Archive for August 7th, 2006
Eat this GameCube, Birthday Boy!
Today’s nerd hero, reader Timothy, zapped us a pic of this delicious-looking game cake. He explains:
This picture was taken at my wedding in June. My birthday was 3 days before the wedding and my wife had the wedding cake baker make a birthday cake for me for at the reception in the shape of a Gamecube. Sadly, only part of the controller is visible in this picture. I knew nothing about it until we got to the reception. It was a wonderfully nerdy moment on an otherwise not nerdy day.
Birthday three days before your wedding? Good thinking! That way you’ll never forget your anniversary.
“Zombies Ate My Neighbors” Short Film Adaptation
This is the first episode of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, a live-action send-up of the much-loved 1994 console game of the same name. The plot differs from the game, but the main characters Zeek and Julie are still there.
The video - part 1 in a trilogy of 3-minute shorts - follows the unlikely Zeek and Julie as they encounter and easily dispatch a few zombies amidst the chaos of a funeral…more zombie slaying is coming, but we’ll have to wait for the rest of the series to know how it ends.
[...]
Here’s how the competition works: There are three rounds of voting. Round 1, which began about a week ago, goes until September 1st. Then, 50 top voted shorts will be chosen to go on to round 2. Round 2 is a lot like Round 1 except that, by the end, only 10 top voted shorts will make it through. In the end there will be prizes and a whole lot of hullaballoo for the first three finalists.
I love independent movies, even the wee tiny ones that end up clogging up the intertubes like so many balls of hair and scalp grease down a shower drain, so I feel a warming of the something-or-other when I tell you to check out the thingies on this whatsit-list.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors Adaptation in TheProject.TV Short Film Contest [GamesFirst]
Lumines Live Dated
Just when I was started to get bored with the Xbox Live Wednesdays, alongs comes a reason to log-in to your 360 on humpday: Lumines Live.
According to the latest Live Arcade schedule, the 360-flavored Lumines hits on Sept. 6. Here’s the rest of the kinda mediocre schedule:
09 August: Pac-Man
16 August: Texas Hold ‘Em
23 August: Time Pilot
30 August: Scramble
06 September: Lumines Live!
XBLW Sked [Official Xbox Magazine]
New Lite Cracks Inspire Droll Repartee
With Nintendo gracefully acknowledging the Lite’s hinge cracks and fixing them left and right, I felt justified in my choice of keeping my ol’ reliable fatty on hand. And alas, a new crack seems to have reared its crackity head.
The new crack, which may or may not be epidemic (weigh in, Lite owners), seems hinge-related, and “may render the DS unplayable”.
The best part of this is not the post itself, or the documentative photographs, but rather the extremely effete snarking in the comment thread where the image at right was originally posted.
Originally Posted by 51|RandoM
Things break. Portable things tend to break even more than things that just sit there. Portable things with moving parts break even more.Welcome to reality, perhaps you should’ve stuck with the matrix where nothing ever breaks.
[Mason says:] Stirring.
I don’t think the issue anyone has is with the impermanence of forms, but rather how frequently these rather expensive forms are demonstrating their impermanence.
Well spoken, Mason. Tycho would be proud.
The New DS Lite Crack [Game Break]
Forum thread on the new crack [Evil Avatar forums]
Mapping the Metaverse
Terra Nova is where I go when I get sick of the high-pitched squealing accompanying rumors of the nth Mariotroidelda release for the Wiiiiiii that’s found on the majority of blogs on my feed. I think of the writers there as being the Algonquin Round Table of the Internets Too Point Oh, lounging about in a plush, yet masculine den and discussing Horde/Alliance ratios over port and cigars.
Ren Reynolds, one of the Nouveau Terran writers, posits that an adequate mapping system for the make-believe worlds we live in has not been achieved, and asks readers, the Internet, and god almighty for a solution:
Like other TNers and probably a good slice of our readers I’m all over the metaverse, sometimes in multiple spaces at the same time - Second Life, WoW, There, EvE, SWG and those ‘almost-spaces’ like Animal Crossing; heck I might even get a Cyworld account.
[...]I have this shadow in my mind you see. Like the cube is a partial shadow of a tesseract. I can feel the space of virtual spaces that I want to see mapped and made into a geographical metaphor. I want someone clever and creative to go invent a way to easily understand the relative positions in virtual spaces that we occupy. I know it’s not just a list of IDs, or a flat diagram - I know what it isn’t but I don’t know what is is.
I find this immensely intriguing, the thought of visually mapping something so ethereal. It will take a steady hand and a solid mix of art, design and engineering to successfully create such a construct.
Any Kotaku Scouts that are so inclined are welcome, nay, encouraged to hit me up at that sidebarred email address with ideas along these lines, including rambling diatribes and ambling diagrams.
Or you could just read the rest of Ren’s article and comment there [Terra Nova]
Real Life Excite Bike?
Double back flip? This guy must have been raised on Excite Bike.
Excite Bike [GGA]
Wii Flavored Super Mario Strikers Coming
Matt Casamassina reports over on IGN that a Super Mario Strikers sequel is in the works for the Wii. The sequel, he says, will be unveiled later this month at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany this year.
I hope this rumor is true, I love the original and the Wii Mote could make this game a lot more fun.
Video of Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam for Wii
Nintendo denies Space World, speculates on Mario at launch
‘No more online gaming for you!’ says EA
EA does give a sh-t about System Shock 3, says PC Gamer UK
Games shipping this week
Pols want “Truth in Video Game Rating Act”
Chinese spend the most time online
Laguna Beach video game coming soon!
id: Piracy killing PC gaming market
IGN, Gamespot review score inflation revealed
Production company ready to whore out Castlevania
A video review of Star Fox Command
Goodbye PowerMac, hello Mac Pro
New Bullet Witch preview vids
Wii to tango with Latin America in December, price is high
Sam & Max will be point & click
Prince of Persia now confirmed for Wii
Enchanted Arms embraces bilingualism
Swarm Dead Rising producer at signing tomorrow
Rumors & Speculation
IGN: Mario Strikers sequel to hit Wii
‘XBLA Wednesdays’ looks to keep rolling, Konami leading the charge
Portable Gamecube rumor returns briefly
Toys
Majora’s Mask Fierce Deity Link figurine
Steal this toy: GTA Vice City action figures
Culture
WoW joins emo kids on MySpace
How to get the most out of your Dead Rising demo
Is the DS Lite too small for the large handed?
The HL2: Episode 1 black hole grenade
The Unbelievers: fair reviews by being blatantly unfair
Dancing Elves? It’s fun to stay at the WOW-M-C-A
Buy an N-Gage, seriously
StarCraft greatness: The perfect SCV Rush
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Penny Arcade Case Mod
Nothing says hardcore gamer nerd like a Fruitfucker case mod. Cathode Tan points to this lovely creation that is one part gamebot, one part ode to Penny Arcade.
Penny Arcade Case Mod [Cathode Tan]
The State of Japan’s Arcades
Newsweek gets its quarter on with a look at Japan’s relatively healthy arcade business.
There are 9,500 arcades in the country with more than 445,000 game machines made by Japanese companies like Namco and Capcom, says Masumi Akagi, publisher of Japan’s Game Publisher magazine. In the U.S. of course, the story is much different–arcades are a rapidly dying breed with only about 3,000 in operation down from 10,000 a decade ago.”
…
“So this is what we are missing in America, with our arcades abandoned by the big entertainment and game companies and converted into Baby Gaps. Japan’s “quarter kids” have grown up and are still having fun… Yet there’s evidence that the country is ambivalent about its arcades. Japan is facing a looming demographic nightmare.”
Interesting, though slightly rehashed, stuff.
Newsweek on Japanese Arcades [GameSetWatch]
Where’s Our Goddamned Merchant Ivory?
Gamasutra holds up the mirror to the acne-pocked, wolf-whistling face of the gaming industry in Where’s Our Merchant Ivory, an article that addresses the lack of intellectualism in video games and what it means for the reputation of the genre as a whole.
And it explains, quite nicely, why we need serious, artful games with valuable content.
Elite forms of a medium help to legitimize that medium. They provide status symbols that people who want to be thought of as important and respectable can support. That’s why big corporations and wealthy families give money to ballet companies and symphony orchestras: Publicly sponsoring the elite forms of these arts reflects well on the givers. The élite forms also create shelter in which the less “worthy” forms of the medium can operate more safely. Once an élite form of video games exists, nobody can ever again say, “video games are just a silly waste of time.” Nobody would dream of saying that about music, even if they thought it was true of bubble-gum pop.
The author, Ernest Adams, goes on to explain what this hypothetical Merchant Ivory game would entail (exquisite art and music, meaningful content, excellent writing, moving performances, and like all truly great art, it would be vastly entertaining. Captivating, in fact.
Adams also posits that the Merchat Ivory of gaming is currently Sid Meier, a position I disagree with strenuously. I venture the opinion that Halflife 2 is closer to the gaming-art ideal; a tantalizing mixture of moving content and impressive execution.
Where’s Our Merchant Ivory? [Gamasutra]
Swarm Dead Rising producer at signing tomorrow
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Adventure
Despite his name, Keiji Inafune clearly isn’t the wary type, opting to appear in public tomorrow and openly inviting gamers to inundate him with requests to sign their copies of Dead Rising. The esteemed developer’s latest game, yet another entry into the zombie-ridden shopping mall sim genre, has already generated a great deal of buzz, possibly because it allows you to beat undead cretons to a pulp with baseball bats, benches and finely matured wheels of cheese.
If you plan on attending the signing event tomorrow, here’s what you need to know:
- Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2006
- Time: 4:00PM - 6:00PM
- Location: EB Games, Redmond Town Center
16495 NE 74th Street
Redmond, Washington 98052 (Tel. 425-895-8331) - Demeanor: Approachable, but may unexpectedly and infrequently lunge
And don’t forget, you’ll actually have to purchase a copy of the game in order to have it signed. There will be plenty of free Xbox t-shirts, however, no doubt meant to distract the crowd’s inherent urge to tear Mr. Inafune limb from limb and devour his brain.
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Medal of Honor Coming to PSP
1Up reports on EA’s latest Medal of Honor. Medal of Honor Heroes is the Playstation Portable iteration of the popular franchise. The game will include six multiplayer modes, 32-player support and 15 maps. The campaign, single-player mode lets you unlock 20 different characters for multiplayer use. Sounds kinda cool, though it will totally depend on how they work the controls.
Medal of Honor Heads to Portables [1Up]
Portable Gamecube rumor returns briefly
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii
For several minutes, in fact. Earlier today, IGN’s Matt Casamassina posted an article that served to round up several wily Wii rumors, including the usual price ($229) and launch date (2 Nov. or 12 Nov.) suspects. More interesting, however, was the indication given by mysterious sources that IBM was in the process of shrinking and slowing down the Wii’s Broadway chip for a “future Nintendo handheld — presumably one that plays Gamecube discs.”
Before the rumor managed to fully set in and plunge the masses into unyielding seizures of delight, the article was promptly pulled from the site and replaced by a decidedly unhelpful update. “At the request of our sources, who do not wish to go to jail this week, we have temporarily removed the Wii rumors piece that was posted earlier.” Apparently, the oppressive and joyless Nintendo police were none too pleased with people blabbering about portable Gamecubes to IGN. When the article reappeared, all mention of it had been removed, spirited away to some great rumor recycle bin (send our love to the holographic projector).
Perhaps that’s all there is to this story — there is no portable Gamecube and the article’s editing serves no purpose other than to make it more accurate. Of course, when an article is admittedly based entirely on whispered secrets and industry murmurings, why yank it just to edit out one rumor in particular? Or could it be another high-larious prank devised by Matt’s IGN pals? Time will tell, though we’d rather it be an impatient and stocky time attending the Leipzig Games Convention.
[Thanks Master X 24 & Ryoma!]
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The G-Man Can Dance! And Sing!
Although I personally wouldn’t want to bust in on them in a Men’s Room stall at this year’s Pax, GayGamer is one of my favorite blogs. They have a really good eye for finding interesting game related things. And in their latest post, they managed to scratch my perpetual itch for goofy dancing G-Man videos, accompanied by zany tunes. Yes, that is Tiny Tim!
No Bond game with Casino Royale debut
Filed under: Action, Adventure
With the 21st Bond film, Casino Royale, opening this Holiday season, one would suspect a videogame adaptation to cash in on the movie’s hype. Activision, however, is skipping this film to focus on a Bond game for the recently announced 22nd film, tentatively scheduled for release May 2, 2008.
The previous Bond video games (seven by EA between 2000 and 2005) have received decent to lukewarm reviews. Kudos to Activision for not milking the franchise for all that it’s worth.
The next Bond, based on whatever movie follows Casino Royale, will be developed by Treyarch. Activision will release games based on Shrek 3, Spider-Man 3, and Transformers during the first quarter of fiscal 2008, which begins April 1, 2007.
[via Eurogamer]
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Enchanted Arms embraces bilingualism
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, RPGs
Due for release on 29 August, Enchanted Arms is the fully localized version of From Software’s more awkwardly named and rather annoyingly capitalized [eM] eNCHANT arM, the first traditional Japanese RPG to emerge on the Xbox 360. For its American release, the fine French folks at Ubisoft have bravely volunteered to publish the game and translate the gratuitous amounts of Japanese voice and text into something more palatable to a Western audience.
Then again, many localizations turn out be anything but palatable, representing the aural equivalent of vicious food poisoning. The mere memory of Shenmue’s soulless soccer kids causes great discomfort and anxiety, feelings that are slightly dimmed by Ubisoft’s intentions to include both Japanese and English soundtracks on the Enchanted Arms disc. Excellent news, to be sure, but frustrating in the sense that Ubisoft is one of the few publishers that actually does put a great deal of care into cinematic presentation, generally avoiding talentless talkers who end up in the recording studio through sheer chance. Based on Grandia II, their English efforts might not be nearly embarrassing enough to warrant this feature.
And really, “feature” is a good word to describe it. With advanced compression techniques and new, Blu-tinged storage mediums arriving, there should be no reason for gamers not to have a choice in who they hear blathering about chosen ones and ancient, poorly imprisoned evils. It’s about time that publishers and developers realized that poor voice acting is no laughing matter.
[A video involving magical limbs is embedded in the second part of the post.]
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Metroid… METAL!
I love this little picture of Samus rocking out with her 8-bit guitar. What is she thrashing? Metroid tunes gone metal, naturally.
MetroidMetal.com is a place to celebrate the mysterious and hypnotic melodies from Nintendo’s classic game series, Metroid.
These songs beg for more energy, so I’ve created this site to experiment with the genre that would suit these songs the best… metal.
Now if only we could get Torokun to do an image of a bikini-clad Samus climbing out of her mech-armor, sticking out her tongue and flashing devil horns.
Metroid Metal (Thanks, Vincent!)
Prince of Persia now confirmed for Wii
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Action, Adventure, Fighting, Business
After last week’s French slip that Prince of Persia will be making an appearance on the Wii, the company has now confirmed — in English — that the game is in fact coming to the console.
A spokesperson for Ubisoft told IGN that PoP will be a Wii title: “I can confirm that a game based on the popular Prince of Persia franchise is one of many titles Ubisoft has in development for Nintendo’s Wii. At this time we can not provide an official date for the game or any additional information about it.”
There, glad that that’s settled. Let the Wiimote use speculation commence.
[Thanks, Davis and Hank]
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Meet The Super Otaku
For newcomers, our name Kotaku is taken from the Japanese words “ko” (small) and “otaku” (fanatic). It isn’t a real word per se, but something somebody whipped up just for us.
Though, keeping true to our moniker, we are otaku, but in the smallest sense. We like our figurines and nerdy goodies, but only to a point. At the other end of the spectrum are the otaku, AKA the diehard dorks.
Take Tsutomu Nakamura. He’s not a game otaku, but rather follows gravia idols. Closely. He’s not your typical otaku. He’s forty years-old and has been coming to Akihabara for the past three years. He’s had his pic taken with over a thousand idols. He’s apparently spent over 20,000,000 yen (US $170,000) on idoru-related goods.
Something happened to Nakamura-san three and a half years ago, and I don’t think it was he won the lottery. Or maybe it was.
More Here [Japan Probe]
