Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks Nintendo president Satoru Iwata runs the entire spectrum of emotions in an interview he gave with Japanese site Yukan Fuji. He discusses his surprise at the Wii and DS’s success, while mentioning his sadness about critics claiming that Nintendo forces product shortages as part of its strategy. That’s not all! Iwata also talks about people growing tired of games as entertainment, mentions his personal positive outlook and cracks what must be the unfunniest joke of 2008. All that, after the jump:
To: Ash & Luke From: Flynn Subject:
Ahoy, gents! The first few weeks of 2008 seem to have been pretty tame. Not a whole lot going on in my world except unpacking lots of boxes. So, in attempt to keep from boring you to tears I’ll just move on to the news from this weekend.
Apparently Xbox is crack… for kids!!
We get to see some of the first gameplay vids of the Penny Arcade Game
This Nerf Lancer is really well done
The Chinese are cracking down on online gaming
Well, that about wraps it up for this weekend. Hope you guys have a great week and I’ll see you next time. Goodnight!
We finally start getting some good titles this week with No More Heroes, Advance Wars 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea and Burnout Paradise My wallet is going to start emptying itself again. I can just feel it coming. What are you going to be picking up this week?
No More Heroes (WII) Suda 51′s surreal cel shaded adventures of Travis Touchdown.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS) The follow up to the wildly popular Advance Wars hits with a new storyline and wi-fi.
Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC) Arrrgh! Live the life of a pirate on land and sea in this new MMO.
Burnout Paradise (PS3, X360) Drive, crash and burn!
Endless Ocean (WII) Explore the mysterious world under the sea.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS) Pit Mario against Sonic on your DS.
One Piece: Unlimited Adventure (WII) Search for booty with Capt. Monkey.
Iridium Runners (PS2) It’s a space race!
Rainbow Islands Evolution (PSP) Bub and Bob are back again in a new old adventure again.
Pleasant morning to you!
Well, it’s kind of pleasant. For the first time in three weeks I woke up and there wasn’t a street bum sleeping next to me. So hey, it can only get better from here.
Or not. We’re experiencing some slight issues with our US feed. As you can guess, we’re working hard to get things on track, so expect your daily dose of gaming news to arrive very, very soon, or just very soon, depending on how fast we are.
Perhaps the best known fan-made Ultima project is Exult. The Exult team took apart Ultima VII‘s game files, wrote an entirely new engine to read the data, and made it compatible with a range of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac.
They even managed to revamp the graphics, and it’s by far the best way to relive one’s memories of the game. (Or, if you’ve never played Ultima VII, experience the best title in the Ultima series).
If you’re looking for something with a more modern look, then the Ultima 6 Project will pique your interest. Rather than deconstruct Ultima VI and rebuild it, Ultima 6 Project is a massive total conversion for Gas Powered Games Dungeon Siege. RPGWatch has an interview up with Jesse Strachman, the project’s co-lead producer:
RPGWatch: What most still impresses you about the game?
JS: The sheer scope of what we’re trying to do is just amazing. We look at the original Dungeon Siege game, and then we look at our own maps and all the dungeons, and I think our world is like 25 times the size or something absurd like that. It’s just so vast. Even with what little we’ve done so far, you still have probably, what, 30-50 hours of playtime? Every time I sit down to furnish another house and define another NPC’s schedule, I just have to stop and think, wow. I have to do this another 300 times before we’re done. Now that’s impressive.
While milestone builds are available to download and play (the latest being the 375MB Milestone 4), Strachman believes the whole shebang won’t be complete until late 2009.
I couldn’t find any information regarding multiplayer options, but Dungeon Siege has ample support, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it made it into the final mod.
You can check out the rest of the interview over at RPGWatch, or visit the official site.
U6 Project Interview [RPGWatch, via GGMania]
Sarah over at Lifehacker has pointed us in the direction of a freshly launched gaming news and reviews site aimed at parents, called What They Play. Intermingled with your standard reviews are articles such as “Wii Found One: The Parents Guide To Finding A Wii” (not such a bad idea considering how hard the damn things were to find last Christmas).
Reviews don’t appear to be scored by quality, rather users can rate them based on minimum age. According to the site, Assassin’s Creed is appropriate for kids 11 and over.
Okay, it might need a little work.
It wasn’t long ago that Oz gaming site PALGN launched GamerKids, its own attempt at such a portal. For now, What They Play looks like the better effort, as long as you don’t mind the international feel, particularly the use of ESRB ratings.
I think it’s going to take a while for sites like GamerKids and What They Play to find the right formula, but what we’ve seen so far is definitely a solid start.
What They Play [Official site, via Lifehacker via CNET, thanks Sarah]
British publication Telegraph.co.uk has published an article warning parents about the dangers of a “new” violent video game called Bully. Wait, haven’t we heard all this before? Yes, we have. We heard this same outcry when the original version of the game came out for the PS2 in the UK and Rockstar had to change the name to Canis Canem Edit. Well, it seems that with the re-release of the game in its Wii and 360 form, Rockstar is pulling no punches and changing the name back to Bully. This move has of course caused yet another burst of concern from parents and anti-bullying groups. Two UK chains, PC World and Currys, have already refused to carry the game and if the protesters have their way, more will follow. But, will they really be able to completely quash the sales of a game that has already gotten through the gates once before?
Video game glorifies bullying, say critics [Telegraph.co.uk]
Sega Superstar Tennis Debut Trailer All your favourite Sega characters playing tennis. Which reminds me, the Australian Open is still on…
Rumour Confirmed: Bully Scholarship Edition Hits Early March A bit of Bully action for the Wii and Xbox 360. I’ll be interested to see how well the game does on Nintendo’s console.
Kotaku Originals: Numbers, Numbers and More Numbers A super-fun-happy collection of original posts from Kotaku. Read them, and remember their awesomeness.
Activision Support Exposes Email Addresses Of Guitar Hero Owners Ah, poor Activision. You’ll get something right eventually. Just not this month.
Graham Hopper, Disney Interactive’s general manager, sat down with Gamasutra to discuss the Wii, kids games, grown up games, movies, Squeenix, Kingdom Hearts, and all sorts of other stuff in an interesting mishmash of grown up gaming concerns and child’s play. Disney’s had a hand in the gaming world for quite some time, though they’ve shifted from licensing to producing, and have been beefing up their portfolio with studio acquisitions and new relationships. Will this spell a real shift in the future?
The key thing for us is being flexible. We never said that we wanted to move away from licensing, and we don’t intend to. Great examples of licensed games that we make that we would love to continue to make those licensed games.
A great example of that is Kingdom Hearts. It’s a great collaboration between Square and ourselves. Disney characters are in there, and Final Fantasy characters are in there. It’s the kind of collaboration that works, and where we see other opportunities like that, we will do them.
We’ve got a relationship with THQ, and things with Konami. It’s not an aberration for us to be licensing. They stay part of our portfolio. But a big piece of the focus is that we didn’t feel that purely following a license would give us the right kind of investment focus on quality, and building our brand in games where we thought we had the potential to do.
As tempting as it can be to dismiss a lot of the more casual and kid-geared offerings from companies like Disney, those markets are growing by leaps and bounds – a lot of kid games may fly under the proverbial radar while they’re snapping up new users like no tomorrow. It’s interesting to read how one company with a very well defined image is trying to cater to a number of pretty diverse markets.
Evolving Disney: Graham Hopper Speaks [Gamasutra]
Move over Mario and friends, you aren’t the only collection of characters that can have a sports game. Sonic and friends are taking to the court in a new tennis game entitled Sega Superstar Tennis. While sports games don’t really intrigue me, I do like the collection of characters they’ve gathered for this game like Nights (from NiGHTS), Amigo (Samba De Amigo) and my personal favourite, Space Channel 5′s Ulala. Of course Sonic and Dr. Eggman are on hand as well because after all, what would a Sega title be without Sonic. But this trailer really begs the question: Who would win in a tennis match, team Mario or team Sonic?
