Nintendo

PC Gaming dead!? But it’s so young and innocent!

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In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, I’ve actually started reading a book. Yeah, I know. Simply amazing.

My friend at work let me borrow Masters of Doom, the book that details the two men that helped shape the PC gaming industry into what it is today: John Carmack and John Romero of id Software.

A very interesting part in the book was when Carmack, in only one night, recreated the first level to Super Mario Bros. 3 on a PC. For an IBM PC at the time (1990), this was an amazing feat. No PC was powerful enough to simulate the scrolling effect that Nintendo did so easily on their NES system, but Carmack created an algorithm that somehow faked the effect, calling it adaptive tile refresh. Basically, the screen changed only what needed to change, and it would be the starting point for what would later become id Software. →  Snap! Crackle! Read!

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 11.10.06

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One of the worst Top Ten Worst Games of All Time lists
Top 10, 25, 50, whatever lists are one of my worst enemies. They are vacuous and a cheap excuse for content. Even an unnumbered list is significantly better because from the outset the author wasn’t just trying to fill a number of slots. This link is to one of the dumbest Top 10 lists I’ve seen in a while but since it’s posted on a major site, many big blogs picked it up. Oh, the injustice!

Significantly worse than Postal.

It seems as if the author of this list may not play games. He acknowledges that peoples’ opinions will differ and that it’s hard compiling a list of the worst games ever made, but that caveat doesn’t save him. →  Ba da bam ba baa I’m readin’ it.

What the dilly with the DS?

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I was psyched for a handful of recent DS releases but then the reviews came. Yes, reviews aren’t gospel, but they aren’t as worthless as fanboys would like you to believe (for an interesting case study on the power of denial, visit the Sega forums). These once promising DS games now look significantly less promising.

The first of the bunch is Children of Mana. I don’t know why I expected anything from this game after Legend of Mana sucked so hard. Perhaps it’s the small hope I still carry that one day there will be another game in the series as good as Secret of Mana. Most reviewers describe the game as a “slow,” or “boring,” dungeon crawl with barely any plot. It’s possible the action RPGs of my youth that I hold so dearly had the same shortcomings, but I am no longer 12. →  Post of Tsushima

Matt’s Lite Impressions: Wii Edition

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Apparently the Gaming Gods have smiled upon me once again, because I got to take the Nintendo Wii out for a spin today at the Nintendo World Store in NYC.

The first floor contained 3 Wii Sports kiosks. After a very short wait, I was given the go-ahead to try out the almighty Wii. I was about to play Tennis, but remembered they had Baseball as well, so I opted to go for the all-American pastime instead. The attendee helped me get setup with the game, and strapped the Wii-mote on me with it’s sleek little hand strap.

It’s been almost a year since I first saw it, but I finally got a chance to hold the Wii-mote. First thing I noticed was that it is completely encased, both the remote and the nun-chuck, in that shiny clear plastic that is becoming a staple of Nintendo hardware these days. →  May God smite me if I stop reading here!

Launch Game Revelations

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In less than three weeks, the Wii and the Playstation 3 will be let out of their respective cages. And let me tell you, they’re definitely not a nice bunch, those two. They’re always making you feel bad for playing with those traditional, non-motion-sensing controllers like that of the Xbox 360. They’re just a couple of jerks. Best thing to do is to not pay them any attention. And what better way to do that than remember the launches of old systems?

If we take a look at previous launches, you will notice one interesting thing: many consoles launch with at least one game that goes on to be one of the greatest games of all time. I’ve listed them below.

Best Launch Titles

For those of you who haven never heard of it, this is what Super Mario Bros.

 →  Shadow of Read

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 11.3.06

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Halo movie indefinitely stalled
That a Peter Jackson backed Halo movie probably won’t get made despite the fact that Uwe Boll continually releases game based movies is beyond hilarious. Clearly, if there is a god he is evil, or maybe he just has a great sense of humor.

A scene from the upcoming Castlevania movie.

Castlevania movie coming
Odds are, this movie will be slightly better than Van Helsing. The problem is that Van Helsing is solidly on “so bad it’s good” ground, and so Castlevania, by being better, will be worse. Castlevania’s only hope is to be crappier than Van Helsing (or actually good, but let’s not get crazy) and therefore better. This all makes sense, right?

PS3 launching in Hong Kong and Taiwan on November 17
As an American, it is my god given right to believe I am more important than any damn foreigner. →  Fine, but this article then no more.

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. →  I can has post?

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.27.06

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The proud owner of four Xbox 360s.

360 breaks all sorts of records in Australia
Watch out Master System, there’s a new kid in Australia. By selling over 100,000 units, the 360 has become the fastest selling console down under. The first European settlers in Australia were criminals and we have Australians to blame for those rambunctious reptile lovers, Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter (“that’s not a terrible accent, THIS IS A TERRIBLE ACCENT”). Clearly Microsoft must take these facts into account before celebrating the good news.

Gamasutra interview Clover’s Inaba
Prepare yourself for an only marginally related rant. Oh, and read the interview, it’s interesting.

The way the games media goes from one golden boy of creativity to the next is pretty odd. Why do gamers get three or four different interviews from Inaba but not one from Takahashi, Ueda, or Mizuguchi? →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Eulogy for the GameCube

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What can I say, GameCube? You had a good run these last five years, but your last exclusive release was Baten Kaitos Origins, back in September. Not even Nintendo themselves stuck it out until the end, moving Super Paper Mario onto the Wii. I’m sorry GameCube, but it’s time to say goodbye.

But let’s not look at your failures too much. Let us remember you as you were: a console that was home to some truly great games. You deserve it. And don’t worry about all those haters on the Internet, calling you a failure. In time, they’ll begin to understand.

You were released on Nov. 18th 2001 to a somewhat muted launch. In a surprise attack, Microsoft’s Xbox and their Halo stole much of your spotlight. I remember watching the video review of Halo on GameSpot, where the reviewer couldn’t sleep at night because he was playing Halo too much. →  Article Hominid

DIY PSP Car Stereo

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Here’s a tip for you do-it-yourselfers: turn your dust-infested PSP into your car stereo system. I was completely surprised (and annoyed at myself for not realizing sooner) that you can use an iPod tape-deck adapter with your PSP. Some of you have may already done this, but I went one step further. I applied velcro strips on the bottom of my PSP and a vacant lot on my car’s console, and viola! A fairly stylish car stereo system.

I’ve included a pic to give you an idea on how to set it up. Just make sure to get somewhat industrial-strength velcro strips to use, as pulling the PSP off the dashboard repeatedly will probably rip off weaker kinds. I went ahead and put the softer side of velcro on the actual system, and the spiky kind on the car. →  All you need is read.

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. →  An article approaches.
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Life as a Game Tester: Episode 3

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As of this writing, my time in the video game industry is dwindling. When I took this job, I was only guaranteed work until the end of October, which is rapidly approaching. That’s the life of a QA tester, I guess. If your company doesn’t have anything playable for you to test, there’s not much reason to go to work everyday. Already, my day consists of me playing my own games more than the game we’re making, which isn’t necessarily bad. I call it “research.”

Right now, we have the second game I’ve worked on being tested by NOA and NOE. You can check out what that entails by reading Episode 2.

Nintendo’s quality control is not infallible.

It’s great to get a game to submission, but in my experience, it’s been the worst thing that can happen to a game in development. →  Holy crap, show me more!

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. →  Just read it.

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. →  Read, you fools!

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. →  Silent Post 2

Graphics over gameplay: is it really all that bad?

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Whether or not graphics really add all that much to video games has been heavily debated in the last few years. And once the Wii and PS3 come out to steal the 360’s spotlight, we’ll surely hear about it all over again.

Though it may not seem like it due to the clever use of lighting and camera angles, the colossus is actually only an inch taller than you.

But, if we think about it logically, is there really a difference between the two? Some would say, “Of course there is! What are you, high? You can’t play with pictures!” And yes, they’d be perfectly correct. But what people don’t think about is the complementary effect that graphics can have on gameplay.

Take, for example, Shadow of the Colossus. Not exactly the prettiest title in some respects, but one cannot say it isn’t graphically intensive. →  An article approaches.
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Weekend Spotlight

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After reading about the 10 anniversary of the Nintendo 64 over there at Infendo, I decided to play… my SNES. My urge for nostalgia went a little farther, I guess.

Anyway, after dusting the ol’ SNES off and finally figuring out which controller worked completely, I popped in one the greats: Final Fantasy VI. One of the best, if not THE best, RPG of all time.

Incidentally, I’ve never actually beaten the game before, and this is after I bought the thing for like $50 on eBay last year. The game is great, but it’s hard to find time to play all these 40+ hour fantasies, now that real life has reared its ugly head. The last time I left off, I just completed the famous Opera scene. I will say that that scene was truly amazing. →  You think about everything.

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). →  Did I do that?

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.22.06

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RedOctane sues TAC who in turn sue RedOctane
Guitar Hero makers RedOctane have filed a lawsuit against TAC for making guitar controllers that resemble their own. In response, TAC has sued RedOctane, claiming they’ve been making guitar controllers longer and that RedOctane is actually infringing on their copyright. Whether or not this sue the suer move is just standard stupid legal strategy remains to be seen. Personally, I’d find it hilarious if RedOctane loses.

Nintendo wants violent sexy games
Nintendo of America is courting mature content for the Wii. This is no doubt a good business strategy, but it still doesn’t sit totally right. However evil they were as a corporation, I always had a little respect for their slightly patronizing desire to protect us from unseemly content. Nintendo was the catcher in the rye. →  I’m readin’ here!

Nintendo’s new ad campaign

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Nintendo knows that simply marketing their Wii console with standard ads would not take full advantage of the system’s propaganda potential. To tap into the marketing power of the system’s gimmick, they have begun releasing what they call life style ads. Writers at other gaming sites (who specialize in games and not advertising) have ignorantly mocked these ads as bad Gap knock offs. Little do they realize that Nintendo’s life style shots are what the company needs to appeal to a host of demographics traditionally not interested in video games. Study the following six photos for a minute and see if you can identify the demographic they capture before scrolling down to the answer.

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Demographic: Interracial couples who don’t understand that not all controllers sense motion

People who don’t understand new technology need new technology, too. →  Zone of the Readers: The 2nd Reader