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GamesIndustry announced today that British developer Kuju Entertainment are the ones working on LucasArts’ new music-based puzzler “Traxion”:

Called Traxion, the new game consists of a wide variety of music-based mini-games, and will come pre-loaded with music from several leading artists - but one of the key features of the title is that it will also work with music loaded onto Memory Sticks by individual gamers.

Making this the first PSP game that I’m aware of to use memory stick-loaded mp3s in any appreciable sense. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories made a misguided effort to do so with their snidely proprietary Rockstar mp3 importer. More of a pain in the ass than a feature, that thing. Eliza Gauger

More [GamesIndustry]

 
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In an interview with Kikizo, Peter Moore got a little chest-thumpy and started talking about how gamers don’t really care about backwards compatibility. Then he says that Msoft “under promised and over delivered” on the Xbox 360’s BC. Man, an Msoft Veep salary must really get you some high-grade crack.

Hit the jump for the full insanity.

Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that. It’s a very complicated thing… very complex work. I’m just stunned that we have hundreds of games that are backwards compatible.

He added: “more are coming, but at some point, you just go, there’s enough, let’s move on, or people aren’t as worried about a game being backwards compatible - and I like to think we’ve upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compat.”

Just when I was starting to respect the man he has to go all crazy talk on me. Brian Crecente

Moore Talks [Kikizo] [Thanks Nick]

 
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Related: The Colgate 360 Tooth Brush

Filed under: Mac, PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

PC World’s list of top 100 tech products of the year praised our sister blog Engadget and gave Apple lots of love but the categorical winner of the list is undoubtedly gaming. The following products aren’t all directly gaming related (you could use some of them to run spreadsheets) although there’s a quite clear video gaming subtext underlying many of the choices. Lets just say that they’re as close to being gaming technology as Uri Geller is to being locked up in an asylum.

1. Core Duo - the first chip to enable desktop level performance in games on laptop computers.
2. Athlon 64 X2 - for that ultimate gaming rig you always wanted (but couldn’t, and still can’t, afford).
10. Boot Camp - Apple’s Mac gaming solution.
16. GeForce 7600GT - hits that price/performance sweet spot.
19. Guitar Hero - we think that this is some kind of video game.
55. Raptor X - 10,000RPM Hard Drives were invented for gaming.
58. X1900 XTX - ATI’s biggest, baddest GPU. Stupid name though.
63. A8N32 mobo - it’s all about the SLI, baby.
89. Xbox 360 - we’ve heard of this! Isn’t it designed to hold your lunch?
92. GeForce 7900 GTX - nVIDIA’s biggest, baddest GPU. Stupid name though.

I personally own several products identical or similar to products on this list (a MacBook with a Core Duo CPU running Windows via Boot Camp is being used to write this post - I’m off for some Eve Online in a sec). Do you agree with these choices? What’s missing?

P.S. If anyone from PC World is reading this, I apologize for desecrating your logo.

[Update: “top tech,” not “top ten tech”. Thanks Ahms!]

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DS Lites get an early release, Will Wright takes on the media, and we remember Rez’s trance vibrator. Do yourself a favor, check out some indie games — while you’re at it, check out the highlights for the day:

News
Storm your shops! DS Lite street date broken
UK sales charts, May 21-27: Hitman hits the spot
China, Intel, and the WiMAX agenda
The summer gaming drought is upon us
NYTimes examines Sony’s worldwide appeal
Wright rocks out with the mainstream media
Guild Wars goings-on
Indie incidents in the month of May

Rumors & Speculation
Gaming at the Olympics? It could happen

Culture
WSJ: Xbox 360 is home of hacker hoedown
Return of the Dreamcast … sort of
Zelda composer conducts his work on the Wii
Boobs, vibrators, and Hitler make “strangest” list

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Wanna see something funny?

Wanna see something funny?

How to enable the cheat menu; now get your game on.

The first week of our Friday Night Lites contest is well under way. Make sure to enter this week’s contest to win a Polar White DS Lite, DS Lite case, Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, Magnetica and Trace Memory.

The contest is open to anyone in the world. So none of your contest spamming you damn dirty martians. Brian Crecente

Kotaku’s Summer of Prizes Weekly DS Lite Give-Away [Kotaku]

 
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Related: Friday Night Lites: Six DS Give-Away Details
Related: Win Nintendo Gal’s E3 Schwag

The Dreamcast may have died years ago, but it lives on over at IGN. The has relaunched its Dreamcast site with a very specific goal: re-review every title that appeared on the ill-fated console. With over 250 DC games, there’s plenty of fodder for impressions, screens and videos. Just don’t expect any breaking news.

The Dreamcast Didn’t Fail, We Failed The Dreamcast [IGN]

 
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Related: PC World Says Apple’s Pippin Is Not the Worst
Related: Wiimote’s Dirty, Dirty Dreamcast Past?
Related: Sonic Is HUGE in Siberia

It would be an understatement to call Gizmondo exec Stefan Eriksson’s plea of not guilty predictable. I mean, the man drives around (allegedly) stolen Ferraris, claims to work for (allegedly) national security, and worst of all, tried to launch a hybrid portable gaming device with a Sting-infested kick-off in London. Of course Captain Delusional is going to plead not guilty to his flying Ferrari shenanigans.

Officially, his not guilty pleas, which he entered earlier this week, were to grand theft, embezzlement and drunken driving. That’s a total of seven felony charges and two misdemeanors, that the 40-year-old is trying to avoid. And the delusions continue…Brian Crecente

Ferrari case defendant pleads not guilty [AP]

 
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Related: Best of E3 Nominees

Filed under: Culture, Retro

The Onion A.V. Club has inventoried “11 Of Video Gaming’s Strangest Moments” and come up with some real doozies. What other list runs the gamut from facing off with Hitler’s disembodied head in a giant robot suit in Wolfenstein 3D to a pre-1UP Jane Pinckard famously facing off with Rez’s trance vibrator at Game Girl Advance? Here’s the skinny on the strangest:

1. Busting out of Downland
2. Messing up Hitler in Wolfenstein
3. Music videos in Total Distortion
4. Penn and Teller’s bus ride in Smoke and Mirrors
5. Elusive topless cage matches in DoA
6. Dying to win in Planescape: Torment
7. Corporate revenge in Adventure, Ultima VII, and Baldur’s Gate II
8. Potty-training in Black & White
9. Going loco in Eternal Darkness
10. Rubbing one out with Rez
11. The cornfield prison in Second Life

That pique your curiosity? Get the full meal over at the Onion.

[Thanks, White Rose Duelist]

(Update: Capitulated on image selection for the NSFW crowd)

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More Mario anime! After Peach refuses to marry Mario, Mario learns that he can partially assuage his lust when he discovers that he has the perfect eye-level when dancing with the much taller object of his affections.

There’s a complete episode of the anime up on YouTube to boot:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Thanks for Daniel for the tip! FLORIAN ECKHARDT

 
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Related: Metroid in Push-Pins
Related: Luigi Doesn’t Have Many Friends
Related: The Real Paper Mario (and Luigi)

Filed under: Culture, Retro, Nintendo Wii, Video, Rhythm

At the spry age of 20, classically-trained Koji Kondo joined Nintendo and, using 3 monophonic “instruments” and a “drum track” noise channel, composed some of the most memorable and everlasting theme music in gaming history, including all the Mario and Zelda titles (not to mention the seminal Super Smash Bros. Melee score, alongside a few others). So it is a little more than amusing to watch Kondo conduct his own work on the Wii Music Orchestrator at this year’s E3.

Projectdose.com happen to videotape Kondo’s performance and has posted it on YouTube (we have also embedded the video here, after the break). According to the site, Kondo scored 92 out of 100, which is both a testament to the Wiimote’s accuracy and Kondo’s ability to conduct lifeless polygons like they were lifeless real musicians.

Here is the video:

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Matt at the appropriately titled hackdiarydoesn’t spend his free time socializing in MMORPG Second Life. He hacks it. With the recent release of Version 1.10, communication with the web on demand is now possible. Hence, Matt’s latest project.

I’ve spent a few hours hacking on some toy objects with this new capability, starting with the mashup de rigeur: Flickr integration. My home in SL now sports a simple picture frame. Touch it and it looks up your avatar name to see what your favourite Flickr tag is, picks a random picture with that tag from Flickr and displays it on its surface. If it hasn’t met you before, it asks you to tell it what tag to use.

Anyone interested in this can find Matt in SL as “Matt Basiat.” Brian Ashcraft

More Here [hackdiary]

 
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Related: Work as a Second Life Journo
Related: Second Life S&M Vacation

Cubed3 does a nice job of summarizing some of the speculation out there about the rumor that Nintendo is phasing the original DS out in Japan, despite Nintendo President Satoru Iwata’s comments to the contrary.

First they point to the yo-yoing sales of the bulky portable, something that seems to be tied to stock issues. Then they point to a post on GameFront.de that reports that wholesale retailers say they haven’t gotten original DS stock replenishments for a month.

It makes sense. Who would want to buy a DS when you can get a DS Lite? There would have to be a huge price difference to convince most consumers to pony up for the uglier, bigger version of the sexy new DS. Brian Crecente

Original DS Being Phased Out in Japan? [C3]

 
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Filed under: Arcade, Culture, Mac, PC, Online

Partially as a rebuke to an earlier article on the subject of the sparsity of indie game releases and partially because they can, Gametunnel has posted an article featuring just over ten reviews of independent games released this month. The titles reviewed range from Lux, a Risk-type game that features several scenarios based on historical battles (if you’re a Risk fan, drop everything and download this game immediately) to Eets, a “solid and original puzzle game.”

An fun little indie game that I discovered recently is Open Fire, a casual point-and-click shooter which was released a few days ago. What indie games have you discovered lately?

[Thanks, Russell Carroll]

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Sometimes as a blogger you don’t even try to top someone else’s description. They just aced it in one:

Conquer the Video Craze was issued in 1982, at the height of arcade games’ popularity. Over a background of ambient arcade noise, Curtis Hoard, “Atari Champion finalist”, reads convoluted game tips in a slow nasal monotone.

The album itself was sampled in the Beastie Boys’ on To The 5 Boroughs but you can listen to the whole delightfully sad-sack thing over at Dinosaur Gardens. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Conquer the Video Craze [Dinosaur Gardens]

 
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Related: IGN: The Dreamcast Is NOT Dead

Get tricked out like never before.

Filed under: PC, Action, Online, RPGs, Competitive Gaming, MMO

The Europeans are currently dominating the rest of the field, while the Americans struggle to hold ground, and the Japanese and Korean teams scarcely put up a fight. World Cup headlines? Nah, we still have another week to go for that. How about a Guild Wars Factions Championship update?

Europe’s undefeated Esoteric Warriors won the latest qualifying round, and the European teams hold seven of the top ten spots. South Korea’s The Last Pride, winners of the first Guild Wars World Championship, currently sit in fourth place hoping to add another US$50K to their earnings. Americans must be too busy playing World of Warcraft.

See also:

• Guild Wars China to be operated by The9
• Guild Wars Factions Championship details revealed

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Worried that someone might swipe your PSP, watch a load of UMD movies and get it all smudgy with fingerprints? Me neither, but it’s comforting to know there is PSP anti-theft protection. It lets owners track their portables online. Here’s how it works: whenever the PSP is connected to a computer, it automatically sends an email. The owner can get the theft’s email addy, IP, etc and contact local law enforcement so they can marvel at your tech savvy. I wasn’t aware that PSP theft was such a huge problem that it warranted a tracking device. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Max Console]

 
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Related: Report: Msoft to Go Portable in 07/08?
Related: Griffin’s PSP Car Dock