Today we've officially reached the end of an era for the Internet: GeoCities is dead.  Yes, Yahoo finally pulled the plug on the free web hosting service.  While the news is sad, it's certainly not unexpected.  How many people out there actually visited, much less created or maintained, a GeoCities site in the past five years?



While GeoCities ultimately became cesspool of bad layouts, broken images, blinking text and those little animated "under construction" gifs, it still deserves some respect.  GeoCities attempted to provide an outlet for the major creative outpouring that occurred at the beginning of the public Internet.  Their ambition wasn't just to create a free hosting service though, they wanted create a virtual global community.  If you have any doubts, then just look back at some of the original terminology they used.  Their users were called "homesteaders" and their sites were grouped into "neighborhoods."  Heck, their very own name embodies the idea of a single global city.

In retrospect, they were doomed to fail from day one.
( Read more... )

This console generation has been rough to Sony.  They went to the trouble of trying to make an uberconsole in the form of the Playstation 3, only to watch it get its pants beat by Ninendo's underpowered, yet lovably oddball Wii.  Then they had to stand by and watch as their third-party exclusive titles like Devil May Cry IV and Final Fantasy XIII suddenly suddenly became less exclusive.  And let's not even get into the emotional ball kick that was the announcement of Dragon Quest IX would be a Nintendo DS exclusive.  That had to drive more then a few Sony employees to go drown their sorrows.

My point is that Sony has to take their comforts where they can get them, like how their console isn't prone to catastrophic mechanical failures like that other guy's one.  After all, Sony would never put out a product without checking for massive design flaws, right?



What you're looking at is the Yellow Light of Death, which occurs when the soldering on the Playstation 3's motherboard overheats.  This renders the system completely inoperable, short of a trip back to Sony for repairs.  A trip that will cost you about $150 if your system is out of warranty, which is likely given that it only lasts for a year.  If this problem seems oddly similar to the Red Ring of Death suffered by Microsoft's Xbox 360 console that's because it's the exact same thing.

Sony is handling the problem with the grace an dignity of any large corporate entity, which is a nice way of saying they're sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling, "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

( Read more... )

Do you remember the Super Mario Bros. Super Show?  Of course you do.  Anyone who had an NES and a pulse watched that show religiously back in the day.  They ignored the fact that the plot lines were contrived fairy tale/movie/whatever parodies of the week simply because it was Mario in cartoon form.

Nowadays though, most people deride the show cheap cash in it basically was.  It didn't help that since every episode was a parody of something, they often felt like they had nothing to do with Mario (Nintendo must have noticed this too, since later Mario series would be much more game orientated).  If there is any part of the show that is remembered with any fondness though, it was the show's live-action segments featuring wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Mario.



Unlike the cartoon, these segments were more like a sit-com with Mario and Luigi (played by Danny Wells) siting at home, while occasionally receiving celebrity guest stars including Vanna White, Magic Johnson and Sgt. Slaughter.



( Read more... )

When Sony got rid of Ken Kutaragi, I thought it would leave an unfillable void of hyperbole in the gaming industry.  I hadn't counted on how many other execs would come rushing to fill it.  Like Peter Moore, Microsoft's former chief PR guy, who claims that disc-based systems are a "burning platform" and those that stay on the platform "face certain death."

Seriously, just look at this:

“The core business model of videogames is a burning platform,” said Moore, speaking at the 5th annual PLAY Digital Media Conference.

“Look at the platform we’re on, it’s a burning platform,” said Moore. “As a concept, do you stay on the platform and face certain death, or do you jump into the water and face probable death? Most of you would choose probable death, so you start moving towards a hybrid model of digital distribution.”

“As digital distribution becomes more and more, we’ll continue as an industry to work with retail and to ship discs, but more and more of the content will be in the ‘cloud,” added Moore, as reported by consumer website IGN. “More content will be delivered daily, weekly, or monthly, and less will be of the old model of cartridges and discs.”

What makes this really funny, is for all his bluster of digital distribution, EA isn't exactly leading the pack on this front.  On digital distribution site Direct2Drive they an impressive 75 items available, but not all of those items are games since the search didn't filter things like bundle packs, DLC and a strategy guide for game EA doesn't actually publish.  They're showing on other digital distribution sites is even more lackluster, with only 20 titles on Valve's Steam and about five on Stardock's Impulse (I'm not exactly certain because you can't search by publisher on that one for some reason).

Perhaps Mr. Moore should get off of the platform before he yells at everyone else about it?

GamesIndustry via the Armchair Empire

Well this is somewhat awkward. I make a big show about how I'm going to give gaming snapshots every week, and then I go and mess things up by playing practically no games the following week.

There are many things I could blame this on, but the most appropriate target would be the fact I was sick for the better part of the week.  While I was never sick to the point I stayed the whole day in bed (the fact I'm only working temp being a contributing factor), I was sick to the point I had trouble gathering enough focus to write.  In between the time I spent coughing up lungs and feeling generally miserable, I did have time to play one game...

In that past I've been rather...unkind to this game, to put it mildly (link to come when I can actually find it).  The reasons for my dislike are long and complex, so I won't go into detail with them right now. Instead I will give the highly-abridged-but-concise version: I was being dumb.  Really dumb.  In fact, I was being so dumb, I made the Zelda CDi games seem like a good idea.
( Read more... )

I've recently realized for all the time I spend talking about games, I don't really talk about what I'm actually playing.  Occasionally I might do a review/opinion piece on a game after I finish it, but due to time and forgetfulness these come few and far between.

So I'm going to try and change that by posting weekly snap shots of the game I'm currently playing.  Be warned that they might be somewhat eclectic, because sometimes I'll just jump between games for no good reason.  I'd also mention some of them might be a bit obscure, but that's kind of a given for me.

So without further ado...

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood - This is the game I've sunk most of my gaming time into lately. It's one I've actually been meaning to play through for a while, but I didn't really have an opportunity until I saw the game in a bargain bin.

While the game overall is pretty fun, it does have some surprisingly large flaws that I won't go into now.  I'm about three-fourths of the way through the game, so hopefully I should finish it so I can write a more detailed piece.

( Read more... )

There's been a bit of a Renaissance in gaming lately as developers old styles of games and revisit them in a new light. The best of these, such as Bionic Commando: Rearmed, take the solid underpinnings of the original game while updating some of the peripheral elements and presentation for a modern audience.

Some purists have taken issue that many of these game eschew traditional sprite-based graphics in favor of polygonal ones.  They feel the only way to properly make a 2D game is with 2D graphics.

I wonder how those people feel about 3D Dot Game Heroes, which is a 3D game done with 2D graphics.  Well, actually more like the 2D graphics are being done in 3D.  Look, just look at the video to understand what I'm saying:


Crazy looking, isn't it?

I haven't really been paying attention to coverage on New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  This isn't because I'm uninterested in the game, quite the opposite really.  Nintendo had me the moment they said "four-player Mario co-op," so really there was nothing more previews could offer me.  At best they would simply reaffirm that I had to get this game, and at worse they could spoil little things about the game I'd want to discover for myself.  As a result, it wasn't until just now when I discovered that the Koopa Kids were going to be in the game.

Yes, Bowser's often-forgotten offspring are returning to harass Mario and Co. for this game.  There aren't any pictures or videos of the fights online to my knowledge, but according to a preview on 1up the fights are similar to the Kid's Super Mario Bros. 3 experience, with a slight twist.  In the fight with Iggy for example, he still bounces around on his ball and shoots stuff out of his magic wand, but parts of the floor will rise and fall.  And before the fight even begins Kamek from Yoshi's Island shows up and ensorcells the room, which changes the floor to ice.

Basically what I'm trying to say is the boss fights sound like they're going to be crazy awesome.

While the inclusion of the Koopa Kids in any new Mario game makes is 100 times more awesome (it's worth noting that the only other recent game to use them, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, was also awesome), it also fixes one of the big problems with the original New Super Mario Bros.  Namely how the reoccurring antagonist role fell solely in Bowser Jr., who in addition to being a less interesting character design was also incredibly boring to fight.

This raises the inevitable lingering question: are the Koopa Kids supplementing Bowser Jr., or replacing him?

Story via Retronauts
Picture via Brandokay Productions

Ah Monopoly, the classic board game of finance and negotiations. A game of high risks and competitive play that captivates the world over, at least until you get down to the last two players. For most people, this is either where they stop playing Monopoly, or where other people make them before the game goes on forever.

Of course, these concerns are more figurative then literal. Surely all games of Monopoly have to end sometime, right?

Not according to a study by researchers at Cornell University. According to their research there is a 12 percent possibility that a two player game of Monopoly can continue forever.

Think about that for a second. They're basically saying that if you play a two player game of Monopoly there is a better then 10 percent chance that the game will be impossible to complete within the remainder of your life. For those smug people in the back, please refrain from the "I could have told you that"s.


Realistically speaking though, the odds of a Monopoly game continuing infinitely are nonexistent. The world record for the longest Monopoly game is 70 days, but most people would probably kill themselves then even consider playing just seven hours.

As an interesting corollary to the story is that of all the places an infinite Monopoly game could occur, it's unlikely that it will happen at higher levels of play. Apparently in professional-level Monopoly game (and it really shouldn't surprise you that there is such a thing) games are so aggressive that they don't last more then an hour.

San Diego Union Tribune

One of the most heart-wrenching moments of retro gaming is when you find an obscure title that's completely awesome, and then discover that its been more or less forgotten by its creators.  Such is the case with Rocket Knight Adventures, a platformer for Genesis by Konami.

The game came out during the animal mascot game era or gaming, among other such contemporaries such as Bubsy and Aero the Acrobat.  The mammal du jour of RKA is a possum named Sparkster, who blasts through a vaguely steampunk world saving other possums from an army of pigs while occasionally fighting his rival, Axel Gear.

 Like most mascot characters, Sparkster pretty much disappeared by the 32-bit era, which is a shame since his games were notable among the genre in that they were actually good.  Aside from some odd cameos here and there it seemed like Konami had forgotten about Sparkster.  Which made it all the more surprising when I saw that 1up.com was doing a cover story for a new Rocket Knight game.
( Read more... )

There's something elementally pure about tabletop wargames. Sure, the mere mention of the term brings up images of sweaty men crowded around tables loaded with pewter miniatures, who spend most of their time measuring distances and arguing about positioning. However, if you tear away all the obsessive military recreations and space marines, then you're left with a game where you pit your toys against another person's toys. The only difference between a wargame and what you probably did as a kid is that wargames have rules.

Lots of rules, actually. Which are pretty expensive. So are the miniatures, for that matter. Especially when you add in the cost of paint. Makes you wonder why most people prefer to play video game?

I bring this up because of Scope, an project that attempts to use augmented reality (which is essentially virtual reality's practical younger brother) to create a tabletop wargame with the streamlined interface of a video game. What really makes this project interesting it the you supply the minatures for the game in the form of your old toys.



As far as I can deduce, the game works by using a combination of special markers and a camera-equipped, head-mounted display. The camera reads the symbols and feeds them back to a computer, which in turn feeds images to the glasses. Actually picking the symbols seems to be done by focusing on them.

The end result is you have basically have a wargame with a video game-like interface that effectively deals with hassles typically associated with wargames (most of them involving distance in some form). Furthermore, the game is can also take obstacles into account for things like cover, which you can supply in the form of boxes, old building blocks or anything along that line.

Perhaps the only bad thing about Scope is the same problem associated with any augmented reality project: the technology involved is probably too expensive to seriously consider as a retail product. At least it doesn't risk potential safety hangups like some other augmented reality projects.

Scope via GameSetWatch

So over a month ago I got a temp job doing data entry.  This came at a very good time for me, since I had been unemployed for months and had been very slowly running out of money.  Of course, shortly afterward I found that I had less time to write then I expected, and updates came less and less frequently.  In my last post here I swore that I would time to post somewhat regularly again.

That was a month ago.

You see, something I didn't realize then was that after spending eight hours in front of a computer, the absolute last thing I wanted to do when I got home was to sit in front of the computer.  Even when I did manage to pull myself in front of a computer I ended up mostly either playing games or surfing the web.

As a result, the only real writing I got done last month were some handwritten ideas and Twitter.  This isn't actually as bad as it sounds, since I've done a lot more with Twitter then I ever thought possible.  However, there was still that longing to write something more.  Like a story, or a blog post, and anything longer then 140 characters really.

That, combined with the realization that I don't want to data entry for the rest of my life, lead me to decide to reorder my life and get writing back to the forefront.  I'm not going to be quiting my temp job anytime soon, but I at least want to put a greater effort towards trying to get paid for my writing.

In that regard though, there's going to be some changes around here.  In the time I've spent writing this blog I've gradually come to realize there are some inherent limitations to Livejournal.  Specifically the difficulty in really customizing your blog and the general Internet stigma that Livejournal is merely a personal blogging site, and not really suited for any sort of professional blogging.  So I think it's time I moved onto larger fields and greener oceans, or something like that.

This does not mean I intend to stop updating this blog.  Livejournal is still a good place for personal blogging, and I would feel kind of bad just ending the blog here.  It also doesn't mean I'll stop talking about games here, since that's a big part of my personal life.

Okay, maybe things won't change here specifically much, but they might.  In any case, here's hoping the first post of the month is not the only one.

Often times you will find things on the Internet that almost seem too good to be true.  Most of the time they really aren't.

Still there are times you will see something that seems too good to be true, but really hope it is anyway.  Such is the case of a video from an alpha build of Marvel: Ulitmate Alliance that featured Samus Aran and Link as secret characters.

Seriously, just see for yourself:


As you can imagine, this is relatively old (the video was first posted back in back on the big blogs in May 2008) but still pretty low key.  So the story goes, Activision wanted to include those two charcters as as exclusive characters to the Wii version.  Rather then ask Nintendo about this directly though, Activision tried to to surprise Nintendo with a demo of the two characters.  Due to time constrants though, they actually demoed Link and Samus on the PS2 rather then the Wii.

For one reason or another though, Nintendo wasn't happy with them and ask Activision to remove Link and Samus from the final game.  As such, the only evidence that this was even a possiblity is the above video and a demo reel (which also has the only known footage of Link in the game).

Sounds like a good story, but is it true?  Who knows for sure, since even if it was true it's unlikely there's even residual code left in the PS2 version of the game (because if Hot Coffee has taught us anything, if you leave unused code in a game people will find it).  At the very least, it cool to imagine that it could have happened.  Stranger video game crossovers have happened after all.

Love, hate it, or think it's overrated, there's no denying that Final Fantasy is one of the biggest video game franchises in the world.  Equally undeniably is that with every installment the series the name becomes increasingly ironic.

Why did Square pick such a title that would make the sequels seem a little silly?  Hard to say really.  Getting concrete information about the Japanese video game industry is difficult at best, and almost impossible at worse.  For all anyone knows it could have come from someone flipping through a Japanese-English dictionary and picking two words that sounded interesting and happened to create an alliteration.  It's not uncommon for the Japanese to use English simply because "it sounds cool," regardless of how arbitrary the resulting name might seem.  However, most people belive that the real reason the series is called Final Fantasy, is that the first one may have almost been the last game in the series, if the not the last game Square ever made.

The theory states that Square was in dire financial straits after a string of flops, and this game was quite possibly the last one they would ever make.  As a result series creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, choose the name an ironic tribute to the company.  Of course, the theory also states that the game sold like crazy and reversed the company's financial fortunes.

I can see your eyebrows raising out there in the Internet.  The story does seem a bit too good to be true.  When asked about the titles' origin in interviews, Sakaguchi himself has said that game was intended to be his last game, not Square's.  You see, Sakaguchi had dropped out of college to work at Square and wanted to go back.  However, he wanted to make one more game before he went back, and thus the resulting title.

So for a long time it seemed like the first story was just a story.  After all, there was nothing to back it up other then rumors and hearsay.  That changed about a month ago as a result of an interview with long-time series composer, Nobuo Uematsu.  After the interview proper had taken place, the interviewer was making small talk and asked if the game was originally named for Sakaguchi returning for college?  Uematsu replied that while Sakaguchi was going to quit, but the bigger reason was that Square was facing  bankruptcy.

Looks the good story might actually be the true one.  Maybe someone should ask Shougo Sakai why Nintendo won't release Mother 3 outside of Japan?  Couldn't hurt really.

From Wired.com Game|Life

Okay, so it seems that get employed full-time has not left me with as much time to write as I originally thought.  Who knew?

Seriously though, this job has forced me to reconsider how I allocate a lot of my time.  Up until Monday, two weeks ago, my life consisted of mostly sitting at home writing, playing video games, and looking for jobs.  The situation literally changed overnight when I suddenly found myself with a regular (if teniously temporary) job taking up the majority of my day.

Not that I'm trying to complain about my sudden abundance of job.  Among other things, I would love to have enough money to support myself and move out of my parent's house sometime before the age of thirty.  And while I would love to support myself through my writing, people haven't exactly been breaking down seeking witty and insightful writing skills.

However, while I must restate that I like working again, the fact remains I have significantly less free time.  Now I have to figure out how to budget that remaining time between writing, playing games and looking for...well actually I probably could cut that last one out now that I think of it.

As far as the matter relates to directly to here, I ultimately plan to get back into the habit of posting here again.  Obviously I won't be making them quite as often, or probably quite as long, but I've done some of my best writing under ridiculous time constraints.  Also the content might sight a bit from it's video game-centric (if not exclusive focus) simply because I have less time to play games. 

Still, I've somehow managed to keep up this blog for over five years now, so I'm not about to stop now.

There should be a law that people who don't actually play video games are not allowed to talk about them in public.  This is because when said people do, they manage to make idiots out of themselves and cause the people who do play video games to face palm in disgust.

Such was the case in a recent interview with football commentating legend John Madden, when he was asked about how the Madden Football series came to be in an interview:

LA Times: How far has the video game evolved since the days [EA founder] Trip Hawkins ... approached you in 1986 to do a title?

Madden: When Trip Hawkins and I started, there were no video games. He was going to make a game you could play on the computer. The reason I joined him was that I wanted to make something that could teach football. Then it took us years to get to that point.

There are so many things wrong with that statement it hurts to even thing about it.

LA Times via Kotaku

Video game piracy has been a bit of a hot news item, what with all copy protection software that seems to be designed to cause honest gamers to pirate their own games.  People forget that piracy has nibbled at the heels of the video game industry throughout most of it's existence.  Even cartridges, whose very design is practically a form of copy protection, were never safe.  This lead to some developers to come up with some rather creative ways to block pirates.

In particular, Nintendo's SNES classic Earthbound had quite a few copy protection checks hidden in it's programing.  Some of it's mundane stuff, like screens that pop up telling you that copying games is bad.  However, there are some checks that alter the game in order to create a negative play experience for a would-be pirate.

For example, there is one check that increases the occurrance of random enemies on the overworld.  Just how much does it increase, you ask?  Just look at the screens below:


However, the absolute meanest thing the game can do to a pirate comes at the very end of the game.  Right when you fight the final boss there is a check, which if the game fails, will cause it to freeze up and delete your saves.  I'm not kidding about this, just watch the video (and if I have to warn you about spoilers, then you're probably not reading this article anyway):


Can you just imagine the look on some Hong Kong pirate's face back in the day, who had scoffed at the warnings and just muscled through the ridiculous enemy encounter rate only to find it was all for naught?  Truly, I can't think of a better example of crime not paying.

SecuROM?  StarForce?  You guys should be taking notes from this.  Who needs root kits if you can make the game delete its own saves to spite the pirate?

Press the Buttons via Starmen.net

When the economic recession first hit, famous writers swore up and down that video game industry was recession proof.  Several months and a couple highly publicized studio closings later, writers seem to have taken the opposite stance and now think that the industry is headed for a meltdown that would make the Great Crash of '83 look like a slow after-Christmas sales quarter.

A video was recently posted that interviewed a lot of developers about whether they thought the industry was headed for a crash.  I am not posting said video, because I feel the whole matter can be summed up in two words: so what?

So what if the video game industry crashes tomorrow?  It's not like anyone's going to say, "Oh well, it took over thirty years, but it looks like video games were just a fad after all.  Time to put away the controllers and figure out how to socially interact with normal human beings.  I wonder what I can do to fill all that time I spent arguing about video games online?"  Video games will still exist even if the industry somehow disappears, and as long as games exist there will be people who will play them.

While I highly doubt an actual industry crash is going to happen anytime soon (especially considering the last one had less to do with economics and more with the fact the industry was really dumb back then), but even in the event of an unlikely scenario where the video game industry spontaneously combusts I think video games and the people who play them will still get by.  Personally, I own enough unplayed games that if I stopped getting new ones I wouldn't have to repeat titles for at least a decade.  Probably more, given how long it takes me to play through games.

So in summary, there are plenty of good things to be worried about in this economic depression.  Things like whether or not you'll have a job tomorrow, or whether the entire health care industry will somehow explode.  Don't bother worrying about gaming though.  It's no going away anytime soon.

So when I started my twitter feed, I swore that wouldn't replace my updates here.  About a month, 9 LJ posts and 135 Twitter updates later, I still stand by that promise.  It's just that it's a little easier to regularily update Twitter then to update here.  Something about the ability to do it any time or maybe that the character limit forces me to focus my thoughts instead of letting them wander across the page until even I don't know when they are going to end.

Sorry, lost my train of thought there.

In any case though, I haven't been posting here as much simply because I've been slightly busy.  This week, in fact, I've actually been much busier then normal because I actually have a job.

Yes that's right, I actually have a real job for the first time in months (admitedly, it's not for lack of trying that I've been unemployed this long).  Sure it's only a temp job that could end at any time, but I'm at least working through next week.

Now that I have a job, I finally can stop sitting around the house thinking about all the things I could be doing with my free time that I don't end up doing, and instead I can go to work and think about all the thing I could be doing, but can't because I no longer have free time.

Wait, that didn't come out right.

As much as I like indie games, I cannot claim to love all indie games equally.  One large section of the genre which almost never registers on my radar are flash games.  I'm not entirely sure why this is.  It's possible there's a part of my brain that still equates flash games with "variations on killing the Duck Hunt Dog."

Perhaps there are some of you out there that feel the same way about them.  However, this is far from the only thing flash games are good for.



( Click to continue reading review )