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Rumors of buyouts have been swarming the gaming world recently. Nintendo will buy Sega. Microsoft will buy Sega. Nintendo will buy Capcom. EA will buy Capcom. Nintendo will buy Sega AND Capcom. Microsoft will buy Nintendo. Sony will buy General Electric (ok, so I just made that last one up). You get the idea.

Please. Until you read about this from Microsoft, Vivendi, or on legit gaming sites, assume that somebody made this crap up and are just looking for web traffic.

well according to this article here the xbox is at number 2 spot in europe... its not failing as miserably as some people would have predicted

GODGames ran out of money three times, then got borged by Take 2 Interactive. (Gamespot did that story, which at the time I excerpted here.

I think you've got the right idea, but your facts are lacking.

Perhaps it's worth noting that Snood (and all games like it) are based off of the addicting game Bust A Move, originally released on the Neo Geo in arcades in 1994.

This type of game is definitely not new. Just had to give credit where it was due. ;)

Hopefully Uru will let players just walk around and chat, much like the recently annoucned "There". My girlfriend and I held comparisons of the two worlds and be both agreed:

Would you rather spend time There...

or here?

Weird people you meet online notwithstanding, Uru looks like a place I'm actually interested in visiting, exploring, etc. What I am not interested in is buying virutal Levi's jeans for my avatar with real cash. :P

Hopefully Uru will let players just walk around and chat, much like the recently annoucned "There". My girlfriend and I held comparisons of the two worlds and be both agreed:

Would you rather spend time There...

or here?

Weird people you meet online notwithstanding, Uru looks like a place I'm actually interested in visiting, exploring, etc. What I am not interested in is buying virutal Levi's jeans for my avatar with real cash. :P

... as provided by Gamespot

Or do those guys in the GameSpot video have issues with making eye contact? I think they all stared at the surface of the table when talking.

Most Improved Sequel on PC. They liked Hitman 2.

After I read the article before posting, I leave now in search of the demos.

Moonbase commander, Best Game No One Played on PC.

Anyone else look for the games that fall through the cracks of marketing and end up in the discount bin? I know there are other poor college kids out there that can't afford $40-50 a game.

"So it was to the great surprise of Gearbox's Randy Pitchford when Microsoft told him last June that no one had been working on the much anticipated PC conversion of Halo."

That's months *after* Halo for XBox was released. Why is it so difficult to port Halo/XBox now? Because MS poisoned it with DirectX. If they had stuck with OpenGL and perhaps used OpenPlay, we might have seen it for PC/Mac earlier. At this rate (they're only 40% done according to the GameSpot article), we won't see Halo for PC/Mac until after Halo 2 is out for XBox.

Microsoft's solution to the Xbox cinematic bug is to have users remove The Lord of the Rings from the hard drive, install three other games, and then reinstall The Lord of the Rings.

Just a brief reflection... I can't believe they forgot to mention what may be the true classic old school vaporware RPG: Champions. I'm not really in the mood to karma whore so I won't bother summarizing the article - but anyone on the boards who's a true furry-toothed geek will remember getting all sweaty, hot, and bothered over this game way back in '91. ;)

"So Barthelet introduced measurable goals and objectives for each programmer. Everything would be tracked, including the number of lines programmers were writing each day."

Tracking the lines of code written? Talk about an invitation to bloat! Having been on large commerical software projects before, sitting with other developers reviewing code submissions, I can say that one would get laughed out of the room if they merely wrote with a "number of lines submitted" mentality.

Unasked-for advice to would-be project managers: It's the quality of the code, not the number of lines it takes to make things happen. Experienced developers know what I'm talking about. Number of features implemented, and number of bugs squished, are far more reliable indicators of ones' contribution.

"Mongo write 500 lines today! Mongo allocate gigabyte! Memory smoke! Computer crash! Mongo sad!"

stories of the development process. This really gives an in-depth view of the ordeal that the developers go through like the problems they face and the solutions they come up with. Besides being an interesting read, these articles give the players an appreciation of the hard work done by the coders/designers. Geoff has done such Behind The Games articles on other games including Black&White. I was so impressed by efforts of the developers and the main designer Peter Molyneux, that although I had a warez copy of the game, I went ahead and bought the game. Being a developer myself, I really wanted to see these guy's hard work pay off.
Again, thanks to Geoff for bringing these interesting articles to the public without which no one would have had a chance to appreciate the games in a different way.

Ever heard of html?

click

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/simsonlin e/wright_hand.html

Taking a break from simulation games, Sid Meier wrote CPU Bach, which was released in 1993.

I think Sony owns something around 40% of Square, that's why I reffered to it as "practically first-party". It doesn't matter if square lost a lot of money, all that proves is that they had a lot of money TO LOSE because they were so successful selling FF VII for the PS1. The FF series is very important to Sony, so Sony is keeping them afloat.

I've read an endless series of great reviews for MechAssualt: Gamespot 9.0, Editor's Choice, IGN 9.2, GamesDomain 4.5 out of 5, Top Game, etc. And visually it looks stunning. So forgive me, but based upon the reviews I'd buy MechAssault first.

Mario's shines were good, but it was just Mario64++. I think Zelda will be a great hit, though.

I think the whole franchise itself is getting a bit old and dated. They haven't really kept it fresh like Square did with FF. Though I was never really a big fan of Mario and Zelda to begin with. I actually think Pokemon is a much more valuable franchise at this point.

Although not on the GameCube (at least yet), some serious retrogaming came out for the PS2 this week in the form of Activision Anthology. If you ever wanted to relive River Raid while listenig to Blondie, see Pitfall TV commercials, or play Kaboom on a giant rotating cube, I think someone heard your prayers. Or nightmares, one of the two.

GR will do nice , as most players will have played cs....Whacked, I have no idea about actually.

Whacked! is supposed to be a multiplayer gameshow that allows the online player to pick a persona (including a woman who runs around naked-but-censored the entire show) and then compete in various contests. If you are at all into Nintendo games, think Mario Party, but for adults. It scored poorly, though, with only a 5.6 from Gamespot (who, I believe, is a truly impartial reviewer).

As an aside, it is important to note that companies aren't required to go with Xbox Live as Electronic Arts chose to support their own servers and ditch Microsoft.

I'm reading so much these days about Microsoft shutting down Lik Sang for creating XBox mods. So, I was very happy to find this story on Valve, who have supported the total conversion of Half-Life into Counter-Strike -- and made some good money in the process. I hope this open source movement will continue. It's really a win-win situation for everyone.

The Fallacy of the Woman Gamer

There are no women gamers, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. They don't exist. In the '80s there was one, but she died. The women that you see competing in Quake tournaments are paid employees of id. If you meet a "woman" in an online game such as EverQuest or Tribes, there's a pretty good chance it's either one of us or a 40-year-old man. And if you're sure it's neither of those things, then maybe it's the government testing a robot or a poltergeist because it's not a human female. Some of you may complain that you're positive you've met a woman on one of the various MUDS. Perhaps, which brings up a point that didn't make the list: MUDS are not games.

Crime Encouraged:

Since impersonating a woman isn't a crime unless she's also a police officer, we're going to have to fall back on Chet punching Lord British.

http://www.betanews.com/
http://www.gamespot.com/betacenter/

Also useful: go to Blue's News and search for "beta".

I read this over at GameSpot. Seems that SoFII is Xbox bound as well. The game will support Xbox Live and have multiple online modes.

I'm no huge fan of the Beast, but I have to concede that they are positioning themselves really well with the Xbox.

I want to see somebody trying to play Doom 3 on a console with their low resolution & crappy texture.

Wow, you just hit on the reason I have found myself playing more console games. I can honestly say I have spent more time in windows fuxxing with drivers to get some cool new game working than I did playing some of those games.

Consoles are plug and play. I have never had any problems with a console (except for the PSX - I had an early production run that got really hot).

When I was younger I used to enjoy tinkering with my computer. I still do (current project: rolling out a homemade router using free pc hardware from work and Linux) but if I want to play a game, I want to play a game.

Btw, Doom 3 is coming out for XBOX - just like Morrowind did.

FileFront
Nvidia
3D Gamers
Beyond Unreal
The Shack
HomeLan Fed
Aus Gamers
File Planet
Faster Files
Blue's News
Gigex
FragLand
GameSpot.

And the fastest mirror that I've tried yet was Nvidia's, though you have to download six split files and run a script to recombine them.

The site that had the Chu Chu Rocket commercial was probably Gamespot. I remember seeing a really hilarious Japanese ad for Samba De Amigo on there once. I believe you need a subscription to access their media files, nowadays...

Note the way that the Pitfall commercials ends with "Pitfall, by David Crane." In a parallel universe, David Perry, John Carmack, and Tim Schaffer are all household names...

Atari gave us some much of joy! Too bad it's dead now

If Atari is so dead, then who published Neverwinter Nights? At least one of the two Atari companies is alive and kicking as part of Infogrames. (The other got bought by a hard drive maker.)

Graphics technology will not be 'done' until we can't visually tell the difference between real-life and a game.

Hehe, funny you brought that up. I saw thisscreenshot and thought: "Ahh.. Cool dynamic lightning". Some moments later I realized it was not a screenshot among the others, but a view from inside id's demo cube. :)

Graphics technology will not be 'done' until we can't visually tell the difference between real-life and a game.

Hehe, funny you brought that up. I saw thisscreenshot and thought: "Ahh.. Cool dynamic lightning". Some moments later I realized it was not a screenshot among the others, but a view from inside id's demo cube. :)

• For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting, and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
• Stop it with the positive previews. I have yet to see a preview of a game that says "You know, we're working with an early build of a game - and it sucks. I mean, you thought Daikatana was bad - this game takes the cake." I don't even read reviews anymore - I just check out the synopsys of a game, download the demo, and that's it, because I know I can't rely on what game journalists say about the game before its released. I know it's hard, especially when a game in beta might be better in final version. But if you only have something nice to say (when it isn't deserved), don't say anything at all.
• Ziff Davis also owns gamers.com, Official US Playstation Magazine, etc, etc, etc. I almost hope they go under, mainly because a good chunk of the paper gaming magazines are owned by one company, and you can tell. They're all pretty much the same (much like there's no reason to go to zdnet.com if you've already scanned the headlines for cnet.net). Anyone remember the Gamefan magazine? Great rag, and I was hoping GameGo would take off, but with a near monopoly on gaming magazines, Ziff-Davis has made sure everything is covered in a macho bullshit shell.
• No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers. I want to know about the game. Is it fun. Is it entertaining. I was annoyed after visiting E3 to see the high level of insults to women depicted there, and even more so after checking out a gaming magazine to see they focused the first section to pictures of the girls. Stop it. Please.

• For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting, and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
• Stop it with the positive previews. I have yet to see a preview of a game that says "You know, we're working with an early build of a game - and it sucks. I mean, you thought Daikatana was bad - this game takes the cake." I don't even read reviews anymore - I just check out the synopsys of a game, download the demo, and that's it, because I know I can't rely on what game journalists say about the game before its released. I know it's hard, especially when a game in beta might be better in final version. But if you only have something nice to say (when it isn't deserved), don't say anything at all.
• Ziff Davis also owns gamers.com, Official US Playstation Magazine, etc, etc, etc. I almost hope they go under, mainly because a good chunk of the paper gaming magazines are owned by one company, and you can tell. They're all pretty much the same (much like there's no reason to go to zdnet.com if you've already scanned the headlines for cnet.net). Anyone remember the Gamefan magazine? Great rag, and I was hoping GameGo would take off, but with a near monopoly on gaming magazines, Ziff-Davis has made sure everything is covered in a macho bullshit shell.
• No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers. I want to know about the game. Is it fun. Is it entertaining. I was annoyed after visiting E3 to see the high level of insults to women depicted there, and even more so after checking out a gaming magazine to see they focused the first section to pictures of the girls. Stop it. Please.

Don't forget BS Zelda. It's a remake of The Legend of Zelda for SNES by a third party (I think). Download, flash and play for the SNES - they were ahead of their time.

Can anyone who actually had one of these Satellaview systems explain it in better detail? I've only seen the roms, and I'd be awfully curious as to how it worked.

I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunantly, the "general concensus" does not agree with you, as they've never played the game. (Despite it being released several times.)

Heck, even paid game reviewers who are big Star Wars fans haven't played it. I don't even think the famous Gabe has played it, nevermind all the other "kiddies" out there. Alas, even in it's newest re-release, it still doesn't have enough eye candy to draw in the younger generation. They'll just go on with their lives thinking Rogue Leader is the penultimate in Star Wars sims. Bleech.

For what it's worth, I know the art director on the Army Game project very well. Luke Ahearn is a real class act and will listen to any concerns you guys have.

I used to work with him several years ago when he ran Goldtree Enterprises. They created Cylindrix and Dead Reckoning. They also released a number of FRPG utilities to help GMs run games. The web site is still online.

Review of Cylindrix

Review of Dead Reckoning

It's really a pleasure to see the fruits of labor finally. Army Game has been pretty hush-hush since Luke left New Orleans for the project.

This was already posted at AtomicPop under the Dmusic section the exact URLs are here an here I think GameSpot has also posted it a while ago. Try searching at AtomicPop for more info.

There's also an excellent "first impressions" at Gamespot.

... but an accurate description of the current status of Diablo II online. The supposedly secure realms have been hacked to pieces. Many people charge items to help other players, sell items on ebay, and focus on the repetitive play that the game rewards.

One of the latest hacks, for example, which I find particularly funny, can program mouse and keyboard actions so that you keep creating games and killing the same monster over and over again soley for the purpose of getting the items the monster drops. This bot works - the prices within the trading economy have already gone down about one half because of the flood of all the items from players running it.

A good online game should not be based on rewarding this kind of repetitive behavior that a bot can perform (quote stolen from LB talking about Tabula Rasa.

Microsoft has discontinued its UltimateTV hardware, leaving only the DirectTV/UltimateTV option. It's not doing fine, just ask one of the 400 people cut from the team (leaving ~100). ZDNet has a nice story about this entitled Why UltimateTV was an ultimate failure. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that ReplayTV/SonicBlue or Tivo are kicking their asses; none of the PVR vendors is too healthy. It's a tough market and they're all struggling. Still, Microsoft is in a compromised position because they are at the same time trying to fight software piracy and be buddies with the DRM crowd, and to make a device which really screws with the entertainment industry's business model.

The Xbox is a different matter. The best argument I've seen any Microsoft zealot put forth so far is that this is 1.0, and the fact that they sold anything at all is a victory. Riiight. True, Microsoft has monopoly profits and can use them to fund failing projects indefinitely until competitors (who actually have to make money off their products) run out of money. Did somebody say Netscape? But Sony *is* making money on the PS2, and Microsoft is losing money on the Xbox. Even so, Microsoft reduced their sales projections for the Xbox, and are now estimating that they will ship 3.5 to 4 million units by the end of June 2002. Meanwhile, first week the PS2 was available, 980,000 units were sold. The first four days the PS2 game Final Fantasy X was on sale, 1.9 million units were sold. By the end of January 2002, over 4 million copies of Final Fantasy X had been sold worldwide. That means that in the same amount of time (~7 months), one PS2 game outsold the Xbox console. Apparently Gord knows what he's talking about when he said (a year ago!) that "This console race was over before it started." Microsoft needs to pull an maneuver like the IIS/IE one they used to kill Netscape: just give away the Xbox with the purchase of Halo. Eventually Sony will run out of money and give up. Riiiight.

As for PocketPC vs. Palm, that's a matter of speculation and only time will tell if Palm will get it together or if they will continue sitting on their asses while MS gets around to producing a useful PDA for less than $400 (remember that the Palm 105 costs $99 so they aren't really direct competitors - Palm makes the cheap simple ones, PocketPC licensees make the high-end fancy ones).

According to this story on gamespot.com, that's the exact same amount they're losing on the X-Box this year. Apologies if someone else already pointed this out, but seemed like an interesting coinceidence (draw your own piracy related conclusions).

The games are downloadable to the GBA, yes. But that's only after you unlock them playing another game, Animal Crossing (known as Animal Forest + in Japan) for the Gamecube. Now, there's something you have to understand about Animal Crossing: 95% of people will not like this game. Imagine The Sims crossing with the talking animals found in Disney movies. That's a hint of what Animal Crossing is all about. You play the game for literally months before you can save up enough money to buy yourself a decent house, and winning NES games is purely luck-of-the-draw.

I've talked to people in Japan who have been playing the game literally for months, and they just won their first Famicom (Japan's version of the NES) game. And it's not like they play it for a day, then pick it up next week. No, no, the game continues even when you're not playing it, using the Gamecube's internal clock. The game knows when certain things happen (raffles, sales, etc) and will not let you jump in to play them later.

Also, the NES games are stored in local RAM on the GBA. Once you power it down, you're done. You gotta reload the game from your Gamecube.

The idsoftware screenshots are really lame. Check out the better shots at Gamespot. There's plenty of different heights and I don't recall Doom having a very engaging lighting model in the first place.

So, when 1980 rolled around, Nintendo had one crappy game and a staff artist with a bit of free time on his hands. Yamauchi called Shigeru into his office, told him that he was going to be responsible for saving Radarscope, and then sent him on his way. At that point, 27-year-old Shigeru had never created a video game and didn't know how to program.
In perhaps the boldest move in early game development, Shigeru scrapped the Radarscope game entirely. He didn't try to modify or fix it; he just threw the whole thing out. But he couldn't just make any kind of game that he wanted to, because he was limited by the capabilities of the hardware that Radarscope was running on. So Shigeru had mostly free reign, only with no programming skills, a small budget, an even smaller team of Nintendo developers, and a blank screen.

one obstacle we face is making sure people know that what they see is NOT pre-rendered. Everything we are showing is running in real-time in the game engine

So the emphasis is on much much more realistic looking monsters, not simply 'more more more kills'. Atmosphere. sowing the seeds for terror...

The designers are aiming to scare. Trent Reznor (doom3sound fx) says "we want to get inside your head: and make you not like it", so scared to hell is probably true. Any gamer will tell you about how 'in your head' id can make their games, expect the global mass hallucination that will be a nightmare called DoomIII soon!

well, maybe November anyway. The inside scoop on Doom III's unveiling at E3 here.

sig=have i mastered hyperlinking test...?

You can also check:

gamespot
more from gamespot

And get the Doom 3 legacy movie from here:

3d gamers

It doesnt have much footage from Doom 3, but it got interviews with some people from Id Software.

All links graciously ripped off: Voodoo Extreme.

You can also check:

gamespot
more from gamespot

And get the Doom 3 legacy movie from here:

3d gamers

It doesnt have much footage from Doom 3, but it got interviews with some people from Id Software.

All links graciously ripped off: Voodoo Extreme.

Here are a few quick Gamespot coverage links. They contain much more information than the Nintendo links and provide screenshots.

Metroid Prime hands-on
Super Mario Sunshine hands-on
The Zelda title gamespace