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• Namco, Your Klonoa Commercial is Dangerously Misleading

  Spoiler Warning. Giant, story-ruining, spoiler warning. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Spoiler Warning. You know what, Namco, I’m getting a little tired of having to have these talks with you. I know you’re tired of it too. If you paid attention, this wouldn’t be happening. You’ve been doing a lot of good lately, and I want you to know I’m proud of you for it. Not only did you decide to remake Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the game’s tenth anniversary, you brought back much of the Klonoa Works team to make it. Director Hideo Yoshizawa, artist Yoshihiko Arai, and composer Kanako Kakino. Wise, Namco, wise. You even decided against that atrocious redesign of Klonoa you were batting around last year. This commercial, though, Namco. I don’t know if this is a very smart choice. It’s a little… misleading. Read More... Posted Apr 06 2009, 09:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, Playstation, klonoa, namco, shuichi sakurazaki, kanako kakino, klonoa door to phantomile, hideo yoshizawa, yoshihiko aria

• The All New Retro: Bust-a-Groove and Low-Poly Love

  I won’t deny it. My gaming tastes are a little unusual. Take my emulation aversion. Does a normal person spend months and months tracking down a rare and expensive cheat device so they can play an imported SNES game when they could download a ROM and SNES emulator in about ten seconds? No. This is not how a normal person behaves. As I slowly morph into something approximating an adult, I’ve been noticing another strange predilection in my gaming brain: a love of low-polygon graphics. Some games do not age with grace. Their mechanics, and especially their graphics, develop the distinct taste of vinegar when they used to be wine just five years before. Yet the games of the 32- and 64-bit era, games that I thought were repulsive even at the time, are starting to take on a strange allure. Read More... Posted Mar 31 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, mega man, katamari damacy, Playstation, square-enix, tomb raider, retro, final fantasy iv, sega saturn, Retro game challenge, nintendo 64, enix, tomb raider 3, bust-a-groove

• BREAKING NEWS: Sony Announces Potential Price Drop for the PLAYSTATION............2. oh.

  I have been waiting for a PS3 price drop, nay, expecting one for a few months now. I just want to see a show of hands here. Who out there, like me, is all ready to pick up a PS3 but only if it is priced within the range of sanity? The PS3 wasn't exactly setting the world aflame in sales prior to the global recession and so one wonders at Sony's stubborn refusal to accept that people, especially in this economy, are not willing to work extra hours just to afford their machine. Read More... Posted Mar 31 2009, 05:00 PM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: amber ahlborn, Playstation, ps3, price drop

• Miami Law: Welcome Back Victor Ireland of Working Designs

  Somehow I missed Victor Ireland’s re-emergence last December. I shouldn’t be too surprised. It might be big news to me, but the return of a niche industry icon best remembered by a handful of geeks for his American localizations of niche videogames ten years ago isn’t exactly Edge Online headline news material. It’s sidebar at best. For everyone reading who doesn’t smile when they hear the word Alundra, here’s the score. Victor Ireland co-founded Working Designs. After opening in 1986, Working Designs was one of the only publishers in the Western world devoted to localizing strange Japanese games, particularly those JRPG things we enjoy so much here at 61FPS. Working Designs translations tended to be a bit strange, littered with juvenile humor and American pop culture references. They serviced a very small audience; not only were they putting out games in an unpopular genre, they had a habit of releasing them for doomed consoles like the Turbo-Grafx 16, Turbo CD, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn. Working Design’s golden age was when they started releasing Playstation games at the end of the 1990s. Read More... Posted Mar 04 2009, 08:05 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, working designs, playstation 2, sega, Playstation, lunar, sega cd, lunar the silver star, sega saturn, hudson, arc the lad, turbo grafx 16, turbo cd, gaijinworks, Miami law

• Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?

  Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen hit Wii’s Virtual Console today. This is good for a variety of reasons. Quality Virtual Console releases are a rarity here in the far flung future of 2009. Ogre Battle is rare itself; its two English releases tend to fetch a pretty penny on Ebay. I’ve never played Yasumi Matsuno’s first foray into dense fantasy opera, so I’m looking forward to checking it out on the cheap. My history with the Ogre series is confined to Ogre Battle 64. OB64 was one of the only N64 games I ever owned and I spent many, many hours playing it in the spring of 2001. I had almost no idea what I was doing. OB64 throws you into the deep end as soon you start, burying you under a mountain of circuitous cutscenes and leaving you to figure out its blend of TRPG and RTS play on your own. I was pretty proud of myself for getting thirty hours into OB64 without a guide. That is, until I read a FAQ and found out about the nearly endless number of stats you have to consider if you want to actually see the game’s ending. Nothing in the game tells you about party loyalty or how to measure a unit’s leadership potential. Nothing in the game even indicates that these are things you’re supposed to account for. I love it when a game trusts me to learn how to play. I think that’s why people have responded so well to Retro Game Challenge. Even beyond its Famicom devotionals, the games trust you to learn their rules through play. Nothing is more frustrating than turning on a game and having to sit through an hour of tutorials, forcing you to plod through poorly acted scenes of someone telling you to press X to jump. By the same token, games like Ogre Battle are so complex that you need to have an in-game guide to teach you their rules by example. Read More... Posted Mar 02 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, wii, snes, Playstation, n64, super nintendo, virtual console, Retro game challenge, question of the day, square enix, tactics ogre, nintedo 64, ogre battle 64, march of the black queen, ogre battle, yasumi matsuno

• The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad

  Romanticizing the pre-internet age of games criticism is common amongst those of us born before 1990. With the presses stopped on Electronic Gaming Monthly, the last survivors of gaming print’s heyday are Gamepro and Nintendo Power. Those magazines still cater to the adolescent audience they always have, but they’ve lost all of their old schlocky appeal. It’s a good thing. Gaming print isn’t dead, and games criticism is slowly but surely emerging from its fandom-based larval form. Yeah the internet’s glutted with drivel, but there’s a lot of substantive, well-written study of the medium happening. *cough* One thing certainly hasn’t changed. Gamefan may be long dead at this point, but Dave Halverson is still publishing monthly volumes of unabashed fandom in Play. Play, like Gamefan and Gamer’s Republic before it, isn’t really criticism. The magazine doesn’t engage in heady intellectualism like Edge, but it also doesn’t fall into Consumer Reports-style, reviews-and-previews tradition of Gamepro. Halverson’s publications are professionally made ‘zines, literal love letters to the industry they cover. The furor surrounding Halverson’s praise for Golden Axe: Beast Rider a few months back was surprising. The man isn’t a critic. He’s a lover. He publishes The Girls of Gaming, for crying out loud. Despite his flighty editorial mandate, Halverson’s pubs have had a surprisingly lasting impact on North American gaming culture. Today, Treasure is an iconic development studio beloved the world over. Gunstar Heroes wasn’t responsible for that notoriety. It was Gamefan’s constant lionization of the company that birthed the cult of Treasure. Gamefan was, for me, a message in a bottle. Every single month, I would open an issue and be overwhelmed by bizarre foreign games I would never have a chance to play. And at the back of every issue waited the most cryptic and vexing passages of all: the advertisements for Halverson’s import games shop Game Cave. The ads were four-pages long and littered with miniscule pictures of games accompanied by nothing more than a title. That was where I saw this. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, victor ireland, working designs, sony, playstation 2, play, gamecube, Playstation, nintendo power, golden axe, xbox, gamepro, vagrant story, arc the lad, golden axe beast rider, gamefan, arc the lad collection, maximo, gamer’s republic, tactics ogre

• Wii Brings Silent Hill to Climax

  No, wait. Rewind. Switch that. Climax is going to bring Silent Hill to the Wii! The rumor going ‘round the campfire is that those nutty Brits behind Silent Hill: Origins will be remaking the original Silent Hill for both Wii and PSP. 61FPS just spent this past Monday celebrating Silent Hill’s tenth birthday. What better way to celebrate the occasion than by taking a stroll down memory lane, waggling as you go? Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, psp, silent hill, konami, silent hill origins, Playstation, klonoa, namco, climax

• Rockman's Anti-PETA Rampage

  A lot of people love Mega Man Legends on the Playstation, but they have no idea how easy it is to abuse animals in the original Japanese title, Rockman Dash. Seriously, Rockman can really kick the shit out of God's creatures. For starters, there's a scene early in the game where Tron is treed by Paprika the rat dog. In the American version of the game, Mega Man negotiates with the furry terrorist. In the Japanese version, you can make Rockman's foot negotiate with the dog's ass. Paprika squeals and books it across the city. It's pretty hilarious. Less hilarious is Rockman's ability to shoot down birds. When Samus shoots birds in Metroid Prime, it's funny because they explode with a perturbed “Caw!” When Rockman indulges in duck season, the birds just float to the ground silently and lay there, broken, before flashing and fading away. Flashback city to overzealous air rifle mishaps. Worse, Rockman can kick around the adorable white-socked black cats who tend to hang around the game's ruins. This is especially heartbreaking when you consider that you can beat up on the one cat you're allowed to take aboard the Flutter—the same cat who quickly gives birth to kittens thereafter. I know this has you intrigued, because you are a bad person. All instances of animal abuse in Rockman Dash have been neatly chronicled in a YouTube video that follows after the jump. Read More... Posted Feb 24 2009, 11:06 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Playstation, metroid prime, tron, nadia oxford, samus, mega man legends, animals, rockman dash

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

  Silent Hill (released February 24th, 1999) did not mark a pivotal moment in the original Playstation’s lifecycle. Technologically speaking, Silent Hill was a solid effort, but nothing unusual for the time. Foregoing the pre-rendered backgrounds that were horror games’ stock-in-trade, Silent Hill’s full-3D environments weren’t as pristinely rendered as Konami’s own, year-old Metal Gear Solid. The CGI cutscenes, another requisite of the era, were competent but by no means up to the Squaresoft gold standard. Its control was wonky, its camera unwieldy, and the voice-acting was stiff even for a Playstation game. Of course, none of that matters. Silent Hill was a pivotal moment in game’s maturation as an affecting, expressive medium. Forget technology; its technical failings made it a stronger work. Forget genre; Silent Hill is not survival horror. It’s just horror. Read More... Posted Feb 23 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, capcom, metal gear solid, silent hill, konami, sony, rule of rose, Playstation, tecmo, fatal frame, team silent, silent hill 2, sunsoft, 10 years ago, akira yamioka, shuji ishikawa, punchline, david lynch, jacob’s ladder, Adrian lyne, siren, clock tower

• The White Whale: Terranigma and Ahab Gaming

  I sympathized with Nadia’s post last week about the pants wetting nature of Terranigma’s “Desert” theme. That eerie swath of SNES atmospherics by Miyoko Kobayashi and Masanori Hikichi is still fresh in my memory, and not just from following the link in Madame Oxford’s piece. Three weeks ago, after some ten years of hunting, I finally sat down and played Terranigma in one day-long marathon session. This was both the realization of a long-standing desire to play Quintet’s final Super Nintendo entry in their Heaven and Earth saga and also part of a grand gaming journey I’ve undertaken here in 2009. The quest, as it were, is to track down three games from the past two decades that represent significant gaps in my experience: The One That Got Away, The Second Chance, and The White Whale. My goal is to finally see, after building up each game that fits these descriptions for me in my brain, how they live up long after their respective primes. Given my inexplicable aversion to emulation, the English version of Terranigma has always been my white whale, the cartridge I’ve hunted for and that I’ve constantly sought for an actual way to play. An Australian copy of the game isn’t terribly rare, but it tends to fetch a high price, and then there’s the hurdle of getting it to run on a non-PAL Super Nintendo. That hurdle’s especially high since Terranigma, being one of the last Super Nintendo games, is fitted with a particularly finicky region-lockout chip. Even a Fami-clone that can play PAL carts like the Retro Duo won’t boot Terranigma. There are only two options for intrepid (and legitimately insane) gamers like myself. First, you can mod your SNES with 50/60 Hz region lockout switches. Fearing that I’d end up soldering my hand to the console, I opted out of this. The only other option is to find an incredibly rare version of the Pro Action Replay cheat device. Only three models will work, Mk2.P, 2.T, and 3, all of which only released in Europe in limited quantities. After trolling the net since last summer, I finally found one at the beginning of January. So, in spite of these barriers, in spite of my psychoses, I finally played and finished my white whale. Was it worth the wait? Did Terranigma live up to a decade of expectation? Read More... Posted Feb 20 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, snes, working designs, sony, Playstation, soul blazer, super nintendo, terranigma, illusion of gaia, quintet, pro action replay, miyoko kobayahi, enix, masanori hikichi, retro duo, arc the lad

• The Console Wars Made Adorable

  Everyone gets embroiled in a console war once in a while. We have some kind of inborn instinct that causes us to rush to the defence of our beloved consoles as if they were a damsel cornered by a dragon. It's interesting to wonder what system-associated developers like Miyamoto think about such behaviour. “What, do you people have deep-rooted problems revolving around peer approval or something?” When you think about how silly the console wars ultimately are, you really do have to duck your head in shame for participating (shortly before you go back and do it all over again). Or, sometimes, you might receive another reminder of how easily we can all get along if we just try. For instance, through an art project. Read More... Posted Feb 19 2009, 07:50 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, nintendo ds, microsoft, xbox 360, wii, psp, Playstation, ps3, fan stuff, nadia oxford, fanboys, console war

• Whatcha Playing: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Again)

  I have a small stable of games I love returning to once in a while, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is among them. I own the original Playstation version (the actual original: it lacks the flu-snot green bar that labels it a best-selling re-release) and the emulation that was packed with the PSP's Dracula X Chronicles. I've finished both multiple times, but I decided that wasn't enough, so I downloaded the game once more on XBLA. Having lost my original Playstation at the bottom our sock drawer something like five years ago, it's nice to play Symphony of the Night on a large screen once more. It'd be nice if the Achievements weren't lame, but eh, if wishes were horses, and all that. Symphony of the Night is still firmly in the top quality tier of the Castlevania hierarchy, but aging gamers draw in vital nutrients through message board fights about whether or not an esteemed game still deserves its lofty status. Over the past handful of years, Symphony of the Night has ignited similar arguments. Is the game as brilliant as we remember it? Was the Inverted Castle a stroke of game design genius or a cheap trick to extend gameplay? Read More... Posted Jan 30 2009, 11:06 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, psp, konami, castlevania, Playstation, retro, symphony of the night, 2d, xbla, nadia oxford, 32-bit, dracula x chronicles, sprites

• True Tales of Multiplayer: Fights, Tricks, and Fights!

  Lately I've found myself chilling with my homeboys Dan and Ryan, playing old video games that most of our friends don't remember or never heard of at all hours of day and night. It started when Dan found an old cartridge of the Jaleco's SNES beat-em-up The Peace Keepers. I was impressed by the ability to recolor any of the game's sprites however you wanted, but otherwise the game was an all-around stunningly frustrating experience. Things picked up for the next round, however, when I popped in my favorite SNES "sports" game, DMA Designs' Uniracers... Read More... Posted Jan 26 2009, 06:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, snes, konami, super smash bros, Playstation, tony hawk, grand theft auto, uniracers, power stone, multiplayer, jaleco, the peace keepers, poy poy, dma design

• A Playstation Tradition

  It's official, I am committed to buying a PS3...eventually. I'm pretty darn optimistic that, considering the current US economy and Sony's own financial problems that we'll be seeing another price drop for the PS3 and that will be enough for me. Now if only I could afford an HD TV I'd be set. Though I may not have the system yet, today two games I ordered came in the mail: Ratchet & Clank Future and Devil May Cry 4. As I unpacked these games, I realized that, starting with the first Playstation, I seem to have created a bit of a buying tradition. Read More... Posted Jan 22 2009, 09:30 PM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: wii, amber ahlborn, Playstation, nostalgia, ps3

• When Does a Console Pay For Itself?

  Mr Cole Stryker and I share similar opinions on Nintendo's Wii. I do not believe it's going to kill the industry, nor do I think Nintendo is going to recruit hardcore gamers through a Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament and grind them into sustenance for casuals. But after listening to the complaints about how little the Wii has to offer, I've come to wonder how gamers gauge their satisfaction with a system. When do you lean back, pat your belly and declare that a game console has wholly proved its worth? I don't play with my Wii all hours of the day (huh huh), but I'm honestly puzzled by people who say, “I'm a long-time Nintendo fan, but I sold my Wii because there's nothing on it.” I'm going to assume that a “Nintendo fan” fought to the point of collapse during the bitter droughts that struck the N64 and GameCube. I owned both systems, and both earned me gasps from peers. “Jesus Christ, why?” they would wail. Franchises like Mario and Zelda are in fact why I bought the N64, the GameCube and the Wii. My Playstation saw a lot more action than my N64, but declaring a console a flop once the dust on its casing reaches a certain level is deceiving. Read More... Posted Jan 21 2009, 11:03 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: wii, gamecube, Playstation, n64, nadia oxford

• Actor's Scene Re-Dub Attempts To Make Up For Mega Man X4's Past Sins

  Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4 are two of the first games we point at when we talk about the awkward spasms gaming went through in its transition from 16 to 32 bits. “Hey, remember when voice acting in Playstation games could make your dog's ears bleed?” we say. The death of Iris in Mega Man X4 still holds in our memories, not entirely for good reasons. For starters, the romance between the two has since ignited way too many message board conversations about how/if robots Do It. Second, Zero's voice actor sounds like he drank a scalpel blade smoothie before he recorded. Third...well...WhatamIfighting4rrrrrr?” Capcom did get its act together admirably in the latter Mega Man X games. Mega Man X: Command Mission, Mega Man X8 and Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X employed the same voice actors for all three games, giving the characters some much-needed consistency. Moreover, there is a hint of professionalism here, as the actors were all employed from The Ocean Group, a Canadian-based anime dubbing company. Zero's adopted actor is Lucas Gilbertson, an Alberta native who voices the red Maverick Hunter by day and draws some awesomely effed-up pictures by night. Gilbertson was interviewed by a fansite/blog that asked him if he'd try redubbing Iris' death scene in Mega Man X4. Guess what! He did! He also got a bit close to the microphone, so you might want to lower your volume a titch. Read More... Posted Jan 14 2009, 07:38 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Playstation, fan stuff, anime, nadia oxford, mega man x4, mega man x5, ocean group, dubbing

• Crono: My First Aeris Gainsborough

  You remember Aeris' death in Final Fantasy VII, right? Sephiroth dropped from the sky, brandishing his very big sword, and he spit Aeris like a piece of sacrificial lamb on a shishkabob. Cloud broke out the pitas, Cid stirred up the hummus and—no, wait, that didn't happen. Aeris died in Cloud's arms and it was very sad. There, that's what happened. Aeris's death, though curiously dry (not a drop of blood was spilled—what kind of impotent Jesus stand-in was she?), was a stunning event for the gaming world. Until the moment Sephiroth fell on her as neatly as a dart flying to a pub's board, it seemed unfathomable that a game character could die. Forever. No take-backs. Unfathomable for some. Not so much for others. Read More... Posted Jan 08 2009, 12:01 AM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: snes, chrono trigger, Playstation, retro, marle, super nintendo, crono, 16-bit, final fantasy vii, nadia oxford, chrono trigger ds, aerith, aeris

• Sony’s New Year’s Resolution

  For all intents and purposes, 2008 was an excellent year for Sony and the Playstations. Was it the salad days of 2001, when the Playstation 2 was coming into its own and Sony was crushing every proverbial ass in the world? Certainly not. But the Playstation 3 managed to finally get itself a stable of quality exclusives that weren’t completely ignored by the public and panned by the media. The Playstation Portable, despite receiving only a scant few notable games, had a banner year in Japan and continued to grow its install base in the rest of the world. The Playstation Network worked out a few of its kinks, and even if it’s the ugliest baby since Sloth, at least Home launched. And the good ol’ Playstation 2 continued, eight years after its birth, to both sell and play host to great new games. The end of the year, however, did not look so hot. The Playstation 3 got trounced by its competitors leading up to Christmas. You see, it didn’t matter how damn good Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rim, or Valkyria Chronicles were. What mattered is that the average person in every country where the system is sold does not have $400 for a videogame console right now. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, motorstorm, psp, sony, playstation 2, Playstation, littlebigplanet, resistance 2, valkyria chronicles

• X-Blades and the Cultural Uncanny Valley

  Years of schooling in composition left me with absolutely no sense of proper grammar, structure, and only a passing familiarity with proper spelling, but I did come away with a good sense of how not to seem like a jackass in an opening. The golden rules: don’t open with a question and don’t start with a definition. These rules can be broken only when absolutely necessary. Like now for instance! How many of you have heard of X-Blades? For clarity’s sake, X-Blades is a third-person action game in the Devil May Cry mold and it looks like a parody of Japanese videogames that you might see on The Simpsons. It stars a young woman sporting knives, blonde hair, and enormous eyes/breasts. She wears some string and tiny scraps of cloth over her privates and kills monsters in a fantasy land where it is apparently always dusk. Her name’s Ayumi. Of course it is! It's a videogame so overfull on cliché that it can’t possibly be real. But it is, and it actually seems fairly inoffensive, a potentially good way to drop a few hours between games that you actually give a damn about. Thing is, though, every time I’ve seen screens or footage of X-Blades something has just seemed off. I know that isn’t the most journalistic statement in the world but there’s no other way to put it. It’s just wrong, off-putting, something rotten inside of its seemingly pure trope-soup. Take a look, see what I mean. Read More... Posted Dec 23 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, uncanny valley, psp, Playstation, ted woolsey, gaijin entertainment, x-blades, Shadow madness, the simpsons, coded arms, crave

• Beating the Dead Horse Who Has It Coming: Playstation Releases on PSN

  Castlevania Chronicles, the peculiar Playstation remake of a peculiar X68000 remake of the original Castlevania, was released as a downloadable title on Playstation Network today. It ain’t the best Castlevania out there, but it’s still a swell action title. The disc release was never widely distributed either, so this will be the very first time most interested players will even get the chance to try it out. Of course, the same could be said of a lot of Playstation games. The halcyon days of 2003 when you could walk into any Blockbuster or Gamestop in the country and pick up five classic PS1 games, often times still shrinkwrapped, for ten or twenty bucks are long over, and the collector’s market is making many great games prohibitively expensive. Want to play Silent Hill? Hope you’ve got an extra sixty-five dollars lying around. How about Suikoden II, considered to be the series’ definitive installment? That’ll be $150. And what about cult classics like CyberConnect2’s Silent Bomber? Yeah, seventy smackers. You shouldn’t have to pay top dollar for these games, though, considering they could very easily be released on the Playstation Network. Read More... Posted Dec 18 2008, 06:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, psp, silent hill, konami, castlevania, Playstation, psn, scea, Suikoden, cyberconnect2, castlevania chronicles, silent bomber, Suikoden ii

• Underrated: Klonoa Series

  Klonoa 2 As far as underrated games go, the Klonoa titles have enjoyed moderate success. Still, if you were to stop random gamers on the street and ask if they've played a Klonoa game chances are they haven't. The first Klonoa game was released on the original Playstation and was one of the earliest titles to combine sprite based characters with 3-D environments. The game play was centered around classic 2-D platforming with an emphasis on using the enemies Klonoa grabbed and inflated to clear barricades, jump higher (including stringing together long series of aerial maneuvers), and find ways around various obstacles. It was fantastically fun and innovative, offering a solid challenge and a very rewarding experience. Read More... Posted Dec 15 2008, 12:00 PM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: wii, amber ahlborn, Playstation, klonoa, underrated, underappreciated

• Periphery: The Coolest Homebrew Project Device Ever

  My understanding is that Niagara Falls is something of an awe-inspiring sightseeing opportunity as far as natural formations go and it’s a tacky extravaganza of shoddy, moldering love hotels as a tourist destination. You go to gamble, eat at buffets, and look at some fast water, right? I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been there in eighteen years, and my child’s-memory is fuzzy at best. It’s a cluttered jumble of images and familial inside jokes, things like eating pickle chips and weighing the odds of my survival if I jumped the railing. My clearest memory, though, is the preponderance of freak museums. Every corner boasted its own hall of mismatched curiosities, from replicas of barrels that made the falls’ descent to stuffed polar bears and any number of imaginary anthropological curiosities. I fear going back because I prefer my memory of the city’s institutionalized theater-of-the-absurd. I check the website GameSniped on a weekly basis because, while it is intangible, it is very much a gaming freak museum. Prototype NES carts, complete Master System collections, strange promotional materials from bygone eras. It is a literal island of lost games, the detritus of the medium’s collective subconscious, interesting to collectors and freaks only. And me of course. Today’s spotlight is especially alluring, as both a historical find and as an opportunity. Read More... Posted Nov 24 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, periphery, nes, Playstation, Panasonic, 3do, d2, Kenji eno, m2, gamesniped, sega master system

• Sony Might Just Hate You

  Even before the company’s dramatic fall from grace, there has been a number of reasons a discerning individual might think that Sony hates them. The original Playstation had a failure rate to challenge the Xbox 360’s and the first DualShock controller didn’t become a pack-in with the system for months after its release. The Playstation 2 launched at a pricey $299 and that price held until May of 2002 when Sony suddenly and without forewarning dropped it to $199, leaving thousands of gamers out a hundred bucks when a simple press release could have saved them the trouble. The PSP launched and its screen was plagued by dead pixels and the Playstation 3 cost half a grand at the cheapest when it launched in ’06. One day, they’re committed to backwards compatibility and against rumble in controllers, and the next they’re asking you drop sixty smackers on a controller that shakes and backwards compatibility is for the birds. Yep. Sony hates you. Sony hates all of us. Well, today, Sony hates your potential creativity. Read More... Posted Nov 13 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, playstation 3, scee, psp, castlevania, sony, playstation 2, Playstation, psn, symphony of the night, castlevania iii, scea, alucard, dualshock

• Rock Star Designer Fallout: Team Ninja’s Post-Itagaki Future

  While the videogame-designer-as-rock-star phenomenon is still a growing factor across the game development landscape, it’s had a recognizable poster boy for close to a decade. The be-sun-spectacled Tomonobu Itagaki is gaming’s very own Noel Gallagher, a mouthy, arrogant source of great quotes with a spotty creative track record, but who’s inarguably responsible for a couple of masterpieces. He’s also a magnet for controversy. Even beyond his inflammatory comments about rival game franchises, namely Tekken and Devil May Cry, Itagaki has been at the center of multiple legal entanglements with his former publisher, Tecmo. First, it was charges of sexual harassment. Then, this past June, Itagaki quit Tecmo after shipping Ninja Gaiden 2 and immediately sued the publisher for not delivering on promised pay bonuses. This is the problem with the rock star designer phenomenon. In the aftermath of Itagaki’s departure from Tecmo, everyone in the industry was asking what’s next for Itagaki and what is his beleaguered publisher – Tecmo’s president resigned shortly after Itagaki left and they were nearly acquired by Square-Enix after that, before agreeing to merge with Koei – going to do without him. No one really asked what Team Ninja, the team that Itagaki founded, was going to do without their public face. How does a development team recover when their image, an identity that’s secured them a devoted audience more than the games they’ve made, has walked away? Read More... Posted Nov 03 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, microsoft, xbox 360, sony, Playstation, square-enix, ninja gaiden, dead or alive, koei, tecmo, tomonobu itagaki, ninja gaiden dragon sword, ninja gaiden 2

• The Weakest Link: Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross

  Chrono Cross is the official sequel to Chrono Trigger, and I often wonder if it should have been. I really enjoyed Chono Cross: the graphics are beautiful, the music is stunning and the cast (even though it numbers in the trillions) is generally fun to hang with. As its own game, Chrono Cross is a Playstation must-have. As a sequel to Chrono Trigger, however, it's kind of off-colour. Following up Chrono Trigger with Chrono Cross is like eating a zuccini right after an ice cream cone. Both taste good, but for entirely different reasons that don't mix well. There stands an excellent chance that Chrono Trigger DS will hammer some hasty bridges between it and Chrono Cross, and I really wish it wouldn't. The Playstation re-release of Chrono Trigger (avoid avoid avoid) already established links between the two, so I fear it's too late. You may have noticed that I mouth off a lot about how the quality of game stories can stand to be closer to what you'd find in a book. I don't know if there has ever been an author who took over a beloved universe and promptly killed off its cast in the most half-assed manner possible in order to move in his roster, but if there is, I doubt he made any friends. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 06:42 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo ds, chrono trigger, Playstation, square-enix, chrono cross, nadia oxford, game story

• The Videogame Ages, part 2

  In part one of The Videogame Ages, I discussed the inadequacy of “generation” language in gaming, and laid out The Golden Age of gaming. In part two, I look at the Silver and Bronze ages before taking a look at the modern era and the future. The Silver Age – 1983 to 1996 8-Bit, 16-Bit, Early Handheld, Early 3D, Advanced PC and Arcade The silver age of games is defined by expansion, in not just playability but breadth of experience. When home computers became affordable and home consoles began diversifying, games started transforming from immediate, single-mechanic experiences into more lasting forms. Silver age games were still about escalating challenge, but high scores ceased being the goal, replaced by definitive endings. Games started becoming more explicitly narrative-driven, as aesthetic justification on consoles and as the focus of many PC games (see the entire adventure game genre.) Portable gaming also started to rise to prominence during this period, early single-screen LCD games replaced by multi-game consoles like the Game Boy and Atari Lynx. Arcade and PC game technology pulled far away from home consoles, but all games were shifted from the rough visual abstraction of golden age games, into more aesthetically recognizable presentations – albeit still cartoonish impressionistic rather than realistic. The rise of polygonal 3D graphics, both real-time full 3D (Yu Suzuki’s Virtua series) and pre-rendered (Myst, etc.), at the end of the silver age marks the transition to bronze. In 1996, with the release of Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Quake, the silver age comes to a close. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, boom blox, little big planet, game boy, halo 3, nes, PC, half-life, mac, mario 64, atari, Playstation, super mario bros, nolan bushnell, spore, tomb raider, 8-bit, 16-bit, quake, mmo, arcade, famicom, littlebigplanet, spacewar!, bob dvorak, golden age, 128-bit, Magnavox odyssey, myst, bronze age, silver age, pong, 32-bit, tennis for two

• The Videogame Ages, part 1

  This past Friday, I tried to slip a little piece of language into a discussion about game emulation that I was wary about using at all. At this point, the go-to boundaries for discussing videogames’ admittedly small history is console-technology generations. We say 8-Bit or 16-Bit because these are easy identifiers based on competing, contemporary technologies. But the language “The 8-Bit Generation” doesn’t account for arcade technology, PC games, or portable gaming. Now that Bob Dvorak’s Tennis for Two is officially fifty years-old, I think we can finally start applying broader terms to gaming’s evolutionary eras. Obviously history is fluid, and chances are these classifications won’t hold true in 2050, but for now they work. The Hesiodic ages, as laid out here, consider games on every platform; the rigid parameters of home consoles, the advanced nature of PC and Mac gaming throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, the fast strides made by arcade technology throughout that same period, and the predominantly inferior technology available in handheld gaming. Unlike Hesiod’s Ages of Man, however, the videogame ages are (mostly) a positive progression. Please note: these are not strict definitions. This is a discussion, and I want everyone to make their opinions heard in the comments section. Now then, onward to the Golden Age. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, boom blox, little big planet, game boy, halo 3, nes, PC, half-life, mac, mario 64, atari, Playstation, super mario bros, nolan bushnell, spore, tomb raider, 8-bit, 16-bit, quake, mmo, arcade, famicom, littlebigplanet, spacewar!, bob dvorak, golden age, 128-bit, Magnavox odyssey, myst, bronze age, silver age, pong, 32-bit, tennis for two

• The Curious Case of Playstation Home

  I sometimes forget that Playstation Home, Sony’s proposed Frankenstein Monster that blends Xbox Live-like online service with an American Apparel-ad-meets-Second Life 3D space, even exists. Following its debut at GDC 2007, I was intrigued by the idea, but in the intervening eighteen months, Home has yet to materialize in any meaningful way. A closed beta trial of the service launched way back in April 2007, preceding a tentative launch later that fall, and that beta has since been extended half a dozen times. Home’s actual launch is out there, somewhere in the unknowable vaporware-future, and thankfully so. According to any and all hands-on reports from beta testers, Home is a ghost town, empty but for a scant few trendy avatars wandering the eerie Logan’s Run-style wasteland, hunting for an awkwardly animated dance party that may never happen. Read More... Posted Sep 23 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: home, nintendo, microsoft, xbox 360, sony, animal crossing, Playstation, uncharted, warhawk

• R.I.P. Xbox 720 and Playstation 4: The Future of Gaming

  When Dennis Dyack laid out his vision for the One-Console Future, he theorized that the extinction of multiple videogame consoles wasn’t just a utopian possibility “where games would become better in quality, cheaper, and more widely available.” He said it was inevitable. I’ve never agreed with Mr. Dyack, but I don’t necessarily think he’s too far off. As Wedbush Morgan’s resident maverick Michael Pachter says in the latest episode of GameTrailers’ Bonus Round, the console war is already on the road to being less about technological difference’s as it is about a war of branding. Not who has the better games, graphics, and controllers, but whose name is cooler. I think that’s true. But it’s only one possibility. Read More... Posted Sep 03 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, microsoft, michael pachter, wii, sony, Playstation, dennis dyack, xbox, seamus blackley, gametrailers, bonus round geoff keighley

• Games We Will Never Get to Play: Kenji Eno’s D2 for M2

  My obsession with Kenji Eno continues to grow despite the fact that I have yet to play a single game he designed. It isn’t just the mystery behind the man and his philosophy on design that’s got me so intrigued, but the fact that his games have always been on the periphery of my experience, especially the original D. Long before I had a Playstation or even a home computer that had a prayer of running the game, I remember gawking at pictures of the macabre adventure title in advertisements and being both fascinated and legitimately creeped out. When D2 came out for the Dreamcast, I was keen to check it and satisfy my younger self’s curiosity, but lost interest when I found out that the American version had been heavily censored. Thanks to Lost Levels and PC Games That Weren’t’s Timo Weirich, Kenji Eno and D just got a little bit more delightfully mysterious. Read More... Posted Aug 28 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, PC, Playstation, 3do, d, Kenji eno, lost levels, games we will never get to play