Archive for June 8th, 2006
Exclusive footage from the “Lost” game
Filed under: Culture, Adventure, Video
This Lost game is shaping up to be a real looker, if a little repetitive. If you’re not a fan of the series, check out this link for an explanation.
[Thanks, Nushio]
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Japanese sales charts, May 29-June 4: Mario on top again
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Action, Adventure
New Super Mario Bros is still going strong at the top of the Japanese sales charts this week. With over 330,000 sales — well over a million, cumulatively — the title’s dominance has well and truly whipped the rest of the charts into submission, with only a small amount of reshuffling since last week:
1. New Super Mario Bros. [DS]
2. Brain Age 2 (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS) [DS]
3. Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes a Day (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training) [DS]
4. Metroid Prime Hunters [DS]
5. World Soccer Winning Eleven 10 [PS2]
6. Tetris DS [DS]
7. Animal Crossing: Wild World [DS]
8. Eigo ga Nigate na Otona no DS Training: Eigo Duke [DS]
9. Jikkyou Powerful Major League [PS2]
10. Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable [PSP]
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Ikaruga, The Manga
Anyone who’s played Treasure’s classic shooter Ikaruga, knows one thing: it rocks. Here’s an equally cool, and moody, manga from Japan. It was dug up on the Shmups.com forums and created by cantHUE. While I would’ve expected something a with a lot more lasers, this looks like a bulls-eye. Beautiful, elegant stuff!
More Here [Shoot The Core] via GameSetWatch
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Putting Up or Shutting Up About Original Mods: Tremulous
I downloaded Tremulous a few days ago but haven’t had time to mess with it until today. The graphics are simplistic but the game is neato. I went in as a spectator for about half an hour so I could actually see the game being played as opposed to blundering around and getting screamed at.
Tremulous is a hybrid RTS/FPS, similar to the long-lost Savage but without any sort of commander. Here’s a blurb from the official website:
Tremulous is a free, open source game that blends a team based FPS with elements of an RTS. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans. Players on both teams are able to build working structures in-game like an RTS. These structures provide many functions, the most important being spawning. The designated builders must ensure there are spawn structures or other players will not be able to rejoin the game after death. Other structures provide automated base defense (to some degree), healing functions and much more…
I dug it. The aliens were skittery and sproingy, the space marines macho as all hell, and the “defending the base” aspect really added a certain special something. The character models are bulky and ugly, as are the maps, but the whole shebang is open source so feel free to pull it apart and put it back together in better shapes.
Tremulous Home Page [I don't rememebr where I found this.]
Endorphin the Precursor to Euphoria
If you read my last update you’ll know that things are a little unstable at the office today, so I did my best to check and see if we’d already posted this (sorta old) little movie demonstrating the post-ragdoll physics being used in the new Indiana Jones game. And I don’t think we have. Be sure to write outraged e-mails to the tips address if I’m wrong, ‘kay?
I think that might be Bashy scrabbling at the door just now, so I’ll make this quick. This here video was made using the Endorphin engine, which LucasArts has mysteriously appropriated and renamed euphoria (yes, it does have to be lowercased and italicized)
The video is neat-ish, but I would have liked to see some clearer representations of the “same scenario, different results” thing being trumpeted in Game Informer’s June Indy article. The screenshots look promising, if a little over-lightbloomed. But it sounds like Lucas himself has been a key part of the project from beginning to end, so I’m already resigned to be enraged by the story and dialogue. Sigh.
12-in-1 NES console for the lazy retro gamer
Filed under: Retro
The utlitarian M82 was an NES demonstration unit for department stores. Twelve classic NES titles jammed into a heavy, metal box built to support a heavy CRT monitor, the M82 is like a paean to the humble technology that this industry’s been founded on.
Now, thanks to the magic of eBay, you can own a little slice of gaming history, pulled from the rubble of a shuttered Lionel Playworld with a complete assortment of titles: Donkey Kong Jr, Yo Noid, R.C. Pro Am, Golf, Rad Racer, Double Dribble, Life Force, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Mario 2, Ice Hockey, GOLGO 13, and the ever popular Super Mario Brothers / Duck Hunt combo cartridge.
Yo Noid?! I must have this now … every copy must be destroyed. It has been written.
[Thanks, Groovy Guy]
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Getcha Wii Games Heah!
A couple sharp-eyed readers have written in to alert the slovenly Kotaku team that Best Buy is now fielding Wii preorders. This place became a madhouse shortly after Crecente left on “vacation” (read:discounted Tijuana implant binge) and it was fun until Bashcraft finished off the Rockstar and started slurring something about “hazing the noob” while his bloodshot eyes listed unsteadily across my face.
So I’m updating via PSP from a monitor box in one of the abandoned employee lounges, Solid Snake-style. By the time this posts I’ll have moved to a different location, so don’t even bother trying to find me, suckas.
I’m leeching wifi from some unencrypted node called “bewbz4fl0r1an” and the signal strength is pretty low. Even when I’m connected, it’s Kings Quest slow. I guess someone is sucking up all the bandwidth.
Anyway, think of me when you slap down your $50 for Red Steel. I’ll do what I can, but man, I can hear them breaking into the Sierra Mist from here. God help us all.
Wii games at Best Buy OMG WIIIIII! [Best Buy]
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Steamy Zombie Movie
Computer and Video Games draws our attention to the best 15-minute zombie flick ever made:
Zombie Movie, an award-winning horror ’short’ which we admit we’d never heard of until one of our illustrious colleagues pointed us in its direction with a rotting finger, is available for viewing via Valve Software’s Steam.
A film with a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title, Zombie Movie has been created by Kiwis Michael J. Asquith and Ben Stenbeck, both self-confessed walking dead obsessives who have links with the Half-Life developer. Asquith and Stenbeck have also previously worked for WETA Workshop, which was behind the impressive special effects in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies and King Kong.
I decided to slog through Steam’s dark corridors to see if it was really worth it, and by golly it was. I think I missed some stuff due to accents, but the brutal simplicity of the piece is both genuinely funny, and truly horrifying.
Award-winning Zombie Movie shuffles onto Steam [Computer and Video Games]
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Sweet Jesus! New Battlefield 2142 Screens!
Stompy mechs! Exquisitely rendered rocket tails! Sunny blue skies! Shooty little hoverbots! Splosions!
Yanked right out of Computer and Video Games’ grippy little fingers and smeared, still steaming, all over Kotaku’s head and neck. Come readers, let us stare into the future of fun… together.
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Xblocks Multi-Surface Maze
Design team Victor Szilagyi & Tristam Sparks are currently exhibiting their artsy-fartsy sculpture “Xblocks”, a dual-surface maze game that looks reminiscent of old Donkey Kong.
xBlocks is a convergence between video games & sculpture — liberating play from the screen. It is a mixed reality installation inspired by traditional platform games of the late 1980s such as Super Mario Brothers or Pitfall. Using standard game controllers, two opposing players must help their characters navigate in and around a three dimensional maze. The real challenge comes, not from traditional game mechanics but rather from moving with your character as he sprints around corners and jumps between the installation’s two play surfaces.
The link between “fine” art and video games seems to be gaining strength lately, but most of it strikes me as rather half-assed.
This would be a neat little toy, miniaturized. I can see it being sold in the SkyMall catalogue alongside electronic limb-removal kits for housecats (”Cauterize Without the Caterwaul!”) and combination desk fan/windchimes.
Xblocks [Milog, via Randform.org]
Today in Joystiq: June 8, 2006
News
Not-so Classic Wii downloads less than $10
“Erotic” themes too much for Sony in America
Amazing Crysis (PC) comparison pics
New Project Gray Company artwork
Take-Two gets foreboding slap on wrist by FTC
New GRAW content deploying this month
Metal Gear fanboys: Kojima Productions wants you!
XBLA: SFII in June for $5, Lumines in Aug/Sep for $15
DS gets ‘Point Blank’ tap, light gun not required
BestBuy.com wants your Wii gaming loot now
Rumors & Speculation
Rare’s Jetpac rumored for Xbox Live Arcade
Nintendo granted messaging patent — Wii IM?
Rumor: Indie darling Darwinia to hit XBLA?
Culture
Nintendo’s 20 year reunion
Federal judge caught playing solitaire during a trial
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X-Men Legends II
Obtain Superman like skills as X-Men, yeah I went there.
BestBuy.com wants your Wii gaming loot now
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Business
Got some money you feel like letting a giant corporation — one with a lackluster record when it comes to gaming — have in exchange for … well, their word? Big box behemoth Best Buy’s online counterpart would be just thrilled to take your $49.99 per game in exchange for them holding a copy of the mass produced merch when it’s released.
One can make the case for pre-ordering and reserving consoles — despite how badly gaming retailers FUBARed their 360 allocations last year — but software? C’mon! With the exception of Red Steel, those aren’t even launch titles! Nintendo’s even said Brawl won’t be out until “after the turn of the year.” Sure, BestBuy.com looks a little sleazy, but if folks are willing to part with their loot for little more than the promise of something that hasn’t been dated or priced, who can blame them? Get rich quick scheme #42: open online gaming shop, take pre-orders for Metal Gear Solid 5, retire!
Buy early, buy often:
PS3 titles listed for Oct. 1st and ready for pre-order
More Revolution pre-release madness from GameStop
Zelda Revolution: wishful thinking or calculated scam?
Halo 3 on pre-sale
[Via Engadget]
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Mario Kart Source, for All Your Mario Kart Needs
A rough and tumble gang of Halflife 2 modders are on the go with Mario Kart Source, which is exactly what it sounds like: a Mario Kart mod for HL2.
Apparently the finished game will include models from Mario and Halflife, as well as familiar weapons and maps based of previous Karting adventures.
Any sort of modding is neat in a basic, “making stuff” sense, but I dearly wish people would try harder to come up with their own brainleavings instead of working so hard on ripping off previous properties.
It’s bad enough that such a large chunk of Nintendo games have us staring at yet another primary palette of princesses and plumbers (sick of Mario?! Blasphemy! I am so fired!), but when the fanboys insist on churning out even more of it, it becomes suffocating.
This is not the last time you will hear me say this: I am from the future, and I have come here to tell you to do new things.
Mario Kart Source [via Digg]
Gay Gamer Survey
In Newsweekly, companion website to In Newsweekly, New England’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender news and entertainment weekly, has posted a story on a new survey meant specifically for GLBT gamers, or “gaymers” as the article so coyly quotates.
The whole piece stinks of two things I hate: splitting an already disadvantaged minority (gamers) into potentially conflicting factions; and assigning previously-constructed stereotypes to the new group.
First we need to prove that homosexual gamers even exist. Yeah it sounds ridiculous, but that’s where you have to start on something like this. This survey is an attempt to quantify the existence of an invisible minority.
I think this minority is invisible because who a gamer likes to boink has no practical application here, except possibly as a marketing tool. It’s the same issue I have with the constant barrage of “women in games” crowing: the longer we tell each other that a gamer girl is a rare and mysterious thing, the longer she will remain so.
I’m with Dan Savage on this issue. Let homosexuality be normal. True tolerance isn’t making special recognitions of your fellow gamers’ differences, but simply not caring in the first place.
As a possibly self-defeating aside, I once got warned by Blizzard for saying “hey it’s okay to be gay” in Barrens Chat. Amid an ocean of “stfu fagget”. So now I say it every chance I get.
Gay video game player survey [In Newsweekly]
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Related: Gaymer’s Survey
PingK: Electric Kool-Aid Acid Pong
Thanks to Kotaku fave Destructoid for pointing out this soothing and tranquil video for PingK, which is Pong on some sort of electric kool-aid acid test. Although pretty to watch, like hallucinogenic waves lapping the sanity of the mind, It’s Pong, so it’s probably not really worth playing. But if you feel so compelled, you can grab the game here.
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Changing Stereotypes or Just Replacing Them?
Islamic developers are working hard, producing titles that will hopefully appeal to the youngsters. Over in Syria, developers are working on Al-Quraysh, a strategy game that depicts the first 100 years of Islamic history from the eyes of Bedouins, Arabs, Persians and Romans.
“Al-Quraysh is going to help people in the West better understand the people who are living in the East,” says Radwan Kasimya. Besides Al-Quraysh, his company Afkar Media has previously released games like Under Siege with Palestinian themes. Critics say the games perpetuate stereotypes by replacing extremist Muslims with extremist Jews.
But, what do the gamers think?
“We do want to put Arabs in games and show that we have a civilization, we respect other people, and that we are not aggressors,” says 26 year-old Mohamad Hamzeh. “But it’s hard to really get into a game like Under Siege. When you are in 2005 and you find a game that was released in 1995 that was much more advanced, it is not good. You must feel the challenge in the game. They are paying so much attention to the political and religious part, they are not concentrating on the technical parts of the game.”
Gamers don’t want political or religious games, but simply good games. And that is universal.
More Here [CS Monitor] Thanks, Dr. Menlo!
Warning! DS Lite press boxes booby trapped!
Filed under: Nintendo DS
A cautionary warning to any members of the esteemed gaming press who have not yet opened that package from Nintendo that’s sitting on the counter … beckoning you. If you’re faint of heart, allergic to trumpets, or if white LEDs give you an embarrassing rash, please do not open the package! Instead, take it immediately to the closest postal facility and mail it to us immediately so we can, ahem … properly dispose of it.
Luckily for him, Joe Hutsko — TV Guide’s gadget guy — suffers from none of the aforementioned afflictions. No matter, his carefully booby trapped box was busted! After some MacGyver work using nothing but, uh, his fingers and a faulty wire, he got the thing breathing just long enough to capture the beast on film. The video shows the carefully orchestrated package detonating trumpeting its opening with great fanfare! Yay!
[Thanks, Joe]
(Update: embedded video of “the opening” from Penny Arcade, after the break. Completists can check out a similar video at IGN. Thanks, Eric)
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D&D Online Adds Solo Play Instead of More, New, Better Content
In a bid to bring in more players to their sparsely populated and just as sparsely designed MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, Turbine’s created a solo area for MMORPG gamers who prefer to play alone.
To which I ask: huh? I just don’t get these people — the guys who base their decision on whether or not to buy an MMOG upon whether or not they can play the game solo. It’s nice for MMOGs to be a bit solo friendly, allowing you to have some fun when you can’t get a group or your buddies aren’t around. But I know entire swathes of gamers who are perfectly happy to pay $15 a month so they can essentially play it like a single player game.
In addition to the new solo area, D&D Online is making the game easier: you can level with less experience. Considering many people are already very easily able to max their level in D&D Online’s month free play time, this seems like a rather boneheaded move towards customer retainment. The game’s failing because it needs more and better content, not because it’s too hard.
Dungeons & Dragons Online Adds Solo Play [1UP]
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A Tutorial in Xbox Live Smack Talk
A nine point guide to learning how to talk like a foul-mouthed thirteen year-old. This is why “mute” was invented, you friggin’ noob punk.
Posted Here [VideoGamesBlogger]
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