61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

• Whatcha Playing: Earth Day Edition

  April 22nd, the day we all take off from work and gather at our local mosques and synagogues to solemnly pay respects to our mother Earth on the anniversary of her creation... or something. So do your part and take your game time today away from blasting zombies and chainsawing aliens in half, instead playing games all about helping mother Earth. Here are the four games that I'm playing for Earth Day: Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol for Nintendo DS Rather than cleaning up a house and helping with domestic troubles, this Chibi-Robo has been tasked with turning a barren field of sand into a lush flourishing public park. Like SimCity, you get to design your own world, laying paths and streams, rocks and hills, even benches, fountains, clock towers, statues, and mini-games to your liking. The nicer your park, the more visitors it gets each day. You also have to befriend local toys (including Molly Mapletree, seen above) to help you build up your park and battle smoglings who aim to pollute all the beautiful nature you've brought to the park, but the majority of gameplay is planting flowers. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds, thanks to the charm and playfulness found in all Skip-developed Nintendo games. Read More... Posted Apr 22 2009, 04:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, playstation 3, nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, wii, wiiware, psn, chibi-robo, skip, eden, pixeljunk, pixeljunk eden, flower, earth, bonsai barber

• 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

• Vandal Hearts Resurrected, Has Terrible Character Art

  You’d never suspect that, once upon a time, strategy RPGs were a rare and beautiful beast. Twelve years ago, you wouldn’t open a magazine and think, “Ah, yes, I see. This month there are thirteen different Game Boy games coming out from Namco, Square, Inis, Nippon Icchi, and Atlus that will allow me to train tiny warriors to walk across a colorful grid to slaughter evil beasts. Oh, look, there’s six more on Sony’s Playstation and nine more on Sega’s Saturn. Can’t wait to see next month’s haul. I’ll be moving across those grids and having fun until the sun goes out, by gum!” It just didn’t work like that. There were only a few of them. There was Tactic’s Ogre, which was made by Yasumi Matsuno. Then there was Final Fantasy Tactics which was, um, made by Yasumi Matsuno. But then there was Vandal Hearts, a dead ringer for Matsuno’s SRPGs that was, in fact, not made by Matsuno. Read More... Posted Apr 13 2009, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: playstation 3, game boy, xbox 360, konami, sony, sega, psn, Saturn, Suikoden, final fantasy tactics, tactics ogre, yasumi matsuno, vandal hearts II, monster madness, john constantinel xbox live arcade, vandal hearts, vandal hearts flames of judgment

• The Japanese PlayStation Store Gets Final Fantasy VII, Life Declared "Unfair"

  Let's face facts; the American PlayStation Store is...not so good. Just take a look at the number of original Playstation games you can download in Japan, compared to what's available here. Go ahead, I'll wait. Surprised? Then you probably haven't been paying attention. No offense intended, of course, but if you've been following PlayStation Store release news since the PS3's launch, then you're probably familiar with the disappointment all PS3 owners feel when they see so many of their favorite games just out of arm's reach. Of course, it's always possible to go through the rigmarole of creating a Japanese account and "tricking" the PlayStation Store into thinking that you deserve access to its superior Japanese marketplace, but you shouldn't have to. Hell, if Sony got their act together and started pimping the PS3 as the place to get your affordable fix of their respectable and immense library (especially the PS2), I'd consider adding their new console to my rickety fire hazard of an entertainment center. Read More... Posted Apr 13 2009, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: sony, psn, ps3, bob mackey, square enix, playstation store

• Alternate Soundtrack: Noby Noby Boy vs. Daft Punk

  As John previously mentioned, Spring is in the air here in New York. Coats and coffee have been replaced by t-shirts and...well... some people still have coffee. I've been rocking the cranberry juice myself. With all of this new life in the air, I find myself returning to my summer lover, Alternate Soundtrack, and where better to begin than with Bandai Namco's newest Springtime insta-classic, Noby Noby Boy. As I'm sure you know, because you're all just that well-informed, oh wonderful 61fpsers, Keita Takahashi's Noby Noby Boy is a game all about relaxed play. In fact, the game's title is a pun on the japanese words for "loose" and "stretch," much like how the original Katamari Damacy was a visual pun in that the two kanji were nearly identical, but I digress. While Katamari was notorious for its ridiculously catchy and enthralling soundtrack, Noby's is much more subdued. Introductory tuba and bells clear the path for sedate acoustic guitar plucking. That's about it. Thankfully, Noby uses just about every feature of the PS3's Cross Media Browser, including the ability to play music from the hard drive, allowing you to make your own soundtrack with incredible ease. I found that the game works wonderfully with Daft Punk's Discovery. Read More... Posted Mar 10 2009, 10:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: playstation 3, alternate soundtrack, derrick sanskrit, daft punk, psn, namco bandai, keita takahashi, noby noby boy, spring

• 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

• Rite of Spring: Flower and What’s Lacking in the Romantic Games Movement

  Last week was full of everything you want out of a vacation: a change of setting from urban sprawl to glorious mountain range, rancid air exchanged for clean winter wind, great food, better scotch, and the best company. Of course, there was also a smorgasbord of great portable games. Retro Game Challenge, Atlus’ under-the-radar curiosity My World, My Way, and Kirby Super Star Ultra made for marvelous palette cleansers, washing away the last traces of Epic Holiday Gaming morsels still stuck between my gaming teeth. It was restful, brief, and rejuvenating. When I returned, I knew that it was going to be time for 2009 hardcore gaming to go into high gear what with Street Fighter IV and a Killzone 2 demo waiting, but the first thing I had to spend some time with was Flower. As soon as it had finished installing, well, it felt like my vacation had just gotten an extension. The game is exhilarating. Having grown up in rural upstate New York, the contrast of Flower’s city-bound preludes and its soaring bucolic playgrounds pulls at very specific heartstrings in me. The game is brief but I’m no less taken with it. Jenova Chen and ThatGameCompany are damn good at eliciting just this sort of emotional response with their games. Their debut Cloud was rich with the same bittersweet catharsis that characterizes Flower. Both are something like the game equivalent of a symphonic poem, their fluid flight-based gameplay replacing music as the visceral informant of a visual/audio narrative. They’re games unified in subject too; Cloud and Flower chronicle escapes to a pure, natural world from metropolitan confinement. They are concerned with beauty and simplicity. I wouldn’t say that Chen and TGC started it, but they’re certainly poster children for what appears to be a burgeoning romantic movement in game design. Read More... Posted Feb 19 2009, 09:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, psn, xbox live, atlus, braid, Retro game challenge, cloud, façade, procedural arts, jon blow, my world my way, flower, thatgamecompany, jenova chen, flow, Kirby super star ultra, rite of spring, that game company, Stravinsky, scotch is awesome, windows

• Maybe You Should Just Watch Them: Hands-On With Watchmen

  What a strange trajectory the Watchmen property has taken, to begin as the (not a, the) groundbreaking and thought-provoking comic series of the 80s and end up here, as it will, in an episodic brawling game based on a movie with one of the most tortured development cycles in history. How did we get here? Where even are we? Read More... Posted Feb 11 2009, 11:25 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: psn, xbla, joe keiser, preview, watchmen

• Flower - A Zen de Blob?

  thatgamecompany's long-awaited "Zen game" Flower is finally being released on the Playstation Network next week, having been originally teased way back at the Tokyo Game Show in 2007. So far the game has caused all who've witnessed it to find themselves unable to accurately describe what the "game" is, only that it is captivating. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi was recently treated to a demonstration by Creative Director Jenova Chen. While it is still nowhere near as telling as an actual hands-on experience with the game, it is most definitely insightful. Video after the break: Read More... Posted Feb 03 2009, 11:59 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, derrick sanskrit, shadow of the colossus, psn, de blob, flower, thatgamecompany, jenova chen

• 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

• 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

• Create Unholy Life With the LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Generator

  If you look to your right, you'll see a picture of the lovely little girl I produced with a gentleman who called himself "Lou Sipher." He was an interesting man, full of ambitions but a little cold in bed. Lou and I don't talk very much these days. He's a busy guy. Those Christian rock bands aren't going to trick themselves into playing evil secular music. If you'd like to create your own twisted variation on Sackboy, check out the LittleBigPlanet site. You can't get too elaborate or anything, but you might pass away a few moments. I'm just going to sit back and watch the Internet implode as everyone dives for the chance to design the first Sackboy Hitler. ...Wow, my daughter's pretty terrifying. I can't wait until she starts kindergarten! That's a knife in her hand, by the way. Read More... Posted Sep 26 2008, 08:18 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, psn, sackboy, nadia oxford, littlebigplanet

• WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out

  Nintendo has been on my mind over the past few days. Not as a corporation in the business of making video games. More like a singular anthropomorphic entity. This is how Nintendo exists in my head these days, so when I see them making business decisions, my psychosis interprets those decision as being made by an individual. You know, as an affront against me personally. For example, I look at the abject madness that is Skip’s Captain Rainbow and then I remember that it will never come out in the US. Sure, WarioWare comes out, but do we get Mother 3? Tingle’s Rosy Rupee Land, a game that’s actually available in English? Nintendo doesn’t bring their weird games here, so Captain Rainbow, with its legion of obscure, z-list Nintendo characters, will flounder away on an island nation half the world away. Nintendo does things like this to spite me. Like my first experiences with WiiWare this past weekend. Read More... Posted Aug 25 2008, 03:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, wii, lost winds, wiiware, psn, earthbound, warioware, captain rainbow, strong bad, david braben, wii play, mother, live arcade

• Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

  Your dear mother has undoubtedly told you at some point, "You need to have a wife. It's good to have a wife." Maybe you agree or maybe you disagree, but either way, singles feel pressured to hunt down a mate even while insisting to themselves that the single life is totally rad. Sony's adopted your mother's stance on companionship, but instead of spouses it's talking about mascots. "Every system needs a mascot. It's good to have a mascot. Here, Sackboy now represents Sony." "Gee Sony, Sackboy is awfully cute, but is it a good idea to make him the spokes...doll for the company? We don't actually know how LittleBigPlanet will sell. And honestly, I'm okay with Sony's lack of a mascot--" "It's good to have a mascot. Now start making babies." If you feel wary, it's okay. Sony's previous attempts to match us up with digital companions resulted in lukewarm relationships before sputtering out: Crash Bandicoot, Lara Croft, Kratos. Even Microsoft fared far better by branding itself with Master Chief. Read More... Posted Aug 15 2008, 05:45 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: grand theft auto iv, little big planet, playstation 3, microsoft, sony, psn, playstation network, xbox, legend of zelda: twilight princess, identity, master chief, sackboy, mascots

• More Downloadable Remakes! More, Says I!

  Bionic Commando Rearmed is apparently excellent, not like there was ever any doubt (well...maybe just a titch). Chances are good that Mega Man 9 will be playable as well, which leads me to believe that Capcom has a pretty good idea about how to handle its remakes. I would like to see more. On one hand, the state of the gaming world is making me brood like Yahtzee. Why are the most exciting games of today remakes and sequels to old franchises? Am I a dirty person for being more excited about ancient gaming lore than Mirror's Edge? I don't know if there are any rabid Osamu Tezuka fans among us, but the whole ordeal reminds me a bit of the Phoenix manga series. In it, mankind's progress sputtered and stalled because he became nostalgic for the past instead of trying to innovate for the future. Eventually, the human race decayed and crumbled before the master computers running the world burnt civilization to the ground with hydrogen bombs. Gamers' pining for the past might be a grim prophecy. We should tread carefully and be wary. On the other hand...hey, Bionic Commando Rearmed! Read More... Posted Aug 13 2008, 07:04 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: psp, capcom, yahtzee, psn, mega man powered up, nostalgia, bionic commando rearmed, xbla, remakes, phoenix, mega man maverick hunter x, osamu tezuka

• Introducing Mrs Radd Spencer

  1UP.com posted an excellent interview with Ben Judd, the producer of Bionic Commando Rearmed. Judd's insight is interesting, especially his revelation about Rearmed's story connecting to the next-gen game coming out for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3: "Making the story for this was great. It was a lot of fun, actually, because you have a little bare-bones story from the NES. (...) One of the things we added in was that the main character has a wife. And you find out that his wife left him when you're talking to different people in the game. He says, "I don't know why she left. Maybe she doesn't like a military man." Later, you find out something happened to his wife, and you find out in the next-gen -- it ties into the next-gen game." Maybe I'm too much of a girl sometimes, but I'm always very interested in the emotional aspect of video games. I thought, Radd Spencer has a wife? What does she look like? I hope you appreciate the concept sketch behind the jump. I put many backbreaking hours into it. Read More... Posted Aug 12 2008, 06:36 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: psn, retro, super joe, radd spencer, concept sketch, mrs radd spencer, xbla, bionic command

• Far Out, Man

  When the demo for PixelJunk’s latest play on genre convention, Eden, went live on the Playstation Network late last week, I was still knee deep in a country spanning jaunt, my only real gaming time devoted to quick sessions of Shiren the Wanderer and Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. I’ve been following Eden closely since Dylan Cuthber and Q Games started showing it off earlier this year, intrigued by its subdued yet dense pop-art visuals, deep house soundtrack, and its peculiar momentum-based play. Now that I’ve spent some time with the free appetizer hosted on PSN, I am, like Derrick, entranced by Eden. Beyond the basic satisfaction of moving through Eden’s gardens, its central theme of growth – your actions bring life to the environment resulting with subtle shifts in each garden’s music – is emblematic of the shift in the way games broadly can be classified. Read More... Posted Jul 31 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, derrick sanskrit, everyday shooter, phoenix wright, Playstation, psn, shiren the wanderer, eden, pixeljunk, echochrome

• Where is The City of Metronome?

  Back in 2005, Swedish developer Tarsier came to E3 with a big game they’d been cooking up called The City of Metronome. Metronome, even three years later, remains a visual feast, its faceless characters, early 20th century fashion, and twisting cityscape sitting somewhere between Edward Gorey and Pixar, Ralph Bakshi and Alex Proyas’ Dark City. Tarsier had also created an exciting foundation for play in Metronome; every action was based around sound. A player could control the city’s citizens, alter architecture, and even fight using sounds recorded in the game. And recording wasn’t just a clever twist on item collection either, as the player could create their own noise to record by interacting with the world (breaking glass, having a conversation, etc.) Few games in the past five years have been as conceptually exciting or strange as Metronome. Read More... Posted Jun 11 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, bioshock, where is, Playstation, city of metronome, psn, take-two, tarsier