touched

i have DS.

thank you ben, touch and go is touching.

its such a refreshing new 2d platformer.

elaboration:
instead of a platformer based on levels, this game is based on game modes.

inorder to get a new game mode you have to unlock it by mastering the primary ones.
and this is where it gets good.

your first stage of the mode is baby mario falling from the sky. he is kept on the top screen but your gameplay is on the bottom, they are both connected so the level appears on DS.

you pretty much guide mario with clouds placed by you. the thing is, after this stage, your points determains what colour yoshi you get for the platform stage. faster yoshi is sweet but can be overwhemming, but has more advantages than slower.

this is where innovation comes into the gameplay, its hard to explain it complimentary, but you dont control yoshi's walking. its automatic. the amazing thing is you control his path using the clouds, you control the aim of his eggs and you control his jump/post-jump hover.
this concept cant be explained, but trust a huge fan of 2d platformers, this gameplay is newer than n00b. you have to touch it to be comsumed.

goood pick been

now the next question is.....

what game do i get next???/



i have the money for the moment.

ill end this spam session

...with a concise and well educated piece on console games:

A gamer's manifesto.

please take the time to read, its quite insightful.

bring back the writer

we were all sad to see the morale wit of the simpsons leave when conan obrien left, but hes still writing, and continues to entertain.

this is an article by him on the future of television.

i have to say i really enjoy his writing style.




if u haven't guessed, yes ive been surfing the net recently, im looking for a good mapping and texture tute for 3d max. there arent many around...

watch yourself.

been careful now, it seems bittorrent isnt exactly a tight system for digital distribution anymore.

its a good think for irc, right hartney ;)

right?

greatest advert ive seen in a LONG time!!!!!!

for people who love stunts.

i recommend watching this even if your on dialup speed, its golden

websites = 404 error

i had quite a chuckle about this post on:

the wrost application ever.

yeh, you know your in trouble when your loosing first party developers/publishers. it looks like the money pile is always bigger on the other side. i can see nintendo losing theyre next gen console and just sticking to handhelds. maybe even developing/publishing for xbox/ps3 (they may be too proud for that)

but its exactly what happened to apple. they were making their software for their hardware. they didnt leave for modding/customisation, it was all or nothing. the competition was open-ended and apple nearly collapsed.

as a publisher, nintendo are amazing, and have such a high quality of first party releases, they just dont have the money for harware performance and game innovation/development. no one does. so when it comes to sales, people want to go bigger and faster, and impulse buy. nintendo still have a strong public relations with the core gamers, but i feel theyre not "trendy" enough to keep the new wave of casual gamers.

so what do u do?

websites = boring

...unless.

its just an interesting site on web design. its true, though. web design is utterly boring, i mean look at our blog...




enough said

usually, a big publisher will have pool of game engines that they own or have bought off (licensed) another company. this is why third-parties strive to survive. they either have to license a game engine (the old UT engine is $500,000 to license) or hopefully score a deal with a publisher and be able to use their inhouse engines. unless your Hcore and can create engines for openGL and directX your stuck with buying an engine (i left java out cause.....well its java).

xbox opened up the western market, and i mean, good for them. japan is still the leading consumer country for Vgames. xbox is like the 6th best selling console there. it doesnt have shit on the market. PS2 was still outputing sweet games cause they still have respectful developers with them (ie. any japanese developer). obviously microsoft has their revenue in other fields (software) so their introduction to the game industry is a tainted one. theyre buying all the developers (rare RIP) and throwing shit at them. on the flip side, theyre only effective the western market (the market we are apart of) so its the only experience we see. i too think xbox is a shit-stirrer, but i cant really blame them for the amount of shit they release. i think there are more poor releases on PC.

washing?? you mean like, not being covered in your own filth?? screw that, who needs sex anyway...*wipes translucent sticky glaze off computer screen*

e3 cont. cont.

i dont think its xboxs fault for this market domination. i think primarily, it comes back to the gamers. i know alot of gamers are very closed-minded about games/genres (myself included) and dont even think to touch it if it doesnt meet high standards. unless we've heard a sweet review of it or seen advertising or read about it, we're not going to play it. we've become arrogant and expect too much from developers. due to this demand cause by the gaming consumer, developers have to license engines. unless you have the money like value, you cant send 4 years developing an original game system/engine/concept/gameplay/ user interface/ effect system/ physics engine. its too big of an ask.

i think most developers do well with what they get their hands on and have some control of creativity with the resources they have. the fact of the matter is we expect more and quick frankly do all we can to play these games. these are the facts (general facts):
85% of Vgames are pirated
15% of profit goes to the developer
it costs publishers $3-5 (for each unit) to mass produce and distribute a game on most platforms
out of 100 third-party concepts brought to major publishers, they will only choose to consider making 10 of them

with these facts in mind, the industry is run by publishers, and not many of these executives are gamers. they are business men! they make money. the gaming industry has now over taken the movie industry in revenue.

so ive gone from gamers controling the direction of the market, to the publishers.

i think the easiest way to stop this trend in violence is to wait it out. it cant be popular forever. 2d platform/side scrollers dominated the 8/16-bit consoles. it then died. i can see fps games evolving into something alot more. i like the idea of hybridizing fps with rts on a multiplayer/networked platform. i think mmos will come in soon and have a time of dominance amongst the core gamers. i have a feeling handheld will become more than just a lil kids console. the psp, nds and gbm should introduce a new social acceptance, due to its streamline design and compactibility. personal electronics are becoming fashionable (ie. the ipod, mobile phones). this handheld movement will be a completely new field of gaming. the gameboy will not just be seen as some chunky brick-like unit that played monotoned tetris, but be a silver micro accessory you carry around cause "your a gamer and gaming is now cool!"

the ages of the techheads are coming. people are wearing atari t-shirts for retro/gaming/street credit. so go into your closet and get out that alex the kidd shirt you wore when you were 10 and represent (also, the tight fit is considered hip now too)

actually, you know what, fuck it. be a core gamer, continue to be a social introvert. wear whatever is clean. eat anything microwaveable or that can be prepared in 2 mins. buy usb accessories on ebay. go to lans, feel L33T by paying out n00bz that dont know how to work daemon tools, leech pron, play CS and get pwnd. fall in love with the only girl that goes to the lan cause her Bfriend has the power to drag her along. find out what her handle is and PM her with shy but desperate proposals. hack and crack anything you want. digitally steal music and audiovisual content.

be the minority and deny that gaming is cool because, you dont give a fuck about trends, you care about head shot counts.

side note to E3

i have come to a conclusion about the games i have been seeing at E3.

firstly, most of us witnessed a dominace in the action movie genre, in relation to movies in the 90s. i believe this was a progression based upon the rise of technology in pyrotechnics and live-action SFX. we also came to the realisation that many of us liked explosions and destruction. this was the vice of the 90s. it has since died due to factors such as CGI alternative etc. fast forward to the present and we see the same popular ideals present in Vgames, yet on a more interactive medium.

what i am saying is publishers are creating this monotoneous paradigm. in a bid for production, graphical blood spill will win over perfect gameplay with mediocre graphics. E3 this year is a perfect example of blood over brains. the only luck we have are some releases of shredding flesh titles actually obtaining a half innovative gameplay system.

i know im whinging, there were many amazing looking titles drenched in quirky and new gameplay, but its only about 10% of the releases. THANK GOD FOR NINTENDO.

can anyone else see what i am saying???

lego music

we've seen the lego ipod guy

so whats next???????

ben, you never post anymore :(

i shivered

....the second i saw this. ive been waiting for this for the whole of E3, and i have to say, it is easily the sexiest design of any console ever (given the finish is what it really looks like from the pics). no sure if the stand for it is functional, but it is altering the perspective of the console.

im sorry but it was beautiful, i cant stress this enough.

ok, so the pic of the gamboy micro pic doesnt really serve it justice, the fact that the dimensions of the handheld are equal to the ipod and the wieght is half is probably the selling point. this thing is mini!!!!! it has the best and brightest screen ever (thats what they say) for a handheld, it will be able to fit comfortably in your jeans. its is an upgrade to gba, not a successor. some of the titles nintendo are developing for gba is amazing as well. they are releasing dynasty warriors advance, mario tennis, DKC3, yoshis topsey-turvey, along with the array of perfection titles being released on DS; new super mario brothers, mario and luigi SS2, golden eye, advance wars: dual strike, spinter cell, pac'n'roll, castlevania, and viewtiful joe DS. i dont know what u think, nintendo told us the NDS was an experimental handheld to target an older audience, but i can see this being the successor of the gba. these games look amazing, my mind blows.

i have to finish this cause im in the middle of watching the actually presentation nintendo did for E3 at the same link as what i sent you, i suggest anyone thats a nintendo fan watch it!!! its fucken amazing.


in closing, i love nintendo, and i know theyre not going anywhere too fast...

e3

a directory of picks for the new PS3.

i could get used to looking at the form of it. the white one looks hot!!!!

great reference to the bat-erang. the contorller is interesting and i think i like it better than the XBox360s. i think the arms of it are a bit big so i would like to feel the ergonomics of it to see if i could get used to playing it. as usual, gamespy has all the shizzle.

it looks as if they have dropped the L2 + R2 buttons, which is a shame. the button layout seem to be a standardization. im surprized we were gifted with a wireless controller in such a small package. anyway, i wanna see the titles on that baby!!!!!!!!!!!!

a saddened day

after all my hyperactivity over the ds i sparked a question:

if any, what N64 game would you port for the DS???

my opinion:

goldeneye (in a second)
mariokart (due to the amazing multi-play)
mario tennis

these games would make the best for wi-fi on the DS and i dream that this will come to the effect, i really dont care if im buying the same game, the multi-player experiences i have accounted for have been scepical to say the least.

so i head off and see if anything is in development, and i have cringed to the site of this.

wtf????

why would anyone let EA port this beautiful game? its was supposed to be rehashed. from the screens its a classic Vgame demise. i still cant judge on visuals along, so im hoping the multi-player experience is still in tact.

the game itself is looking at a few very nice features. 8 player on one cart, 4 player co-op, dual weapons, it seems like PD to me. yet i dont see the remains of any of the original N64 bond levels. :(

thw trailer is here.

what do u think ben?yay or nay?

DS retort

its hard to describe, but my desire for the DS is far behond infinite nintendo respect. i didnt think the developers would jump to the console, but again im proven that some people have faith in it.

This will be an interesting release, and i cant see it working for any other handheld. i am in love with design and innovation, but the psp still tried to pull me back, with its dominating hardware, and multi-functionality. i was looking at it the other day, and i realised it doesnt have a soul. its not progressive design. its a rehash of the PS1. its got average gameplay, with way too many racing games. its a beats for graphics. thats it. the movie playback feature is quite amazing, but really, who wants to watch a movie on 480x272 res. do we really need to watch the new epi of family guy on the train, or the OC at work?

the thing that gets me with the DS is multi-play. id rather sit down at uni and wi-fi my way in shooting the shit out of samus than watch shit on my psp. the major floor in NDS is that its initial design it chanky. nintendo always does it and then releases a killer second edition. ie. GBC, GBA SP.

along with this i am interested in seeing the new GB. for the moment it is hard to even get a glimps of it (nintendo is secure) on the net, so yeh..... ill have to wait

in reply to "i submit"

first off topic stuff. in regards to the phasing out of the snes (ideally 2d platformed games) to make way for new technology (contemporary 3d concoles), we all thought at the time, shit, its 3d, so it has to be better. the mainstream market fell and it was the developers/publishers that were catering for the new platform. there ends 32-bit joyous bliss. so here comes N64 and PS showcasing games never before seem. never before plays. the novelty was great, and for a time, games seemed so right to play. next gen consoles come in and we see the comprimise (demise) of gameplay for graphical aesthetics. and here comes the sad part. the introduction to the casual gamer. we all know what comes next, industrialization, standardization, mass production. video games are now officially cool, and anyone can play, from the lil 11 year ol squirt that hits up the pokemon with his level 15 ghost pokemon, to a 25 year old business man, who in his spair time picks up the Xbox and plays a bit of madden. with any art form comes the pricks that come in, commersialize and buy the shit out of the art. what we are seeing is a staleness in gaming. cant be helped.

getting back to my point. this idea is not new to people.

incomes the handheld console. innocent and naive. for the mean time, its evolution didnt exactly follow the path of its brother. it was going with more respect. it was learning off the mistakes of its older brother. compare the snes (minus the nostalgic value) to the array for GBA games, and 10 fold, i personally think gba has some of the most appealingly developed games ever. presently, the evolution for handheld (much like snes -> N64) is coming into affect with promising results. but how well will it go? are we going to see the phasing out of 2d games completely??????

on a side note. there has been an obvious revival of arcade games via the repositioning of it to another medium. this medium is flash games. although its subtle, arcade is practically flash. i personally dont think they will be able to intergrate the systems and styles of 2D games into flash, but theres a thought that there must be an underground revival happening???

where do we go for pixelation when the gba is lost????



i agreed with ben entirely, xbox will have the online, but honestly, id rather stay with my PC for that sort of functionality.

as for the nintendo article, yeh, i had to research those sales numbers myself for my game design class, and noticed japan's disinterest in microsoft. the thing i didnt like about the article was it was written very subjectively. there was lots of emphasis on japan, but not much on europe/asia/australia. given japan must be the gaming country of the world, the article didnt seem objective and international. but hey, i knew nintendo was going well, the fan base around nintendo is immense.

i didnt hear about the GB thing and frankly im quite scared. portability and functionality seems to be pressuring handhelds. lest emphasis on games, more on whether it can play movies, or play music, or suck your dick. theyre turning concoles more and more into computers. i predict microsoft will just release a laptop, call it a handheld and just release the games as exe files. microsoft were never ones for subtly....

it beats a fat chubby black console.

if you haven't linked this off penny-arcade yet, you havent seen the primary design of something that will be hogging space in millions of fat lil american houses (i mean the people are fat, not that houses....ok some houses may be fat, but only due to design purposes). also pics of the wireless controller.

it is indeed the Xbox360.

i have ergonomical problems with the controller shape. it seems alein like. it looks too smooth for its own good, and dont you think its ironic that microsoft, being a major competitor to apple, has lead the concole skin to a pearly pail white. i would have thought apple would have trademarked anything that was white. lets not stop there, apple should have trademarked the colour white by now!!!

anyway, this control design looks tacty. its the the 1980s interpretation of intergalactic space design. im guess they stole it out of stanley kubbrick's 2001 scape odyessy. im sorry but i just dont like this. ever since the adaption of the snes controller buttons, i have not been happy with xbox. obviously nintendo have a right to use x,y,a,b, and PS have the simplest of geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle, cross?) but xbox's designers sat down one day and said, "fuck it, lets copy nintendo, and make the D-pad on it really shitty and concaved. and screw it, lets make it as big as we like, we dont want little children and midgets playing with our controller, they have no net income."
and dont get me started with the fat shit of a ebony concole.

so looking at the next gen xbox, im glad theyve hired people with a bit of style.......yet to much style. i can see this machine standing up at your trendcore clubs. and is it me, or is this thing evolving to look like the tower of a PC.

ive had enough of ripping the shit out of this unreleased products, frankly i dont know shit about it. its going to be suped up with man killing hardware, and microsoft will make shit loads of money off it. then theyll continue to buy out every publisher/developer until we live in the age of where only one game engine exsists (own by microsoft of coarse) and all releases are just mods of this engine. only FPS, RPG MMO, 3Dplatform and RTS will exsist. nintendo will own the underground, sony would have been bought out, and ill be at home playing all snes and gba roms emulated on my hacked mini PS2, that i bought at an antique store for $2

either way im boycotting xbox360. im looking forward to the PS next gen console, i heard the chip in that thing is mindblowing.


ben, please lay down your opinion on this topic. japan love PS and nintendo, theyre sales of the Xbox is really bad. why cant we follow suit with them. theyre the only ones that can repent the monotony that is coming from american publishers. im guessing theyre too busy playing starcraft, to care.

spoiler: rivers secret is that shes a black midget

its true. honestly, you see it in the trailer!!!

i know we cant wait for this, but is it really worth watching on a 1280x1024 res screen? it hasnt made the leak to the net as of yet, but imguessing its presence next month. not to say i will be participating in the act of obtain this media.

taken directly from torrentspy. this will be very interesting
to describe it for people that are in the dark with texture memory, its the memory in a graphics card that load and hold all the textures, for a game. most current games won't have more than 128meg/256meg due to once you go over the local memory, you slow the process down (efficiency) because the remaining textures need to me stored somewhere else (system memroy "RAM") . so doubling this memory doubles the options for game developers. a shit load more bumpmaps, norm maps, this is setting up the new generation of games. expect more detail <3

thats all i got for the moment, saw the teaser of the new harry potter movie, and noticed some serious trendcore hairstyles happening. i think it looks a little silly, but thats just me. the film will make alotta money either way.

new that i want to read

THIS!!!!

i know i should show respect for my roots (nintendo) but sony are making it harder and harder to say no. i love to touch, i love to feel, but PSP makes love to my eyes in so many different ways!

dear NDS

when will you release your SP, its the only light at the end of the tunnel thats there for me. brighten my gaming day please.

love 10 years of nintendo- man


p.s. the new NeoFlash cart looks all good and well but when will we be seeing games dumped on the damn thing.


last but not least, ive always remembered gumby starring a yellow dinosaur. no one has ever supported me in this claim and i have proven and justified myself in the coolest of ways.

piece!

hack the world...or this site.

so i found this site thinking it was the old one you guys used to do but i think its different....

anyway, how about that 4 swords.

this isnt working

sorry about the faulty link, heres a new blog on it

article

i tried editting the last post but it wasn't working.

thanks for the game link ben, respect.

Shocking VideoGames

yes yes yes

we hadly use this thing, i know. im going to start using this more......when Ben does.

so i may not be new to this article but after reading, i couldnt get my brain to access the situation. i get the concept, yes, buti just dont know how i feel about it.

being a gamer of 11 golden years now, i must say, if this were to reach a commerical stauts, would it change the face of gaming nerds as we know it. no offence to contemporary nerds of this day, but we can hardly state we are strong, energetic cretins of reality. i can just imagine the change in stereotyped CS gamers. a new form of hardcore, pain-loving psychoes, with a thurst of electric current and victory. if video games desensitise us, think of the new plateau we gamers will we on. stun-gun sales will drop.

will this technology be easily intergrated with FPS? i see it as a gimmick, but am not sure of its positive or negitive aspects.

pros:
i can see it being a great feature to multiplayers. the only thing more enjoyable than getting a clean head shot on your friend, is to know your senting an electric shock to his head (if the system articulates like that)

the face of FPS will change tenfold. there seems to be an immortality in FPS. instead of the time between battle and death, its a time between battle and health pickups, or checkpoints. i can play a COD game with 60 people on the lan server and die 20 times, and think nothing of it. i get my good share of kills, but to think im going to get my arse shocked, i will think more about it. prodency is the key, and i will be interested in how gamneplay will change because of this function.

cons:
i sounds expensive, and we all know publishers dont go on rise and innovation anymore.

how accepting will it be to the gaming community

russian roulette mods (thats right, modding the system to actually shock and kill people, in a world with snuff, this has to be plausible)

whingy mothers and christians (im generalizing, i know) complaining their pants off

my computer workstation is usually the dump site of easy cooked meals and beverages. and on occasions i spill. given this technology, if i screw up the hardware, what are the chances of me killing myself? again thats just a prediction.

ok, after considering the pros and cons, i think i support this gaming invention. i want to be hurt. i want to peel pain, i want to inflict pain.


ben can you reply to this as an actually post, not a reply. im interested in your input.

*dammit my spellcheck isnt working, oh well, you deal with it*

*editted
sorry, didn't realise the site needed reg. i was in it yester, how strange.
another article:
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