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• Mock Up Frenzy!
• Red Alert 3 - “Talent” Trailer
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VideoGamesLive comes to town

Of course, VGL tours all over the world, so I ought to point out that the town in question is London. And why does that matter? Two reasons: (a) Tickets only (finally) went on sale last week; and (b) It’s the nearest venue to the Levelselect team’s home town!

The orchestra is appearing at the Royal Festival Hall for one night only - Friday 24th October, as part of the London Games Festival. There are two performances on the day and tickets are available from the VideoGamesLive website. We’ve got ours already, so we’ll see you there!

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, the pic is of last year’s costume competition winner. Don’t you feel thirsty just looking at him?)

Heavy Update To Be Biggest Yet

As from today Valve will be drip feeding us information and downloads for their latest class update.

Valve promises that the Heavy update will be the biggest update so far and judging by the fact that every day for a week they will be revaling more, tells us they’re not kidding.

In addition to offering new unlockable weapons, achievements, “The Heavy” update also includes a brand new gameplay mode and a number of new maps. The rollout culminates next Tuesday, August 19 when the update will be made available to all owners of Team Fortress 2.

Once again Valve are offering a free weekend of TF2, to give all gamers a chance to check out the new gameplay introduced in “The Heavy” update. The Free Weekend is open to gamers the world over and scheduled to begin Friday, August 22 at 11 am PDT.

To check out the updates visit the Heavy page

War Games 25 Years On

25 years is a long time, for a movie that puts you in auto classic status, not that WarGames needs such generosity because it is a classic anyway. Made around the time video gaming was in it’s infancy WarGames inspired a whole generation of would be hackers, gamers and geeks alike and made you believe even us geeks could get a girl as attractive as Alley Sheedy.

Wired’s article, comprised as an interview with Walter Parkes, Lawrence Lasker and Peter Schwartz delves into what makes WarGames so popular today and their influences at the time that shaped the movie. It’s well worth a read if you’d like to not only know more about the film but also the gaming industry during the 70s/80s.

WarGames at Wired Via laughingsquid

Video Games Live album debuts at #10

The Video Games Live album debuted in San Diego last week, coming in at a respectable #10 in the US Billboard charts. It’s recognition for a lively and enjoyable event that celebrates what gamers have known for a very long time… that the games industry has some top notch composers whose music rivals and often betters mainstream artists.
(Read on …)

Mushroom Men Goodies

It sounds like Gamecock and Red Fly Studio are really going to town will the build up to Mushroom Men’s release in the United States in October, I certainly hope the make a similar effort in Europe too.

Up for grabs is the Pax statue (pictured above), the first set of trading cards and a six day cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Mexico and then back again. Although to be honest I’ll just be happy with the funky statue (and the game of course). (Read on …)

Machinima UK Music Video Contest

Have you ever watched Machinima and thought to yourself that you could do better? Or simply watched it and thought you’d like to give it a try? Well Machinima.com/uk and Rustlers Microwave snacks have teamed up with Jonathan Coulton (bloke above of Portal Still Alive fame) to offer UK residents a chance of Machinima fame and fortune.

The competition is to celebrate the launch of Machinima.com’s UK website and is part of it’s commitment to bringing the art of Machinima to the UK. Open to any UK resident over the age of eighteen, it’s a chance for any budding director to show off their skills and help raise their profile both within the community and for the community itself.

Jonathan Coulton has very kindly lent two of his songs to the competition, of which one needs to be used to create a music video within the realms of Machinima, it’s that simple. If you fancy a go at it you must hurry because you only have until 1st of August to submit your entry. For more information about the competition, the rules and the cool prizes on offer for the winners visit the competition page.

Also for those who would like to give it a try but lack the technical knowhow might want to check out DigitalPh33r’s Guide to Making Halo 3 Machinima: Parts One & Two (which granted are made will Halo 3 and Xbox in mind but are still full of useful information none the less).

Guinness World Records Celebrates Father’s Day

Bit of a strange one this, basically the Guinness World Record: Gamer Edition wants to celebrate father’s day by getting dads to break records on their favourite games, no I don’t get this either.

Don’t get me wrong, father and son bonding is important but I usually find gaming high scores to be out of reach of the average gamer let alone a world record score (just check Twin Galaxies), but hey it’s all in the interest of fun!

The full press release is below, check the very obvious EA plug for Tiger Woods, but no mention of Activision for Guitar Hero. Strange. (Read on …)

Capcom 25 Years old

Yesterday (June 11th) was Capcom’s 25th birthday and to celebrate they are holding a tea party and everyone is invited!

OK, I made that last bit up but they really are 25 and the CEO, Kenzou Tsujimoto has posted a very nice Oscar acceptance speech thanking everyone from the stakeholders right down to the customers and promises some momentous titles this year too.

Happy Birthday Capcom, the guys at Level Select thank you for your awesome games over the years and hope you prosper for another 25 years. And please, please let those Mega Man 9 rumours be true!

Check out the CEO Message here

What Do You Burn Apart From Witches? More witches!

In the finest traditions of common sense and free thinking Pastor Richard Patrick of Abyssinia Baptist Church, is considering having a game burning to try and combat the rise in violence in Newport News, Virginia.

If it goes ahead the event will encourage parents and children to burn music CDs and video games which are considered to be destructive to young minds. Book burnings are a rare occurrence these days, there are exceptions offcourse and book burnings have been widely documented for Harry Potter books. I find the pastors response to violence to be somewhat ironic considering the mob mentality and persecution closely associated with book burning, even worse is he claims to be a man of religion. But then, we all know what a symbol of understanding and acceptance religious people are.

Source Game politics

Street Fighter IV Coming To London!

Capcom will be wheeling out SFIV for the Battle of Destiny, the Road to Evolution event at the London Metropolitan University on Saturday, 27th July. The Battle of Destiny tournament is a world wide tournament that pits players against each other in a battle of mortal combat (no, not the game and not literately), the winner will get to go to Las Vegas and get to duke it out against other world warriors.

Other games that will be hosting tournaments will be Hyper Street Fighter 2 - Anniversary Edition, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, Capcom Vs SNK 2 and Street Fighter 3 : 3rd Strike, if you are any good at any of these and you fancy you chances in the world arena head over to battle of destiny

Source Eurogamer

Your New Gaming Calendar

Sourcing game release dates can be an absolute pain in the arse, not because of delays by developers but simply because there has never been one place where you could go to get the dates.

That has all changed now thanks to http://www.game-releases.net, which has been set up with the sole purpose of cataloging and arranging the jumbled mess of release dates into a simple to use colour coordinated calendar.

The site also has a very attractive information page for each product that tells you everything you need to known about your most anticipated release, one down side is that the site currently only caters for the US, hopefully a European and even Asian calendar will be included in the future.

Visit Game Releases

Source Destructoid

Ness Enters The Fray?

The Hanabi Festival is back to the Virtual Console, seasoned Wii owners might remember the Hanabi Festival from last year, which released titles like Sin And Punishment, Ninja Gaiden and the limited-edition Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.

As of today PAL territories will be able to download

• Gradius II Gofer No Yabou – Turbografx (Japanese version)
• Columns III: Revenge of Columns – SEGA MEGA DRIVE (U.S. version)
• Final Soldier – Turbografx (Japanese version)

Each week Nintendo will release a selection of titles that never saw an original release in Europe and all games will be released in their original U.S. or Japanese versions.

The most exciting news though has to be the fact that Earthbound has just been rated by the ERSB, which could see the title available in America very soon. With the Hanabi Festival already under way could we finally see a European release too?

Earthbound Source VC-Reviews

Hanabi Festival

Gold Rush Weekend

A quick heads up to remind everyone that Valve’s Team Fortress 2 free weekend starts at 7pm tonight, which is in about 1:30 mins.

You don’t need to be an existing Steam member to qualify, but keep in mind that you will need to download Steam and register a free account to take advantage of the free weekend offer. Once you have registered, or are already a member you can download Team Fortress 2 straight away.

For more information visit the official Gold Rush page

TF2 System Requirements

Minimum: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX 8 level Graphics Card, Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better), 1GB RAM, DirectX 9 level Graphics Card, Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

It’s a Soopa Mario!

Saturday saw the Soopa Coin-Up Brothers super custom vinyl event at the Concrete Jungle in super New York, and even though I wasn’t able to get there the information super-highway does what it does best… check out this super Flickr set for a peek at the super Soopas on show.

You can also keep up-to-date with all the super Soopa custom action by visiting the official super Vinyl Toy Freaks Soopa Gallery.

SCI-FI-LONDON Sponsored by EA

The UK Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival gets an official sponsor in the form of Electronic Arts, the festival which will run from 30 April – 4 May 2008 at the Apollo West End theatre will showcase all the best Sci-Fi Films, books, comics and games. (Read on …)

Can video games really make you healthier?

Couch potato syndrome has helped see adult obesity levels quadruple in the UK over the last 25 years and since the advent of the Wii people have wanted to know if you really can get fit playing games. Studies have already shown the Wii is no substitute for actual exercise, but it is a step in the right direction.

(Read on …)

Play.com Live! Part 1 The Event

The UK’s first gaming convention in quite a few years took place over the weekend and the Level Select team went to Wembley stadium to see what Play.com and the gaming industry had put on show for us. (Read on …)

Nintendo To Host Three GDC Panels

Nintendo, the greedy little devils are planning to hold tree different panels at this year’s Game Developers Conference, with Takao Sawano, Takashi Aoyama, and Masahiro Sakurai all addressing the attendees about Nintendo’s recent successes.

(Read on …)

Megaman Is Twenty Today!

That’s right, the infamous Megaman (or Rockman in the east) was born on 17th December 1987.

If you go to the Japanese Capcom site and blow out the candles a link will send you to the image above and a very nice message in Japanese, what it says I have no idea. I am hoping that somebody somewhere will be kind enough to translate it.

Official Capcom Site.

Here’s a link the message (Japanese).

Thanks to Destructoid for alerting me to Megaman’s Birthday.

Commodore 64 25th Anniversary

The computer History Museum is an organisation that preserves artifacts and stories of the information age. Founded in 1996 the museum has become home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection comprising over 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software.

On December 10th the CHM recorded a special celebration of the Commodore 64 which was twenty five years old in August. In the celebration a panel of experts discuss the impact of the Commodore 64 (or C64) since its launch in 1982 and how it’s gone on to sell 17 million units up until the end of its lifetime in 1994.

The video, which can be found on you tube is over 90 minutes long and comprises of some very high profile people, like Steve Wozniak and Jack Tramiel.

Unfortunately the you tube video requests that it’s not shared without permission so follow the links below.

Commodore 64 - 25th Anniversary Celebration Video

Computer History Museum

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