much closer to a 'gaming search engine', with vanilla web results alongside eBay/retail store purchase links, etc. This is presumably what Wazap is intending to roll out in the States - and honestly, I don't see it making much of a splash.

So, the Search Engine Lowdown site raves: "According to eMarketer, 40% of American adults play video games (35% female, 45% male). When those percentages are converted into sheer numbers and sales, that is a staggering market to enter." No, no, no - this is missing the point. When I want to search for info about video games, I use Google. When it's about video game news, I use Google News (for formal reports) and Technorati (for less formal reports).

So, in conclusion - VC funders need to think more carefully about what they're supporting. For me (and, I believe, most people) - here's absolutely nothing specific about games that would make we want to remember to switch to a game-only search engine. Would I switch to a dog-specific search engine when looking for info about my dachshund? Nope.

What Wazap needs is its Japanese site (which is smart, but has pretty much nothing to do with the horribly buzzwordy 'search') rolled out over all territories, and it needs to have done that back in, uhm, 2000 or so in order to have built up a significant community, which is the one thing money can't buy. Still, I don't imagine venture money extends to funding time reversal just yet?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This one has been floating around for a bit, but is worth linking - Time Magazine's Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates has a piece up called 'Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer', in which he talks about his MMO semi-addiction in pretty bald terms.

I'm not sure labeling himself simply as a 'gamer' is fair to gamers as a whole - this is specifically MMO addiction, as opposed to playing Tetris on the way home - but his MMO experiences are stark, of course: "I retreated to my old haven of video games and purchased Everquest, the forerunner to WoW. The dude at the counter rang me up and laughed as he said "Picking up Evercrack, I see." I didn't fully get the joke until two years later."

Oh? "By then I was playing the game 16 hours a day. I'd gained 30 pounds. I didn't have a job. The end came one weekend when I played a marathon session, which I only interrupted for trips to Dunkin' Donuts. I quit, lost the weight, and put my life back in order." However, he does make a good and fair point in there: "What I came to understand was that WoW was not necessarily an escape, but a surrogate for a community that is harder and harder to find in the real world." So, not a hatchet job, at all - but bald and thought-provoking. It may just be the headline that bothers me? [Via T-I.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Fellow Game Developer magazine editor Brandon Sheffield has gone update-crazy with Insert Credit over the long holiday weekend, and his most notable update deals with the two original IP Game Boy Advance titles recently released by slightly odd new U.S. publisher Graffiti Entertainment.

I knew about one of them: "Mazes of Fate is a first person dungeon game from argentina of all places (Sabrasa), and seems to have very deep systems, branching paths, and a lot of gameplay time (if you're into that - I prefer shorter games). "

But I was not aware of the other: "Next there's Back to Stone (French in origin, pictured here). It's a 3/4 view action RPG along the linds of LandStalker (sort of kind of). There aren't a whole lot of impressions of it around the internet, so here are some from comic-kaze of the sngp forums: "Great concept, and the first bits reminded me of great oblique angled 2D games. It has a promising combat system and a lot of puzzles mostly involving beating up enemies and turning them to blocks of stone and then knocking the stones around to get them to land on special tiles to unlock keys."" Ta, Brandon!

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

Thanks to Thuyen Nguyen for passing on the following neatness: "I've made a sit-com pilot about a games company. Shot in Melbourne, it's a cross between The IT Crowd and The Office." It's called 'Work & Play', and it's available for viewing on Revver.

Thuyen comments: "I wouldn't say it's a professional production, but it definitely isn't two guys in front of a webcam either. Perhaps of note, it was shot at IR Gurus, who made Heroes of the Pacific, and the upcoming Heatseeker. So even if the video doesn't tickle your fancy, you can treat it as a pseudo studio tour :)" He adds: "Please note that this is a personal production, and not commissioned by IR Gurus in any way."

Well, it certainly does feel a bit IT Crowd-y, and it's obviously a little bit low-budget, but it's fun to wander through, if only to see what a series set at a video game developer might be like.

Talking of which, did you guys spot that a new animated show called Code Monkeys has been announced for G4, and will "tell the stories of old-school game coders Dave and Jerry, whose wacky, surreal adventures are told through Super Nintendo style videogame art." Also, can I plug the video game developer murder mystery graphic novel I started a couple of years back, but will probably never finish? I can? Excellent.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I keep stumbling into interesting niche fansite 2006 best-ofs way after 2007 has started, but there's no reason not to mention them here - in this case, the LucasArts super-duper-hardcore at International House Of Mojo's 2006 Year In Review round-up, which is tres entertaining.

Really, it's notable if you have any idea who Bad Brain Entertainment are, and work out who can be bothered to do a cartoon featuring their CEO as The Office's David Brent - here's a hint to why adventure fans may be so motivated, by the way.

There's also a slightly hilarious second page in which the writer insists that Double Fine should start making episodic games, but Telltale should stop making episodic games (no, really!), before it ends up in an honest to goodness 'best of' list, and Sam & Max 2 gets best game of the year from the assorted adventure game zombies. Anyhow, there's something curiously evangelical about the LucasArts sect, and I think I've been brainwashed. Threeeepwooooood! Threeeeepwoooood!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reports to this effect have been floating around for a while (ever since the joint Brian Eno/Will Wright lecture for the Long Now foundation last year), but a recent Berlin lecture by ambient music maestro Eno, written up at WWMNA, seems to have confirmed that Eno is curating the Spore soundtrack, a very neat revelation.

The write-up of the Berlin lecture explains: "Generativity plays a role in many fields now, with gaming being no exception. Also built around this notion and probably one of the currently most eagerly awaited games is Will Wright's Spore, for which Brian Eno, as he revealed, will be making the soundtrack! He was asked to do it, because the designers wanted sound that is just a procedural as the game itself, instead of the loops which are tied to certain stages or areas which we are used to experience in games."

What's more, Eno "...went on to demonstrate a simple software called "The Shuffler" which he uses to create fragments for the soundtrack of Spore and which even with a simple combination of samples possibly would never create the same composition twice within a lifetime." So basically, it's a bit like Koan Pro only crazily wired into a game? Of course, one might ask what Eno is doing if the music is infinitely different every time, but I guess he's the... DJ? [Via The-Inbetween.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['Roboto-chan!' is a fortnightly column by Ollie Barder which covers videogames that feature robots and the pop-cultural folklore surrounding them. This week's column gives a brief rundown of two main design features that have been responsible for the enduring success of Japanese mecha.]

There are two facets of the mecha pop-cultural mythos that are synonymous with it being pant wettingly awesome. They’ve spawned toys that have caused riots due to their subsequent demand and more importantly forged tenets of mecha design that survive until this day.

These are the respective abilities of combination (gattai) and transformation (henkei). In game playing terms these abilities are also something of note, though we have yet to see Japanese gaming truly catch up in terms of useable functionality.

More after the jump…

In 1972 Go Nagai penned what would be one of the first super robots, it was Mazinger Z and it utilised the now famed rocket punch attack and also had a detachable cockpit. Following on from this modular approach, Nagai went onto create an equally important series that of Getter Robo in 1974.

Getter Robo was important because it actually featured three fighter planes that combined into three different robots. This was the first “gattai” sequence in anime and despite both Nagai and the animators fudging the sequence (as in having the respective parts grow and morph in a rather organic manner) it started the ball rolling nonetheless.

It wasn’t long at all until the eponymous Raideen undertook the first ever “henkei” by transforming into the fearfully fast God Bird. The transformation differed from the gattai due to the Raideen not needing any further parts to change, but merely performed a set of movements that utilised the innate abilities of the mecha.

Technically speaking though, most gattai sequences involve a fair bit of henkei. Take Combattler V for example, each of its five component parts need to perform a mild form of henkei in order to successfully complete the overall gattai. This is also true for almost every gattai sequence in anime and manga history.

Amongst fans this often causes fierce and suitably wild-eyed debate, in that gattai and henkei are actually the same ability. In some instances this is partially true but on the whole the abilities are disparate. Simply because the henkei used in gattai are partial ones and not full on functional mode changes (unlike the Raideen’s God Bird for instance).

Both of these abilities have impressive though obviously problematic gameplay implementations. In terms of direct control, mecha that have different functional modes are an inherent headache. In the case of SEGA’s moderately recent Macross game on the PlayStation 2, the engine was based of the Aero Dancing series.

So whilst the flight control was superb for the multi-mode variable fighters, with subtle and refined control expected from a flight simulator, upon transformation the engine had to compensate in a rather clumsy manner for the other two modes of GERWALK and battroid.

Battroid was given a very rigid lock-on system, that whilst serviceable was incredibly overt and lacked the finer precison of the fighter. Whereas GERWALK was simply a mess, with neither fighter or battroid controls having priority leaving the player to muddle through.

The depressing thing is that SEGA’s Macross game is actually one of the better entries into the mecha gaming pantheon and at least attempted to cover the henkei in moderately useable gameplay form (you honestly don't want to know about the VF-X games).

The more common approach is to either create mecha with similar abilities between their respective modes or to take away player control almost entirely. In the case of the former, the Capcom beat-em-up, Choukou Senki Kikaioh features a gattai themed mecha piloted by two boisterous boys, called the Twinzam V it flicks quickly between the modes performing the gattai in lightning fast time. Whilst the gattai has occurred it wasn’t a controlled manoeuvre merely one that was triggered.

The latter case is that of the Super Robot Wars games where mecha like the Dancouga combine beyond the reach of the player but reward them nonetheless with a heroic pose for the camera followed by the brief though impressive act of raw mechanical carnage.

Few games nail henkei let alone gattai sequences, even those with a robust anime license acting as a helpful guide. This is not to say that it’s impossible but the fault doesn’t lie with game developers so much the fact that Go Nagai et al faked the abilities so as to maximise their visual impact.

This is something that was belied by the various toys released that were unable to accurately mimic their animated counterparts. Gaming suffers a similar affliction due to the nature of game engines being built upon real world variables.

Admittedly, there are games that are forced to look at these abilities as a whole such as From Software’s Another Century’s Episode franchise and even the ill-fated Gun Metal approached henkei in a similar manner (though with the latter creating your own mecha does afford a greater amount of freedom in building the engine, however without suitably iconic design it doesn’t always pay off, something that Battle Engine Aquila subsequently verified).

Eventually, gaming will catch up and accurately reproduce anime-esque henkei and gattai sequences in full blown form but until that day we shall have to entertain ourselves by simply shouting Change Getter...a lot.

[Ollie Barder is a freelance journalist who's written for The Guardian, appeared on BBC Radio 4 and contributed to Japanese mecha artbooks. He lives at home with an ever growing collection of Japanese die-cast robot toys and a very understanding wife.]

Posted by oliieb at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Semi-via the neeto Steam Review, I spotted a Brazilian site named 'Online Gaming Zeitgeist', which is particularly handy because it uses GameSpy's online server list for many popular PC FPSes to create graphs over time of game popularity - revealing plenty of interesting trends!

Though it doesn't try to be canonical (and there are plenty of caveats involved from just using GameSpy's lists!), there's an interesting post about 'The Christmas Effect' which reveals of the holiday PC game gift-giving bonanza: "The first thing to notice is that Battlefield 2142 was the obvious winner this Christmas. While it still doesn’t have the popularity of games such as Half-life 1, Half-life 2 and even its older brother Battlefield 2, the holiday season has given it a second breath and the chance to revert what was a sharp drop in its number of online players." There are still more Battlefield 2 players, mind you.

Also fascinating - a graph on 'The Day Steam Stopped', showing the massive and obvious effects on Half-Life game playing for a storm-related outage, and a trends preview for 2007, which had a smart 'big question': "Will there be enough fans of online, vehicular-based mayhem to pay off the investment made by [Unreal Tournament 2007]’s and [Enemy Territory: Quake Wars]’ developers? Will they crush Battlefield, be crushed, or just split the player base? Hard to say by now, but should be an interesting thing to watch."

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, this is news that should really be left for JohnH's regular '@Play' GSW on the subject, but since he's not posting again til next weekend, I'd better to it for him - a NeoGAF thread reveals that a Japanese remake of Rogue for the PlayStation 2 has been announced, blimey!

The always slightly grumpy Duckroll (who can read the Japanese!), comments in the thread: "This is being published by Compile Heart [here's an Insert Credit post on them - as commenters note: "They are a descendant of legendary developer Compile. Moo Niitani, creator of Puyo Puyo, works there. Right now they are developing an original puzzle game for arcade and Wii."].... It is being developed by Plophet, a tiny developer best known for the D3 published Simple series games The Maze and The Dungeon RPG. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that the "supervisor" is the Japanese guy that originally translated Rogue and all support docs into Japanese." Informative, if glass half-empty!

Anyhow, the game is called Rogue Hearts Dungeon, and there's a Game Watch Japanese-language piece with lots more pics - here's the Wikipedia page for Rogue for those wondering about its history. I wonder how the copyright/licensing worked in this case, if at all? Also, some hyper-niche publisher should pick this up for the States, hah.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Just went and picked up the February 2007 issue of Official Xbox Magazine at GameStop this weekend - mainly because myself and Alistair Wallis helped them out by doing a mini-feature on game engines (from Unreal through Source and beyond!), but I was also struck by the redeeming features of their cover-disc this month.

Since most Xbox 360 demos are freely downloadable from Xbox Live, it's obviously a much harder sell to get people to buy a magazine with an included disc (which reminds me - if you're going to, subscribe online instead of buying it from stores - it's $24.95 for a year's subscription but $9.95 on newsstands for each issue!), but I noted a couple of smart things about this latest issue that are worth pointing out.

Firstly, there are two Oblivion add-ons which normally cost Xbox Live Marketplace Points, freely available on the Feb disc - Wizard's Tower (150 points) and Thieves Den (150 points) - so that's $3.75 of content just there, if I've done my math right. I believe this is the first time they've done this, and honestly, they should try to do it every disc - I know there have been exclusive wallpaper and gamer icons before, though - Xbox.com has a great fan-made list of all the OXM coverdiscs and their content, alongside an insanely detailed OXM reviews/contents thread.

Also - and possibly cooler - there have been two or three Japan-only Xbox 360 demos on the OXM cover-discs. Obviously, they're actually in, uhm, Japanese, but it's definitely neat to get a look at these easily (though you do have to 'unlock' them by playing the other demos, which is either enticing or annoying, depending on who you talk to). The ones I spotted so far were Zegapain XOR, which was on the Issue 62 coverdisc, Tenchu Senran, on the Issue 65 coverdisc, and finally, Zegapain NOT, which is on this latest Issue 67 coverdisc. This latter title is a Namco Bandai and Cavia mech title with some pretty nice graphics and reasonably fun, though rather twitchy shooter gameplay - somewhat in the Z.O.E. style?

[Also, there are obviously attempts to have some demos be exclusive to Official Xbox Magazine - but I'm not sure how well that works, since there's no reason not to have them on Xbox Live too. OXM ran into this problem before Xmas, when Rainbow 6 Las Vegas was allegedly delayed from appearing on XBL in the U.S. so it would debut in the magazine first. No idea if that's true, but even the idea ends up harboring ill will in today's connected world, I'm afraid.]

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

["Beyond Tetris" is a column from Tony "Tablesaw" Delgado about puzzle games that transcend mere abstract action and instead plunge deep into the heart of problem-solving. Today is the beginning of a two-part article on one of the most grueling puzzle marathons available, the MIT Mystery Hunt.]

In 1980, a graduate student at the Masschusetts Institute of Technology named Brad Schaefer hid a valuable coin on the campus of his Boston college and wrote a few devious riddles leading to its location on a sheet of paper. Since then, the IAP Mystery Hunt has grown in size scope and importance; and while the puzzles were once bound on paper, the growing intricacies of the puzzles have turned the game into something increasingly dependent on computers.

Today, the Mystery Hunt has some unusual traditions. Puzzles are distinct, and lead to an answer that is a word or a phrase. Then, all of the answers in a round feed into another puzzle called a metapuzzle. Completing these metapuzzles help a team progress through the Hunt until they can find the location of a "coin," which has recently been anything from a small disk to a snowglobe. And Mystery Hunt puzzles tend to have very unusual twists to them. Something that appears to be a crossword might be something totally different. The unsual text introducing a puzzle (called "flavor text") can hold critical, if abstract, clues. And sometimes, you just need to know the MIT campus.

This article is going to be a little weird. When this Part I goes live, the Hunt will be over. But right now, as I write it, I'm in the headquarters of the team running the Hunt. In 2006, my Hunt team, The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb at Midnight, won the Hunt and consequently was awarded the duty of running the 2007 Hunt. Since that time, we've been frantically planning the game and writing the puzzles, and now thirty-eight teams and hundreds of players are finding their way through our maze of enigmas.

To maintain secrecy, I cannot reveal much about the meat of the 2007 Hunt at this time, so I'll be writing more about it later this week, when I return from Boston. You can look at the address of the current hunt, but I can't guarantee that there'll be anything there. It could be all of the puzzles from the 2007 Hunt, it could be none of them. But in the meantime, I'm going to talk a bit about Hunts past with an eye, of course, toward videogames

Going Online
Back in 1988, about sixty people arrived in Lobby 7 to grab photocopied packets - a much smaller event. On Friday, the lobby was filled to brimming with players (with hundreds more still in respective team headquarters) who received a handout with no puzzles, just URLs, usernames, passwords, and e-mail addresses. The hunt is being staffed by about a dozen people, with ten laptops and a server.

The computers have proliferated for many reasons. Foremost is the monumental effect that search engines have had on the discovery of trivia. Back in 1980, a puzzle was made difficult by checking all the related books out of the MIT library. Obviously, that's no longer an option. Since the proliferation of Google (and its predecessors like Alta Vista) and other repositories of trivia like Wikipedia, it's become more common to see trivia puzzles about identifying pictures or music instead of answering written questions.

More importantly, bringing the puzzles online have created an opportunity for more complex organization. In 2003, the Hunt took on a theme of The Matrix. In addition to normal time-released rounds, teams could "take the red pill" that would unlock an entirely new "world" of puzzles outside of the Matrix. These Reality puzzles were ironically patterened after a text adventure maze. In this complicated web of twisty puzzles (all different), a team could only progress to a new puzzle when they had solved a puzzle adjacent to it on the web. This kind of node-based distribution has become a standard, and requires solvers to have logins and passwords and organizers to have complex databases and servers.

Games Within Games
Though programming and electrical engineering have been common subjects for Hunt puzzles, videogames usually take a back seat. The notable exception has been Infocom text adventures, which have appeared at least twice. Certainly, videogames like Mario's Picross, which are common as pencil-and-paper puzzles, have made several appearances. The 2004 and 2006 Hunts, written by somewhat younger teams, had more videogames, like in this Dance Dance Revolution puzzle, an Angband puzzle, and this general videogame puzzle.

Playing videogames is actually more common. In 2001, one "puzzle" was just a command to have someone visit headquarters. Once there, teams had to beat Adventure on the Atari 2600 to receive their answer. But most often, teams will devise their own games for teams to play. Web-based mazes are common; very little is still available from the 1996 Hunt but this Godel Escher Bach–themed maze is. And there are lots of applets which are, of course, harder than your average web-based Java games, since they are specificall designed for the Hunt. This maze from the 2003 Hunt follows some unusual rules, and this maze from 2005 is far too large to actually be played through. Other games make solvers play through more difficult variations of very common games, as in Pentris and Feel Your Way.

Getting Up to Date

The last seven years of Mystery Hunts are available online in their entirety, along with partial records of the twenty years previous. There are more videogame puzzles waiting to be discovered, and there are hundreds of other challenges to be found. Most importantly, perhaps, the last seven years of puzzles all have answers available, so if you aren't used to these types of puzzles or don't have the time to solve them completely, you can still get a sense of the elegance and ingenuity behind them.

And finally, an update, I'm finishing Part I on Sunday morning, and I can announce that the first team to find the coin was Dr. Awkward, though other teams have followed close behind. I'll be writing about the whole experience soon, so keep reading Game Set Watch until then!

Posted by tablesaw at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Another good site that lacks an RSS feed is RPGFan, and thus I just spotted (a little late, perhaps!) that the Japanese RPG-centric site has its 2006 Game Of The Year Awards online, with some interesting perspectives.

The best overall RPG of the year, according to the folks there? Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII, of course, for which it's explained: "How dazzlingly unexpected! While most of you out there were expecting either this game or Twilight Princess to snag this award, the long development cycle and change of pace for Final Fantasy XII left many gamers waiting in trepidation. Luckily, the new team delivers completely."

There's also a slightly hidden page of editor picks, for which the most relatively unexpected pick is Lost Magic for the DS: "I know what you're thinking: "how did some short, dinky DS game end up on a top five list?" Let me spell it out for you. This RTS/RPG hybrid made better use of the DS's capabilities than any other RPG on the handheld to date."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over at casual site Gamezebo, they have a review of Belle's Beauty Boutique, a game where the eponymous hero "...gets to run her very own beauty parlor and do her best to satisfy the demands of the assorted customers who walk through the door."

As the reviewer notes: "Like other Diner Dash-inspired games, Belle's Beauty Boutique challenges players to keep customers happy by making sure they receive the services they ask for. This involves seating customers in the appropriate chairs depending on whether they ask for a wash, cut, blow dry, manicure or dye job, and then cleaning the station afterwards if they've left a mess behind."

I found the game interesting both because it shows how super-influential Diner Dash has been, and also because of comments made at Wonderland Blog on it by Alice: "Ultimately though, I can't help but lament the existence of these types of games. I was always the stalwart supporter of just better marketing, as there are (IMO) enough games out there that girls would love, if they just knew about them or understood that they weren't just for army-loving chaps. If girls do get games specifically targeted to them (as they will), if there's a broad and neverending supply of Games For Girls, I worry that their diet of gaming may end up being sugar and spice all the way."

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (56)

We present a handy pointer to the latest 'Retro Roundup' over at 1UP.com, which is definitely the best explanation of all that console retro goodness released every week - and we applaud it!

As well as Jumping Flash for PSP and Ms. Pac-Man for XBLA, also profiled is Dungeon Explorer for the PC Engine/Turbografx 16, for which it's explained:

"There are two factors that might get in the way of your enjoyment of Dungeon Explorer: One, its graphics look awful on Virtual Console due to the Wii's inexplicably sub-standard video output quality for TG16 games. We're not sure if this is a Nintendo problem or a Hudson problem, but either way someone needs a stern talking-to. And two, Dungeon Explorer is not made for solo play. It's a Gauntlet-like medieval shooter with characters who have D&D-level hit points."

Toasty continues: "It's pretty unforgiving, and a single-player game can end rather abruptly. But with a friend? Dungeon Explorer is almost kind of magical. And with four friends (it supports five players) it's so magical the David Copperfield starts getting envious. It's not for everyone, but as a quick, stupid party game it sure beats another lame Mario Party sequel."

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['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.]

A bit of advertising kicks off our magazine roundup for this week. For those of you deeply interested in all the little nooks and crannies of magazine history, the unofficial DVDs on sale from zzap64.co.uk are really a must -- the complete runs of over 20 British game and computer magazines are available in scanned-JPG format, including the twin publications (CRASH and Zzap!64) that pretty much defined what UK game mags would look like for the next quarter-century.

Three new magazines have been added in the past couple weeks that are well worth looking into: Mean Machines Sega was the premiere Sega-console mag in the country for the late-Genesis/early-Saturn era (and also features some of Julian Rignall's last writing for print mags); Commodore Disk User is a tech-oriented Commodore mag; and Computer Age is a very early (and pretty short-lived) computer-hobbyist title in the style of Byte or Creative Computing.

It's all available for sale on their non-publisher-supported site (and the cash helps them track down and scan other mags), but you can actually find many of the series available free for download if you poke around long enough -- for example, the World of Spectrum archive contains all of the mags from the zzap64.co.uk collections that included any coverage for the 8-bit Spectrum computer. Have fun.

With that out of the way, click on for a full look at all the new US game mags of the past fortnight.

Games for Windows: The Official Magazine February 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: The Crossing

This is GFW's "101 Free Games" issue, which was a yearly occasion in the CGW days, arguably reaching its peak back in '03 when they included a DVD with Deus Ex and a couple other "real" games. The mag's long been discless, however, and so this feature is instead your typical roundup of screenshots, quick paragraph descriptions, and URLs.

Otherwise: The main feature is devoted to The Crossing, which is a hot exclusive on a game which sounds positively fruity -- France, crazy templar superheroes, "cross-play" -- and I can't wait to see it execute half of what it promises. There's also a four-page roundtable (featuring everyone from Frank O'Connor to Orson Scott Card) discussing the issue of why videogame stories suck. (Frank O doesn't get into what happened with Halo 2, but it's still a fun read.)

Over in reviews: It's a downright bad month for the big-name titles, as Gothic 3, Heroes of Might & Magic V, the LOTR strategy sequel, and Splinter Cell all get average evaluations. Phantasy Star Universe ties for the top score, which a lot of other mags would probably disagree with.

Massive Magazine #2

Cover: Some taur

EIC Steve Bauman brings up an interesting topic in his editorial this issue that I wouldn't mind discussing in-depth myself sometime: "Our surveys show that you want previews, reviews, and news. WIth zillions of websites out there featuring that material, we feel this magazine can focus on some of the other entertaining parts of gaming." As he points out, MMOs inherently lend themselves better to more off-beat features and examination than the standard magazine-review format would allow.

And indeed, the only very standard game-mag-type feature in this issue is six pages up front that tour the WoW: The Burning Crusade beta. Right after that, though, comes a story on a guy who took a troll to level 60 in WoW without ever wearing any armor, and even though it's a tiny piece, I still found it more fun to read than that big WOW:TBC feature. I'd say Bauman has the right idea here.

Proving this point: There are all manner of interesting features in Massive #2, including: a look at the "big five" last-gen MMOs (Everquest, Uo, Asheron's Call, DAoC and Anarchy Online) and how they're doing now; a collection of silly anecdotes related to player-killing in all its many forms; the story of a man who ran an incredible Ponzi scheme on EVE Online and made about $45,000 in real money off it; and (incredible coincidence here) a piece that attempts to look into the mind of griefers.

It's really nothing but interesting features (even to non-MMO people) from start to finish, and I'd highly recommend any gamer to pick this one up if they want something to really sink their teeth into this month. It's enough to make me wonder what a magazine like this, but not just limited to the MMO genre, would be like.

Computer Games February 2007

Cover: The Most Anticipated Games of 2007

I feel kind of bad for saying this, but these days I'm much more psyched for every new issue of Massive over Computer Games, even though they're from the same publisher and basically the same writers. Why is this? I think it's because, even as Bauman and crew are creating quite literally a new form of game magazine over on Massive, with CGM they're still stuck working within the strictly defined boundaries of what readers expect from a PC game mag.

This issue of CGM has a bit of self-parody along these lines, including a page-sized "Mad Lib Preview" that pokes mercilessly at the typical game-mag filler -- "Powered by the (EXCLAMATION) Engine, its (PLURAL NOUN) are (ADJECTIVE), and feature excellent shader (PLURAL NOUN) to create (ADJECTIVE) water and some very (ADJECTIVE) (PLURAL ANIMAL)."

Still: The main story in this mag is one of the oldest tricks in the game-mag bag: the old "Top hits of the upcoming year" preview roundup. 22 games (and a certain operating system) get quick previews in this section, and everything from Spore to Bus Driver gets coverage. Not badly done...but it also strikes me that this is just the sort of thing the same editors are trying to avoid filling the pages with in Massive.

Maximum PC Presents The Ultimate Guide to PC Gaming Hardware

Look out, soldier! Another Future special! This one features a lot of original content and comes with a CD demo of Sid Meier's Railroads!, which makes it somewhat more worth the $9.99 price -- but, then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for two-page spreads of bare PC hardware with lots of arrows pointing at bits of it.

PSM February 2007 (Podcast)

A decided lack of PS3 stuff happening currently means that PSM does another hardware cover after just doing one a coupla months ago. This time they do an exhaustive comparison between the PS3 and Xbox 360, one that claims to be unbiased on the cover. Is that true? Well, yes, actually. The face-off feature itself features equal amounts of Chris Slate and OXM editor Francesca Reyes, and every section of it tries to give both systems equal coverage in the Fox News "fair and balanced" fashion. The result is not so great for the PS3 -- even Slate must admit up to it in the end: "I'm a big believer in what Sony has planned for the PS3 -- I just wish that more of it had been ready at launch."

Even better: There's a news piece labeled "PS3: How Not to Launch A Console," which goes over all the problems Sony's facing with their new system right now and gives the overall launch a C+ grade. And you thought Future mags were all about blind fandom.

Also: PSM gave Okami their Game of the Year award. Rock on. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is the front-runner of a review section packed with the also-rans of the Christmas season.

Tips & Tricks February 2007

The second issue of T&T after Bill Kunkel became editor-in-chief also features the first editorial written by the guy himself. "We're in the midst of some major changes here," he writes, "but we believe that it's all about added value with no loss of the content that has made us the leading strategy magazine in the business for more than a dozen years."

Part of those major changes include making their website a serious place for cheats and strategies -- but, for now, Kunkel's invited all of us to the mag's MySpace page.

The upfront section: This month the mag kicks off with "IMHO," three pages of T&T's editors giving their answers to some classic debate topics (What's the most underrated game ever? What's the best power-up?) and invites readers to contribute their answers. If this manages to keep its momentum, it could be a neat regular column -- and a very Kunkel-y one, too, I should add.

[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 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a random question for all you smartasses out there - I was playing Capcom Classics Collection Remixed on my PSP during my commute the other day, and checking out the intro for Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts reminded me of the ever-dangerous gargoyle Red Arremer's own starring roles.

When I had a Game Boy back in 1991 or so, I picked up an import version of Gargoyle's Quest, which is, of course, one of the three spin-offs starring Red Arremer/Firebrand as "a gargoyle who is predestined to be the Red Blaze who saves the Ghoul Realm from the evil wrath of King Breager and brings peace to the land once again." Uh, right! But it was a fun little monochromatic title, nonetheless - and Demon's Crest for SNES is also pretty fun.

So my question to you guys is: How many video game villains can you name who subsequently starred in their own video games?

Please reply below in the comments - I'm imagining that someone will quickly go ahead and name a couple related to a certain Kyoto-dwelling console hardware company - and please do - but I'm also interested in some of the more obscure ones too, since I'm sure they exist and I sure can't place them.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Michael 'Zonk' Zenke handily points me to a series of great Ultima Online retrospectives over at Nerfbat.com, written by Ryan Shwayder, formerly of SOE, and now of Green Monster Games (yes, the Curt Schilling-founded MMO firm).

The set of posts were actually inspired by Dan Rubenfeld's recently GSW-featured Ultima Online reminiscence - and Shwayder's first post talks about running wild in the seminal MMO: "Sometimes we’d tame a dragon, take him to the inside of one of our keeps, leave it there until it became untamed, and gate unsuspecting people into its deathly lair."

There's also a second part, which coos: "Occasionally, we’d find a relatively unoccupied enemy tower, and we would create a staircase out of crafted items (chairs, tables, or something, I don’t quite remember) to the top of the tower, then assault it from within or simply steal everything and go. Or I’d tame a dragon and have it fetch the items I could see on the inside of a house."

Or even a third one: "Anyone recall the black dye bin craze? The REAL black dye. Jet black, that made you blend into cave walls. Those things were worth a pretty penny after a while." Is it just me, or is some of this stuff more evocative than some World Of Warcraft story recounting, esp. because of the crazy house customization stuff and cheeky exploiting?

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Returning to the Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy-themed Yahoo! Group to see if anyone cared about my recently GSW-published article on the subject (yes, yes, vanity!), I came across something pretty amazing - 'Manic Miner, The Opera'.

Composer Colin Broom explains: "A while back (just over a year ago)I was commissioned to compose some music for 'The Franz Kafka Big Band', a radio comedy show on BBC Radio Scotland. The comedy is pretty offbeat and knowing the writer as well as I do, I'm never too surprised at the ideas he wants to do."

"Anyway, one of these was a sketch about trying to make classical music appeal to a younger audience, and involved the supposed premiere of 'Manic Miner: the Opera', an opera about Miner Willy and his journey through the mines, which I had to compose sections of. There were three sections composed: I - Central Cavern; II - Eugene's Lair; III - Warehouse." [.MP3 links!]

Needless to say, this is an awesome idea - and it's carried out really well, too! Of course, only on unlikely places like BBC Scotland would an almost 25-year-old video game be considered likely "to make classical music appeal to a younger audience", but it's certainly right up my personal comedy alley, so all's right with the world.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think word of GSW appreciating some of the freeware and indie adventure games made using AGS is getting out, because we got a new email from the devs at Herculean Effort: "I was wondering if you would be interested in checking out our new game, Super Jazz Man, which was released not long ago."

There's actually a YouTube trailer for the game, too, which "...puts you in the unitard and cape of a musical superhero who waits tables at the Zanzibar restaurant under the cover of night.. After playing a weekend concert that revolutionizes the local airwaves, our saxophonist receives a phone call at work." There's an interesting ethnicity-related comment in the YouTube comments for the game, but I'm presuming that the trailer just presents the game unfortunately in that regard.

In any case, there's a playable demo of the game available for PC - the full version is $8.95 for download from the Herculean Effort website. In addition, the Super Jazz Man folks comment: "You may already be familiar with our freeware point-and-click games Apprentice and Apprentice 2." Indeed - both of these are high quality, free AGS games.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['MMOG Nation' is a weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week's column looks back at 2006, and tries to give out credit and blame in equal measure.]

Despite 2006's expiration date already having past, it's the solemn duty of anyone with a column to reflect on what has come before. It's vitally important that we remember the best and worst moments of the previous year, so that when people screw up this year we can say we saw it coming. This year, of all years, it's even more important that we keep the past in mind. All three 'next-gen' consoles are now on the market, pundits are shouting from the rooftops about the 'revitalization' of PC Gaming, and there are at least two or three AAA Massive titles likely to be launched this year. At the end of this year, we'll be able to look back with 20/20 hindsight on what is sure to be a unique span of time in Massive Gaming. In the meantime, we can take that same look back on a year that ... well, wasn't that unique. Nothing huge launched, nothing big went under, and the only industry-shaking news was the 'death' of E3, something talked about at great length in many corners of the internet already. Just the same, there were some good times and some bad times this year that are worth noting. Read on for a listing of the tin badges I picked up at the corner store: the 2006 MMOG Nation awards.

The Big Winner Award

EVE Online - When EVE launched in 2003, it was competing with several other titles for the Sci-Fi niche of the Massive genre. At the start of 2007, it's almost the only contender left. Games like Anarchy Online or Star Wars Galaxies are just jokes now, and direct competitor Earth and Beyond has had its doors shuttered for quite some time now. That EVE is the only really viable SF MMOG running would be noteworthy enough, but 2006 saw the game just explode in popularity. A CCG, a new expansion, CCP's acquisition of White Wolf Games ... last year was an exciting time for the title. It is constantly topping itself for new 'most players' numbers, and unless something drastic happens I think 2007 is going to be a fantastic year for EVE as well. EVE isn't my thing, and I'm definitely not sure I agree with the MMORPG.com community awards. Just the same, I'd like to think I'm smart enough to know a good thing when I see it: EVE is a title to watch, in 2007 and beyond.

The World of Warcraft Award

World of Warcraft - I think this is an award every Massive award list should just have, so people don't have to vote on WoW in other categories. WoW just wins the World of Warcraft Award, and that's that. What is there to say? The new expansion launches next Tuesday, on the heels of the announcement that the game has hit 8 Million subscribers. 2 million people in the U.S. play the game. Last year WoW became a CCG, the topic of a South Park episode, a meeting place, the new font from which all game addiction flows, and the template for every fantasy-genre Massive game to be released in the next decade. We'll see how well she does once the rocky Burning Crusade launch is over and done with, but there's no way this behemoth is going anywhere. WoW is the mountain on the horizon. We'll be using it to orient ourselves for a long, long time to come.

The Good to be Free Award

Guild Wars and Shadowbane - This award mostly goes to Guild Wars, which was designed to be a free title. Shadowbane gets an honorable mention because some dedicated game-makers have kept the 'Play to Crush' title alive, despite reality and business sense telling them to give it up. More deservingly, Guild Wars is a title that is changing things for the better in the Massive neck of the woods. Monthly fee-less, high quality play experiences that aren't transplants from Asia can only serve to enrich the Western appetite for Massive games. I'm sure the next Diablo title is going to be huge, but I personally think that's a waste of time. We've got Guild Wars. What more do we need?

The Anybody Wanna Buy a MMOG Award

Saga of Ryzom - Oh pretty, pretty Ryzom. Such a beautiful, French game. Even your 'roll your own module' gameplay addition, possibly the most inventive idea to be introduced to the Massive genre in years, wasn't enough to keep Nevrax afloat. Saga of Ryzom was finally purchased, and not by the 'Free Ryzom' foundation more's the pity. It's a sad day, though, when such a unique experience has to fight tooth and nail for a spot at the table. With a new crew steering the ship, we can only hope that Ryzom will be able to find more players willing to inhabit its well-decorated and highly unusual niche in the marketplace.

The Green Is Beautiful Award

Warhammer Online - If you'd asked me what I thought about WAR a year ago, I would have grumbled about a poor translation of the RPG experience and then turned away. Having actually heard the (very passionate) devs describing what they're trying to bring to the party, I'm much more inclined to think this is going to work out. Really, Mythic is leading with what they do best: Realm vs. Realm combat. The orcs and skaven and chaos beasts are all along for the ride, but gameplay-wise Mythic is doing what it does best, and turning the amp up to 11. If they pull this off (and that's a big if at this point), I think WAR might be the only game in the offing that can give WoW a well-deserved kick in the pants. Go Greenskins!

The Men In Tights Award

Marvel Universe Online and DC Online - They get to share this one. They'll be when they finally come out, so it seems only fitting that they get started here. While the DC MMOG has been publicly in the works since 2005, the yang to its yin was only announced as of E3 of 2006. The possibility of a fightout between MMOGs for both the DC and Marvel worlds is delicious to behold. If you add in City of Heroes, the three-way battle that will ensue becomes not only fascinating from a gaming perspective, but a business standpoint as well. Two of the games will be run by Cryptic Studios, which has proven itself capable if somewhat unimaginative with the superhero formula. SOE, on the other hand, is a Massive industry leader ... but they've never done anything like a comic-book MMOG before. It's going to be a fight to remember, and so the humble origins are important to remember.

The EverQuest Franchise - Both EQLive and EverQuest 2 saw the launch of kickass expansions this year. In the case of EverQuest, I think the Serpent's Spine justifies its existence in a way that recent developments have not. As for EQ2, World of Warcraft's ugly kid sister has blossomed into a prom queen. Faydwer gives old school players their propers, while introducing new twists and the extremely adorable Fae. The theories rolling around is that the next expansion will offer up a new evil city, and a new evil race. Whatever it is, I hope it can live up to the customization and creativity of the little folk. Say what you will about some of SOE's other properties, but the folks working on EQLive and EQ2 are doing a bang-up job. Can't wait to see what they have in store for us this year.

The Thanks For All The Fish Award

If you've been reading along with the column, you already know some of the MMOG bloggers I enjoy, but I wanted to make sure to publicly thank two gents for their writing. They're moving on to bigger and better things, and so we'll no longer be able to rely on them for insight into the MMOG-releated issues of the day. The Cesspit and Darniaq: Verbosity Unleashed are both now (mostly) quiet after several years of intelligent discourse. I'm especially saddened by Darniaq's sign-off, as I was hoping he'd be my first Citizen Spotlight for 2007. So it goes. Good luck to both Abalieno and Darniaq; your posting will be missed.

The Nigh-Onto-Clueless Company Award

Turbine - Those folks need their heads examined. This is now a company offering the biggest disappointment of 2006 (DDO), a title from the era of EQLive that still has most of its original paint (Asheron's Call), and a game that looks like the most boring incarnation of Tolkien's vision ever to be brought to a computer screen (LOTRO). Seriously, how the hell do you make Tolkien boring? Lord of the Rings Online looks to be shaping itself into a gigantic waste of a very important license. When they proudly began showing us trailers and screenshots in 2006, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Wow ... so, you can autoattack? Orcs? And you can play a dwarf? Fascinating! There is a talented group of people working a Turbine, and it kills me to see their work showcased like this. DDO is just now starting to go interesting places, but how do you survive a launch like the game had? The concept of monster-based PvP is intriguing, but how do you convince people that LOTRO isn't EQ with added Tom Bombadil flavoring? I honestly hope they do better this year, but 2006 was just a bad year for Turbine.

The Big Loser Award

Auto Assault - What if they threw a MMOG, and nobody came? That question was answered last year, when NCSoft proved that they don't always have the golden Massive touch. Even with the popularity of titles like City of Heroes, Gulid Wars, and Lineage cushioning the crushing failure of Auto Assault, the wasted time and effort of 44 employees has to hurt. The continued existence of this game just makes me sad. I really hope NCSoft tries to make the best of this by dropping the monthly fee, and aiming for a box-sales model like the one employed by Guild Wars. I say give those employees reasons to be proud of their work again, and give AA the only chance it has to make it in this cut-throat MMOG market. Otherwise, I hope the 2007 future of this title is a quick, painless death.

Whatever comes our way in 2007, there's going to be a lot to talk about. Here's hoping that you keep reading GameSetWatch, and keeping an eye out for the MMOG Nation column. Have fun in the Outlands, folks!

[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 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We do get some 'alternative' pitches round here (though, note, the headline is a joke!), and this one is from Thief executive producer Joe Gilby, who comments of his friend's game: "It is interesting to see stealth used in a totally different real world simulation. It's quite an accomplishment for Richard Gardener to have been able to pull this off with only a couple contractors to help him."

The 'stealth' in question is in, wait for it, Indigo Games' PC indie title "Wildlife Explorer: Birds of North America", which "...offers a unique 3D birding experience. It is an authentic immersion in birding, easily accessible from the comfort of your living room pc. The game is a deep and rewarding simulation of bird spotting, incorporating 45 distinct species with individualized animations, high quality recordings for bird calls, featuring rich bird behaviors such as mobbing and predator hunting."

What's more: "You learn to stealthily track, spot and photograph a plethora of birds in a variety of settings, on your way to documenting the legendary Ivory-billed Woodpecker to become a Master Birder." There's even a hook: "Led by researchers from the prestigious Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the real-life hunt is on to confirm the re-discovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, believed until recently to be extinct. Participate in this search, in the virtual world of Birds." You know, I _do_ think this game deserves a bit more exposure.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hey, good news for those who'd like to check out the latest issue of Game Developer magazine, the U.S.-based trade mag for game professionals that we run when we're not posting on GameSetWatch. The latest, January 2007 issue is now available for free online viewing, since it's our new digital sample issue!

A quick rundown from a Gamasutra story on the issue: "The cover feature for the January 2007 issue is 'Not Your Typical Grind: Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam for Wii' by Toys for Bob's Toby Schadt... The January issue also reveals Game Developer’s 2006 Front Line Awards, as announced in December, which "pays homage to the companies and products that make game development possible"... Another major feature is Chris Hind and Dan Bell's 'Setting The Bar' [about choosing your battles when fixing bugs in games!]"

Anyhow, there's also all the normal and very neat columns from our veteran columnists like Noah Falstein, Steve Theodore, Mick West and Jesse Harlin, and there's an opportunity to subscribe to either the physical or digital versions of the magazine over at the official website.

I won't put too much of a hard sell on you, but there's a lot of unique, practical content in Game Developer that you can't get anywhere else, if you're a developer, student, or wannabe developer - and the digital version comes with searchable access to back issues all the way to 2004, too. Though we like paper! [Oh, and in the immediate future, the February 2007 issue has an exclusive postmortem of Resistance: Fall Of Man by the Insomniac guys in it - yay.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Good Lord, all I have to do for GSW nowadays is cut and paste things that people email to me. I like this 'Web 2.0' approach! This one is from Ernest Adams: "I'm going to mention it in my next Designer's Notebook column anyway, but I thought I would mention that the long-promised database of Twinkie Denial Conditions is now online."

Ernest continues: "Well, I SAY "database," it's that kind of database known as a "flat file." Anyway, I've organized them by topic and when you click on one, it takes you straight to its description in the original column." For those not aware, the concept of the Bad Designer, No Twinkie idea is: "Even great games can include design errors. Here’s a list of things not to do."

It's explained further: "These are all the Twinkie Denial Conditions described in my “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” Designer’s Notebook columns. Each one is an egregious design error, although many of them have appeared in otherwise great games. I’ve organized them into general categories." Here's a random example: 'Wrecking a Game's Balance for the Sake of A "Cool Feature"'. Nobody said all of these conditions were fair, but they're generally pretty damn readable!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Got a note from Tom Ohle which is worth passing on to you unwashed masses: "Stardock just launched Space Rangers: The Klissan War -previously unavailable in North America - on TotalGaming.net for $19.99 or 1 token (that's less than $10 if you go the token route). They've bundled it with Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators for $29.99 or 3 tokens."

This is pretty cool - European sites such as Eurogamer were big fans of the Space Ranger series - though note that in the UK, Space Rangers 2 and Space Rangers came in the same box and were collectively called 'Space Rangers', whereas in the States, Cinemaware Marquee did a standalone retail release of Space Rangers 2 and called it... Space Rangers 2. As far as I can divine!

Anyhow, the point is, the Space Rangers series is a sprawling PC space exploration game which is, Kieron Gillen claims, "...precisely aimed at my soft spots – emergent situations, freeform universes, sheer quirkiness, and being constructed by an underdog developer in the middle of nowhere (Vladivostok, apparently)." It's interesting that Eastern Europe/Russia is starting to produce innovative titles that flow away from the traditional RTS/FPS genres which apparently keep the German economy strong, so I say, by all means support it!

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

In a few days, we'll be publishing a comprehensive and rather neat history of Electronic Arts over at Gamasutra, thanks to a sterling effort by GSW columnist Jeffrey Fleming.

But, since we had the return of 3DO Kid just the other day, and one of the interviewees for our EA piece is Trip Hawkins, the EA founder and 3DO supremo, nowadays running mobile firm Digital Chocolate, we realized we had some neat out-takes from the Hawkins interview, and they should go up on GameSetWatch.

Thanks again to Trip - watch for his full comments in the imminent Gama piece! Here's what we left out due to space constraints:

Hawkins On Silicon Valley in The ‘70’s

"I might not have discovered Silicon Valley if I had not chosen Stanford for graduate school. I might not have learned about the first computer retail store without the coincidence that I took a summer job in Santa Monica and that is there the world's first computer store opened up. Then the first store in the first chain of stores opened near my home in Mountain View when I was attending Stanford. And I drove past Fairchild on the way to school, and they introduced the first cartridge video game system and I made a cold call on them one day to offer to do some free market research, and they said yes.

Ironically, the major institutions at that time - including Stanford, Berkeley, National Semiconductor, H-P, IBM, and Intel - did NOT grasp the concept of home computing and video games. For example, while I was at Apple a close colleague of mine that had gone to Berkeley tried to get the Computer Science professors interested in Apple, and they thought the Apple II was basically a pointless tinker toy."

Hawkins On 3DO

"After scoring a massively favorable license with Sega, I knew I had a big bull's eye drawn on my chest because the console guys would make sure I could never repeat what I had done with the Genesis. And on the PC side, nothing was going on that would advance the cause of the gamers and the game industry. This was 1990. Nobody liked paying high royalties under restrictive licenses, and what made it even worse was having to build ROM cartridges at great cost and inventory risk.

I knew the Genesis would give EA a great ride at least until 1994, but was afraid for what would happen after that. At that point, Sony had no idea they were going to enter the business and invent the PlayStation. I saw that great software companies like Microsoft and Sega and Nintendo all had created their own platforms. I thought the industry needed one to push forward with 3D graphics and optical disc media and networking capability. Nobody was doing anything, so it seemed like the window was open. That much proved to be true.

3DO was able to raise some money and recruit some big partners. But by 1993 Sony had made a $2 billion commitment, and even with all our partners we could not match what Sony was willing to do. 3DO ended up being a catalyst for many constructive changes. For example, even Sony executives have admitted to me that they copied many aspects of the 3DO licensing program."

Hawkins On His Latest Firm, Digital Chocolate

"By 2003 you could see the mass market adoption of SMS, camera phones, and ringtones, and the early growth of mobile games. Collectively I could see that the public was craving new ways to "reach out and touch someone." I realized that the mobile phone was really the first social computer. Social value will drive market growth, and that includes games. Human beings do not aspire to be alone. Playing by ourselves in isolation is not our quest for meaning.

Digital Chocolate is really catching on. We've won more awards and garnered the highest review scores in the industry in the last two years. This is the result of innovative games like Night Club Empire, Rollercoaster Rush, Brain Juice, and Tower Bloxx, which come with social community features. We're also inventing new social games like MLSN Sports Picks, where you can create a private club with some buddies and compete by predicting sports outcomes.

We're just now launching AvaPeeps, where you create and use an avatar that has its own social life and goes on dates with other avatars. It's fun to have a grown-up "Tamagochi" that is depressed after a bad blind date, but then gets elated over some hottie he met at our virtual beach. And that avatar hook-up might even lead to meeting the love of your life in reality.

The mobile phone could very well be "gaming for the rest of us." Hardcore gamers are about 5% of the population, but everyone has a mobile phone. There is synergy between the markets and traditional gamers will be key influencers and leaders, but in the end the mass market will want a different product experience that has more social value and will adopt a lot of new brands. This gives Digital Chocolate a great opportunity."

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

Throwing this one over here as well because I'd love some extra perspective from GSW types - over at Gamasutra, we're asking a new 'Question Of The Week' about the game business' resolutions for 2007.

This is really for professionals or those close to the industry, but: "The question, which can be answered at the official Question Of The Week page until January 13th, is: "If there was one change you'd like to see the video game industry effect in 2007, what would it be?" Answers could involve working conditions, different business models, legislation-related changes, image shifts, or even game trends - we'd like to see a large diversity of ideas for the game biz to consider in 2007."

So, if you have a clue and you're vaguely game biz-related (ideally!), please post! We already have some neat answers from folks like Cryptic's Clarinda Merripen, so I'm looking forward to posting the results soonish.

[While we're on the subject of sister sites and GSW-relevant stories, Alistair Wallis wrote a profile of Zombies Ate My Neighbors' Mike Ebert just posted over on Gama as part of the 'Playing Catch-Up' history series - I think this is one of the first times he's been interviewed standalone on his history in the biz? Fascinating stuff.

Also, Crystal Dynamics' Jason Weesner posted a rather neat history of the game biz over at our edu site GameCareerGuide.com, including a paean to the glory days of Ed's Model & Hobby Shop in Coronado, CA, which sounds like a great place in 1982.]

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

Here's a fun little chronology for all you guys. It goes a little like this:

1. Game Developer magazine Features Editor and Insert Credit supremo Brandon Sheffield is browsing eBay while perfecting his Gackt likeness and fending off Ziff Davis claims that he's emo! He discovers some very cool painted NES consoles on eBay, among them a cute Metroid case version.

2. Michael 'GeekOnStun' McWhertor over at Kotaku goes and reads IC, and posts about them too, leading to various commenters saying "...The Metroid painting was the only one that looked professional", and Brandon reporting Kotaku to the Internet link-borrowing authorities, even if they did credit him with a 'via' (he has his reputation as a moody goth to keep up!)

3. Still, it turns out that GDC Executive Director Jamil Moledina reads Kotaku, not Insert Credit (*nelson* HAH HAH! */nelson*), and he goes and smacks down $100+ on the 'Buy It Now' link for the actually good painted NES, the Metroid one. Then it comes to the CMP Game Group office, and we all point at it, and Jamil takes a picture:

If you notice, I called the picture 'jametroid.jpg'. Hee - I so funny! For reference, the other things in the picture include one of those neeto Katamari Damacy hats that came out early in 2005.

In fact, Jamil gave one to Keita Takahashi at the 2005 GDC, and Takahashi's Time Magazine profile later in 2005 had a picture of him wearing a hat and posing next to a cow. There are also artfully arranged GDC meeting papers and the latest issue of Game Developer. (Jamil's desk is actually more 'sprawling' than this and has more Battlestar Galactica merchandise on it, but he's being modest. 42!)

So the moral of this story is - everyone should use Kotaku for cube to cube merchandise recommendations within their office! It's quicker than smoke signals, and you get to see more YouTube videos of large unclaimed PS3 displays that way. THE END!

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over at Gnome's Lair, they've posted an interview with offbeat adventure game creator 'Vince Twelve', whose splitscreen and wonderfully named 'What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed' we have previously covered on GSW.

Turns out Mr. Twelve, who is based in Japan, has done some very neat other experimental adventure game we didn't notice, including Anna ("You are Hero, a clear-room technician charged with the maintenance of all the station’s systems including Anna, the intelligent computer system that runs the station.The day starts as routinely as any other, but ends with Homeworld’s very survival in jeopardy"). The front page of his site is a neat blog, too.

He also helped out on Spooks ("...as close to the Land of the Dead that you can get with a pulse. In this immersive Sierra-style adventure, you play as Mortia, an adorably cynical little ghoul girl."), and [EDIT!], pops up in comments to note: "Spooks was written and designed by Erin Robinson. I just took on programming and distributing duties. And it falls more into the nostalgic category than the experimental category, but it's still an awesome game!"

I also love his comments about innovation in games: "I do think that innovation is important, but I don’t think it’s necessary in every game. A lot of people are making games with more consideration for nostalgia than innovation, and that’s perfectly fine. Afterall, refining and perfecting old ideas can be just as important as coming up with new ones. If you’re making a game, especially a freeware game, you only have to answer to yourself, so you can make the kind of game that you want to make."

He continues: "That being said, freeware game makers are in a unique position to innovate. Since they don’t have significant money invested in the game, it isn’t such a big deal if their clever, innovative idea doesn’t work so well in a game as it did in their head. Compared to a big developer with millions of dollars invested in a title’s success, or even a small developer who scraped together every last penny they could find to fund their game, this is a big opportunity to take some risks and try something new." Which he does. Thanks, Vince!

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

The Escapist has just posted some neat new articles, and one of them is named 'Shark Bone or Shark Oil?', and sees Bonnie Ruberg profiling Game Developer magazine design columnist and long-time design veteran Noah Falstein.

In particular, Ruberg notes Falstein's "...recent alliance with Quixit, a shiny new company out to save our minds, represents a unique synthesis of neurological research and game design that combines verified scientific process with the growth and support potential of an online community - and then makes it fun." In other words, it's all about the mental exercise, Brain Training stylee.

It's explained: "Quixit, which was born when CEO Sheryle Bolton acquired licenses to the France-based Happy Neuron brain game panoply, approaches [patient motivation to learn] bidirectionally: from one angle using Falstein's design expertise to refine the research-based Happy Neuron games for an entertainment aesthetic, and from another angle creating an online community where hundreds of thousands of potential users can share experiences, engage in friendly competition and, very importantly for primary health practitioners who may only see their patients once or twice a year, track and monitor individual progress." Intriguing article, and an interesting company, to boot.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Despite the fact that MTV's website is still auto-video-playing, Flash-triggeringly awful, we're still going to link to Stephen Totilo's excellent new article 'Mortal Combat: An Iraqi Gamer Shares His Harrowing Story', over at MTV News.

It's revealed: "What's the gaming life been like in Baghdad? It has followed a path familiar to many European gamers, where the Amiga computer was the premiere gaming system at a time when the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated in America and Japan. Then the Sega Genesis was big. ("Mortal Kombat" on that machine was a... favorite.) Then came PlayStation. Nintendo was never big. The dominant games were always the soccer titles, [Iraqi gamer] Wisam said. He couldn't find many folks like himself who, in his words, is a " 'Final Fantasy' freaker.""

Wisam also notes: "Most of the games he buys are bootlegs, sold for about a dollar in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. "Before the invasion, we could buy a lot of games," Wisam said. "The games are available if you go outside. But maybe I'll get killed by a car bomb or [improvised explosive device]."" So, hardly a normal EB/GameStop situation then. But it's heartening (and a little weird?) to note that Final Fantasy fanboyism is alive and well even in Baghdad.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[After a break - he apparently nearly 32-bit gamed himself to death, having played and completed over 60 3DO titles in 2006, 3DO Kid is back. He's updating his blog. He's written a new entry for his GameSetWatch column, and all is well with the world - except, of course, the Angels of 32bit retro gaming that talk to him, and disturbingly, only him, through the medium of his 3DO controller... racing games this time, apparently!]

It is good to be back.

“What? What was that you said? Back to the 3DO games cupboard to pluck another game to duel in the endless war between 3DO Multiplayer and Atari Jaguar? Oh, OK! Back to the cupboard.”

[3DO Kid stuffs hand inside ‘3DO games’ cupboard, followed by the sounds of rummaging]

“Megarace? No, sorry, the Atari Jaguar doesn’t have any streamed from CD racing games – lucky for it.”

[Rummage. Rummage.]

“Autobahn Tokio? Nope. It doesn’t have any arcade street racers either.”

[Rummage, rummage.]

“Crash ‘n Burn. What the!? Angels? ANGELS!!? Oh-there you are. What’s with the racing games? The 3DO and Jaguar had different types of racing games - they can't be compared!”

[Short eerie silence as the voices were communed with.]

“Oh – OK, I get it. Racing games for Round 2 then. The Atari Jaguar's best racing game versus 3DO's best racing game. Easy - when it's explained.”

3DO Vs. Jaguar - The Racing Game Overview!

The Jaguar, despite sharing its name with one of the most beautiful brands of car on Earth, was somewhat bereft of any decent racing titles.

Virtua Racing, no, sorry, I mean Checkered Flag leads the Atarian field, just ahead of Pro Rally Drive which hobbles in a 16-bit fashion semi-impressively across the field, with Club Drive bringing up the rear. Which, in many ways – is very appropriate.

Stil,l the 3DO offerings aren’t that great either. Megarace or Mega-stream-from-CD-athon, Autobahn Tokio, which despite my rose tints and the fact it does share some tracks, in my honest opinion (Retro Gamer Magazine, I’m looking at you!) with Gran Turismo – isn’t all that great. Crash ‘n Burn? It’s loved, but I don’t know why. So nope. F1GP – easily the worst F1 game eve. Hmm - too close to call, isn’t it?

But then hold on. What’s that? Oh yes. I remember. The 3DO Multiplayer delivers epic Atari smashing grandeur with Need for Speed. Oh yes. So it did.

Ha! Ha! Ha! [It’s good to see an unbiased attitude, isn’t it?] Easy one. 3DO has already won round two. Nothing. Not one Jaguar game can compete with the Need for Speed on the 3DO.

3DO: The Need... For Speed!

The 3DO version of a Need for Speed is probably the only version of the Need for Speed you’ll ever need to really worry about. In contrast to many of the later sequels that EA spews forth each Christmas, NFS 3DO is set in broad daylight. It has cars that looks like cars, and offers a passing nod to the laws of physics.

The Need, in 1994, was not to glue bits of oversized Airfix kits to the car, or for that matter strap bits of fish tank lighting equipment to the underside. No indeed it wasn’t. The Speed, in ’94, was about Porsches, Ferraris and Lambos. With a few American and Japanese cars thrown in to make the numbers up!

Oh yes. The Need for Speed – born out of developers that had been bringing us 16-bit racing joy with the likes of Test Drive on the Amiga. 'Twas EA Canada – the Lord bless them and keep them – except, of course, we know he didn’t. Git.

There were three tracks broken into three sections each. It had coasts, hot air balloons, cities, snow, hidden scooters. Everything and more. No circuits, mind. Circuits were introduced when Satan had finished modifying NFS to run on the Sega and Sony machines.

Back in Nov ’94, The Need for Speed was accused of a couple of things that initially appear to be insane. Only on closer examination are they very actually insane. Firstly, it was accused of not giving the player the impression they were actually in a race. (Edge magazine – I’m now looking at you!) Well, that’s rubbish for a start. The only way to play NFS is from the in-car view. The sense of urgency you get when you hear that damned whine from the 512TR coming up from behind - or indeed, from that black and white car with the blue flashy things on the roof, filling the rear-view, certainly made me feel like I was in a race.

The second accusation was you were unable to explore the environment. Explore? What is this? A 4X4 simulator? Still, fair is fair - I explored my need to watch a Mazda RX7 pirouette across the road with smoke pouring out of its engine - that was all the exploration I needed. Explore? Really? Who writes this stuff? Even the graphics stand up today and the X-man – your ‘A’-merican FMV opponent, wasn’t half as cheesy as I remember. In fact, I kind of liked him. A role model to look up to, in my opinion. Who need 50 Cent when you have a Porsche 993? Replays? A horn?

It’s just a shame that NFS turned up when it did. If it had been delivered a year earlier, I think things would have turned out better. For 3DO anyway. If it had been a launch title for the 3DO – the world may have been a different place. It didn’t and it wasn’t. Trouble was, you see, NFS slid up to the lights, revving the hell out of its engine, only to peer across and see Ridge Racer and Daytona on the far side, running on the more powerful PSX and Saturn. It was a race that was over before it started.

Jaguar: Time To Take The Checkered Flag!

However – pausing for a second today, a little older and a little wiser, we sneak a glance out of the nearside window – and lo what is that? My – my, it looks like a Japanese racer, a Sega Japanese racer – but what’s that? Just a minute - Oh no it’s not. It’s Checkered Flag on the Jaguar. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery – but in my opinion they should have just sent flowers.

To put things into context. If NFS is a Porsche, Ridge Racer a Ferrari and Daytona a Lamborghini, then Checkered Flag is a Kia. No really – it is.

I like textureless 3D models. I really do. I’ll be honest; I preferred Virtua Fighter's graphics to the textured Tekken graphics. I liked the graphics of Virtua Cop and Virtua Racing. So, I do like the clean lines of the graphics in Checkered Flag – sure, compared to the NFS on the 3DO, these bald polygons look somewhat dated – but there is a cute nostalgia. A warm glow. And it’s not from me wetting myself laughing at the ‘best racer on the Atari Jaguar’.

The sale must have been an easy one. Virtua Racer was a popular game and making a clone for the burgeoning next generation of machines must have made sense. Once that sale was made, it’s clear the developers sat and looked at Virtua Racer and analyzed its weaknesses. More tracks, more weather, more options. Sure. Great. Yes – well done. But there must have been either a sales or marketing pressure to make Checkered Flag appeal to two gaming demographics, where Virtua Racer only really appealed to one. Arcade racing fans. The addition of simulator elements made Checkered Flag rubbish, and it stalls as a game. Somewhere, hidden, I’m sure there is a game. Some claim to have found it. But in my opinion it’s the Osama Bin Laden of hiding, not the Saddam Hussein type of hiding. I doubt I could find the game play even with the help of 250,000 US troops.

The frame rate is jerky, pop-up - something that normally I don’t even notice - is really chronic, the handling is really bad; it suffers from awful under-steer. Trying to pit in is a real challenge, regardless of how slow you are going. It’s all a bit of a mess. Trust me when I say it is rubbish.

Thrilling Conclusion?

So that’s it. Easy round two for the 3DO then. The best news is that Freedo has released an updated version of their 3DO Multiplayer emulator, and NFS never looked better on your PC.

So where are we? Oh yes.

3DO 1: Atari Jaguar 1:

All to play for in the next round, then!

Posted by 3dokid at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The Adventure Classic Gaming site is one of those niche but adorable sites that I kiss the Internet, Mahir-style, for having created, and its latest update is a feature called 'Keyboard Power' by Leopold McGinnis, discussing "...the passing of a dear old friend—the keyboard."

McGinnis notes nostalgically: "Today, the idea of using a keyboard to enter commands into a gaming system seems laughably archaic. Not too long ago, however, it was the preferred (if not only) option for playing games. In a gaming world where ergonomic and instamatic refinements on the game playing experience pop up every other week, it’s easy to get lost in the moment and lose track where this is all headed, to forget about the way things once were and what we once took for granted."

But what I think is even more interesting is the author's bio - apparently he "...is the author of Game Quest, a novel published by Underground Uprising Press about the hostile takeover of the world’s most famous computer game company and the death of the adventure game." And wow, if you're into thinly veiled Sierra homages, you're in luck!

So what's it all about? "Nestled deep in the California Mountains, the tight-knit Madre family is the envy of the computer gaming world. Since founding the company fifteen years ago, Will and Kendra Roberts have pioneered an industry by following their own brand of folksy, do-the-right-thing business ethic. But success proves to be their greatest enemy as their company begins to slip wildly beyond their control, and venture capitalists, smelling money, flood the market with cheap knock-offs of Madre's product. Not only that, but the new monstrously popular 3D shoot-em-ups threaten to put the final bullet in Madre's signature Adventure Games."

Damn them, and this is pretty adorable - Emily Morganti has done a review of the book over at Adventure Gamers, where she notes: "The novel is full of detailed scenes and dynamic characters, and it has a well-structured plot. Game Quest lacks some of the polish of professionally-published titles, but then again, so did many of Sierra's games, and those are still considered classics. This homegrown labor of love is a fitting tribute to the Sierra that used to be, and a great read for anyone with even a little nostalgia for those good old days." I like the idea of Game Quest, esp. for a hyper-niche audience. Like you?

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The be-bearded Raph Koster handily points to an extremely interesting Utne Reader cover story on games, written by Chris Suellentrop (who covers games for Slate on occasion, I believe).

The Utne Reader is an somewhat bizarre but neat alt.periodical and Suellentrop's conclusion for his article (reprinted from the even more obscure Wilson Quarterly) is actually an odd but thought-provoking one:

"Whether you find the content of video games inoffensive or grotesque, their structure teaches players that the best course of action is always to accept the system and work to succeed within it... Our video-game brains, trained on success machines, may be undergoing a Mr. Universe workout, one that leaves us stronger but less flexible. So don't worry that video games are teaching us to be killers. Worry instead that they're teaching us to salute."

For his part, Koster notes that the article "...argues that games may be driving gamers to be more conformist — because they teach you to solve the problems presented, not to break out of patterns and truly innovate. As part of the basis for this argument, the author uses my book a fair amount." Koster comments, however: "But I think it’s a mistake to perceive the ordinary daily play of games as being the only way to engage with games."

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

This may just be egging on the unnecessary, but I note that grumpy/cynical UK game journalist anony-blogger The RAM Raider has tipped his hat in the direction of grumpy/cynical UK game developer anony-blogger, 'Game Truth', currently dispensing hate and vitriol on a near-weekly basis.

A good point to start? 'Super studios', in which Mr. Truth claims: "The inside news is this: British developers are the worst developers in the world. Specifically, large-scale British developers are the worst in the world. They live in a high-currency climate, they spend money away on stupid ideas, they perpetuate a management class that drifts from studio to studio, driving each one to the edge of extinction."

There's also an semi-vicious attack on studio mergers: "When two developers merge it’s because one of them has no money and both have no ideas (but the money developer’s CEO hasn’t done his homework and doesn’t realise). These mergers ALWAYS fail, resulting in one of the companies getting eaten by the other and a consequent large staff overhead that dwindles resources, brand values and all the rest of it." Which is fun.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via new columnist Arttu's Solvalou.com, I spotted the homepage of Gravitar world record holder Dan Coogan, which is full of all kinds of gorgeous tips, stories, and interviews regarding the classic 1982 Atari vector monitor arcade game.

The biggest news, of course: "HIGH SCORE UPDATE: December 23, 2006: I surpassed my previous high score (3,652,700 on 9/8/03) with a new high score of 8,029,450. A NEW WORLD RECORD! Game play started at 10:15 AM Friday, December 22nd and ended at 9:30 AM Saturday, December 23, 2006 (23 hours 15 minutes). The game was recorded on digital video and refereed by Brien King." A totally awesome pic of Dan accompanies the announcement.

Elsewhere on the site, there's all kinds of awesome stuff - the full design documentation for Gravitar scanned in, including the Atari employee ID badges for creators Mike Hally and Rich Adam. There are also some newly updated, detailed email comments from both of the creators, including an important secret:

"[Rich Adam] answered a major question for me: Why is the game resetting? (frustrating, when you are playing for more than 10 hours and going for the world record, and suddenly it's "game over" ). Once the game stores more than 128 ships in it's memory, it can reset. Rich advised me to keep the total number of ships in reserve below 128 -- I did that and was able to break the Gravitar world record."

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

So, we've been pressing on with plans for the 2007 Independent Games Summit, and we just finished up the list of sessions for the 2-day conference taking place immediately before the Independent Games Festival this March, yay.

There's a couple of panelists left to fill in, but we just confirmed the final unfilled lecture for the 2007 IGS today: 'Indie Prototyping, Braid, & Making Innovative Games', from Number None's Jonathan Blow. As we explain: "Former Game Developer magazine code columnist and 2006 IGF Design Innovation winner Jonathan Blow, the creator of innovative time-manipulating platform title Braid, discusses the deliberate methodology behind his indie game prototyping. He shows how he conceives, develops, and tests out indie concepts in playable form, and discusses how you know when a prototype is working, and where to take it from there, demonstrating multiple in-development prototypes (including Braid) along the way."

Some other recent tweaks - we just added Ryan Clark from Professor Fizzwizzle/FizzBall creator Grubby Games to the 'Indie Development Logistics' panel, alongside folks from Klei Entertainment, Gastronaut Studios, and NinjaBee - should be an interesting panel! Also, Introversion co-founder Mark Morris is making an appearance, alongside Manifesto's Greg Costikyan and a couple of other neat/sekrit to-be-announced people, in the final 'Building The Future of Indie Games' panel. Hope some of you can make it!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This has been floating around my 'to be posted' list for a while, but I haven't seen anyone else put it up, so - 'Western game developer in Japan' blog Japanmanship has a neat post called 'Will Wii Win?', all about Nintendo's new console and the Japanese market.

Some of his key insights? "In Japan companies know customers expect free goodies for loyalty... This goes a long way and Nintendo play that game very well. Club Nintendo in Japan is actually worthwhile; the presents you can get on points are usually pretty cool. Gold and Platinum members, which depends on how many points you accrue, get given extra freebies, probably at quite a cost to Nintendo." This is a good point.

The conclusion? "In the end it is injudicious to speak of winners or that hateful term “console war”... I certainly hope the PS3 can keep its fair share of the market and the Wii will keep selling, as well as Microsoft finally cracking that Japanese market that has eluded it so far despite some heroic efforts. As a consumer though, my choice is clear: the Wii is providing me more value for money and fun than either of its competitors could hope to manage."

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

In Giant Eel Stories, we examine the phenomenon of Usenet victory posts, in which players crow about games which were very interesting, often because of something that happened, or some conduct they upheld, or they won. This time we again focus on Nethack, although we may not in the future.

In this installment:

- We learn about a wizard who wasn't just content with killing a lot of monsters, but had to kill all the monsters....

- After than, we meet a Healer who won the game without killing anything at all, although it must be said a large horde of henchmen was seen following him through the dungeons...

- We have a look at the story of the Priest who did not win, but will still be remembered probably for years to come for getting the highest score. And when I say that, I mean she really got the highest score....

- We finish up with a look at a real story: a work of Nethack fanfiction. Yes, it exists. No, it is not as lame as you think it might be.

Edward, Chaotic Male Elven Wizard Extinctionist, Ascended
Played by Matthew Bourland
Google Reader archive

Some of the more useful objects in Nethack are scrolls of genocide, which can be used to wipe entire species of monster out of the game. While they don't work on everything, they do work on a lot of things, and they do an utterly thorough job. Once genocided, a class of monsters will be completely absent from play for the rest of the current game. It will be cleared out of the current level, will be wiped from existence from previously-visited level when they are seen, and will never be generated again.

But there is another kind of "genocide" in the game as well. Unlike most other roguelikes (and RPGs in general), generally speaking, there is only a limited number of each kind of monster existing in the game. Every time a monster is generated, a counter is incremented for that species, and once it hits 120, generally speaking, no more of that monster will be seen. In game terms, that monster is "extinct." When the game rolls to generate a new roaming monster on a level, if that monster is chosen it'll roll again, and again if necessary. Levels that come stocked with that monster already on it, even non-random levels, will, in most cases, be a bit emptier. Those monsters can still be added to the game via a small number of other ways, but they won't be roaming around levels, in general, any more.

Nethack is not a small game, but neither is it very big, and there are hundreds of types of monsters for the generation code to choose from, so it is rare that a quarter of those limits are reached in a game if the player is really trying to win, even if he drags his feet along the way. The extinction check is mostly there to put an ultimate barrier to certain kinds of monster farming behavior (which it really isn't too good at since the worst kind of farming, that of black puddings, uses a method that ignores extinction).

Even so, there has in recent years been established an unofficial conduct called Extinctionist, and many players have accomplished it now. The linked-to story describes the first such game recorded. What an Extinctionist tries to do is completely eliminate as many kinds of monsters from the game as possible, either through genocide if it's available, or from just depleting all the kinds of monsters that can be produced.

People who play these games, it must be said, often find that by the end it is not just the monsters that are exhausted. Extinctionist games can last weeks, and it is not even terribly exciting play along the way. A character with sufficient mojo to cause the game to run out of Archons will not have much to fear from the rest of the bestiary either, and the tremendous amounts of loot that rapidly pile up during these games eventually make what few source of danger that remain trivial to overcome.

But Extinctionist games are interesting not just as an example of some players' degree of obsession with Nethack. When Nethack starts to run out of monsters, what happens is, first, the few monsters that aren't yet extinct appear much more often, which are often the harder foes in the game by that time (like Archons), but their increased numbers run them out faster as well. But in the long run, after even the rarest foes are depleted, the way Nethack handles it is that monsters just stop appearing. (This is its own problem, since without monster corpses to eat, and once all the territory in the game has been explored, most players will eventually run out of food.)

Another consequence of Extinctionist games is that vast amounts of loot will eventually be generated in those games. Some of the loot generated by this are things that the player can use to increase his stats, or damage done, or armor class, or be used to make other useful things. By properly utilizing all this stuff, Extinctionist characters can become super-strong, powerful to a degree far beyond the realm of mortals. We're talking people in a world with 1st ed D&D sensibilities having hit points enough to make Final Fantasy characters jealous, armor classes of -60 and better, and a few other, esoteric benefits that most players go their entire Nethack careers without seeing, like acquiring high levels of intrinsic damage bonuses from eating many rings of increase damage.

But such extents of power are overkill, of course, as Nethack characters wielded by players who are steeped enough in the game's lore that they can seriously attempt Extinctionist games are rarely in tremendous danger after the early levels of the game, unless they are playing one of the truly extreme conducts. Like Pacifist.

Patito, Neutral Male Gnomish Healer Pacifist, Ascended
Played by Andreas Dorn
Google Reader archive

In a game in which thousands of monsters die by the end of a game, it seems like pacifist characters shoudn't even be possible, but they are, and the conduct has been done several times now.

Pacifism, in Nethack, means that the player cannot bring about the death of a monster by his own actions. It is okay to hit monsters (there is another conduct, regarding wielded weapons, for that), although it can be dangerous to do so since one might accidentally kill it in the process.

The problem with playing a Pacifist is that there are so many monsters who want to kill the player, and without being able to kill them in return it is extremely difficult to survive long enough to get to deeper levels. Plus, many of the objects the player needs, and really wants, are held by particular monsters. The solution to that is to have lots of pets, and strong ones, to take care of those monsters for you.

The problem with that is that pets are vulnerable in way the player is not, and can be instantly killed or permanently transformed very easily, in addition to facing most of the same dangers player characters have to deal with. Pacifist players usually must continually acquire new pets to make up for the ones lost to attrition.

Pets are not as capable as players for other reasons besides. When monsters are tamed, many of their non-melee abilities, like dragon breath and spellcasting, are lost, and they will never willingly attack a foe more than one experience level greater than it. Most of the baddies towards the end (particularly the Wizard of Yendor, who gets stronger and stronger) have so high a level that no pet will attack them unless special measures are taken to enhance their power. Because of this, Healers are probably the best choice for Pacifist games, not just for their thematic appropriateness but because their quest artifact, the Staff of Aesculapius, can drain levels from foes when they are struck with it, eventually getting them to the point where they can be finished off by a handy horde of friends.

Pets are the key to surviving a Pacifist game (that and figuring out how to raise one's experience level without combat), and Patito the Gnomish Healer was extremely skilled at their acquiring and maintenance. So great was his mojo in this regard that he even managed to tame... Pestilence.

That's Pestilence, the Horseman of the Apocalypse who hangs out on the Astral Plane, a unique monster who cannot be permanently killed but, apparently, can be tamed. Word on whether it enjoyed scooby snacks is, unfortunately, unavailable.

Zadir, Neutral Female Human Priest, killed by overexertion.
Played by legopowa
Google Reader archive

Nethack is a roguelike game, a roleplaying game, and its own self-consistent, algorithmically-generated world, but it is also a computer program, and computer programs, as we discovered back in 1999, have limits.

Destroying all the monsters in the dungeon is one such limit, and another is the range of the player's score. When computer games are stretched far beyond the expected limits, sometimes strange behavior is seen. The old arcade phenomenon of scores that rolled over to zero after passing a maximum value is an example of this. Many of them used a kind of binary-coded-decimal system to represent the score both on-screen and in memory, as a way of saving a few extra processor cycles, but with the result that, once the player's score exceeded however many 9s were allotted on-screen, the score value would "roll over," back to zero.

Modern computer games (and make no mistake, we are talking about one of them) use a C number type, in Nethack's case 31 bits long plus one bit to hold a positive sign, to store the player's score. Just like with a decimal record-keeping system, this variable can overflow, but that value is so vastly great that the player would have to earn... let me see... ah, 2,147,483,648 points to do so. That's over two billion points in a game in which most games score less than 1,000, victories tend to score between two and eight million, and Extinctionist games are in the tens of millions. So, would you believe that--

Aw heck, who am I kidding? Of course you believe it. We've already established that some people can win as pacifists in a game in which anyone sane kills monsters reflexively.

Further, legopowa's game was not something he did at home, away from prying eyes that might discover any cheating methods he might have used. He played his game in public, on alt.org's Nethack server. For a while, players had amused themselves there with setting higher and higher scores, trying to gain the coveted top spot on the list, while all the ordinary players (like myself) were sent into deep despair of ever hoping to topple them.

Nethack points are earned for reaching new dungeon levels, for collecting gold and artifacts, and for a variety of other little things, but in the end the thing that makes up most of the score is experience points. Not "gift" experience, such as from finding sources of free levels, but experience gained from killing monsters. Players gain the great majority of their points through killing monsters, and there is really no way around that. While a player, once he's reached the point where he can kill with impunity, can basically mint his points, it still takes an incredible amount of time to earn scores even of a hundred million. For two billion, it would seem to require decades, certainly at least years.

legopowa, using macros to automate his game, did it in a week.

The full details are in the Google Groups post, and he explains it better than I could, but the final result of his game are these: first, he scored MAXINT minus one points, getting the highest possible score without overflowing the score counter and thus finally and eternally claiming the top spot on alt.org's scoreboard, and second, he proved without doubt that Nethack's scoring system is broken. It might seem to be rather an extreme length to go to to prove such a thing, but that is just the kind of game it is.

In leaving you this time, I present that piece of Nethack fanfiction mentioned before, Virgo Vardja's "Behind The Scenes," the tale, not of how Cloud would love Sepiroth ever so sweetly, or of how Sonic the Hedgehog characters get along in their eternal angst-fueled war against the machines, or of how the author could be the only person Legolas/Captain Picard/Neo could ever love.

It is the story of what happens, in the Dungeons of Doom, after a player wins the game, and the residents have to get back to their lives. Perhaps that isn't as, um, "exciting" as the other inspirations for fanfiction out there on the internet, but it is at the very least entertaining to think about. (Other stories from Virgo Vardja can be found on his Nethack site.)

Posted by John Harris at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Still whacking through the great content on Hardcore Gaming 101 that's been stealth-posted recently, and another highlight is an overview of Falcom's Japanese RPG 'Sorcerian', an important RPG milestone over there, but relatively unknown over here.

Writer Al LaPrade explains: "Part five of the Dragon Slayer "series," Sorcerian is a bizarre mixture of side-scrolling platforming action and concepts adopted from both complicated western RPGs such as Wizardry and simplified Japanese RPGs such as Dragon Quest. What would be an unrefined mess of a game in less capable hands ends up here being an extremely charming and arguably successful experiment in the "out there" game design that characterized computer game development in both the US and Japan during the mid- to late 1980s."

The most interesting thing about it: "Once the quest begins you will be in for a shock when you realize that this game, which up until now has seemed like some sort of Wizardry clone, is now a side-scrolling action game. You control all four characters at once which looks pretty comical." But despite this, it looks like an interesting and compelling game, as evidenced by multiple remakes all the way up to the Sega Dreamcast.

There's also lots of hardcore info in here about crazy obscurities like third-party scenario disks for the series: "Two sets of scenario disks were released by a company called Takeru Soft. Similar to Sengoku and Pyramid, Gilgamesh Sorcerian had an historical/mythical theme...in this case the myths and legends of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king/legend/hero. Visitor from Space did not have a literary/historical/mythical theme but instead had the theme of "environmental destruction."" Great piece.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Arcade Obscurities is a bi-weekly column by Solvalou.com's Arttu Ylärakkola, probing some of the most interesting and obscure arcade games yet to be covered in the geek gaming press, thanks to Arttu's JAMMA board collection, and our insatiable quest for knowledge. The first column deals with Namco's 1999 puzzle game 'Aqua Rush'.]

Rushing Aquatic Puzzles

Google for Aqua Rush, and the first result you'll get is a marketing site for bottled water. However, Aqua Rush is also a little-known Japan-only arcade game, one product of Namco's massive arcade history - no wonder if you haven't heard about it.

Basically what we have here is an underwater themed puzzle game: air bubbles rise from the bottom of the screen inside a rectangular playing area. When the bubbles collide with static bubbles on top of the screen, they combine. If a bubble is wide enough to cover the whole width of the playing field, that part of the bubble bursts and disappears - yes, exactly like making a line in Tetris. No need to completely clear the screen, as only one red-hued row in the bubble needs to be removed in order to proceed to the next level.

In Aqua Rush, the piece you control starts as a 3-bubble-wide rectangle. Instead of rotating it, you have 3 buttons with which you can use to grow the piece as much as you like by adding one bubble on top of the leftmost, middle or rightmost bubble. Since the only things you can do are to move the piece horizontally and expand it, many of the game's levels consist of figuring out how to effectively fill vertical spaces.

This means making combos is relatively easy: just figure out how to expand your piece so that after the first bubble line bursts, the leftovers of your piece fit on the next vertical gap and so on. As nothing is ever rotated, gameplay is more streamlined than what is found in usual block fitting games.

Bubbly Combo Crackdown

This one-dimensionality of the game forces limits on how distinct puzzles can be created and makes the presented problems not very mentally taxing, but neither isn't really a problem as what matters more in this case is the basic ingredient of a fun puzzle game: high amount of stupendously long combos - and Aqua Rush is full of them. The way the graphics are implemented enhances the explosiveness of the combos, as the bubbles are big enough to make the level not to fit to the screen but instead the playfield scrolls vertically when lines are made.

Another gameplay mechanic which adds to the sense of speed and urgency is that often a level requires you to fill extremely long vertical gaps which is solved not by thinking, but by furiously mashing the buttons in attempt to resize your block correctly. And the bigger your block is, the more lines you can take out simultaneously. This is essential, as play is graded on how quickly a level is completed.

Easy, But Beautiful?

All the above works as well as possible, but unfortunately the fast-paced gameplay is not very finely tuned: I completed two of the three different difficulty levels on my first go. Two player vs mode is also available, but it does not work very well: huge chains equal quick unfair deaths. So is Aqua Rush a deservedly forgettable game?

No!

It's all about the presentation! The game is dead serious about itself, and for me, its style hits all the right spots. Instead of dancing yellow cartoon kittens, there are swarms of realistic polygonal fishes swimming in the background, screens of 3D explosion rings when points are scored and perfectly fitting soundscape (click the link for an MP3).

Conclusion

Aqua Rush was released as late as 1999 and runs on Namco's System 12 hardware, which is basically a souped-up version of the PlayStation console. What we have here is a 2D puzzle game running on the same hardware which was used for titles like Soul Calibur and Tekken Tag Tournament.

The above may sound heretical to the cultivated retrogamer, but with Aqua Rush the non-gameplay related components really make a difference. It's a prime example of Namco's unique style which surfaces in its games once in a while. Like, for example, Xevious 3D/G - in my opinion the best retro remake when it comes to style - Aqua Rush has everything right.

So what's the conclusion? Manic shooters put you "in the zone" with their intensity. While being a simplistic puzzle game, instead of being boring, Aqua Rush puts you in the zone with its presentation. It's a worthy achievement, methinks.

Posted by arttuy at 6:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

During the course of scoring the Independent Games Festival's Student Showcase, for which the first-round winners were announced earlier this week, I ended up playing through lots of the other student games that were interesting but didn't quite make it.

So, as a service to the gentle GSW reader, I print some tips on some of the most interesting games that weren't judged finalists - and just about all of these are freely downloadable from the linked webpages, which is pretty darn neat. Please note these are just ones that appealed personally to me - there's no official IGF proclamations here. Here we go:

Spider (HKU, Holland - pictured!)
"With lush visuals and fun swinging gameplay, this Dutch student game has you as a spider, swinging through levels trying to collect fireflies. Some of the controls feel a little unintuitive (I want to be able to affect my swing with the mouse or direction keys), and the random movements of the fireflies make them a bear to control sometimes, but swinging around levels is a blast, and this looks every inch a professional game - it even has features like mid-level quicksaves!"

Lily & The Giant (Enjmin, France)
"A cute, whimsical art style, running in the Virtools game engine in a Web browser. Sweet fantasy music, too - a giant is stomping through your town and you have to move people out of the way and otherwise prepare for his passage. The difference between French and English keyboards plays havoc with movement controls, but play it with a joypad and you'll be good."

Helium Boy (Grimsöv, Sweden)
"Retro-feeling, almost N64-like side-scrolling 3D platformer with 'depth', in which you're a little kid with balloons that you can use for large, floating jumps, and you have to navigate various obstacles by either letting go of the balloons or inflating them. Uses an interesting mouse-based control system, but the forced scroll and some difficulties with depth perception mean it's a bit tricky - you restart further back on the stage when you die, to. Nonetheless, endearing and fun to toy with."

The Blob (Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, USA)
"A very ambitious FIEA project, the postmortem of which was documented on Game Career Guide, this Torque Shader Engine student game has some neat ideas and art, with you sliding a blob around a colorful fantasy world, but suffers a bit from high minimum specs and hybrid race/platform gameplay that feels a little shoehorned in. Nonetheless, intriguing - and not to be confused with a Katamari-style game called 'The Blob' that was also entered into this year's IGF."

Zombie City Tactics (Western Washington University, USA)
"We've covered this before on GameSetWatch, but it's still neat. Despite having no graphics to speak of, the zombie killing strategy game has plenty of deep tactics, and some pretty cool ideas in and among its 100 maps of carnage."

Understanding Games: Motivation (University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany)
"Less a game than a tutorial into what makes games interesting, this is a pretty neat idea nonetheless, and is a small Flash-playable file to boot. The readme e