Japan

Best Game Ever – The history of puzzle games leading up to Baku Baku

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Some day in the far off future, Tetris will be played with six screens. One screen will feature the gameplay while the other five will show images of unrelated games being automatically played. All five other games will be superior to Tetris.

Once upon a time there was an evil Communist engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. Don’t bother asking Alexey if he is an evil Communist because, like all evil Communists, he signed a blood oath with Stalin (and possibly Hitler) to hide his menacing ways should Soviet Russia ever fall. Anyway, Alexey was a genius and in 1985 he bestowed upon the world a video game he liked to call Destroy American Freedoms. This was later renamed Tetris.

The premise of Tetris was to line up American freedoms in order to destroy them. A line represented free elections, the L piece was the right to a free trial, the other L piece was the freedom of the press, and so on. →  Can you read me now?

Chris loves Jesus part 1

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I’d like to tell you all a little story about me and my friend named Jesus. No, not that Jesus… This Jesus doesn’t save. It uses passwords instead.

I like women who match their bedrooms.

When it comes to obscure and unknown games, it takes a lot to get much less known than Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster. Although it came out on several systems in Japan, it saw no English release. Despite the – somewhat recognizable – name, the game bears no teachings, or indeed any characters somewhat resembling, the well-known founder of Christianity (in fact, the name refers to a space station in the game). There is a bio-monster, however, and it inspires dread.

Jesus is an adventure survival horror game developed by Enix and published by King Records. While most console adventure games have some element of action, Jesus more resembles a text-based adventure. Jesus is obviously a product of the 1980’s, right down to the bright red, oversized hairstyle of the main character. →  Densha de Read! Shinkansen

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.20.06

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PS1 games downloadable on PS3
Actual good news for Sony? It seems so. The company plans to have their entire PS1 catalogue available, sans the games that are too messy contract-wise. What are the odds they port some Japanese only titles for American downloading? Yeah, zero, I know.

Have stock in Sony?

Sony profit forecast not very encouraging
Among the reasons for the lowered forecast were lower than expect PSP sales, higher than expected Cell processor costs and the lowered PS3 price. If they really needed to stabilize themselves, why not just put out a 360 clone? If the PS3 cost $400 and had the PlayStation exclusives the PS2 had, Sony would’ve easily maintained their #1 position. I guess big risks sometimes pay off, but how about Sony release more big risk games instead of a big risk console?

PS3 pricing and network details
50 bucks for a PS3 controller?!

The New E3

Pros
– Fewer people
– In July (I look cute in short shorts)
– Invite only (talentless media people won’t be there)

Cons
– Now more boring
– Separate hotels and shuttle rides? →  How many games must a gamer play before you call him a gamer?

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.13.06

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Japanese consumers want the PS3
Famitsu surveyed people at the Tokyo Games Show and got some interesting if odd results. Although we are talking about Japan so odd is a relative term. About 56% of those surveyed felt the low end PS3 was pricey. Even considering that the TGS would be full of hardcore gamers, this number seems low. Compare this to the 13% who think the Wii costs too much and 25% who think the 360 is expensive.

When asked what system they most looked forward to, 58% said the PS3 and 34% said the Wii. Contrast this, though, to what people said about which system they plan to buy on launch. 11% said they’d get a PS3 at launch while 18% said they’d get a Wii. Further. 36% said they have no current plan for getting a PS3 and 33% said the same of the Wii. The two consoles seem pretty neck and neck in Japan, at least amongst the more serious gamers. →  Rule of Read

Review – Golden Sun

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For the most part, the library of video games consists largely of clones of previously successful games. Games such as Grand Theft Auto III have spawned so many sorry attempts at duplication that a whole new sub-genre was born. There was a time when there was only Grand Theft Auto, and the imitators were yet to join the party. So revolutionary titles do happen. They do not happen frequently, and there are plenty of examples of games that tried to establish something new and failed. I think ChoroQ is an example of this. In trying to create an RPG complete with plot, towns, and dungeon exploration within the context of a racing game (or vice versa) the series (which apparently has several iterations on various systems around the world) tried something unique but ended up making a below average game. It is fair to call a spade a spade and say the game was no good while still appreciating the risks it took. →  [do not click]

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.6.06

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Uwe Boll in talks for a second BloodRayne movie
If you missed the first BloodRayne movie, you owe it to Ed Wood to go see it. It’s not as terribly good as House of the Dead, but its crappiness is better than the mostly just bad Alone in the Dark. I will also be going to see Dungeon Siege on opening knight (hahahahaha, get it?) if anyone wants to join me.

For some odd reason a lot of people hate Boll and want him to have a massive heart attack and die, or at least stop directing movies. I come from the Leprechaun school of horror films (Leprechaun in the Hood is overrated, I recommend Leprechaun in Space) so Boll’s schlock is something I really look forward to. Some argue that movies like BloodRayne keep games from being taken serious. It’s more like games like BloodRayne keep games from being taken seriously.

If you’ve got a moment, take a gander at this write up of the state of video game movies. →  Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatarticle

Why the PSP is a success

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Many online sources have declared the PSP a failure. Others, including print magazines, haven’t gone that far but have acknowledged the PSP may currently be failing. The difference being the tense of the verb to fail. Here are some declarations that the PSP is dead or dying:

Should we consider the PSP dead?

RIP PSP

PSP: Just Die Already

Developers: The PSP has “failed”

But common wisdom is wrong: the PSP is not a failure; it has actually been quite successful. Sony took on a company that had around 95% of the handheld market. As of July, Sony has shipped 20 million units compared to Nintendo’s 21 million DS’s sold. There is a difference between units shipped and units sold, though how much is up for debate. Let’s take an extreme stance and assume that Sony only sold half of the units they shipped. This still means they not only penetrated a market owned by Nintendo, but captured a third of it. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.29.06

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Opera free on Wii until June ‘07
Though I have absolutely no proof to support this fear, I’m worried that browsing the web on the Wii will require a subscription. Imagine some horrendous system that costs something small like 2 Nintendollars or whatever every time you open the browser. That would seriously limit the time I’d be able to spend on the couch watching pornography with my parents.

I don’t remember playing as an aging guy with a mighty war flute.

Microsoft makes up for broken consoles
Wow, good for them. Does the tracking chip they implant in the machine come free of charge?

The old RPGs are coming
At least in Japan. I may have to play Final Fantasy 6 again, but that’s ok since it’s the pinnacle of the series (Cloud is teh suxx0rs). It’s a shame they didn’t give it the Final Fantasy 3 treatment, though that could be because they plan on remaking 6 for the PS3. →  Rule of Read

Best Game Ever – Jumping Flash!

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The year was 1995 and my Plan Get an SNES hadn’t come to fruition. Too young to learn from my mistakes, I diverted recourses from that plan towards my new plan: Plan Get a PlayStation Plan. This consisted of saving my allowance, selling rare Genesis games (I’d later buy again for twice the price), and begging my parents for money.

Explaining why a longtime Sega supporter decided he wanted a PS and not a Saturn would take another article, but can easily be summarized — Sega had destroyed my faith in them by releasing and not supporting two add ons for the Genesis. The Saturn, in my eyes, was doomed to fail. And fail it did, at least in the US. Years later I’d feel slightly guilty for abandoning Sega in their time of need but in late ’95 I was ecstatic because Plan Get a PlayStation worked.

Square breasts

At least I was ecstatic until I played some games on it. →  READ3R

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.15.06

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All that Nintendo jazz
So the Wii will cost $250 and debut November 17th. Nintendo knows how to deliver as little as possible without breaking a promise. The system will come with Wii Sports (in NA, but not Japan) as a pack in. This makes a lot of sense; consumers will be worried about the new control interface being new and strange, including an easily accessible fun title that makes full use of the controller is a great way to usher in the Wii.

Only they decided to include one controller, not two. This is a very stupid move precisely because it limits the strategy I just outlined. With two controllers and a simple game right out of the box, couples, fathers and daughters, johns and prostitutes, Lavern and Shirley or any other combination of two people could be having a ball with the Wii from the minute they plug it in. By including only one controller, Nintendo is not encouraging the social aspect of gaming they claim to support. →  It’s not you, it’s me.