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• Indie Dev Moment: The Manipulator

  The Manipulator is a smart, lo-fi platform puzzler. It also happens to be an honest-to-goodness murder simulator, like the ones you read about in the newspapers. Except it’s real. Read More... Posted Apr 22 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: indie dev moment, freeware, joe keiser, the manipulator, murder simulator

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Super Smash Bros

  A vital addition to the Nintendo 64 catalog, Super Smash Bros (released April 27, 1999) was a phenomenal critical and commercial success. It helped cement the console’s legacy of innovative four-player game design, while at the same time creating a new flagship franchise for Nintendo and starting the game’s creators, Masahiro Sakurai and particularly Satoru Iwata, on a trajectory that would eventually see them leading the industry. As such, it’s one of 1999’s most historically important titles. Read More... Posted Apr 21 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: super smash bros, super smash bros brawl, satoru iwata, nintendo 64, joe keiser, 10 years ago, super smash bros melee, masahiro sakurai

• One Real Man Runs Along the Mirror’s Edge

  Here’s the first example of what I hope will become an extremely dangerous fad: videos of parkour filmed in the style of Mirror’s Edge. You’ll want to stay for at least the first minute, when filmer AZO is most dedicated to the tribute—he even finds a properly color coordinated factory and makes a beeline for the red pipes. Some of the rest of it is pretty out of place, like the bike tricks and the, um, magic cup thing, and some of his other moves wouldn’t look impressive filmed any other way. They do look impressive this way, which reiterates two things: DICE really found something powerful with the combination of camera angle, camera motion, and animation in Mirror’s Edge, if someone else can use that same combination to make standing on a two-foot fence feel dramatic.  Doing athletic things while holding a camera is unfathomably awesome to the internet. The video, after the jump. Read More... Posted Apr 20 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: parkour, mirror’s edge, joe keiser, life imitates games, first-person cameras

• What Michael Jackson’s Game Collection Says About Michael Jackson

  Remember that ridiculous auction of all of Michael Jackson’s stuff? The one that got pulled a few weeks later when Jackson suddenly remembered he liked all his stuff? I do, because it had me scouring my couch for enough change to purchase his 87 arcade cabinets. Now, a game collection says a lot about a person—for example, my game collection says that I am credit risk, and that my love for engrish alone probably qualifies me as functionally illiterate. But even with all those pre-approved Diner’s Club cards I could still never afford anything remotely approaching Michael Jackson’s ludicrous collection. So what do his games say about him? Read More... Posted Apr 17 2009, 07:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: rule of rose, joe keiser, michael jackson, jaleco, collections, auctions, ponies and their many marks

• Whatcha Reading: Racing the Beam

  There are a lot ways to think about games—as cultural artifacts, works of art, works of programming craft. Racing the Beam asks you to think about games in a way that is rarely considered: as a negotiation between game developer and hardware platform, between an artist with vision and the constrained tool that must be used to bring that vision to life. It’s a particularly apt metaphor for the platform in question, the Atari 2600, as almost all of that console’s games were made by one-man programmer/artist/designers. The result is a video game history unlike any I’ve ever read. Read More... Posted Apr 16 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: activision, atari 2600, books, pong, joe keiser, combat, whatcha reading, racing the beam, yar's revenge

• Whatcha Playing: GTI Club+

  Did everyone miss this little racing gem when it came out a earlier this year? I know I did, and that’s a shame—but not as shameful as the fact that I missed the original game when it game out 12 years ago. I’m pretty sure I’ve never even seen the cabinet, and I spent a lot of time in arcades in 1996. Maybe GTI Club was a Euro-specific thing? Whatever. It’s mine now. Read More... Posted Apr 15 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, psn, joe keiser, racing, gti club, gti club+, daytona usa

• Qutting Time at Edge-Online

  Today it was announced that the staff of Edge-Online, every single one of them, quit that place to move on to other endeavors. In a blog entry that is about as spiky as a blog entry can be when the topic is business matters going cross-eyed, the former editor in chief Colin Campbell explained that the publisher offered him and the site a “a gumbo of old media thinking, rampant cost-cutting and ego-driven control mechanisms” going forward. This was the reason for his resignation. One can’t help but assume that the rest of the gang there felt the same way, because they left shortly thereafter. I used to work at Edge-Online as well. So what do I think about this whole thing? Read More... Posted Apr 14 2009, 09:22 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: journalism, edge online, joe keiser, inside baseball

• The 61FPS Review: Suikoden Tierkreis

  Let’s get something out of the way first, to avoid misunderstanding: I love Suikoden. I know that Suikoden II is the best game on the PlayStation, and that it is easily one of the two best games I’ve ever played. I left Suikoden III spinning in my PS2 for hours, and I’m not talking about playing it—I’m talking about letting the attract video repeat over and over just to listen to its score. I played Suikoden Tactics from beginning till end, and so help me, I didn’t hate it. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand the depth of my meaning when I tell you Suikoden Tierkreis isn’t for me. Read More... Posted Apr 08 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo ds, konami, 61fps review, joe keiser, Suikoden ii, Suikoden Tierkreis, jrpgs

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Requiem: Avenging Angel

  A rare effort from 3DO to create a first-person shooter franchise, Requiem: Avenging Angel (released April 4, 1999) had a fascinating premise but nevertheless was a critical and commercial dud. It was also the last game to come out of Cyclone Studios, a short-lived development house that never managed to find its footing despite having a string of interesting game concepts. So it's an interesting footnote in the history of the genre, with interesting lessons to be learned from some of its specific shortcomings. Read More... Posted Mar 30 2009, 11:15 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: 3do, pc games, joe keiser, 10 years ago, Requiem: Avenging Angel, Cyclone Studios, first person shooters

• Whatcha Playing: Dead or Alive Xtreme 2

  When I tell you that I am playing Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 I know that the first thing you think of is “there’s only one reason to play that game in 2009.” But it’s not what you think, honest. Yes, it’s an archaic collect-a-thon that was excoriated by the press for a variety of reasons both just and unjust. But the Xtreme series actually does manipulate the player in fascinating ways. Xtreme 2’s failure to appeal also speaks to the failure of some modern gaming conventions, and specifically suggests that maybe Achievements shouldn’t be mandatory on every title under the sun. If we can all disregard the nauseating breast physics for a second (and I understand this is very, very difficult) I’ll try to explain. Read More... Posted Mar 27 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: xbox 360, dead or alive, tomonobu itagaki, team ninja, joe keiser, achievement points, nauseating breast physics

• Everything You Need to Know About the Wii Storage Solution

  As we’ve said, one of Nintendo’s big reveals at GDC today is the long, long awaited solution to the Wii’s storage woes. It's so obvious it's not even worthy of a condescending drum roll: it’s just the ability to load Virtual Console and WiiWare games off an SD card. Could someone please explain to me why this took two years to roll out? From today’s Nintendo GDC keynote, we know that this solution adds 32GB SDHC card support and is implemented via an SD card menu that looks a lot like the Wii menu. But I’ve been playing with it, and so have all the extra little details after the jump. This might be rather fine data for something as pedestrian as a storage solution, but don’t blame me: Nintendo has given me way too long to think about what I want from this. Here’s the breakdown: There’s load time. The Wii still can’t actually load games in-place off the SD card; instead it has to copy them to system memory temporarily, and then load it. This means you will be twiddling your thumbs while the copy takes place, and on a big game like Sin & Punishment this load can be nearly twenty seconds long. Read More... Posted Mar 25 2009, 01:50 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: wii, wiiware, virtual console, joe keiser, gdc 2009, storage, fridge, sdhc

• Will OnLive Change Everything?

  The first major reveal of this year’s GDC is OnLive, a service that seems in a lot of ways to be too good to be true. Put simply, OnLive wants to take the hardware out of the gaming equation: simply log in via a web browser-based plugin, start up any game on offer, and the game starts to play on some godly rig at OnLive’s server farm—with the glorious HD results beamed right into your trashy netbook. The announcement materials for OnLive make the thing sound truly game-changing. OnLive will let you play modern games on anything, starting with PC, Mac, and a little “MicroConsole” that probably won’t cost more than $100. It will start with PC games (including computer crushers possibly including Crysis), but console games are possible. There’ll be unique community options like unlimited live spectators as well, and you can have it all for a low, Xbox Live-like annual fee (and the price of game purchase/rental, of course). Read More... Posted Mar 24 2009, 03:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: pc games, cloud, joe keiser, onlive, euphamisms for childbirth, digital distribution

• Sony’s Xi: It’s Something to Do in PlayStation Home

  Because I am a relatively sane human being, I hadn’t noticed the strange new alternate reality game that has apparently been teased in PlayStation Home for the past few weeks. That would have required me to play Home, a nightmarish exercise that no good person should have to experience more than once. But these aren’t normal circumstances. This is Xi, Home’s first alternate reality game, which officially launched yesterday. Never mind that the point of ARGs is to take place in the real world, while Xi looks like it will take place primarily in Home: I didn’t re-enter Sony’s hellscape of marketing to argue semantics. I went in to figure out if you should chance it too. Everyone knows the strategy of the average Home player goes thusly: 1. Find a female 2. Turn on bubble machine 3. Dance like an idiot until female leaves/turns into fat man. Xi ups the ante on these players: now Home’s sexiest alpha tester has disappeared! So if you’re ever going to find her, to gloriously Charleston with her, you’ll need to figure out whatever crazy, cryptic thing she was doing, as well as the mysteries that lie in Home’s super-secret Alpha Zones. Read More... Posted Mar 24 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, joe keiser, Playstation home, quincy, alternate reality games, xi

• My Name is Joe, and I have a Metagaming Problem.

  I’ve been bouncing around my backlog lately, and it’s become problematic. This is not because of the backlog itself, though I will not lie: my backlog is dark and deep, a German forest in the middle of the night. By the time you get to 2004 you can no longer see sunlight. By the time you get to 1995 there is no way out, your breadcrumb trail having been eaten by PlayStation launch titles. You will be scared and alone, having no choice but to turn to torturing analogies for comfort. My point, and I think I have one, is that pulling games out of my archive requires some kind of path, some kind of genre or theme like “games with robots in” or “games by that one developer I like to pretend is my friend”. So I’ve chosen a path. It is Achievement Points. And it is ruining everything. Read More... Posted Mar 23 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: xbox 360, joe keiser, achievements, overlord, metagaming, devil may cry 4, achievement points

• 10 Years Ago This Week: X-Wing Alliance

  X-Wing Alliance (released March 24, 1999) was the last entry in Totally Games’ X-Wing series of space sims, and one of the last games in the genre to experience significant retail success. It thus represents a significant marker in the collapse of the space simulator as a market force, even if it’s not a particularly notable game on its own. Read More... Posted Mar 23 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: star wars, joe keiser, 10 years ago, x-wing alliance, space sim, x-wing, tie fighter

• Roundtable Discussion: Pushing the Envelope on Sex and Nudity

  Relatively recently Grand Theft Auto news made waves by showing a full frontal male nudity scene.  Now, this is hardly the first time a human being, male or female, has been shown nekkid in a game.  You can at least go back as far as the reprehensible Custer's Revenge for the Atari to find a digital representation of male genitals.  The question is, do we really need this sort of thing in a video game? Read More... Posted Mar 20 2009, 04:30 PM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: sex, amber ahlborn, cole stryker, joe keiser, roundtable discussion, nudity

• Playing Treasure's Lost PS2 Game

  I don’t know how this got past me, but I’m on it now: a few weeks ago, the unreleased game saviors at Lost Levels gave up on their seven year wait for Tiny Toons: Defenders of the Universe and finally pushed the beta they had been sitting on into public channels. The reason you should care about such inexplicable, unfinished, licensed pap? Two reasons. It’s from Treasure, the Japanese game developer everyone so loves (probably too much). And it’s been billed in the past as the spiritual successor to Rakugaki Showtime, the cult crayon arena fighter nobody’s ever played. Read More... Posted Mar 19 2009, 05:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: ps2, treasure, joe keiser, licensing tragedies, unreleased games, rakugaki showtime, leaked games

• Whatcha Playing: Dungeon Maker II

  These days my launch PSP is held together by masking tape, spit, and prayer. But it does work (for now), and I’m trying to get to know it a little bit better before it inevitably decomposes into its constituent parts. The game of the hour is Dungeon Maker II: The Hidden War, a title from last Christmas that was roundly ignored by all humans. To be fair, it’s a bit of a minor effort. It’s low budget, free of any and all flashiness, and doesn’t have a lick of polish. But it’s also curiously addictive, so it provides a nice contrast to the modern AAA titles that hide their mechanics deep under pixel shaders and mocap animation. Dungeon Maker II is a throwback: like the low-tech games of yore, its mechanics sit exposed and naked under the nose of the player, and so have to be compelling on their own. Read More... Posted Mar 18 2009, 11:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, psp, diablo, jrpg, joe keiser, dungeon maker, nethack

• 10 Years Ago This Week: EverQuest

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,652 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. While not the first successful MMORPG (Ultima Online is frequently cited for this accolade), EverQuest (released March 16, 1999) was undoubtedly the first truly culturally relevant MMORPG, and the first one to achieve critical mass in its player base. The things EverQuest did in its five years at the top of the genre defined not only the way MMORPGs are designed. It also codified how the MMO business is structured, cemented a great many aspects of massive game player culture, and began the controversies that continue to haunt the genre to this day. It’s hard to overstate how much EverQuest has contributed to the medium, and you could certainly make an argument for it being the most important game of the last ten years (though you only have the rest of the day to do so). Read More... Posted Mar 16 2009, 10:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: world of warcraft, sony online, mmorpgs, pc games, everquest, joe keiser, 10 years ago, the realm, mythic, meridian 59, stormfront, ultima online, mac games

• The Perfect Recession Game: Tetoris

  Here’s a real find for anyone that’s found themselves without a job in this difficult time. It’s free, it’s long, it’s as addictive as Tetris, and the only system requirement is perfect 20/20 vision. It’s Tetoris, the Tetris variant where every line takes 20 minutes to break. Read More... Posted Mar 11 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: internet, puzzle, tetris, flash games, joe keiser, tetoris

• The 61FPS Review: Star Ocean The Last Hope

  Star Ocean 4 is a tragic creature. It’s not a great game, nor can it even see greatness from where it is now. Instead, it feels like it was dragged, kicking and clawing, away from greatness by wicked beasts that feed only on the worst excesses of Japanese pop storytelling. So its story is almost unfathomably bad. Here is one Edge Maverick, who goes against what his parents wanted for him by being neither edgy or a maverick. Born on a post-apocalyptic earth, he is but a cog in the government division tasked with finding a new home world for the remainder of humanity. A coincidental calamity sees him promoted to captain of his own ship, with his mission clear: mankind is choking on fallout, so go find a new planet for them. Preferably one without giant man-murdering insects. He immediately loses the plot. Long before he finds himself embroiled in a conflict for the fate of the universe, Edge is compiling his ragtag team of horrifying cosplay clichés: there’s a winged girl in there, and an embarrassingly clad catgirl, and at least two different varieties of space elf. He takes this merry band of awfully voice-acted annoyances across a series of nearly non-sequitur adventures, none of which have anything to do with colonizing the galaxy. Perhaps because he has confused being the universe’s most incompetent space captain with being a maverick, he messes up nearly all of these missions, which apparently excuses him to spend hours and hours as a mopey drama queen. Read More... Posted Mar 10 2009, 06:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, 61fps review, jrpg, joe keiser, star ocean 4, star ocean: the last hope

• 30 Years Ago This Week: The CD

  We’re taking a break from our regular 10 Years Ago column this week, but only because nothing happened ten years ago this week—unless you are some kind of terrible extreme sports game aficionado, in which case you can talk about EA’s Rush Down by yourself. Fortunately for the rest of us, something great did happen this week. It’s just something we have to go back a little bit further to discuss. The Compact Disc (released, sort of, on March 8th, 1979) was first publicly demoed thirty years ago this previous Sunday. It went on to become one of the major driving technologies of the digital media revolution. It also broadened the horizons of videogames as a medium, and to an extent democratized the industry as well. Read More... Posted Mar 09 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: sega cd, fmv hell, sony playstation, joe keiser, 10 years ago, cd-i, amiga cdtv, 30 years ago, cd-rom

• Roundtable Discussion: Genre Design Evolution

  Roundtable Discussion takes the intrepid 61FPS blogging team and pits it against itself in the search for deeper truth. The moderator for today is Derrick Sanskrit. Hey kids, I think it's time for another roundtable chat. I've actually been wanting to ask this of you guys for a few weeks now, because I've noticed that lately I've been playing a lot of games I never would have even considered playing as a kid. Am I alone in this or are we all doing it? What sorts of games are you playing now that you didn't play during what I assume was the glorious childhood heyday of gaming we all experienced? What sorts of games did you play then that you don't now? Have our tastes changed or have we merely opened/closed ourselves to certain experiences? What is fundamentally different about how these games are made now and how has overall design changed over time, affecting us as game consumers? I know that's a bit of a loaded series of questions, so I'll kick things off. I pretty much never played racing games as a kid. As a lifelong urban New Yorker, I never romanticized the concept of driving a car and have veered away from it for as long as I've been able. My college roommates pressured me into playing Gran Turismo, but it was Need For Speed Underground that made me a convert. Read More... Posted Mar 09 2009, 09:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, need for speed, shmup, cole stryker, bioware, burnout paradise, joe keiser, guilty gear, roundtable discussion, design, genre

• The One Thing Games Should Take From Star Ocean: The Last Hope

  Perhaps you recall that one cutscene that was posted here a week ago from Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It was a beastly thing from the darkest depths of the uncanny valley, writhing grotesquely in vibrant 720p. Well, it’s even worse in English—I have embedded that version after the jump, and if you think that I did that because I hate you that is completely fair. I’m playing the game for a forthcoming 61FPS Review, and thirty hours in the good news is that so far this wins the battle for the “Worst Cutscene in Star Ocean: The Last Hope Award”. The bad news is that the battle for that award is titanic in scale—this game is packed densely with cutscenes, many of them twenty minutes long., and eventually they all combine into a single Lovecraftian horror of wild gesticulation and ear-wrenching voice acting. The producer of the game recently talked about games surpassing film as a storytelling medium. I hope he was speaking in general terms, because his team sure can’t do it alone. I’m off topic. “Make sure your cutscenes are consistent in their ability to cause pain” is not the lesson the industry should take from Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Instead, it’s the elegant way the game lets you skip them. Read More... Posted Mar 06 2009, 04:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, cutscenes, jrpg, joe keiser, star ocean 4, tentacled horrors from the depths of madness

• Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy--The Beatles: Rock Band Priced and Dated

  MTV Games and Harmonix have dropped a handful of details on The Beatles: Rock Band, the official name of that Beatles game that was announced last October. Key among those details was the fact that it would be called The Beatles: Rock Band. That certainly doesn’t sound like the “new, full-grown, custom game built from the ground up” that was mentioned back then, but I’ve spent the months since that announcement dreaming of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club RTS so it’s possible that my disappointment is not exactly, um, sane. I’ll get my other crazy compliant out of the way now, too: the release is scheduled for 09/09/09, which is cute and all but totally conflicts with the Decade of Dreamcast blowout party I have been planning in my mind since, oh, January 1st 2009. But maybe that is just the ship date and everything will be fine! Read More... Posted Mar 05 2009, 02:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, rock band, the beatles, harmonix, ps3, joe keiser, rhythm action, the beatles: rock band

• Indie Dev Moment: Blush

  The lovable lunatics at Flashbang Studios have been catering to you dinosaur-loving kiddies for ages, what with their off-road velociraptor safaris and jetpack brontosauri. I didn’t care about those so much, possibly because I don’t have a soul. But I can’t ignore those guys any longer, because this week a game came out of the studio just for me. It’s called Blush. It’s a psychedelic physics-based jellyfish simulator. It is primarily about tentacles, and the flinging about of said tentacles. That’s all I need, but I own every single underwater game that has ever been released*. Normal humans might need more explanation, but that’s fine because Blush really is rather lovely. (You might also need a video. I’ve got that too.) Read More... Posted Mar 04 2009, 12:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: indie dev moment, web games, joe keiser, blush, off-road velociraptor safari, jetpack brontosaurus, flashbang studios, blurst

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Army Men 3D

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,652 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. It’s hard to imagine a time when the world wasn’t glutted with terrible Army Men games. And yet, that’s exactly the world that Army Men 3D (released March 2, 1999) was born into. Army Men 3D was the game that made the series’ descent into crushing awfulness visible to all. Army Men has been the poster boy of franchise overexertion and laziness since its 1998 debut, but that wasn’t always immediately apparent. While only the most generous of reviewers considered the first Army Men title to be even mediocre, there was no denying that the concept of little plastic green men fighting little plastic tan men was an interesting game space to explore. But Army Men 3D didn’t explore it. Instead, it was a 3D remake of the 2D original—an incredibly brazen move, since that first game was less than a year old and generally disliked. This was the first real sign that 3DO didn’t actually have a plan for the Army Men series beyond driving revenue—and the product matched the intention. Read More... Posted Mar 02 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: 3do, joe keiser, Playstation 1, 10 years ago, army men, army men 3d

• Finally, Some Info On Dreamfall Chapters

  Ragnar Tornquist’s ethereal adventure games are one of the medium’s greatest joys: The Longest Journey is an established genre classic, and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was a genuinely affecting piece of work with an unforgettable (in either a good or bad way, depending on who you ask) ending. They were brilliant, and those among us who are priveleged and wise cannot stop thinking about them, demand more of them. But the Dreamfall team has spend the intervening years on NCSoft’s next big MMO project. Now The Secret World is fascinating in its own right, but it’s not more Longest Journey. Tornquist knows what we crave, so today he pushed aside the typically opaque curtain of publisher secrecy to explain as much as he could about the upcoming Dreamfall Chapters. It’s all unofficial, but to see more of Dreamfall at all is a delight. Read More... Posted Feb 27 2009, 04:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: adventure games, joe keiser, the longest journey 2, ragnar tornquist, dreamfall, dreamfall chapters, the longest journey

• Spring Cleaning: Dusting Off Your Old Games

  I, like Cole, have been feeling the pinch of the economy lately. I’m not quite at the stage he’s at though: for example, I still live in New York, which means that naturally I meet our editor John regularly in that secret room on Wall Street where all New Yorkers adjust their monocles and laugh at the world. I also continue to own my most intricately designed brandy snifters, and I still swirl them daily. But this lifestyle necessitates other cut backs, and one of them—the biggest one, actually—is my games spending. This is bad, because I am a consummate hoarder and cutting back in this way is hard. But it’s also good; because I’m a consummate hoarder and have tons of games I have not given nearly enough love to. Read More... Posted Feb 24 2009, 02:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: gamecube, ps2, wario games, joe keiser, new york city, virtual on, collections, wario world, zone of the enders

• The 61FPS Review: Noby Noby Boy—Part 2

  Over the weekend, I spent half an hour tying my body around a cloud. I’m not really sure why I did it, and I’m not particularly convinced I enjoyed it. Something inside me told me to do it, and after a fashion I succeeded. And then I played Noby Noby Boy for a few more hours. And when I put down the controller I came to a realization: this is not something that can actually be reviewed. Let me be clear: I am not the sort of person that believes that reviews should not have scores or grades at the end. I believe that most games are built with specific goals in mind, and that the value of those goals and how successful the game was in achieving those goals can be measured in a relatively standard way. It’s not objective, and there are exceptional games that bring trouble to the grading system, which is why you see so much hand wringing about review scores (note: that hand wringing is also valuable—it keeps scoring models contemporary and reviewers on their toes). It’s the same thing that happens at almost any school. Noby Noby Boy is one of those exceptional outliers. There’s no implied contract here: you’re not trading $60 for the promise of a solid genre entry that meets all the bullet points and marketing hype. Noby Noby is $5, with the marketing hype being that it is “inexplicable” and the bullet points being “relax” and “have fun”. Without any expectations, it can’t be said that Noby Noby Boy is a failure. But can it also be said that it is a success? Read More... Posted Feb 23 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: review, 61fps review, katamari damacy, psn, ps3, joe keiser, noby noby boy