Blog5 Games

In 1980, the Stern company came up with it’s fist bonafide video game arcade hit, Berzerk. The game was distinctive for many reasons, not the least of which is being the first game to have a talking feature. In the game you play a “humanoid” who is being chased around the maze levels by angry killer robots. Touching the walls, robots or getting shot by robots spelled instant death. Your job is to exterminate all the robots on the level so you can move on to the next. there were 64,000 different levels, each one harder than the last. But you better be quick with your killing or along comes Evil Otto, a sort of smiley faced orange that would bounce around and threaten to kill you. Evil Otto was indestructible and would try to block your escape to the next level.

As I mentioned before, Berzerk was the fist arcade game to introduce a talking function. The machine itself would entice players to the machine by tossing out uips like “Quarters detected in pockets.” Once in the game, the robots and Evil Otto both had catchy dialogue such as “Kill the Humanoid” and “Intruder Alert.” If you allowed Evil Otto to chase you out of the level before all the robots were killed, you would be taunted with the ever insulting “Chicken, fight like a robot.”

According to KLOV, Berzerk also holds the dubious distinction of being the first game to be blamed for the death of a player. Allegedly in 1981, a nineteen year old boy dropped dead of a heart attack right after he finished playing the game. Another story exists of an eighteen year old boy who also died of a massive heart attack directly after scoring two of the top ten spots on a Berzerk machine’s leaderboard. Believe it, or not!

This flyer is hilarious with it’s real life preppy hero and girlfriend dropped Tron style into the game itself. It features the killer robots, Evil Otto and the world famous stellar dialogue from the game in its many iterations. You almost feel like you’re there! “How are we going to get out of this one?” our hero asks. “The answer’s on the back.” replies our hiding heroine. Turning over the flyer to reveals a picture of the cabinet and a sales pitch that includes “Unsurpassed 30 word vocabulary,” and a “Newly designed Joy Stick that allows you to move the humanoid figure in 8 different directions.” (Ah, the innovation was truly astounding.) And then for some reason a small portion of the flyer was printed upside down reading “You’ll really flip overthis game too,” with an upside down Stern logo to compliment it. Now, that’s what I call berzerk!

Flyer courtesy TAFA

The official Eternal Sonata website has appeared as if by magic and has announced that the game is now available for pre-order Gamestop/EB Games. Now, I know a lot of you have the concept of pre-ordering, but this one comes with a pretty great bonus. Pre-order now and receive one five custom faceplates for your 360. They are really quite stunning and I’m not sure if you get your choice of if you’re stuck with whatever one they give you, but my choice would probably be the dandy fellow wearing black with the tall top hat. Although seeing as I just came home with the exclusive BioShock faceplate as a gift from my lovely local EB Games clerk, I’d be hard pressed to remove it even for the likes of these.
[via EvilAvatar]

With China’s presence online expanding, it’s not exactly shocking that companies are springing up at a quick pace with new virtual offerings, though one has to wonder how many Second Life clones one country needs, even a country the size of China. HiPiHi, uWorld, Frenzoo, and an as-of-yet unnamed offering from Shanda that will probably be a pretty faithful copy of Second Life (it’s Shanda, after all, not exactly known for honoring intellectual property rights) are all being announced or scheduled to hit the Chinese market soon. Of course, they’re also facing stiff competition from foreign companies both far away from and close to home.

“China’s the No 2 market now, with Blizzard and Shanda Entertainment just two of the major players. HiPiHi will launch this autumn, Entropia Universe is moving in soon, and Shanda has announced plans to create another Chinese virtual world. There are, of course, more out there, and many more coming. It’s a busy time in China’s online 3D landscape.”

Well, this is yet one more platform for the government to get cracking on regulating. I’ll be looking forward to the New York Times article sometime next year on government-hired players installed to keep tabs on their fellow avatars in the virtual China.
New virtual worlds to conquer in China [Asia Times Online]

Gamasutra has published the second installment of its series that “present[s] in-depth histories of the first ten games voted into the Digital Game Canon,” and the subject this time is Zork. It’s a fun look back, and perhaps forward - at least according to the author, who says flat out that “My goal is to persuade you that the text adventure is still a viable genre for modern gamers, even in an age when software and hardware developers are making breakthrough after breakthrough in graphics and animation.”

It’s a history, an homage, a bit of a love letter, and a fun read overall.

What Zork seemed to contribute more than anything was the idea that the computer could simulate a rich virtual environment much, much larger and nuanced than the playing fields seen in games like Spacewar! or Pac-Man. Furthermore, the game demonstrated the literary potential of the computer. Thousands upon thousands of gamers have been charmed by the wit and elegance of Zork’s many descriptions.

GameSetWatch also pointed out that Matt Barton, the author, made the full interviews available on his own website, so you can find them here.
The History Of Zork [Gamasutra]

We have a lovely bunch of gameplay videos from Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for you today. Three in fact! In this first one we get to see some puzzle solving, and after the jump you can see some hot dungeon action and then get your sea legs with some sailing gameplay. The more I see of this game, the more excited I am for it to come out. maybe not BioShock excited, but excited enough. I am one of those rare freaks who actually liked the Wind Waker Link re-design and look forward to seeing more of that style in play with the DS version. Go big head Link!

Along with animation and cartoon assets, the Chinese government is trying to give the game industry a boost by launching asset trading on the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange (SUAEE) (in partnership with China’s National Center for Animation, Cartoon and Game Industry). Things kicked off on Thursday, 28 June with thirty items were listed, mostly animated and folklore properties (perhaps some of the classic cartoon versions of 西遊記 Journey to the West?)

The center will provide an exchange platform for assets and equity, and offer fund-raising, intermediary and pricing services for companies, said Cai Minyong, president of Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange (SUAEE).

More than 30 items … were listed on the exchange with a combined price of about US$4 million.

Of course, the idea of intellectual property being traded in a country notorious for not really caring about IP rights in any sense of the word is a little ironic. Still, China is desperately trying to give its homegrown game and animation industries a boost in an attempt to compete with countries like Korea, Japan, Taiwan, et al. We’ll see how it pans out.
Trading starts on animation, cartoon and game industry exchange [ChinaDaily via Xinhua]

2000: Activision releases Dark Reign 2 for PC in the US. Why do some franchises feel forced to reinvent instead of simply improve? Here’s hoping for a Dark Reign 3 the way we all wanted Dark Reign 2.

2005: Atlus releases Trauma Center: Under the Knife for DS in Japan. I seriously just looked at this game and thought, “That was released only last year?” Then I remembered, it’s 2007 and half-way to 2008. And I’m never going to med school to please my parents.

The Korean National Tax Service has announced they will be tacking on value added tax (VAT) to real-money transactions (RMT) in virtual worlds beginning 1 July. It seems like a business that would be fairly easy to take under the radar to avoid paying taxes, but I’m not a tax professional.

A summarized policy:

Sellers who do between 6 and 12 million won [~$6,500 - $13,000]/half year in business will have VAT auto applied by transaction’s middle-man

Sellers who do more than 12 million won/half year in business will need a business license and will pay the tax by themselves

The entry at im69 points out that according to the TOS of many games, in-game items and currency traded for real money still belong to the developers - so who exactly is responsible for the tax and how is the industry going to respond? Korean game publishers have been silent on the issue, but the increasing interest real-world governments have in regulating virtual transactions is getting more and more interesting.
RMT Taxation starts in Korea from 1 July 2007 [im69 via PlayNoEvil]

Bitter disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings on the new Harry Potter game for the Wii. Sure I have a pile of other games I could be playing, some of them I even got for free, but being a fan I had to experience the magic for myself. The thought of waving that Wii remote around like a magic wand struck every chord in my geekafied, fantasy loving body. Little did I know that the wand waving would barely compensate for the rest of this abominable game.

Graphics: I knew going into it that the Wii graphics wouldn’t live up to some of the stunning footage I’d seen from the 360 and PS3 versions, but I was not prepared for what I saw. Inexcusably crunchy graphics and a muddy, dull color palette. I could tell that on any other system this game would look beautiful, but here on the Wii, it just didn’t cut the mustard. The character models were great and actually looked like the actors, but that was little consolation.

Camera: This has got to be, hands down, one of the worst cameras I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with in a game. The mainly fixed camera never seems to be at quite the right angle and even though you are supposed to be able to center the camera behind Harry, it only works about seventy percent of the time. Often, the fixed camera angles in certain rooms make it extremely difficult to navigate, especially when it comes to multiple flights of stairs.

When you approach another character, you can talk to them using the A button and the camera is supposed to snap to a view of that character. On many occasions, the camera angle on these shots was so bad that I was greeted with a screen full of background and the bobbing top of the character’s head at the bottom of the screen. In one instance, during a scene while I was supposed to be listening to Hermoine and another character describe what was happening next, Ron’s AI somehow got caught on camera and spent the entire conversation distracting me by walking back and forth and bumping face first into the camera. Shamefull… how did this make it past testing?

Controls: In general, the controls aren’t too bad and the actual magic wand moves are rather fun and easy to memorize. The Wingardium Leviosa levitation spell is a bit awkward though, as once you have something actually floating around in the air, it is difficult to get it to where it goes. Moving things up and down is particularly a problem and many times I found myself spinning wildly in circles that were difficult to recover from.

One of the only redeeming qualities is the use of the Marauder’s Map to get around the often confusing world of Hogwarts. By selecting a place or person on the map, you can follow the footprints on the floor around you to get there, thus making it harder to get lost in the endless hallways.

The Story: I thought OOTP was one of the best of the HP series and I’m looking forward to seeing the film, but the game’s hack job on the plot made it almost impossible to follow, even for a fan. Cut scenes were broken up and often referred to things or events that we never saw or heard about happening. Often the scenes just ended nonsensically leaving me wondering what deaf monkey edited the script.

The Wrap Up: This game just plain sucked. Poor graphics, terrible camera and a difficult to follow story make this title a definite no purchase even for the most hardcore Potter fan. The magic casting is fun, but not enough to make up for all the other atrocities heaped on us.

That said, I would be willing to give the game another chance on the 360, if for no other reason that to see the game graphics as they were intended. But, I flatly refuse to run out and drop another fifty bucks on it, so I guess I will just have to live with my hatred.

The one saving grace of the entire experience? There was a free ticket to the movie in the manual. I’ll be sure to use it when the film comes out and hopefully it’s cinematic wonder will make me forget the horror that is this game.

Slate has a fun (and scathing) article up on ‘the problem with serious games‘ - with companies like Persuasive Games getting quite a lot of press recently, newsgames and ’serious games’ have also been getting an increasing amount of press. The problem, Justin Peters says, is that “making games educational is like dumping Velveeta on broccoli. Liberal deployment of the word blaster can’t hide the fact that you’re choking down something that’s supposed to be good for you.” Peters concedes there are games like Civilization - fun and educational.

Not content to let such accusations about boring games and what amounts to not-very-educational content, Ian Bogost (Persuasive’s founder) says over at Water Cooler Games that he thinks “the idea of making games more alluring to people who don’t love games is actually something of a noble goal, in my mind, especially as those who do love games become ever more narrow-minded about what a game experience needs to be.” I very much doubt the NYT cares one way or another if ‘gamers’ think Food Import Folly is fun or not, but Peters has a point depending on which part of the market a designer wants to meet. No, not every game needs to be Civ, but it couldn’t hurt to have more games like that flittering around.

World of Borecraft: Never play a video game that’s trying to teach you something [Slate] & World of Borecraft [Water Cooler Games]

Danc over at Lost Garden has some thoughts up on what web designers can (or should?) learn from game designers, and what some of them want to learn.

Games are interesting to web developers because they demonstrate a rich set of techniques, proven over the course of thousands of projects to keep users heavily engaged. Experience points, in game currencies, mission, player housing, avatar creation, and guilds are some of the meta-game systems that are almost immediately applicable to practically any existing class of application.

Of course, games come with their own baggage, and he points out plenty of wildly popular sites use extremely minimalist designs. Beyond that, a rich setting borrowing heavily from games isn’t a great idea for every application (my eyes bleed just thinking about the horrific possibilities). “It is not completely clear what should be borrowed, what should questioned and what should be reinterpreted. It is a fascinating topic for further inquiry.” The comment section should start perking away, which is often just as fascinating - if not more so - than than the original. Maggie Greene

Short thoughts on games and interaction design [Lost Garden]

Some games just seem to perpetually keep the rumor mill grinding at a pace, and the upcoming Beautiful Katamari is certainly one of them. First there were the Xbox 360 exclusivity rumors, then the refuted XBLA only rumor. Now, IGN is reporting an all new one.

According to IGN, “sources close to Namco Bandai” are reporting that work has stopped on the PS3 version and those resources are being channeled into a version of the quirky rolling game for the Wii. These “close sources” cite porting issues and the PS3’s poor sales performance as reasons for the cancellation.

So is it true? Is it rumor? It’s hard to tell with E3 only a week and a half away and the entire game industry worked up into a frenzy, but IGN’s sources are generally pretty reliable. All will likely be revealed come Namco Bandai’s press conference on the 12th, so keep your eyes on Kotaku during E3 and we’ll be sure to bring you the final word when it happens.

Beautiful Katamari Skips PS3, Goes Wii [IGN]

It was a fine week for Kotaku originals! We’re underwhelemed by The Transformers Game (no surprise there), guest reporter N. Evan Van Zelfden gets some alone time with Richard Garriott and Fahey fulfills his life long dream of being a girl sleuth.

• Super Stardust HD Impressions
• Drugged Out Bad Gaming Hair Cut Adventure
• Transformers 360 Impressions
• Pokemon Diamond & Pearl Origami Paper
• Activision Confirms SoF3, Rumors Abound
• Hanging with Garriott
• Impressions: Resident Evil 4 Wii
• Impressions: Warmonger
• Impressions: Band of Bugs
• Becoming Nancy Drew
• The E3 Killzone 2 Invite
• NetDevil Swag Bag
• Square Enix Sacrificing Originals for Spin-Offs, Ports and Remakes
• New DS Lite Colors Up-Close And Very Personal
• This Day in Gaming

Let’s just say reaction to Ubisoft’s pricing for the Rainbow Six Vegas Black Pack was…negative. And leave it at that. Seems Ubisoft were listening, though, as a post has appeared over at Gamerscore claiming the decision to charge for the pack was “an error”. Anyone who actually paid for it will have their money refunded, and the Red Pack will also now be made available free of charge.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas Black Pack Downloadable Content for Xbox 360 Live was originally intended to be free content for the fans of Rainbow Six Vegas. We apologize for the error. All players who purchased the Black Pack will be reimbursed automatically within 8 to 10 weeks. The Black Pack will be posted Saturday June 30 and will be free of charge. Also, as a token of our appreciation for the Rainbow Six community, we are making the Red Pack free as of Friday July 6th as well. Thanks for playing and we hope you enjoy this free content.

Error my ass. Still, a backflip’s better than stubborn resistance. I guess. We could take issue with the 8-10 week refund processing time, but then if you were stupid enough to fork out the cash for this update think of it as a valuable lesson in how to better spend your hard-earned dollars.

Rainbow Six Vegas - Free Happy Goodness [Gamerscore]

In this month’s Nintendo Power, there’s an interview with Eiji Aonuma, in which he gets chatty about Zelda. One thing that’s got me interested is he mentions he’d love to do a remake of Wind Waker on the Wii. Course, he’s just wishing out loud, and something like this would probably never actually come to pass, but just in case it DOES (Res 4 setting somewhat of a precedent), yes Nintendo, a 16:9, polished-up, waggle-enhanced version of Wind Waker would be great. Oh, at a budget price, too. Thanks.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker [Nintendo Power, via N-Europe]

You’ve seen the costume, now here’s the ad. That’s nerd princess Shoko Nakagawa in a TV spot for PlayStation 2 game Super Robot Taisen OG. Not a big fan of this behind-the-scenes ad. It does make its point (yes, she’s a nerd, we know), but seems, I dunno, cheap?

If you or your big cuddly nerd buddies are planning a trip to San Diego this year for comic-con, be sure to drop by NECA’s booth. This might be of interest. To celebrate the release of their Castlevania line of figures, they’re offering this cute little guy as an exclusive promo. He’ll stand about 3″, and is limited to 1000 pieces. If you can make it, great, pick one up, if not, 983 of them will probably end up on eBay.

A Very Special Announcement on a Very Exclusive Item [NECA]

From June 1st to August 31st, Microsoft Japan is just giving stuff away! Anyone in Japan who buys an Xbox 360 gets one free Xbox 360 Live Arcade game. Three lucky individuals will also win 100 free games. Count ‘em: ONE HUNDRED. (Ninety-five currently released packaged titles and five Live Arcade games). Free XBL Arcade game with purchase, that’s a pretty good deal. Hey Japan, you listening?!

Campaign Page [Xbox 360, Thanks Riyu!]

Here, an early entry in Chop Chop Master Onion’s Rap Showdown. It will not win. But I shall remember it forever.

The Italians, they don’t care. They don’t give a hoot that we’re on the cusp of July 2007. Because in Italy this week, it was time to look back and remember the best games of 2006. It was also time to decree that the best console game released in 2006 was…DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2.

Full list of winners below.

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION

1) Best Trade AD Campaign
Electronic Arts - Fifa 07 Evolution

2) Best Print AD Consumer Campaign
Nintendo - Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training

3) Best TV Spot
Microsoft - Gears of War

4) Best Radio Spot
Electronic Arts - The Sims 2 Pets

5) Best Online Campaign
Vivendi - World of Warcraft

6) Best Packaging
DDE - Guild Wars Nightfall Collector’s Edition

7) Best POS Material
Vivendi - World of Warcraft

Best Budget Line
Activision - Best Of Activision

9) Best Launch Event
Scei - PS3 Dome

10) Best Co-Marketing Activity
Konami / Halifax - PES 6 with Gazzetta dello Sport

11) Best Charity Iniative - Ex Aequo:
Nintendo - Nintendo for Abio
Halifax with Bible and AMREF

PRODUCTS

12) Best First Person Shooter:
Microsoft - Gears of War

13) Best Sports Games:
Konami / Halifax - Pro Evolution Soccer 6

14) Best Racing Game:
Electronic Arts - Need for Speed Carbon

15) Best Action Adventure Game:
Nintendo - The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess

16) Best Strategy Game:
Microsoft - Age of Empire III

17) Best Simulation Game:
Microsoft - Flight Simulator X

18) Best Puzzle Game - Ex Aequo
Scei - Buzz! The Big Quiz
505 Games / Halifax - Cooking Mama

19) Best Overall Pc Game:
Vivendi - World of Warcraft

20) Best Overall Console Game - Ex Aequo
Atari - Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Konami / Halifax - PES 6

21) Best Overall Portable Game
Nintendo - Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training

22) Revelation of the Year:
Nintendo - Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training

ACCESSORIES

23) Best PC Accessory:
Thrustmaster - Rally Wheel GT Force Feedback Pro Clutch 3 Pedals Edition

24) Best Console Accessory:
Atomic - TVR Sport Racing Steering Wheel Atomic

25) Best Portable Accessory
Blaze / Leader - Xploder PSP

SPECIAL AWARDS

1) Special Marketing Award:
Disney Interactive Studios - Desperate Housewives
/Trade Campaign/

2) Special Marketing Launch Award:
Activision - Guitar Hero II