To: Crecente
From: Bashcraft

Over the weekend, I was playing soccer with the kid, I set down my cell phone. And when I came back, it was gooooooooooooooone. Maybe I've been in Japan, too long, cause I didn't think anything of setting my phone down. (I mean, people leave their bags on tables at fast food restaurants while they go order!) So this latest loss means that this is the third mobile phone I've gone through in the last three years. Here's where it get unsettling: When I got home, my wife asked why I kept calling her and hanging up. Dialed my phone, hoping to get the asshole who stole my phone on the line, but fucker wouldn't answer. After that, I quickly had the phone's service cut.

Luke had an Aussie holiday, so it was just me all night!

What you missed last night
MGS4 DVD humour spoiler
Robbie Bach on Blu-ray Xbox 360 rumour
Konami on MGS4 early release
More details about the Akihabara killer
SFIV cabinet dated for Japan?

Suspiciously virally PR looking blog Wii Fit is It recounts the tale of one man who submitted the purchase price of Wii Fit as his yearly company exercise expense, and he got it approved. According to the very-excited-about-Wii Fit blogger:

I work in a desk job. It's very sedentary, and the most physically taxing activity is walking to the building next door for meetings. Because of this, the office has a health and fitness policy, which allows employees to claim an allowance of $AU 158 per year for fitness-related equipment or services: sports clothes, gym memberships, that sort of thing.

Well, I submitted my form to apply for a reimbursement for Wii Fit. And it came through no problems.

Wii Fit's interesting and all, but let's hope this fella does other physical activities besides Wii Fit over the next 12 months.

My boss paid for Wii Fit [Wii Fit is It via Infendo] [Pic]

The first details about upcoming Call of Duty 5 hit today. Unlike the modern CoD4, CoD5 will return to WWII. The game will be set in the Pacific Theatre. Also unlike CoD4, the game won't be developed by Infinity Ward, but CoD3 dev Treyarch. The upcoming title will feature co-op — a first for the series. Also, multiplayer will feature vehicles and squad-elements as well. The game is truly multi-plat, and the Wii version is being developed by a separate Treyarch team and will support the Wii Zapper. The game is gritty, apparently. How gritty?

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While the game doesn't go on sale until June 12th, Reader Snake-87 tips us that as of 10:00AM today his local shop had 500 copies of MGS4. Each copy is priced at 20KD ($AU 79) — and hey, that's pretty damn close to Japan prices! Certainly, this isn't the only store breaking the street date — just the only store we've heard of in Kuwait doing it! Hit the jump to see how well MGS4 goes with Kuwaiti licence plates.

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That Resident Evil 4 Wii port did some good business for Capcom. So the Resident Evil 0 Wii port makes sense! So why not bring that Japan-only Wii port to the US? Well, Capcom USA doesn't want it, it seems. Like, really doesn't want it. Capcom exec Christian Svensson explains:

Nothing is ever final, but we've been asked twice if we've wanted to bring it Westward and twice we've declined.

Yeah, would any American Wii owners actually buy it if Capcom ever did decide to port it? Sure a few would, but...

Capcom USA Declines [Capcom BBS via Go Nintendo]

SNK DS title Doki Doki Majo Shinpan let players touch young witches via the DS's touch screen. Using the stylus you can jiggle the witch jubblies! Saucy stuff, but not pornography. Still, it seems to have inspired computer erotic game Majo Michi, which is also set against vaguely reminiscent story plots and character designs, but also lets players touch young witches. It also possible to do other things as well. Players use their mouse for touching — which isn't as lighthearted as the DS stylus. Then again, Majo Michi makes up for the discrepancy other ways, we guess.

This Is Totally Not Safe For Work [Official Site]

Via game site Insert Credit comes info that Street Fighter IV will be getting a Japanese arcade this summer as we had previously posted. Apparently, the cabinet set will be released July 18th, and the PCB-only release is supposedly August 10th. This is unconfirmed by Capcom, and no word on outside Japan arcade releases.

Random Thread [mmcafe via Insert Credit]

As we reported earlier, tragedy struck Tokyo's video game/anime/manga district Akihabara this Sunday. A 25-year-old-man stabbed 17, killing 7. Truly, truly horrible stuff. The killer's name is Tomohiro Kato, and according to blog Japan Probe, details about him include: He had been to Akihabara many times in the past. He worked for a Tokyo-based temp company and had been sent to Shizuoka for work. He played tennis in school. One of his year book sketches includes a character from Namco RPG Tales of Destiny with messages he wrote in English (after the jump). The mass media has already latched onto the game connection, instead of the tennis one to explain this senseless spree. (Because tennis driving people to kill makes no sense — but apparently video games does!)

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Right now, some people are playing Metal Gear Solid 4 — days ahead of its June 12th drop date. While Konami's UK General Manager Pete Stone is doing his all to keep the street date, it seems to have been broken somehow — whether that be through accidental or nefarious means. According to a Konami spokesperson:

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You've heard the rumour: Microsoft will be announcing a Blu-ray Xbox 360 on Monday morning at 10am KT (Kotaku Time). Apparently Microsoft is gunning to upstage the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. Check out what Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division President Robbie Back has to say about that rumour:

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Screw plot spoilers! The really fun stuff in Metal Gear Solid has always been Kojima's sense of humour. So! If you do not want any of your fourth wall Metal Gear Solid 4 humour ruined, do not watch this! Everyone else click and chuckle at format ribbing.

Thanks to all who sent this in!

Ed's Update: Konami has taken down the clip. Hit the jump for screens and rundown of the conversation.

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UPDATE: the above is claimed to be the first nine minutes of gameplay in Metal Gear Solid 4.

Since we were tipped to both the unboxing video and the opening sequence around 6 pm Crecente time, we've been flooded with tips to other videos. The above, uploaded within the past hour, was cut to fit YouTube's 10 minute requirement.

After the jump, video of someone unboxing the 80 GB PS3 Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle four days before the street date. It's 5 minutes in a single take so, looks pretty legit. Also after the jump, another video showing the MGS4 intro/start menu video.

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To: Bash
From: Owen
Re: Drinkin' Time

I'm not sure what has me in a fouler mood; the fact the cat pissed right next to the goddamn $AU 129.96 looks-like-a-potted-plant cat crap hut; N.C. State lost 17-8 and trailed 9-0 in the first inning, playing for its first College World Series appearance since its only visit in 1968; or the fact I duped two posts this weekend. Also the cat is feigning a limp. Yes, feigning. Because she wants me to go to the vet and spend $AU 145.56 so she can come home and eat placebos and, I dunno, get a kickback from the doctor or something.

While I wasn't busy sulking, we got these stories out that may be of interest to you. Now I am off to drink Early Times.

Rumour: LucasArts to Halt All Internal Development
MGS4 Unboxing and Start Menu Video
EVE Online Convenes Real-World Elected Council
The Challenge of Naming Games
USB HDD on Nintendo Horizon?
I'm Sorry I Have to Do This to You
MMO Business Models: Subscriptions vs. Free To Play
A Politician Who Actually Games

Shacknews is reporting, via "a reliable source", that once Star Wars: The Force Unleashed drops in mid-September, LucasArts will pinkslip another 100 employees and quit internal development.

Force Unleashed is the first internally developed 360 and PS3 title for LA, and the first LA-developed title since Republic Commando for the Xbox in 2005. There is, as Yoda might say, another ...

That would be the untitled Indiana Jones third-person actioner, and according to Shacknews, the remainder of its work, left after The Force Unleashed hits the street, will be outsourced. Shacknews notes that past and present development partners include TT Games, Day 1, BioWare, Pandemic and, reaching way back, Totally Games (X-Wing, TIE Fighter).

Source: LucasArts to Halt Internal Development [Shacknews]

Metal Gear Solid 4 dominates the releases this week, dropping on Thursday. NASCAR 09 and Dragon Ball Z pick up the leftovers on Tuesday, plus there's the Don King-branded boxing game which, come on, how can that game not have an ultra-realistic litigation engine built in, if it's Don King. So, if you game on the PS3, this is pretty much your week to shine. Let us know what you're buying, and if you're buying a PS3 just to play MGS4, in the comments.

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GameInfoWire.com has about a dozen new screen shots of Dawn of War II up. These follow the gameplay video that went up midweek. I'm gonna keep my trap shut about the game. Warhammer 40,000 scared the bejabbers out of me and my basic set D&D friends when we were in school. Mostly because the only kids who played it had passes to the smoking pit and grew moustaches. So, here's one, and there are four full-size after the jump and the rest on GameInfoWire, and please don't give me a noogie or a titty-twister, sir. Owwww ....

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Got this far and realised we've had no hot flashes this weekend. So here's a super-slimmed down Super Mario Kart, done in 11 KB of pure javascript goodness. Pick from Mario, Luigi or Peach and then race on two different maps. It even has a soundtrack.

You'll be beaten off the line easily every time, but if you race the second map and take advantage of the turns, you can get into first pretty quickly.

There's no timer or lap count and your opponents seem to float in the air until you overtake them. Still, I killed a few minutes with this while going off on a reverie, wondering if I'll be 55 and playing a slimmed down javascript Assassin's Creed or something.

Javascript Super Mario Kart [nihilogic]

There's a lot of dissatisfaction regarding how games are reviewed coming from a number of quarters; there is an equally vociferous defence of the typical numerically-based reviews. Over at GameSetWatch, Simon Parkin takes up the issue of the reviewer-reader divide, especially in terms of what readers want out of a review (even if they don't know it):

The average reader (even if they don't know it) is after a complete objective, scientific comparison between game x and game y with data and statistics and, finally, a numerical point on a linear scale by which they can compare, for example, Mass Effect with Rock Band and see which one is empirically better.

Except, of course, video games don't work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and it's possible to compare the number of polygons between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare. But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D, I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the 'true' scale of quality.

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And happily, no one was on hand to grief it. A 41-year-old Japanese man who suffers from a progressive muscle disease that has left him almost totally paralysed, moved his Second Life character about a virtual environment using his brain waves, reports Agence France-Presse.

The experiment is significant because the signals his brain sent to move the character came from the man imagining that he was walking. He also used a microphone to meet and converse with another Second Lifer. Then a swarm of flying penises surrounded him and the appalled researchers. OK, just kidding about that.

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That's not R5-D4's brother, it's a modded Wiimote that a German student envisions for use in a virtual graffiti world.

Martin Lihs, student at Bauhas-University in Weimar, built the "Wiispray" for his thesis. He wants the wall to encourage graffiti artists to express themselves without the artistic encumberances of balancing on a highway overpass railings, getting chased by railroad police, or, like getting arrested.

Sounds fun and creative but people tag up real walls for a reason -- real people see 'em. All the commissioned murals, coffee table books and contests for graffiti artists provide real recognition to, but not like getting up on a warehouse wall. The essential act of graffiti is painting where you're not supposed to paint, right?

WiiSpray Prototype Graffiti Controller for Wii [Slashgear, via Engadget]

"A game is a game is a game" — are they? The plethora of popular card and board game adaptations — and their popularity — would seem to indicate 'yes.' Over at the Escapist, Scott Jon Siegel muses on the future and potential of adaptations on a number of levels. Especially when one considers the casual market, familiar electronic adaptations make for potential casual hits:

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Iceland. It's where all the cool kids go to have a summit. Reagan and Gorbachev rapped about nukes there in 1985; 20 years later, the Supreme Metal Council condemned the overuse of the devil horns hand-signal. And now something billing itself as EVE Online's democratically elected government will meet there, probably because it's too far for Something Awful to show up and grief the shit out of it.

The Council of Stellar Management -- which sounds like something from Dilbert -- was formed by EVE developer CCP back in March, and now the two bodies will meet to discuss issues both real- and virtual-world pertaining to the game. The CSM's nine delegates and five alternates serve six month terms and were elected back in March. Developer CCP is based in Reykjavik (holy shit I spelled that correctly the first time).

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Nick Montfort and Andrew Stern have published the text of their very interesting speech given at the Electronic Literature Organisation "Visionary Landscapes" conference; the subject is ELIZA, the 1966 parody of a Rogerian therapist — more correctly, it's where the next ELIZA-like program (in terms of influence) is going to come from and what it may look like. It's an interesting piece, coming from the perspective of "bigger and flashier is not always better":

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Tricia Helfer has about two months to work on her speech, because she's the latest in the keynote lineup for NVIDIA's visual computing conference in San Jose in late August. And, being a hot former-supermodel-turned-actress and all, she had better come up with something good or I expect all the geeks fanboys industry luminaries in attendance will say, in unision, "NOT NEWS", and get up and leave or something. Happens to me all the time, and I'm stunning.

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The latest GameCareerGuide "Game Design Challenge" is to rename Katamari Damacy: if you had been working for Namco in 2004 and they had decided to give the game a new title, what would you have suggested? "Think up with something snappy that will appease the localisation department, designers, and artists, who will likely create new cover art to accommodates the new title". Localisation is something that not many people give too much thought to, but titles are the first step in shaping the public's perception of of a work (be it book, movie, or game).

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Technology columnist Mike Musgrove got Entertainment Software Association CEO Michael Gallagher on the horn (we got him first!) to talk about, what else, ESA's membership losses. Everyone here should be familiar with the story and the pressures that realigning E3 have brought to bear on membership dues, believed to be the motivation for so many big name publishers flying the coop. ESA refers us to the companies to get the reasons for leaving, and so far none have, really.

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Emily Short has a thought provoking post over on her blog regarding interactive fiction for the "hard-casual" crowd. Can the modern crop of interactive fiction appeal to that segment of the market that isn't the traditional IF crowd, nor the "match three" type of casual player, nor the hardcore audience? Sounds sort of like a contradiction of terms, since IF is pretty niche to begin with, but she lays out her reasoning really well. On why the hard casual market:

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We have no confirmation or sourcing of our own on this, so, we don't vouch for its accuracy. But we will be watching the clock at 10 am Crecente time tomorrow, as CrunchGear is rumourmongering that Microsoft will announce Blu-Ray Xboxes will be shipping by Christmas, at that time. Rumour has it they'll cost less than an Elite.

The announcement would apparently be timed to upstage Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference which kicks off an hour later in San Francisco. Here's the full rumour from CrunchGear's tipster:

I'm told MS will upstage Apple with a Monday 9am PDT announcement (1 hour before WWDC) via press release that the Xbox 360 will get Blu-Ray before Christmas. Price was "under the current Elite", but i could get any more details.

We'll be pursuing this tomorrow as our means of pursuit are limited today. Carry on.

MS to release Blu-Ray drive on Monday[CrunchGear]

Plenty of high praise has flowed to Metal Gear Solid 4, but N'Gai Croal offers a different take in his latest posting over on Level Up. The game, like others, makes timely use of Private Military Corporations (read: mercenaries) to create an environment players want to explore and a story they want to advance. But MGS4's true point lies in its "war economy", which governs or responds to the choices made by players.

Any game must "radically simplify complex systems", and MGS4's gun-launderer character, and fluctuating price of unlockable weapons and equipment does just that as a representation of a mercenary economy. And that, N'Gai reasons, makes a statement about the inherent amorality of war fought for profit just as much as cutscene dialogue, no matter how well written, where gamers are most conditioned to look for what was on the game creator's mind.

That's not to say MGS4 now goes into a pantheon of great allegorical commentaries on war and greed. It's a video game, so whatever message comes out is necessarily refracted through your experience of playing it. And it is a hell of a lot of fun. But N'Gai's point is that the "war economy" with which you, as Snake, must do business make it thought provoking, in addition to being an entertaining game at the top of its genre.

I Need a Hero, for Hire [Level Up]

There's plenty of chatter about a seeming run-of-the-mill job posting but, admittedly, it might foreshadow something even for those of us who have qualifications necessary to work for Nintendo. Here 'tis:

CONTRACT - Software/Hardware Tester

Description of Duties

—-> * Creating and executing a test plan for Wii's USB devices <—--
* Executing test plans with great attention to detail and documenting bugs
* Writing test procedure documents, gathering, and learning required software/hardware
* Reproducing bug reports and helping find work-arounds or resolutions

The talky-talk going around surmises that it involves USB HDDs to store all those swell WiiWare games Ninty's been pushing out. Me, I think it's a USB George Foreman grill, but then I don't represent the cutting edge of blog thought.

Nintendo Looking Into USB Attachments? [Nintencast, via Codenamerevolution and others]

Seven are dead in Tokyo after a 25-year-old man plowed his truck through a crowd of people, then pulled a knife and stabbed 18. The attack happened Sunday afternoon in Tokyo's Akihabara Electric Town, a district well known to video game, comic book and cosplay enthusiasts.

The victims range in age from 19 to 74 and include five men and one woman. Details still are coming in as to the identity and condition of others. Eleven more were wounded in the knife attack, two of them critically.

UPDATE: BBC News, quoting Kyodo News, reports the suspect's name is Tomohiro Kato, 25, and he is in custody. The female victim was 21 years old. An eyewitness account said Kato "jumped on top of a man he had hit with his vehicle and stabbed him with a knife many times. Walking toward Akihabara station, he slashed nearby people at random.'' There are more details and video on the BBC link.

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