Blog5 Games

The sun sets on day 2 of the GO3 expo here in Perth, and the worst is behind us. Today saw the conclusion of the industry conference talks (which brought both joy and disappointment), while also kicking off the big expo on the showroom floor. I’ll give a full account of the floor tomorrow, but suffice to say, it was a little underwhelming. What you missed if you weren’t here (which, granted, is most of you):

Below, some happy snaps of the day. And before you ask, mum, yes, I felt dirty following those girls up the escalator. Luke Plunkett

Filed under: Nintendo Wii

We warned you yesterday. Welcome to many site’s nebulous comprehension that April Fool’s Day is actually April 1 — not the day or week before, or the whole month for that matter. Wii.TV gets the first spot in our alerts as they announce Legend of Zelda … that’s it, they didn’t even bother to come up with a subhead. Go through the effort of editing a five minute video and don’t even bother to come up with a full title. No, Legend of Zelda: Future Calls or Legend of Zelda: Knights of the Ganon Wars.

The video is a compilation of Star Wars concept drawings, Final Fantasy stills and other random elements. Actually, that would make for a good deconstruction exercise. Know where the components come from? Give a shout out.

[Thanks Whosyourdaddy?]

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This week we have a power packed group of Kotaku Originals. Luke Plunkett single handedly takes on Australia’s GO3 conference and gets all fancy pants with his Tea and Biscuit meetings with video game luminaries, we find out more details about the Elite 360, and game reviewer Joel Johnson tries his hand at game design.

• GO3: Tea & Biscuits With Kojima & Suda
• GO3: Pushing The Boundaries Of Technology
• GO3: Kojima Live-Blogging
• GO3: Matsuura Talks Music
• GO3: World In Conflict Hands-On Impressions
• Kingdom Hearts Is Totally Mainstream In Japan
• Handmade Nintendo Kicks
• Armchair Designer: A Space Opera
• GO3: Day 1 Roundup
• WoW - All’s Well That Ends Well
• GO3: Suda Live-Blogging
• GO3: Tea & Biscuits With Rod Fergusson
• GO3: Mizuguchi Live-Blogging
• Sony Responds to PS3 Elite Rumor
• Super Autographed Copy of Oblivion
• WoW I Feel Violated
• 360 1st Birthday Cake
• Sony Working On PS3 “Elite” Model?
• Feature: Game Ad Plague Continues in Denver
• Gallery: Elite 360 Naked And Unsupervised
• Feature: Microsoft Gets Elite
• The Pokemon Post Card For the Pokemon Plane
• Feature: Guild Wars 2, GW Expansion Unveiled
• This Day In Gaming

Flynn De Marco

Filed under: Culture, Online, Polls

There’s somewhat of a correlation between using the descriptive little and the premise of big, enormous landscapes of creativity. Of course, LittleBigPlanet is one prime example. Recall even Little Nemo, an old children’s book which spawned a decent licensed video game, The Dream Master. (We wouldn’t mind seeing that on the Virtual Console, Capcom.) And we find Mario Galaxy so strangely familiar because the concept of jumping between a vast array of mini-planets is a concept we remember from Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).

This has nothing to do with webcomics; here are our picks for the best gaming comics. Be sure to vote for your favorite, and let us know of any gems we missed this week!

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Yes, it made the newspaper because I put it there and no, it’s not game related, not really. But I thought perhaps you’d still want to read it, that and I mentioned it last night in my Night Note.

So hit up the Rocky Mountain News and read my pro-pirate stance and then vote to your heart’s content. And remember what else they call silent but deadly. Brian Crecente

Crecente: Pirate-vs.-ninja debate rages [Crecente: Pirate-vs.-ninja debate rages]

Filed under: Culture, Nintendo Wii

Nintendo of Canada is raffling off six hand painted Wiis by Canadian artists. Why does Nintendo of Canada get all the cool contests? The last cool thing Nintendo of America ever did was the Dragon Warrior giveaway with Nintendo Power back in the day. Yeah, we just brought up some old-school stuff there!

To win such an artistic Wii you must be a citizen of Canada and a member of their My Nintendo club — oh, and you have to be over 13 years old. Winners will be announced on or around May 9. The Wii certainly lends itself to some artistic reinterpretation. Although painting your Wii would probably void any warranty — pity.

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Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360

Mamma Mia! Here we go again, GTA, does it show how much politicians can’t resist ya? GamePolitics points to a New York Daily News piece this morning where politicians are incensed by Liberty City’s striking resemblence to New York City. The Daily News had city councilmen, Police Commisssioner Ray Kelly and even Mayor Bloomberg’s office commenting that the game has nothing to do with reality. Bloomberg’s office even whipped out statistics showing auto thefts have dropped 58 percent since Bloomberg took office, and so far this year New York City’s murder rate is down 28 percent. Apparently that will all change once GTA IV hits the streets. Following yesterday’s takeover at Take-Two, it doesn’t look like protocol on GTA issues is changing, Take-Two refused comment on the story.

Real life mayors getting upset about games taking place in their cities is a pretty recent phenomenon. Las Vegas was upset with Ubisoft over Rainbow Six taking place in the city of sin and Mexican government officials confiscated GRAW 2. For the record, this wouldn’t be the first time Liberty City was the setting for GTA. In the latest incarnations Grand Theft Auto III and GTA: Liberty City Stories were also set in pseudo-New York. We don’t fault politicians though, sometimes the activists who get these balls rolling are bit late. The groups that helped get GTA ads banned in Boston with GTA: Vice City Stories weren’t on the ball or enraged enough when GTA: Liberty City Stories‘ ads ran a year earlier.

Continue reading Mayor Bloomberg defends NYC in wake of GTA trailer

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Only the finest Earl Grey and Monte Carlo bikkies today: both Hideo Kojima AND Goichi Suda popped in for a chat. Transcribing these things takes time (read: DAYS), but just to whet your whistle, here’s some highlights:

All this and more. Soon. Not now. Soon. Luke Plunkett

Filed under: Culture

Do you love game cakes? So does Gamecakes.com! In answer to the ever-growing number of game-related cakes that have flooded the game world copycat-murder style, Kotaku’s Michael Fahey and Joystiq’s yours truly have banded together to start an entire site dedicated to game cakes. Okay, Fahey is the brains and the brawn; I’m just a lonely cake-enthusiast turned contributer.

Anyways, the point is, never before has there been a site so full of deliciousness. Plus, if you’ve made a game cake and have pictures, we want to publish them; everyone deserves their fifteen minutes of cakey fame. In addition to showing off pics, Gamecakes.com is also a place to share cake recipes, cake-eating testimonials, heck, even cake post mortems. Gamecakes.com is here for all your cake-related needs, or just your digital sugar fix…

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Thanks, but no. Luke Plunkett

What’s probably the main event of the weekend is about to get started. Kojima is the biggest name attending the GO3 conference, and he’s also tipped to be the only one actually showing something off: a shiny new MGS4 trailer. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. Fingers crossed, eh?

3:06pm - We’re running 35 minutes late. Lot’s of late-minute tinkering with the AV. He’s a stickler for perfection. But we’re underway, and I think he brought his own translator. Best translator of the weekend? Yes!

3:08pm - Looking at the evolution of video games, and how Metal Gear shaped that. In the 80’s, everything was about shooting. So Metal Gear was born. I feel another life story coming on, so settle in for the long haul.

3:16pm - Lots of footage of Metal Gear. “It’s very boring, isn’t it?”. Lots of laughter, lots of nodding heads. “What a big duct that is!”, “it’s a lot like new Metal Gear, isn’t it?”. Funny stuff, he’s in fine form.

3:25pm - Time marches on. We’re at Metal Gear Solid now, and he’s demoing the intro. “His face is made of dots!”. For a game that’s nine years old, it’s still looking pretty good. Kojima runs, he’s discovered, he runs away and…we have first box-hiding gag. It goes as expected, laughs all round.

3:30pm - The timeline stuff continues, and we’re at MGS2. Another demo, another intro. “Can I skip this dialogue” jokes are swimming through my mind. He’s not too happy with some of the tanker sequence, thinks it looks glitchy, but it looks fine to me.

3:36pm - Talking about how they came up with the setting for MGS3. “Where should I hide my snake this time?”. I am the only person who chortles, which is a little embarrassing. Snakes are in the jungle, so the game should be in the jungle. Now he’s demoing MGS3, and apologising for not being able to eat Koala in the game.

3:43pm - Alright, time for MGS4. He’s talking up the psychological warfare stuff, where you freak out the warring soldiers. He runs the trailer that ends with Snake holding a gun in his mouth. Not new. Sorry.

3:49pm - Shows a screen of the systems Metal Gear has appeared on (or at least developed primarily for). Sorry kids, no 360 there.

3:50pm - And we’re done. No new trailer, no announcments. Let down? Yeahh, but probably shouldn’t have been expecting too much. Anyways, got to run, our interview is right after the talk. I’ll see if I can drag anything out of him there. Luke Plunkett

Masaya Matsuura just finished a really great address here at GO3. Called (give me a minute) “While waiting to cross, an airplane flies over the boxy heads: the inspiration of music on game development and its advancement into the future”, it had rhythm action and dancing robots. I know. Perfect.

Admittedly, some of the stuff went a little over my head, as I’m not a music guy, but on the whole it was an interesting talk on how important music is to games, how it needs to be more important and what games can become when they stop treating music like the poorer cousin to graphics.

Highlights were his ideas that if you only make music for a product then you’re not a real musician, music games should have a basis in kids music (because everyone knows it and everyone loves it) and a singing, dancing Aibo which could listen to music played to it then change the melody itself, dramatically altering the tone and impact of the piece. I tell you, my heart melted.

He closed out the talk with a demo of his upcoming title Rythmica, which is due out later this year. Looks very, very basic yet very, very fun: it can play any song you want it to, and all the while letters of the alphabet are displayed on screen, jiggling away like a Windows Media Player visualisation. When a letter pops up that’s in the song title, you hit the button. Basic, yes, but the letters bounce around and sway with the music, giving it a cruisey, play-it-in-the-dark-at-3am kind of feel. Luke Plunkett

Filed under: Culture, Nintendo DS

Japanese gamers can learn English with their DS. There’s even a Japanese-English dictionary for the system. Now it’s time for us poor monoglot anglophones to expand our linguistic horizons. A coder known as Zoelen has just released an early version of Project JDS. The app teaches you to recognize and write both hiragana and katakana characters, even listen to their pronunciation. And if you’re really nice, you can use the touch screen to draw characters and get berated for using the wrong stroke order!

It isn’t much to look at, but it gets the job done and is surprisingly feature-rich for a homemade app. Now if only it had a catchy name. Something like … Touch Dic.

[Via DrunkenCoders]

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I’ll be honest: before today, I’d never heard of this game. Which is to say I probably had, but then discarded the memory, like I tend to do with most RTS games these days. They all look the same to me, you see.

I’m a fool. I just got done playing a few multiplayer rounds of World in Conflict, and I like.

Despite this being super-raw, super-early code, WiC is coming along real nice. It’s not really an RTS at all - you get one squad to control, respawn points and a map to take over. Just like Battlefield. Except it’s controlled like an RTS. Sort of. You see, you control the camera with the WASD keys, and your units with the mouse. Sounds messy, yeah, but strike me down if it doesn’t work a treat.

Promising stuff. Keep an eye on it. But be patient - this thing is a while off yet. Luke Plunkett

Rockman (AKA Mega-Man) doing a 8-bit version of the dance from anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, produced by Uji-based Kyoto Animation. The name of the tune is Hare Hare Yukai. Hit the jump for the original version and YouTuber plamoo’s take. Brian Ashcraft

Rockman Dance [Nikkan Thread Guide, Thanks Witzbold!]

The clip shows how otaku has become a tourist attraction for foreign visitors and also features Toy Tokyo, which Kotaku visited back in January and a manga retailer in London, which we didn’t. Otaku culture has spread all over the world. Foreign Minister Taro Aso says that today’s Japanese otaku are not depressed, dark people, but bright and happy! Yippie.

Kotaku readers, please promise me that when you visit Akihabara, you will not take a “tour” with a hippy holding a flag. Please. Brian Ashcraft

Akiba Tourism [Japan Probe]

To: Ash
From: Crecente

Well, that’s it. I’ve turned in my pencil and ID, I no longer work at the Rocky Mountain News. Turns out my last story for the paper as a staffer won’t be about games. It will be about pirates and ninjas. I convinced them, with some help from a colleague, to let me write a short feature op-en piece framing the whole debate and putting forth the obvious truth that pirates are better than ninjas. Now that its going to be in a newspaper that makes it fact. So there.

What you missed:
Bioshock Limited Edition Coming
Crazy Shoes
This is long but I like it, a Space Opera MMO
Whips, Ponies and Tiny Anorexic Men
Coolest Robot of the Day

Wow, it’s going to be weird not going into work on Monday. Weekends have kinda lost their meaning.

Ed’s noteStory is up on the Rocky. It’s fact now.

Every wonder how mainstream Square-Enix games are in Japan? Like would people, business people encounter ads for a new Square-Enix title on the way to the daily grind? Guess so! Writes Kotakuite Landon:

I spotted these giant advertisements for Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix in the underground station in Shibuya, leading to the Den-en Toshi line. There were quite a few of them around the many pillars, and it was the first time I had seen a game advertised down there.

And probably not the last! Brian Ashcraft

Typically, parents generally can’t be bothered to exert more effort beyond sweeping a dozen artery clogging, obesity causing Lunchables into their shopping cart every two weeks then slapping them into Chubby Timmy’s backpack. When I was in elementary school, I set the packed lunch bar low, only hoping for an PB&J sandwich that hadn’t been flattened by a Red Delicious and praying that the bananas were some shade of yellow.

However, this Japanese mom goes to extreme lengths to keep her children interested in their food, creating gorgeously handcrafted lunchbox creations, most of them loaded with Nintendo character references. From Super Mario Bros. to Animal Crossing to Mario Kart, these food creations look too good to eat. Not that I’m a fan of carved Vienna sausages and boiled fish paste mind you, just that the craftsmanship is out of this world. Many more here.

Thanks to Synie for the wonderful tip! Michael McWhertor

Filed under: Culture, Online, Video, MMO

Some of you, the exact number, we’re not sure, have a Second Life. Others have a First Life. Today’s video pick introduces the Third Life as part of a Kit Kat ad in the Netherlands. Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT (caution: website resizes your window, plays sound, and otherwise annoys), Kit Kat only loosely ties into the joke. Regardless, the humor scores high with us gamers, and we highly recommend the video.

Watch the ad after the break.

[Via Adverblog]

Continue reading Today’s most recursive game video: Third Life

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