['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.]

   

From the best to the worst, this week's GMW is all about the game mag scene in the United Kingdom, which has taken a beating in recent years but still outclasses the US in terms of sheer quantity. Read on and discover what's worth throwing out the big bucks for and what's got to be avoided at all costs...

Future Publishing

Still the largest game mag publisher in the UK, Future has a zilion titles that cover every possible game platform. In many cases, thanks to assorted buyouts and audience retainment, they have more than one mag for some platforms -- one "official" title, and another unofficial one. In the past, the main difference between official and unofficial was a game demo disc, but with the PlayStation and Nintendo "official" titles now lacking a regular disc, the main demarcation now seems to be style and design. The "official" mags have a clean, adult-oriented, Edge-type design, while the unofficial ones are more hardcore-oriented and packed with info, humorous writing, and flashy extras like strategy guides and game trailer DVDs. And candy. Yes, candy.

Most Future UK titles are unavailable in US bookstores, with a couple exceptions:

   

Edge is certainly the most prestigious title coming from the UK right now, and a good 22% of its circulation (7638 out of 35,145 copies in the second half of 2006) is sold outside of Britain. It's also an anomaly in that, given current exchange rates, it's actually cheaper to buy (either off the newsstand or via the new US subscription offer) in America than Britain by a good buck or two per issue.

In the modern marketplace, Edge's position has shifted subtly from "magazine written for adults" to "magazine written for gamers who like to sit down and really read something". In that mission they succeed fabulously, with even the most mundane previews and reviews written with immaculate detail and engaging copy. There's nothing lazy about any aspect of its creation, and if you have $75, then a subscription is a very, very hot idea. (Edge also generates a great deal of Internet talk for its more controversial reviews -- they're never going to live down their 6/10 rating for Gunstar Heroes where they complained about the lack of "hidden levels".)

Edge has published three FILE compilations of past content; special issues like that come out around once every two or three months.

   

PC Gamer is much, much different from its US counterpart, and I'd buy it more often if it weren't so expensive. The difference can be described thus: PC Gamer US is about itself, but PC Gamer UK is about its readers. Packed with a double-sided DVD full of game crap, PC Gamer is packed with the sort of industry features and just-screwing-around articles you're more likely to see in Games For Windows here, and both the design and writing is much friendlier to people who don't eat, sleep and breathe PC games. It's little wonder that PCGUS has been cribbing one or two filler pieces from PCGUK in recent issues. Can we trade mags, guys?

PSW's main draw is its DVD (lots and lots of game trailers) and an allegedly "independent" approach to PS3 games, but really, this is the archetype of the modern Britmag: previews that try to be opinionated but aren't; reviews that ramble on for way too long; and not much else. It's not a bad read, but it's also not much of an improvement over any online site.

Other Future titles: (takes deep breath) CheatStation, GamesMaster, N Gamer, Nintendo The Official Magazine, PlayStation 2 Official Magazine UK, PlayStation Official Magazine UK, Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine, PC Zone, PSM3, Xbox World 360.

Similar to the situation of Official PlayStation [One] Magazine in the UK, Future published both an official Xbox and and official 360 magazine for a while; the original-Xbox title folded in late '06 (I think). PlayStation Official Magazine UK is also a different mag from PS2:OMUK; the former concentrates on PS3 news and does not include any disc, while PS2:OMUK will presumably include a disc filled with old demos until it winds down.

They say N:TOM and PC Zone are good, but I haven't seen a recent copy. GamesMaster is the only aggressively young-targeted game mag left in the UK, unless you count the strategy rags.

Imagine Publishing

Imagine's the 2nd-biggest game mag publisher in the UK almost by default. It got started in '05, formed by two ex-executives of defunct rival Paragon Publishing, and got a boost the following year when it bought up the assets of similarly defunct publisher Highbury Entertainment. It now publishes 18 mags, 8 of which are games related, and nearly all of them make apperances on US shelves.

   

Arguably, Retro Gamer is Imagine's most visible title in the US, since it fulfills a niche that doesn't have anything covering it here. The content is heavily UK-oriented and occasionally marred by lazy copy-editing and boring news articles, but it's still a great read, especially the far-reaching historical overviews written by Britmag-veteran Stuart Campbell, a man who knows his stuff.

   

GamesTM is Edge's top rival (some would say ripoff); its basic gimmick is its 160 pages of editorial copy a month, as well as an extensive monthly retro-gaming section of its own. The review/preview bits aren't as interesting as Edge, however, although a promised redesign may change things in the future. Worth a browse through, at least.

   

n-Revolution is Imagine's Nintendo mag, and it's surprisingly good. Packed with two mini-mags every month (one devoted to the DS, the other devoted yet again to retro coverage -- Imagine loves writing about old games), the contents are surprisingly close to Nintendo Power in style -- long previews, surprising amounts of inside access, and a generally fun feel throughout.

X360 is one Imagine's Highbury purchases; they also publish a separate mag called just 360, which must be endlessly confusing to consumers. 360 is positioned as the "hardcore coverage" mag, while X360 is "written for the more serious gamer who will appreciate the Xbox 360's digital hub and multimedia status," according to Imagine's webpage. In practice, this seems to mean DVD reviews and a pack-in disc with game trailers and the occasional humorous game voiceover. I wonder how different from 360 it really is?

   

Finally, some quick history. Next 3 has just been redesigned and renamed to PSU3: PlayStation 3 Unlimited; it's Imagine's PS mag and one that's highly tech and nerd-oriented. Go>Play is a PSP mag, and this is the last issue, although it allegedly lives on as a website. The most noteworthy thing about it is arguably is exhaustive coverage of homebrew stuff, including reviews of old pirated games running on emulators.

Other mags

   

Unlike the olden days of...uh...2004, there are very few game mag publishers left in the UK besides the "big two" of Future and Imagine. In fact, these two titles are the only ones I'm aware of.

PURE (the sole product of Evolve Publishing) used to be a PSP mag, but they've expanded to the PS3. This hasn't done much to separate it from the pack yet, though, since I have trouble telling the difference between this mag and PSW.

Finally, 360 Gamer (the sole product of Uncooked Media, although there's an ad for PURE in here so I think the two outfits are related somehow) is the worst game mag in the Commonwealth. Seriously, the design's nice, but the content gives the Beckett titles a run for their money in their race for the bottom of the barrel. Released every three weeks in the UK, the mag's text reads almost exactly like IGN's, right down to the shameless story padding and nonexistent copy editing ("collide" is misspelled as "collie" at one point in the cover feature to highly humorous effect). I feel like a total idiot for buying it, and I hope you don't make the same mistake.

Conclusion

Subscribe to Edge. Buy Retro Gamer. If you're rich, buy PC Gamer UK. Maybe take a glance or two at n-Revolution and GamesTM. Don't worry much about the others.

[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 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I'm aware that the whole world has gone Grand Theft Auto IV crazy, but just wanted to make sure everyone found this David Kushner-written piece for Wired on 'The Road to Ruin: How Grand Theft Auto Hit the Skids'.

It's been referred in a couple of places (such as Planet Grand Theft Auto) that the article is a 'hit piece' against the company. And while I don't think that's entirely true, I didn't find this piece very satisfying - despite the smart guys who helped put it together. The reason? Rockstar's insane levels of secrecy. The only interviews with the co-founders are from 2002-ish, and I would say that Wired were pretty unsuccessful at finding anyone with any insight into the inner workings of the company.

Obviously, with Take-Two getting taken over by activist shareholders this week, the entire future of Rockstar as a division could be in the balance. But with the insane amount of hype around GTA IV, can anyone afford to mess with the Housers?

[And what - no mention of David Jones in the piece? For me, though he left before the height of the franchise, he's just as key to Rockstar's success by perfecting the initial GTA gameplay, to go alongside the Housers' keenly refined (and sometimes slightly 'overcrafted', for me) sense of brand and style.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

['Cinema Pixeldiso' is a semi-regular column by Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins that takes a look at movies that are either directly based upon or are related to video games, with a focus on the obscure and the misunderstood. This week’s selection is a documentary that chronicles a world record attempt.]

This is the story of man vs machine. The machine in question is the arcade classic Missile Command, and the man is Bill Carlton, an average run-of-the-mill kind of guy.

High Score

Its perhaps safe to say that when most people hear about some expert game player, or at least someone who is obsessed with video games, they immediately make assumptions: among other traits, this person more than likely has zero friends, let alone a girlfriend, is perhaps unemployed, has poor hygiene, and maybe even "talks funny". But not Bill. He has a decent job, friends, even a girlfriend, who may not understand Bill's obsession but is nonetheless supportive.

He's not some ball of angst like many diehard gamers but instead a rather charming, laid-back, and even genuinely funny guy. So as we follow along his quest to attain the record for highest score ever, instead of wincing whenever Bill hits a stumbling block, we, the viewers are actually sympathetic and even hopeful for his success. Though its Bill's apparent normalcy that makes his obsession all the more intriguing and perplexing, since one must ask: what's a normal guy like that doing stuff like this?

Man On A Mission

As a kid, Bill was given advice from the resident expert game-playing adult, or 'the neighborhood kids' god' as he is described, and that is to be as good as him, all one needs to do is excel at just one thing, whatever that might be, and then apply that same passion to anything else. And Bill applied this advice and it worked for him, though he was a bit of a late bloomer; it wasn't until the games that he wanted to be great at as a kid had become "classics", some fifteen years later, that Bill made his mark. In an interview with a local retro arcade operator, we learn that Bill first gained attention when he noticed by the end of each day, someone had set the highest possible score for Asteroids before the numbers would roll over.

Bill's first attempt at getting the highest score in a game, with Asteroids, is what put him on the map, at least among others who are obsessed with breaking such records, many of which were established years ago, when classic arcade games were still contemporary. The previous high score took one person eighty hours to achieve, and Bill in 2003 was on his way to replicate and surpass such a feat, but at the twenty seven hour mark the machine died on him. And this unfortunate technical mishap would set the tone for Bill's story throughout the film. Not once is there any doubt, from either Bill himself, his friends, his girlfriend, or even the experts that Bill is capable of setting the high score for Missile Command. The only thing anyone worries about is if the machine will hold up.

Early on in the documentary, we see Bill happily unload a freshly purchased, vintage Missile Command unit, and not too long afterwards he's already flexing his skills. Watching him play with complete confidence and joy is like watching a musical virtuoso take a dusty old violin that's been ignored and neglected, and in just a matter of moments, breathe new life into it, making the machine hum like it has never hummed before. Unfortunately, after a few rounds (one must assume that he's lasted longer than most other mortal players), the machine resets itself.

It’s discovered that some of the connections on the motherboard are loose and dusty, and after an adjustment, things appear to be in fine working order. But that's thing; that machine, like all other classic games, was made many years ago. They were never intended to withstand marathon sessions to begin with, so to ask of it over two decades later is a tall order. As the obligatory Twin Galaxies rep (the folks that oversee all the records of gaming's past) that appears in the documentary explains, there are a host of technical issues that can pop up that can cause the machine to die and reset itself, and all of which are just uncontrollable factors that one most face when doing a marathon run. A few hours later, Bill gets about 3.5 million points from his second game; it is estimated that he will need approximately 54-56 hours to break the 80.3 million point record. Bill's personal best is 29.7, which is the 10th highest in the books (and Bill actually fell asleep while setting it, so one has to wonder if it could have been more).

As for the top record, it was set by over 25 years ago, and remains one of the longest held records to date.

You've Got Either Video Games, Alcohol, or Drugs

The machine continues to reset itself in subsequent practice sessions, and without explanation. A few weeks before the record attempt, the game is moved to the site where history will presumably go down, Galaxy Games, a small game store located in a nearby city in Bill's home-state of Oregon, which also happens to be one of the few places for kids in the sleepy little town. Not long into his first on-site trial marathon run, the first of many to build up his endurance, the machine again resets itself. After this, as well as every other time it happened, Bill would simply go outside for some fresh air and a quick smoke, then went back to play the game till it couldn't handle it anymore.

The documentary isn't particularly action packed or eventful (though it does become suspenseful as things progress) - it's just a nice leisurely look at one man with a goal, and all the trials and tribulations involved in achieving it. As silly as it sounds, playing a video game nonstop is rather demanding, both mentally and physically, requiring quite a deal of conditioning, which Bill is able to deal with via the aid of his "ninja list", as well as resolve, which Bill also exhibits.

He's quite confident that the task at hand is more than achievable, and because potential problems are more or less out of his hands, instead of getting all worked up over nothing, Bill plays it calm and cool. One wonders why others on the cusp of making history can't act the same. One nice moment is when Bill ponders what he'll do once he finally breaks the record: celebrate or just keep playing and set the bar even higher (enough to scare anyone else away from ever trying). As he says, "No one ever made history being a big puss."

We also get to hear from the people that inhabit Bill's world, like the pair of teens playing EverQuest in the back of the store during his first midnight run, that attest to how boring it can be. "You've Got Either Video Games, Alcohol, or Drugs" explains one of the them, and he choose video games, even though he confesses that Everquest was itself a pretty boring game in which you just did the same thing over and over again. Another interesting casual observer is some guy that's just a customer to the store, someone who used to play Missile Command back in the day as a kid, and wasn't too bad at it. He now has kids, and can't keep up with what they play. Bill and him go head to head, and this person actually provides a decent challenge. Through this we see the embers of his youth aflame once more in his eyes and words.

We even get to meet Victor Ali, the boy, who is now a man, that set the record in the first place, so basically wishes anyone luck that's crazy enough to stay up 80 plus hours to demolish some crazy, youthful record. There's even a brief chat with the crazy kid who's not a regular guy who still holds the record that Bill is gunning for.

After a new board has been installed, Bill makes his record attempt. Everything starts out well... Bill is in good sprits, as expected at that point. Near the five million point, Alison, Bill's girlfriend shows up, and what other world records can one think of in which the record breaker can chit-chat and brag to their lady while they're in an attempt? She of course thinks its "crazy" but is still supportive nonetheless.

At the around four hours and forty-four minutes, Bill has almost 7.3 million points, and he tells that he's looking about about another todays "if everything goes fine... otherwise we're looking at another ten minutes if things don't go fine."

Ten Minutes Later...

The machine reset itself, at the 8.6 million mark. Is Bill angry? Sad? No. Just calm, cool, and collected. So the scene is not particularity heart-breaking. Bill is mostly not surprised, because "its what happens every-time." So he is disappointed, even though its not too obvious. Yet he tries his best to keep things in perspective, and even look at the positives, such as how not having to worrying about going to bathroom in some "nasty" game room for that weekend.

Two months later, another board is ordered and installed and another attempt is scheduled. At this point, Bill is more confident in the machine and more nervous about something going wrong on his end, such as making a stupid mistake in the game early on, or getting diarrhea. And on Friday, May 28th, 2005, we watch Bill's third attempt - "and I want it to be the last" - as he says a few hours beforehand. Does he succeed?

I won't say, partly for obvious spoiler issues, but partly because it's just not important. Those who are curious can find out what the end result is if they wish, but the movie isn't about whether he gets the high score, but the journey towards it. And Bill's journey is something we've all have gone through, or aspire to, or maybe even currently are in the middle of. Not to give too much away, but the ending is bittersweet. In the end, Bill's tale is like anyone else's. It's about believing in yourself (or fooling yourself, depending on your cynical point of view), and following your passions, no matter how silly they might be.

Final Score

High Score is a fantastic addition to the growing ranks of video game documentaries, which includes the recently screened at Sundance Chasing Ghosts and The King Of Kong, as well as the recently featured in this column 8 Bit. High Score is short, and sweet, and well worth catching if you ever get the chance. The movie is shown here and there, so keep an eye out at the official homepage and hope that it plays near you someday.

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

Posted by at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

First there was Insert Credit, which is still going, of course, and then the forums sheared off in a 'giant glacier falling into the sea' stylee and formed SelectButton, and now, it seems, Tim Rogers and some like-minded folkses have set up ActionButton.net.

The site, it appears, is "...a kind of web-log website thing about videogames. Our mission is basically to review videogames. Our reviews, between 800 and 1200 words in length each, can and will employ wordplay trickery and sometimes actual, absolute anger." Sounds fair enough to me.

Obviously, hanging out close to RogersSpace(TM) means that there will be disgruntled people trying to poke holes in this effort - to which I would say, check out Eric-Jon Waugh's Donkey Kong 3 review - "It’s been said that each of us only has one tune to play; all we ever do is change the way we play it. It’s also been said that Donkey Kong and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s tune originates in his personal hobbies, filtered through a love of Japanese and Western fairy tales. The Legend of Zelda has its roots in the fields and caves behind Miyamoto’s childhood home. Pikmin comes from Miyamoto’s garden. And Donkey Kong 3 is based on the premise that it is fun to spray DDT up a gorilla’s asshole. While being attacked by bees."

Or, if you will, peruse Tim's review of Crackdown: "Jumping and bouncing and shooting. Oddly colored sky. Really weighty vehicle physics. Industrial, angry, mediocre soundtrack that, if little else, communicates the feeling of two or three pounds of cocaine sprinting through your futuristic bloodstream as you hurtle toward the next guy the boss says needs to stop living right now. The game’s got atmosphere, and it loves it."

Bottom line - this is great writing, even through the self-conscious metacommentary which tends to characterize Rogers and some of his compatriots. But that's what makes it readable, for me - context and a little lightness of tone. Imagine if video game reviews weren't something you had to read through in order to work out if you wanted to spend your money on a game? That'd be ActionButton, then - and only a very few other sites out there manage that.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Ah yes, a little something for the weekend, Sir? In the form of these slightly insane left-over GSW-worth links, of course. Some of the most important of which are as follows:

- MTV's Stephen Totilo and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal have discovered the art of conversation, and seem determined to make us suffer for it. Hence the 'me-vs.-n'gai: The "God of War II" debate - Endless Gaming Conversation' article, as it's charmingly called on Stephen's own site. As he notes: "Below you will find the entire exchange N'Gai Croal and I had about "God of War II" over the past month and published over the past week. It runs a mere 12,329 words." Turns out it's fun and readable, though, like those Tom Vs. Bruce articles from CGW or other suitably charismatic double-acts. I look forward to them conspiring to drop a piano down some stairs next.

- Do you remember the video game poetry book 'Blue Wizard Is About To Die' from Seth 'Fingers' Flynn Barkan? Well, it was released a couple of years back, and it turns out it's really good. Anyhow, I just found out why he's called 'Fingers' - here's Barkan playing 'How Deep Is the Ocean (How High Is the Sky)' by Irving Berlin on YouTube, very creditably. Again, like the Marc Laidlaw post the other day, this is just someone somewhat involved in games doing something else cool, so to hell with ya, I'm linking it. [Via Frank.]

- GamesOnDeck editor Mathew Kumar also hoity-toits around at the Torontoist (ugh, too many vowels!), and he's pointed out some kind of crazy Nintendo Canada painted-Wii competition. "So, with the Wii on everyone’s lips but in almost noone’s shopping carts (what with it selling out the minute new stock arrives) your best bet to get your hands on one might be Nintendo’s new sweepstakes The Art of Wii. Held in conjunction with Magic Pony, you can win one of six unique hand-painted Nintendo Wiis, with the first four decorated by Gary Taxali, Hoi-An Tang, punk group illScarlett and (our favourite, possibly because it’s the most video-gamey) Arnold Tsang of Udon Entertainment."

- That grumpy Grassroots Gamemaster guy posted something called 'Dead Game Designers Society'. I do like his point a bit more this time, since it's about games making you care: "Why? Why make the game? And therefore, why play it? Why playing it will make you feel alive! Unless you ask why - and ask that not within the confined context of gaming, but out in the open context of human experience... Unless you ask why, and speak on those terms, you won't have a goddamn clue how to make anything fun. How to make it really compelling."

- This is really a bit biz-like for GSW, but I like linking to Paul Hyman's Hollywood Reporter pieces, so there. This time, he's talking about the rise of outsourcing in video game art, and this quote is probably the choicest, from Foundation9's Craig Rundels: "It can cost me maybe $7,000 to get a high-end character created domestically or $5,500 in Russia. But, if I go to China, it runs me closer to $4,000 without sacrificing quality. That's per character. And many video games have lots of characters in them." Scary? Mebbe.

- The adorably tiny NIS America just had their E3-replacing press event, and lo and behold, they announced a bunch of new import RPG-style games, including Grim Grimoire for June, Dragoneer's Aria for July, and Soul Nomad & The World Eaters (great name!) for August. I was going to try to work out what the hell each of those was, but Shacknews' Chris Remo did a great job of it already, so go check his comments. He also notes: "A company executive strongly hinted that Nippon Ichi is moving into Wii and Nintendo DS development." Goodie.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ye gods, look what Frank IM-ed to me just now: "Showcasing the vibrant world of game testing, VMC Game Labs launches a new Web comic today that puts games testers in the starring role."

So, this is all about good QA practices, right? Well... "Pixel and Vega, a pair of fictional, futuristic game testers from VMC Game Labs, are transported into a three-part series, VMC Game Labs: Rules of Engagement, which premieres online [.PDF link] this week."

What do you get, then? Well, medieval knights being pursued by Ethernet cables, ridiculously proportioned smokin' game tester babes in cyberpunk outfits, and an almost Liefield-ian sense of attention to detail, complete with some wacky virtual world NPC conversations and evil bug-infested trolls to tickle your fancy in the finale. I'm not sure this would actually make me want to use VMC for TRC testing on my console game, which is one of the things they do - but it certainly makes me want to point at them, and I guess that was the point of this particular insanity?

[UPDATE: Commenter CPinard suggests: "I'd wager that the comic is to recruit, not to get companies to contract with them" - good point, I hadn't thought of that - and then points to an interesting messageboard thread that has attracted kinds of vitriol from workers. Fun!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Got an email note from the ArcadeFlyers.com folks, who are doing a sterling job: "After seven years of cataloging coin-op video game flyers, The Arcade Flyer Archive (TAFA) is pleased to announce the imminent launch of two new flyer archives... in May 2007."

Really? Wossat? "The pinball flyer archive will include electromechanical, solid state, bingo, video pinball and pinball redemption. The arcade and amusement game flyer archive will include an even wider assortment of game types, including pitch n' bat, rifle, bowler, novelty, driver, wall, 16mm film and other electromechanical and novelty coin-op equipment. The three flyer archives will be independently catalogued."

What's more: "To support this effort, The Arcade Flyer Archive recently purchased over 10,000 coin-op flyers from Tim Ferrante, former owner and publisher of GameRoom magazine. These paper assets will provide the core collection for the new archives as well as keep the video game flyer archive growing steadily. In order to help fund the expansion of TAFA's operations, original duplicates of flyers will eventually be sold on eBay under the seller name 'Dphower'."

This is totally good news for preserving digital copies of important paper documents and ephemera like this - and ArcadeFlyers has been busy on the regular arcade stuff recently - for example an awesome Atari Game Booth flyer from 1978, and totally cute stuff like this Bonk's Adventure flyer from Western distributor Kaneko.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Some of you may recall that I'm a bit of a Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy fan - read that essay for a bit of Matthew Smith context if you're hazy on that particular niche of '80s psychedelic platforming wonder.

So it was great when I was chatting via email (about another topic) to Westwood Studios/EA veteran Steve Wetherill the other day, and checked out his softography to realize that yes, he worked on both Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the Amstrad CPC, before becoming a key figure at Odin Computer Graphics of Nodes Of Yesod fame. Yes, 'fame', stop looking at me weird over there.

Anyhow, nowadays Steve has his own little mobile game company, Uztek Games, who did EA Air Hockey for cellphones (which I believe I've played and enjoyed, actually) - and also owns and operates a vineyard, so there. But he was kind enough to give me some recollections on interacting with Matthew Smith and his experiences alongside Matthew on the fabled 'lost' Miner Willy game, 'The Megatree', as follows:

"My very first job in the games biz was as a programmer @ Software Projects - that would have been in 1984. My first project, working with another coder called Derrick Rowson, was to port [Manic Miner] to the Amstrad CPC. This was the first "in house" conversion of MM that SP had done. I did see Matthew from time to time, but JSW shipped at around the time I started @ SP, so Matthew was in "burnt out" mode.

In any case, Matthew lived in Birkenhead and the SP office was in Woolton in Liverpool, and Matthew worked from his house, so he did not have regular cause to be in the office. It's strange too why we were not given access to the Manic Miner source code. We disassembled the Spectrum version to create the Amstrad version.

After MM, Derrick & I ported [Jet Set Willy]. Again, no source code was forthcoming (and I know this because it took forever to get the stairs/ramps to work the same way as the Speccy version). We went a little crazy with the JSW port though, and we ended up more than doubling the number of rooms. In effect, we were the very first JSW modders (though, we also wrote most the game from scratch too since we had no source code). I left SP to go to Odin once JSW for the Amstrad was done, but the canny folks @ SP saw an opportunity, and so Derrick then ported the Amstrad game back to the Spectrum where it was released as Jet Set Willy 2 - that game is basically identical to the Amstrad version we'd made. Here are some comments I made on the topic of JSW2 last year.

Matthew used to go to some of the same drinking spots as I did (I was living in Birkenhead while I worked @ SP) and I remember Matthew showing up at least once to the Birkenhead rock club "Stairways" wearing his toga, so the toga thing is definitely true.

When the powers that be @ SP (Alan & Tommy) decided that a new Willy game was needed, they setup Matthew, Marc Dawson (C64 coder - now Marc Wilding running Illusions in the Czech republic) and Stuart Fotheringham (artist) in my house (the house where I lived - it actually belonged to Software Projects) on Holt Road in Birkenhead so that they could develop "The Megatree" away from "distractions". Matthew was to design, Marc was to code, Stoo to do the art. I'd leave for work each morning, and various members of the team would be in the house, planning the game.

I'd return in the evening and various members of the team would be @ the house .. planning the game. And so it went on for a couple of months until it became clear that nothing was really happening. I do remember a demo of some little trees dancing around a big tree, or something of that nature. I don't think there was ever anything really playable. It is a long time ago though. :)"

[EDITOR'S NOTE: There's lots more info on The Megatree at GTW64, including disc images, for what it's worth, backing up Steve's recollections nicely.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Now here's a kinda unmissable pitch for a game: "Sortasoft today announced the immediate availability of their new [PC] action/puzzle game Retro Records. See what it takes to run a record store in the era of iPods and digital downloads!" Yep, it's totally a Nick Hornby casual game simulator, circa High Fidelity.

Here's the exact blurb: "In Retro Records, you have inherited a disorderly record store and must rummage through classic vinyl albums to prepare them for sale. Retro Records blends simple and addictive gameplay with indie record store aesthetics. As players collect more albums, they unlock turntables, gold and platinum records, and other upgrades. Players also get to take a breather once in a while and test their memory in bonus rounds. It's fast paced analog action with a funky soundtrack to groove to...just don't break too many records!"

What's more: "Retro Records features over 200 classic jazz, rock, hip hop, reggae, country, classical, techno and disco records. With the help of Oliver, the record store clerk, players can collect over 20 unique rare records to show off on their store shelves. If you want to personalize your store, Customize Albums mode allows you to add any of your own favorite classic albums [using Amazon.com and a Listmania account!]."

Anyhow, there's a free demo of Retro Records available, but I caught up with Sortasoft's indie creator Joshua DeBonis, and asked him a couple of slightly flippant questions about it:

Q: Are you hoping that the Nick Hornby-style obsessive record collectors will play this game?

A: Sure I am, but I'm not trying to specifically target that crowd. Everybody loves music, so I'm aiming for a wide audience! People who grew up with records are nostalgic about them, and the younger post-vinyl crowd is intrigued.

Q: 2. Are you one yourself?

A: I love music, and I do have a modest record collection, but I'm certainly not obsessive. I just buy records that I want to listen to. If anything, I'm the opposite. Usually I just leave my albums lying around in complete disarray. Every couple of months I have to spend a few hours putting everything back in the correct jackets. This "activity" was definitely a major inspiration for the game.

Q: What's the top 3 favorite stupidly collectible records that you own?

A: I only own one stupidly collectible record, and your audience should appreciate this... which is a 7" of De La Soul featuring Parappa the Rapper doing "I Gotta Believe".

So my other two are just a couple of my favorite records. You can find both of these in the game.

Go by Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon has been a huge influence on me musically (as a tenor saxophonist). I've studied this record inside and out, and at least at one time I could play along with the entire thing note for note.

Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Aside from being wonderful to listen to, this was the first record I ever bought. It also reminds me of my older brother who introduced me to Pink Floyd.

Q: 4. A lot of casual games seem to be female-aimed nowadays, yours is... the inverse! How come?

A: I just make games that I personally want to play. However I've found that women seem to enjoy Retro Records as much as men. My girlfriend loves the game, or at least she did until I made her playtest it for the 400th time.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Got a random PR email, as often happens, but hey, it's about a video game TV show that's streamable online, even if it is a bit 'yoof' and Australian: "Good Game, the show by gamers for gamers, returns to ABC2 on Tuesday 27 March at 8.30pm and [in freely streamable form] to ABC Online... Hosted by Junglist (Jeremy Ray) and new presenter Bajo (Steven O'Donnell), Good Game will continue to bring gamers the latest in news and events, top gaming tips, reviews and interviews. "

Actually, this doesn't sound so bad: "In the first episode, Good Game meets a true gaming God, Supreme Commander's Chris Taylor, one of the few game developers who gets his name on the front of the box. In the wake of the Australian launch of the PS3, the team reviews the launch title, Resistance: Fall of Man, and meets its creator Ted Price."

In addition: "Good Game also takes an in-depth look at the meteoric rise of the Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). With some games boasting player numbers larger than many small countries and with at least eight new MMO's due for release in 2007, Good Game looks at why these games are so popular and the impact they are having on the rest of the gaming community." So there you go. They have streamable video segments from the previous series, too - and even if it's just on Aussie digital TV - hey, it's on TV!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a new Gamasutra article which is very GSW-worthy - a 'Playing Catch Up' column featuring Adventure creator Warren Robinett, who made the first video game 'easter egg', of course - and also founded educational game firm The Learning Company, which I didn't know.

Anyhow, there's some good stuff in here: "Adventure... capitalized on the console’s success enormously well. By the end of the decade, there were around 1.8 million Atari 2600 owners, and 1 million of them were playing Robinett’s game. However, despite the incredible sales—at $25 each, no less—its creator was still on a salary of $22,000 a year, and soon decided to leave the company...

“I was tired of working, and Atari management didn't value the 2600 designers,” he says. “Boy were they stupid, because the designers all quit and started competing companies.” Years later, he notes with some enthusiasm, the company “came crashing down, like a whale dropped from a 747 at 30,000 feet”."

Later on, post game biz for Robinett, boy, there was some craziness: "In 1991, Robinett was talking with Stan Williams—a college and grad school friend who was, at the time, a chemistry professor at UCLA—in regards to a Scanning-Tunneling Microscope that had been developed by Williams and his grad students. Together, they decided that the idea of connecting the microscope to Robinett’s VR system would be “interesting”. The resulting invention was the Nanomanipulator, a VR interface that allows its user to “see, touch, and manipulate individual macromolecules”. The machine was implemented later on by Russ Taylor as a PhD thesis, who still runs the project." Nice!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['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. This week let’s datajack the Matrix and see what we can find on Shadowrun.]

Video games and role playing have always been close allies. Just as Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson attempted to extend Tolkien’s world into pencil and paper games, programmers have labored to model the ritual theater of tabletop role playing sessions in software. Personal computer RPGs have seen a steady path of development over the years, from the early days of Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth to the latest visual dream in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series. However, in the West, console RPG efforts have been largely abandoned, surrendered to the Japanese, whose role playing aesthetics follow distinctly divergent lines. For an early snapshot of this evolution consider the three video games based on the Shadowrun license.

Shadowrun began life in 1989 as a set of tabletop role playing rules published by the FASA Corporation. The world of Shadowrun was weird mix of fantasy and sci-fi in which Tolkien-esque characters such as elves, orks, and dragons were given a serrated edge by dropping them into a near future, tech noir landscape. Magic existed alongside neural implants as “deckers” and shamanists hacked into computer networks to battle sinister transnational corporations. Life was cheap in Shadowrun and death often came quickly, whether it was by tempered steel, a 9mm Hydra-Shok, or a bolt of summoned lightning. Avoiding a potentially goofy and derivative premise, the Shadowrun game was elevated by the fevered intensity of its vicious world.

FASA was always adept at licensing its properties (in fact, the original company currently exists only as licensing rights manager, leaving the publishing and distribution of its properties to other companies) and soon enhanced the Shadowrun brand with tie-in novels and a series of unique video games, each produced by a different developer.

Brain Burnt

The first Shadowrun video game was created by the Australian developer Beam Software (who later changed its name to Melbourne House) and published by Data East in 1993 for SNES. The game followed amnesiac Jake Armitage, recently deceased but resurrected thanks to late 21st century medical technology, as he struggled to find his killers before they could finish the job. It was surprisingly faithful to the source material’s dark and amoral setting, particularly considering Nintendo’s strict approval process. The city of Seattle was portrayed in the game as a sort of Bosnian War era Sarajevo with hidden snipers raining death on scurrying refugees and teeming black markets where almost anything could be had for a price.

Shadowrun for the SNES is well worth seeking out and can be found with a little searching complete with manual and folded poster for around $35. As with most SNES games, loose cartridges are very easy to find but do not pay more than $10.

Geeked

In 1994 the Genesis received a Shadowrun game published by Sega. Developed by BlueSky Software, the game followed the exploits of a shadowrunner named Joshua as he unraveled the mystery of his brother’s death. While there was a interesting narrative to follow, BlueSky allowed players a tremendous amount of freedom within the game to explore and develop their character as they saw fit. There was a multitude of jobs to take on, from data hacker to meat shield, and variety of criminal gangs to associate with or run from. The game world was large and exploring its numerous nooks and crannies provided a great sense of accomplishment.

A key title for Genesis collectors, look to pay around $25 for a complete version of Shadowrun. A loose cartridge should not be worth more than $8.

Shinu

Several years later, Japan received their own Shadowrun game, this time for the fading Mega CD. Published by Compile in 1996, the Mega CD version of Shadowrun was created by Group SNE, a Japanese developer with deep tabletop role playing game credentials. In the late 80’s the company had helped to kick start the Nippon gaming scene with their Sword World rule books and later created the much beloved Record of Lodoss War. Adapting the material to fit Japanese tastes, Group SNE’s Shadowrun went in a very different direction from the previous Western designed games. For their version, the developer created a complex point-and-click adventure with lush, anime graphics. While the previous two Shadowrun games handled combat in real-time, Shadowrun for the Mega CD employed a turn-based tactical system in the style of Shining Force or Arc the Lad with combat results decided by animated rolling dice.

Unfortunately for importers, Shadowrun for the Mega CD is heavy with text and those without fairly high level Japanese language skills will have a hard time progressing through the game. Still, if you must have it, search online and expect to pay about $65.

Although the FASA Corporation has ceased operation as a game publisher, Shadowrun lives on. The tabletop rules are now in their 4th edition and are being published by FanPro . Roc (an imprint of New American Library, which is part of the Penguin Group) is also publishing a new set of tie-in novels. Microsoft owns FASA Interactive (now called FASA Studio) and is currently preparing a multiplayer, first-person shooter set in the Shadowrun universe for the Xbox 360 and Vista to be released later this year.

Further Reading: Playing Catch Up: Shadowrun’s Paul Kid interview by Alistair Wallis, Gamasutra, November 2, 2006

Images: (C) 2001-2006 WizKids Inc./Fantasy Productions All Rights Reserved

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

Posted by jfleming at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at the Daily Yomiuri, there's a cute little profile of Sega game designer Hiroshi Uemura, who, of course, "...gave birth to two mega-hit children's card-based video games, "Mushiking: The King of Beetles" for boys, and "Love and Berry Dress up and Dance!" for girls."

When I was last in Tokyo last September, these CCG-based arcade machines were _everywhere_, and there was even Love & Berry dress-up for little girls at Sega's Joypolis - and the numbers on just the arcade versions alone bear this out: ""Mushiking" has sold 420 million cards since January 2003. "Love and Berry," which substitutes fashion competitions for bug battles, has sold 240 million cards since October 2004."

There's some cute commentary on how the game was designed, too: "Uemura says the goal in designing the games was to let children and parents enjoy playing together. It was a concept adapted from past mistakes. Before "Mushiking," a cutting-edge attraction designed by the team frightened an elderly person and grandchild at a theme park. "Mushiking" was born out of reflection on that failure. Uemura said the game allows adults to use their intuition to help children with the games. "For example, when playing "Love and Berry," parents can advise children by saying, "You don't wear jeans at dance parties,' and by doing so, parents can enjoy communicating with children."" Yeah, no jeans!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know there are lots of different Game Boy models, of course. But do you know how their sound output varies over the multiple different DS and Game Boy SKUs? Chiptune musician Herbert Weixelbaum does, and he's created a massive, newly updated page profiling the different noises each GB makes.

He explains of this pretty cool analysis: "not only do the different game boy models sound different, if you have a look at the waveforms, you can see, that these already look very different (thin sound - thin waveform). i recorded the pulse instrument, envelope: A8, wave: pulse width 50% (square), with a pitch of C3 (which is great C, in musical terms)."

Weixelbaum's conclusion? "things like "retro feel" might or might not be of importance to you, but it is a pretty objective judgment, that the original game boy (or the original with the pro sound mod) has the best sound, while the game boy advance sp2 has the best display. if you want to use a gba program, like nanoloop 2.0, the ds lite has the best sound and display." [Via the rockin' vorc.org.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

An interesting piece over at our education sister site Game Career Guide today, dealing with the idea of creating a visual language flow for video games, with a view to understanding them better.

Author Paolo Taje explains in the intro: "My analysis... rests upon a decomposition of fundamental gameplay elements and a subsequent reconstruction within an ordered structure founded on layers. The ultimate aim of this process is to understand how game tokens, dynamics and player psychology are linked together." It's particularly intriguing when he applies it to Pac-Man and Tetris.

Taje explains of his Russian puzzle game deconstruction: "The rules of Tetris create a network of dynamics, properties and goals in the main (left) sector. First of all, you can Move your blocks in one dimension (left or right) and Rotate them by 90 degrees. Their fall can be described as a Time Limit in placing them; Play Area has instead an upper Space Limit. The foremost dynamic is Match, i.e. to position and wedge blocks, which results in Destroying one or more lines. Depending on game state, the player's goal changes from impulse to Survive, when the play area is almost full, to wish to Destroy All blocks, when the play area is filled up only halfway or less." Is this useful? I'm wondering - it could be!

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

["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's unfortunately delayed installment looks at an overlooked handheld game: Nemesis Factor.]

It has been a staple of the adventure game since Zork. It burst into the public consciousness in Myst. It has been recreated countless times across the internet in room-escaping Flash games. It has many forms; it has no name; it is The Machine of Unknown Purpose with Buttons You Can Press.

The Machine of Unknown Purpose with Buttons You Can Press has opened doors, revealed clues, and even turned on other Machines of Unknown Purposes with Buttons You Can Also Press. Sometimes, it has no purpose other to be solved, for points or bragging rights. But for whatever reason, the buttons must be pressed, in the right order, at the right times, without making a mistake, in order to succeed.

Perhaps you have wondered what you would do if you were confronted by The Machine of Unknown Purpose with Buttons You Can Press in real life, a physical Machine with Buttons You Can Press using your fingers instead of with a mouse or keyboard.

wonder no more. The Machine of Unknown Purpose with Buttons You Can Press exists, and its name is Nemesis Factor.

Prime Factorization

Nemesis Factor was produced by Hasbro (the producers of Lights Out) in 2001. (In a blog post on the game, Ken Jennings seems to think that it was released in 1981, but that's wildly incorrect.) Like all Machines of Unknown Purposes with Buttons You Can Press, it has a fairly straightforward interface. There are five colored buttons: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. (At least, that's what they're supposed to be. I find that the green and blue look more like blue and violet, respectively.) The buttons light up, and you must light all five of them. The game is divided into 100 levels, each with one puzzle. Ostensibly, the goal for each is the same—light all the buttons—but in each level, the methods change drastically. Up to four people can save their progress, though each player has to play separately.

The first few levels only require pressing the buttons. They're very simple, and plenty of the initial patterns will be familiar to adventure-gamers. After five puzzles, the game introduces the speaker, and the game begins to speak before and after your button presses. By providing limited feedback to your actions, the game really starts to feel like a portable graphic adventure: you figure out what the buttons do, you put them in order, you press the buttons.

But unlike most adventure games, Nemesis Factor keeps ramping up the difficulty. Not only does the speaker provide increasingly baroque prompts and responses, the game soon reveals that it has more ways to receive input than you expect. Pretty soon, even mostly straightforward puzzles require quickly sorting through several different possibilities. And the final levels, even the ones that don't use all of the tricks of the device, are incredibly difficult to tease out.

The game includes a scoring system, which is mostly annoying (you get docked if you press too many buttons trying to solve a level), and a hint system which is excellent. Though I advise working through the game without resorting to it, if you get painfully stuck (or if you're trying to get through most of the game on a deadline), each level can provide two clues, which are pretty good at nudging you to the right place.

Meme Factor

Despite embodying such a common videogame puzzle trope, Nemesis Factor hasn't made much of an impact. It was awarded Best Puzzle in the 2003 Games 100, but it's not clear why it wasn't listed the year before. The puzzle disappeared from shelves pretty soon after. I remember seeing it in the stores at the time, but just looking at the box, it was hard to imagine the kind of deep challenges that the game actually offered. I imagine most people had the same reaction, and the game went largely unnoticed. I didn't hear any word of mouth until after it was out of stores.

Unlike most of the games I write about, there are no clones of Nemesis Factor, and no way to play the game online. If you want to solve these puzzles, your only hope is to grab one off eBay. For goodness' sake, I haven't even seen straight rip-offs. The unusual interface of the original machine makes a complete duplicate unlikely, but with the number of Machines of Unknown Purposes with Buttons You Can Press growing ever larger in videogames, one would expect that someone would have tried to steal from Nemesis Factor. Of course, I don't want to encourage plagiarism, but at the very least, the Flash programmers of the world could look at how these puzzles work. They're marvelous, and they offer insight into the possibilities of The Machine of Unknown Purpose with Buttons You Can Press, which lay far beyond matching colors and playing a melodies you heard elsewhere.

The team behind Nemesis Factor isn't listed anywhere on the Web (other than a few mentions of respected puzzle constructer Dave Tuller), but hopefully they will bring some sort of sequel to the world. Or perhaps someone, anyone else, will be inspired to bring the Nemesis flavor to The machine of unknown Purpose with Buttons You can Press. If the legions of escape-the-room games are any indication, we're ready for Nemesis Factor II. Think about the playful surprises of recent DS adventure games, and imagine what they could be in the hands of truly inspired—and truly devious—puzzle desginers.

[Tony Delgado is a member of the National Puzzlers' League, and a solver and creater of puzzles of all sorts. Other than his work as the copy chief for The Gamer's Quarter, he finds his job unsatisfying and is open to career-change suggestions.]

Posted by tablesaw at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Apparently I haven't been keeping up with Microsoft's blog outreach, since I just spotted On10.net, a video-heavy tech and gaming blog that's funded by the Redmond giant (wait, do I get to point out my favorite Microsoft-related typo here?), and they have a number of pretty interesting videos from GDC 2007, just posted over the last few days.

I particularly wanted to point out the video showcasing Emotiv's brain-based control system, explained slightly breathlessly by Tina Wood: "Emotiv's technology is based upon interpreting the electrical activity in the human brain via EEG that looks below the individually unique outer cortex to deeper regions of the brain." It is VERY neat, though - and this is the first decent video I've seen of it.

There's also a piece chatting to the Penny Arcade folks about their Hothead-developed episodic game, and something talking to Gentle Giant Studios about their neat 3D scanning, motion capture, etc. I find the lack of clear 'this is Microsoft-funded' labeling a teensy bit meh, but the content is interesting, so hey - go poke at it. [Since I set this ready to post, they added an Xbox 360 Elite video, which is probably making them a lot more noticed, though!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following a recent GSW entry about the Tale of Tales guys (of Endless Forest and now The Path fame), I've been exchanging a few emails with them, and they pointed out 'Interactivity wants to be free', an interesting recent TofT blog post.

They actually quibble with Rod Humble's 'The Marriage', recognizing its positives, but arguing in part: "Interactivity is capable of so much more than games. New media artists like Lia and Dextro have been working with this for years. And while they share a formal language with Rod Humble to some extent, the work of these internationally renowned artists provokes a lot more rich and diverse emotions."

The critique continues: "Not that I am advocating any kind of puritanism in art. I don’t think laying bare the very concepts of art and limiting art to its very core is a good idea. The computer gives us a an unprecented array of media that we can all use simultaneously to express things in the most sensuous and spectacular ways ever imagined. Why limit ourselves with this wealth at our disposal?"

[Actually, one of the things I've been wrestling with is whether festivals such as the IGF should do a better job of recognizing the most experimental pieces of interactivity (such as The Endless Forest) which are not necessarily good games in a conventional playable sense, but say something or provoke emotional responses. See the Realtime Art Manifesto for more on this - it's important, I think.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those Halo.bungie.org guys find some awesome stuff sometimes - in this case a turn-based Halo mock-up machinima movie that is all kinds of silly stupid Final Fantasy aping dumbness, in a nice way.

They note: "RVideo found a fantastic video posted on the HaloGrid forums (yep, they're back) - it was done by the the guys over at Chaos Films, and it emulates a standard turn-based RPG using the Halo engine."

The HBO folks are mirroring the WMP9 version - 28.4 mb, as well as hosting their own QuickTime version - 29.8 mb. They continue: "This movie is hilarious - really well done. If you've ever played RPGs, you'll immediately connect. If you haven't, it's STILL pretty darned funny - just be glad XBL isn't like this! Can't wait for parts 2 and 3 (I'm hoping we can get higher-quality versions of all of them, from here on in)." Wow, neeto!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hoo hoo, it's time for the 'Indie Game Review Panel [March Edition]' over at rather smart indie game site GameTunnel, and this month, they ask: "If a dog and rabbit-like creature were trying to kill the President should you stop them? Is becoming President in an election-sim game really "winning?""

As a direct result of this, Sam & Max: Lincoln Must Die gets joint Game Of The Month, with Russ Carroll commenting: "This episode has some great government-al humor mixed with the puzzle randomness that makes most people shake their heads at puzzle games. Sam & Max certainly are worth the low entry price. Essentially you are getting 3 hours of fun for a bit more than a movie. Oh and did I mention the musical number-esque song done in ragtime style?"

But it shares it with Loonyland 2, which I had never heard of, and sounds really interesting - Brian Clair comments: "Loonyland 2 is another great RPG that made it into this month’s roundup. Unlike Geneforge 4, which is geared more towards hardcore role-players, Loonyland 2 takes aim at the RPG-lite crowd. There’s more action than reading in this release, but that doesn’t detract from the gameplay at all. You’ll control your avatar through a variety of quests as you fight off toys gone mad in a number of areas. As you dispatch the enemies, you’ll gain experience and go up in levels as with any RPG." Go poke it!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We actually covered love for PC title Dwarf Fortress before, but I thought it was cool that Toybane has been claiming that the title is the future of games, presenting "...a level of immersion unparalleled in gaming; an almost complete, dynamic world; and created an emotional connection with its characters with absolutely no graphics at all."

Why does Dwarf Fortress matter? The Toybane folks rave: "Whenever was there a game that named close to every landmark above ground and below, populated it with thousands of creatures that each lived persistent lives, created a multi-civilized world history complete with back story, had dynamic weather with fronts and humidity, used a multi-currency economic system, and presented a rich ecosystem of seasons and wildlife?"

In fact, they reference the recent Gamasutra interview with Warren Spector, in which he commented, in characteristically grumpy fashion, that developers should: “Stop building movie sets and make a world we can interact with instead.” Wait, so Dwarf Fortress is the ultimate manifestation of this, despite being ASCII-based? Please feel free to agree or not.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Apparently, knowing how transfixed I am by the whole Gizmondo Ferrari crash thing I am, the Universe is conspiring to help me find media reference to it - this time in the form of Kavinsky's new '1986' EP, a music release on Air's Record Makers label that I grabbed from Emusic.

In fact, there's a page on ClickGroove where you can hear the 'Flashback' track, which has some very familiar audio in it - a creepy Knight Rider-style groove, over which you can hear voiceover discussing "...a car that's virtually sliced in half on the PCH". Specifically a Ferrari, of course - apparently Kavinsky has been sampling news dialog from the Gizmondo crash for his new release.

Anyhow, there's also an earlier video for 'Testarossa' from Kavinsky: "KAVINSKY-"Testarossa autodrive "from "Teddy boy" ep (Record makers-2006) Directed by Jonas&François for "75" production &Anthony Thouzet", which I would say also has some vague Gizmondo inspiration in it, what with crashed Ferraris and ambulances - although I don't remember Stefan Eriksson being as Miami Vice as this, so perhaps it's just an oblique reference. Still - awesome-o.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['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 frequent Western misinterpretation of what mecha games set out to achieve.]

Now with the release of Armored Core 4 abroad, reviews and forum discussion are a mixed bag. The main problem is down to a misinterpretation of what mecha games set out to achieve and consequently offer in terms of gameplay. Fallacious comparisons are often made to other types of gaming genre as a means of categorising the quality of whatever mecha game is currently under the spotlight. So, I think it’s time for a little cultural clarification…

On the whole, the Halo series of games are something that elicits a series of responses from people. On the one hand the singleplayer level design and narrative are criminally poor, especially after Bungie’s Marathon games, and on the other the controls and multiplayer are sublime. Almost everyone now thinks that all console FPS games should utilise a similar configuration, this is also true for most third person orientated action games too.

In terms of the evolution of gameplay this approach to acknowledging a superior means of control, as a means of improving other games, is a shrewd and insightful one. Well, for the most part. If, for instance, the focus of the game is the complexity of the controls so as to emulate the experience of piloting a monstrously large robot then a Halo-esque set of controls will miss the point of what the game is trying to achieve (try to imagine Steel Battalion without the controller).

Naturally, if a game goes out of its way to force a deep and complex set of controls upon the player it often puts most gamers backs up. With the advent of the blogosphere and a general increase in the potency of the vox populi, a game that seemingly runs in the face of (Western) opinion is going to get itself into trouble at some point or another.

Armored Core as a series of games, outside of Japan at least, has always had a tough time of wooing the journalistic throng and punters alike. On the one hand you have the people who think the game is clumsy and difficult to control and then you have, well, ninjas who take to the games like mechanical ducks to water.

From a Western perspective, Armored Core is a third person action game that has restrictive environments, hideously complex customisation and counter-intuitive controls. Alternatively, in Japan at least, the games are thought to be very focused in terms of their level design, contain comprehensive customisation and very thorough controls.

The emphasis in games such as Armored Core is empowering the player through their own effort and understanding of how the game works and how it should be played. The environments are meant to be boxed in to denote a level of futility to the player’s progression. After all it’s very common in anime series to have the protagonist strategically set-up by the enemy and have them survive overwhelming odds. This approach to having a limited environment and forcing the player to commit to a difficult encounter is the gaming equivalent of what occurs in an anime narrative.

Subsequently, the player is expected to learn how to build a suitably potent mecha and how to get the most out of it during combat, after all that's what anime protagonists have to go through so why shouldn't the player as well? The onus is entirely on you and the rush upon enduring a monstrous battle against overwhelming odds is palpable, well if you actually put the effort in to get to that point.

Much in the same way that God Hand received mixed responses for having seemingly clumsy controls and odd camera angles, few people sat back and tried to examine what was trying to be achieved. In the same vein, games such as Virtual On and Armored Core are rife with what can only initially appear as utterly bizarre design choices.

To look at, a game such as Virtual On is a third person shmup. When actually it's a vectored based combat game with a heavy emphasis on strategy. Look at the controls, Virtual On uses two sticks with two buttons each. Why this configuration? What is it trying to achieve?

Well, firstly it's not trying to purposefully irritate anyone. The twinstick setup has two purposes, one functional and one pop-cultural. The latter is to offer a vague approximation of mobile suit control from the Zeta Gundam era, whereas the former is to allow a fast response to enemy weapons fire and more precise control of your virtuaroid (something that the Saturn and Dreamcast ports proved with the limited control via their respective pads).

Armored Core 4 is no different in its approach to mecha made polygonal flesh. It's trying to encompass the control of a very complex piece of a machinery and offering enough player input to give the sense that, yes, you are an ass kicking pilot. However, it doesn't just give that control away without the expectation that the player will work at it.

You see, games like Armored Core and Virtual On aren't made for people who want maximum gaming empowerment for zero effort. In addition, they aren't meant to be played without the understanding of their pop-cultural context (much in the same way Lego Star Wars loses much of its charm if you neither like or care about Lego or Star Wars). Mecha games are made for people who like mecha and want to pilot the damn things, mainly because as you've probably noticed they don't exist yet.

In the same way that I am not a Greek god, a cyborg super soldier or a spy. Games offer those virtual opportunities but for me to misinterpret, in a gaming context, a Greek god as a cyborg super soldier who should be spying is a bit bloody stupid. There are reasons that Armored Core has survived over a decade, it might be worth re-examining as to why.

[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 6:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

This is kinda just a sideline to the current PlayStation 3 launch kerfuffle, but I'm fascinated by the provincial European reaction to the launch - and Matteo Bittanti has a good round-up of the Italian issues - which, it turns out, revolve almost entirely around video game soccer!

The titanically large, important Italian newspaper Il Corriere Della Sera has apparently weighed in as follows: "Italy's best selling national newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, published a story about a frustrated PS3 buyer (also, a journalist) who decided to immediately sell the console after realizing that it would not run Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and Fifa 2007 (both currently available on the PS2)."

He continues: "Titled "Ieri ho comprato la PS3. Oggi la rivendo" (= "Yesterday I bought a PS3. Today, I'm selling it") the story is interesting because this consumer's disappointment is apparently shared by thousands of other players: in a country where electronic gaming and soccer games are synonomous, a long term lack of compatibility with PES6 (aka Winning Eleven in the US and Japan) and FIFA07 would be considered simply unacceptable." Apparently it's being addressed (maybe!), but let's not forget what apps are killer apps outside the States, mm?

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Had a wander back to C&VG's subsite for PC Gamer UK, which is so Flash-infested that it makes my PC overspin (hurrah!), but a couple more neat mag features have been reprinted - notably 'How To Be A Complete Bastard'.

This particular piece of 'fun' is John Walker's take on how to be really nasty in online games - apparently for fun and/or profit, and starts with the grinning intro: "Griefers are much maligned. Condemned as the playground bullies of the online world, they are in fact masters of innovation.... These are the anarchists of gaming, taking the ingredients they're given and making a cake no one was expecting. Jealous? You should be. So why not begin your career of adding imagination to multiplayer gaming today?" Or, you know, they're horrid and should be ignored, guys.

Also worth checking - a piece on GTA: San Andreas, which is odd and well written: " But this is not art imitating life, or even the foreign policy of a superpower somewhere near Canada, say, because GTA's overwhelming mechanisms of cause and effect mean these guys are shooting for a good reason. That alone is cause enough to spend your hours there, and damn the grim early days in the ghetto. All you need is a relaxed attitude, time dribbling near-endlessly from your hands and a love for the streets. Oh yeah, and maybe a jetpack."

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

Over at Metal Slug fansite (yay!) Metal Slug DB, there's a new post pointing out a completely awesome (EDIT: un?)official Metal Slug model kit, as showcased recently in Japan.

It's explained: "Wonder Festival, which is an exihibition held in Japan that gathers around figure and model kit enthusiasts and dealers, recently held their Winter 2007 exposition... Among the tens of thousands of figures lying around on top of the tables was the Metal Slug resin kit (assembly and painting required) molded and packaged by Alchemist 9000."

Also, I love the petulant fanboy rest of the post: "Luckily (for me), I've managed to acquire two of these things. They didn't come cheap, however, although I do suspect that these will be pretty damned rare and nearly impossible to find in the future.... Unfortunately, those are all of the photos you will see of the resin kit. Nearly all of the media's attention in the exposition were gathered around semi-naked figures of anime girls, so the top five photos are, presumably, the only ones taken of the Metal Slug resin kit during the exposition. (As for my own two kits, I'm not even going to bother opening these, and will instead salt them away. So don't be expecting me to put up any pictures of them.)" Haw! [Via Neo-Geo.com.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The retro crazies at RetroBlast! have just put up a post pointing out that the 2007 Golden Tee World Championship began on Sunday in the Tilted Kilt pub at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas - there's an older press release on Coin-Op Today with the full details.

Actually, people consistently ignore the Golden Tee golf series, despite the fact that it's probably the most financially successful video game series in North American arcades over the last 10 years - so it's nice to see a little pointing out. Over at the Incredible Technologies forums for the game, there's some allegedly live coverage unfolding, though not much has started up yet.

Anyhow, as RetroBlast! handily explains: "To be held over the next two days, the championship will pit a 16-man international squad against a 16-man American team. The international team consists of teams from South Africa, the U.K., Australia and Canada. During the previous 4 tournaments the Americans have prevailed 3 times with the World Team winning their only World Championship Cup in 2004... The prize money totals over $57,000, so it looks to be a heated competition!" I played Golden Tee's networked arcade version on Saturday night at a bar in San Jose, actually - but didn't score too well, thanks to inadequate trackball technique. Oh well.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Turns out that official Bungie homebase Bungie.net posts some neat features from time to time, and a newly posted one is a look at the packaging construction for the super-deluxe version of Halo 3 for Xbox 360, in an article called 'A Legend in the Making'.

As explained in the intro: "As you know by now, Halo 3 will come in three flavors later this year, ranging from the standard game, to the super deluxe "Legendary Edition." The Legendary Edition comes packaged with a collectible Spartan helmet, two bonus discs and an exclusive cinematic storyboard booklet. I’ve seen the final helmet first hand I can honestly say it's totally awesome. The end product is the result of all the blood, sweat and tears that so many people have poured into this project over the past two years (yes, you read that right, this project started over two years ago!)." Blimey - there's lots of pics of factory workers toiling on 'legendary construction' tasks, too.

Microsoft's Craig Carlson explains of his work on the v. swish helmet: "I first got involved in this in an all day, Saturday planning meeting here in Redmond in June of 2005. We looked at wax-resin, cast-resin and injection molding as design and manufacturing solutions before settling on injection molding. The next challenge was RFQ’ing this and finding suppliers with both the capacity required as well as the capability. It still amazes me that we ended up using our largest Keyboard supplier, but since I launched 8 keyboard and desktop products with them while working in MS PC Hardware, I was convinced that they gave us the best chance for success in the end." [Via halo.bungie.org.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The IC messageboard insurgents at SelectButton (more specifically, Mechanori!) have made a fascinating post on obscure Japanese PlayStation 1 game 'LSD', "...a recreation of dreams written down in a staff member's dream journal."

It's explained: "There is no goal in LSD. You can walk in four directions, you can look behind you with the L1 or R1 buttons, you can strafe with the L2 and R2 buttons, and you can look up with the triangle button. There's no "jump" or "use" button; you're purely an observer in the world of LSD." Niftily abstract.

And how does it look? "The game is composed of large, linked rooms or stages. Some are fairly coherent (a green field, a boat dock, a city of old Japanese architecture). Some are pretty absurd (a park of miniature buildings, a wasteland of bizarre architecture and bright colors). Sometimes they're littered with animals and moving clouds. Other times, they're completely still."

[There's a good Wikipedia page devoted to the game, but little other info about it online - this is the kind of title that screams out for Long Tail-style resurrection via PlayStation 3 or PSP E-Distribution, even if only a few thousand people would grab it. I just don't think Sony has it in mind to get this comprehensive just yet, though, especially not with import titles.]

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

I'm not really saying that uber-blog Kotaku is the only outlet that's ever done this, but I'm going to have to talk you all through this one, and I'm hoping for some further understanding of the sloppiness of Digg, 'citizen journalism', and over-sensationalizing on the Net.

We're starting with Dean Takahashi's new piece on the Xbox 360 Elite, which he debuted yesterday on his San Jose Mercury News blog. Though this isn't the crux of the problem, there's even an interesting twist on this part - I believe that Dean originally posted this with 'Exclusive' in the title (see the blog URL), but changed it after some commenter complaints, such as from 'David': "Sorry, but how is this “exclusive?'’ Game Informer and Engadget both reported this days ago with the same type of anonymous sourcing."

Takahashi's comments in response to David are fair: "You are correct that Game Informer and Engadget have reported this, and I should have mentioned them. Engadget in particular has a lot of detail. We’ve added our own independent sourcing and analysis, including the detail on the chip cost reduction schedule that no one has talked about." I guess - Dean is a smart guy, but this piece does feel a bit weak, considering I have a copy of Game Informer in my hands also announcing the Elite. But still - it includes a couple more details, and the Xbox 360 Elite is a bit more official now. So fair enough.

Anyhow, the next thing that happens is that Brian Crecente posts about Dean's comments on Kotaku - basically with a link and an extra paragraph of commentary: "I suspect that this new model will hit in April, with official word coming as early as next week. I also wouldn't be surprised that if consumer interest shifted to the newer model, that Microsoft drops the price on their current models by this holiday season." Don't have a big issue with this - people may click through to Dean, Kotaku is in part (like GSW!) a linklog after all, etc.

But here's the bit that gets my goat. A certain 'Bippy101' submitted Kotaku's version of the story to Digg, with a simply incorrect version of the story: 'Xbox 360 Elite with IPTV announcement coming next week... The new Xbox 360 Elite will be announced next week with a bigger harddrive, smaller chip, HDMI and IPTV.' This factually worded statement is not true - Brian has posited that the announcement might be next week - and indeed it might, but he's not even citing sources at this point. And the IPTV bit is kinda not Elite-specific.

What's doubly unfortunate is that the specific 'Digg It' button for this dodgily worded story has been embedded in the Kotaku story to help promote the hits further. C'mon, Kotaku-ites - what about reporting a story that someone else has reported (with one extra paragraph of commentary!) gives you the right to try to get a front page Digg for it? I consider that pretty iffy.

Now, I don't know who 'Bippy101' is - guess he could be someone completely random. But judging by the user's Digg history, I'm presuming that it's a single or composite Gawker Media staffer - and interestingly, most of its submitted stories make it to the front page, presumably exactly because they are embedded in Kotaku stories after they are submitted. (Not saying it's a secret, just extrapolating.)

Actually, most of the time, these Bippy101 frontpaged stories are original Kotaku reporting - such as the 'Reign Over Me' movie interview. But there are some other ones in there which I honestly would feel guilty about submitting to Digg - like the Gears Of War movie announcement, which is just a paragraph and a link to Variety. You can absolutely submit things from your own outlet to Digg - we also do it from time to time - but IMHO, it should be your own original reporting, otherwise the dilution of information just discourages first-hand reporting.

If these rules aren't held to, what happens? Let's take a look at the 'recently frontpaged' list on Digg game news to find out. I'm not saying that all of these are submitted by the site themselves - we've had a couple of frontpage Diggs that were re-reported stories, put forward by third parties, but up there right now are things like a QJ.net piece that's just summarizing Gizmodo, a fake official confirmation for Katamari Damacy Wii, or YouNewb summarizing a GameSpot piece. I could go on - and you may recall that I have before. But I firmly believe that major sites should be leading the way, and this is a bit of a mis-step, This is _THE_ new frontline for journalism and journalistic ethics, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it and thinking about it.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Over at sister site Gamasutra, Benj Edwards (himself a former GSW columnist) has written up 'The Right to Baer Games - An Interview with Ralph Baer, the Father of Video Games', one of the more deliciously cranky interviews we've collectively run in a while.

Talking about developing the first game hardware in the '60s (ahead of the Magnavox Odyssey, which debuted in 1972), Baer explained: ""Quit screwing around with that." That was the question that was asked by my boss, who was the executive VP for quite a few years. I was asked that question many times: "Are you still screwing around with that stuff, Baer?" And I'd smile and say nothing, right?"

Considering Baer's patents are probably a key part of his lasting fame/success, he's quite dismissive of the whole patent process, too: "...You look at the patents, and three out of four are garbage. Especially since it's so easy to do patent searches on the web; it's very easy. You look at that stuff: one piece of crap after another. How the hell did that ever get in there and clog up the system to where stuff that should have really been handled in an expeditious manner didn't make it through the damn office for three years or even longer? That's problem number one."

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At 1UP, Nadia Oxford has written an new in-depth feature named 'Tragicomic', which deals with lots of things, but most of them orbiting around a central point: "Is it possible that we might someday get our fill of good stories through games instead of novels?"

Basically, I think this piece is about how to get stories working better in games, thus the intro: "A polished, edited novel is a story in one its purest forms. By comparison, the stories in videogames tend to be overly dramatic, full of clichés, and plagued with plot holes. The difference in quality can be pinned on several factors, including localization, cultural differences between Japan and America, and the need to balance story and gameplay.... But that doesn't mean game stories are unable to draw in players. Nor do game scripts with original ideas, characters, and careful localization go amiss."

It interviews one or two great people, too: "John Zakour is a humor and science-fiction writer brought on by Frogware to localize 80 Days, a PC adaptation of the famous Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. "I took a lot of humor from my old novels and put it in the game," Zakour says. "Some people loved it and called it the funniest game of all time. Others hated it. It's really difficult to take dialog in translated English and make it funny while being constrained by what the characters are doing. Still, I love the challenge."" Scattered, but intriguing.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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

Oh, there are just so many magazines!

This installment of Mag Roundup is absolutely enormous, thanks to a sudden spate of strategy specials. It's also quite an important one, since it marks the closing of one magazine (MMO Games, formerly MASSIVE) and the launch of a new one (Beckett's eSports).

I recently went crazy with my credit card and bought all the Britmags I could find locally, so you can look forward to me tackling the British game-mag industry next week. For now, though, let's have a look at all the US game mags on the newsstand right now...

MMO Games Issue #1.03

Cover: Hellgate: London

MMO Games, as hinted at earlier, is the new name of MASSIVE Magazine. Editor Steve Bauman makes an oblique reference to lawyers in his opening piece, but doesn't get into specifics -- specifics that may be hard to track down now that mag owner TheGlobe.com has closed down the division. (Certainly, there's at least two game-industry companies I can think of named "Massive" that would have a case against them if TheGlobe didn't ask for permission first.)

With the new name, there's also a new website for the mag listed at mmogamesmag.com; however, that URL doesn't actually go anywhere, despite the fact TheGlobe registered it back in January. The renaming seemed to be done in a major rush overall, considering there's still a house ad for MASSIVE (touting issue 2, no less) inside this issue.

Getting back to the content, though, the most interesting part of MMO Games' first and last issue is its theme: money. There's 28 pages devoted to where to camp, what to trade, and how to kill your afternoons and evenings in all manner of different MMOs, along with a few bits of development commentary at the far end of the mag discussing currency's role in online games. Sounds interesting at first, but read it, and you quickly realize it's a glorified 28-page strategy guide, which isn't the most engaging thing ever (not to mention likely out of date in many areas, given the way MMOs and their populations evolve). The rest of the mag is mostly taken up by your typical mag-style previews, which is a disappointment.

I think MASSIVE #2 will remain my favorite issue of this magazine's short run, but I'll still bemoan its loss, because for just a little while there, it was doing something many magazines weren't doing -- less nitty-gritty game coverage and more lifestyle or scene-type stuff. It's a direction that print will have to devote itself more and more fully to in the future, since that's one of its main advantages over the Internet.

Beckett eSports April/May 2007

Cover: Mr. Dave Walsh (sponsored by Red Bull)

One mag down, another mag up! Yes, Beckett Media (which now publishes more ongoing game mags than Ziff Davis, can you believe that?) is blazing the stands this month with eGames, a new bimonthly made in cooperation with pro-gamer site GotFrag that strives to be "the #1 source for competitive video gaming."

The structure of eSports is pretty loose. The 78-page mag is mostly filled with profiles of people and teams, including Dave Walsh (who's so good at Halo 2 that Red Bull gives him 10 cases of energy drinks a month) and Complexity, a team of Counter-Strike journeymen. Six major cyber-gaming leagues (yes, there are (over) six of them) have their own columns going over qualifiers and upcoming tournaments, and there's also coverage of one-offs like the Madden Challenge held during the NFL Pro Bowl. A multi-page overview of DirectX 10 and a news/rumors/humor section in the back round the whole package out.

The thing I'm struck by thumbing through eGames is how damn nerdy we all look. I mean, seriously. Every picture of a pro gamer in this mag makes me want to do the "NERRRRRRRRRRDDS!" shout from that classic of movie-dom, Revenge of the Nerds. Your typical game mag this definitely ain't; unless you really like pictures of pale, twig-like white guys in their early 20s, you'll be interested in the text and interviews and coverage and stuff. But, on the same token, if you're looking for that sort of thing, you'd be getting it right now on the GotFrag site anyway, right?

Which leads me to kind of wonder what the raison d'être for the eSports mag is in the first place. But ah well, the text (despite being written at a fanzine level) is kinda interesting, so...

Nintendo Power May 2007

Cover: Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (Dialga/Palkia covers)

Hooray, I'm getting NPs super-early again! And once again, NP is the only magazine which really is worth it for the "exclusives" -- not that their preview coverage is all that exclusive, but it's often the case that you hear about obscure Nintendo-console-exclusive releases here, both first and in the most extensive fashion anywhere besides IGN Wii.

This month's NP kicks it on the interview front as well, featuring a roundtable discussion with the four main folks behind Diamond/Pearl (including Ken Sugimori, the man who devised and drew the first 251 Pokémon pretty much by himself). The interview cavalcade continues with Randy Pitchford (Brothers in Arms: Double Time), the Super Paper Mario guys, and Shingo Mukaitoge (Dewy), but that's not even the main highlight here -- that's reserved for the 4-page feature on cooking games titled "Now You're Cooking with Power" and featuring staff writer Chris Hoffman in a photo-sequence that's nothing short of hilarious. And there's a two-page strategy guide on Kid Icarus. Sheesh. Nintendo fans are so spoiled, they are.

Game Informer April 2007

Cover: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Once again, the first third of GI is must-read material and the rest is must-look-at-the-screenshots material. Doug Lowenstein gets an "exit interview" in the news section that's a remarkable read ("In 20 years we will have a president that will have grown up playing Grand Theft Auto. That's inevitable"). There's a roundtable of four developers (Cliffy, Lord British, Todd Howard, and Cory Barlog (God of War II)) about the future of games as art which is similarly stimulating. Kudo Tsunoda, general manager of EA Chicago and generally the most sane man working for that company, gets two pages. Interviews, interviews, interviews! I love it!

After the news and before the reviews, we have hot-sclusive looks at Uncharted (I preferred "Untitled Naughty Dog Project" myself), Spider-Man 3, and Saboteur, along with their annual Game Infarcer joke-mag. Uncharted is actually a neat preview 'cos the art designers put some serious effort into it, offering up sequences of animation-describing photos and other bits of game-developer nerd trivia that's neat to look at. The rest is kinda run-of-the-mill, and I almost wish Game Infarcer could've eaten up more space because I'd rather read more of that than another couple spreads of boring previews. My opinion, anyway.

Play April 2007

Cover: BioShock

Play's gettin' a little lean at 84 pages, but the contents are quite nice -- a long piece on BioShock that's well-rewarded by how much info they're giving out on the game these days, a roundup of racing games featuring more of that Dany Orizio "guess which game I'm from" original art, and six pages on Gamecock and other new "indie" publishers. No room for much else, though, besides the usual reviews/previews.

Hardcore Gamer April 2007

Cover: Heist

This issue has a feature on "Ports Gone Wrong" -- those misfits of the past (the PC Mega Man, for example) that shock and amaze with their ineptitude. It's a great idea for a feature, even though it could use some better research. When covering the PC-8801 port of Super Mario Bros, it's mention that "this game is so unplayable, Mario dies in the demo" -- but he dies in one of the NES version's demos, too. Yeah! I outnerded you!

Otherwise, you know what to expect from HCG by now -- tons of art and color all over the place, helping you forgive any transgressions the text may make.

Official Xbox Magazine April 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: GRAW 2

The biggest news with OXM may be with the disc. In a move to make the disc worth looking for even with XBL downloads duplicating a lot of its big-name content, there's now an episodic game of sorts called OXM Universe that uses your OXM Points (unlocked by playing demo-disc games and watching videos) as in-game "credits." A space exploration/strategy thingie of sorts, Universe is a neat little timewaster, I think -- even though they had to reset everyone's OXM Points to launch it.

Universe (which will run every issue and end "no later than" Holiday '07) is accompanied by a GRAW Chapter 2 download and demos of GRAW 2, Crackdown, and...wait for it...New Rally-X. Ooh! Ah yes, and the magazine: It's a pretty normal isue, with a look at XNA indie games being the main highlight if you aren't after previews/reviews.

PSM March 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: Ninja Gaiden Sigma

I have to say, it's all right if there's a subscription card here or there in the mag I read, but PSM just seems to be packed with little interruptions and annoyances this month. First up, the 8-page cell phone guide, also in OXM. Second up, a giant fold-out God of War II advertorial which includes an interview with Barlog (also seen in GI). Third up, this full-page Full Sail ad printed on thick stock so the mag always opens up right to it. Arrgh.

Ignoring these for the moment, I'd say the most "hey, neato" moment for me this month was opening up the reviews section and seeing Sonic the Hedgehog get about 75 words, if that. And a 2.0 score. Justin Cheng, you are a harsh mistress.

Tips & Tricks April 2007

Cover: Some lovely ladies (and Izuna)

Funny thing I just noticed -- the greatest chunk of Tips & Tricks' contents is now taken up not by tips, or tricks, but by all the columns and departments they now print. "Departments" (including a new one on World of Warcraft) occupies 32 pages, codes 22, strategy guides 15, and previews eight. This really suggests to me that they oughta consider a name change already -- I love most of the departments, but no one's gonna notice them if they're scared off by the "Tips & Tricks" title. (Well, I notice them, but...)

Moving on, the top feature this month is on game schools, and it's actually kinda similar to the game-school advertorials Famitsu runs around three times a year in Japan -- it covers every school, shows off some example art, and contains a few quotes from each school's rep discussing potential students' concerns. Top department highlights include a female-guitarist showdown in Guitar Hero II, a review of the Captain N DVD set, and a really neat (and incredibly, surprisingly exhaustive) overview of all the toys Nintendo produced during the 1960s and '70s. Seriously, you'll spend 10 minutes just poring over that spread and seeing all the random junk Nintendo produced 40 years ago. It's nuts.

   

Mag publishers went strategy-guide crazy this month. Here's Tips & Tricks Spring '07 Video-Game Codebook and the spring 2007 issue of Code Vault, both of which are mostly straight strategy and reference. The T&T Codebook has an "exclusive" preview of Spider-Man 3, but so did every other mag this month -- and Code Vault is still all excerpts from Brady strategy guides, which ain't too useful.

   

Future's two new specials are Xbox 360 Gear Guide and PC Gamer Ultimate Strategy Guide, and while they aren't all original content (stuff is borrowed from Maximum PC, Games Radar, the UK edition of PC Gamer, you name it), they're both put together in a package that's fun to sit down and read. This was especially surprising for me wtih the PC Gamer special -- it's dotted with all manner of neat sidetracks, from a how-to on putting a zombie dude in Oblivion to a blow-by-blow guide on forging a World of Warcraft character to level 60 in one week.

Strategy guides are nice and all, but in the age of GameFAQs, the thing has to be fun to read in addition to useful if you expect folks to shell out for it. Future definitely succeeded here.

Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention Game Developer March 2007, another fat issue laden with glossy GDC-season help-wanted ads. The postmortem on Sam and Max is the straw that broke the camel's back -- once I'm done writing this, I'm gonna subscribe to GameTap and download Episode One right away. It just looks like too much goofy fun.

[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 4:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

There, I knew subscribing to IGN's all-articles feed would bear fruit in the end - they've just debuted 'The Future Of The PlayStation Portable', describing, in handy hyperbolic terms: 'Over a dozen of the top developers tell us in a huge anniversary blow-out.'

The intro article is a bit, well, over-apologetic for the format, ("Hell, the Nintendo Ds is the best-selling game system of this new generation, period -- nothing stands up to it as competition. But just because Nintendo is winning, does that mean that Sony has lost?"), but the interviews are well thought-out, and there's some firm sense talked in the Planet Moon chat, for one: "The PSP needs to have a digital game distribution system. It's perfect for it and it will liberate the device in many ways."

Q's Tetsuya Mizuguchi has what I think is the best response, though: "While the PSP may have lost a bit of steam over the last year - especially when compared to the DS - we're hopeful that it will continue to provide quality entertainment for current and future users. There's still this image of PSP being mainly a "portable game device" rather than a multimedia entertainment device - that is, including myself, as I don't use the PSP other than to play games - so I'm looking forward to how the other possibilities and uses of the PSP will be promoted including the connectivity between PS3 and the recently announced Home. Now, if only it came with a hard drive..."

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The HDR Lying blog has another interesting, if a little meandering piece, named 'The Essential Worldwide Success: Packaging the East for the West', and it talks specifically about the suitability (or not) of Koei and Bandai's Gundam Musou for PlayStation 3 for launch outside Japan.

In the way of an intro, it's noted: "In a time where games are becoming more and more expensive to produce, and profit margins are shrinking, more and more companies are starting to look at creating a global product. Ryan Payton’s hire at Kojima Productions was a step to get a more global perspective on their series, including the ever popular Metal Gear Solid." But how does Gundam Musou fit in?

As noted: "For the Japanese gaming market, the amalgamation of Gundam and Musou is a no brainer. The game is a mix of the most popular action series in Japan, and the biggest animated franchise phenomenon in Japanese history, on a single Bluray disc." But in the States, as Dynasty Warriors, it's just not such a big deal. So, it's asked: "With no Musou name in the West, how does Namco Bandai name Gundam Musou?"

Hm? "Does Namco Bandai make their connection to Koei public, and call the game Gundam Warriors? They could sever the connection entirely, and instead ride on the Gundam alone, going with something close to, but likely more original than, Gundam Battlefront. With a change like that, they lose the cache that the Musou name would give them, but in the United States, that might not matter at all." This is one example, of course, of a continuing cultural battle to get universally popular video games across multiple regions - but it's an interesting one.

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

Over at Rob 'Xemu' Fermier's blog, the Ensemble Studios staffer points out a 30-minute TV advert teaser for the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer, which "...ran on the FX network in the wee hours [on Thursday]" - yep, a full half-hour of just a repetitive countdown message. Wonder how much that cost?

Xemu notes: "I think Rockstar's approach here of using TV even at this early stage makes a lot of sense given the wide target audience of the game. Having a countdown via off-hour TV spots is pretty intriguing and may lead some people to the web based version of the same (which is all the information reallly in the ad)... But the levels of recursion here are pretty astounding."

Right! "This is promotion (TV) for the promotion (web) for the promotion (trailer) of a game. Of course, I found out about this through a fansite which adds a fourth level... then I guess this is sort of promotion of that, so now it's a fifth level..." And this one is the 6th! Anyhow, Planet Grand Theft Auto has up-to-the-minute gossip, noting: "The first GTA4 trailer releases on March 29 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time", and, indeed: "Grand Theft Auto IV releases on October 16, 2007 in North America for PS3 and XBOX 360."

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The latest required Game Developer magazine-related viewing over at YouTube is, of course, '2007 Disneyland Martial Arts Festival Sport Jujitsu' - specifically 'Cliff -vs- Pat. 200lbs and Up Division'. What? Oh yeah, this would be the magazine's art director Cliff Scorso kicking some ass (and getting a gold medal!) in his weight division at a regional championship!

I don't really understand how this whole Jujitsu thing works, so Brandon explained it to me in IM: "The reason the fight keeps stopping is because the guy kept complaining he couldn't see when Cliff hit him in the face... but you're allowed to do that." What's more: 'So, the yellow flag means a round is over. And that guy apparently has a good stand up game, but didn't get to use it because Cliff kept throwing him."

So, seriously, any magazines out there - is your art director more hardcore than Monsieur Scorso? Because we challenge, on his behalf, and not actually bothering to ask him - yours against ours in mortal combat. Also, we're going to be a bit more careful about asking for front cover changes in the future, just in case he grabs us and throws us again the cube wall in a fit of pique. (Only he wouldn't, he's lovely, hah!)

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

Just got sent a copy of a pretty interesting book, 'Halo Effect: An Unauthorized Look at the Most Successful Video Game of All Time', which is described as "...examining the Halo phenomenon from every angle... from profiling the greatest Halo player who ever lived to providing a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the wildly popular, virtual-reality Halo movies." [I think they mean machinima!]

Anyhow, slightly vague intro aside, there are a number of fun essays in this anthology, from Smart Pop Books, who have also published a similar tome about World Of Warcraft. For one, NGJ czar Kieron Gillen has a piece called 'Planetary Objects In The Rear View Mirror' about how interest in Halo grew during the game's construction, positing: "There was a time no one outside of Bungie cared about Halo. Or if they did, they cared for no reason at all. Or the wrong reason."

Even neater, Kevin R Grazier, apparently the science advisor to Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the chrome '80s one!) contributes 'Halo Science 101', including calculations in the differences in velocity rates for water in a waterfall in normal gravity vs. on a Halo, and lots more insane planetary calculations based on the Halo mythos. Finally, the ever-lovable Dean Takahashi contributes 'The Making Of Halo and Halo 2 And The Birth Of The Xbox 360', which seems typically well-researched and handy.

I think this is a bit more factual than theoretical, compared to some of the other famous books by the same company - but I've tended to highlight the more game writer/science-y stuff, and there's definitely some 'heavy thinking' in some of the essays, too. Overall, it's a fun concept, and Halo fans would do well to check it out.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

[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 fifth column looks at Sega's obscure 1993 3D-'ish' fighting game Dark Edge.]

Back in the day, Sega was known for its powerful arcade hardware. What this meant in the late '80s and early '90s was that the hardware was good at sprite scaling and rotation. When Sega released Rad Mobile in 1990, its state-of-the-art pseudo-3D graphics were powered by the new System 32 hardware. While driving games come and go, there's one obscurity on System 32 that never was seen outside Japan: a fighting game called Dark Edge.

The game's background from the official flyer: "In the 25th Century, the human beings are allowed to live in the unified world controlled by the ultra-large computer. Those tough people who got out of their control now seem to be battling for the sake of their ambitions and desires. Even that battling, however, is controlled and the super-fighter is destined to fall a victim to an assassin sent by the ultra-large computer. Down the assassin and destroy the computer. Regain the future of the human beings, and fight for your aspirations."

The "out of control" heroes "fighting for their aspirations" are:

M.E.K. (Mechanical Enforced Kommando)
"A European mercenary soldier wounded in the war underwent a cyborg operation and is determined to have revenge on the Boss who sent him to the battlefield."

Genie
"A female martial artists who wears the Gymnastic Battle Suit that enhances her agility. She attacks the enemy by taking advantage of an unguarded moment."

Blood the bio-monster
"This monster man born as a result of generic mutation has the weapons of elastic nails and sharp fins. He displays primitive instincs as a fighter as he discharges poisonous liquid."

Yeager the sonic breaker
"A former German fighter pilot who became a cyborg in order to be the super-fighter. His special ability: High speed flight."

Thud the Samurai
"An American who has the Samurai spirit can use two swords skillfully. He believes in the spiritual power and controls the thunder."

Goliath with power suit
"A laborer wearing the power suit converted from construction equipment. He moves slow, but his attack is extremely powerful."

What all the above means is that Dark Edge is more or less your typical one-on-one fighting game. Like in almost every other modern fighter, players have multiple punch and kick buttons at their disposal, as well as various projectile attacks. Defeat one opponent and fight a more skilled one. In additon to standard characters, the game contains two bosses, plus Space Harrier-like bonus stages.

What makes Dark Edge special is that it is probably the world's first modern 3D fighting game. What is even more special is that it implements its "realistic 3-D battle action as seen in the SFX movies" (like it says in its flyer) by using 2D sprite scaling! As far as pseudo 3D-graphics go, Dark Edge is very impressive: System 32's sprite pushing power is used extensively.

In addition to two big fighters, the environments have lots and lots of eye candy: snow with footprints, reflective water, billowing sand, spinners flying in around in a Blade Runner - themed level and so on...all this while simultaneously keeping the frame rate high - while animation is very choppy, the graphics move very fluidly. While there have been other sprite-scaled 3D fighters, none of them has been as ambitious or well-implemented as Dark Edge.

Unfortunately, the amount of sprite-pushing power can not overcome the fact that using 2D graphics requires lots of memory: since all the fighters are pre-drawn, there is only a limited number of angles from which the combatants can be displayed. Also, the graphics tend to get very blocky when the camera zooms in. While in a "normal" polygonal fighting game low-quality textures or low-poly models would not affect playability, Dark Edge proves that making 3D fighting game with sprites is not a very good idea: the gameplay, while not a total mess, feels very imprecise and random.

In addition to technical issues, there are also some basic problems that exist probably due to the newness of the 3D fighting concept: the camera does not rotate around the players, meaning that very often you end up exactly behind or front of your opponent, and playability flies out the window when in a versus fighting game, you can see only one character.

Polygon-powered Virtua Fighter, with a rotating camera, was released couple of months after Dark Edge, and all we know very well what happened. While not being a very good game, Dark Edge still holds the admirable title of being the world's first true 3D one-on-one fighting game. In addition to that, I've always had a soft spot for sprite-based 3D games, and Dark Edge is no exception: "PlayStation-generation" types will probably think that those games look terrible, but they're just wrong. :)

Posted by arttuy at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Possibly my favorite column in all of gaming website-land is Vinny Carrella's semi-regular article series for casual site Gamezebo, and his latest discusses why games like the iSpy-esque Mysteryville and Mystery Case Files series continue to enjoy such immense popularity among casual gamers.

Carrella explains: "Based on what I know (intuitively not scientifically) about the behavior of mature gamers - what they want and what they gravitate towards - these find-the-needle-in-the-haystack 'mystery' games are the tip of an iceberg I saw looming in the icy waters of the gaming ocean more than 15 years ago.... Searching for your lost car keys can be an agonizing and frustrating experience. But if someone were to hide your car keys and then tell you that they were somewhere on your desk, it becomes a game, especially if they give you clues."

Thus: "The same [principle] is at work in games like Mystery Case Files. We are shown an image and told that somewhere within that image are several items. The more we find, the more we trust that we're not being duped and if the game is well-designed we'll spend hours searching for what we know must be there. There is an innate sense of empowerment in this activity, an affirming satisfaction that our powers of perception are indeed strong. Such games pose no risk of failure and offer us the pleasure of finding hidden things under conditions where the stakes are low. That appeals directly to our primal primate perception; which many believe evolved to find brightly colored fruit amongst the dense foliage of the forest canopy." Awesome writing.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There has already been some marvelling at the Game Developers Conference 2007 speaker gift, which is "...a DVD clamshell with four sets of DVD-shaped magnetic poetry, the words conforming to themes from this year's conference [and random 'hilarious' game-related words!]" - and a little stand to put them on if you don't have a fridge handy, actually.

Anyhow, we managed to grab five sets of the DVD-case stored magnetic poetry from the wonderful GDC organizers who we sit near (thanks Jamil and Meggan!), and we're going to give them away in a stupendous GameSetCompetition! The question is simple enough:

"What's the best phrase, sentence, or nonsensical chain of words you can make by using the words on the special GDC magnetic poetry pieces?"

You can see the full word line-up by clicking here or on the picture to the right - as I noted before: "A bunch of the words were actually contributed by myself and some others from Game Developer and Gamasutra editorial, hence some suitably dumb stuff like 'Riiidge Racer', 'Megaton', 'Dropdabomb', 'O RLY', 'shmup', and some others I can't remember right now. Also 'sensible stuff' like Itagaki, Wright, Schafer, Sid Meier's, shipdate, script, physics, texture, and so on."

Also, now I look at it, I remember I included GAF (oh dear!) - and also I think we didn't include enough 'doing' words like 'praised', 'beat', 'encouraged', etc. Oh well. But you can still get some good stuff out of this. Here's my completely random and quite possibly libelous example: "Drunk Jaffe Slipped Kojima The Twink"!

Anyhow, please enter by submitting your chain of words in the comments below at any time before Thursday, March 29th at noon PST, and include either an email address or a link to a website containing your email address. And may the dumbest answers win! [Thx for pics, Boyer!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

You've got to hand it to Microsoft's gaming platform strategy guy Andre 'Ozymandias' Vrignaud - he's certainly been getting into the PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360 conflict on his weblog recently - and he's asking some interesting, if Microsoft-centric questions, such as how much memory is reserved for OS on PlayStation 3.

So, apparently, all of the Xbox 360 system information (dashboard/online) fits into 32mb, resident at all times. Pete Isensee at Microsoft comments of the alternative: "For comparison, PS3 developers have to deal with a system that has memory split into two 256MB banks, one of which is reserved for graphics only. A large portion of both the memory banks are reserved for the system. On top of that, games that want to support other features, like friends lists or in-game commerce, take an additional memory hit."

He continues: "[An Ars Technica postl indicates that a total of 96MB is reserved for the system on PS3. [An Innerbits post indicates that 9MB is required for friends lists (and 60MB for in-game commerce!). If those numbers are correct, a PS3 title using friends lists functionality has 512-96-9 = 407MB available, 73MB less than an Xbox 360 title using the same features."

However, more than one commenter is skeptical about how this is presented - Parveen Kaler comments: "That is very one-sided analysis. There is a space vs. speed trade-off here. The PS3 doesn't require as much memory for certain tasks. For example, progressive meshes are a viable technique on the [PlayStation 3's] SPUs, whereas it is not very viable on the 360's cores." Later on, apparently blocked from commenting more by NDAs, he comments: "My final point is that this argument is all overblown fanboy fodder. This particular issue is a speed bump not an iceberg. Both systems have pros and cons. Developers will exploit the pros of both systems and mitigate the cons of both systems."

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

Ah yes, those GameSetLinks - there's a few things hanging around that are worth posting before we get to the weekend, spanning follow-ups to previous posts through brand-new and hitherto undiscovered rubbish. Which you will like, honest:

- Firstly, an interesting comment follow-up to a recent GameSetWatch story about Guitar Hero 2 for Xbox 360 'going green'. Commenter T. Ryan Arnold notes: "I work in the Mastering Lab at THQ, so I would consider myself sort of an expert on things going Gold, Green, and everything in between. Here's another intersting tidbit of information. Back in the early Xbox days, builds submitted to Microsoft on DLT tape for submission would have a test run burned onto special submission DVD media which happened to be GREEN. Back then I'd hear a lot of devs talking about "going green", meaning that the final build had been burned to green submission discs. Most submission to Microsoft is electronic now...so [the naming] might just be a holdover to the days when "going green" meant that you basically had a build that was in the final stages before manufacturing." Useful!

- This is not game-related in content at all, but Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw just updated his weblog with a great book recommendation: "The finest Robert Louis Stevenson novel I hadn’t read, The Master of Ballantrae (1889) blends the high-seas piracy of Kidnapped! and Treasure Island, with Jekyll & Hyde’s dark doubled vision of humanity. It seems to have had a strong influence on Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer (1909), of which I was vividly reminded during certain long discussions in a ship’s cabin during a storm. And toward the stripped-down end of the novel, it turns into a grim frontier adventure reminiscent of Antonia Bird’s sublime Ravenous." So there.

- Gamasutra news guy Jason Dobson has posted a new interview with Atlus' Nich Maragos, also a former Gamasutra news guy (aha!) over at Snackbar Games, discussing the upcoming Etrian Odyssey - and Maragos explained of the first-person DS RPG: "What we hope to do... is put a little of the spark back into the genre. It's a very beautiful game, set in vibrant forest mazes that are a little more interesting to look at than your average medieval sewer. It's got colorful, bold designs for the monsters and characters that make it more appealing to people who have grown up with Japanese RPGs, rather than their American PC brethren."

- If you haven't seen Jeremy Parish's review for Cooking Mama: Cook Off! for the Wii, then you should do so. It starts: "[Editor's Note: The following teleplay is a transcript of the pilot episode of Iron Chef: Video Games, which was inexplicably dropped by the Food Network before its on-air debut.]", it's got an entirely goofy concept, and guys, guys, it's actually fun to read/view. Why can't more reviews be fun to read? That's the eternal question, of course.

- An interesting YouTube find, here - someone has posted a VHS-recorded video from BS Zelda no Densetsu, the "...expanded version of The Legend of Zelda that was released for the Satellaview attachment for the Super Famicom in Japan." Most bizarrely: "The game was divided into four weekly episodes. These episodes were played live, at the same time as a videogame tips show was running on the satellite network." Since the game can never be played live again, this is the only evidence we'll have of precisely how the game was shown through the Satellaview. [Via Frank, who adds: "They used cable television to stream "game data", which was actually live-broadcast, looping audio, with data downloaded via modem."]

- Worth pointing out at Gamasutra today - Alistair Wallis' profile of Mutant League Football's Michael Mendheim, explaining the genesis of the game: "Mendheim’s growing status in the industry saw his connections grow as well. Based on a love of American football and EA’s John Madden Football series of games, he contacted a producer at the company, and pitched an idea he had for a twist on the sport. “I loved Madden Football,” he enthuses, “it was and still is my favorite game. Football, science fiction, violence, and a touch of dark humor all seemed like a natural fit. Mix these elements up with the right amount of strategy and you end up with a blood and guts football game that makes people laugh and think.”"

- Kotaku's look at the upcoming movie Reign Over Me and its apparently intelligent use of Shadow Of The Colossus in the plot is a nice piece of reporting - we'll see how the movie turns out, but the point is good: "Reign Over Me must be one of the first Hollywood films, if not the first, to deal with games thematically and intelligently. While other industry pundits try to figure out how to take the latest blockbuster game and turn it into a movie or vice versa, Reign Over Me already has an insightful leg up: Let the games speak for themselves. Characters bond through games and lose themselves in them, only to find themselves again. They enjoy the simple act of play."

- Another Experimental Gameplay Workshop game I'm just waking up to (thanks Gillen/Kumar!) is 'The Truth About Game Development', in which: "You play the part of a game producer and your job is to produce the best game you can as cheaply as possible. Mostly you just try to motivate the lazy ass game developers by killing them." Nuff said, really - all of the Kloonigames 'done in a week' games are pretty awesome, so just look around!

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may remember that I had an in-depth trawl of GameFly's pre-release information a few weeks back, happening upon the following entry: "- Touch The Dead (Eidos, April 30th) - sounds like a logical title! Are there any Japanese zombie touching DS games that Eidos could import, or is this a whole new title? No info online at all."

Well, information has now broken (huzzah!), and MTV's Stephen Totilo has a cute write-up of the game (scroll down) as part of his Eidos game inspection festivities in New York. He notes: ""Touch the Dead," which Eidos initially planned to call "Dead and Furious," is a first-person shooter on rails. You don't control where the character moves, you just tap the touch screen in the right spots to shoot at the zombies. When you're out of ammo, you drag bullets to the gun."

What's more: "In later levels, the zombies throw their heads at you. The player has to touch those craniums into oblivion. The game, which is slated for May, is running off a crude 3-D engine. It may have been the worst-looking game that Eidos was showing. But it doesn't matter. It had me using a stylus to tap zombies to their doom. So I crown it the best new game I played Tuesday."

[Anyhow, looks like the game, instead of being imported from Japan, as I conjectured, is heavily Japanese-inspired but made by Dream On Studio, a French developer spun off from Infogrames Lyon. The studio also makes Winnie The Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure - bit of a stylistic contrast, there!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I believe that we have an interview with them next week on Gamasutra, but in the meantime, Torpex Games' Jamie Fristrom has posted some fun facts about XNA and Xbox Live Arcade on his GameDevBlog personal blog.

Torpex are making Schizoid, which is mini-previewed on 1UP and is "...the first game to officially make the jump from XNA development to Xbox Live Arcade" - it's described as "a co-op action game in which teamwork matters like never before, as gamers and their friend or AI ally protect each other from barrages of glowing enemies." Should (hopefully!) be out before the end of the year.

In the blog, Fristrom explains the various approval processes for Xbox Live Arcade (handy!), talks about the advantages and disadvantages of XNA (also handy!), and concludes by answering the query 'What you think of the cost of doing "casual" games...?' with: "I prefer the term "downloadable" because our players aren't going to be casual. And, well, hey, it's cheap. Really cheap. A story went over Reuters today that said my alma mater - Spider-Man 3 - may cost $35 million. Schizoid will cost over two orders of magnitude less than that. And I believe it'll be just as fun. You could make over a hundred Schizoids for the cost of a Spider-Man 3! "

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at a Forum Nokia blog, Finnish developer and researcher Arto Holopainen has been talking about his company's physically operated game controller experiments, specifically the "idea of using muscles to control wirelessly mobile phone applications like games" - intriguing!

He explains: "Since the first case study [.PDF link], the muscle controlling has advanced quite far. Now the actual muscle controller is kind of wearable “sleeve” that is made of skin tight material like sport clothes. The “sleeve” has built in textile electrodes to measure EMG signal from muscles as well as integrated small Bluetooth enabled bio-amplifier to collect and to forward the information wirelessly."

He continues: "You just wear the sleeve and start using it. MuscleControl application in mobile phone receives muscle activity and translates it to phone commands. Instead of creating own games that uses the “sleeve” in closed-box like fashion, the beauty of MuscleControl is to act more like a joystick driver that can be used to control other applications. So basically you can use and configure it to commands you like. Nice isn’t it?"

What's more: "In addition to just for fun, the application can be harnessed for more serious use like muscle rehabilitation (games for health) and for help to disabled persons (to activate e.g. phone call with certain muscle activity). And of course one obvious usage is the sport exercises. Wouldn’t it be nice to monitor your muscle activity during your training and to get to report afterwards? There are some many applications for MuscleControl that I’m just wondering why this hasn’t been done before..." Neat stuff.

[Actually, speaking of the 'alternative mobile gaming' area, sister site GamesOnDeck has just posted a neat feature about proximity-based gaming from Tom Soderlund, creator of the game BotFighters.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been quite enjoying the blog posts of Dan 'Elektro' Amrich of Official Xbox Magazine recently, and one of the most recent ones is titled 'I will now fix the review score problem', and, uhh, does, kinda.

Dan explains: "Recently OXM took some heat for giving Crackdown a 7 out of 10. OMG WE HATED IT, said the readers. But when OXM gives a first-party game an 8 or above, OMG THEY R TEH BIAS. So. After careful consideration, here’s the answer..." What? What? We feel a revelation coming on!

Wow, it's genius. "All games get one of two scores: 7 or 8. As already determined by the audience, 7 means the reviewer hated it. An 8 means the reviewer loved it. There will be no complaining, no arguments about whether a stealth game that gets a 9.8 is actually superior to a shooter game that gets a 9.9. You get a 7 or an 8."

He explains why: "It’s a very personal but extremely binary decision at its core. Pull out your wallet and tell me it’s different: It’s worth your money or it’s not worth your money." You know, I see the sarcasm, but he also kinda has a point, right? I've been liking 1UP's Retro Round-up reviews, which do exactly this - thumbs up or thumbs down. Maybe all reviews should go that way, hmm?

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Over at Arthouse Games, they have the scoop: " Rod Humble just released his experimental artgame The Marriage for public consumption."

So, what is it? " With no sound, no music, and barely-there graphics, this game is clearly not meant to dazzle your senses, but instead meant to intrigue your mind (and its low-fi nature is not a cop-out---Rod Humble's day job is at EA, so he has plenty of experience making high-fi games)."

Arthouse Games' Jason Rohrer continues of the title, which was showcased at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC this year: "I have played The Marriage quite a bit, and so has my spouse. We've spent some time talking about what it might mean. The game, and my experience discussing it, have reminded me of experiences at galleries of modern art---for each piece, I stare at it, scratch my head a bit, and try to mine the piece for meaning of some kind. I'm also reminded of watching a David Lynch movie with friends---we'd spend the rest of the evening discussing what the movie might mean."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we ran the results of the first competition last year, but the guys at the Toronto Indie Game Jam have slung us info on their new TO Jam 2 'make a game quick' festival, taking place in just a few weeks. Indies in Toronto should check this out:

"This is the official announcement of TO Jam 2. What's this Jam deal all about you ask? You attempt to make a game in one weekend. You say it can't be done? Well it has been done! Thi's years event promises to be bigger, more exciting and prestigious than last year."

The event "will be held in the downtown Toronto area" and "will happen May 4-6, 2007" - there's going to be more information on the forums in due course, and considering that completely wacky games like Kalishnikitty came out of it last year, we're looking forward to seeing what they (and you!) do this time round.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Realized that this was posted on sister site Gamasutra, was very GSW-worthy, and I didn't link it - Bonnie Ruberg chatted to 'alternate reality game' creator Jane McGonigal, known for her work at 42 Entertainment on ilovebees and Last Call Poker, during GDC.

This was a pretty interesting exchange, for one: "One of my most rewarding game design experiences has been the gameplay for cemeteries (Last Call Poker), the Activision-commissioned project for the release of Gun with 42 Entertainment. I did the game design for the cemeteries. We had a lot of goals with that, some were related to Activision, their interest in exploring the history of the game and the real American folklore of the game."

McGonigal notes: "Part of it was also we realized we were going to send players to cemeteries, and, well, once people go to cemeteries to play a game, they’ll probably go back again some day for something not quite as fun. It was the idea that we could read some sort of social experience and meaning system in a cemetery that would make those later moments somehow more bearable." This is definitely a bit out there, but I do actually appreciate the sentiment.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's interesting to see Japanese-headquartered, formerly 'closed' companies such as Capcom open up, as it's been doing over the past few months, and their Lost Planet blogging has turned into a general Capcom multi-person blog setup which encompasses lots of interesting posts - though the master URL is still at Lost Planet's community site, for some reason.

Anyhow, Scarlett's blog on CapcomUSA.com, which also feeds into this, has been posting some excellent interviews with Capcom localization staff and the latest talks to Janet Hsu of Capcom Japan about her job in general, as well as her localization work on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

Hsu comments of some relatively untranslatable Japanese gags: "The other things that didn’t transfer very well were for the most part, cultural references. For example, Morgan Fey’s style of speaking in the Japanese version is a very old style of Japanese and she has a peculiar way of addressing people. I had to figure out how to rework it so she still sounded formal, but slightly odd in English and came up with “Good sir!” as her way of addressing Phoenix."

[Posted earlier, there's also an interview with JP Kellams and with the excellently named Brandon Gay, both localizers based at Capcom's Osaka studios, and various other interviews and links of interest dotted throughout the Capcom blogs - I'd love to see more companies opening up like this, in a sort of 'internal/external newsletter' style.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, I completely forgot about this, but Kotaku has picked up the story from an original Watercooler Games post - there were some special GDC poetry lessons given out this year.

Specifically, Ian Bogost explains: "For those of you who don't know about this tradition, every year [at Game Developers Conference] CMP provides a small yet charming gift to all of the speakers. This year it was a DVD clamshell with four sets of DVD-shaped magnetic poetry, the words conforming to themes from this year's conference."

A bunch of the words were actually contributed by myself and some others from Game Developer and Gamasutra editorial, hence some suitably dumb stuff like 'Riiidge Racer', 'Megaton', 'Dropdabomb', 'O RLY', 'shmup', and some others I can't remember right now. Also 'sensible stuff' like Itagaki, Wright, Schafer, Sid Meier's, shipdate, script, physics, texture, and so on. Now I just need to work out where if we have any spares, because I forgot to pick mine up at GDC!

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

Over at Gnome's Lair, they have a really interesting interview quizzing Dr. Peter Favaro, cited as "...the man behind the excellent Alter Ego life-sim and also one of the few psychologists deeply interested in the Internet... and video gaming."

Dr. Favaro explains of what happened after the '80s Activision title that made his name: "Well, Alter Ego was to be followed by a game called Child's Play -a humorous simulation about raising children, but Activision fell on financial hard times and [it] had to be scrapped. The project manager was someone named Brenda Laurel, whom everyone first referred to as "The Lizard Queen" in the early days of the Internet. Since then I have had some game ideas. One is finally coming to fruition. It's Internet based and code named K-OS."

He then explains this new wackiness called K-OS: "People purchase computer generated DNA. They feed, train and teach the creature that forms from it. The creatures meet in a virtual world on line, fight, consume each other's attributes until one becomes most superior. You know, the kind of touchy feely activities psychologists are known for." Sounds appropriately 'survival of the fittest',

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This has actually been out for a little while, but we just managed to add it to the website, so now we're communicating it to you, yay:

"The March 2007 issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra.com, and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has now shipped to subscribers and is available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and single-issue formats.

The cover feature for the March issue (accompanied by an exclusive Steve Purcell-painted cover) is an postmortem of the episodic process used to make the new Sam & Max monthly 'Season 1' PC instalments from Telltale Games, and is described as follows:

"Do the words “episode one” still make you groan from the 12 times you watched all the Star Wars movies in one session? To developers, they signify a new day. Telltale Games, working with Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell, embarked on a months-long journey to create a game series that would be episodic in both content and distribution cycle. A handful of company insiders share how the plan came to fruition and what measures they took to adapt to the new schedule."

The March issue also takes a look at security issues in video game coding, of which it's explained: "When game developers talk about player protection, they're usually referring to cheating. However, some developers are coming to see that there's more at stake in matters of security. Microsoft security experts Dave Weinstein and Michael Howard consider how the machines of online game players might be left exposed to virtual perpetrators."

Another major feature is a 'state of the industry' piece on digital distribution, including interviews with major figures from Microsoft, Sony, and Valve: "Are video games retreating from store shelves en masse to fully join their digitally exclusive brethren, to create a game version of the iTunes Music Store? With digital distribution, developers and publishers—even of console games—are not only cutting out the middleman, but also enhancing their products. And they need more than just a lower price point to make it work."

The issue is rounded out by an interview with original home video game creator Ralph Baer, GameLab co-founder Peter Lee, and the customary in-depth news, code, art, audio, and design columns from Game Developer's veteran correspondents, as well as product reviews and game art features.

Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues, all for a reduced price.

There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of March 2007's magazine as a single issue. Newsstand copies of the magazine are now available at North American outlets including Barnes & Noble and other specialty bookstores."

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The mysterious and grumpy 'Grassroots Gamemaster', whose mission is "in a world of dead, bland game design... to reawaken the truest dimension of what games can be - as they once were - and what they could be again" has posted a blog entry called 'What They Don't Tell You On The Game Design Job Description...'.

He then gets uber-cynical in deconstructing a typical game design job opening, for example: "Demonstrated ability to motivate and lead other team members. [That means two things: one you describe your vision, but then when the team cuts it down you just shut the hell up and take it. Two: you really get around to doing what we want you to do, to transform your vision into something everybody in the group - from the topmost producer to the lowliest QA guy - can get... can understand... right off the bat. Because believe me, if we don't understand it right away, it ain't gonna fly. I mean, who the hell do you think you are, Stanley Kubrick or somethin'? There ain't guys like that in game dev, boy. Let me tell you.]"

Or: "Proven track record with AAA console products and/or online game development. [Again... vision or no... we want proof. Not that it really means anything, or really does prove that this new game you or anyone else will be worth a damn, but it's comforting to us... Think of all those shitty games out there made by people with "proven track records"...]" You know, I don't really think this is actually useful, but it's an entertainingly nihilistic piece.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

Simultaneously among the most beloved, and most loathed, features of the popular roguelike game Nethack is its wide variety of jokes and anachronisms. Often, when people who dislike the game, but appreciate other roguelikes, discuss their dissatisfaction with the game, it's because it contains things like candy bars, quantum mechanics, credit cards, magic markers and fortune cookies within its vague fantasy setting.

There are those of us who dearly love all these kinds of things, and in case you haven't guessed I'm one of them. I find that far too many fantasy games, both the regular kind, and roguelikes too at times, take themselves too seriously. The most popular computer roleplaying games you can find don't care a whit about subtlety or humor except on rare occasions.

Even Zelda, the last time out, gave us a strongly-typed light-dark motif that, although they did try to overturn it during the course of the game, still seemed to buy into it more than discredit. Yet considering how the whimsical and joyous Wind Waker was the worst-selling console Zelda for a long while, it seems that most gamers are perfectly happy with this. I am disappointed in modern gaming for many reasons, but none so more as this.

You know the kind of games I mean. Games that throw around words like "darkness" as if they were going out of style -- and the sooner that happens the better as far as I'm concerned. Yet it is enlightening, perhaps, to note that other than a weird little tacked-on prologue before the game, we don't even know why Nethack's long succession of @-signs are braving the dungeon. It likely isn't to save the world; the player's god wants the amulet, but it isn't a pressing fight against the forces of evil. I've always seen it as more of a quest for glory kind of thing.

Of the other major games, Rogue's quest is important only so that Rodney can gain admittance to the local fighter's guild. (In light of that game's tremendous difficulty, I can only imagine that he'll be in scarce company.) Crawl players seek the Orb of Zot; we don't know why. Angbanders wanna slay Morgoth, the great foe of Tolkien's Middle Earth (Sauron's boss), but it doesn't seem like he's about to up and invade at the moment. ADOM, alone among the major roguelikes, puts the player in a world-saving (or conquering) role, and perhaps because of this it is ADOM's quest, which has far more storyline than the other roguelikes, that seems the most petty. To save the world is a noble thing, but come on, it's been saved millions of times by now. Can't the durn thing take care of itself for a moment?

Well I say, let the technicolor phantastic realm-kingdom in dire need of salvation take a running leap. This time, our focus is digressions. A listing of jokes in Nethack. Let's go!

Strange objects

Sinks
Some time ago Nethack Devteam member Janet Walz saw the multiplicity of things in the game, and asked herself what thing is there that it lacks? The answer was obvious: the kitchen sink.

Sinks can be drunk from, if you have a death wish or something (there are two different ways to get polymorphed that way, and polymorph can destroy armor). They can be kicked, which can summon succubuses or incubuses for a bit of fun, or black puddings for a bit of the opposite of fun. Or you can drop rings down them, usually wasting the ring but providing a significant hint to its function in the process.

So, those results aren't funny? That's right, they aren't, but come on now. There are kitchen sinks in the dungeon!

Shirts
Back when Tourists were added to the game, they were intended as a challenge class. They begin with no melee weapon, get overcharged in shops, and their starting armor is a "+0 Hawaiian Shirt," which offers no protection at all.

More recent versions have changed this somewhat; many players agree that the Tourist quest artifact, the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, which doesn't charge general merchandise but does wands, is among the best in the game. And that "useless" shirt, when coupled with other armor, can be a boon. Any armor piece can only accept so much enchantment, you see, before it becomes likely that it'll disintegrate. A player can wear a suit of armor, a cloak, a helmet, a shield and a pair of boots, and their combined pluses can be substantial, but once it reaches a given maximum it becomes dangerous to enchant any more.

A shirt, you see, is an extra layer of armor that goes under armor, and so while it has no defense value itself it can be safely enchanted to +4 or +5, and that can make a big difference. Shirts are very rare items to find randomly, so it is useful to begin the game with one.

A few versions after Hawaiian Shirts entered the game, the Devteam added T-Shirts, which are functionally the same except for one useless, yet interesting, feature: they can be read. And there are quite a good number of things that can be printed on them, like:

(By the way, Tourists themselves are not, strictly-speaking, an anachronism. They are a reference to Twoflower from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. In fact the Tourist quest takes place in leading Disc city Ankh-Morpork, and the Tourist quest leader is Twoflower himself. In any case, the Tourist class is one of the features that can be compiled out of the game if the player is that opposed to them.)

Graves
They are found randomly throughout the dungeon, sometimes appear on bones levels at the spot a previous player met his end, and there are dozens of them deep in the dungeon, in the Valley of the Dead. They can be looted, but they can also be read. A sample grave marker....

Fortunes

Fortune cookies are an essential part of Nethack's hint system, with the meaning of the word "fortune" here being based more on the Unix command-line toy more than the confection offered by Chinese food places. There are hundreds of possible messages, divided into "true" and "false" based on their usefulness. Blessed cookies always provide true fortunes, and cursed cookies false. Many of the fortunes, further, are frequently fairly funny:

"So when I die, the first thing I will see in heaven is a score list?"
A wish?  Okay, make me a fortune cookie!
Let's face it:  this time you're not going to win.
Not all rumors are as misleading as this one.
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
Sorry, no fortune this time.  Better luck next cookie!
You swallowed the fortune!
You choke on the fortune cookie.  --More--

The Rogue level

Never let it be said that Nethack has forgotten its roots. In addition to the game's many holdovers from its early history as a remake of Rogue, deep in the dungeon it contains the greatest homage of all: a complete level done in the style of Rogue, right down to borrowing its own idiosyncratic ASCII graphics. Even graphic versions of the game drop down to letters and line-drawing characters here, and it'll also make an effort to duplicate a version of Rogue produced for the platform the game is made for; the picture above is from the MS-DOS port. It also always contains a ghost named after one of Rogue's creators.

Cultural borrowings

Perhaps the most awesome thing about Nethack, speaking as an English grad student? The game is loaded with cultural references! Most of the quest artifacts are taken from different fantasy series, from Dying Earth (Eyes of the Overworld) to Conan the Barbarian (the Heart of Ahriman). The Knight artifact is the Magic Mirror of Merlin, which goes all the way back to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which was printed in 1596 for heaven's sake. Most of the other artifacts are borrowed similarly: Stormbringer comes from the Elric books, Grayswandir's from Amber, Vorpal Blade's from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." Sting and Orcrist, of course, are from The Hobbit. The artifact weapon Snickersnee is from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, just about the last thing you'd expect a D&D-ish random dungeon game to borrow from. The gods worshipped by each character class is also cunningly chosen to be from a relevant world mythology (Valkyries, for example, get Norse gods), with the exception of Tourists (Discworld gods) and Priests (who get a random deities chosen from the other sets).

Not only that: balrogs and hobbits are also from Tolkien, crysknives and long worms are from Dune, towels and their use from The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, lots of things come from the Zork games and Adventure, and many of the named demons come from Christian tradition by way of early Dungeons & Dragons books, pre- obnoxious fundamentalist furor perpetuated by televangelists and rabble-rousing preachers.

All of this just scratches the surface. The game's built-in encyclopedia has a quote, from some< work of literature, for most monsters in the game, as well as some of the more noted artifacts. An exhaustive list of those, over 180 in all, can be found here.

Coyotes

A recent version of the game introduced a new canine opponent, to go in alongside the domestic dog hierarchy (small dog, dog and large dog), jackals, wolves, winter wolves and hell hounds: the coyote. If you use the "What is" command, forward slash, to access the game's encyclopedia to get information on a coyote, the entry is:

If that's not enough to convince you of the monster's esteemed inspiration, the forward-slash command adds an interesting extra bit of information to the What Is report, only for coyotes:

Incidental messages

If you somehow die on the very first turn:

If you have a pet pit viper or pit fiend, who falls victim to a pit trap:

If you are polymorphed into a metal eater and munch on a trident:

If you're hallucinating the message is different:

Eating apples provides the report message "Core dumped," but I don't have a picture of that because it only does that in Unix ports of the game! (Core dumps are what Unix/Linux programs do when they crash, they write the contents of their memory to a file, called a core.)

Finally, while I won't spoil it here, players who are really hungry or low on points, are playing a Wizard or Valkyrie or of Elven race, and are familiar with the arcade game Gauntlet, are bound to be surprised eventually.

Hallucination messages

That brings us to the uncomfortably large category of hallucination jokes, which the game contains so many of that at times it seems like the hallucination condition is there solely as an excuse to be funny. It is easy to overlook the fact that hallucination actually predates Hack, first being seen in later versions of Rogue.

The Devteam did make the most of it, though. Almost anything the player does prompts a funny message when hallucinating, often with a pop culture joke or bit of hippie slang attached. (A personal favorite is "You feel that Odin is bummed.") There are so many of those, and they're scattered so throughly throughout the source code, that I won't even try to list them. I will offer extra points, however, to whoever can find the condition that causes the game to tell them "There's a tiger in your tank."

The actual effect of hallucination is that monsters (and item observed from a distance) appear to flip randomly through a set of possibilities, thus depriving you of knowledge of what type they are. In Rogue the random appearance was chosen from the monsters in the game, but Nethack will also pick from a list of monsters that don't actually exist, which cover a wide gamut of sources in games, books, TV, movies and comics. Favorites include giant pigmy, master lichen, grue, Y2K bug, rodent of unusual size, Smokey the bear, smurf, Klingon, Totoro, Dalek, teenage mutant ninja turtle, one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater, and, of course, Morgoth from Nethack's distant cousin, Angband.

Shocking the gods

Finally, a specific game event that most good players encounter eventually, but always comes as a surprise, and sometimes a rude one, the first time they see it. It is a kind of joke to do with the alarming tendency of Nethack characters, once they get a good 15 levels under their belt and a selection of all the useful equipment they can obtain in the game, of becoming unstoppable tanks.

While even advanced characters can be killed, and often are in the days running up to one's first victory, if the player really knows what he's doing, more than half of the game can become a foregone conclusion. A really knowledgeable Nethack character is in some danger at the beginning, a little bit danger maybe at the very end, and almost completely safe in between. Of the named demon lords that can accost the player later in the game, the great heavies of the old-school D&D world, only Demogorgon is a significant challenge by the time he might show up, and he makes an appearance in only a very small number of games. I've never run into him myself.

Of course ultimately, there's always a bigger fish. The dungeon of Nethack a number of branches, but what is considered the "dungeon" is split into two major halves, the Dungeons of Doom, which go down to about level 25 or so, and Gehennom, which is the rest of the way. There are a number of significant differences between the two (like that Gehennom is a lot more frustrating to explore), but the foremost one is perhaps that prayer, Nethack's all-purpose escape valve for the almost-dead player, doesn't work in Gehennom. While there operators route all prayers get routed to Moloch, the game's antagonist deity. (See: fish, bigger.)

If alerted to a presence in his domain, the there is a chance that the thing does is fire a lightning bolt at the player's character, which instantly kills if it isn't resisted. But of course, by this time the player is likely to have gained shock resistance from one of several sources, and will pass through it unscathed, which gives Moloch an excuse to pull out the big guns, the wide-angle disintegration beam.

This beam cannot be reflected (like by a shield of reflection), and can destroy multiple inventory items at once. Magic resistance doesn't help either. However, it IS survivable, for one kind of monster in the game, black dragons, can confer the intrinsic state of disintegration-resistance if its flesh is consumed. The comment made by the Great God Moloch upon realizing he has been thwarted by a mere mortal is awesome to behold:

Posted by John Harris at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

In their 'infinite wisdom', the IGDA's San Diego chapter has invited my colleague Brandon Sheffield to moderate/talk about 'What makes a next-gen game', as he handily points out over at Insert Credit. [While he's down there, he's going to do a San Diego studio profile mini-tour for Gamasutra, so that's cool!]

Anyhow, Sheffield underpeddles his wares semi-adorably in his IC post, : "You should go if you're around, and in the industry. I think that's a prerequisite. Maybe heckle, or bring rotten fruit to throw. I moderated some stuff at GDC too, so it may go ok... though there were some hecklers there too!" The event is next Thursday evening, March 29th, and: "Questions will be solicited from game developers worldwide and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the event."

The full event website has more info, explaining: "Don’t miss out on this exclusive, free event featuring editor-in-chief Dave Halverson from Play Magazine; editor-in-chief Francesca Reyes from Official Xbox Magazine; deputy editor-in-chief Kaiser Hwang from PSM; editor Brandon Sheffield from Game Developer Magazine; contributing writer Paul Semel for GamePro, Official PlayStation Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and others; and Game Head host Geoff Keighley from Spike TV."

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

The folks at Buena Vista Games were kind enough to send over Meteos: Disney Magic for the Nintendo DS, and I'm going to continue the grand GSW tradition of only posting impressions of games created by Q Entertainment - of which this, alongside Lumines 2 for PS2, is the latest.

The first thing to note is the cute message on the back of the box: "Basic reading ability is needed to fully enjoy this game." And indeed it is, since there are several specifics tasks to be done in Story Mode which you have to understand in order to accomplish, such as blasting off particular types of block to complete levels.

Also worth commenting on is that this is actually an outsourced Q joint, as the credits explain: "Concept planning & Management: Q Entertainment; Development: ASPECT Co. Ltd, Platinum Egg Inc.; Product management: Jamsworks Co." All small Japanese devs, I think - if anyone knows anything about them, post in the comments. [UPDATE: Even before this went live, Brandon Sheffield has done the research for us - all hail the IC massif!]

So, the gameplay! I feel that being able to shuffle blocks both vertically and horizontally makes the game, sure, slightly more of a vanilla block-shuffler, but much more natural and fun to play. Meteos is fun, but for me it always felt like I had one hand tied behind my back while playing it because of the vertical only gameplay. (Though I believe that the hardest single-player level in Disney Magic has horizontal shuffling turned off, and turned on via a power-up?)

Something that I definitely appreciate is a little depth, and with silver and gold benchmarks to beat on each level in Meteos: Disney Magic (apart from an actual 'Stage Passed' milestone), you can keep going back to do better - though you need to play through levels in one sitting.

Also, the branching level structure after the 'Easy' stage in Story Mode is appreciated for a bit of variety. Honestly, the game doesn't seem that easy for a Disney-themed title, either. 'Normal' level was already reasonably challenging for me, and there's 'Hard' and 'Expert' after that, as well as various endless-style modes. There's a lot to keep you occupied there.

In addition, it's good to see another game with vertical orientation, something that started feeling more natural on DS after Brain Age did it. [Mind you, I don't think the original DS works quite so well vertically, ergonomically speaking, but the DS Lite certainly does.]

For me, the art was just a little bit 'vanilla', for some reason. I think I expected slightly twisted and cooler versions of Disney characters, but maybe I'm spoilt by Kingdom Hearts, which does that really well. And also, this is a game for kids and families, not for me, so they would likely be expecting regular depictions of their Disney favorites, from Toy Story through Lilo & Stitch and beyond - there's even Pirates Of The Caribbean in there somewhere. And Nightmare Before Christmas, of course - which looks cool, actually.

Overall, this is competent and playable, and I'm actually having more fun with it than the original Meteos. But it's not as cool and original IP and all that kinda of stuff, and you don't get to mess with planets and weird abstract signs. Hey - how about Disney characters traveling through the Meteos universe? That would have been the ultimate mash-up here. But I'm just spitballing now, and the fact is that this is a fine DS puzzler based on a neat concept (lacking only Wi-Fi play, boo), and well worth checking out.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Not even sure if I _should_ point to this, but it's interesting that Indygamer has discovered a student game called 'Scientology Pwned', which I _guess_ is a critique of scientology, although it seems like more of a Robotron clone without much of a message, honestly.

Tim @ Indygamer explains: "The premise of Scientology Pwned is to essentially shoot everything in sight. The single unobstructed map has four enemy generators that create progressively tougher enemies. Use the arrow keys to move your character, and hold the control key to shoot. Your shooting direction will automatically lock when the control key is held down. Alternatively, the shift key can be held to lock your shooting direction when the control key is not held down. Music was composed by Jonathan Mak, creator of Everyday Shooter."

Tried it out briefly, and it's a well-created mini-blaster, but I'd love to see something with more of a social message. The game references various classes of enemy, including Scientologist, Special Affairs, and Sea Org, but that just really affects which rocket launchers they hold. Indygamer commenter Paul Eres says: "There's (still) such a thing as freedom of speech, and I like this game's name, I think its author did well to choose it. I assume he knows the risks though -- this is only slightly less risky than naming a game Islam Pwned." Quite. Guys, can we have some games dealing with controversial subjects with some DEPTH to them, please?

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I try not to enter the debate about video game reviewing, since it tends to be long and messy, but I will say that, apart from Eurogamer's sophisticated and progressively interesting attitude to reviews, the other site I actually want to link to for reviews on GSW is The New Gamer, who just reviewed WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii.

I like the review's conclusion so much that I'm just going to excerpt is - but read the rest: "Smooth Moves is, moreso than the effervescent Wii Sports, a brilliant collection of ad spots for the Wii: It's a compendium of five-second-long vignettes showcasing the versatile and numerous control methods of the form baton/Wiimote. The eclectic series of Wiimote movements is a virtual showroom for just how ambitious developers can successfully work the hardware. Certainly, Smooth Moves leaves critics scratching their heads, wondering 'can developers recreate this level of fun for extended periods of time?' to which, the advertisers would obviously say "Who cares? Buy now! Supplies are limited!" and to which, I'm tempted to reply in the same manner."

"Smooth Moves is the best pitch-job for a console I've seen in some time, one that is infinitely re-playable simply because of its controller and the unique, expansive, experience it can provide, which is far more than we can say of prior WarioWare games and even most launch-window games. And while Smooth Moves can't answer whether future long-form Wii games can sustain the same amount of glee, it definitely shows that, in a gaming life where nuances, aggravations and story are excised, such boundless fun can be attained."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A little more random GameSetLink-age for late on a weekend, and there's actually quite a lot of neat things that might have escaped your knowledge - but, thanks to the tentacles of my RSS feeds and Technorati-ing, have no escaped mine - here we go:

- Mega64's Rocco has posted a long account of his experiences at GDC, and it's kinda fun, since it talks about how the whole Miyamoto sketch came about - someone's posted the version that showed at the Game Developers Choice Awards, incidentally, so you can hear the audience reaction. It's also heartwarming: "As soon as Shigeru walks through the door, he sees us in our stupid costumes and just starts cracking up. And then we all started cracking up. I think that little moment was one of my favorites ever in getting to work on this crappy little show of ours. Just thinking back to Derrick and I hiding under the West Hills bleachers in our Mario costumes, the first thing we ever filmed, all the way to this moment, was just nuts. It doesn't get any more full-circle than that."

- Comic book artist and bon vivant Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese, Dork) has posted up a bunch of his rough sketches, and one of them is the pencil version of his Game Developer 2006 Career Guide, which depicts an ittle cute little baby floating in search of a joypad, Nevermind-styled. I'd never seen the sketch version, so I was delighted to check this out.

- Chris Kohler has already done a good write-up on this, but there's some slightly ridiculous internecine fighting going on - Kohls explains smartly: "Games Radar is accusing rival games site IGN of copying their article ideas, pointing out that their articles on game franchises that have gone downhill and top 25 games for each console were followed closely by similar pieces on IGN... Honestly? The "games that jumped the shark" article is a tiny bit suspicious, but the last time I checked you don't have to be a super genius to come up with a list of the best video games on Xbox." Guys - it aint' what you do, it's the way that you do it - that's what gets results.

- A couple more random/smart GDC and IGF reports I Technorat-ed: 'Someone Stole My Domain' has a nice IGF 2007 write-up summing up "the low-down on the very best of the indie scene", or at least our IGF-ified version of it. Also, Emily at Telltale has posted her GDC experiences, including links to the Sam & Max skits they did specially for the IGF awards.

- Videoludica has spotted an intriguing-looking new book I was unaware of, 'The EverQuest Reader', "...a collection of new essays that breaks fresh ground in the fast-growing field of games studies by theorising the major themes, ideas and activities surrounding the online fantasy role-playing game EverQuest, which boasted nearly half a million players at its height and became a landmark of interactive entertainment in the online age."

- Over at Flash game aggregation site Kongregate, they've put up 'Understanding Games: Episode 1', "...the first of four games trying to raise awareness for the basic concepts of computer and video games. It deals with rules, interactivity, representation and simulation in games." It's actually interesting, since it's a game that's also teaching you about making games - it's by the Pixelate Environment folks from Germany. [Via Boyer!]

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UK writer Richard Cobbett's website has some really fun writings on adventure games, and a recent entry discusses what's known as 'The Horror of Hopkins FBI', analyzing a PC game which, while getting decent marks from a couple of adventure game critics, appears to be horribly cliched, misogynistic, and terrible.

Cobbett explains of the 1999-ish European-developed title in question: "I last thought about it while writing Cirque du Strange for PC Gamer - the 50 Weirdest Moments In PC Gaming. Hopkins had so many that could have been included, but none I could find grabs for. So it didn't make it in, and I was sad."

He continues: "Then I was poking around our local game store when I saw a copy on the shelves. 99p, as part of a double-pack. Clearly, they didn't know what evil they had taken into their midst. I had to remove it in order that their souls not be lost. This level of Weapons Grade Badness requires special training to handle, and I've played Midnight Nowhere, Druuna, and Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. I knew I could take it..." Then he explains why, with pictures and story references and OUCH.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Had a chance to wander around my local Bay Area GameStop store yesterday, and spotted a few details and interesting products for Nintendo's handhelds that might be of interest to GameSetWatch readers - as follows:

- Firstly, Atlus' Game Boy Advance version of puzzle game Polarium is available for $9.99 new - also on the website, but obviously you'll avoid shipping charges if you buy it from the store. Tony 'Tablesaw' Delgado did a whole column on the game late last year, and some say it's even superior to the DS version, so it's worth checking out.

- Not sure how long it's been this cheap, but GBA title Drill Dozer is now $14.99 new at GameStop. It's by Pokemon tykes Game Freak, and here's a handy Onion A.V. Club mini-review: "Reach areas by drilling through tunnels, open doors by drilling cranks, defeat enemies by drilling into their gaping mouths. Yup, [main character] Jill is hardcore like that." Ignoring Freudian issues, might be time for those who haven't to pick this up, as I did.

- I didn't buy this one, but Capcom Classics Mini Mix for GBA is also now $9.99 new, and Armchair Arcade just made a little post about it, handily. Interestingly, "...the games included here are oldies but goodies and are were originally NES ports of arcade games that are heavily changed from the originals in effective ways." And it's got a SD version of Final Fight called Mighty Final Fight, even. Probably not amazing, but intriguing.

- Two final oddities: just available for DS at $20, Namco Bandai's Trioncube hasn't been that well reviewed, but seems quirky and different, at least. Brandon found some nice commercials promoting it in Japan. And I ran into a game that you haven't heard of - Destination Games' Lionel Trains: On Track, apparently a DS-ish Railroad Tycoon type game which, at least according to reviews so far, isn't very good. But it's unknown!

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at Videoludica, there's some new info on 'short horror game' The Path, from Tale of Tales, "the innovative game design studio is responsible for The Endless Forest interactive screensaver and 8. The Path is slated for a 2008 release."

From the official 'The Path' website: "There's something wrong with the forest. No matter how bright the sun shines, it remains dark and foggy. It smells like something died. Strange noises fill the rusty air. Squeaks and screeches. The dull thump of someone chopping trees. The wind playing eerie melodies on ghostlike flutes. Shivers run down her spine. She just left the city. Cars can't drive here anymore. Mother told her to go visit grandmother. The old lady lives all alone at the other side of the forest. Quite a walk from here. It's probably best if she stays on the path..."

Here's the rundown for this interesting PC art-game melange: "Play six different avatars with distinct personalities... interact with autonomous characters driven by Drama Princess technology... unique free-form gameplay: do what you want when you want it.. .mix the music in realtime through in-game activity... lose yourself in an endless forest filled with attractions and atrocities." Worth checking out.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | 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.]

Reports that Computer Games and MASSIVE Magazine (recently rechristened MMO Games due to a legal dispute) have been shut down met with unprecedented furor and wailing across the entire Internet. Just kidding. Actually the response was tepid nearly everywhere it was reported, with these comments posted to Kotaku being pretty representative of prevailing opinion:

"I stopped reading game magazines before I hit high school. Years, and years, and... years ago. I didn't even realize there were still so many around. Waste of paper and money if you ask me. Just my opinion."

They should have just switched to an online company, rivaling IGN or Gamespot."

One could argue that the PC game-mag marketplace is a tad more moribund than its console counterpart since it's shrinking and increasingly moving to online experiences that print mags can't report on fast enough. However, I think the real problem is these commentors' general way of thinking, which is likely far more prevalent among gamers casual and hardcore than most EIC's would like to admit. To sum it up, video game magazines are old, and all they have is old news, and I can get news on the Internet, and therefore magazines are dumb.

Putting this another way (and perhaps in an unfair manner), you could also say this: Magazine publishers are failing to communicate to their potential audience that their magazines just aren't like that anymore. A lot of mags, from EGM and GFW to Tips & Tricks, try to de-emphasize news in favor of longer pieces on the industry and trends in general. But as long as you are EGM or GFW or any other long-standing game publication, you can't get rid of the cookie-cutter news and reviews and previews -- readers will complain about it mightily if you do, no matter how wrong they are on the issue.

With that in mind, I've given some thought to what I'd do if I had the editorship of a brand-new game mag and ten billion dollars to build it with.

To start out, I took a bunch of mags I'd like to borrow stuff from and simmered them all together on my oven range:

- The older-game coverage of the UK's Retro Gamer
- The extremely long features and interviews of Japan's CONTINUE
- The massive variety of regular columns of Tips & Tricks
- The visual design of Make
- And the dogged devotion to product quality seen most recently in political commentary mag The New Republic (which went from publishing weekly to twice a month, expanded the page count and size, and began to feature extensive new art and photography starting this week)

So, throwing all these unrelated traits together, and what kind of game mag do you get? Well, first off, the mag (which I'll call GameStoat for the sake of this article) is a mook, a made-up Japanese word combining "magazine" and "book" that emphasizes high paper quality and extensive visuals at the expense of a high price. (Make and CONTINUE are mooks.)

I'd want each issue to be a constant 150-160 pages each, and I'm not planning on many ad pages (certainly nowhere near as many as traditional game mags), so the price would have to be pretty high -- I'd reckon $15 is about the maximum any sane person will spend on something in a magazine rack. (Sound high? Well, look at any non-game magazine that comes with a DVD or anything extra to it -- almost all of them are at least $10 these days. Instead of DVDs, though, the Stoat will use that price tag to use the best paper and have the most content pages of any game title in the US. A worthy trade-off? Well, if the writing quality's there, yes.)

Why do I like the mook format so much? Well, it's different from the pack, for one. The format looks nice on your coffee table, not disposable and getting all crinkled up on your toilet seat. What's more, a mook-type publication works perfectly for the subject matter GameStoat will cover -- not retro games, not current game news, but just games, in general, and anything else neat about and around games.

Every issue would have:

- Some sort of enormous retrospective on some aspect of video games. An old console, a long-running game series, a certain creator, a certain genre, some kind of trend in video games, video-game TV shows, and so on. The Sega Genesis. Batman games. Treasure. Need for Speed. DOS games from 1994 to 1996, that transitional era between 2D and 3D. Maybe a couple per issue, even.

- A similarly enormous interview with one game dignitary or another -- a creator, the head of the ESA, whomever is interesting past or present. Miyamoto. Will Wright. The guy who makes all the Mario Party games. The guy who designs the cases for game hardware.

- Editor roundtables on one thing or another -- trends, old games, and so on.

- A design that recalls Make and GFW -- extremely clean and straight, but also packed to the gills with original photography and art. That $15 price tag would pay for a ton of custom art for the mag. The art would be more prevalent in the mag than any individual game's screenshots.

- Massive amounts of columns. Anyone involved with games, or anyone who's talented in another field but likes games a lot (Trent Reznor, Penn Jillette, Curt Schilling, that sort of thing), can have a column. The game designer's column on making games, the PR/marketing guy's column on selling games, the degenerate WOW addict's column about the moment his girlfriend gave up on him, Mr. X from a famous Texas game studio exposing life in the trenches of development. Illustrate the columns with art, not game screenshots all the time.

- A regular "how-to" section. How do I set up this stupidly awesome entertainment center? How do I build up a great big collection of game music? I kinda missed out on Amiga games as a kid -- how do I set up and run an emulator? How do I beat the Grim Reaper in the first Castlevania? If there's an interesting way to visually present all this, anything can fit in here -- it doesn't have to even be a practical how-to; it's just gotta be interesting to read. Along with this, a column called "How to Make This Game," a dev diary with lots of Maya screen grabs and pictures of uncomfortable PR parties.

- Interesting giveaways for a change. Giveaways are a deceptively powerful way to build reader loyalty, but pretty much every mag except for Nintendo Power gives them short shrift. I love giveaways, but I hate boring ones like free games. Let's give away concept-art lithos, Master Chief helmets, the inflatable shark from EA Tiburon's cafeteria signed in Marks-A-Lot by everyone on the Madden team, the contents of Hideo Kojima's cube's wastebasket.

- Anything and everything else that makes a neat-looking spread that a fan of video games aged 25-50 might legitimately be interested in. 80s Nickelodeon TV shows. DVD season sets. Simpson T-shirts. Oh God, I'm 30, how do I save money? The New Kids on the Block -- I'd love to know what Jordan is up to these days.

And that's the Stoat in a nutshell. Note the complete lack of news, previews and reviews. I don't want any of those in GameStoat -- not in the traditional way, at least. That's because I honestly don't think readers of print game mags give a crap about reviews and previews anymore. They may think they do, but they don't, and when they encounter a mag filled with nothing but interesting features instead of page-filling previews, they'll realize how much they were missing. (MASSIVE was in the process of proving this before getting closed through no fault of its own.)

The mag would be seasonal, maybe bimonthly if it actually takes off. There would be an online counterpart, of course, with weblogs and podcasts and forums -- but, most importantly, print subscribers would get to access a full digital version of every issue, including extra audio and video wherever possible. I'd consider it an utter success if circulation reaches 100,000 -- GameStoat won't be the flagship title in any publisher's roster, but it will make a profit, and if I do my job right as EIC, its prestige and fan dedication will be the sort of thing money can't buy, either in print or online.

Does that all sound exciting to you? Well, tough. This was just a stimulating exercise in concept design for me. I already got a job -- and besides, to run a game mag I'd pretty much have to be in California, and I like my ferrets more than being a big game-industry star. Hopefully, however, GameStoat has shown that the magazine format can still be made to work for video games -- and, if done right, it can be the exact opposite of Computer Games and prove how relevant print still is in the 21st century.

[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 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

I'm still struggling to remember them with their non-RSS shenanigans, but a recent update on Hardcore Gaming 101 includes an excellent, in-depth look at Capcom's Darkstalkers series, one of my own personal favorite fighting game series (I used to own an arcade board of Vampire Savior 2, even.)

Anyhow, the intro handily explains: "Darkstalkers (Vampire in Japan) was Capcom's other original fighting game series. Its popularity never came anywhere near Street Fighter's, but its colorful characters, innovate gameplay elements, and quirky sense of humor earned it a cult following and heavily influenced other fighting games, including Guilty Gear and Capcom's own Marvel Vs. series. But for such a groundbreaking title, Darkstalkers gets surprisingly little recognition, especially in the States."

What the piece does a particularly good job of is rounding up the slightly confusing arcade and console sequels, as well as obscure appearances for the game's characters: "The Japanese only strategy RPG Namco X Capcom includes Demitri, Morrigan, Felicia, Lei Lei, Lilith, Lord Raptor, Huitzil and Q. Bee, as well as a few of their signature songs." Oh yeah - I have a request - Namco X Capcom localized downloadable release over PS3 E-Distribution, plz? And Segagaga, while you're at it?

The conclusion from ther HG101 crew? "So have we really seen the last of the Darkstalkers? My guess would be yes, unless Capcom decides to do a few more crossover games somewhere down the road. I would be a lot less disappointed about this if the series had gotten a better run -- the only fighting game more undeservedly overlooked than Darkstalkers is probably Last Blade. That's just the way it goes, I guess."

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to Fun-Motion for pointing out an extremely cool physics-game related fact: "Gish 2 is now listed as in development on the the Cryptic Sea website."

Matthew Wegner explains: "The release date is a vague “later”, and the description is a mere ellipsis, but this is fantastic news for Gish lovers everywhere. Alex and Edmund, the original programmer and artist on Gish, will be working on the sequel (they recently acquired the rights to Gish from Chronic Logic). Godspeed, gentlemen!"

The various commenters are pretty excited about a sequel to the 2005 IGF-winning game, too - 'Axcho' comments: "That little goo guy with the sword looks awesome, like a cross between Gish and Stitch (and what could be better than that?). I think it might be more fun to control him than Gish. Well, I can hope…"

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at GSW's new sister mobile biz site GamesOnDeck, we've just posted a two-part postmortem to I-play's cellphone game 24: Agent Down, and the Big Blue Bubble-developed game is definitely one of the more creative mobile titles in the West of recent, being a sequel to a previous BAFTA-winning title.

Among other points, there's some interesting comments about the constraints of cellphone gaming: "It was crucial to give our players as much content as possible in an application which most players do not realize is oftentimes smaller than a single page of a word document (i.e. under 300k of memory) to fit onto their mobile device. For 24: Agent Down we had 243k (max) to 60k (minimum)." Looks like the final game got reviewed decently, anyhow.

While I'm here and you guys are listening, myself and Mathew Kumar of GamesOnDeck are looking for regional correspondents, especially in Japan and Korea, but also in Europe, to weigh in on the regional mobile game scenes (which are _very_ different) on a regular basis. Anyone here into writing and plays cellphone games, or could do at a stretch? Then mail us at GSW and we'll pass it on!

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At AtariAge, they've been kind enough to point out some awesome retro TV additions to YouTube, in the form of a "...an episode of Enterprise (the 80s PBS business show, not the Star Trek spin-off) hosted by veteran CBS correspondant Eric Sevareid."

As is explained: "This particular episode (looks like it was aired in 1983 by my estimate) was all about Imagic. It featured the four founding members talking about the business, current and future projects, and in part follows the development and release cycle of Atlantis throughought 1982 -- from design, prototyping, playtesting, finishing, the CES '82 debut and the following months." Here's Part 1 - Atari Age has links to the other two parts.

What's more: "Some great inside shots of Imagic are shown, along with some great early and mid-stage Atlantis pre-prototype shots, scenes from the CES show, production line shots, financial stats on the company including the press conference announcing their plans to be the first video game company to issue an IPO, and so on. Really fascinating stuff and some rare glimpses into the inner world of a game company of the 80s." Great stuff.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may recall that we've covered the Christian game publisher/developer Left Behind Games before - most recently for pasting defensive comments all over anyone's blog which has mentioned their allegedly terrible Christian RTS based on the best-selling series of Rapture-themed books. Sigh.

Anyhow, the latest indignity comes in the form of a Christian Post article about the game, titled 'Left Behind Games to Reach Out to Asia Ahead of Olympics'. In it, the reporter Kevin Jackson summarizes huffily: "The gamemakers are marketing the title as a nonviolent alternative to help Asians better communicate with Westerners - a premise that many Christians would agree is false."

I know there's controversy within the Christian community about the game, and I'm not sure Jackson has quite done his homework here: "Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy game, much like the popular World of Warcraft"? Oops. But overall, the Christian Post looks correctly quizzical at some pretty ridiculous statements in the piece: "[Left Behind Games' sales consultant] Chiu also noted the prospect of success in Asia in his statement. He said: “With the movie The Da Vinci Code doing phenomenally in Asia, the game Eternal Forces would be very well received"" Oh... kay.

Left Behind Games is not, it appears, doing too well, despite the controversy - its first post-launch financial results revealed a $4.1 million loss for the quarter in which the game was launched - ouch. And if they're sending out press releases like 'Left Behind Games Concludes First Transaction in Australia', I'm not sure things are looking much better.

On the other hand, they have licensed Big Huge Games' RTS engine for the next (post-expansion) game in the Left Behind series, so one would imagine that would help clear up the gameplay issues a little bit - the Rise Of Nations series is purdy. But considering they only announced the license in November 2006, it'll take a while for the game based on it to come down the pipe. Maybe the real Rapture will help the company to profitability? [Via J-Dob.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few weeks ago at work, Game Developer managing editor Jill Duffy set, as a culmination to a series of fiendishly difficult grammar-related whiteboard challenges, a somewhat easier task - the editors of Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine were to come up with the most stereotypical video game name... evah.

So here's what we came up with, following several multi-minute bouts with tortured artist syndrome and intense head-fist interface thinking:

Simon 'GameSetWatch' Carless
(Game Developer/Gamasutra EIC)
"Quaternion: The Beige-ning"

Frank 'Lost Levels' Cifaldi
(Gamasutra features editor)
"WWII: World War II"

Jill 'Jilly' Duffy
(Game Developer managing editor)
"Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Call Of Duty: Revenge Of Duty"

Brandon 'Insert Credit' Sheffield
(Game Developer features editor)
"Pauly Shore's XTREME Nude Wakeboarding II: The Awakening"

Also, we have a late entry via IM from Jason 'Gama news guy' Dobson, submitting the tortured "Final Fantasy VII: The Black Gate: Part Two". Anyhow - this isn't really a competition right now, since the winner was already decided at a little Sneak King-playing drinks party here at the CMP Game Group (it was Cifaldi, damn him!), but feel free to suggest your own stereotypical game titles in the comments!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (57)

As is often the case during the week, I've been accumulating a bunch of links that are a little bit too minor to post as standalone posts, but are nonetheless worth pointing and gawking at. So a slow Friday afternoon allows me to write some of those up, as follows:

- Let's start with something completely random. Poking around video aggregation/rating site VideoSift, it was neat to see the Wipeout-themed music video for Fluke's 'Atom Bomb' getting linked and appreciated. As the Wikipedia page notes: "Originally formed for the soundtrack to the Wipeout 2097 video game the track reached #20 in the UK music charts and brought Fluke their first non-club mainstream single." Fluke's output in general is excellent, a bit Underworld-y, and used in lots of movies/movie trailers, and I still heart The Designers Republic for the art stylings, so... there you go.

- Pocketwatch Games founder Andy Schatz, who presented the Independent Games Festival Awards for us this year, is a totally wonderful guy and a vital member of the indie community, so it was great to see him post a history of his company on his Qatfish.com indie blog aggregator site. He explains at the end: " I wanted to describe what it means to be an “Indie” game developer, and what, in my opinion, game development SHOULD be about. I never got my MBA, but I still plan to change the world." With neat, ecofriendly indie games like Venture Arctic (pictured), he's on the right track.

- We already talked about the new Katamari Damacy T-shirts, but missed out on Cabel Sasser's blog post about visiting Keita Takahashi in Japan to work out this new batch. A key passage: "First off, more Katamari Damacy games are coming! The games are no longer being worked on by Takahashi ("We Love Katamari", the sequel, was as far as he wanted to take it), but Namco is soldiering on without him, and I'm still very excited about what's to come. Look for some new Katamari titles possibly as soon as later this year. So, Takahashi is now working on something totally new. What is this new video game project? What platform is it on? When can we see it? Sadly, I can't say. But, as with all things Takahashi, it's safe to say you'll be surprised, confused, and delighted." Yay! Also, Cabel's dad invented Dr. Who stew for Subway. Nuff said.

- The GDC recaps are all dead and buried, but I thought Snarfed.org's round-up of the event was particularly nicely done as a karmic overview: "The overriding theme this year can be summed up in three words: YouTube for games. Everyone was chasing full-speed after the user-generated content bandwagon. The big three platforms all had their official stories, and lots of others were clamoring to tell theirs too." Lots more handy Game Developers Conference 2007 analysis inside - hey, maybe we should have done something like this!

- Via Boyer and Fort90 and various others, a demo version of Gesundheit! is now available, one of the wackiest and most offbeat Adventure Game Studio-created games I've seen: "In "Gesundheit!", you're a little green pig who sneezes yummy snot, and you use your tasty nasal discharges to lead monsters into traps, all while trying to avoid being eaten. For the graphics, I'm scanning scratchboard drawings and doing 2D animation with a lovely 3D program, anim8or." Aso, as the author explains: "It's basically an old-school action-puzzle type thing." Great art, too.

- I think the first bit of this already got linked on some 'big boy blogs', but Joel Parker at GameOfTheBlog got some abstruse swag from Rockstar in exchange for signing over his cheekily registered Manhunt3.com domain to them. There's some controversy over whether it's 'ransom' or 'bounty' (ar harr!), but there's now a picture of the Rockstar mug he got and OH LOOK HE SAID 'RANSOM' IN THAT POST, so I win. In your face, Parker!

- I'd forgotten about Wataru Maruyama's Costume GET! blog until its appearance on Jiji's blogroll jolted my memory again, but it's on the ol' RSS feed now, so don't everyone fret. In any case, this late February post reveals some obviously dodgy Dead Or Alive 10th Anniversary books that show plenty of the non-costumes showcased in that series of games. More importantly, it reminded me that the Okami artbook is coming out in the States in July, thanks to Udon, who help operate Capcom Comics - and also released the Street Fighter: Eternal Challenge artbook in the West - which I don't think got nearly enough press. Neat, anyhow.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Digging this one out before the weekend hits, Clive Thompson's excellent Wired News column has taken on a pretty touchy subject - race in RPG games, under the title 'Playing The Master Race', and explaining: "it suddenly hits me that this is a really weird, yet central part of online gaming: obsessing about your racial identity and appearance."

This was in relevance to an MMO based on a certain Oxford don's imaginary world, of course: "When I log into the beta of the new Lord of the Rings game, the first thing I do is pick my race. I decide I'm going to be a dwarf: stolid, not so great with magic, but a superb brawler. The idea of being a slightly hotheaded man of the earth appeals to me. And pretty soon I'm engrossed in the task of trying out various big, honking noses."

And yes, it gets odder: "Races inside games often seem to reflect, in a creepy way, some of our most regrettable biases about race in real life. For example, when World of Warcraft first came out, players were amused, stunned or both to discover that the evil trolls spoke in ... Jamaican accents. Aaron Delwiche, a game academic at Trinity University, asked his student Beth Cox to analyze all the "emotes" in World of Warcraft -- the spoken greetings or hand gestures Blizzard pre-programmed into each race. She found that Trolls were "disproportionately more likely to make violent or sexual statements," Delwiche notes." I have enough trouble spelling Tolkien, let alone ruminating on things like this.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So I got a press release earlier today about a game that's about to appear in stores, and something caught my eye: "Get ready to crank up the speakers once again, as Activision’s Guitar Hero II prepares for its highly anticipated world tour onto next-gen videogame consoles by announcing it has gone green, and is now ready for production on the Microsoft Xbox 360."

Wait - gone _green_? When I worked in the industry, though this was admittedly 4 or 5 years ago now, 'gone gold' was always the standard, and it's still being used in press commentary even now. However, 'gone gold' does confuse people sometimes because they think of it like a gold or platinum record - something to do with sales, as opposed to the gold master that gets shipped for duplication.

Anyhow, I pinged RedOctane's Bryan Lam on this very question, since he helped craft the press release, and he kindly replied, explaining that 'gone green' is "...Microsoft’s version of going gold, and we felt it was appropriate to use the term “gone green” to highlight our initial efforts to bring the Guitar Hero franchise onto the Xbox 360 and other next-gen platforms. Not to mention, it's also St. Patty's Day coming up! The phrase isn’t often used within the enthusiast press, though it’s an acknowledged term within the industry."

In fact, yep, a Google search for the term reveals that pretty much only RedOctane and Activision have come out in favor of talking in public about this new term - presumably Microsoft's reference that the game is getting a green light to be manufactured [EDIT: Also because lots of X360-related things are green!], and doing away with the concept that you're burning a gold-colored CDR or whatever - which makes sense. But how far can 'gone green' go as a phrase? I, for one, welcome our new green overlords.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The rather beautifully named High Dynamic Range Lying weblog recently posted an in-depth post named 'Clean and Simple: What’s the future of the Heads-Up Display?', and I thought it was well worth linking to.

The intro? "HUDs have remained unchanged since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, but that isn’t to say that some games didn’t boldly attempt to change the way we look at HUDs, and have paved the way for what could be the future of information display in video games. What have we done right in the past? What have been the failures? Where do we go from here? HDRL hopes to answer that, with a touch of optimistic speculation, and a pinch of nostalgic golf clapping."

There are then some fun analyses of conventional or unconventional HUD systems, with a nod to one of the most 'interesting' ones: "Say what you will about the failure of Trespasser, the PC-only First Person Shooter based on the world of Jurassic Park, but the game was rife with unique ideas (albeit poorly executed). Player health was represented by a heart-shaped tattoo on the player`s breast. When players started to lose health, they would look down at themselves. While the mechanic was a step in the right direction, the sad part was that players had to constantly look down to check health, which disrupted gameplay to a large extent." [Semi-via Jiji.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I managed to get Jeff Minter to come over to keynote the Independent Games Summit the other week, I was delighted to hear that he also got invited to speak at Google. Turns out the subsequent 'Google Tech Talk' has been posted on Google Video for free, and provides 61 minutes of Yak goodness.

There's a nice abstract: "Jeff "Yak" Minter has been developing video games from the Sinclair Spectrum era on up through the present day. If you were alive in the 8-bit years, you've probably played one of his games: Llamatron, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Gridrunner and Idris Alpha were among the better-known ones. If you were one of the 30 people to buy an Atari Jaguar, you probably bought his "Tempest 2000" and "Defender 2000" cartridges." More than 30!

Finally: "And if you own an Xbox 360, you've also seen his work: the built-in music visualizer is his creation. His current project is an XBox Live Arcade game temporarily titled "Space Giraffe", which is an attempt to bring the classic Atari game Tempest into the next-gen era." The whole video is basically the same as his Independent Games Summit keynote, and also includes multiple camera angles and emulator demos as he wanders through his awesome back catalogue, so - unmissable! [Via Boyer.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['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. This week we take a look at the epic, and lamentably unfinished Shenmue series.]

We had been hearing about Shenmue for years before it was released. First there were rumors that Yu Suzuki was working on a Virtua Fighter RPG for the Saturn. As the director of Sega’s AM2 division, Suzuki had been responsible for some of the company’s most exciting arcade titles. Space Harrier, Hang-On, Out Run, Virtua Cop, and the epochal Virtua Fighter series were all the work of Suzuki and his AM2 team, so the idea of a new title for home consoles was very intriguing.

As more information trickled out of Japan, VF RPG became known as Project Berkley and development moved to Sega’s new generation of hardware. No one knew what Project Berkley was except that it would big, different, and amazing. As Katana became Dreamcast, Project Berkley was given the official title of Shenmue. Suzuki called the game a F.R.E.E. RPG, which stood for Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment and it would feature Q.T.E. or Quick Timer Events. No one could figure out what he meant by that either. After years of development and a budget estimated at 20 million, possibly as high as 70 million, the first chapter of Shenmue was released for the Dreamcast in 2000 to critical acclaim and consumer indifference.

Chapter 1: Yokosuka

Shenmue started off full of drama and intrigue, a sort of kung-fu revenge tale crossed with a Hardy Boys mystery. However, once the narrative was set up, you found yourself strangely free, wandering the back streets of urban Japan with little pressure to accomplish anything except to slowly settle into the game’s minutely detailed world.

At first, Shenmue’s open ended structure was startling, so different from most other goal oriented video games. The casual pace of Shenmue allowed you the time to linger over trivialities and follow whatever whim came along. You could spend all day at the arcade playing Hang-On or map the locations of every vending machine, sampling each flavor of soda as you drifted about. The designers sweated the details as much as was technically possible and constructed a solid environment textured with the patina of life. The Japan depicted in Shenmue was working class, a landscape of cheap fluorescent lights, water stained ceiling tiles, and chipped concrete. Not the high tech wonderland of Western imagination, but a Japan that was closer to the way it really is; old and slightly rundown, worn at the edges by the shuffle of people going about their lives.

However, pushing against the walls of the game you began to understand the limits of its artificial world. Along with the freedom that Shenmue seemed to promise, came the creeping realization that you were an actor in its drama and that you must eventually take the stage and play your part.

As a game Shenmue largely succeeded. The fighting was satisfying, with many opportunities to teach bullies the values of humility and respect. How you fought was up to you, whether you wanted to go deep into fancy combo moves or just button mash your way to victory, either approach was valid. Shenmue’s climactic running battle will always be one of my most pleasurable video game memories.

Other aspects of the game could be tedious, particularly in the second half when you were required to go work everyday. It was certainly a strange experience to come home from my real job and then punch the clock in Shenmue. The Simon Says/Dragon’s Lair-like Quick Timer Events were sometimes frustrating. Still, I was always surprised by the game’s ability to reengage me with some interesting twist just as my attention began to flag.

Shenmue was released in America in November of 2000. It shipped with two booklets and four GD-ROMs and included a supplemental Passport disc. It can still be acquired new from Game Quest Direct for $29.99. Sega also released a limited edition of Shenmue that added a music CD of jukebox tunes from the game. The LE version goes for around $35 at online auctions. Collectors might also want to seek out the 1998 Japanese release of Virtua Fighter 3tb which included a second disc called Project Berkley that had an interview with Yu Suzuki along with a teaser for Shenmue.

Chapter 2: Hong Kong

Sega of America broke my heart with Shenmue II. The game was set to be released in the Fall of 2001 and my calendar was marked. I couldn’t wait to return to its world. Then Sega abruptly walked away from the Dreamcast and made the last minute decision to cancel Shenmue II’s U.S. release. The game was shuffled back into development to create an Xbox version that wouldn’t be ready for another year.

Sega had done a lot to alienate its fans over the years but pulling Shenmue II was more than I could take. I could not understand how Sega came to its decision to publish the sequel on a different system whose user base would likely have no prior awareness or interest in Shenmue. My only comfort was the thrill of schadenfreude when I later saw massive quantities of Sega’s Xbox efforts (including Shenmue II) end up in deeply discounted bargain bins.

The Xbox version of Shenmue II finally made it to America in the Fall of 2002. It had slightly enhanced graphics and an English dub as well as a few other tweaks and add-ons. It also included a 90 minute DVD version of Shenmue that was produced using cut-scenes and in-game footage. Shenmue II for Xbox can still be purchased new from Game Quest Direct for $14.99. The game has also been recently added to the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list.

Although Shenmue II was canceled for U.S. Dreamcast market, Europe squeaked by, getting the game late in 2001. The European version retained the original Japanese language voice-overs and provided English subtitles. It shipped in an impressive looking package of two double disc Euro style jewel cases along with four duplicate manuals and a slipcover. The European version can be found at auction for around $45.

Chapter 3....

The Shenmue story was supposed to be told over 16 chapters but so far little has come of it. A multiplayer online version of Shenmue was announced for Asia in 2004 but the partnership between Sega and the game’s Korean developer JC Entertainment dissolved in a lawsuit. Supposedly work continues on the MMORPG but no English version is planned.

Many of Shenmue’s advancements have become part of the established vocabulary of game design. Quick Timer Events were seamlessly incorporated into Resident Evil 4 and Tomb Raider: Legend and the idea provides the game play foundation of Indigo Prophecy. Some have described Sega’s Yakuza as Shenmue without a humorless eunuch as its main character.

There are rumors that a completed version of the Shenmue saga which condenses the later chapters is being developed for one of the new generation of consoles but considering the series’ low sales, I don’t have much confidence in Sega’s commitment to finishing it.

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

Posted by jfleming at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It's totally tragic that Computer Games Magazine has apparently closed down, and even more so because I'd just got the April 2007 issue which included the regular spoof game ads from our friends and sometime Gamasutra columnists from Schadenfreude Interactive.

This time round, the two ads were for Accordion Hero II (the sequel to the seminal!), and a brand new game called Nachtmusik, and information and screenshots of both titles are available on the official Schadenfreude homepage. As for Accordion Hero II, apparently, it's: Everything you loved in the first game, but more of it, ja? Features a new Practice mode, and 65 new songs including: * Leichtensteiner Polka, Traditional * The Bowling King, Those Darn Accordions * Can't Touch This, M.C. Hammer * Ya Ya Wunderbar, Frankie Yankovic * Pictures of Matchstick Men, Status Quo * In Heaven There Is No Beer, Traditional * Ride The Lightning, Metallica." Damn!

And the brand new Nachtmusik is "...a karaoke survival horror game. Yes, we have combined our love of karaoke with our love of German opera and our love for running around ruined, ichor-spattered hallways wielding a bloody candlestick or sawed-off shotgun while being pursued relentlessly by ghosts and mutants. I do not think there is another karaoke survival horror game in the world! There may well be a good reason for this, but such things have never stopped us before." This is oddly reminiscent of the actually real IGF Student Showcase winner Opera Slinger, hilariously.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Realized that I haven't linked GSW sister educational site Game Career Guide here recently, and it's just put out a series of features (here's the RSS feed, subscribe now!) that are both interesting and relevant to a bunch of GameSetWatch readers, I reckon. They go as follows:

- We've just posted a feature called 'What Game Companies Want From Graduates' by Alistair Wallis which chats to senior HR folks from EA, Insomniac Games, and THQ, with EA's Colleen McCreary saying: "Our concern with for-profit institutions is that students may not learn the fundamental the tools for understanding and solving complex issues... We are most likely to hire someone who has a BFA or MFA from a traditional art college and a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science for our entry level artist and software engineer positions."

- There's also been a couple of interesting postmortems from IGF Student Showcase Winners posted recently - there's one for Sungkyunkwan University's Rooms, which is a really interesting abstract puzzle game, and also DigiPen's eventual best Student Game winner Toblo - plenty of insight in there.

- Another couple of random features of late which are worth checking - a round-up of the Game Career Seminar at GDC, with a fair bit of educational insight, and also 'Academics For Game Designers', in which: "Michael McCoy, a game designer with twelve years of professional experience who now teaches Level Design at The Guildhall at SMU, offers advice about school and course options for aspiring game designers."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A note from Hugh Hancock of Strange Company, then: "Just thought you might be interested to know that our "Fair Game" Machinima ads we just completed, advertising Fair Trade practises, seem to be going a bit viral!"

He continues: "We've produced two spots. One, made in The Sims 2, was shown at the Scottish Parliament, of all places. The other one, made in World of Warcraft, hit #1 most linked Film and Animation video on YouTube over the weekend, and has sparked off debate about Fair Trade ethics on World of Warcraft sites all over the place."

There's more info on the official FairGame machinima site, which explains: "Many people will be aware of the crushing inequalities and exploitation of Third-World farmers by First-World corporations, particularly that centered on the raw foodstuffs for coffee, chocolate and similar products. We wanted to use the medium of computer games to talk about these problems and suggest Fair Trade as an alternative."

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at GamesRadar, Christian Nutt has a fun interview with Castlevania mastermind IGA which is notable because it asks some spectacularly nerdy but very relevant questions about the upcoming Castlevania compilation for PSP and the future of the franchise.

The Konami supremo explains of the title: "The basic concept of delivering this title over PSP is to deliver Rondo of Blood that was never released in the States - not Symphony of the Night. Many of the gamers in the US, or outside Japan, tend to think that SOTN is one of the Castlevania titles that made a drastic change to the series. But personally speaking, I think Rondo of Blood was the title that actually started branching out from the past Castlevania series."

It's also interesting to see him tackling the lack of simple level-based gameplay in recent Castlevanias, which he apparently yearns for: "Another reason I brought Rondo of Blood to PSP this time was to test case with the consumers if they would accept the linear type of game. Because, obviously, the linear type of game is not mainstream level design in the current industry. From my end, my keyword to the game creation was "longevity." How gamers could last the gameplay and play it over and over again. So I really want to hear the consumer reaction to the linear type and see if it would fit for the future Castlevania series." Neat stuff.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at his regular Hollywood Reporter column, Paul Hyman has been discussing the topic of casual game 'cloning', which you may recall has been the subject of some controversy on Gamasutra, GameSetWatch, and every other damn casual game discussion ever.

Hyman claims: "Recently, chatter within the Casual Games SIG of the International Game Developers Association heated up when developers proposed that copyrighting their work was the only way to prevent what has happened to such games as "Tetris" and "Bejeweled."" Of course, a lot of people (probably including me) believe that any kind of patent or legal securing of game concepts can be a terrible idea - there's been a recent Gamasutra article about that too from David Sirlin.

This is probably the most interesting bit: "But, in [his] posting to the Casual Games SIG's "Casual Games Digest," Kim Pallister, business development manager at Microsoft Casual Games, notes that MSN Games has taken a stand on clones. "Granted, it's a bit of a 'soft shoe' stance, but it's something," says Pallister. MSN Games' games acceptance criteria states that "Games that mimic other titles may receive additional scrutiny."

Pallister continues: "We understand that most games draw upon many elements of their predecessors... That being said, MSN Games has received games that were transparently obvious copies of popular casual game titles. Since these clones typically have very little new of value to add, we may opt to not accept such a title for distribution."" First time I've seen anyone in the casual biz even mention this in public - though maybe I haven't been looking hard enough.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

A final pre-GDC floater (ew!), Kyle Orland over at GameDaily's 'Media Coverage' column actually posted a neat interview with veteran video game mag editor Bill Kunkel a couple of weeks back, and it's well worth a trawl through.

The intro explains: "Bill Kunkel is unquestionably the grandfather of video game journalism. After writing the first regular game review column for Video magazine in the late '70s, he helped start the first American consumer magazine for gaming, Electronic Games, in 1981. Kunkel has meandered a bit since those days, writing for comics and wrestling magazines, and even working as a game developer and design consultant for a time. But he's always come back to game journalism, bouncing between a variety of print and online outlets before recently becoming the editor-in-chief of Tips & Tricks magazine starting with the January 2007 issue."

Anyhow, Kunkel has some good quotes all round (and I wonder if he can bring Tips & Tricks back from the brink?), but here's a particularly interesting one: "Once the Internet got established, basically magazines started dying because so much of game journalism had become about news – the signing, the specs for the next generation system that hasn't come out in Japan yet. That kind of obsession – everything here is kind of OK and boring, but everything that's coming is infinitely more exciting – when you get readers conditioned to think that's what it's all about, magazines don't stand a chance in hell against the Internet."

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I've been known to get on the ol' hobby horse about the specter of 'terrible Internet reporting', I was very pleased to see that Official Xbox Magazine's Dan Amrich has done exactly the same thing in discussing 'alleged GamePro bribery' over an earlier review of Supreme Commander, as reported by the extremely dubious 'Game World Network' and then rocketed onto Digg.

You may recall a previous 'Anatomy Of A Rumor' report which also fingered GWN as being, to be blunt, absolutely terrible excuses for game journalists, and it looks like they're at it again. This time, they accused GamePro Australia of taking a bribe for giving Supreme Commander a 50% score, based on - wait for it - some crazy on the GameSpot forums spreading a hoax. Then they submitted it to Digg, where you will note that it's got to 1027 Diggs, despite being completely untrue.

Dan does a fine job of taking apart the chain of events that caused this lameness to occur (though perhaps the Craig Charles reference is pushing it a bit, even if I know what he means). But I wanted to point out the absolutely terrible plagiarism that GWN is using to get other front-page Diggs, such as this one about God Of War today.

Sure, that news is (more or less, vaguely) true - but look, GWN's coverage of the event by Richard Manley is in no way a complete cut and paste of 1UP's live event coverage, including identical quotes and the SAME ACTUAL PICTURES. Though they did draw a red arrow in one of them, so I guess that's OK.

Mind you, these were the folks who were 'liveblogging' the Japanese Wii press conference by watching an archived Japanese investor conference from a few months earlier by mistake. And their GDC Phil Harrison keynote 'liveblog' consisted of them reading Eurogamer's liveblog and repasting the quotes. So they were liveblogging Eurogamer's liveblog! Seriously.

But hey, it's the Internet, there's really little concept of reputation when it comes to putting stories onto aggregators like Digg - you can just keep submitting whatever you like, and the public will pick up on it if the headline is sensational enough. Wisdom of crowds at work! And my augmented rant is done. But really, GWN, please shuffle off this mortal coil, already?

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Over at Lum's ever-perceptive Broken Toys, there's a post recounting the post-launch fallout over PC MMO Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes, in which, as Lum charmingly puts it: "Brad McQuaid leaves the Sigil fallout shelter and sees his shadow, which means six more months of crunch patching." Yep, it appears the game did ship with a few bugs in place.

McQuaid is incredibly honest about financial realities in his comments, though: "We had to agree to a launch date, or there would be no money to continue. This was unfortunate, but we will and are recovering. This game was expensive — probably second only to WoW, although WoW cost more than double. I don’t want to sound jealous, although I probably am to some degree to be honest, but Blizzard put $80M into development."

Blimey, carry on? "No one else is willing or able to do that. Not Microsoft, not Sony. EA perhaps, and they’re now back in the MMOG business with the Mythic acquisition (but at the time we started Sigil, they were still in a lot of pain over Sims Online, which is rumored to have been around $25-30M — so at the time they were not interested in a game like Vanguard. And certainly not smaller publishers — they definitely don’t have that kind of money." It's unclear how well Vanguard subscriptions are doing, but it certainly has a bit of a 'hardcore' rep currently. And a VERY frank maker!

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['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 effect of two Japanese animators on mecha gaming.]

When people look at mecha games, outside of Japan, they often overlook the main sources of influence. After all, from a pop-cultural standpoint Japan is literally immersed in mecha. From anime to manga, mecha is all pervasive and has been around for over half a century.

There are consequently two very important figures in anime that have inadvertently shaped the last twenty years of mecha gaming and will continue to do so for a good long while to come. And so we shall talk about them!

Many may know of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Gundam saga and it is often regarded as a canon influence for mecha games. However, Gundam is a far more general catalyst when it came to the real robot phenomenon. It merely showed that mecha were fragile and where piloted by actual human beings (rather than feral posers with unkempt hair). Yet, the finer details in Gundam were often brushed over or even worse given fudged physics (Minovsky particles for instance).

There are two other people that gave greater definition to mecha, not only from a technical standpoint but also a kinetic one.

Ryosuke Takahashi

Very much the foil to Tomino, Takahashi approached real robots as something that could almost be created within the context of present day technology. As such the design work and the subsequent realistic treatment of said designs gave the rest of the narrative a more believable and subtle edge.

Take the cult classic Aoki Ryusei SPT Layzner, very near the beginning of this epic yet deeply poignant series the protagonist Eiji is faced with a major problem. After stealing the prototype super powered tracer (or SPT) Layzner from the Grados invading forces, he’s now faced with the need to re-fuel. He thus waits amongst the ruins of a military base on Mars with barely enough fuel remaining for simple movement; in the hope another SPT will search the ruins for him.

He switches all his systems off, so as not to broadcast his position and waits. Faintly in the distance you hear the noise of another SPT walking slowly in Eiji’s direction. For a moment you share Eiji’s terror of not knowing where the enemy will appear, after all his radar has been turned off. Eventually the enemy SPT comes within range and it’s clear he can’t see the Layzner. Eiji quickly strikes and uses his remaining fuel in an attempt to cripple the enemy SPT without destroying it (thus removing his chance at re-fuelling). The elation that you share with Eiji as he succeeds within such a strict rule set is almost palpable.

The important point about Takahashi’s focus on technical veracity is that defines a very distinct rule set for the characters to work within. Compared to Tomino’s more freeform approach, Takahashi’s is far more suited to gaming and helped switch on several developers within the Japanese games industry that mecha could be treated as something with finite resources (with From Software being relevant in this instance, especially with their vocal admiration of Takahashi’s animated works).

Takahashi’s approach to mecha isn’t wholly intentional either; more that his main desire is to portray people and the events surrounding them in a gritty and believable manner. The mecha fall very much into the background of the work and are treated more as tools rather than anything spiritual in significance. Admittedly, in many instances, Takahashi’s animated works often hold titles named after the eponymous mecha (such as Layzner and Galient) but that’s more of a marketing decision really.

Ichiro Itano

Itano is an interesting chap, he worked on the original Gundam movies and has been pretty much joined at the mechanical hip ever since. Unlike Takahashi, Itano has a more specific skill set in regards to animation. Whilst Itano has sat in the director's chair more than once his trademark is more action orientated. If you've watched much anime, especially anything from Macross, then you'll be familiar with glorious dogfights and beautifully animated volleys of missiles, as their vapor trails arc across the sky like hyperactive gossamers.

This aerial ballet has a name and one that venerates its creator, called the Itano Circus it has in many ways defined the capabilities of animated mecha. Like a beacon of possibility, other animators and games developers have looked to Itano for inspiration. Whilst Takahashi gave credence to mecha, Itano made their movement almost aspirational. A good example of what I'm talking about is illustrated here, here and here (with a downloadable version here).

Now, one of the big problems developers face when dealing with Itano's work is that to look at it's an amazing spectacle. However, the characters within the anime are often legends in terms of piloting skill. When you transfer an approximation of those controls to a gangly teenager, it doesn't always work out. A good example of what I'm talking about is that of the various Eureka 7 games. Eureka 7 is basically the anime Stanislaw Lem would have wrote if he ever had a penchant for transforming mecha that surf through the sky. The anime created a unique rule set to allow the mecha, called LFO's, ride invisible energy waves whilst airborne. The problem is that this rule set wasn't really explained that clearly and subsequently that let the animators off the leash in terms of the aerial combat sequences.

Visually, said dogfights are literally jawdropping in their audacity but transferring that into gameplay form isn't really manageable short of some kind of neural interface. Which is why Itano's legacy is aspirational to developers. They see the Nirvash swooping through streams of missiles and want to afford a similar visceral thrill to the player (after all, many developers want to be the riding the trapar waves themselves).

A powerful dichotomy...

These two figures in Japanese animation capture two almost diametrically opposite aspects of mecha that developers strive for; a fixed rule set to denote a level of realism and the ability to dodge missiles whilst striking multiple poses. It's this dichotomy that has produced games like Zone of Enders, Armored Core, Virtual On and a slew of others. Whilst Takahashi's and Itano's influence are by no means overt, most developers cite their respect for these animators on a particularly common basis and their subsequent games often bely a level of admiration that's hard to ignore. Both gentlemen are still busy creating new animated works however and their influence will continue to be felt in games for a long time to come.

[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 1:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A suspiciously alert Brandon Boyer has just pointed out to me that, by Isis and Osiris, there are some brand-new Katamari Damacy T-shirts available on Cabel Sasser's Panic.com, and they're completely completely awesome.

All you really need to know is that the new designs are labeled either 'shiny' or 'fuzzy', in many cases, and they have all kinds of great abstractions to them. Also, if you click through on each shirt and go to the last picture, you'll see Keita Takahashi's comments on each, for example for the Castle one: "I let my mind wander with this one. I wanted a romantic shirt, and as a result, I think the shirt turned out wonderful... It's a castle, and it's gold, so I really want Hollywood celebrities to wear this shirt."

Or the Rolling one: "Panic is always telling me, "no more curve balls! How about a straight-forward Katamari shirt?" Since Panic agreed to produce the Gold Castle image, I created this one in return. This is our classic give-and-take.... Since we're pretty used to seeing this kind of Katamari image, I think this shirt might be the most popular. That's good news, but it's also a little regrettable." Hah!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Though you may have noted this over at Gamasutra, just wanted to register my sadness that Computer Games Magazine and Massive Magazine are closing down, apparently partly due to parent company TheGlobe.com losing a lawsuit over some alleged MySpace spamming they were doing (yikes).

I'm sure Mr. Gifford will follow up further in a Mag Weasel-ing, but here's part of the Gamasutra story on the events, which leave me annoyed because CGM was my favorite U.S. print mag in terms of editorial content. It's possible that someone else will pick up the torch and acquire the mags? I certainly hope so:

"Independent sources, both via an un-named publisher dealing with the magazines and from industry messageboard QT3, have revealed that U.S. print publication Computer Games Magazine and its sister MMO-centric Massive magazine have apparently been shut down by publisher TheGlobe.com.

Computer Games Magazine, regarded as the second oldest PC focused monthly magazine in circulation after Computer Gaming World, was first launched in 1988 as British gaming magazine Games International. The magazine later evolved over several iterations, firstly as Strategy Plus, and then later Computer Games: Strategy Plus, before adopting its most current title.

In March 2006, the staff of Computer Games Magazine announced the creation of a spinoff publication called Massive, which focused on massively multiplayer online titles such as World of WarCraft and PlanetSide. The magazine was distinguished in that each issue would feature MMO demos... the first issue of the magazine was released on September 19, 2006, and its proper quarterly run began in January this year."

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['MMOG Nation' is a weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week's column is a look behind the scenes at the MMOG blog Van Hemlock.]

Self-styled as a 'virtual monster hunter', the author behind the site Van Hemlock offers up a regular dose of simple, honest game criticism. Other sites might see posts go up more often, but when Hemlock speaks it's almost always a good idea to listen. This wandering gamer has been posting for a little over two years now, and in that time has weighed on on everything from World of Warcraft to the depths of Eve Online's space.

Speaking directly and with little pretension, it's helpful to use Hemlock as a measuring stick for the interestingness of a game; if he doesn't have much to say on a particular title, odds are good there just isn't much there worth talking about. Hemlock was kind enough to sit down for a virtual chat, and I have some links to pass out touching on the major themes of his site. Read on for a look behind the scenes with this well-read and highly observant blogger.

Soon To Be Featured In A Major Motion Picture

Michael: If you don't mind my asking, what is your home life like? Do you have any children? A spouse/girlfriend? What's your day job?

Hemlock: In a lot of ways, I am the stereotypical gaming slob - single, no kids, live to play, etc. Computer games, well, MMOs in particular, have pretty much consumed my life at this point and I probably ought to get out more. In my defence though, I don't live in a basement - my mother's or otherwise - and in fact live in a second floor apartment, whose mortgage is probably enough Real Life Responsibility for me, I think. I also don't like Cheetoes or Mountain Dew, which are hard to find in the UK anyway - Wotsits and Tizer are the nearest UK equivalent, I suspect. My day job is as a Graphic Designer for an electronic engineering company - brochures, websites, exhibitions stands, that sort of thing, although it's not something I'm passionate enough about to want to do at home as well, hence the austere look of the blog!

Michael: Do you have any hobbies outside of Massive gaming? Do you do any more traditional PC/console gaming?

Hemlock: I've always been fascinated with computer games from a very early age, starting with a Sinclair Spectrum in the late eighties and progressively upgrading from there. Lonely childhood in a remote country location, a somewhat indifferent father, and being a bit of a dreamer all made those little 8-bit action games very compelling. Nowadays I almost exclusively play online MMOs, although a friend lent me his Xbox 1 not so long ago (He got a 360 so it became somewhat surplus), so have been trying to get into 'sofa gaming' a bit, with various sucess. Quite enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, Deus Ex 2 and whatever Burnout game is on that thing. The whole car-crashing for points prizes and prestige is a lot of quick fun, but on the whole, I don't think I'm a console gamer really - not immersive enough, and I'm not really a 'drop-in type' of gamer anymore. Plus my huge gnarled claws aren't as good with a controller as a mouse and keyboard! As for other hobbies, I'm quite getting into the EVE CCG with a couple of friends, although I think that only counts as 'outside Massive gaming' on a technicality. I used to be a bit of an outdoors adventure sports type, it's been quite a long time since I've been rock climbing or caving - I'm probably getting old. I'm 31, by the way.

Michael: How would you characterize your experience with Massive games? Do you consider yourself more casual or 'hardcore'? Ever done any raiding?

Hemlock: In a word, 'nomadic'. I'm a hard-core gamer with respect to the genre, but terribly casual with any specific title. I suspect it's just because I've played so many of them now that none of them can quite monopolise my attention span. I don't think I have ADHD as such - it's just I tend to get to a point in an MMO where I can tick a mental box - 'understand how *that* works' - and then get restless and want to poke about new things. It's much better in these post-WoW days, where the levelling is just about fast enough to keep up with my attention span, but it used to be awful around 2000, when broken-glass grinding was the norm, and I'd end up very frustrated in most games, having to redo the same types of experience over and over, before being allowed to see new ones. As you can imagine, I'm an *extremely* 'Explorer' Bartle Test type. I also tend to solo far more than is reasonable or normal in a massively *multiplayer* game, and am still try to work out why.

Michael: How many MMOGs have you played? What was your first game?

Hemlock: Whoosh...around twenty, I think. Pretty much every western MMO there's ever been, with a few notable exceptions; City of Heroes and Dark Age of Camelot are two I feel I ought to have tried, but never quite got round to. Horizons, Auto Assault and Dungeons and Dragons Online, less so. My first MMO was actually the barely heard of Cyro/Vibes Mankind - mostly a kind of massive space based RTS. Very bewildering and very broken, which I think gave me a prophetic and accurate first impression of the genre as a whole. The first one I'd seriously count though, is EverQuest. After a few weeks on a regular server, I got it into my head that full-on, no-rules open PvP server would be somehow honourable, interesting and a suitable challenge for my gaming talents. The next two years scarred me and made me a lot more of a cynical, bitter gamer than I was, and I'm glad Rallos Zek has been server-merged out of existence, frankly. I tend to avoid PvP nowadays - not worth the stress. Mind you - I do love Planetside. It's probably more about the consequences of PvP, rather than the act itself, for me.

Michael: City of Heroes is one of those games that a lot of MMOG nerds have notched in their belt as a matter of course. Was there anything in specific that kept you away, or was it just an accident of timing? What's kept you from checking it out recently?

Hemlock: I think it's just me, rather than CoH/V. Heard a lot of good things about it; light-hearted and casual fun in spandex and all. I just never went through a Comic Book phase when growing up, so the whole Superhero thing mostly passed me by. I was probably obsessing about another game at the time, and now, it's finding the time. I probably will have a look some day though - just need to get bored and storm out of one of my curent games first! Must admit though, I hated Freedom Force, so that might have put me off a bit.

Michael: What would you consider your favorite game? Your least favorite?

Hemlock: Difficult. My impressions of games vary a lot depending how near or close I am to them at the time - very flambouyant love-hate cycles for most of them, I'd say. I think for me, a favourite game is one that I'll keep returning to over and over; I'm going to quit them all, sooner or later, but some I never come back to again, apart from the odd week here and there to see how it's doing. You probably want names really, don't you? At this very moment, I'm liking Guild Wars: Nightfall the most, I think, although it infuriates me in almost equal measure with it's hectic nature and somewhat unpredictable combat. In general though, I'm increasingly drawn to MMOs that do things a bit differently - Planetside, EVE Online, Guild Wars, etc. Stuff that isn't EQ/AO/WoW/EQ2, although I still usually have at least one Level Quest on the go too.

Least favourite is easier - played a lot of train-wrecks in my time. Shadowbane deserves a mention, although probably not for the usual reasons - ultra harsh PvP brutality, etc. It just seemed too empty. And didn't perform very well on my PC, despite it's obviously apparent age. Neocron 2 for the sheer unpleasantness of it's playerbase - very offputting, which is a shame... the world itself was very interesting. Call me superficial, but I never did get my head around the 2D sprites of Ultima Online either. The very worst online game I've ever played though, is Mimesis Online, a game I've never seen mentioned anywhere else. It's possible I dreamed it, but I'm far too traumatised to go into details here. I'd have trouble pointing at a recent title though - a lot of current titles are bland, certainly, but rarely awful.

Michael: To follow up with that, do you have a favorite memory from a Massive game? I like to call it 'something you'll tell your grandkids about.' Anything like that?

Hemlock: Probably the Star Wars: Galaxies town I had a part in building on a fresh server. I think there's Ranterbury Tale about it somewhere in my archives, but basically, a whole series of unlikely coincidences caused some kind of gaming 'alignment', and for a few months a whole group of us managed to create a real and geniune 'community' like I'd not sen anywhere else in my travels. It wasn't guilds or cliques, just a whole load of individual players spontaneously pulling together to make the game work pretty much as it must have been designed by some starry-eyed SOE/Lucasarts dev. All very utopian, and good while it lasted. I'm generally quite distrustful of the whole 'Guild' structure, especially in games where raid loot is better than soloable stuff - guilds become more like temping agencies than anything else - short term contracts, in exchange for a particular kind of payment, so it was nice to see that there can be another way.

Michael: Conversely, do you have a bad memory that's tainted your experiences with Massive games in general?

Hemlock: Well, I don't mind crazy pickup group antics so much - you get to the point where it just becomes funny in spite of the wipes, smacktalk, etc. My Ranterbury Tales feature thing is pretty much typical of my attitude toward it all these days - no such thing as a Bad Group, only Good Comedy Material! In terms of darker and more damaging experiences, I'd have to go with my years on Rallos Zek. I know 'Emo' isn't very fashionable these days, but I really do think spending so much of my spare time in such a viciously paranoia-riddled and spiteful environment damaged me, over the longer term, and could be one of the reasons I'm so inclined to solo so much. As a result of it all, I'm quite distrustful of others online, even in worlds where it's physically impossible for them to attack me, and worse still, some of it leaked out into my perceptions of Real Life. When you start to see what human beings could be like if there were no laws or police or repercussions, it makes you start to believe that the only reason people don't gank each other 'RL', is that they aren't sure enough in their ability to get away with it. Vastly out of proportion I know, and I expect much of my problems with Rallos were just me taking it all *far* too seriously. I think I'm mostly cured nowadays though!

Michael: What is it about Massive games that appeals to you? What makes you keep playing these great big beautiful games?

Hemlock: Good question. I sometimes think my entire blog has just been me groping at some kind of answer to this myself. I'm not terribly social, solo by default and generally expect the worst from group or guild work. I guess it's the 'Alone Together' thing the brain-folk at Terra Nova talk about now and then. Even though I'm unlikely to interact with very many of the other players, just seeing the zone-chat and knowing that 3000 or so other people are in there too gives it a vital pulse, I think. Also, having a game it's unlikely I'll complete, no matter how obsessively I play, is good too. I have a lot of singleplayer games I've loved to bits for the 20 hours of gameplay they offered, and then never touched again, having 'won' them. Doesn't happen so much in MMOs, I find.

Michael: What made you start a blog in the first place? How did you decide on a name?

Hemlock:Mostly imitation and seeing other MMO bloggers at it. Back then I was much more angry about MMO shortcomings and seeing stuff like Lum the Mad was great; "We don't have to just sit there and take this stuff? Power to the people!" Kill Ten Rats and Tobold were big influences too, I think. After a little while I settled down a bit and just start treating it as a kind of online diary, mostly for my own benefit, that other MMO gamers might find interesting or helpful, rather than a one-man crusade to get my classes buffed and everything else nerfed.

The name was thought up in a hurry after my previous, and not nearly as successful general blog had to be 'dissapearred' after I somewhat naievely said some rather foolish things about my RL employer. I kept the job, just about, but any further blogging would have to be purely game related, and under a new, secret name. All just as well really. I always think a good blog has a focus that it should keep to, other than the blogger him or herself, otherwise you run the risk of being a bit self-indulgent. I picked MMOs, something I spend an awful lot of time either playing, or thinking about anyway.

I'd just been watching the Hugh Jackman action romp 'Van Helsing' at the time, and the whole generic monster hunting thing seemed to fit, although I gave up on the silly 'in character' bits very early on. I am not, not have ever been, Dutch!

Michael: What keeps you going, writing on the site?

Hemlock:Boredom at work, mostly. No, partly it's because I just need to write something about it all, even if it is just for my own amusement; I'm so self-absorbed that sometimes I go back through my older posts and read through them - they make me chuckle at least, so part of their purpose is served. Also it's nice to be a bit of an expert in *something* and I don't really have any other field of more worthwhile or meaningful expertise, so if I do have to write something, it's important I write about something I know. Self justification of sorts, perhaps? Plus I do particularly like being a 'cross-game' blogger, talking about all sorts of MMOs from post to post - with any luck, someone who came to me looking for World of Warcraft tips or whatever, might go away and try something they wouldn't have otherwise thought of, like Planetside or Second Life. I like the sponaeity of it all too...I often won't have a clue what to write about until I've sat down and gone through my RSS thingey. There's always something a bit bizzare or odd going on in the MMO-O-Sphere though!

Michael: I definitely share your wanderlust in Massive games, and I've always wondered what it was about the genre that inspires that kind of attitude. What is it about understanding a game that makes us need to move on, do you think? Conversely, for games like Planetside (which you've talked about a bit recently), what keeps you grounded for a time?

Hemlock:I think it's about the variety of it all for me. Different *kinds* of experiences, within the various games. Seeing and trying new and unexpected things. Certainly there might be a difference in specific choreography for different end-game raid bosses and what have you, but I sort of consider the whole end-game finished, once I've been on enough particular raids for the novelty of raiding itself to wear off. Same with crafting, or exploring. You make enough 'Mediocre Swords' and you pretty much know how making 'Outstanding Swords' will be. Planetside is a bit of an odd one though - the overall gameplay is very samey over the long term, but no two base captures ever go quite the same way - each situation is slightly different. Human opponents do keep things interesting - I just wish I could get over my fear of material loss enough to enjoy PvP in other games. Plus the war stories are fun - you don't tend to come away from the average goblin bashing session with quite that level of annecdote.

Michael: Your EVE CCG posts are highly entertaining. What other non-computer based games do you enjoy? Any previous experiences with CCGs, board games, pen and paper games?

Hemlock:Well, I'm passing familiar with Magic: The Gathering, although generally only play with the cards of others. The whole marketing model for collectible card games is a bit sinister for my liking, and it's a bit of an exercise in self-discipline not to go out and spend hundreds of pounds on booster pack trade displays, just to find that one crucial rare card. I've dabbled a bit in the various Games Workshop tabletop wargames too (very excited to see Warhammer 40K MMO annouced!), and of course, various incarntations of D&D, AD&D, ADHD&D, etc. Still, looking back at those 1980s rulebooks from today, it seems obvious that they were just MMOs, that the computers hadn't been invented for yet. I've dabbled in a lot, but keep coming back to the PC - nothing else quite has that draw for me.

Michael: Is there anything that you'd like to say to your site's readers? Anything you'd like them to know in specific?

Hemlock: Yes, please be more specific when entering keywords into Google, otherwise you'll just keep ending up at some bizzarre online gaming blog written by a wannbe hack who thinks having a large vocabulary is the same thing as being intellectual! Also - I haven't played Project Entropia in years, and was only there for a week even then - please find your own websites to hang out at!

Chaucer and Inexpensive Seating

Pulling a page from the works of great English literature, Van Hemlock's most well-known series of articles is the Ranterbury Tales. Each consists of a flashback to a specific gaming moment in Hemlock's 'Traveling Matt' life, and is a great place to get a feel for his writing style. He mentioned The Pioneer's Tale above, the story of his time homesteading in Star Wars Galaxies. Additional posts guaranteed to entertain are The Babysitter's Tale (the first), The Fellowship's Tale (in which Hemlock reminds himself why he solos), and The Banqueter's Tale (my current favorite).

"From the little raid window, I could tell that we had only three healers between us all, only two fighters, one scout (me), and six mage types, ranging from the Ever Cool Warlock, through to some of the more obscure practitioners of arcane arts, conjurers, illusionists, wizards, you name it, they were there. Was like Vegas, really...I'm sure I even saw Penn and Teller at the back somewhere, but it all got a bit confusing to be honest. That's DPS covered then, I thought, and not for the first time, wished I was a priest of some sort."

The Cheap Seats, another Hemlock post series, makes an effort to provide high-level observations of low-level gameplay. Specifically, it's a collection of 14-day trial impressions of a number of games. It's also one of the regular series he's updated the least, and is definitely something I hope is returned to in the future. In the meantime, you can check out his rationale for the project, as well as his impressions of Ryzom, Puzzle Pirates, and Shadowbane.

"My real main problem with the game though, is that your little half-vampire, or demon-kin, or whatever, is born into the world, and beyond being given the somewhat lofty and abstract goal of ‘Crush Your Enemies’, ‘Claim A Throne’ and ‘Rule The World’, is basically left to it. For the raw newbie, this is a bit too far on the ‘open ended gameplay’ scale, and you have to entertain yourself. I could find no quests, missions, discernable NPC factions or back-story, and only the vaguest hints about what life was like on The Mainland, and how, and who, I could help. There was no tutorial, no greeter, nothing; not even the customary explanatory note in my inventory – “Hail, Soandso! Orcs killed your parents! Go talk to Quest_NPC_1 who can help you start a new life!”…that sort of thing."

Firsthand Accounts of Monster-Slaying (Virtually)

The bulk of Hemlock's other posts concentrate on his day-to-day activities in whatever title he happens to be playing at the moment. While there are certainly posts about World of Warcraft and EVE Online if you're inclined towards those games, at the moment he's concentrating on Planetside and Guild Wars. I've particularly enjoyed Hemlock's discussion of his regular group in Guild Wars, the 'Tuesday Noob Club'.

"Last night saw us help a man find his lost wedding ring, stolen by harpies. We provided armed security for a delicate mining operation in a quarry. We helped 'control' the population of the above harpies -mostly by going on a bit of a rampage in their breeding grounds - the mothers were not happy, but then I've never met a good-humoured harpy in any game! We helped a chef put together a banquet, made mostly out of various types of monster gunk - rather him than me. All while pushing forward into new and unknown lands, on our way to deal with the next step of the Primary Quest, which at the moment seems to be focussed on containing a sudden outbreak of undead. Grrr...pesky undead! One life is never enough, is it? Ohhhhhh noooooo."

[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 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now, we have people like Geek on Stun to remind us of the true greatness of Spike's school gang supremacy PS2 title Kenka Banchou: "We fell in love with this game the second we saw eye-beams being exchanged between our pompadoured hero and some sorry punk who can't handle a little intimidation."

Well, good news for tall haircut fans! NCSX's blog points out that Kenka Banchou 2: Full Throttle for PlayStation 2 is now out in Japan, after some surprising semi-success for the first title: "Spike went on to sell 157,000 copies of the game without much of an advertising budget or any name recognition."

Anyhow: "Fast forward two years and Yasuo's still around but no longer the hero. A young buck named Tomoya has entered the world and must earn his own badge of yankii honor. By using the mighty menchi beam to initiate encounters and fists to beat down packs of ruffians, the new protagonist slowly gains street cred, repute, and the adoration of lowly gangsters throughout the hood." Lots more info on the NCSX page - dammit, someone pick this up for the West already.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, since this has been floating around for a bit, I thought it was time to clarify, politely. Gamesindustry.biz ran an interview excerpt with Warren Spector today in which he reveals he has not signed a deal with Vivendi, as previously reported.

In fact, with regard to a Vivendi/Junction Point deal, Spector told GI: "If you want a scoop, that actually is not true. I'm not exactly sure where that came from. So you're the first person to hear that." Which is now true, apparently, but GI's Patrick Garratt also took a jab at the online sites (including ComputerAndVideoGames.com) who originally reported the Vivendi signing story, referencing a Game Developer magazine feature which had Spector saying: "Luckily Vivendi seems to get it."

Garratt comments: "Many sites ostensibly grabbed the wrong end of the stick, and proclaimed a Junction Point game to be signed to Vivendi." Well, to be fair to them, I'm presuming that Garratt has not seen the February 2007 issue of Game Developer, which specifically says: "On the occasion of Junction Point's new creative deal with Vivendi Games, Game Developer spoke to Spector about his new studio, his stance on MMOs... writing in games, and dynamic storytelling."

In other words, Vivendi and Spector came to us, and we did an interview with them for the February issue of the magazine, which was meant to be timed around the announcement of the deal. And we were waiting for the embargo to lift so we can run the announcement and the interview online and, well... nothing happened. Then several sites picked up the announcement from the magazine, but there's still been no confirmation.

So, I guess my point is - I suppose the deal could still happen. If Spector is denying it, then maybe it won't. But this is the first time in my editorship of the magazine that someone has given us a story which turns out not to be true - so I was hoping that Warren would say: "Actually, that information came out a little prematurely, and it turns out the deal has not been concluded", rather than, say: "I'm not exactly sure where that came from."

Anyhow, the full and extremely interesting Warren Spector +interview (minus the Vivendi references) is available on Gamasutra now. So not all is lost. But still, guys - please sign deals before doing the press on them?

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:24 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. This installment looks at an old and widely reviled videogame cliché: the Tower of Hanoi.]

I think it's safe to assume that anyone reading this blog has played a fair share of videogames. It is therefore safe to assume that you have seen the Tower of Hanoi at least once. And I'd also wager good money that you're sick of it. Frankly, I'm sick of it. I play too many puzzle and adventure games to have to deal with hoary mechanical exercises like this. But it does have an interesting history, which may give you some perspective on how it came to be such a cliché.

The End of the World as We Know It

In 1882, a mechanical puzzle appeared in Paris called "La Tour D'Hanoï," or "The Tower of Hanoi." It had three pegs, eight disks, and an instruction booklet telling of the game's history in China, Japan and Tonkin (northern Vietnam), where the disks were porcelain instead of wood. (An English translation by Paul K. Stockmeyer is available.) It also included the legend of "Indian Brahmins" who played the game with sixty-four disks of gold, in the belief that when the tower is completely moved, the universe will end.

All of this was a lie, or at the very leastmisleading advertising. The credited inventor "Professor N. Claus (De Siam)" was merely a pseudonym for "E. Lucas (D'Amiens)," the mathemetician Édouard Lucas. Previously, he had developed a method that could be used to verify if Mersenne numbers were prime, and in 1876, he verified that 2¹²⁷-1 was prime. (This number would be the largest known prime until 1951 and the age of computers). In 1880, he published the solution to the Baguenaudier or Chinese Rings puzzle. Both of these achievements will be important.

The Tower of Hanoi was a relatively popular mathematical curiosity; it was reproduced many times under different names (as can be seen in this collection at James Dalgety's Puzzle Museum). It also appeared outside of a physical form. Sam Loyd discussed the Tower in his Cyclopedia of Puzzles in 1914. It was mentioned in Martin Gardner's Scientific American column in 1957, and in Eric Frank Russell's science-fiction story "Now Inhale" in 1959. But these textual appearances weren't related to actually carrying out the mechanics of the puzzle, instead, they focused on the surprising math behind the device.

Gray Areas

The original French instruction booklet aims at giving players a look at how exponents work, specifically powers of two. The Tower of Hanoi is a very compact device, even as the number of disks increases. But the number of moves required for each grows massive quickly. In fact, the sixty-four–disk tower described in the "legend" is revealed to require 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 moves, which would take, as noted by Lucas, more than five billion centuries. To help explain why, Lucas includes a chart of the minimum moves required for different disks: for 2 disks, it would take 3 moves; for 3 disks, 7 moves; for 4 disks, 15 moves; all the way up to 8 disks requiring 255 moves.

To the modern computer-savvy individual, that last pair should look familiar; in the age of bits and bytes, binary numbers are much more commonly recognizable. And in fact, the minimum number of moves for the Tower of Hanoi with n disks is 2ⁿ-1, which is also the maximum decimal value of an n-digit binary number. So, the Tower of Hanoi replicates the Mersenne numbers that Lucas had been studying. Understanding the link between the mechanical movements of the Tower and the powers of two was the main point of the exercise; and the process of mechanically moving the disks (which includes moving the disks in more or less the same order, doubling the amount of work for every added level) gave solvers a way to see how the process worked.

Specifically, the Tower of Hanoi models a reflected binary code, also known as a Gray Code. In a Gray code, only one binary digit is changed from one number to the next. Moreover, if you look at a list of Gray code numbers (like the ones on the Wikipedia page), you'll see that all of the digits in the first are reflected in the second half of the list. (Imagine folding the list over in half, and the ones and zeroes will match up.) Because of the way the Tower of Hanoi requires duplicating your work, the reflective nature of the Gray code is a map to solving. Look again at the solution for a four-disk Tower at Mathworld, and compare it to the four-bit Gray code at Wikipedia. The number in the solution is the same as the position of the digit that changes in the Gray code.

Gray codes are used in many scientific fields, but they're also the basis for several puzzles, including Spin Out and The Brain Puzzler. It's also the basis of the Baguenaudier puzzle that Lucas had solved a few years before. But as Jaap Scherphuis notes, the puzzles are all very simple. "In any position there are at most two possible moves, the equivalent of going up or down the list of Gray code numbers. If you never take back a move, you will always go on until you reach the end/beginning of the list."

After all of this, we've discovered that the mathematical interest behind the Tower of Hanoi make it unpleasant to actually complete; the only "interesting" move is the first one. So how come it's everywhere?

Death by Computer

In addition to the mathematical intricacies noted above, the solving of the Tower of Hanoi has some interesting things to say about an important aspect of computer programming: recursion. So the Tower of Hanoi went from being a mathematical curiosity to a programming exercise. Miroslav Kolar has a page that deals extensively with solving algorithms for the Tower of Hanoi, and Amit Singh has a simliar, but less serious collection. Jack Beidler, a CS professor at the University of Scranton, has a page showing how the recursive algorithm works in simpler terms. This explains how the mathematical curiosity was introduced to the new computer programmers, and why, to this day, there remain far too many small stand-alone programs that replicate the puzzle.

I don't know precisely when the Tower made the jump from computing class assignment to videogame, but the most notable implementation was in Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz in 1988. In the '90s, it appeared in the kid-oriented educational puzzlers The Island of Doctor Brain and The Secret Island of Dr. Quandry. It also appeared in the adventure game The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate and in the role-playing game Ultima VIII: Pagan. Things started getting weirder when it showed up in the god game Black and White. And I don't even want to count the number of second-rate text and graphic adventure games where it shows up (and I did consider trying). Of course, before all of these, a Tower solver was written for the word-processing game program Emacs.

One of the most egregious examples was in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where a four disk Tower was made needlessly tiresome by a difficult-to-understand menu and penalties id you accidentally put a large disk on top of a smaller one. It inspired Peterb to write at Tea Leaves that the Tower of Hanoi was the "lava level" of puzzles:

If Towers of Hanoi is in your game, you should just eliminate it and instead put a big sign in your environment that reads "I am completely out of ideas." Word to the wise: if Emacs ships with a module that solves the puzzle you're putting in your game, that's a good sign that the puzzle isn't actually any fun. So am I saying that it's never legitimate to include a classic oldie like Towers of Hanoi in your game? Well, yes. I am.

[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, which just published its eighth issue.]

Posted by tablesaw at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Currently spreading all over the Internet in quite short order, Internet video japesters Mega64 have posted their special Game Developers Conference-shot Super Mario Bros. skit, in which they jump around the Moscone Center in SF and meet... somebody special!

This skit was produced while Mega64 was at GDC last week, and appeared in the Game Developers Choice Awards, to some serious guffawing - if you look closer in that video, you'll also see clips from their Super Mario Bros 3, A Boy And His Blob (!) and Feel The Magic videos (iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou.)

I also got a chance to see Mega64's Rocco at the IGF Pavilion at some point last week, and I think I embarrassed him slightly by praising him in borderline fanboy fashion. Nonetheless, as can be seen from previous GSW entries going slightly nana over the unique blend of Jackass-ery and dumb fun, those guys rule. [Also, NeoGAF is making animated GIFs, which is a surefine sign that it's a hit.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My preternaturally sensitive RSS reader has discerned that there's a new Way Of The Rodent issue up, and the sometimes unfairly ignored, very British webmag has an excellent chat with Owen Rubin front and center of the issue.

Why have you heard of Owen Rubin, then? He explains of the classic titles he made for Nolan Bushnell at Atari: "There is a long list. Some made it, some did not. Ones you may have heard of include Major Havoc, Space Duel, Triple Hunt and Sky Diver. Oh and I wrote the routine for the volcano in Battlezone!"

Internal politics are also dealt with: "The biggest problem with Atari was their management. Keep in mind that Atari was a bunch of 20 something young engineers, some becoming managers with no training at all. It was full of college friends hiring friends who had these little cliques, and seldom did any of them know how to really manage, or care. Plus Atari offered no training, and had no role models really. I would not play the politics, so I was never given a higher management position even after 9 years, one of the reasons I left. Man, the stories I could tell about bad management at Atari." Interesting.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not content with winning the IGF Grand Prize, Aquaria's Derek Yu has edited a spectacularly good Postman-written guide to Japanese 'doujin' shooters over at TIGSource - and it's really good to see a comprehensive English-language genre intro to the beautiful subgenre.

There's a neat 'multiple rungs of ladder' analogy to show the five sets of doujin shooter quality bars, with the top two being described as follows: "These titles come from developers that are small enough to still be considered doujin, but with larger teams and more resources then the weekend coder who just whipped up a shooter in a few months. Many of these titles have a high enough production value to be distributed at events such as Comiket, a haven for doujin shmup fans."

The top run? "After playing one of these babies, you are either instantly hooked on the genre or so sickened by the insane bullet patterns that you will never play another danmaku game again. Steel Saviour has some incredible visuals, and it's hard to believe that games from Shanghai Alice (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Imperishible Night) are mainly the work of one person (the aforementioned Zun). And Kamui, from Siter Skain, still stands as one of my favorite doujin shmups of all time." Awesome guide.

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Right at the end of GDC week, there are quite a few random, semi-random, and entirely random Web posts, both about Game Developers Conference and not, that have occurred over the course of these 7 days. So here they are:

- There's nothing like a little rivalry, and over at 1UP, James Mielke compares Tekken and Virtua Fighter in a very much Vs. style, raging: "Where Virtua Fighter has gone, Tekken has always followed (and occasionally surpassed). In this feature we're going to break down each series in a number of critical categories and evaluate who comes out on top, determine who exactly is the winner, declare who is the champion of them all." You do that!

- I never ran into Gus Mastrapa at GDC (hi Gus!), but he made a cute post on the music used before/during the GDC keynotes, noting that Daft Punk "...was played at both of the convention's major keynotes. Just prior to Phil Harrison's talk Sony staged some emergent gameplay -- a soccer match played with inflatable soccer balls. The song "Around the World" looped as the audience batted the huge balls toward their respective goals. Before Shigeru Miyamoto's keynote today Nintendo looped a handful of Daft Punk songs from Discovery." Also: "In semi-related keynote music news, the creators of Little Big Planet played a good part of the Go! Team's debut record Thunder, Lightning, Strike during their presentation."

- Some good ol' eBay randomness - I was looking for a new watch this weekend, and ran into a big auction of Beatmania-branded watches, all sealed. Apparently, "They Vibrate, they have an alarm, and they blink!", though I'm still trying to work out whether they're ugly or G-Shock-ish gimmicky fun from the grainy picture. Anyhow, for $10 including shipping, even with needing new batteries, y'know, it's worth a quizzical look.

- N'Gai Croal ended up posting a couple of non-GDC-specific exclusives into his blog this week, and he revealed that Ubisoft is publishing Jam Sessions for the DS, a conversion of the previously GSW-mentioned and extremely clever DS guitar sim 'M-06', in the West this June. Yay. He also added a fascinating chat with Jam Sessions designer Seth Delackner - turns out he's a Westerner working at Tokyo game developer Plato and has plenty of intriguing things to say.

- A couple of other fragmented things of note from GDC. Firstly, game designer David Sirlin has some really thoughtful write-ups of Wed/Thu/Fri's events (from his perspective) on his weblog. Secondly, Dan Tabar of Data Realms has a whole bunch of GDC photos up, with quite a bit of sightseeing, but notable because it has the first pics I've seen of Virt playing out at the IGF party. Rawk.

- Finally, Gillen points out the awesome cover to a Swedish game magazine, commenting: "Oskar Skog drops me a mail, showing the cover art for the second issue of +N, which he’s the editor of... I share, and am slightly nostalgic for the days when magazines all actually commissioned unique works of art for their covers. This one’s the handywork of one Kamekichi." I approve.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Something that got posted during GDC week and roundly not linked was Chris Kohler's Wired News article, 'An ITunes for Games? Not Yet', which makes some good points on the whole digidist issue for consoles.

Here's the basic gist: "In reality, and quite ironically, the number of full-blown, disc-based games on retail shelves dwarfs the online offerings for two of the consoles. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has amassed a library of more than 160 game discs since its November 2005 launch, but only 45 downloadable titles are on the Xbox Live Arcade service. On the PlayStation 3, there are 21 games on Blu-ray disc, but only eight in Sony's online store... Only on Nintendo's Wii does the downloadable catalog outnumber the retail one: 56 to 35. The company's secret: recycling."

Interestingly, he gets a stat for Xbox Live Arcade development budgets from Microsoft's Chris Early - $250,000 and $450,000. In addition Nintendo's George Harrison "...also floated the intriguing possibility that Nintendo might start releasing classic Japanese games that never made it to the United States." Kohler's overall thesis is that not doing straight re-releases of classic titles is a big wasted opportunity for everyone. And I think I agree, as long as the straight emulated versions can be segregated and priced sensibly.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over at Game Of The Blog, the radiant Joel Reed Parker has been exploring Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, a game you may recall that I previously commented was weird since "...nobody actually knows who she is in the States."

Parker does a good job at poking at a maze of attributions: "Secret Stash Games, the only company listed on the US cover, is almost a complete mystery... The [main] notable mention is in a review of Chili Con Carnage on a 1up journal... From looking at the WHOIS info for www.secretstashgames.com(currently not being used!) the registrar is Eidos so I'm guessing that it must me some sort of imprint company." That sounds correct - and it's a bit like Fresh Games, if people remember that.

GOTB has a follow-up post named, somewhat helpfully, 'The First Hour Of Carol Vorderman's Sudoku', and he notes: "I haven't played that much sudoku beyond the easy level puzzles so the 30 minutes of video tutorials describing various techniques at each difficulty level were fairly insightful. Unfortunately they didn't letterbox them for a 4:3 ratio from the original PSP versions and they are vertically stretched." Still, it's... sudoku!

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

Another neat leftover from before GDC - over at Guilded Lilies, blogger L Laughy has a post called 'Game Covers Women Want To See', and which makes some pretty good points.

In particular, she comments: "I would like to discuss two covers from RPGs for the PC that have good inclusive box art. Below are images from Dungeon Siege and the DS Legends of Aranna expansion pack. Both covers are pretty much the same, but it was the first Dungeon Siege box that got me interested in playing the game and had me looking forward to the later expansion of the game."

Why so? "This cover art works for me primarily because it shows a female character that isn't objectified, but instead looks capable and ready to get things accomplished in the game world. The expression on her face is confident and self-assured, with a dash of sass in her wry smile." Anyone else want to reference surprisingly universal game covers? I'm actually quite impressed by this one, given the subject matter.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Seeing as I'm Chairman of the IGF, I thought I'd troll around and find what other coverage of last week's events at Game Developers Conference were hanging out on the web. And there's some pretty fun stuff actually, as follows (oh, and pic is from Vince's excellent collection, once again):

- Over at the San Jose Mercury News, the serene Dean Takahashi has a nice story on Everyday Shooter's Jon Mak, with a nice wry take on Mak's sharp attitude: "Mak won three awards tonight. He learned about computers by repairing them in his father’s shop while growing up. Now all of his work is paying off with “Everyday Shooter,” a music-based shooter game that his agent — yes, agent, Warren Currell of Sherpa Games — says is a combo of Rez-meets-Lumines-meets-Geometry Wars."

- Heather Chaplin has filed a report for NPR's All Things Considered discussing the IGF and Independent Games Summit, with the intro explaining: "The independent game developers tackle subjects you'd expect to find in serious cinema: a marriage in crisis, democracy, a rabbi questioning his faith. Commentator Heather Chaplin is at the conference, and she says that the development of an independent games movement is a sign that the industry might be growing up." I think the humanistic angle is a good one to take for NPR, though I will say that the IGF finalists are not, honestly, filled with social messages.

- I thought this was heartening: IGN did a nice write-up of the IGF winners, complete with some extra commentary on each game, such as Samorost 2: "every bit as visually stunning as its predecessor, and just as minimalist in its design and mouse-based control." The piece concludes: "A quick glance at a few of the above titles (which were selected from 275 entries overall) shows just how vital the indie gaming scene is right now."

- And Maw This! has a nice write-up of Day 1 of the IGS, including personal insights into Jeff Minter's reality distortion field: "All this really built up nicely to what Jeff felt games could do well, they could put players into “the zone”. His preference for abstract games stemmed from this goal - it doesn’t matter what things in the game represent, because you can have goals and achieve things (like getting points) without needing to be in a representive virtual reality. The blocks you shoot could be just blocks, the triangles don’t need to represent doggies or anything." Yes, no doggies!

- Finally, a couple of random other things - Xbox 360 Fanboy (a Joystiq/AOL spinoff joint) has hands-on with Band Of Bugs and with Castle Crashers from the IGF Pavilion, and Spong (of all sites!) has a write-up of some IGS content, though they got confused and thought it was IGDA-related. Also, I now realize that basically all of the UK journalists and basically none of the US journalists at GDC turned up for the Minter keynote - which is kinda cute! I forget sometimes that not all Yanks worship Minter as we Brits do.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['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.]

We're getting into the April issues, and already most magazines are at their smallest for the year, around 100 pages for most titles. This means that (for many mags) most space gets taken up by humdrum game previews and reviews, and pages used to give the magazine some sense of personal touch tend to get short shrift. It's always a drag, but some mags (particularly GamePro and OXM) are learning how to deal with the restrictions pretty well, I think.

This mag contraction made me give a little more thought on what kind of magazine I'd run in my wildest dreams, and I'd like to lay out my proposal to the GameSetWatch-reading audience next week, but for now, click on for a rundown of all the game mags to hit shelves and/or mailboxes in the past fortnight.

Electronic Gaming Monthly April 2007 (Podcast)

Cover: Ratchet & Clank Future

EGM this month kicks off with a page-sized photo of Peter Moore staring at you. Things can only go up from there, though, and the ensuing interview (coming a year after a similar one in 2006) is the sort of hard-hitting, entertaining stuff that EGM is beginning to make a name for itself with in my mind. There's another interview later on with David Jaffe, once again talking about Calling All Cars and cursin' up a storm, and a quick 3-pager on the console-game scene in a selection of foreign countries is kinda neat.

Otherwise: This issue of EGM plays it pretty straight, and you're more likely to pick it up for all the exclusive coverage in it -- R&C, Spider-Man 3, Mushroom Kingdom Hearts (ho ho ho) and so forth. There's also a roundup preview feature covering Wii games that features some downright scary photography -- I heartily recommend going out of your way to look at it.

Nintendo Power April 2007

Cover: MySims

NP is its usual treasure trove of first-looks this month, with six pages on MySims (which looks so darn cheery, I want to eat its little heart out...wait, that didn't come out right), five on Sega's Alien Syndrome, and little pieces on all manner of hitherto-unknown Wii and DS projects. Again, though, this issue's mainly about games, without much truly wacky going on in the writing...unless you count the letters section, which seems to have grown to four pages, a fact I enjoy greatly.

GamePro April 2007

   

Cover: Burnout 5, Guitar Hero II (Level-2 edition)

Well, GP is a pleasant surprise this month. This is the most packed issue of GamePro I've seen in a long time, and the editors seem to put it all together with ease, with only one or two noticeable blemishes (previewing God of War II when EGM's reviewing it this month, for example). The two main game features (the new Burnout and Bizarre Developments' The Club) are still kinda text heavy, but it's interesting text, filled with hum'rous sidebars and developers saying non-trivial things for a change.

What's more, I'm beginning to see the appeal of the "Opening Shots," the few pages up front which is nothing but really big game screenshots. When the screens are really cool, then the pages are incredibly eye-catching, and things work really well this month with a big shot of The Darkness where you're blowing some guy's head away. The "Spawn Point" news section is neat this month (main highlight being a young'un-friendly piece on what it's like to work at EA Tiburon -- wow, they got ping-pong tables and free video games!), and the feature-length interview with jack Tretton, while covering the same territory as EGM's last month, still entertains with its more "fun" approach.

All in all, this is the first issue of GP to really excite me in ages, and I'm glad the redesign seems to be re-energizing the editorial staff a fair bit. Keep it up!

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

Cover: Unreal Tournament 3

This is the prettiest issue of GFW yet. The old Xbox Nation vibe is extremely strong in the design this time around, right down to the monotonized game-designer headshots and wildly experimental visual illustrations for each feature. I loves it.

The content ain't so bad either. Besides the games on the cover, there's a piece on professional online griefers (seriously?!!) and "Love + Hate," one of those roundups where the editors ask a bunch of game industry types what they like and dislike about their business. Brad McQuaid complains about long working hours, for example, and Warren Spector gets a whole page to go over all his loves and hates (mostly hate, doled out to everything from money to publishers and bad storylines).

Side note: This issue of GFW features the first advertorial page I've seen (on space RPG Genesis Rising) that actually included a by-line from a real person -- in this case, Scott Steinberg, which makes me wonder if the topic of advertorial-ing gets covered in the videogame writing style guide he co-authored.

cbmComputer Games April 2007

Cover: Huxley, I guess? It's not immediately obvious with all those big-sized coverlines if you don't know the game in the first place.

CGM CGMs away as only CGM can this month, giving out the preview/review game features but seemingly devoting most of its efforts to the news-y pieces, this time devoted to in-game advertising, cheaters vs. cheater-killers, and the legend -- nay, myth -- of Derek Smart. (If you haven't heard of him, read CGM, it's quite funny.)

Beckett Spotlight: Cheat Codes Issue #16

Cover: Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

And Beckett Becketts away as only Beckett can this month, too, reviewing two-month-old games and not having any paid advertising pages. I'm impressed at how they do it at times.

[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 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oops, I originally got this before GDC, but I've only just had time to dig it out - but it's still worth posting, I reckon. Basically, PaRappa The Rapper character designer Rodney Greenblat (see the excellent Gamasutra interview by Matt Hawkins for more info on him) has a new Japanese multi-gallery show and tour featuring his awesome abstract paintings, with the prints buyable at his online store - and I'm printing the details below.

"Art Print Japan, one of the largest fine art print publishers in Japan, with a chain of over 50 galleries is proud to announce "ELEMENTAL: New Prints and Works on Paper by Rodney Alan Greenblat." The multi location exhibition includes 15 limited edition ultra high quality ink jet prints based on paintings and drawings from 2005 and 2006, and over 40 original pastel drawings and watercolors. The show will also include some new limited edition products such as postcard sets and stationary.

A full color catalog will be published in conjunction with the show. The artist will tour Japan making stops at 10 of the gallery locations.

Schedule of personal appearances by the artist:
March 2007
9 - Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture
10 - Osaka, Takashimaya Department Store
11 - Kyoto, Takashimaya Department Store
16 - Chiba - SOGO Loft Department Store
17 - Koriyama, Fukushima
18 - Tokyo , Tachikawa
21 - Nagoya, Takashimaya Department Store
23 - Utsunomiya, Toghigi Prefecture TOBU
24 - Tokyo, Shinjuku - Takashimaya Department Store
25 - Yokohama Takashimaya Department Store

The show can be previewed at the artist's website. A small number of the signed artist's proof prints are available for sale on the site."

Posted by Simon Carless at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, so I lied - it wasn't the last GDC post. This is because I decided to check YouTube for all the GDC-related video uploads that happened during the conference, and I thought it would be handy to put all the obvious ones in one place. Plus there's one I should mention first!

- GameSpot has full video of the IGF Awards and Choice Awards, including all the goodness that happened on the night. I think I acquitted myself decently- though I must remember not to stare at the autocue quite so intently next time, heh, since I'm tall and it makes my eyes look a tad hooded. But overall, can't tell you how many compliments we got about this awards in terms of entertainment value and overall quality. Yay!

Elsewhere, here's a descending-in-popularity list of the most-posted YouTube videos relating to the conf:

- The new Super Mario Galaxy trailer is definitely the most-uploaded to YouTube, and with reason. It's sad Nintendo couldn't show a little more dungarees, but this glimpse is awesome, and it's out in 2007.

- Then there's Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3 - did anyone notice the MM-related hint in the GDC preview? Hm? Hmm? Anyhow, here's the demo video, and there's also a level construction video and an online sharing video. So I say, go go Alex 'Statix' Evans, Mark Healey, and friends - we did an IGS session about physics games, and this is a big validation of the genre.

- After that, there would be PlayStation Home for PlayStation 3, the virtual world that starts Beta-testing next month. I'm actually reasonably interested in this - it's not that I don't think virtual worlds can't be fun (after all, this _is_ just a slightly bigger version of the lobby in Phantasy Star Online!), but I do think that Second Life's slightly overhyped status has made me slightly allergic to them. I suspect stuff like this and Three Rings' Whirled will be the equivalent of a hayfever tablet for the genre. Maybe.

- To end with some randomness - a new Tabula Rasa trailer brings Richard Garriott's MMO closer to Starship Troopers than I had previously thought, and there are some neat Joystiq-uploaded vids on YouTube which include looks at the XNA competition going on in the North Hall lobby, as well as a peek at IGF Student Showcase finalist The Blob. Much appreciated, guys!

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

This is quite possibly the last GDC post for now - but it would be remiss of me not to point out that we used most of the Insert Credit homeboys for our Gamasutra GDC 2007 coverage, including the near-mythical Eric-Jon Waugh, the very Uematsu-ish Vincent Diamante, and of course, Game Developer's very own Brandon Sheffield.

Anyhow, we have ridiculous amounts of Gamasutra write-ups from them (and more coming next week), with the latest including Q's Shuji Utsumi on the company's history, a full write-up of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and lots besides - but there are a couple of Insert Credit side-posts that are worth pointing at.

Firstly, Vince just posted a little compilation of his favorite GDC photos, and there are some corkers in there - I really like the Sheffield/Crecente B&W lurve, for one, as well as the candid of Alexey Pajitnov. Honestly, Vince is a bit of a triple threat, having also composed the music for Jenova Chen's Cloud, and being a pretty decent writer, too.

But Brandon also posted some fun stuff on IC during GDC week, including pics of The Behemoth's XBLA trophies for Castle Crashers, as well as info on Studio Nocturne's Housewife Superstar for DS, as shown at Game Connection (is the Dame Edna reference coincidental? I'm presuming so!)

There are also some extra bits on Studio Nocturne's other games, including "Makeup Diva... quite a nice idea, in which you play as an aspiring makeup artist to the stars" - hope these get picked up for some kind of real DS release, because they're a bit adorable.

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

Ahem - so I have to admit that Microsoft was nice enough to invite me to their GDC blogger breakfast (thanks Arne and friends!), and then I completely ran out of time to post about it here on GSW.

But I did have enough time to dash off a story for Gamasutra about the big news - that "Microsoft and Bungie Studios are currently planning two different episodic gaming series for Xbox 360 with Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson" - the first set in the Halo universe.

Now, we knew some of this already - just not the episodic bit - but I feel a bit cheeky in going ahead and posting it on Gamasutra when they recruited me for my GameSetWatch 'skillz'. But I did ask the question which resulted in this news, and I'm further making up for it now by posting some more highlights from the breakfast.

Well, firstly, over at Major Nelson's site, there's actually a full audio recording of the breakfast. Actually, I didn't realize it was being recorded, possibly because I came in late, so I'm glad I didn't swear too much - though I did complain about somebody hating Paperboy, I think. Destructoid has a link to the video, too, and Gamerscore Blog has a bunch of pictures of the whole thing.

Anyhow, here's some interesting bits:

- Here's the one I already wrote up, but hey, worth mentioning again - Shane Kim confirmed that Microsoft and Bungie Studios are currently planning two different episodic gaming series for Xbox 360 with Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, commenting: "Our deal with Peter is not about a film guy who wants to make video games". He also revealed of the Jackson/Bungie collaboration: "We're in the design phase now", continuing: "The first series will be set in the Halo universe."

- I did ask Chris Satchell a question directly related to my 'Why Partnernet Is A PR Nightmare' post, and he indicated that "The best thing we can do is keep educating" on why journalists shouldn't be leaking Partnernet info. He also suggested that "there is a huge amount of [technical/financial] overhead" regarding my vague suggestion to set up a separate 'Pressnet' - which is probably true! It was also mentioned that Microsoft employees have been asked not to play their work-related XBL accounts at home - which is apparently how achievements get leaked sometimes when an unreleased game has been played on a public player profile?

- Probably the greatest amount of sour apples in the room were regarding the Xbox Live Arcade release schedule. Shane Kim fully agreed that Microsoft has "...created some expectations that we haven't been great on delivering on". But there was some slight fudging, I believe, on exactly why that was - and some vague finger-pointing at developers for underestimating the amount of time it would take to get through XBLA certification. All I can tell you from talking to XBLA teams at GDC is that certification is often taking at least twice as long as the 3 months that Microsoft originally estimated.

I believe these delays are due to two issues - firstly, the large amount of localization, which is time-consuming for small teams - many games ship simultaneously in up to 8 languages. Secondly, the significant amounts of network-specific testing needed end up taking large amounts of time, because there can be some significant bugs in there. This is something that the Small Arms team mentioned (in their IGS postmortem lecture) as particularly problematic for them, because you can have any combination of AI, same-machine, and online players jousting together in their game. So I'm gonna say it's both parties' 'faults' in some way - and it's a bit crazy that XBLA cert is taking time multiples of retail cert right now.

- Finally, talking about Microsoft's strategy going forward, Kim specifically cited "...the success of Nintendo with the Wii in a certain customer segment", citing that he needs to do better. It's good to see honesty when it comes to that type of thing, and Microsoft's candor that they need to do better at creating a family audience is good to see. They particularly talked about Viva Pinata in that context, of course - Kim confirmed: "You're going to see us do more with that franchise." And so they should!

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at GDC today, there was a special 'Pitch Your Game Idea' as part of Game Career Seminar in the expo hall, and Frank 'Lost Levels/Gama' Cifaldi had literally the BEST IDEA EVER, and he's going to read it to me now. It goes as follows:

"This is based on the old wives' tale of swallowing spiders - 'Did you know in your sleep every year you swallow ten spiders?' I started thinking - why would spiders want to go into someone's mouth? And it occurred to me that this would be a pretty cool game. And the title of my game is: 'Oh My God, Spiders In My Mouth'."

"The way it works is, every level you are a spider and the idea is that you have to get into somebody's mouth". (At this point in the pitch in the editor room Vincent Diamante admits that it happened to him! As the mouth, not the spider.) But basically you have to build a Rube Goldberg-style machine to get into someone's mouth. It's inspired by Mousetrap, the board game, and the early levels of Katamari Damacy where you are tiny."

I point out that it's a bit like Mr. Mosquito with spiders. Frank agrees. We then wonder why we wrote this. And Frank suggests a victory dance, inside the appropriate orifice - like The King in Sneak King doing his flourishing. Cha cha cha!

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

Returning to some of our Gamasutra GDC coverage, I finally got round to reading Frank Cifaldi's excellent write-up of "From 'Ouendan!' to 'HELP!': Inside the Elite Beat Agents" - Keiichi Yano's talk about "the developer history that lead to last year's release of Nintendo's hit rhythm game for the Nintendo DS."

Was this cool? Well, damn, let's start with this fact: "With him were two fully-dressed ouendan - Japanese male cheerleaders - who occasionally cheered him on, a la the original game's premise."

What's more: "Yano showed the prototype video presentation he used to pitch Ouendan. The video looked, more or less, like the final game: a scenario played out on the DS's top screen, and on the bottom screen, the ouendan cheered people into overcoming adversity. The song, Morning Musume's "Koi no Dance Site," would be used in the final game. The stage premise, involving a crowd trying to physically prevent a train from hitting a watery-eyed puppy stuck on its tracks, did not." Ouch!

Finally, on the Ouendan sequel - Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashi - Osu! Tatake! Ouendan 2. "Loosely," said Yano, "that translates to 'Burn! Hot-Blooded Rhythm Soul.'": "Two screenshots were shown, clearly showing that the new cheer squad are playable characters. These shots depicted a level scenario in which a businessman has purchased too many shoes, and has to unload them somehow. His desperation takes him as far as outer space, where he tries to sell shoes to alien creatures." Wuhoh, the whole office is so buying this.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, it's Thursday of GDC week and people are really starting to slow down now - I had an IGF-related interview this morning which included double-digit yawns by both interviewer and interviewee, I think. But hey, there's plenty of things still going on, so let's compile a few from the Gamasutra GDC 2007 coverage and elsewhere:

- Miyamoto's keynote speech was cute but necessarily free of announcements, due to Nintendo's share selling blackout window, it appears. One thing that I'm beginning to wonder - are Iwata and Miyamoto really that witty, or does Bill Trinen (or others) end up punching up the English translation of the speeches quite a bit? He may be the secret weapon behind Nintendo's charismatic GDC keynotes of late.

- Hidden gem of the show? We'll have more on this soon, but Emotiv Systems' launch, headed by ex-Xbox evangelist Ed Fries, is - according to Gama's Brandon Boyer - a real and extremely interesting set of technology. What does it do? Why, it's "...a helmet which can detect dozens of thoughts and emotions and correspond them to specific in-game actions." It's multi-million dollar funded, and it allegedly actually works. We'll see, huh?

- Brandon Sheffield chatted to Microsoft's Shane Kim, and being an extreme Japanophile, teased some fun Japanese-specific info out of him: "Gamasutra also pressed for the specific corporate whereabouts of Panzer Dragoon series director Yukio Futatsugi, who also released Phantom Dust to critical acclaim on the original Xbox. To this, Shane Kim replied, "Mr. Futatsugi is working closely with Mr. Sakaguchi on his projects. As an MGS Japan employee, he's working closely on those projects, since those are the big things we're working on in Japan.""

Heck, there's lots lots lots lots more (Koji Kondo, Final Fantasy XII, Media Molecule (pictured), Game Design Challenge, Ouendan, Warren Spector) over at the Gamasutra GDC 2007 page. Please to enjoy!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow, the IGF Awards (and Choice Awards!) were a whirlwind of wonder tonight. There was a real marriage proposal (and acceptance!) from some of the Toblo folks, a fake marriage proposal from Everyday Shooter's awesome Jon Mak, and a grand prize victory for Bit-Blot's completely wonderful Aquaria - and smiles all round!

[UPDATE: TIGSource has a post with some nice comments and links to the Kotaku and the Joystiq liveblogging of the awards, with lots more pics/details!.]

Full press release follows:

"Bit Blot's dreamlike 2D underwater adventure game Aquaria won top honors, collecting the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, at the 2007 Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards.

The winners were announced tonight at the 9th Annual IGF Awards ceremony, hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

The IGF awards have been described as the Sundance Festival of the videogame industry, and offer both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to the lucky winners. Other major award recipients included Queasy Games' abstract shoot-em-up, Everyday Shooter, which grabbed the awards for Design Innovation and Excellence In Audio, upcoming Xbox 360 Live Arcade title Castle Crashers, which won for Excellence In Visual Art, Three Rings' online title Bang! Howdy, which came out on top in the Technical Excellence category, and stylish Flash-based point-and-click puzzle adventure Samorost 2, which triumphed in the Best Web Game category.

There were two other notable Main Competition awards given out on the night -- the Audience Award, adjudicated from public voting at major consumer game website GameSpot, was won by The Behemoth's Castle Crashers, and IGF Platinum Sponsor GameTap gave out $20,000 in advances for indie games to appear on its PC subscription download service, as part of its special GameTap Indie Award - with Everyday Shooter getting a $10,000 advance and $5,000 advances going to Cryptic Sea's Blast Miner and Naked Sky Entertainment's RoboBlitz.

In addition, the IGF Student Showcase recognized ten student-designed games and, for the first time ever, awarded a $2,500 Best Student Game prize. The award went to DigiPen Institute of Technology's fast-paced capture the flag game, Toblo.

The IGF Mod Competition, now in its second year, celebrated the best amateur mods of existing videogames with a new $5,000 award for Best Mod Game. Cut Corner Company Productions took home the Best Mod award for Weekday Warrior, their corporate office adventure mod for Half-Life 2, also the Best Singleplayer FPS Mod."

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, crap, looks like the crazy GDC week finally got on top of me, and I have to slow down my GameSetWatch posting until I arrive at the other end of the rainbow of GDC flavors.

Nonetheless, over at Gamasutra, the GDC 2007 live coverage is still blasting on without me, and Vincent Diamante has been doing lots more great write-ups from the Independent Games Summit, including Jon Blow's session on indie prototyping that just about blew my tiny mind, as well as the 'Gatekeepers Of Indie Distribution' panel with Microsoft, Sony, GameTap, and friends.

The rest of the Independent Games Summit went very well, with all kinds of positive feedback - I'm sure we'll do it again in some form. Sadly, David Jaffe couldn't make the last panel (we're speculating a Kratos impersonator abducted him), but we substituted the ever-strident Eric Zimmerman, who contributed to a really funny, opinionated panel on the future of independent games, alongside Derek Yu, Greg Costikyan, and Introversion's Mark Morris. Plenty of views were aired!

This evening, there were plenty of Sony briefings, East Meets West (or East Vs. West!) parties, and IGDA get-togethers, but I was hanging out at/co-hosting a Flashbang Studios and IGF-sponsored get together for IGF judges, IGS speakers, and IGF finalists - just a small thing, but it went off amazingly, complete with a Virt live chiptune set.

Before I wander to bed (wait, did I book a 7.30am breakfast meeting? In what state of mind was I when I did this?), wanted to mention that Vincent has been taking some great GDC pictures and posting them to his Flickr account. Pictured - Vince's former USC colleague and Cloud/fl0w creator Jenova Chen, in some kind of stark profile.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

I figured what I should do before writing an article on Dungeon Crawl was sit down and give it a good shot at playing it. It has a tremendous reputation for difficulty, though, so my hopes were not high. So I was as surprised as anyone then, after what I estimate are 30 or so games, that I managed to get to the very deepest level of the game, Level 5 of the Realm of Zot.

I started out, as in most of my games of Dungeon Crawl, as a Hill Dwarf Fighter. I had heard that the more “dedicated” characters in Dungeon Crawl, the ones who are capable of doing one thing but doing it very well, are easier to play than jack-of-all-trades like Humans (no racial bonuses) and Wanderers (the “General Studies” class of the game). Since Hill Dwarves are very good fighters, with excellent Strength, but they don't have annoying drawbacks like Trolls' increased hunger, and Fighters are traditionally straight-forward, whack 'em from up close types who can take a few hits before dying, I fixated upon that combination. It seems like a good match, and this time it took me up to the very threshold of winning.

What follow are my observations on getting so far in a game after so little time. This is a very long installment, even compared to the usual, and I apologize for that. I have tried to distill most of what I've learned in playing this game. Some of this was gleaned from spoilers, and some is just hard-won discovery. Use, or ignore, it as you wish.

Shrek Ain't Too Happy To See Me

All Crawl characters, even the strong, straight-forward ones, have points early in their lives where they have to play carefully to survive. Early exploring is dangerous in Crawl, even more so than ADOM, because the game likes to throw in the occasional tough newbie-killer. Fortunately, fighting the likes of soldier ants and mumaks in Nethack left me well-prepared for this kind of thing.

Of all the newbie-killers, ogres are the worst, who can appear on level four or maybe even earlier, and will kill weak characters without ceremony. Ogres are an interesting monster because, besides their high HP and abnormally huge attack strength, they are otherwise completely average. They can wear no armor, their weapon does lots of damage but is almost never branded (that is, carry a special ability). Most importantly, they have no distance attacks, and are of only normal speed.

Thus the best tactic to use against ogres is to use the loop technique (described last time), to trade blows with the ogre until he is capable of killing you with one more hit, then run away around a loop until hit points have regenerated enough to continue the fight. The problem with this tactic is that it is vulnerable to interference from other monsters. It relies on being able to infallibly move away from the ogre, so a monster that wanders up from the other direction can force the player to kill it, or move around it, instead of escape from the ogre.

But there are other techniques that can be applied to ultra-strong opponents, and some of them take advantage of those intruders. If a rat is between you and an ogre, it is best to let the rat live, since his attacks will barely dent your armor, and if you escape up the stairs, the rat will follow but the ogre will be stuck on the prior level. These kinds of tactics aid the player in other roguelikes, but Dungeon Crawl makes them essential for survival.

More Early Bullies of the Dungeon

Snakes (not small snakes, but plain snakes) are another problem, since they're probably faster than you at the start so you can't effectively use the loop trick, and they can poison you before you get resistance. The poison will wear off after a short while, but if you get to low hit points before it does it may be worth it to drink unknown potions hoping for healing (which restore pitifully few hit points but always cure poison, sickness and other conditions like that). If you don't know what healing is yet, it is the most common potion early in the dungeon, so try drinking first the potion type you have the most of.

A bit deeper you'll encounter orc priests (run until you're out of sight to lure 'em close then kill from adjacent), centaurs (similar, but you can use other monsters to block their shots) and invisible stalkers, which move like bats but you can't see them, and they do a lot of damage. Stalkers generally require that you run to the nearest corridor then shoot down it. They don't have a lot of HP, but they are hard to hit unless you can narrow down their location.

The last kind of troublesome early monster are jellies, which are usually a bit slower than you, but other than that can be very dangerous monsters. When you attack them, or they attack you, they can corrode weapons and armor, permanently reducing its plus, unless you're wearing a means of protection or the item in question is an artifact. Worse, they feed on items laying on the ground, and if they happen upon such things they not only destroy it but often spawn more jellies in the process! Their slowness makes the loop tactic very effective against them, over time, but be sure to pick a loop that has no litter on the floor or you'll soon be facing a corridor full of capital 'J's. Because of their corrosion attribute, often darts are the best way to handle them for non-magic users: run along the loop until they're a space away, then chuck one back with the 'f' key. It'll take a long time but eventually, if you've picked up enough darts, you'll destroy the obnoxious little sandwich spread. Alternatively you can use a wand charge or two.

Once in a while you'll happen upon one of Crawl's unique monsters, who are usually '@'s with a name. Most of them are not a big threat, but watch out for Sigmund early in the game, for he's a spellcaster who merits using centaur strategy to get out of the range of his deadly magic darts. Also beware of "player ghosts," who have the relative name and power of a prior character who died in the game. They are usually very strong, but can often be taken out the same way as ogres.

Roadmap to Monsterland

Crawl's dungeon structure is special, even among roguelikes, because it's non-demanding nature. See, Angband and Rogue have only a single dungeon branch, Nethack has multiple branches but requires players venture into many of them (especially the Quest and Vlad's Tower) to obtain the items needed to reach the Amulet, and ADOM has a very complex quest that forces players to wander through many different dungeons. Crawl, on the other hand, has lots of branches but leaves it up to the player which he explores.

The entry to the Realm of Zot, the last area of the game, is blocked unless players can find three "runes," found at the end of certain branches. It doesn't matter which runes, of around 16 to be collected, that he finds, but he needs at least three. Each branch poses a different kind of challenge, and different characters, even sometimes those of the same race and class, will find an easier time in some places than others.

One quirk of Crawl's dungeons is that they're often not simply connected: each level usually has multiple up- and down- stairs, each leading to a different staircase on the next level. Sometimes you'll even go down some stairs to find out the area you find doesn't itself have a staircase down! If you get stuck like this, sometimes you can search the walls to find a secret door (again, the 's' key searches the eight spaces around you for traps and doors), but usually the best thing to do is go back up the stairs and find another way down. Later on, you can use a means of teleport or digging to get out of those situations. Note that rock staircases, which you find from time to time, are special; they take you to a random stair on the next level, so going down one then up will effectively take you to a different place.

Tips for Identification, Conservation, Mastication and Eradication

Crawls items are randomly scrambled, like Rogue's and Nethack's, but unlike those games they are generally not too dangerous to discover by testing them out. The worst potions you can find are generally mutation (which can be good or bad), poison or strong poison (cure that with a healing potion), or degeneration (which can drain stats; cure it with potions of restore ability, which are not rare). The worst scroll is usually immolation, but it can be used by the canny to attack monsters if you don't care about losing some hit points. Armor in Crawl is identified simply by putting on, although that exposes you to curses. Basic weapon brands (things like poisoned weapons, draining weapon, etc.) types are revealed by wielding it, but the weapon's plusses require using it for a while to figure them out. Many player hoard lots of armor and weapons, along with scrolls of remove curse, so that they can wear- and wield-ID them all at once.

Crawl definitely takes after Rogue in its food system, which functions as a kind of timer. Bread rations and meat rations are the best common food, and generally you'll find enough, as well as other miscellaneous food, to survive in the early dungeon. This food never spoils, but just chowing down on those can be a bad idea; this kind of good food is typically only generated upon first entering a dungeon level, so if you do a lot of backtracking through levels you might find yourself going hungry. Plus, some of the later dungeon branches have little or no food in them.

The solution is to dissect the corpses of monsters you kill (press Shift-D while standing over one), then eat the resulting chunks, which provide not a lot of nutrition but the idea isn't to live off of them but to have them keep you going, so you can conserve the good food for emergencies or late in the game. Some food is poisonous, and some can even mutate you, plus sometimes it'll just randomly make you sick (use healing potions, again, to cure that), but unlike Nethack and ADOM, no monster corpse will provide you with special permanent abilities just from eating them. Most races won't eat raw chunks, however, unless they're already hungry unless they're wearing an amulet of the gourmand. And never eat food if it's started to spoil. And one more 'and': you can't dissect corpses without a bladed weapon handy, although the game will ask you if you want to switch if you have one available. If you can make it to the Hive you'll can scavenge a large supply of food that doesn't spoil, enough to easily last the rest of the game.

Seventh Floor: Housewares, Home Appliances, Customer Service, and Geryon, Gatekeeper of Hell

Sometimes you'll find a yellow staircase. Standing on one will tell you that it leads to a special dungeon branch, and which it goes to. Eventually you'll have to go into some of them to get runes, but it's usually a good idea to look up what they are in a spoiler list (like this one) to get a sense of whether your character can survive there. Summarized, they are:

ECUMENICAL TEMPLE: There are no monsters generated here, but there are lots of altars, one devoted to each of Crawl's gods. By using the 'p' key to pray on one, you can convert to the religion of that god. Each god has certain things he expects of worshipers, and special abilities he provides to faithful followers. Like the dungeon branches, and again, against the popular perception that Crawl doesn't require spoilers to play, the only real way to make a good decision as to which, if any, to follow is to read a spoiler page. This is a good one. My suggestion is to go with Okawaru at first, since he's fairly easy-going. He only really hates it when friendly monsters die, and it's easy to please him by simply praying while killing monsters, and also dissecting them while praying. Eventally he bestows the power to haste one's self, which can come in handy both in combat and escape.

ORCISH MINES: Lots of orcs, who are relatively weak but it is easy to get surrounded by them, there are priests and wizards scattered through them who can attack from a distance, and the level structure makes it difficult to force enemies through bottlenecks in the layout, which help the player by forcing opponents to attack him one at a time. The mines do not contain a rune.

In my game, I found Orcish splint mail of magic resistance there, which became my main armor for the game. It is often better to find artifact armor use that, because it cannot be damaged by monsters, but it also can't be enchanted beyond its starting pluses. They also can have special powers that are difficult to acquire otherwise, especially in the case of randarts, randomly-determined artifacts that are different every game. It is possible to get many necessary resistances taken care of at once with a single randart, if the player is lucky enough to find one, but because they are few equipment guarantees in Crawl it is possible to be undone by a failure to find a good one.

In my game the ultimate cause of death was from fire shots from a pair of Orbs of Fire in a wide-open area, with me only having one level of fire resistance. If I had worn two sources at once their shots would have been much more survivable, and with three they would have been barely a threat at all. But one only has so many equipment slots, and so much that can be carried at once, so one usually has to make hard choices about whether to have one kind of resistance or another at a given moment, or use other equipment like rings of slaying instead. But a single lucky artifact can take the place of several pieces of armor or jewelry, if it is generated and the player manages to have it identified so he'll know it has special powers.

ELVEN HALLS: Lots of magic users here. Players must have one or more sources of magic resistance to have any chance here, but there are many demon summoners on the lowest level, and demons can be strong melee opponents. There is lots of equipment on the lowest level, but no rune.

Magic users in Crawl can be tricky opponents because of the power of magic in that game. The most dire spell around is one that banishes the player to the Abyss, a horrible place filled with demons and difficult to escape from. Fortunately that didn't happen to me in the Elven Halls, although it did later on....

LAIR: This is perhaps the easiest dungeon branch of the game, for almost all the monsters here are ordinary animal-types. Near the bottom strong foes like death yaks may be found, but there are no magic users. The Lair has no rune of its own, but it has three branches itself, two of them having guaranteed runes and the other having a great chance of one. Best of all however, the Lair is a great place to gain experience without much risk.

SNAKE PIT: I got my first rune here. Its primary foes are nagas, which have strong poison attacks, but having just a single level of poison resistance was enough to combat that. Guarding the rune are a small army of nagas, some of them spellcasters, but there is a one-space-width corridor leading from it. A character standing at one end of that can shoot wands of fire, cold or lightning down it to take care of many nagas queued up along it in relative comfort.

SWAMP: I got my second rune from here. It's a series of wide-open levels with lots of water. Falling into deep water can be very dangerous so it is bad to get confused here, and the Swamp Drakes that infest the area have a confusion gas breath attack. Shallow water, while not instantly fatal, slows the player down and makes it difficult to fight back. Poison resistance is also important to have here due to the Swamp Dragons that live in the Swamp's deeper levels. The hydras that live here should be defeated, by the way, with a blunt weapon like a mace, instead of a bladed one like a sword. Just trust me on this.

SLIME PITS: The last branch off from the Lair, and where I eventually got my third rune. It is a very dangerous area for unprepared players. While I took care of the Snake Pit and the Swamp at around level 13-14, I was level 22 when I finally worked up the courage to tackle the Slime Pits. (For comparison's sake, the highest experience level the player can reach is 27.) Equipment damage is frequent unless the player has items to guard against that. I did, yet I still ended up with a couple of plusses taken off my armor while there.

The most annoying thing about getting runes here is that they are random here, not guarenteed, and if they are present they are inside one of four chambers on the deepest level that have undiggable walls, and can only be entered by teleportation. I found not a single source of teleport control through the whole game, and I eventually had to get the rune by wearing a ring of teleport and evoking it many times, until I finally managed to get into a rune-bearing chamber.

HIVE: Another place it is unwise to enter without poison resistance, but once the player has it and is strong enough to take care of multiple bees at once, this is an easy place. There is lots of food here, in the form of honeycombs and royal jellies, so players who can clear this place out and manage their food consumption carefully will be able to worry a lot less about starvation. Unfortunately, there is no rune here.

VAULTS: The first truly challenging area, there's always a rune here but it's in the extremely dangerous last floor, which I was scared to visit. Dungeon levels here are strange: each floor is a wide-open plain with lots of rectangular rooms around it, some of them with doors leading inside and some without. Those doors are essential fixtures, since they are the only bottlenecks to be found there. Combat is often against several foes at once because of that.

CRYPT: Found branching off the Vaults, there is no rune here but I was strong enough by then that I wasn't in much danger, either. Undead are very common there, including the feared skeletal warriors, but they weren't much of a problem for me by that time.

TOMB: A very interesting place branching off from the Crypt. The primary monster here are mummies, which have a very special attribute: if you kill one, they bestow a curse upon you. The curses range from just having stuff cursed (easy to counter with a scroll of remove curse) to rotting for a short while (which removes maximum hit points!) to being sent to the Abyss. The only way to safely handle mummies is to summon or charm other monsters so they take care of them for you, but as a very unmagical dwarf who relied on wands for that kind of thing, this was not easy for me. I left the Tomb after only a few hundred turns, and didn't return.

HALL OF BLADES: A one-level branch from the Vaults, the only monsters here are possessed weapons. Once a weapon is “killed” it falls to the ground and can be used, but while it is “alive” the player will have to face all the effects the weapon possesses. I was banished to the Abyss twice here, once by a morningstar of distortion, and again, once I got back and killed it, by wielding that same weapon. After that, I dropped it in the Abyss and didn't look back.

ABYSS: And what of the Abyss itself? It is effectively its own dungeon branch, but always random. If you leave and return it'll be different, and it doesn't "map out" as you explore it either. The level even wrap around, making it difficult to come up with a good exploration strategy. Attempting to teleport here will just send you to a new area of the Abyss. There is always an exit portal in it somewhere, but meanwhile every kind of demon is trying to kill you, and many of them have strange abilities like intelligence draining, and summoning in still more demons. While there are lots of random walls around to hide behind, it's also easy to get caught in a dead end. It is possible for even low-level characters to get sent there on rare occasions, who die quickly unless they do lots of running, and use teleport scrolls to get out of tight spots. Rarely, runes are found in the Abyss, but going there on purpose to look for them is often unwise.

HELL: Hell has five sections, four of which available by killing Geryon in its entry level and blowing his horn. Each of the other areas has a rune to be found, but a few close calls deeper in convinced me to go look in the Slime Pits for the last one I needed. Mostly, this place is a whole bunch of demons supplying a whole lot of hurt, but at least it's not “instanced” like the Abyss is. One rune is in each of its four branches.

PANDEMONIUM: The third and last of the “underworlds” in Dungeon Crawl, it's like the Abyss in that it's random, tough and hard to escape from (even harder in fact, since most Pandemonium areas only have portals to other areas), and like Hell in that it's mappable. Or at least, so I read. I didn't go there in this game, and I suspect that was a good choice on my part. Several runes can be found randomly here.

REALM OF ZOT: The other branches are, to a degree, optional, but once enough runes are found all players must come here, which is a series of five tough, random areas. My game ended here, on the fifth and last level, just one screen away from the Orb of Zot, goal of the game. I kind of expected it might.

But I know why I died, and next time there, I won't. That's what playing roguelikes is about.

Dungeon Crawl
Old site: Linley's Dungeon Crawl
Current development site: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Much discussion on the game can be found on the Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.misc. (Google Groups link. Client link.)
You can play Dungeon Crawl over telnet using PuTTY, but be sure to set the application keypad setting to Nethack.
Information for the map was obtained from this spoiler page.

Posted by John Harris at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

So, day one of Game Developers Conference is already over - and I'm hoping that you're reading up on Gamasutra's live GDC coverage to get the full lowdown - as ably co-ordinated by my colleagues Frank Cifaldi and Brandon Boyer. But in the meantime, here's a couple of personal perspectives on GDC so far.

[Now, please note that I've been MC-ing and co-ordinating the Independent Games Summit all day, of course, so my experiences have mainly been limited to that!]

But I've been having a whole heap of fun there, and Jeff Minter's keynote was definitely top of my list for the day - the Inquirer has a few more pics of his slides, and a note that one of the Space Giraffe levels was called 'Stargate Basingstoke', yay. There was another one that had 'yiffing' in the title and a disturbing furry-related 'just say no' picture rotating around in the background. Oh, Yak!

Also good and really impassioned was the Innovation in Indie Games panel, and I was touched by how much the panelists, who included fl0w's Jenova Chen and Braid's Jonathan Blow, really believed in games for personal expression. Everyday Shooter's Jon Mak had some great takeaways, too, and told the audience: "Don't innovate, go home, play a bunch of games, figure out which ones you like, and make a game based on that.” Interesting.

Though I'm obviously a bit biased, a whole bunch other of the panels seemed on the money, from John Baez's 'Indie MBA' to Daniel James' smart romp through making an indie MMO, which included such candor as his company's monthly revenues for the past 2 or 3 years plotted against employee costs (I hope someone took a picture of that!) I'm also hoping that some video recordings will be available online later for key IGS sessions, so will keep you guys on the Interweb updated about that.

Other than that, it was a quiet evening for shindigs, with just the Microsoft Casual Games reception in Moscone West, the AMD-sponsored GDC Mobile reception at the Thirsty Bear (see previous article!), and a small but perfectly formed Telltale party close to Union Square catching my attention. Probably good, since it's only going to get crazier from here on out. More updates tomorrow!

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[The third in a ragged series of 'Alex Handy Sez' missives, in which the former Game Developer editor and current Computer Games Magazine/Massive/otherstuff contributor riffs on something or other, focuses on something odd and drunken at GDC. Nope, we have no idea either.]

"So, I spent this evening wandering through wall-to-wall party-goers at this year's GDC pre-conference events. These folks included CTOs for Army training, French developer/publisher relations specialists, and most importantly, cell phone game developers.

This whole sordid affair began in a room filled with mobile devs ranking innovative phone games. The attendees were given free beer, and plastic hand-clapping devices that relieved them of the task of clapping in appreciation. Needless to say, the event was awash in drunken clapping, as though someone had given too much sake to the entire cast of Karate Kid 2.

But the Thirsty Bear party, sponsored by AMD, was where the real polling took place. As I wandered, drunken, through the crowd, I took an informal poll: Java or Brew?

Long story short: Java won. But no fewer than three of the developers polled took the opportunity to liken mobile development to choosing a spiked dildo, with which to be f*cked. Some choice quotes, all anonymous, as everyone had a beer, and journalists frown on quoting drunk people:

"BREW has the better platform, but [I choose] Java."

"Neither. Native." This answer was given by two different masochistic bastards who felt it was easier to develop in native assembly than to touch any of the language-specific platforms.

"Both." Of course, this fellow was behind a Moscow-based development out-sourcing group. He categorized his team as the creame-de-la-creame of out-sourcing shops. Sure, you can go with India, he said, but my developers are the equivalent of MIT educated folks. Of course, his company is more expensive....

"Java. It's open!" Everyone who cited Java was influenced by the openness of the platform, versus Qualcomm's BREW, which is essentially not open.

Note to Sun Microsystems: Only one person, all night, said that JavaME being open source mattered. One fellow did profess faith to RMS, but he couldn't name anything that GPL'ing ME would accomplish. Oh, and not one person had a clue what MSA was, despite my own writings about it.

The only other category of answers was Symbian. I took this to mean that many devs in Europe don't care about language: only OS-Layer Support. Soon, it will all be this way, as the Windows Mobile devs have foretold.

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So GameSetWatch and Gamasutra has another sister website, hurray - and this one is dealing with the increasingly interesting cellphone game biz - here's the full rundown, with quote from, uh, me:

"CMP Technology's Game Group, organizer of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference (GDC) and creator of the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com, has launched GamesOnDeck.com, a website aiming to be the mobile game industry's leading source of news, features and job listings.

An expansion of the already successful mobile industry coverage on Gamasutra, GamesOnDeck.com, edited by Mathew Kumar, publishes daily news and twice-weekly features on the cutting edge of the mobile game industry, giving due attention to the fast-growing sector.

The first features to appear on GamesOnDeck give unprecedented insight into Nokia's new plans for its N-Gage mobile gaming platform, including an interview with Nokia's Gregg Sauter about the company's plans for the device, as well as an editorial from the company's Mark Ollila suggesting: "Forget the console wars. The real innovation lies with mobile."

The site complements the CMP family of products which also includes the celebrated annual conference for mobile game developers, GDC Mobile, the 2007 edition of which opens today at San Francisco's Moscone Center. GDC Mobile 2007 will feature more than 50 sessions, keynotes by Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins and PeopleJam's Robert Tercek and the Mobile Game Innovation Hunt, a competition which gives developers and publishers the opportunity to pitch their most innovative game to a panel of expert judges and the audience for a chance to win unique prizes.

"The CMP Game Group is always looking to support the videogame industry with editorial publications and websites of the highest quality," said Simon Carless, editorial director, CMP Game Group. "With the evolution of our GDC Mobile conference proving the rapid speed at which the mobile game industry is maturing, a site dedicated to the segment like GamesOnDeck.com felt like a logical and necessary addition to our product suite.""

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gnome's Lair points out one of the most mindblowing things I've seen in a while - someone's made a Fawlty Towers map for Counter-Strike Source, Valve's terrorist-heavy FPS of decidedly John Cleese-light action.

Here's what he says: "There are some admittedly rare moments in gaming, when I and the whole of gnomedom really feel that good taste is still alive. Barely perhaps, but definitely alive. Playing Fahrenheit and Beyond Good and Evil were such moments."

But: "Seeing Counter-Strike: Source get a Fawlty Towers map was the latest. Ahh, what a brilliant idea, ain't it? And, John Cleese, what a star, eh? Polly what have you done with my hotel, eh? Stay here is nice, eh? Anyway. Get the map here and be a happy punter." Bloody Harold Wilson!

Posted by Simon Carless at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Physics game site Fun-Motion has pointed out that "Kyle Gabler, of Experimental Gameplay Project and Tower of Goo fame, recently left his job at Maxis to start up an indie studio with Ron C