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Best Buy needs a better selection

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Tonight I scoured the earth for a copy of Etrian Odyssey. A painfully difficult game with music by Yuzo Koshiro sounds like heaven to me. Apparently, Best Buy thinks it sounds like a nerdy Japanese RPG doomed to rot on the shelves. I was hurt that the store didn’t carry the game, but what they do carry is infinitely more infuriating.

Cars…OK, maybe the movie was cute.

Cake mania…I guess it’s some flash game, whatever.

Bratz: Diamondz…No, there is never a reason to stock this game. If you buy your children Bratz merchandise do the world a favor and smother them while they sleep.

Dogz…Nintendogs ripoff meant to take advantage of stupid children and ignorant parents, fine.

Horsez…Nintendogs ripoff meant to take advantage of stupid children and ignorant parents who cannot tell the difference between a dog and a horse, fine. →  Nobody puts article in a corner.

Paranoid Identity Crisis!

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Fanboys unite! Constant squabbles echo among Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox loyalists, but the real battle is elsewhere. It’s a battle between the different ways people choose to spend their free time and their extra dollars. Games are a big and growing part of this battle and they have taken a bite out of that tasty aged 18-34 male demographic. Can games hold onto it? Do they even want to?

Nintendo has set itself the challenge of trying to hold onto some of gaming’s biggest loyalists while making appeals to nontraditional audiences like retirees. And it’s well known that Sony and Microsoft have had their eyes on a bigger prize ever since they stepped in the ring. They both want to eventually establish their brands and platforms for the mythical must-have TV set-top box. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Gamers Want Everything, but don’t want to pay for it

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A leak from the price testing of Rock Band fills gamers with shock and awe on two points:

1. Rock Band’s peripherals are expensive
2. Gamers don’t like paying for expensive stuff and in fact want everything free

Being a jew, after hearing Rock Band announced, I had two reactions–this game would be awesome, and many peripherals would be expensive. Seeing as guitars for guitar hero are rapacious in price (my wallet cries “my anus!”), and extra microphones for karaoke revolution aren’t exactly free either, it’s no surprise that a game with a microphone, two guitars, and a DRUM SET is clocking in at a lot of money. The drum set in particular scared me, since the congas from Donkey Conga (or however it’s spelled) weren’t exactly cheap. →  Some say the world will end in fire, some say in read more

Capcom hates smear campaigns

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This interesting piece of news is from Colin Campbell’s editor blog on Next-Gen.biz, in which he talks about a particular fear that Capcom has in doing normal day-to-day business in the video game industry. And it’s not something that anyone would have expected.

Basically, Capcom is worried that the sales of their games that have “explicit violence or gore” will be impacted negatively by what the mass media has to say about them, concerning the much debated topic of violence in video games and what it may do to young players. Capcom believes they could be on the receiving end of a smear campaign with these kinds of games.

From a business standpoint, it seems logical. If they make a game that can be construed as a “murder simulator”, then the press might get ahold of it and give Capcom some bad publicity. →  May God smite me if I stop reading here!

Better than a full day of sex: Deus Ex being revitalized

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During a recent interview with Quebec’s MusiquePlus, Eidos France’s director general Patrick Melichor revealed that they’re planning to revisit the Deus Ex series with a new installment that will be developed by Eidos’ newly-formed Montreal studio. It isn’t official, but they’re very close to getting it approved. They’re basically just waiting for the go-ahead.

As a loyal Deus Ex fan, this is a great announcement. I loved the original Deus Ex for the PC, but felt a little betrayed when Eidos seemed to give PC players the finger by releasing a bug-ridden Invisible War and telling us to “just play the Xbox version.” Yeah, I was inconsolable for days after that one.

For the uninformed, and therefore stupid, Deus Ex was a FPS/RPG hybrid set in a futuristic cyberpunk society that is on the verge of an outbreak of a deadly disease. →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

Virtual Console Previews/Reviews – Week of May 14th

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Wii Virtual Console:

Ninja Gaiden (NES): Play as Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja warrior who embarks on a quest to avenge his father’s death. A classic, albeit frustrating game. I would hope that unlimited lives are included in this version as dying repeatedly because of wonky wall-jumping mechanics would bring back too many traumatizing memories.

Ninja Spirit (TurboGrafix): Play as Moonlight, a ninja warrior who embarks on a quest to avenge … his father’s … death … wait a minute! So yeah, expect more of the same here but with better graphics.
I pitty the fool who plays Battletoads!

Pac-Man (NES): I don’t think I need to say much about this one.

XBox Live Arcade:

Double Dragon: With new and improved graphics but the same gameplay you know and love. →  Read me now, believe me later.

Fucking Finally – PSP to have iTunes-like Store

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It’s taken Sony two years to finally figure out that there’s gold in them thar downloadable content hills. Sony revealed this week at their Gamers Day conference that they are now actively planning a PSP Store, an online marketplace where handheld users can download multimedia content to their PSP’s.
Matt’s fluorescent beauty.

The real deal that users are getting will probably come in the form of downloadable video content, which is basically non-existent right now. iTunes holds the majority stake for all kinds of content right now, but Sony looks to compete with them in supplying movies, music, and possibly games on their PSP Store. Of course, this is all just speculation, as nothing has been officially announced, other than that Sony will have a store where you can download stuff. →  Readbot Chronicles

Dragon Quest IX no longer has internet multiplayer

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In yet another disappointment to fans, it has been announced recently that Dragon Quest IX will not have internet multiplayer as originally advertised. This comes after the clarification of the battle system that revealed it was the age-old Dragon Quest system with few changes.

The beanbag chair that stares back at you.

The game will still have wireless local multiplayer, for what it’s worth. This is particularly disappointing to me. Since I’m graduating from college soon, DSes will no longer be a common sight to me, and chances of finding people to play with might be a bit slim. Internet multiplayer would be much nicer, particularly if I could play with friends in other places. Even if I know Jay would probably just grief me every chance he gets. →  Finger lickin’ read.

What are you blind, Halo 3 looks like shit

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I just love how mainstream media can tear our little industry a new one with their annoying, but effective “gatekeepers of information” mantra. Apparently reporters for the powerful Reuters news service were on hand for the private unveiling of Microsoft’s Halo 3 beta on Friday, and they immediately went for the graphics jugular with their story.

Third sentence in, “the graphics could use some work.” Now, I don’t argue that fact (which was quoted from a journalist from evilavatar). If we compare all the footage and screenshots for Halo 3 that have officially, as well as unofficially, been revealed to the public, with last year’s Gears of War, we wouldn’t be wrong in saying it looks like complete shit. It’s like they took Halo 2, and just spruced up the textures. →  Screw Jesus, this article’s the real deal

Weekend Wreckage: Cho Ren Sha

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shawsome.jpg

What are you doing this weekend? Wrapping your face over an advanced warfighter? Getting ob-trapped in Gears? Maybe a bit of the old ‘running around flipside trying to find a heart pillar for 18 hours’ business?

Maybe you’ve got It in your head that, much like Uno before it, settling Catan will be that much cooler on your plasma.

You may be right, to be sure. I, too, have settled myself some Catan. I’m a regular Catan colonization specialist. I think being me, and settling Catan, nets an achievement on xBox Live. I think I have that one, and I think it is because I’ve settled Catan.

But this weekend, as I do every third weekend of every month of every year on this island Earth, I will be playing Cho Ren Sha. →  Welcome to the Fantasy Zone.