Archive for March 7th, 2007
Osu! Tatakae! Ouenden sequel information trickles out
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, GDC, Rhythm, Business, Galleries
Keiichi Yano, VP of development for iNiS Corporation showed off some concept art, a few screenshots, and offered morsels of information about Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashi. Prospects of the Japanese sequel to Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan had recently trickled out of Nintendo.
Yano said that the title, due this year, will include new features and characters, including rival Ouendan. He also confirmed that those characters will be playable, saying, “From the screenshots, you can gather that you will be playing them. You’re not only playing them. That’s all I can tell you.”
Yano also said, “I can’t tell you,” when asked about plans to use the DS microphone and WiFi in the new version.
Yano didn’t confirm an American version of the new game, saying, “I know it’s going to be an import for most of you. If you do get a chance, please try to check it out.”
Making no Wii announcements, Yano confirmed that that platform is an interest. “Yes, we are talking to Nintendo [about the Wii], and hopefully we’ll have something to talk about soon.”
Gallery: Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashi
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Digital distribution panel: Retail and downloads work together
Filed under: Mac, PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online, GDC, Business
Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal hosted a GDC discussion about digital distribution, featuring panelists from Bioware, Valve, Microsoft, Telltale Games, and GameTap. The session interested us most for its comments on how retail and digital distribution work together and thoughts on the media’s lack of digital-only games coverage.
Valve’s Jason Holtman said, “The myth of digital distribution cannibalizing retail sales isn’t true. … The first couple times we ran [free weekends for games], we found out they increased retail sales as well [as digital sales.]“
Holtman later said, “We love selling our boxed products. We like selling our digital products, too. … Retail is going to be here to stay. It’s a great channel for games. Digital is also a great channel for games.”
Ray Muzka of Bioware said, “They’re incredibly complimentary. … You can get research, you can get data from your digital distribution to make better games.”
Dan Connors of Telltale Games described how his company’s games benefit from initial digital distribution. He said, “By the time it gets to retail, it’s a known quantity. … It was thought of from the ground up that we’re going to launch online and [move to retail.] … I think we’ve managed to take revenues from a range of places.”
Near the end of the session, Croal asked if he and other journalists had covered digital distribution enough. Rick Sanchez of GameTap vehemently said that the press hadn’t and that they don’t know how to treat his game-download service. The other panelists thought their projects were getting enough coverage, although they echoed the slow recognition of their digital projects.
Other than Microsoft’s Xbox Live games, GameTap represented the only company with a digital-only distribution method. Could that affect GameTap’s recognition, because the public — and journalists — still need a boxed copy to take notice?
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And The Console King Is? The PS2. Still.
This holiday season, it wasn’t the PS3, the Xbox 360 or the Wii that came out on top. Oh no, it was the six-year-old PS2, which moved 1.4 million consoles. Wired’s Chris Baker has a piece up over at Slate detailing why the PS2 still is numero uno. Quoting the article:
Luckily for Sony, their old console is so popular—more than 100 million have been sold worldwide—that they can offset some of the money they’re hemorrhaging with the PS3. By continuing to manufacture and support the PS2, Sony is keeping its old customers happy and offering a cheaper alternative for people who can’t afford a next-generation machine. Sony did the same thing last time around and managed to sell more than 20 million of the original PS1 consoles between 2000 and 2004—after the appearance of the PlayStation 2.
This March, God of War 2 will hit the PS2 and looks to be a big time hit. The game’s director, Cory Barlog, tells Baker: “At this point, we know the hardware intimately, we know all the tricks.” Elsewhere, Nintendo and Xbox cut life support for its last gen owners. Sure, charging ridiculous prices for new machines isn’t smart. But is killing off your old console?
PS2, Still Winner [Slate]
Creating Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and its recreation as Elite Beat Agents
Filed under: Culture, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PSP, GDC, Rhythm, Business, Galleries
Keiichi Yano, VP of development for iNiS Corporation created Gitaroo-man and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Americans know him most recently for the conversion of the latter title to Elite Beat Agents. But since the original Japanese rhythm game centered on the rousing Ouendan, at his GDC seminar, Yano explained the process of rebuilding the title for a more American approach with “The Agents.”
With two Ouendan helpers occasionally chiming in, but mostly standing at attention during the presentation, Yano described the history of his company’s titles. He was the game designer and also lead programmer for the company’s first game, Gitaroo-man — “[my ambitious role] was the stupidest thing ever.” He hadn’t created a game before, saying, “[I] studied pretty hard, read all the books, [and] came to GDC. At the end of the development cycle, we thought we had a really good game. … We gained a fair amount of confidence.”
But Gitaroo-man was a retail disappointment. “It sold, like, nothing,” Yano continued. “Any confidence that we had built was completely crushed like a fly. At this point, we had kind of lost all confidence in the music genre. … We really did a lot of soul-searching back then.”
iNiS went on to prototype a new game and show it off to Nintendo. Yano said, “To make a long story short, they thought our idea sucked. … We went on and we kept pitching this game [elsewhere].”
Gallery: Elite Beat Agents concept art
Continue reading Creating Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and its recreation as Elite Beat Agents
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Geometry Wars Turns Up On Vista
No surprises here for 360 owners, but if you’re a PC gamer who’s been all “huh? Geometry Wars?”, Bizarre have released a PC version.
Finally Geometry Wars heads to the PC! Now Windows gamers can download the official Retro Evolved game, and experience a pixel-perfect conversion of the Xbox 360 fan favourite. All of the original enemy and weapon types are present, complete with local leaderboards to track your high scores.
It’ll set you back USD$7.95, or if that’s too costly there’s a free demo as well. It’s Vista-only, though, which is a bit of a shame for those unwilling to take that treacherous plunge.
Geometry Wars on Vista [Bizarre]
New Commodore Gaming PC: “What Gamers Need”
Commodore is back. Make that, Commodore the name is back. The brand has risen from the ashes, and a new Commodore PC geared for PC gaming will launch in Germany at the CeBIT show on March 15th. Commodore Gaming CEO Bala Keilman says that the new gaming PCs will provide “what gamers need and want.” Which is…?
New Commodore Coming [Boing Boing]
Japanese release day highlights: 03.08.07
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii
It’s Thursday — woohoo! That means new releases for Joystiq’s bloggers and readers in Japan (and a “now shipping” date for the import tribe). If you’re here, or there, consider splashing your Yen on these nifty gems:
- Virtua Tennis 3 (”ace,” “a smash,” “grand slam,” etc.; Sega, PS3)
- Bomberman Land Wii (it’s not Bomberman: Act Zero, so just be thankful; Hudson, Wii)
- Eyeshield 21 (an American Football RPG from Nintendo; NCL, Wii)
- Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 29: Monster World Complete Collection (pictured and collected: Wonderboy; not pictured but collected: Monster Land, Wonderboy III, Monster World II, Wonderboy V, Monster World IV; Sega, PS2)
- Seiken Densetsu: Heroes of Mana (it’s a Mana game; SquareEnix, DS)
- Yoshi’s Island DS (home at last; Artoon, DS)
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Take-Two Board Facing Mutiny
The board of Take-Two is about to walk the plank, Reuters are reporting.
Several Take-Two Interactive Software Inc investors have pooled their stakes in the video game company to vote for a slate of director candidates at its upcoming annual meeting, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday
This bit, right here, is where you craft your own “stealth kill” joke. The investors want to oust the chief executive and take a good, long look at the chief financial officer.
I bet October and that GTA game all the kids be talking about can’t come soon enough.
D-Day approaching for Take Two board? [MCV]
Crytek shows CrysisENGINE2, innocent trees shot
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters, GDC, Business, Galleries
Crytek occupies a medium-sized booth space at this year’s GDC show floor. The company, showing its CryENGINE2 to developers, announced that it found its first customer in Avatar Reality, Inc. Hoping to land more interest, the company is hosting a series of rotating presentations about its level editor, sound system, character animation, engine, and other features.
Harald Seeley, Development Director for Crytek briefly spoke with us about the engine and its outlook, saying that it’s at alpha now for the PC, and they’ll ship the SDK to AVI in four to six weeks. Seeley said that Crytek is working to bring CryENGINE2 to the PS3 and Xbox 360, but those plans don’t mean that Crysis will be released on those platforms.
Modders and indie designers should look for a PC version of the development environment bundled with Crysis. Seeley said that the consumer tools offer nearly all of the features of the fully licensed engine, and that modders may be able to work out terms to release commercial software created with the free editor.
Seeley thinks that the commercial version of CryENGINE2 will lead other middleware engines because it was developed for DirectX 10 instead of being prettied up from an older version of the API. He said, “This will become the standard. … [Gamers] won’t be willing to settle for titanium trees any longer. If it looks breakable, if it looks like you should be able to pick it up, [you will.]“
Gallery: Crytek GDC booth
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Castle Crashers GDC ‘07 impressions
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, GDC
Castle Crashers is a chaotic storm of spinning swords, overly aggressive primary colors and the occasional (but never displeasing) decapitation — which is why we like it. Though the GDC demo boasts only a few notable changes from previous iterations, it still warrants a look. A long and loving look accompanied by a forlorn sigh and the formation of a gently sparkling tear.
One of the most interesting things about the game is the manner in which it draws your attention. It’s even a little conflicting, as if two sets of fingers are snapping in your face in an alternating pattern. When you’re not trying to spot your character deep within the colorful anarchy of battle, you’re adopting a wider view of all the over-the-top action. It’s like a tug of war, and one not too dissimilar from the battle between order and chaos that’s at the core of the game.
Continue reading Castle Crashers GDC ‘07 impressions
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Pachinko Wii Game With Online Hitting Japan Soon
Love those spinning silver balls! Sega Sammy’s upcoming Wii title Jissen Pachinko/Pachislot Hisshouhou! Sammy’s Collection Hokuto no Ken Wii will employ both Miis and Wii Wi-Fi for online rankings and in-game avatars. Titled Fighting Pachinko/Pachislot Victory Way! Sammy’s Collection Fist of the North Star Wii in English, the game will hit Japan this May. Interesting bit: Players can use the Wii-mote as a steering wheel to control the spinning balls. Earlier, SNK’s US honcho stated that it didn’t look like Nintendo was going to let third-party publishers include online in their games this year. Then again, he could’ve just been talking about America as a pachinko game probably isn’t hitting the West anytime soon.
Sega Sammy Pachinko Game [Wii Fanboy via 1Up]
Overheard at GDC: “Greatest moment of my life”
Filed under: Culture
“That was the single greatest moment of my life. He stood in front of me, he smiled, he took my game, he signed it, he shook my hand.”
-A passerby, talking on his cell phone about a chance meeting with Shigeru Miyamato, shortly after a presentation by game composer Koji Kondo.
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GDC07: Liveblogging the GDCAwards
About 3,500 people are packed into a sizable ballroom tonight to honor the best and most innovative game developers in the world.
The Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival is, in my opinion, the single best award show honoring games in the world, but I have had a bit to drink.
Hit the jump for the hot live blogging action.
We’re underway with the a dive into indie game development.
We’ll be looking at the best mods first. The finalists for best mod are:
Alan Miranda. Darkness Over Daggerford (NWN)
Spawns of Deflebub (UT)
Eternal Silence (HL2)
Weekday Warrior (HL2)
And the winner is: Weekday Warrior.
Student Showcase finalists are:
Base invaders
Invalid Tangrams
Opera Slinger
Gelatin Joe
And Yet it Moves
Toblo
Euclidean Crisis
The Ball of Bastards
The Blob
And the winner is: Toblo
Wow, oh wow. The team leader for the winning game just proposed to the game’s voice actor on stage. Nice, an award and a wife all in one night.
Excellence in Audio finalists:
Aquaria
Bone: The Great Cow Race
Everyday Shooter
Fizzball
Racing Pitch
And the winner is: Everday Shooter.
Finalists for Excellence in visual arts:
Aquaria
Golf?
Samorost 2
Castle Crashers
Roboblitz
And the winner is: Castle Crashers
The finalists for Design Innovation Awards:
Aquaria
Everyday Shooter
Amradillo Run
Toblo
And the winner is Everyday Shooter
Finalists for Technical Excellence:
Arcane Legions: A Rising Shadow
Armada Online
Bang! Howdy
Blast Miner
Band of Bugs
And the winner is: Bang! Howdy
Best Web Browser Game finalists:
Bubble Islands
Gamma Bros.
Samarost 2
And the winner is: Samarost 2
Now on to the first ever Indie GameTap award. The three winners of this prize will share $50,000 and have their game published on the service.
But first, a really long ad.
Second runner up: Not quite sure, sorry couldn’t hear it.
First runner up: Blast Miner
Winner: Everyday Shooter
The Audience Award winner is Castle Crashers.
The Darwinia team, the winners of last year’s Seumas McNally Awards, just took the stage dressed to the nines in suites decorated with sequin Darwinia symbols. They’re introducing the finalists for this year’s SMAs.
Aquaria
Armadillo Run
Bang! Howdy
Roboblitz
Everyday Shooter
And the winner this year is: Aquaria.
That’s it for the Indie Game Fest. Now on to the Game Developers Choice Awards.
Before getting into the major awards, the show honored three people for innovation in game development:
Bostjan Codets for Line Rider
Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya for Okami (Oh man, Capcom took the stage for the award. Ouch.)
Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiki Yamashita for Wii Sports… Oh, classy, Shigeru took the stage to say thanks personally. He said he’s got plenty to say tomorrow (!!) so he’ll spare us tonight.
Now Double Fine’s Tim Schaeffer is taking the stage to hand out the night’s GDCAs.
New Studio:
Gastronaught Studios for Small Arms
Naked Sky Entertainment for Roboblitz
Iron Lore Entertainment for Titan Quest
Ready at Dawn Studios for Daxter
Wadjet Eye Games for The Shiva
Winner: Iron Lore Entertainment
Best Writing:
Bully
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Sam & Max Ep. 1: Culture Shock
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Best Game Design
Bully
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Viva Pinata
Wii Sports
Winner: Wii Sports
Best Audio
Company of Heroes
DEFCON: Everybody Dies
Guitar Hero II
Tomb Raider: Legend
LocoRoco
Winner: Guitar Hero II
Character Design
Final Fantasy XII
LocoRoco
Okami
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Viva Pinata
Winner: Okami
First Penguin, given out to an innovator who paved the way for others to follow, is being awarded to Alexey Pajitnov. He is known, by many, the man who gave birth to casual games.
Wow, he’s actually here. He just strolled slowly across the stage, arms at his side, wearing a pinstripe jacket and an enormous smile.
“Thank you very very much,. I share the honor of this award with every Tetris publisher Especially I am grateful to Blue Planet software. Thank you very, very, much.”
Best Technology
Company of Heroes
Dead Rising
Gears of War
Rockstar Presentes: Table Tennis
Wii Sports
Winner: Gears of War
Best Visual Arts
Final Fantasy XII
Gears of War
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Viva Pinata
Winner: Gears of War
Community Contribution Award
George “The Fatman” Sanger
Lifetime Achievement Award
Shigeru Miyamoto
“Getting this award makes me feel old and like you want me to retire soon. But I personally feel very young and like I can do this for a long time now. I’ve always had a certain fondness for America and the spirit of America.”
Game of the Year Award
Gears of War
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Wii Sports
Winner: Gears of War
CliffyB: “Holy Shit. This is absolutely unbelievable. Thank you so much frst and formost eveyrone at home who worked so hard to make this happen. I want to thank Microsoft. I want to thank my family. My girlfriend for putting up
Thank you Shigeru Miyamoto for inspiring me to do what I do everyday.”
The End Is Nigh, SingStar PS3 Coming In June
It’s coming. Already, I can see men thinking of ways to hide their PS3s, or this announcement, from their girlfriend/sister/wife.
SingStar will hit the PS3 in Europe in June, and the US in “Autumn”. In addition to the expected previewing and buying of songs over the PlayStation Network, if you’ve got a USB camera you can record yourself singing a track and post it up on the game’s boards, where users can be “rated” by others. Considering this game’s core demographic I can see that getting messy, but hey, that’s Sony’s problem, not mine.
SingStar takes to PS3 stage in June [MCV]
Super Paper Mario GDC ‘07 impressions
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Action, GDC
If you only saw screenshots like the one above, you’d be forgiven for mistaking Super Paper Mario for an All-stars-style update of the original Super Mario Bros. When you see the 95 percent complete build on the GDC show floor, though, it’s easy to see that the game is a true continuation of the Paper Mario series, with a few significant changes thrown in.
Everything you remember from Intelligent Systems’ two Paper Mario games is here — the irreverent writing style, the smoothly animated flat characters set in a detailed polygonal world and the items and leveling structure will all be familiar to Paper Mario fans. The now-familiar Paper Mario sidekicks also return in the form of Pixls — little hovering companions that can perform specialized functions like turning into bombs or grabbing nearby enemies.
What’s changed is how you interact with the enemies — through platform-style jumps instead of turn-based battles. It’s amazing how the lack of jarring, momentum-stealing battles every 30 seconds transforms the game into a more fluid and much more enjoyable experience.
The other major change, as has already been shown in countless online videos, is the ability to switch between a 2D side-view and a 3D over the shoulder view with a tap of the A button. It’s interesting to see the familiar 2D environments converted into sometimes-complex, layered 3D environments, though the puzzles that used this mechanic in the demo seemed pretty facile.
The Wii’s motion-sensitive controls allow for some occasional aerial acrobatics, but for the most part, the game brings back the simple run and jump control scheme of the NES Mario games with little embellishment. Which is just fine by us. Just because the Wii allows for motion-sensitive controls doesn’t mean they should be shoehorned in when other, simpler controls work just as well or better.
Continue reading Super Paper Mario GDC ‘07 impressions
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GDC07: Hecker Kicks, Screams, Rants
Nothing like a conference with like-minded people to give developers a chance to let off some steam. At a little rant session today at GDC, developer Chris Hecker took it upon himself to talk about Nintendo. Oh, sorry, did I say talk? I meant hate on. Some choice excerpts:
“The Wii is a piece of shit!”
“[They need to] make a console that doesn’t suck ass.”
“It’s not clear to me that Nintendo gives a shit about games as an art form.”
Tha’ts not all.
To illustrate his point, he searched for references to games as art on all three console manufacturers web sites. While he found numerous such references on both the official PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sites, Wii.com had none at all. He then shared quotes from executives at Sony and Microsoft talking about games as a serious artistic medium, and then a quote from a Nintendo executive saying the company only wanted to make “fun” games.
Real scientific there. Sit down, Hecker. You’re embarrassing yourself. This “games as art” wankery is getting real old, real fast.
“The Wii is a Piece of Sh*t!” [IGN]
Joystiq not-so-live coverage of the IGF and GDCA awards
Filed under: Culture, Features, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PSP, Microsoft Xbox 360, GDC
6:20 p.m.: The Joystiq crew walks the red carpet, because we’re just that important.
6:33 p.m.: Gnarls Barkley’s cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” is blasting as we find seats in the press section. Cushy seats with recline-able chairs.
6:42 pm: Sam and Max introduce the start for the independent games festival. The mention of projectile vomiting is disturbing, but welcoming somehow.
6:43 pm: Jamil Moledina and Simon Carless march onto stage, noting that the show is being broadcast to the entire world. We sense somewhat sinister undertones.
Continue reading Joystiq not-so-live coverage of the IGF and GDCA awards
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Ashcraft Infiltrates Kojima Productions (Well, Sorta)
Yesterday morning, I arrived in Tokyo a little earlier than scheduled to appear on the Kojima Productions podcast with Ryan Payton. As I’ve mentioned a gazillion times before, I was in town for an article I’m doing for a design magazine. I headed over to Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills to the Kojima Productions office. I hadn’t been there in a while, and security is still ass-tight. Here’s the last time I visited Mori Tower.
I’ve known Ryan for a few years now. We worked on a Wired Mag piece together eons and eons ago — Before he was working for KP. Anyway, it’s was good seeing him again, hanging out for a bit and appearing on his podcast. Not sure when it will air, but will let y’all know when it does.
Didn’t have much time to snoop around the office because I was on a tight schedule, so I was pretty much in and out. There weren’t playable copies of Metal Gear Solid 4 just lying around, but I took a picture of the hallway leading into the room where they are making it. SO EXCITING.
Seen@GDC: Mocap man! On the phone!
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this man was just standing in the middle of GDC’s Moscone West Hall talking on a cell phone in a full motion-capture suit. We’d like to think he was filming an animation sequence for “X-treme Cell Phone Simulator 2: Voice Mail Hell.” In our imaginations, the game is going to be released for PS3 and Xbox 360 but, ironically enough, not for cell phones.
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E3 International Lockout? Not Really
This post on Aussie blog Screen Play has set a few people off this morning, claiming that “Australia and the rest of the non-American world has been locked out of the world’s premier gaming expo”. Take some deep breaths everybody. Calm down.
If that were the case, this would be extraordinary news. But let’s take a look at what it was, exactly, that caused this frenzy:
The IEAA has been in contact with the ESA to see if we were able to secure a block of tickets for retailers or journalists to get them into the show and we weren’t able to do that. The advice that we received back from the ESA was that the show is purely for the North Americans
The IEAA is the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia. And they’re asking to book tickets for retailers and journalists. Fine, the retailers not being allowed might be a pain for them, but at a downsized, don’t-have-a-showroom-floor-anymore E3 like we’re looking at this year, retailers aren’t going to be vying for people’s time anyway, American or not. No big loss.
As for journalists not being able to “secure tickets”, we knew that already. No journalist is able to secure tickets in advance, as we’ve known for months that E3 is now invite-only. And those invites will go out to the people companies want them to go out to, regardless of which country they’re based in.
A quick call to the ESA confirmed this - anybody who makes or publishes games, hardware, accessories or peripherals can attend, irrespective of their nationality.
All is well. All is calm.
E3 lock out [Screen Play]
