Images of Sony's rumoured PSP-4000, also known as the PSP Go, have been leaked to the web. Interestingly, the official images look surprisingly similar to mock up PSP2s that have been making the rounds for the last year. The new portable also dumps the UMD drive entirely, instead featuring 16gb of internal flash memory that is expandable via a Memory Stick Pro Duo card slot. The system also features a sliding screen design that hides the controls and the system also appears to be significantly smaller (read less wide) than the past due to the the buttons being moved. It still sports a single analogue nub though. The system is said to be 43% lighter due to the removal of the disc drive. Additionally, the Go features Bluetooth connectivity. Presumably this will either be for wireless headsets or to interface with the PS3. It is rumoured that Sony will also debut game rentals and music through the PSP Store. Game Console Network (which appears to be suffering a freak out, probably due to demand) claims they got the information for and images from a preview of the June issue of Qore. The PSP Go will supposedly hit shelves this fall.
More news about the system will come when it is officially announced at E3 next week. Mind you, I'm not sure how keen I am on the design. Not exactly meant for adult fingers. There is also the looming problem of current PSP owners who want to upgrade to the new portable. Since it lacks a UMD drive, it is inherently not backwards compatible with most current PSP games. The $10 million question is whether Sony will offer dowloadable versions of all games already available and if they'll charge current PSP owners to replace their UMDs.
Source: Gizmodo -- Pictures Included
Playstation Universe -- With Video from GCN
I usually don't report rumours but this one is particularly interesting. One floating around has been a Nintendo DSi Phone. Unfortunately, those looking to turn their portable into a swiss army knife are out of luck. “Telephony is not in our wheelhouse,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo America's COO. However, Nintendo has hinted that a 3G enabled DSi might me in the works. Fils-Aime said that the company sees the value of wireless connectivity that's in “an always-on connected state”. Therefore, it's a distinct possibility though the company is keeping quite as to whether they're actually working on it or not. In my opinion, this is going to be the way in which all portables eventually go. While Wifi has revolutionized multiplayer for the DS and PSP, it has its limitations. Namely you're limited to wifi hotspots contrasted to ultra fast 3G that is available pretty much everywhere these days. Naturally though, 3G will require additional monthly fees through a cell company. However, the ability to download games and play online anywhere at any time is too tempting for most gamers. Rumour also has it that a cell phone enabled PSP is also in the works.
Source: The Register
Loonie to reach parity by year-end: TD Securities
Infamous at Best Buy Canada $69.99Infamous at Best Buy America $59.99
In case you're wondering, according to today's exchange rate Infamous should be selling in Canada for a cool $66. Ok, not much of a savings but I have noticed that the price of games went up a lot faster when the Canadian dollar dropped than they did when the reverse happened back in 2007. I'm not picking on Best Buy in particular here because all game retailers have started doing this. I've even seen older titles like Ratchet & Clank Future going back up to $70, and don't tell me those are all new units. They wonder why so many people are buying used games. Comparatively speaking, games are a lot cheaper today then they were 15 years ago. I saved up all year to buy Sonic & Knuckles back in 1994, which was $70 when it came out. That works out to be $93 in today's money. Still, buying new games are prohibitively expensive for most. That's something that developers need to realize as they move to kill the used market and switch to a download-only format. I personally think games should drop $10 on average to make them more comparable with DVD and Blu-ray movies. While companies would get less revenue per game sold, they could potentially get more volume sales and curb the used market that they've been so hostile toward.
The flight sim community is in mourning this week after the loss of one of the hobby's biggest repositories of addon content for Microsoft Flight Simulator. On May 13th, the site was hacked and it's two servers were brought to their knees. Twelve years worth of content supplied by the site's 60,000 members , including the forums and the file section, were wiped out in minutes. According to the site's administrator Tom Allensworth, restoring content will be extremely difficult if not outright impossible. The attack has left many in the tech community scratching their heads. One commenter on The Register was confused as to why an attack of this magnitude would be launched against a non-commercial hobby site. Indeed, there is no financial gain to be made by simply deleting data. Some speculate that it could be a test for a larger attack or was possibly done by a disgruntled staff/site member. Nobody has claimed responsibility so far at the time of writing. In the wake of the disaster, Allensworth has come under fire by those in IT for Avsim's purportedly lax security. While Allensworth claims there were no successful hack attempts on the site in its history, server experts have questioned why no offline backups were ever made. Avsim did have a duplicate server but that data was also online, making it an easy target for any hacker able to break into the main server. Using duplicate servers is a common form of redundancy in case of hardware failure but it is not a substitute for proper backups. "Mark" of UK based flight simulation news site FlightSimX, who is donating bandwidth for a possible resurrection of Avsim, laid blame directly on Avsim's administrators for not adequately securing their data.
Currently, Avsim still exists as a temporary web forum but those looking to download files are out of luck. The forum provides more information on the hack as well as progress for getting the site restored. Users will have to sign up again since old user names and passwords no longer work. I've been a member of Avsim for a long time and even though I really don't use FS that often anymore, it's sad to see it go. However, I agree with FlightSimX that the site's administrators should have known better. Hopefully Avsim's many content providers were smart enough to keep backups of their own work and are willing to upload it again should the site be restored. There's an important lesson is to be learned from this. Always backup your important data. Even if you're unlikely to be hacked, computers aren't perpetual machines; they do fail.
Source: The Register
Major trends that reach mass appeal inevitably become dogged by criticism and controversy. Pokemon was no exception. One of the earliest criticisms were in regards the aggressive marketing tactics employed by Nintendo. One prominent child psychologist claimed that the game brainwashed children into buying merchandise. This particular controversy as well as many others were lampooned in the South Park episode "Chinpokomon". Animal rights activists also lashed out against the game saying it promoted animal abuse and bore similarities to cockfighting. Major religious groups joined in on the attack, claiming it promoted the occult as well as violent themes. Abrahamic religions took particular offence to the game's inclusion of evolution, even though it more closely resembled insect metamorphosis rather than the Darwinian kind. Islamic fundamentalists claimed the game was a Jewish plot while Jews complained about supposed Nazi imagery. Fundamentalist Christians thought it contained satanic references. All these claims were proven false.
After the Pokemon trading card game was released in 1999, school yard fights broke out between kids over trade disputes. Parents saw this as indisputable proof that the game promoted violence, gambling, and brainwashing. More level headed individuals such as myself simply saw it as kids just being kids. (Pokemon came out towards the end of my childhood days, but I can remember similar problems with Pogs.) To add to the grief caused by various special interest groups, Nintendo was sued by the creators of the obscure 90s toy Monster in My Pocket for trademark infringement in 2001. Nintendo eventually won the case.
The anime didn't escape controversy either after the episode "Electric Soldier Porygon" caused hundreds of Japanese children to have epileptic seizures. TV Tokyo immediately pulled the episode from distribution and it has not been seen since. It became the first one of the infamous banned episodes. The Pokemon Jinx was accused of being a blackface stereotype of African American women, leading the episode "Holiday Hi-Jinx" to be pulled off American airwaves. Jinx's skin colour was subsequently changed from black to dark purple. (Ironically, Jinx's appearance was based on Ganguro, a fashion trend among teen girls in Japan at the time involving bleached blond hair, deep tans, and thick white eyeliner. Ganguro could almost be called a form of "whiteface" as it mocked the California blond beach bimbo stereotype.) "The Legend of Dratini" was pulled because the Safari Zone Warden is seen pointing a gun at Ash, while Team Rocket's James is later seen holding a gun to the Warden's head. All banned episodes were shown in Japan and can be seen on Youtube. Some have been subtitled by fans but none were dubbed into English.
By the early 2000s, most of the controversy surrounding the series had passed. Pokemon had gone beyond a mere fad and evolved into a much larger pop culture phenomenon. Pikachu got his face on everything from toys to several jumbo jets and even had a protein named after him. Several spinoff games were created including virtual pet Hey You Pikachu for the N64, which used a special voice recognition unit, and Pokemon Pinball for the Gameboy, the first Gameboy game to feature a rumble pack. In 1999, mutterings began coming out about a new Pokemon game that had been released in Japan. Concept arts of new Pokemon not seen in Red, Green, and Blue began spreading online. One, named by fans as Pikablu, showed a round, blue, mouse-like creature which later became Marill. Most infamous was the strange bird shown at the end of the anime's pilot episode. In 2000, Nintendo released the first true sequel of the game in North America under the titles Pokemon Gold & Silver. The bird seen in the anime turned out to be Ho-oh, a legendary phoenix Pokemon that the game's central plot revolved around. Gold & Silver took place three years after the original in Johto region, located just west of and connected to Kanto. Like the previous generation, Gold & Sliver was the first Pokemon game to contain a solid plot revolving around the player's abusive rival, searching for the legenday Ho-oh and Lugia at Brass & Tin Towers, and brining down Team Rocket once and for all. While the basic game mechanics were identical to the original, many new features were added. The graphics were given a complete overhaul to take advantage of the significantly more powerful Gameboy Color. The game was now in full colour and featured far more detailed Pokemon sprites and overworld scenery. Move animations were also vastly improved over the original. The game also increased the number of Pokemon with 100 new creatures being native to only the Johto region, bringing the total to 251. Two new element types, steel and dark, were also added. Other new features included day/night cycles that varied the kinds of Pokemon that could be caught in an area, healing berries, hold items, the Pokegear smartphone, and Pokemon breeding & gender. The clock feature was by far the most critical since certain events would only happen on certain days and certain Pokemon could only be caught at specific times. Talk about forcing kids to play the game 24/7 if they wanted to truly finish it. Unlike other games with day/night cycles, Gold & Silver functioned in real time. To add to all this, the game itself was twice as large as its predecessors. As with the original, the goal was to collect the eight gym badges and defeat the Elite Four. Once you had accomplished that, Professor Oak would give you the NationalDex Pokedex allowing you to travel to Kanto and see how it looks three years after Red & Blue. There you could collect Kanto specific Pokemon and challenge the gyms there. With all 16 badges, you got the chance to fight the reclusive Red on Mt Silver, the protagonist from the original series. Until recently, Red was the most powerful NPC trainer in any Pokemon game, wielding all four starters from the original series, an Espeon, and a Snorlax at levels between 75 and 81.
One year later, Game Freak expanded on the second generation by adding a special edition as they had done with Pokemon Yellow. Pokemon Crystal was released in 2001, making it one of the last Gameboy Color games to be made. While Gold & Silver were backwards compatible with the original Gameboy, Crystal was a Gameboy Color exclusive. Crystal received further visual upgrades; the biggest change being animated Pokemon sprites. This made the creatures seem far more lifelike than they had been as static images. It also expanded the story slightly with new side quests featuring the legendary dog Suicune and the mysterious Unown. The Battle Tower feature was also introduced in the game which added Stadium style single player battle tournaments to the game which tested a trainer's endurance. While not well received by critics as a major improvement over Gold & Silver, it is still coveted by collectors and still regularly sells on eBay for at and above it's original retail value. The Gold, Silver, and Crystal generation is widely regarded by fans to be the best of the series. In my opinion, it's one of the easier Pokemon games out there but is still a lot of fun and as intricate if not more so than any other in the series. The good news is that Nintendo has announced that Gold & Silver will receive remakes for the Nintendo DS, coming out in Japan later this year.
In part 3, we'll examine the spinoff titles and the move to the Gameboy Advance.
How best can I sum up Zen Pinball? Well... it's pinball. It's one of those games that everybody knows and if you don't know how to play it, try leaving your house once and a while. Tap the flippers, shake the table while avoiding the tilt, and navigate that silver ball to the highest score possible. I'm hardly a Tommy; quite frankly I suck at so bad at pinball that I might as well be blind, deaf, and dumb. However, something has always fascinated me about the game. Arguably it is the granddaddy of gaming. All mechanical, no electronics, just you and the machine. For some reason, pinball has never really translated well to the screen. It just seems to loose something; a bit like eating Oreos without the centre. Yeah, there's still chocolate left but what's the point? Zen Pinball exposes a lot of these problems. First of all, pinball itself is not suited for a 16:9 aspect ratio. Right from the get go that puts it at a disadvantage. Anybody who's played real pinball knows it's played on a portrait orientated field rather than landscape. Zen Pinball's table graphics look really squished and things at the top of the table can be difficult to make out. This is a fault not so much with Zen Pinball but rather the HDTV format in itself. Turning the TV on its side would make it work but that would be inconvenient if not downright impossible for most setups. The only way around it would be to use a 4:3 aspect but even then its not ideal. As for the visuals, they're decent enough for a downloadable title but nothing special. Audio quality is good.
The demo gives one table, El Dorado, to try. There are about five tables in the full version I believe although I did not count them. The game also features trophies and an online leader board. Also not in the demo. For gameplay, the controls are what you would expect. The R1 and L1 buttons control their respective flippers. The games physics seem solid enough to how real pinball plays, though it's hardly that complex. Missing seems to be a tilt function. Maybe I'm just too dumb to find it but as I said, I'm bad enough at pinball. Another missing feature which I consider critical for pinball games is rumble support, which is unfortunate. Rumble could have really sealed this as an excellent casual title. It is available on PSN for $10, which I think is a little much given other PSN titles offer more value for the same price. However, with LittleBigPlanet costumes going for $2 and Burnout car packs going for $5, we really can't complain about cost. If you want pinball on your PS3, this should be a pretty decent addition to your collection.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
What works
-It's pinball, pure and simple
-Good graphics & audio
-Good game physics
What doesn't Work
-No rumble support
-Could have featured more tables
-16:9 aspect ratio not ideal for pinball, leaves tables looking squished
As they did with Red & Green on the Gameboy Advance, Nintendo has finally announced the much rumoured remakes of Pokemon Gold & Sliver. They will be titled HeartGold and SoulSilver respectively. Little is known about the remakes at this time. A short gameplay video was released showing the main character walking with a Chikorita, one of the starters from the second generation. It will be released on the DS and use a psudo-3D visual style similar to Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. They will be released this fall in Japan, presumably on November 21st, the 10th anniversary of Gold & Silver in that country. The game is expected to ship internationally in 2010.
Source: Bulbanews
G-Force (All current systems):
Sometimes I run across games that actually look good but just leave me scratching my head. G-Force is one of them. It brings a whole new meaning to la muerte peluda as you play as a member of a team of elite secret agent guinea pigs. Somebody's been tearing up the Riverbank so Hammie Hamster is opening up a can of whoopass on his enemies. Well, unfortunately no. There's actually nothing explaining the game's story, just some gameplay videos. As far as I can tell, this is a Rachet & Clank clone. The enemies are common houshold appliances that appear to be controlled by Skynet. It's being developed by Disney Interactive who seems to be churning out games people over six actually want to play, such as last year's ATV racer Pure.
My Pokemon Ranch (Wii):
Ah, here it is, Pokemon moves to shovelware with this crappy Wii title. Since I'm working on a Pokemon retrospective, this is definitely worth adding this to our list of the weird and the shovelful. The game has been out for a year but was recently updated to include the Platinum additions to the Pokedex. Nearly universally panned, My Pokemon Ranch has been describe as a sit and stare screen saver. You can transfer Pokemon from your DS onto the Wii for storage and you can interact with them only on a vary limited basis. Apparently you can also trade via the Wii as well. You play as your Mii avatar rather than characters from the game. The graphics are absolutely terrible. They're blocky and the textures are limited to simple gouraud shaded models. This is about as basic as 3D graphics can get, even falling behind the N64 in terms of quality; nowhere near what the Wii is capable of. The Pokemon are reduced to small, cute avatars that only bare basic resemblance to their concept artwork. It would be something if they were at least full size as they appear in the Pokedex. Unfortunately, Pokemon never really did translate well to the 3D platform beyond the Smash Bros. series. Nintendo wants 1000 points for this, which equates to $10 of real money. That would be $10 too much considering that full N64 titles cost on the virtual console are sold for the same amount.
Metal Gear Solid Touch caused quite a stir when it was first announced. The mysterious green logo had many thinking the PS3 exclusive MGS4 would be coming to the Xbox. Rather it turned out to be an iPhone spinoff game. While the game has been out for some time, Konami has released a lite version on the App Store for download. Lite basically being Apple-speak for a demo. The game itself is a cross between a rail shooter and that carnival game with the ducks. Booting up the game for the first time and hitting play introduces you to a needlessly long list of instructions that make MGST sound more complicated than it is. Controls couldn't be simpler: point and click. Targets pop up and your goal is to drag the reticule with your finger across the screen and tap to fire your M4 machine gun. Spreading your fingers switches to a scoped sniper rifle for hitting long distance targets while pinching them switches back to the M4. The difference between the carnival target shooter and this is that the targets obviously shoot back. Old Snake ducks automatically and is essentially stationary behind a wall of sandbags for the entire level. A health bar at the bottom tracks your hits, and like in the PS3 game, it recovers automatically while you're ducking. Gameplay is fairly simple and limited. The demo offers three levels but does not set what the goals are for those levels. You don't even have to shoot every target. It just ends I guess after a set period of time. The controls aren't the best, especially if you have fat fingers as it can be difficult to place the reticule on target, since you can't see where you're going.
The three levels recreate (loosely) the first half of Act one in MGS4. Graphics are alright to a degree. Most of the game features pre-rendered graphics similar to other target/rail shooters that were popular in the 1990s, such as Rebel Assault II. Everything looks good but this is not a true 3D game. The helicopter that attacks you in the third level looks just awful and cartoony. Use of pre-rendered graphics for games like this is a vary dated technique that's been out for at least a decade. The iPhone is supposed to be powerful enough to handle full 3D graphics. This game should have been more like Resistance: Retribution on the PSP.
Audio is the game's one shining point in that sound effects and music are vary close to those used in the original MGS4. Other than that, this is a game that's not going to win any technical awards. That's probably the biggest flaw with the iPhone. It has yet to match the Nintendo DS or PSP in terms of graphics quality. It's little more than a small evolution over other cell phone games. The games are also severely limited by the awkward touch only control system. Like the vast majority of iPhone games, it's a brief distraction but not something you could really get into and spend more than ten minutes playing. Is it worth the $10 they're asking for the full version? I would say no. A game like this should be $5 maximum. In fact, that's what the full iPhone port of ID's Wolfenstine 3D is selling for. Buy that instead if you want an iPhone shooter. Metal Gear Solid Touch is a waste of money.
What Works
-Good audio
-Simplistic controls, pick up and play
What Doesn't Work
-Pre-rendered graphics are a considerably dated technique
-Limited in terms of gameplay, just a basic target shooter carnival game
-Touch controls awkward at times, especially if you have fat fingers. Difficult to place reticule on target.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
In a story that comes as no surprise to anyone, Duke Nukem Forever has officially had the Fatboy dropped on it. The game's developer 3D Realms has announced that it is shutting down. Webmaster Joe Siegler told forum members that the announcement was "not a marketing thing. It's true." Things may not be dead for the Duke yet assuming somebody wants to buy the IP. Take Two currently owns the property but has refused to further fund the game, which is why 3D Reamls has been forced to close. At the vary least, Forever is toast, as is nobody could see that coming a mile away. Duke Nukem Forever may go down as the longest development for any game in history. The title was first announced way back in April 1997, twelve years ago now. The game had gone through several incarnations, first being a PC title on the Quake II engine, then moving to the Doom 3 engine in 2004. Screenshots kept popping up over the years. Rumours had it coming out on several platforms. However, nothing concrete was ever produced. Based on Twitter posts by the developers, it was said it would finally release in 2009. Obviously that is not going to happen. DNF has become the quintessential example of vapourware and developed into a joke among gamers.
Source: The Register
