Psychonauts developer Double Fine's blog both makes mention of a new game and posts a picture of the most adorable kitten ever.

• Super Paper Mario and Children of Mana set for October.
• Current generation sez "Dammit, I'm not dead yet." Next Generation provides a list of what's still to come for the current gen systems. A new Megaten coming, and I haven't even started Digital Devil Saga.
• Man, even the Japanese animated Mario series was goofy. And they couldn't get his hair color right either.
• Japan gets a new rating system.
• An LP from 1982 instructing you in how to beat games like Centipede and Defender is pretty much the worst idea one can have.
• Much delayed, much hyped STALKER may be losing features as it claws its way to the finish line.

Posted by Bill at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's funny that this article is about Ted Owen, operator of the Global Gaming League, and his campaign to have video games added to the Olympics, yet presents a much stronger argument for why that's a dumb idea.

Owen's side of it is basically "gaming is fun and requires skill, plus young people like it and the Olympics has been losing younger viewers so this is a way to get them back."

But what's against him is basically everything else.

Even if you can look past the lack of physical skills necessary to play video games, the Olympics haven't had any sort of demonstration sport since 1992 - and Olympic experts say there has been no movement to bring them back.

And further:

But financial and network interest don't earn a sport an Olympic berth; Just ask fans of golf, motorcycle racing and bowling - or, for that matter, baseball, which (along with softball) will be dropped from the Olympics in 2012. And the fact that video gaming is so technology dependent could be particularly damaging.

"There's a big campaign in the [International Olympic Committee] to get kids away from computer terminals," said Ed Hula, editor and founder of Around the Rings, an Olympic newsletter. "[Lobbying for] video gaming would be like asking the IOC to approve power smoking."

But that's not all!

Hula said the reason behind the elimination of demonstration (or exhibition) sports was they were hurting the integrity of the Games. Further, organizers were unable to agree upon replacement medal sports for baseball and softball in 2012 and under Olympic rules will not be able to add any more until 2016.

"If they can't figure out sports to give real medals to, then you can forget about them adding 'let's pretend' sports," said Hula.

I love gaming as much as the next person, and I've even expressed interest in watching competitive gaming. But come on. They can't manage to keep baseball in the Olympics, but you want them to add in video games? Maybe they could all play Track and Field for the irony factor.

Owen's one and only card to play is China. Competitive gaming is a huge deal in China, as well as Korea, much bigger than in North America or Europe. If he can get China's weight behind his idea, he hopes to push gaming into the Olympics by force. But given the odds against them, the fact that much more "real" sports have been fighting to get into the Games for years, and the sheer contradiction of having a sport about sitting in front of a computer and not moving in a competition that's trying to promote physical activity, I'd say the possibility of this coming to fruition any time soon is effectively nil.

Posted by Bill at 3:30 PM | Permalink

Games First has a new preview of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and one particular bit of information sticks out as a potential problem.

Players will be able to switch between Charlotte and Jonathan at any time. There will be times when both characters will be needed simultaneously to solve various puzzles or tag team enemies with attack combos. When both characters are on the screen at the same time, players will be able to control the movement of the active character with the D-pad, and use the stylus to control the movement of the sub-character by dragging it around the screen.

I suppose it would work with puzzles, though I don't like having to pull out the stylus in an action game. But using it in the middle of a fight? Just seems like a hassle to me. The Castlevania series doesn't really strike me as needing the touch screen in any way, except to perhaps manipulate a map or a puzzle. All this other stuff just seems tacked on to justify the game's presence on the DS.

Posted by Bill at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reports are coming in from gamers across the country that certain stores in chains like Target and Wal-Mart have started selling DS Lites eleven days early. It doesn't seem to be confined to any particular area of the country, so if you're really obsessed with getting your hands on one of these things as soon as possible, head out now and try your luck.

Source: Joystiq

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An update on Bungie's website has explained more about the upcoming Halo 2 PC version, which will be released after Windows Vista is released which will happen approximately three days before the sun burns out. First, although the game requires Vista to play, it will not require the new DirectX 10 drivers, meaning one can possibly hold onto one's old graphics card for a bit longer. As a bit of a disappointment to many, PC players will not be able to go up against Xbox players online. Bungie cited multiple reasons, including new maps that the Xbox version won't have, and controls that have been tuned specifically to each format, making matches "lopsided at best."

Elsewhere in the Bungie world, rumors have begun cropping up about their old shooter Marathon coming to Xbox Live Arcade. In response, Bungie answer man Frankie had this to say:

Of course it's possible, it's just not on any current agenda. If it's any consolation, many, many people think it's a good idea.

My guess is that it's pretty likely to come out at some point. The question is just when.

Posted by Bill at 12:40 PM | Permalink

This makes me glad I wasn't at the Nintendo World store to watch the E3 briefing. LOOK AT THOSE GRAPHIX

• There will be no version of DirectX 10 for Windows XP. It will be exclusive to Vista.
• Nintendo brings over the Touch Generations brand to America, marking games like Big Brain Academy and Magnetica.
• Xbox Live Vision Camera set for a September release in America.
• Alex Navarro from Gamespot gets gut punched on video for saying that the PS3 wouldn't be $500 or else you can "feel free to punch me in the stomach."
• Luigi hates Myspace too.
• GameVideos has a video tour of the new 360 dashboard update.
• Comparing the size of all next and current generation consoles, side by side.
• Summer isn't completely worthless.. FiringSquad has a list of the games coming out to fill in the summer gap.
• Will your games work in Windows Vista? ..Maybe?
• How to write an article on women in gaming.

Posted by Bill at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did these guys have a stroke in the last year or two? What the hell happened here?

Sony has launched a new line of merchandise called Playstation Signature, a collection of higher-end items for more "sophisticated" Playstation users. After all, what classy wine connoisseur wouldn't want this 2,100 yen ($19) wine glass with barely visible Playstation face buttons etched onto it?

But of course, you're so classy, that's far too little money to spend for you. Then how about a 15,000 yen ($133) crew neck knit shirt? Or a 73,000 yen ($650) wrist watch with leather strap? Or how about some brain damage, the kind you'd need to buy this crap? That's free. I'd like to see the Venn diagram that illustrates the microscopic intersection of the "people who buy video game merchandise" and "style-minded sophisticates who spend $650 on a watch" sets. Spending that much on inflated collector prices on Ebay for some gaudy piece of plastic with your favorite anime character on it doesn't count.

I guess Sony is trying to butter up the only people who can afford their console. Pictures from the rest of the line can be found here.

Posted by Bill at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

News is thin on the ground today due to the Memorial Day holiday, so go grill some burgers or something.

• Infinium to change their name to Phantom Entertainment, better fitting their main export of things that aren't there.
• If you really have a Halo jones, you can now buy an official Halo 3 shirt.
• The tragic tale of waiting for David Hasselhoff to record voice over for the hot new game Cthulhu Karts. If you have a hard time determining if this is a joke, perhaps you should look at the developer's main page.
• Dork makes Mario World ROM hack to give to his girlfriend which contains a secret message that he's going to take her by limo to.. the Da Vinci Code movie. No, dude. Dude. No.
• Ever wonder what a Chinese cosplay contest looks like?
• Someone at Digg makes an interesting point: Why do most of the members of the famous PMS clan have such pathetic gamerscores? And if their scores are that low, why are they being featured on Xbox.com?
• Atari ceases production of all premium modules and future patches for Neverwinter Nights.
• New screenshots for the upcoming Guitar Hero sequel.
• Not entirely game related, but worth reading all the same: PC World's top 25 worst tech products of all time. Apple's game console Pippen is #22.
• New Super Mario Bros. becomes fastest single day seller ever in Japan, with 480,000 units sold in the first day of retail.

Posted by Bill at 3:55 PM | Permalink

Another week of slim pickings, with the exception of Hitman: Blood Money on the PC, PS2, Xbox and Xbox 360, and City Life on the PC, a kind of "Sim City with cultural-conflict management" game. Also worth noting, if you somehow didn't know it already, is that Half Life 2: Episode One has been preloading for the last month and launches Thursday, June 1. This post on the Steam forums lays out when is the absolute earliest time you'll be able to play, based on your time zone.

The rest of the week's releases can be found here.

Posted by Bill at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've heard your cries. I know what you're thinking. "If I only had the proper instructions for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600, then I could enjoy it to its fullest." Well, I'm here to help.

The first sign that something was wrong with this game is that the booklet is 10 bloody pages long. That might not seem like much, but keep in mind many Atari instruction manuals were nothing more than one long page folded in half, for a total of four pages if you count the cover image.

Wow, E.T. got pretty fluent while we were gone. Except, of course, when saying his wacky catchphrases from the movie.

Is it just me, or could Elliott's sprite double as a streetwalker? No? Just seems like he's got a serious strut going on there.

Try to get a handle on all the varous zones and powers and scoring methods, then try to equate this experience with your concept of "fun." Take care not to strain yourself. Also note the prescience in the statement: "A game ends when E.T. runs out of energy or you decide to quit playing."

Reading the instructions for E.T. is kind of like reading the rules for a new collectible card game. You get up to "If your power token is in the reverse position when your opponent enters engagement mode with more than four apple pickers in play, subtract the sum total of their Juice Quotient from your Taste Reserves" and stop to wonder if it's really worth carrying on with it. Or life, for that matter.

Oh and thanks for explaining that TV type thing to me, guys, I was really racking my brain over that.

Notice that half the game "tips" are just flaws in the programming. The worst is that the only way to pause is to deliberately fall into a well, immediately after they remind you that getting yourself out of a well costs energy. This may well be one of the only games that actually punishes you for needing to go to the bathroom or answering the phone.

One of the problems with E.T. was that it was trapped between two worlds. The gameplay was a progressive, "beginning to end" style -- collect the parts, get to the landing zone, call the ship, the end. But it still used the tradtional style of the time of repeating the game over and over again until you died or got bored, with your only motivation being a higher score. For some reason, scoring points only seems to matter when everything you do is for points; playing Space Invaders or Asteroids, for instance. Once an actual series of events is put into place, progressing to the next step becomes the focus, and scoring becomes kind of pointless (*rimshot*). I don't know of anyone who actually played Super Mario Bros. looking to get a high score.

One of the other problems with E.T. was that it was horrible.

Posted by Bill at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd like to give a big shout out to the Weather Channel, who proved themselves incapable last night of being a channel reporting the weather by airing some stupid show about the coast guard when all I needed was the damn radar. When it finally came up (once in a half hour), two seconds later my power went out. Thanks guys!

• Katamari's creator says the series will probably continue, just without him. But how will that affect the games?
• Gates not sold on motion controllers.
• Ken Kutaragi: PS3 is not a toy. So that means it's okay to spend $600 on it! Whew. Load off my mind.
• Man, the cast of FFVII have fallen on hard times.
• 73% of Japanese Famitsu readers believe Wii will win the console war.
• You know that Link, he's big with the gays.
• It's about time somebody finally offered up in-game Assassin's Creed screens.
• Star Fox DS renamed Star Fox Command; release date set for August.

Posted by Bill at 4:00 PM | Permalink

If we're lucky. There is not set release date, but Microsoft "hopes" to have it ready for download a week from today.

This is basically the big update everyone who's ever complained about the Dashboard has been waiting for. A laundry list of complaints have been addressed, with heavy rearranging of content on Xbox Live, fast forward and rewind capabilities for the video player, the ability to start a DVD back where you left off, and perhaps best of all, a new download manager that will operate in the background, allowing you to continue playing games or watching movies or whatever you want to do. The manager will allow queueing of up to six files and will automatically pause when an online gaming session begins.

But even that's not all. Players will also now be able to set their 360s to boot into the Dashboard first rather than automatically starting whatever game is in the drive, so you don't have to go through the whole quitting out of a game process just because you wanted to hop on to Live to download something. Players will also be able to set seperate gamer pics for their friends and general public, which is probably meant to go along with the Xbox camera coming later this year.

Surprisingly, all of this new functionality will be flashed to the 360's internal memory, meaning it takes up no space on the HD, and actually doesn't require an HD at all. Seeing Microsoft do something so right almost makes me worried about when the other shoe will drop.

Source: Gamespot

Posted by Bill at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Reggie Fils-Aime, head of marketing (up until today) for Nintendo of America and Internet superstar has been promoted to president and chief operating officer for NoA. He is one of three promotions within the company, the other two being current president Tatsumi Kimishima moving to chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and Mike Fukuda moving from senior vice president of Business Development to executive vice president of Business Development.

From the press release:

In his new role as president and chief operating officer, Fils-Aime will lead the day-to-day operations of Nintendo of America while continuing to oversee the Sales & Marketing Division as the company prepares for the launch of Wii. He joined Nintendo of America in December 2003 to lead all Sales & Marketing efforts in the United States, Latin America and Canada. Prior to joining Nintendo, he served as senior vice president of marketing at VH1. He also has held key marketing positions with Guinness Import Co., Derby Cycle Corp., Pizza Hut, Panda Management Co. and Procter & Gamble.

Source: Go Nintendo

Posted by Bill at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally, someone writes an article on the history of boob physics. I mean it's about time!

• Sony claims the story about banning the sale of used PS3 games reported yesterday is "false speculation."
• Makers of Puzzle Pirates announce public beta for Bang! Howdy.
• Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez are not happy that Mercenaries 2 takes place in Venezuela.
• Reggie Fils-Aime says Nintendo has learned its lesson from Gamecube's weak launch line-up.
• First images of Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
• The first PS3s rolling off the line are being made for Europe. For some reason.
• Rumors of a built-in mic for the Wii controller heat up on news that Nintendo has registered Wiikaraoke.com.
• Longtime pen-and-paper and PC RPG designer Ken Rolston talks about his work on Morrowind and Oblivion, and his retirement. Game designers old enough to retire, it's so weird.
• Teaching With Games project heads to UK schools only to find that many have computers with no CD drives.
• New York Times poll shows parents believe TV mostly helps kids, video games mostly hurt.

Posted by Bill at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Two small updates on the Smash Bros. Brawl front today. First, character profiles have been added for Zero Suit Samus and Wario over at official Smash Bros. Brawl site. It mentions that Zero Suit Samus "isn't a pure character addition" and that players can still use the old power suit version if they want. Thus it sounds more like an alternate outfit or "mode" for the character, maybe like Zelda/Sheik in Melee. For Wario, it points out that this is the WarioWare version of the character, not the old Waro World version, and that Wario's gas attack (must this game have fart jokes?) "builds up" over time.

Secondly, an early translation of SSBB designer Masahiro Sakurai's online journal suggests that not all characters from Melee will be returning. He also mentions that the speed of the game is going to be adjusted, though he doesn't say whether it will be faster or slower. Finally, the team is said to be working on expanding the fighting that goes on in the air.

Posted by Bill at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)