• Latest News
• Features
• Merchandise
• Downloads
• Events
• Retro & Arcade
• PC
• Video
• Nintendo
• Sony
• Microsoft
• Sega
• Industry News
• Reviews
• Arts & Crafts
• Apparel

• Mock Up Frenzy!
• Red Alert 3 - “Talent” Trailer
• Project RPB has Risen
• Space Invaders Pillow
• VideoGamesLive comes to town
• Dark Horizon
• Resident Evil 5 Info and Screens
• Teram Fortress 2 Free Weekend
• Hanabi Festival 3
• Target Smash!! and Home-Run Contest World Records

• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007

• More

Game Acrhive Planned

The university of Texas, in Austin (is there any other?) have announced a partnership with several game designers to create a game archive.

They plan to have a fund raiser on September 4th, with tickets ranging from a whooping $5,000 to a more reasonable (yet still quite expensive) $75.
The evening includes a charity auction, with one of the auction items being a weightless flight aboard a Boeing 747, recently experienced by physicist Stephen Hawking and made famous for it’s use in the film Apollo 13.

“The center is poised to become a major repository of historically significant material and documentation related to the evolution of the video-game industry,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the Center for American History. “Austin is home to hundreds of the most prominent names in game development. It just makes sense that the University of Texas at Austin house a research archive dedicated to the study of this industry …”

Noted Industry guest include Richard Garriott, Warren Spector, George Sanger and Bill Bottorff.

Virtual Console Update

Two updates this week for the Virtual Console. Kirby’s Ghost Trap, which was originally on the SNES is 800 points to buy and Devil’s Crush, a sequel to Alien Crush on the Turbografx (also available on the VC) going for 600 points.

Happy Downloading

Kirby’s Ghost Trap – battle of the blobs!

Kirby’s Ghost Trap is a high-speed puzzle game that is sure to send shivers down your spine!

Face off against famous Kirby enemies by forming chain reactions from the differently-coloured Blobs that rain down the screen. Each chain reaction you create sends ghosts to scupper your opponent!

This Super Nintendo classic from 1995 features 16 fast-paced stages, four difficulty levels and a two-player mode.

Pinball wizardry in Devil’s Crush

The follow-up to Alien Crush (also available on Virtual Console), Devil’s Crush takes video game pinball to an even higher level. Set on a living pinball table, Devil’s Crush challenges you to destroy monsters, break spells and return light to a cursed world – all through your ball-blasting skills.

This Turbografx classic features an even bigger table than Alien Crush, more bonus games, a two-player mode and a save system that allows you to come back to the action at any time.

Viva Pinata on DS

Rare’s continuing support for Nintendo has come as a surprise to some because the once second party company was sold to Xbox for reasons only the parties involved know, but is not unwelcome.

The critically acclaimed game for the Xbox 360 is making it’s way to the DS, which unfortunately for all it’s shining reviews it did not do too well on the 360.

It appears as though Viva Pinata has found it’s spiritual home now and will find success along side titles like Animal Crossing and the Pokemon series

Wii Portal

(Now your thinking with third parties)

Rockstar, a company most famous for its Grand Theft Auto series and more recently because of Manhunt 2 have announced that their Xbox 360 title Table Tennis and the PS2 title Bully are going to be released on the Wii. This is very good news on the one hand because yet another third party company is showing a commitment to Nintendo by releasing quality games and because these games are aimed at a more mature audience, with Manhunt currently in limbo its good to see Rockstar has more to offer Wii owners and hopefully have more to offer in the future.

Yet on the other hand Rockstar is releasing ports and they are not the only company doing this Capcom has released Resident Evil 4: the Wii edition, EA Scarface and Godfather, Ubisoft Far cry and Prince of Persia. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with doing this, it is in fact common practice through out the gaming industry, it is a good opportunity for companies to expand their user base and increase sales. At the end of the day it’s the sales of their games that enable them to produce more games.

(Read on …)

Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra

Yesterday I was talking to Daniel and he mentioned he had visited a site [found via Joystiq - Daniel] where they have taken old classic games and have done a sort of acapella style version of them instead.

Now at first I wasn’t too sure what to expect but there are some truly amazing pieces on this site like: Double Dragon Stage One, Bomber Man Battle! & Legend of Zelda, all of which I’m sure will put a smile on your face and take you back to when you first played that game!

Anyway jump over to the site and see for yourself what these guys have done!

Link: www.miniclash.com

Nintendo NES Cart Icons (Pack I)

(Read on …)

Rich prefer Wii

According to media trackers Nielson the Nintendo Wii is more popular with affluent households.

Nielson, a company associated with tracking TV ratings is branching out into the games industry with GamePlay Metrics, a data-tracking service that demonstrates.

“Who is playing games, on which systems, at what times, and, when integrated with other Nielsen data, illustrates which other media platforms are also engaging gamers and which consumer goods they’re likely to buy.”

Currently in 12,000 households (about 33,000 people) monitoring console and pc gaming habits, the system has so far brought back the following information.

PS2 is still the most popular system with 42.3% of all console playtime. Second is Xbox with !7%, then the 360 with 8%, the Gamecube has 5.8%, next is the Wii with 4% and finally the PS3 with only 3%. On the PC front World of Warcraft is the most played game, with an average of 17 hours a week and 18% of all PC gaming time.

Finally GamePlay Metrics data also indicated that the Wii is most popular with richer families with the cheapest of the next-gen consoles most likely to be found in households where the annual income is over $100,000.

“This is the first glimpse of metered in-home video game player data, providing game publishers, console manufactures, advertisers and competing entertainment media with the most accurate, objective, and quantifiable metric available,” said Nielsen Games and Nielsen Wireless vice president Jeff Herrmann in a statement.

“We believe this will change the discussions surrounding which games get developed for what consoles and how publishers represent their actual audience to advertisers.”

Interesting stuff, hopefully this sort of data-tracking will not stiffle creativity within the the gaming industry, with analysts forecasting that 2% of their target audence would be interested in playing and Shoot-em-up with RPG elements!

Source Pocket-lint

Nielson Media

Nintendo DS Cart Icons (Pack I)

(Read on …)

In the shops!

Well ok not quite, this is what to look forward to on Friday.

Pokemon Pearl
Pokemon Diamond
Guilty Gear Dust Strikers

For those of you who are interested in meeting “chart topping wonders” McFly should firstly pre-order the game from Hamleys game and then get themselves down to the Game Store in Hamleys London on release.

The first 200 “lucky” pre-orders will then receive a wrist band.
Oh and a Personal appearance by McFly at the store

All three titles are on the DS and will be around the £29.99 mark

Happy Shopping

Famitsu loves Forever Blue

Respected gaming magazine Famitsu has reviewed the diving sim in the latest issue.

Four reviewers gave the game a score out of ten 10/8/9/8, giving it a total of 35 out of 40, which by anyone’s standards is pretty good.

They said that it feels a little like a simulation allowing you to gradually explore the game and that a change of camera view can literally get you lost at sea.
The Game sucks you in, with the mysterious music making it feel very real.

I am picturing an under water Animal Crossing in my head hopefully it will be a great experience to play this.

(via Aussie-Nintendo)

Heroes game coming soon!

Ubisoft to produce Heroes & Avatar gamesRumour has it Ubisoft has finalised a deal to produce games for both James Cameron’s Avatar and the NBC hit Heroes.

An announcement for the Heroes game will most likely be done for Comic-Con.For those not in the know Heroes is a TV series about seemingly ordinary people with extra ordinary powers, similar to X-Men with a bit of Watchmen thrown in for good measure.

Due for release in 2009, it marks Ubisofts continuing interest in developing Hollywood licenses in to games, with last years King Kong and Beowulf and Lost games in development, with the later also due to be unveiled at this years Comic-Con

(via Screen Head)

Okami 2 ???

In a continuation to the previous story about Okami. Devil May Cry creator and Okami designer Hideki Kamiya has expressed an interest in doing another Okami game, but ultimately its down to Capcom weather or not a sequel would see the like of day.

(via Kotaku)

Yoshi

Everyone’s favorite green dinosaur is back! And now with a new special move the Egg Toss, That will increase the distance of his jump which will be handy when going against the likes of Mario, link and the other stronger characters.

Okami

In an interview with Game informer, Okami creator Keiji Inafune talked about the possibilities of releasing Okami on the Wii and had this to say on the matter.
Of course [a Wii version of Okami is] something that I’ve personally thought about, but it’s easier said than done. It’s a cliché, but it’s not just saying, “Okay, let’s port it over here.” There’s technology, controls and then people to make the game, whether it’s scheduling or knowing the hardware you want to take it to. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but we don’t have any plans for it right now, and nothing to comment on.

Not entirely positive, but its good to see that firstly he’s thinking about it and secondly if does, he’ll do it properly.

(via Gameinformer)

Project H.A.M.M.E.R. is D.E.A.D?

Reading my RSS Feeds I came upon an article on Infendo about Project H.A.M.M.E.R. Which reads that the game has been put on the back burner, but the interesting thing is when Beth Llewellyn was interviewed about the game she did not correct Joystic when they asked the reasons why the game had been cancelled?

Below is part of the interview:

What’s the status of Project H.A.M.M.E.R. or Disaster: Day of Crisis?
Disaster is still in development. Project H.A.M.M.E.R. we’ve sort of shifted resources off that title. But Disaster is still in development. Again, you have to remember, E3 is one small little blip in time and we tried to focus on a few key titles. Rest assured, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes at Nintendo. You know the company, and we always have stuff going on…

Are you talking about the reasons why H.A.M.M.E.R. has been cancelled?
No.

So it looks like Project H.A.M.M.E.R. may never see the light of day!

E3 Interview: Shigeru Miyamoto

Mr Miyamoto is a very much in demand these days, check out another interview with the man here at Wired Blogs

Wii Shotgun

“I Keep this handy for close encounters!”

This gun accessory for the Wii is available to buy from dealextreme for $16.58 and while its a clever piece of kit real question is do you need it?

(via Technabob)

Has Princess Peach been replaced?

Before you all freak out and start to grab your pitch forks and torches, NO Nintendo haven’t replaced the beloved Princess Peach!

But it looks like there is a new princess on the block and her name is Princess Rosetta? But do not worry; Mario will not stop until he has found his beloved Peach!

Virtual Console Update

Three new (old) games for the VC:
Metroid, Street Fighter II Turbo and Silent debuggers!

Teleport yourself back to 1987 and find out how Metroid was “truly a ground-breaking game and established the famous trademarks of the hit series: massive environments, upgradeable weapons and suits, and the famous Morph Ball ability” Not forgetting the fact that when completed players were treated to Samus’ true identity, its not so much of a big deal these days but back in 87 its was bigger than Vader being Luke’s dad…

Street Figther II Turbo is “Street Fighter II, only faster and this time you can fight as the bosses!!”. With the ability to spead up the game x5 or even x10, this game was ludicrusly fast and all the better for it.

Silent Debuggers, a Turbographics game from 1991 set in the far future, mankind has conquered space and is finally at peace. However, small criminal elements known as ‘Bugs’ threaten universal harmony, so a covert team of ‘Silent Debuggers’ is deployed to stop them. As their newest recruit, you must clean up the dangerous space station ‘Gane’, from where no Debugger has ever returned.

NitroBike

Left Field Productions, whose previous efforts include NBA Court Side, MTX Mototrax and the excellent Excitebike 64 Are Working on two Games for Nintendo’s Wii, Dave Mirra’s BMX Challenge and NitroBike.

Having developed Excitebike 64, Nitrobike looks like a spiritual sequel to Excitebike and hopefully it will include all the hallmarks the game too.

Currently there is not a lot of information to go on apart from this, a collection of screenshots and a short video clip.

Navigate rocket-propelled motorcycles in this arcade-style game. players can choose to race against the clock or against worthy opponents in nitrobike’s exciting multi-player game mode and unique online mode.

without a doubt the most exciting prospect of this game is the ability to play online, this is one of the areas the Wii needs improvement in and hopefully this will be the first of many online games from 3rd parties.

• Page 1 of 2
• 1
• 2
• >