61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

• Trailer Review: Bayonetta

  You’d think that with time and experience and the accumulation of knowledge, a man would move past certain things. He’d start to develop more refined tastes that reflect a growing passion for life’s finer stuff. You’d think he’d exhibit a predilection for more metered explorations of the human experience, subtle meditations on adult relationships and history. You’d think that witches who have guns built into their shoes, who get naked while attacking monsters with their hair wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would interest him. Nope. Bayonetta is about as cultured as I’m likely to get. Read More... Posted Apr 13 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, trailer review, devil may cry, platinum games, hideki kamiya, bayonetta, sega, resident evil 2

• The 61FPS Review - MadWorld

  First and foremost, let me say this: I loved just about every second of Platinum Games' debut title MadWorld. If you have a Wii and are even slightly interested in over-the-top violence, I say get the game as soon as you possibly can. If you enjoyed the Wii's reigning champ of hardcore tongue-in-cheek violence No More Heroes, you'll find a lot to love in MadWorld. If you're a fan of Clover Studio's past work, in particular Viewtiful Joe and God Hand, you will probably love MadWorld. If you are a fan of Frank Miller's Sin City and/or black comedy, you will absolutely have a blast with MadWorld. Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's get into the nitty-gritty. Read More... Posted Mar 16 2009, 11:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, platinum games, wii, madworld, 61fps review, sega

• Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami

  Two truths. Today is March 13th. It will not be spring for another eight days. Also, the original soundtrack to Okami is not chiptune. At all. In fact, it is fully orchestrated and entrenched in traditional Japanese composition, a far cry from the heavy metal and pop roots of the blissed-out blip songs composed on the NES or similar consoles. Have you gone outside though? It is freaking gorgeous out there. It may rain, it may be cloudy, but the bitter miasma of late winter has lifted, washed away as if by… a celestial brush! Given, it’s likely that the fine weather is a result of the Earth’s natural solar orbit and axial spin, but I like to think that there’s a sun goddess wolf out there making it nice outside. I’m going to find her. We’ll go to the park and play fetch. Beautiful women will be all, “Oh your dog is beautiful!” And I’ll be all, “Check dis.” Then Amaterasu will make a bushel of fragrant botanicals grow at our feet. Here are three selections from the Okami soundtrack. Listen, be in bloom, and grab your DS or PSP. Go play outside today! The Great Goddess Amaterasu’s Revival Hit the jump for more fresh goodness. Read More... Posted Mar 13 2009, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, platinum games, wii, clover studios, capcom, atsushi inaba, sony, playstation 2, chiptune friday, okami

• MadWorld: Actually a Pretty Even-Keeled World

  Unlike Bayonetta, Sega were all too happy to let me try out MadWorld yesterday. After a quick tutorial in the controls, I was thrown, for lack of a better phrase, into the deep end of Varrigan City. I walked away from the game thinking three distinct things: One: Ultra-detailed black and white games are as cool in practice as they are in theory, but I can see why there aren’t too many of them. Two: Platinum Games took Suda 51’s No More Heroes combat model and improved its accuracy and versatility in significant ways. Three: MadWorld’s kind of… boring. Read More... Posted Jan 29 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, no more heroes, viewtiful joe, platinum games, wii, madworld, bayonetta, atsushi inaba, sega, suda 51, god hand

• Bayonetta: Not As Gratuitous As You Think

  Nah, I’m playing. Bayonetta is totally as gratuitous as you think. Sega came to NYC today and they brought Platinum Games’ Xbox 360/PS3 debut with them. I wasn’t allowed to get my hands on the controller, only a guided playthrough of the game’s first stage, but that was enough to say that Bayonetta’s every bit as over the top as its initial trailer made it out to be. It also looks like a hell of a good time. Read More... Posted Jan 28 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, xbox 360, devil may cry, platinum games, hideki kamiya, bayonetta, sega, ninja gaiden, devil may cry 3

• Infamous: Unsung Contender of 2009

  I don’t like lying. Lying tends to make me feel dirty on the inside, like I’ve broken my own New Year’s resolution and started eating topsoil again because it’s both moist and visually similar to cake. So I won’t lie and tell you that the games I am most excited about in the first half of 2009 are published by someone besides Capcom. It simply isn’t true. There’s new Bionic Commando. It is my topsoil. Everything else is dirt. But that’s not to say there isn’t a whole ton of excellent and appealing dirt on the way! Sega and Platinum Games’ goodies are going to start rolling out in the next few months. Killzone 2 is looking like it may actually deliver on its half-decade of ridiculous hyping. Muramasa: The Demon Blade? Fragile? These games will, hopefully, be sweet. Speaking of all things promising, Bob’s love for Sly Cooper reminded me that Suckerpunch is gearing up for their big Playstation 3 debut in just the next few months. But where is all the hype for open world superhero extravaganza, Infamous? Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 07:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, platinum games, capcom, bionic commando, sega, fragile, sly cooper, killzone 2, infamous, muramasa: the demon blade, suckerpunch

• You’re Doing Great, Sega: Space Harrier Returns

  Space Harrier, unlike a lot of Sega’s other arcade games in the mid-80s, was a little light on challenging play. Your little blonde dude and his huge gun flew across the seemingly endless surface of The Fantasy Zone, shooting all kinds of dragons and cycloptic wooly mammoths, but it never quite felt like anything you did had a physical impact on the world. Things exploded when you shot near them but it didn’t ever feel like you were actually causing it to happen. But Yu Suzuki’s debut game stands out in history because it was, and is, staggeringly beautiful. Its scaling sprite graphics were an important landmark on the road to making lush three-dimensional – not true 3D mind you, but close – game worlds. Harrier’s Fantasy Zone is as bizarre and unique a visual space as anything else that came out of Sega (arguably even stranger and more fully realized than Opa Opa’s Fantasy Zone.) It also had some of the most hilarious voiceovers in a game. One of my earliest gaming memories is of a Space Harrier machine repeatedly yelling, “You’re doing great!” in the corner of a Pizza-Hut. It made me laugh so hard, Pepsi came out my nose, and everyone knows that the true test of comedy is whether or not it can make you leak fluid. It’s strange then, considering Sega’s recent penchant for resurrecting their iconic franchises, that Space Harrier has remained untouched for twenty years. The only sign of the series since 1988 was Sega’s arcade shooter Planet Harrier in 2001, an obvious spiritual successor but still not a proper Space Harrier 3. If Tez Okana has his way, Space Harrier won’t stay unloved for long. Read More... Posted Nov 05 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, platinum games, wii, sega, sonic the hedgehog, space harrier, arcade, house of the dead, asttro boy, tez okana, thunder force vi

• Game Designers: Rockstars, Auteurs, Dweebs?

  One crummy thing about living here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. is that we don’t get issues of Britain’s Edge Magazine for a full month after they hit stands in Britain. Yes, I know, it’s a hard life. We’ve been at war with two separate nations for close to a decade, the economy is disintegrating, and our health care system is an atrocity but all that pales in comparison to not getting pretty videogame rags in a timely manner. But I digress. Yesterday, while flipping through their July issue, something stuck out about their Platinum Games cover story: the photo spread of Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, Shigenori Nishikawa, Hifumi Kouno, and Tatsuya Minami made them look like a god damn boy band. Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, platinum games, valve, shigeru miyamoto, cliffy b, edge, david jaffe, gabe newell

• Independent at a Price: Sega and Platinum Games

  Image courtesy of IGN.com Last week’s reveal that Platinum Games, formerly of Clover fame, was making four entirely new videogames was one of the most exciting moments of the year in gaming. The return of powerful creative voices is always reason to sit up and pay attention. Brendan Sinclair of Gamespot sat down with Sega America VP of marketing Sean Ratcliffe and president Simon Jeffery to discuss Sega and Platinum’s new publishing relationship. Interviews like this tend to not be very revealing about the content or creation of the games being discussed; these aren’t designers talking, they’re marketers, so they market. Buried beneath the glad-handing here, though, is some scary insight into what independent developers without the resources to publish and promote their own work face when getting their games onto the world stage. Take a look at this excerpt: Gamespot: Is this (publishing) deal exclusive, or can Platinum work here and there for other publishers? Simon Jeffrey: It's completely exclusive. Gamespot: Do the intellectual property rights for these brands stay with Sega or Platinum Games? Simon Jeffrey: Sega. No matter what Platinum Games creates under this agreement, they don’t get to own it. Read More... Posted May 22 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, shinji mikami, platinum games, hideki kamiya, madworld, bayonetta, atsushi inaba, sega

• Clover Returns, Heavy as Platinum

  While the final months of 2006 were exciting times – the Wii and Playstation 3 were released mere days apart while the Xbox 360, DS, and PSP really started to heat up content wise – it was also a time of mourning. Just after the release God Hand and Okami, Clover Studios disbanded. Parent company Capcom absorbed much of the staff while the designer trinity of Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil), Hideki Kamiya (Devil May Cry), and Atsushi Inaba (Viewtiful Joe) went off to form a new independent studio. Clover’s games were true rarities in the industry, each one an artistic ziggurat built on a foundation of violently colorful worlds and idiosyncratic mechanics. Viewtiful Joe’s comicbook world of an empowered movie buff that found the player manipulating the action with VCR commands, Okami’s sumi-e fantasia that allowed the player to literally exert their will on the world through painting; truly special stuff. That’s why it’s so exciting that yesterday’s rumors about their new games turned out to be absolutely true. Read More... Posted May 13 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, devil may cry, infinite line, no more heroes, shinji mikami, viewtiful joe, platinum games, resident evil, wii, hideki kamiya, psp, clover studios, madworld, capcom, bayonetta, atsushi inaba