PSP Still In First In Japan, But It’s Still Nintendo’s Pie [Console Taisen]

Sony’s PlayStation Portable is still the bestselling (and worst selling) piece of hardware in Japan, moving another 37,000 PSPs of standard variety and nearly another 1300 of the “go” variety. The PSP secured the top spot on the hardware chart once again, in part thanks to the release of chart topper Kenka Bancho 4: Ichinen Sensou. Like previous weeks, the Wii was right behind it, with considerable distance between Nintendo’s home console and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The combined strength of the Wii and three flavors of the Nintendo DS give the house of Mario more pie than anyone else this week. Somebody needs a new runaway hit in Japan to liven this race up. PSP – 37,338 Wii – 36,241 PlayStation 3 – 27,763 Nintendo DSi LL – 24,605 Nintendo DSi – 15,586 Nintendo DS Lite – 5,029 Xbox 360 – 2,510 PlayStation 2 – 1,912 PSPgo – 1,296

Read more from the original source:
PSP Still In First In Japan, But It’s Still Nintendo’s Pie [Console Taisen]

PSP Still In First In Japan, But It’s Still Nintendo’s Pie [Console Taisen]

Sony’s PlayStation Portable is still the bestselling (and worst selling) piece of hardware in Japan, moving another 37,000 PSPs of standard variety and nearly another 1300 of the “go” variety. The PSP secured the top spot on the hardware chart once again, in part thanks to the release of chart topper Kenka Bancho 4: Ichinen Sensou. Like previous weeks, the Wii was right behind it, with considerable distance between Nintendo’s home console and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The combined strength of the Wii and three flavors of the Nintendo DS give the house of Mario more pie than anyone else this week. Somebody needs a new runaway hit in Japan to liven this race up. PSP – 37,338 Wii – 36,241 PlayStation 3 – 27,763 Nintendo DSi LL – 24,605 Nintendo DSi – 15,586 Nintendo DS Lite – 5,029 Xbox 360 – 2,510 PlayStation 2 – 1,912 PSPgo – 1,296

Here is the original post:
PSP Still In First In Japan, But It’s Still Nintendo’s Pie [Console Taisen]

World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars Trailer

World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars (X360) Let the race begin.

Read more:
World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars Trailer

Muscle March Micro-Review: Flex Crimes [Review]

Aliens have stolen Earth’s precious protein powder and it’s up to an international community of bodybuilders (and one polar bear) to safely return that protein to the excessively ripped community. That’s the plot of Namco Bandai ’s wacky Muscle March . The WiiWare game’s premise may be as deep as the gameplay, tasking players with chasing down said aliens and their creatine hoarding partners in crime—which include a kappa, Oda Nobunaga, and a robot—through simple Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls. Players will form a muscular parade behind the protein thief, posing appropriately to follow them through body-shaped holes in walls like a game of human Tetris. Simply hold the motion sensitive controls in one of four positions to squeeze through those holes, then take down your protein-loving prey with frantic waggling. Muscle March is quirky, zany, wacky, buff fun. Just don’t expect it to last. Loved Hilarious Presentation: As you sprint and flex through the streets of Japan, its countryside and outer space in pursuit of protein thieves, you’ll come across loads of wacky characters, amusing sights and a laugh out loud presentation. Whether gyrating buttocks and bears in bikini bottoms is your cup of tea will determine how much amusement you draw from Muscle March. But if you like the “Oh, Japan! ” brand of bizarre as previously seen in games like the Cho Aniki and Katamari Damacy series, you’ll find something to appreciate here. Hated Empty Gameplay: Here’s where Muscle March suffers. All you do is hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in one of four positions, posing in the color-coded hole shapes left in walls left by the game’s beefy burglars. The novelty wears off within minutes, as the gameplay never deviates from reacting quickly to poses and fake out poses as the race to steal back your protein speeds up. Add to that just three environments in which to play, each broken into three sub-sections, and your interest to revisit Muscle March after completing the game in about 30 minutes will likely peter out rapidly. Wii Controls Make It Frustrating: For a game that relies on just four control positions and some frantic controller flailing, you might think it would control like a dream. Not really. The game feels frustratingly slow to react to pose changes, a major annoyance when races reach maximum speed. Muscle March is fun idea disguised as a game, but the singular gameplay mechanic isn’t explored in any interesting way, making the WiiWare game feel like a repetitive diversion, about as amusing in the long-term as a whoopee cushion. It’s a great gag, one that you can spring on friends who may have their minds blown by the eccentric action of Muscle March, but that’s all you’re going to get for your 500 Wii Points. If you’re looking for depth or value or even interesting gameplay, you won’t find it in Muscle March. Muscle March was developed and published by Namco Bandai for WiiWare on January 16. Retails for 500 Wii Points ($5.00 USD). Nintendo Points were provided by Nintendo for reviewing purposes. Played both game types with multiple characters and posed 72 times in a row. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

Here is the original post:
Muscle March Micro-Review: Flex Crimes [Review]

Should Video Games Permit Three-Player Arm Wrestling? [Design]

Yesterday, I found the line between reality and unreality that video games would not cross. It involved arm wrestling. I was visiting the offices of a public relations firm in Manhattan on Thursday to check out early builds of upcoming games from the publisher Hudson Entertainment. Among those was Deca Sports DS , the first portable game of the Deca Sports line. My only previous significant exposure to Deca Sports was procuring a copy of the first Wii game in the sports mini-game series for my young sister-in-law a couple of Christmases ago. I expected a breezy good time from Deca Sports DS. After a glance at the fact sheet I was handed about the game, I also expected Bobsled, Cheerleading, Wall Climbing, Golf, Sepak Takraw, Rugby, Clay Shooting, Sky Diving, Ping Pong and Arm Wrestling. And I expected the games to be playable across multiple wirelessly-connected DSes. I was told some sports supported up to six players using a single DS cartridge. I had one other hope: I also expected that maybe the public relations person showing me the game, the second reporter checking the game out and I could all play a match of arm-wrestling together. I expected three-person arm wrestling, because, for a second I was thinking in a video game way, not a real-world way. In the real world, only two people can arm wrestle each other at a time. I can’t imagine how it would work with three people unless it was two-vs-one, with the “one” using both of their arms. In video games, however, you can have three-player matches of all sorts of games — so why not arm-wrestling? I’m not talking about three players having a round-robin tournament of one-on-one matches. I’m talking Three Players Arm Wrestling Each Other At The Same Time. No, I was told. Deca Sports DS arm wrestling is a two-player affair. I consented and faced off against the other reporter. To arm-wrestle we had to scribble back and forth on our DSes to gain an advantage. Then, we had to time our taps on a golf-swing-style power meter to power our way to victory. Two-player video game arm wrestling was kind of silly and fun enough. But I left unsure if I’d been unreasonable to wonder if we could have a three-player option. We already don’t expect our video games to be that realistic, not in terms of how high our heroes can jump or how many gunshots it takes to kill a man. We agree, sometimes, to have our virtual basketballs blaze with flame and our race cars to keep driving after they should have exploded. But sometimes we call for reality. We want those cars to stop driving when they break, those basketball players to get tired when they dunk. Would we want three people to arm-wrestle each other, even if it just makes no real-world sense? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t mind seeing someone — or some three — try. Deca Sports DS is set for release this spring.

Read more:
Should Video Games Permit Three-Player Arm Wrestling? [Design]

For the Goomba, What’s Their Motivation, Again? [Weekend Reader]

Boss battles are critically important to most video game genres, providing climactic story points as well as the kind of challenge for which the game was bought in the first place. But what about the minor foes of a game? The personal blog 2-Bit Wasteland takes a sometimes irreverent, sometimes idealized look at the grunts of gaming’s enemy forces. They’re different that a boss and his motivation exists in a game either “to build sympathy for the protagonist and encourage the player to rally behind him,” or “to flesh out the enemy and make him a more three dimensional character, often furthering the player’s understanding of the hero’s ordeal.” Waves of grunts? A different story. Or non-story. 2-Bit Wasteland seems to indicate they represent an opportunity – more characters through which a game may extend the narrative. In many games, I could see how integrating everyone into the story would make it prohibitively dense. But if only for the humor, let us consider what might motivate anonymous, ubiquitous cannon fodder like the goomba. The Life of a Goomba: A Grunt’s Motivation? [2-Bit Wasteland, Dec. 18] This raises a lot of questions, for example why are Goombas working for Bowser? Do they simply obey out of fear? Does Bowser have some kind of mind control? Or does he offer a great BUPA health insurance plan with benefits? Here lies the major flaw with games today: bog standard enemies have no motivation for their actions, and players disregard this flaw as if it’s ok. Perhaps it seems trivial to consider this when talking about Super Mario Bros but the fact is very few games have evolved from this extremely basic premise. If you stop to actually think about it does anyone else consider that Mario might be the bad guy? Almost every single creature in several different worlds seems to pit themselves against Mario and put their lives on the line. Nobody stops to deliberate that he might be the evil one. Just because Bowser looks a bit nasty everyone thinks he’s a baddie. Maybe he was just trying to overthrow the monarchy, Perhaps Peach raised the taxes too far. Perhaps she sent all the Koopa peasants to live in the lava world whilst she got the nice castle off their hard working backs. Doesn’t seem so unreasonable now does it? Perhaps Bowser was a freedom fighter and maybe Mario was a puppet knight of the monarchy who mercilessly went world to world slaughtering all who passed him. Maybe not, the point is we don’t know. Some people just never admit when they’re in the wrong There are games that do this right, Gears of War pits you against the fearsome Locust race who rise from beneath the earth to lay waste to humanity. The genius of this race is that whilst you don’t agree with their motivation you can understand it. Humanity landed and ravaged the surface of their planet and then destroyed a large portion of their species when they emerged from beneath. Furthermore the race design paints them as some giant mutated insects – they all obey a “Queen” and think as a single mind. In a twist the bosses in Gears tend to have less motivation and are more often larger creatures often who The Locust cant control themselves e.g. The Berserker, a blind charging beast, who thinks of nothing else other than tearing you limb from limb. The genius of this and Gear’s story is that it gives you just enough information leaving the player to speculate. This becomes particularly effective in the ‘Sires’ section of the second game. So why don’t other games do it? Laziness? Probably not, it’s more likely the design and time constraints of game creation naturally result in shortcomings such as these. Worth note is Shadow of the Colossus which pits the player against large roaming beasts that traverse the land. The brilliance of these creatures is that they pose no direct threat to you and are simply there for you to kill for your own selfish deeds. Its a unique dynamic where the player’s motivation takes a back seat as Wanderer destroys these creatures to restore life to his love. The complete lack of ‘grunt’ enemies gives the game a sparse feel which results in a lonely journey that is accompanied with a constant feeling of dread. A brilliance not paralleled in any game since. Anyway back to the task in hand. Evolution is required. No longer can we face off against meaningless enemies without reason. And I know games are fundamentally about the gameplay and that is the most important factor but I feel insulted by constantly being fed character development that is surpassed in every conceivable way by The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Imagine a game where every enemy had an agenda, a back story, where no two were the same, perhaps they have a family. What if you came across a Goomba with a wife and kids? Would that make you think twice before so carelessly jumping on their head and crushing their skull into the pavement? – 2-Bit Wasteland Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

See more here:
For the Goomba, What’s Their Motivation, Again? [Weekend Reader]

For the Goomba, What’s Their Motivation, Again? [Weekend Reader]

Boss battles are critically important to most video game genres, providing climactic story points as well as the kind of challenge for which the game was bought in the first place. But what about the minor foes of a game? The personal blog 2-Bit Wasteland takes a sometimes irreverent, sometimes idealized look at the grunts of gaming’s enemy forces. They’re different that a boss and his motivation exists in a game either “to build sympathy for the protagonist and encourage the player to rally behind him,” or “to flesh out the enemy and make him a more three dimensional character, often furthering the player’s understanding of the hero’s ordeal.” Waves of grunts? A different story. Or non-story. 2-Bit Wasteland seems to indicate they represent an opportunity – more characters through which a game may extend the narrative. In many games, I could see how integrating everyone into the story would make it prohibitively dense. But if only for the humor, let us consider what might motivate anonymous, ubiquitous cannon fodder like the goomba. The Life of a Goomba: A Grunt’s Motivation? [2-Bit Wasteland, Dec. 18] This raises a lot of questions, for example why are Goombas working for Bowser? Do they simply obey out of fear? Does Bowser have some kind of mind control? Or does he offer a great BUPA health insurance plan with benefits? Here lies the major flaw with games today: bog standard enemies have no motivation for their actions, and players disregard this flaw as if it’s ok. Perhaps it seems trivial to consider this when talking about Super Mario Bros but the fact is very few games have evolved from this extremely basic premise. If you stop to actually think about it does anyone else consider that Mario might be the bad guy? Almost every single creature in several different worlds seems to pit themselves against Mario and put their lives on the line. Nobody stops to deliberate that he might be the evil one. Just because Bowser looks a bit nasty everyone thinks he’s a baddie. Maybe he was just trying to overthrow the monarchy, Perhaps Peach raised the taxes too far. Perhaps she sent all the Koopa peasants to live in the lava world whilst she got the nice castle off their hard working backs. Doesn’t seem so unreasonable now does it? Perhaps Bowser was a freedom fighter and maybe Mario was a puppet knight of the monarchy who mercilessly went world to world slaughtering all who passed him. Maybe not, the point is we don’t know. Some people just never admit when they’re in the wrong There are games that do this right, Gears of War pits you against the fearsome Locust race who rise from beneath the earth to lay waste to humanity. The genius of this race is that whilst you don’t agree with their motivation you can understand it. Humanity landed and ravaged the surface of their planet and then destroyed a large portion of their species when they emerged from beneath. Furthermore the race design paints them as some giant mutated insects – they all obey a “Queen” and think as a single mind. In a twist the bosses in Gears tend to have less motivation and are more often larger creatures often who The Locust cant control themselves e.g. The Berserker, a blind charging beast, who thinks of nothing else other than tearing you limb from limb. The genius of this and Gear’s story is that it gives you just enough information leaving the player to speculate. This becomes particularly effective in the ‘Sires’ section of the second game. So why don’t other games do it? Laziness? Probably not, it’s more likely the design and time constraints of game creation naturally result in shortcomings such as these. Worth note is Shadow of the Colossus which pits the player against large roaming beasts that traverse the land. The brilliance of these creatures is that they pose no direct threat to you and are simply there for you to kill for your own selfish deeds. Its a unique dynamic where the player’s motivation takes a back seat as Wanderer destroys these creatures to restore life to his love. The complete lack of ‘grunt’ enemies gives the game a sparse feel which results in a lonely journey that is accompanied with a constant feeling of dread. A brilliance not paralleled in any game since. Anyway back to the task in hand. Evolution is required. No longer can we face off against meaningless enemies without reason. And I know games are fundamentally about the gameplay and that is the most important factor but I feel insulted by constantly being fed character development that is surpassed in every conceivable way by The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Imagine a game where every enemy had an agenda, a back story, where no two were the same, perhaps they have a family. What if you came across a Goomba with a wife and kids? Would that make you think twice before so carelessly jumping on their head and crushing their skull into the pavement? – 2-Bit Wasteland Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

More here:
For the Goomba, What’s Their Motivation, Again? [Weekend Reader]

Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Kazunori Yamauchi , creator of the Gran Turismo series, has earlier this month completed a 25-hour endurance race at Thunder Hill Raceway, California. Yamauchi is of course no stranger to racing cars , but still. That’s quite an achievement. I get antsy driving for 25 minutes . He of course didn’t drive the entire 25 hours all by himself; he was a member of the “Spoon Sports” team, and shared duties with a car journo and two other Japanese race drivers. “Not having a lot of experience in circuit driving, and not knowing what to expect in a 25-hour race, I was very relieved to find that I was able to reduce the 20-second gap between my laptimes and my teammates’ at the beginning of the practice to almost zero at the start of the final race”, he said. “It was a great feeling to confirm first hand that “Gran Turismo” has a positive effect in not just learning specific tracks, but also in raising the level of driving technique in the drivers themselves.” Always working, that Yamauchi. Always on the marketing trail. That’s his car up top, with some footage of him driving round and round and round below.

See the rest here:
Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Kazunori Yamauchi , creator of the Gran Turismo series, has earlier this month completed a 25-hour endurance race at Thunder Hill Raceway, California. Yamauchi is of course no stranger to racing cars , but still. That’s quite an achievement. I get antsy driving for 25 minutes . He of course didn’t drive the entire 25 hours all by himself; he was a member of the “Spoon Sports” team, and shared duties with a car journo and two other Japanese race drivers. “Not having a lot of experience in circuit driving, and not knowing what to expect in a 25-hour race, I was very relieved to find that I was able to reduce the 20-second gap between my laptimes and my teammates’ at the beginning of the practice to almost zero at the start of the final race”, he said. “It was a great feeling to confirm first hand that “Gran Turismo” has a positive effect in not just learning specific tracks, but also in raising the level of driving technique in the drivers themselves.” Always working, that Yamauchi. Always on the marketing trail. That’s his car up top, with some footage of him driving round and round and round below.

More:
Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Kazunori Yamauchi , creator of the Gran Turismo series, has earlier this month completed a 25-hour endurance race at Thunder Hill Raceway, California. Yamauchi is of course no stranger to racing cars , but still. That’s quite an achievement. I get antsy driving for 25 minutes . He of course didn’t drive the entire 25 hours all by himself; he was a member of the “Spoon Sports” team, and shared duties with a car journo and two other Japanese race drivers. “Not having a lot of experience in circuit driving, and not knowing what to expect in a 25-hour race, I was very relieved to find that I was able to reduce the 20-second gap between my laptimes and my teammates’ at the beginning of the practice to almost zero at the start of the final race”, he said. “It was a great feeling to confirm first hand that “Gran Turismo” has a positive effect in not just learning specific tracks, but also in raising the level of driving technique in the drivers themselves.” Always working, that Yamauchi. Always on the marketing trail. That’s his car up top, with some footage of him driving round and round and round below.

Read more here:
Gran Turismo Creator Completes 25-Hour Car Race [GT5]

Next Page »