RSS Feeds
humour
The Middleman Gets Its Violent Coin-Op On
Posted by Brian Ashcraft at 11:40 PM on August 11, 2008
Here's an exclusive sneak look at tonight's episode of ABC Family's The Middleman. To bring everyone up to speed: The scene features the show's heroine Wendy Watson and her new boyfriend Tyler, who's completely in the dark about her job fighting aliens and bad dudes. But! They're both totally into zombie films and video games. Oh, and Nolan Bushnell gets name dropped. Tipper Gore, too. And the Dalai Lama.
Nintendo confirms the limited edition Pokémon DS 
There have been 
The question that many gamers were asking after Microsoft's E3 press conference was "How did Final Fantasy XIII end up on the Xbox 360?" Way back in July, Microsoft Global Marketing Manager Albert Pennello explains:
In its original state, Fallout 3 was deemed no good for the Australian market. 
Here's the way Capcom works: multi-platform. The company really doesn't seem to play favourites, and it tries to get its games everywhere it can. So, exclusive titles like Xbox 360 only zombie title Dead Rising seem somewhat out of place in the corporate M.O. In a Bionic Commando: Rearmed thread on the official PlayStation.Blog, Capcom's John Diamonon writes this in response to a post about a PS3 being "REALLY happy with Capcom" even though Dead Rising is still Xbox 360 only:
We know, Dead Rising on Wii looks different, but it's going to play different too. It's got waggle! And not just any waggle: Capcom are bringing Resident Evil 4's waggle to 2006's zombie mall simulator. Gun combat will work exactly the same, with pointing of the Wii Remote for aiming and a shake of the nunchuk for a reload. More shaking is required if you're grabbed by a zombie, however, because you'll have to shake as if your very life depended on it to get out of it. The shaking motif continues with melee weapon use: you can shake the bat while swinging to build up some extra charge. Aside from that, you can shake to shake, and shake twice if you want to shake and bake.
Konami has launched a "Metal Gear Solid 4 Beginner Site" to help those Japanese gamers not familiar with MGS to become, well, familiar with MGS. The game initially did very well when it was launched in Japan last June, but hasn't hit anywhere near the million seller mark. Though! The game is the biggest selling PS3 title in Japan, and for that, Konami should be proud. Heck, Konami even puts that on the MGS4 beginner site.
Some new Crysis Warhead screens (along with bigger versions of some old ones) have been released, courtesy of Japanese site 
Japan's latest gaming love affair is SEGA PSP title Phantasy Star Portable. Since going on sale July 31st, 500,000 copies of the game have been shipped in the week following its launch. No Western release has been announced for this action RPG as of yet. 
While a lot's made of Microsoft's failure to really crack the Japanese market, that's nothing on their inability to really make a dent in continental Europe. After all, Europe's a much bigger market than Japan. So where do Microsoft think they're coming up short? It's not the UK, they're happy enough there. No, it's "some of the more Mediterranean markets", says Microsoft Europe's Chris Lewis, who overlooks the region's fiery passion in favour of their casual gaming habits:
Three new Max Payne movie promotional stills. That's one of them right there, and the other two are after the jump. In the above pic, that's Marky Mark as Max Payne and actress Mila Kunis as Mona Sax, who apparently learned to shoot a gun while filming Max Payne. Well, that's what 
The first Fable let you knock boots with the lady types. Even let you marry them. Which was great, but is nothing on what Fable II will let you get up to. The game's achievement list has been released, and amidst the usual progress-based stuff, one feat in particular stands out. The Swinger. Which rewards you with 5G for taking part in an orgy, provided you do so "
In the West, Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360 and the PS3. That means extra work for Square Enix. But that doesn't get company exec Shinji Hashimoto down. Dude is pumped about this multi-platform release. Hashimoto tells UK magazine 
Never ones to shy away from a chance to earn an extra buck or two, EA have announced they'll be releasing a "Premier Edition" of upcoming RTS Red Alert 3. Exclusive (at least in Europe) to GAME, the premium box will see the game packed in a metal tin, along with five exclusive MP/skirmish maps, a DVD with a making-of featurette (along with the sure-to-be-tasteful special "Women of Red Alert 3"), a soundtrack and, curiously, an "Exclusive Beta Key to a future C&C game!" Exclamation is theirs, not ours. The only C&C game we can think of on the horizon is Tiberium, but with that 
There's a stirring editorial at Destructoid over the 
As Fahey 
BioShock dev Ken Levine isn't all about Ken Levine. He's also all about Grand Theft Auto IV dev Sam Houser. Good for him! Here's Levine on Houser, his new BFF:
Allure Media, the publisher of Kotaku Australia, has launched a new site, called 
A pretty big week considering one hard copy title, Madden 09, always sits like a 500-pound gorilla on the second Tuesday in August. Madden will release on six consoles, and it's not surprising that some big boxes in rural areas are breaking street on that (I bought Madden '05 in Morganton, N.C. about four days ahead).
And not because Shigeru likes to overshare about latent pyromania, internet porn, or armpit farting the William Tell overture. It's because if he did, the industry would collectively say, "A-ha! We now know what Nintendo is making next!" and rush to squat on that IP first. And then their mums would say, "If Shigeru Miyamoto jumped off the Empire State Building, would you?" And when they replied "Yes," it wouldn't be out of spite.
If I had this lunchbox, right after I made my PB&J I would hold it up, edge-on, and blow along it hard before putting it inside. I'd also punch the Konami code into my cheese & crackers to get unlimited Capri Sun.
Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook' has an interesting meditation up on the nature of single player game mechanics — a lot of the achingly simple, but endlessly challenging board games that Rohrer points to require a minimum of two players. Rohrer's question is how to make a single player game that doesn't rely on typical mechanics to provide depth and challenge? Is it possible to have a game with the (gameplay) depth of go without falling back on AI or randomness or 'physical' contests? Well, in short, no:
You might recall the demise of Hellgate developer Flagship Studios from last month, and the subsequent shutdown of Mythos and IP fight over Hellgate. Now Flagship's former Seattle team has reconstituted itself as Runic Games, continuing its focus on action-MMORPG games.
Malcolm Ryan is putting together a most interesting list of game design-related books — except these are the ones that are flying under the radar as it were. Ryan describes these 'secret books' as "books that are not explicitly written about games, but which any game designer who reads them just knows that they are really about games." As part of this, Ryan will be reviewing a book a week on a variety of narrative and game-related topics (even if the connection isn't immediately apparent). In the 'secret book' category, he's got two examples: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander.
Preservation of 'new media' has gotten some attention in recent months — a lot of venerable collections are moving to figure out the best ways to preserve games and gaming media in an archival setting, while building useful collections for the future. The University of Texas at Austin was recently awarded over $US 250,000 to study the collection and preservation of MMOs. In addition to the obvious bits of preservation problems — software and the like — the project is also pretty broad in scope, including an oral history component, as the project head Megan Winget explained:
Dustin Waller, of Cleveland, N.C. (this is where my mother, I shit you not, foxhunts) got a Playstation 3 from his fiancee, who bought it either used or refurbed for $US 350 from an independent games retailer at a mall down the road in Salisbury. Tuesday, Waller gets a visit from the police up the road in the other direction, Statesville, who said the PS3 was stolen goods. They'd tracked him after he unwittingly signed on to PSN using the previous owner's ID. After the police confiscated the PS3, Waller went back to the store to get a refund. He got a 360 instead, and thinks the cops asked the store to provide it.
I've really been enjoying GameSetWatch's series called 'The Game Anthropologist,' which (among other things) looks at various gaming communities — this week is a look at one of my favourite blogs, Michael Abbott's 
I've been keeping my eye on the "Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection" blog, which is a blog corollary to part of Stanford University's archive of gaming-related materials — while there are only a handful of posts, there are some interesting looks back at some more obscure bits of gaming history. The latest is the first part of a look back at the origins of Sierra — back when it was 'On-Line Systems.' While Eric Kaltman notes that he didn't have any of the original titles physically on hand, he did have "the first issue of the "On-Line Letter", a newsletter celebrating the first anniversary of On-Line Systems". Included are plenty of high-res pictures, though not all the interesting stuff is included: