Archive for September 9th, 2006
Let’s Have A Dreamcast Love-In!
My fellow Kotakuites, I’d like to take a break from the usual news and posts about random gaming weirdness and spend a little time reminiscing. I want us all to take a few minutes and appreciate our Dreamcasts. Today marks the seventh year anniversary of the North American launch of the little white devil, a beautifully compact monster that spawned some of the best games of the generation. So go to the closet, unhook that unsightly Xbox from your composite inputs, and lets have a classic Sega gaming freakout.
I’ve still got mine hooked up to my living room television, a copy of Samba de Amigo nestled within, a pair of official electronic maracas no more than six feet away from the console.
Tonight I’ll be firing up some games I haven’t played in years: Phantasy Star Online, Ikaruga, Cosmic Smash, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Bangai-O and Zero Gunner 2. (Yes, I’ll be staying in this Saturday night, unfortunately.) Maybe I’ll see if I can work in some Jet Grind Radio, but that might be pushing it.
I’ll tell you what I remember most about my Dreamcast after the jump, and I invite you to chime in with your thoughts on the best console of the very late 90’s.
My first Dreamcast (aka Katana) memory was seeing screenshots of the awful Godzilla Generations and that bizarre disembodied head floating around a (at the time) mindblowingly rendered city. As a long time Sega fan, I was already hooked.
The next outstanding teary-eyed moment was my first hands-on experience. My friend Corey and I rented a Japanese console, as well as copies of Power Stone, House of the Dead 2 and Blue Stinger. After enjoying some 3D brawling and zombie shooting—not to mention the recreational pharmaceuticals and ensuing Taco Bell feast—we laughed ourselves silly by the travesty that was Blue Stinger. Good times.
Sega’s September 9 launch was also my first experience with midnight mania. Already having taken the next day off from work (I was REALLY psyched) I left my live-in girlfriend to her rest while I ventured to the mall, to queue up with my fellow nerds. After waiting in line for 90 minutes, I walked out with my console, Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Power Stone and Hydro Thunder. Sadly, I was too tired to actually play the damn thing when I got home, but dedicated most of my day locked on to the giant Dreamcast controller.
I’ve had many parties and some impromptu band sleep overs that almost always resulted in someone asking to fire up the Samba de Amigo party machine. Hell, we even had drunken sessions with Typing of the Dead.
I remember getting “hit on” for the first time in an online game by a bunch of dudes in Phantasy Star Online, as my adorable HUnewearl Mika pranced about the station, looking for free gear. Men. So predictable.
Oh, I suppose I could go on and on about my time with my Seaman, my first import game purchase ever in Ikaruga, spending $80 on maracas when I was barely making rent, playing NFL2K1 online and loving it, buying all those great Capcom fighting games and rarely playing them, blowing my Shenmue per diem on capsule toys, but we’d be here all night.
Let us know in the comments just how much you love your Dreamcast, or, when you Dreamcast noob slackers are finally going to go out and pick one up and restore your gaming cred. Ikaruga, here I come!
Nolan Bushnell Atari 7800 Fetching Big Bucks
Attention Atari collectors! Currently being auctioned on eBay is the above pictured, ultra rare “Nolan Bushnell Signature Series Atari 7800″. For you kids too young to have ever dragged your parents to one of Bushnell’s Chuck E. Cheese’s, he’s the founder of Atari. Go on, look it up!
Here’s the deal with this very fashionable old-school console:
A few years ago, we were contracted to assist in the production of NEW Atari 7800 units. They were to be emblazoned with Nolan Bushnell’s signature, a large Atari logo on the front of the case, and “Signature Series” over on the right.
Unfortunately, this project never entered production, and very few of these 7800’s were built. In fact, the 7800 pictured in this auction has one of the pre-production plastic housings, with the guts of a production 7800 unit inside. While new 7800 motherboards were designed (by us!) for this new product, very few of these motherboards exist, and only one board was ever populated.
Look, you have less than 2 days to snag this piece of obsessive collecting history. Auction price at time of publish was $560 so sell that kidney if you have to and get bidding!
Rare Nolan Bushnell Signature Series Atari 7800 Console
Rule of Rose Video Preview!
eToychest was kind enough to point this out to me and since I can let no Rule of Rose material slip through my grasp, I am logging it here with mad glee. This video documents a bit of movement and a boss fight, and talks about various dog functions and the overall mechanic of the game.
The reviewer says the dog is used primarily for locating objects and solving puzzles, generally with a “find” command with which you can match keys to locks and so on. The beast helps in combat by distracting critters so Jennifer can run, but doesn’t appear to inflict or absorb damage.
It also looks like combat is not a big part of the game at all, and in fact is to be mostly avoided. I’ve heard reports of frustration from people who got their hands on a review copy that boss fights are annoying, due to the three-strikes-you’re-dead feature. I usually don’t mind low character health or even one-shot kills (remember Bushido Blade? That game was sweet.), so I don’t think it’ll be insurmountable.
Overall, the game is reputedly more along the lines of an old-school adventure game than a survival horror, the difference being the focus on the combat that survival horror usually entails. I will definitely be picking this up, but any review I give will be late because I’ll be getting it the same time everyone else does. But my review will have a lot more literary references, of that much you can be sure.
more here [eToychest]
Touchscreen Starcraft demonstrates how RTS games were meant to be played
Filed under: Culture, Hacks, Mac, PC, Strategy, Video
This footage of touch-screen Starcraft (greatest real-time strategy game ever, by Blizzard, naturally) sizzles.
Lest ye doubters think it fake, consider: (a) this isn’t the game’s replay interface, (b) the mouse pointer teleports to the exact location of finger touches.
Looks real. Looks rad. Also looks a tad clunky. With an RTS game that’s been coded from the ground up for touch-screen interface, we’d be converts. Blizzard, make it happen in SC3!
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A Very Special Edition Of Gears Of War
I hope you read that right. This isn’t a very special “episode” of Gears of War. Marcus Fenix isn’t going to weigh the moral decisions of “going all the way” with his boyfriend, a la Tootie from that Facts of Life episode that’s indelibly burned into my noodle. This is simply all the stuff you’ll get when you buy the tin can version of Gears of War.
For the shockingly high price of $70, you’ll get Destroyed Beauty, the Gears of War hardbound art book as well as a bonus special features DVD, which includes “an inside look at the making of Gears of War, the “Art of Gears of War” trailer and “Gears of War: The Race to E3″. It’ll all come in a lovely metal case with alternate artwork, like all good “collector’s editions” do.
Cheapskates can obviously wait for the DVD contents to be uploaded to your BitTorrent host of choice while checking out the already scanned in artwork that’s been up since E3. Or you can just wait for the flood of “limited” editions to come roaring back into stores a few months after release. Or you can just buy the damn thing, you bum!
Destroyed Beauty: The Art of Gears of War
This Day in Gaming, September 9th
1996: Capcom releases X-Men vs. Street Fighter in Japan for PS. While the game is fun, does anyone think that Chun-Li really stands a chance against Storm? Chun-Li has a lightning kick. Storm has lightning. Yeah, the real thing.
1999: Acclaim releases TrickStyle for Dreamcast. The game is racing/stunt game set on hoverboards. Yup - full Back to the Future II style action. How is it 2006 and we still don’t have hoverboards? And no, Segways don’t freakin’ count.
2004: Capcom releases Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2 for PS2 in Japan. The Outbreak games feel a lot like the deleted scenes in a movie: floating around with no real purpose, justifiably added to the cutting room floor. Go ahead; flame away.
Have gaming history, trivia, or famous birthdays you’d like to see in TDIG? Drop us a line at tdig@kotaku.com
EA: Spore is PC only … for now
Filed under: PC, Nintendo Wii
Despite Will Wright’s dreams to put Spore on every medium known to man, Electronic Arts has released a statement to taper off expectations that the Sim Everything is fast approaching a release onto any next-gen consoles. “Though we’re investigating the possibilities of bringing the franchise to other platforms in the future,” the statement reads, “any announcements or confirmations for the Wii or any other platform would be premature.”
The Wii reference may be a direct result of UK magazine NGamer’s recent article that suggests Spore is coming to Nintendo Wii in Spring 2007. As it stands, Wright’s team is “100% focused on finishing Spore on the PC and PC only.” That said, you’d have to be pretty foolish to believe Spore will remain exclusive to any format. Like The Sims before it, Wright’s latest project will likely invade every screen — television, computer, mobile phone, etc. — on Earth.
[via Evil Avatar]
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LEGO Batman, Fanboys Coming
Traveller’s Tales knows when they’ve got a goldmine on their hands. After the successful double licensing cash cow that was LEGO Star Wars, they’re moving onto the next LEGO block fanboy love-in, Batman.
According to CVG, the Dark Knight will be featured in his own blocky, kid friendly detective adventure with development already underway.
Sadly, no screens or further details exist, but with LEGO Star Wars II on the cusp of release, anything more than this unofficial announcement might just cause adult children—like yours truly—to uncontrollably issue a release of their own… in their pants.
Holy LEGO Batman! [CVG]
Msoft Pulls Plug on Halo RTS Mod
Fan-made Halo real-time strategy mod Halogen was just kicked to death by Microsoft lawyers.
Last night Slip Stream Productions posted an open letter to readers on their forums saying that after three years of production with nary a word from Microsoft, the company has decided to sick their lawyers on the project and tell the development team to stop working on Halogen because they are infringing on the intellectual property of Bungie Studios.
The forums, site and Moddb profile will be shut down within a week.
Dear Friends,
For the last three years, we’ve worked incessantly to bring you the best Halo mod that we could. There have been a lot of ups and downs, but somehow Halogen has always managed to come out kicking. The problem with using copyrighted intellectual property as a base for a fan project is that you’re very susceptible to legal action. We always figured that since Halogen was such a different take on the Halo franchise, we might manage to make it without incident. That changed today.
Hours ago, we finally recieved the words we’ve been dreading since the mod started to get noticed. Microsoft has decided that we are infringing on the intellectual property of Bungie Studios and has asked us to stop development on Halogen.
I was going to write a big sappy letter here, but what’s the point. So..that’s it then, I guess. The forums, site, and Moddb profile will all be shut down within the week. I can’t say it hasn’t been fun. It’s a shame it has to end like this, but I suppose that’s how it goes. Thanks, guys, for all the time you’ve spent supporting us. It’s been a pleasure. We hate this as much as you do.
- The Halogen Team
Yes, I realize that Microsoft owns the rights to the IP, but waiting three years to tell a group of fans to can their work seems particularly low to me.
What Goes Around [Slipstream Productions, via Destructoid]
Impression of the Viva Pinata Cartoon
I just finished watching the premiere of Viva Pinata with my 5-year-od son. He loved it, I thought it was typical empty children’s programming.
Obviously, the show is made for children, but I find that children’s cartoons come in two flavors: the kind that only children can enjoy and the kind loaded with jokes that only adults get. This one is definitely of the first sort.
While I found Viva Pinata relatively boring, Tristan really seemed to be into it. He thought it was funny that the show was peopled entirely by Pinatas and asked when the show would be on again.
Despite what I thought, the game didn’t really seem loaded with game references. Sure, there were a couple: Every time a pinata broke in some way candy would spill out and a bunch of other pinatas would rush over and eat it. I think it was meant to be cute, but I found it more disturbing than anything else.
I did learn one thing from the second episode in the half hour broadcast. A plot point lets you know that if a Horsetachio (that’s a horse pinata) eats blackberries and daisies they turn into a Zomba, which looked to be a striped horse pinata.
Meh.
Second Life Hacked, Players Outed, Passwords Shut Down
All of the privacy-loving Second Lifers have gotta be in mourning this weekend, Robert Linden has confirmed that the Second Life database was hacked and some of their unencrypted customer information, including account names, real life names and contact information, was stolen.
Linden goes on to say that the hack attack, which happened on Sept. 6, did not include the theft of any unencrypted credit card information.
The company has invalidated all Second Life account passwords. Linden is asking all players to reset their passwords using the website and says that phone support will be up and running by Monday.
Wow, is this the largest hack of a game ever or just the most shocking?
Full statement after the jump.
Urgent Security Announcement [Second Life]
On September 6 we discovered evidence that an intruder was able to access the Second Life database through the web servers. The exploit was shut down on the afternoon of September 6 when we discovered it.
Detailed investigation over the last two days confirmed that some of the unencrypted customer information stored in the database was compromised, potentially including Second Life account names, real life names and contact information, along with encrypted account passwords and encrypted payment information.
No unencrypted credit card information is stored on the database in question. Unencrypted credit card information has not been compromised.
As a precaution we have invalidated all Second Life account passwords. In order to log-in to Second Life you will have to create a new password. Please access the log-in page at https://secondlife.com/password, and click on the “Forgot Password” link. An email will be sent to the email address you have registered with us. (Don’t forget to check your spam filter!) Please click through the link in that email, answer the security question, and create a new password.
Passwords cannot be changed over the phone at this time. Phone support for password issues will be available starting Monday, September 11.
Splinter Cell a Wii Launch Title
Ubisoft has confirmed that Splinter Cell Double Agent will be a launch title for the Wii. Though at the end of the IGN article announcing that, it does say “launch window.”
“We are very excited to bring Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent to the Wii this holiday season,” said Tony Key, vice president of marketing at Ubisoft. “The Splinter Cell franchise has always translated very well across multiple platforms and we are confident that the Wii version will continue the tradition of maximizing the capabilities of each respective video game console platform.”
The Wii version of the game will be based on both the PS2 and GameCube versions, with enhancements made to both gameplay and graphics, according to IGN. While the game won’t have all of the levels that are going to be in the Xbox 360 version, it will make use of Wii’s controls. The game also won’t support online play.
Man, I hope that isn’t the way Wii games are headed, comparatively janky graphics and gimped online for sweet hand-thrusting controls. I want it all, not just innovation.
More screens after the jump.
Splinter Cell Launching With Wii [IGN]
Awful CD-i Zelda games get remixed
Filed under: Retro, Action, Adventure
While checking out Something Awful’s recent, videogame-themed Photoshop Phriday contest, we couldn’t help but notice a link to the site’s latest Flash Tub feature, which actually manages to make something good out of the eminently forgettable CD-i Zelda games. Apparently, some SA forum members took audio clips from the games’ hilariously bad dialogue and remixed them into some maddeningly catchy techno songs. They even went so far as to create a so-bad-its-good Flash animation for one of the songs, which has a hook that will have you mumbling “I can’t wait to bomb some dodongos” all weekend.
Click the read link to view the video and download MP3s of some of the remixes, or continue reading for some hilarious YouTube video of the source material.
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McDonald’s rips off Gordon College Mario show
This isn’t the first time in recent memory that Nintendo and McDonald’s have joined forces (remember that free DS WiFi?), and they do share an public relations company (GolinHarris), and now McDonald’s tapping the rich vein of internet phenomenons that Nintendo seems to cultivate so effortlessly. Their commercial borrows liberally from Breton’s performance, even going so far as to recycle that fancy pause effect. We’ve contacted Breton for his response but, in the meantime, check out both videos embedded after the break and make your own decision. Did McDonald’s rip off the little guy and, if they did, so what?
[Via digg]
The Original
McDonald’s
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Wii-eel attachment looks rather un-wii-ldy
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Driving
Oh, the fanboys are going to hate us for this one …
With eight launch titles, including the much-hyped exclusive Red Steel, there’s no denying that Ubisoft is an avid supporter of the Nintendo Wii. For the launch title GT Pro, however, Ubisoft is preparing to set a dangerous trend by packaging what appears to be a cheap plastic steering wheel attachment.
Shown to IGN, neither the concept art nor supposed prototype give the impression that this attachment is anything more than a large, plastic donut. The interview claims that this attachment will work with any racing gaming — and unless there is a stand involved with the wheel, we’d go so far as to say it could work with any game that doesn’t need the use of the Wiimote’s trigger button.
Does this mark the beginning of an over-saturation of Wii attachments, thus cheapening the controller as a whole? The nunchuks have an accelerometer and the zapper has trigger and added joystick, but the steering wheel looks to add nothing to functionality.
Prove us wrong, Ubisoft.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
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Sassify your inner econ geek
Filed under: Mac, PC, Wireless, Online, Strategy, MMO, Business
How do you control inflation in a MMOG economy so that new players feel they’ve got a chance to catch up to rich, long-time players? How do you enable a healthy secondary market for objects? How do you encourage user-generated crafting and content creation?
Sam Lewis, lead designer of the Cartoon Network MMOG, presented his views on the topic this week at the Austin Games Conference. His goal: educate the audience on the ways in which basic economic theories can help designers create better, healthier MMOGs.
So, out of the bajillion MMOs we saw unveiled at E3 this year, how many do ya reckon were created by designers who paid any attention to basic economic design principles? This is why really good game designers are so rare: they need to be true renaissance (wo)men.
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