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Sonic The Hedgehog Advance?

Turbine Entertainment has been pretty hush-hush about it, but it sounds as though they have a big chunk of the project completed.
There is a blurb about AC 2 being demoed here.
From other reports I have read, it appears they are looking at supporting both Windows and the X-Box. Sorry, probably no Linux clients.
In this interview, they do discuss some of the cooler improvements they have in the works, such as having clouds form over a period of weeks into thunderstorms.

Hmm...try Opera on http://www.gamespot.com Then use any other browser. Admittedly, the Gamespot site code is a bit dodgy (so much so that Gecko is probably displaying it correctly...), but its funny that every other browser displays it properly and Gecko chokes. But, of course, who looks at gaming sites? Get back to programming!

Before Akira fans start salivating, note that most anime videogames haven't been that great.

Remember Vampire Hunter D, Dragon Ball Z: Final Bout, Gundam Wing: Battle Assault?

Of course, GameSpot ranks these games a bit higher than they deserve, IMHO.

Also there was a Gundam Wing game being developed for the PS2 launch, and it suddenly disappeared.

Christopher N Emmick

Before Akira fans start salivating, note that most anime videogames haven't been that great.

Remember Vampire Hunter D, Dragon Ball Z: Final Bout, Gundam Wing: Battle Assault?

Of course, GameSpot ranks these games a bit higher than they deserve, IMHO.

Also there was a Gundam Wing game being developed for the PS2 launch, and it suddenly disappeared.

Christopher N Emmick

Before Akira fans start salivating, note that most anime videogames haven't been that great.

Remember Vampire Hunter D, Dragon Ball Z: Final Bout, Gundam Wing: Battle Assault?

Of course, GameSpot ranks these games a bit higher than they deserve, IMHO.

Also there was a Gundam Wing game being developed for the PS2 launch, and it suddenly disappeared.

Christopher N Emmick

Before Akira fans start salivating, note that most anime videogames haven't been that great.

Remember Vampire Hunter D, Dragon Ball Z: Final Bout, Gundam Wing: Battle Assault?

Of course, GameSpot ranks these games a bit higher than they deserve, IMHO.

Also there was a Gundam Wing game being developed for the PS2 launch, and it suddenly disappeared.

Christopher N Emmick

• Gamers.com - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
  
• The GIA - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
  
• Gamasutra - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
  
• FGN Online - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
  
• SegaDojo - Fairly good SEGA related coverage
  
• MS Xbox - For the people who can get past the fact that Microsoft might just have a kick ass gaming machine
  
• Final Fantasy Online - For any Final Fantasy freak. The site's down at the moment, though
  
• IGN Games - Coverage of anything and everything in gaming
  
• GameSpot - Okay, so it's GameSpot. At least they publish all their media in downloadable MPEGs
  
• Core Magazine - All the random things that other people don't cover, including interviews and stuff straight from Japan.
  
• US Famitsu - Currently down, with no plans of coming back up, but it's the US branch of the standard gaming press in Japan - Famitsu
  
• Stomped - Lots of coverage of gaming in general, with some focus on FPS.
  
• Blue's News - Blue keeps going, and it's always focused on FPS for the most part.
  
• OMM - And of course, Old Man Murray.
  

Perhaps this long juicy piece on Gamespot will satisfy your curiosity.

mahlen

Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. "If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once."
2. "If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points."

http://www.bwgame.com/
http://www.lionhead.com/
http://www.planetblackandwhite.com/
Gamespot review (9.3/10)

...you're wrong! $300 is the suggested price.

"Fact: Women love long hair! It's an instant chick magnet. It's better than walking puppies in the park! Wash it and wear it down. Toss it around on your shoulders a lot. When my guy does this, women will just walk up and start touching his hair! Wouldn't you like this to happen to you?"

is the one by gamespot. check it out . They even included the tetris author, roberta williams, and Nolan Bushnell (of Pong).

Any such list that doesn't count the influence of Pong and Atari is pure crap. Hmm...let me see, the *first* video game? Naah, not really influential.

BTW, why don't people post their own lists? That would be interesting to read.

w/m

The actual situation is that Black Isle has a contract that gives them rights to make D&D games for the next year to two years. After that, Infogrames has exclusive rights to produce computer games based on Hasbro properties (including D&D) for 10 to 15 years. Though they can in turn, license those rights to another company - black isle for example, they won't because Interplay which Black Isle Studios is affiliated with is a direct competitior to Infogrames. For those interested in the issue, check out Desslock's RPG News. Recently he has had a lot of news/editorials regarding it.

http://headline.gamespot.com/news/00_03/30_pc_outd adoh/

"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

No videocards indeed, but the Playstation 2 videochip set uses Direct RDRAM though.

You can only order it online, I believe, but you're supporting a small independent game publisher, Shrapnel Games, by doing so. It's an amazingly good game for shareware.

... The Program also contains a Level Editor (the "Editor") that allows you to create custom levels or other materials for your personal use in connection with the Program ("New Materials"). All use of the Editor or any New Materials is subject to this License Agreement. ...

... You are entitled to use the Program as a single product for your own use, but you are not entitled to use or allow third parties to use the Editor and the New Materials created thereby for commercial purposes including, but not limited to, distribution of New Materials on a stand alone basis or packaged with other software or hardware through any and all distribution channels, including, but not limited to retail sales and on-line electronic distribution without the written consent of Blizzard ...

... The Program also contains a Level Editor (the "Editor") that allows you to create custom levels or other materials for your personal use in connection with the Program ("New Materials"). All use of the Editor or any New Materials is subject to this License Agreement. ...

... You are entitled to use the Program as a single product for your own use, but you are not entitled to use or allow third parties to use the Editor and the New Materials created thereby for commercial purposes including, but not limited to, distribution of New Materials on a stand alone basis or packaged with other software or hardware through any and all distribution channels, including, but not limited to retail sales and on-line electronic distribution without the written consent of Blizzard ...

Mmm. I would blame Myst for the lack of humor, lack of characters, lack of explanations, lack of feedback.

But I would blame the 7th guest for the full motion video. There is a *very* interesting read about trilobyte/7th guest/11th hour/Tender Loving Care/software development/ego/death march projects at http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-tri /.

Repeating myself, it worth the read. Great depth. Quite long. Read it.

Cheers,

--fred

something like 10 MILLION Playstations (first one) already sold.

More like 70 (seventy) million as of Dec 99 ...

Last year the chairman of Sega, Isao Okawa, stated publicly that they were not planning to stay in the harware business. So they have been more-or-less openly using the Dreamcast as a cash cow to fund a move into software, and this latest comes as no great surprise. I don't like to think of any hardware as disposable, and the 1999 announcement definitely kept me away from their gear.

The article really discussed two different points. One is, "are games more fun now than they were ten years ago"? That question is asked more or less constantly by the gaming magazines. My personal opinion is yes; I did in fact have more fun with Baldur's Gate 2 than, say, Pools of Radiance. OTOH, that's extremely subjective-- I'm a lot older now than I was then. But I do feel that when we reminisce about the old titles such as Wasteland, we forget the huge annoyances like having to copy the entire directory because you only got one save game, or having to leave a weight on the spacebar to regain hit points while you went off to lunch (note that these are design improvements, not graphical ones!). Here are some opinions on the issue from Gamespot's Question of the Week.

The other issue he brings up is the difficulty of content creation on such a massive scale. That is a much less valid concern from a "will it ever happen" standpoint. Obviously we need better ways of developing content. But that speaks to tools. No one codes games from scratch in assembly any more. In the future, no one will make all the 3-D models from scratch either. The obscene amount of work that goes into creating a new Everquest zone will seem silly ten years from now, when most of the basic stuff like terrain, trees, a couple of houses, even a few NPC's are put in there automatically. Designers will add and subtract; they'll give some initial parameters; they'll do the stuff by hand that they really need to tweak, just like coders occasionally optimize a method or two into assembly.

We all know what this article is for. Basically, it's "let's calm down all the young people who are mad at me so they won't vote for Nader or some other non-Two party candidate come election day. That way, the day after I'm elected I can resume the war against the First Amendment, and we in the Democratic party won't have to worry about a credible alternative to the two party system."

Of course, I'm a Browne voter myself, but I don't think Harry is even on Lieberman's radar scope.

Anyone who's against video game censorship enough that it was going to effect their vote who votes for Gore/Lieberman based on this is an idiot. I have a bridge in New York I'd like to sell these voters.

Anyone who's worried that Lieberman has really sold out his right wing, pro-censorship ideals should rest assured. This is just a cynical election year ploy, sometimes you have to pretend to be something you aren't to win elections. Don't worry, once Lieberman is in, the video game industry will suffer for it.

• Under $300: A Klein bottle. You though it was impossible? Think again!
• $300-$1500: A nice big monitor. Mine sucks.
• Unlimited: A CAVE to play Quake 2 in. A mere $1,000,000+. The link to the Gamespy article gives a good overview of it all.

Apparently, they have Released Dragon's Lair as a DVD game. It would probably be worth picking it up just for the animations.

--

And so on...

Earlier this year, Gamespot did a feature on some of the most prominent computer game developers (Don't have the link, but I'm sure someone could find it). One of the questions they asked every one was, "If there was one thing you could change about the industry, what would it be?" About half of them said they wanted to slim down the game boxes. They pointed to current PlayStation games at your local EB. They are small, and you can fit tons of them on the shelf. Computer games boxes are huge compared to the PlayStations, and you can fit maybe only a quarter of the amount of games on the same shelf space, compared to the PlayStations. This means each computer game can be on the shelf for less time, which means many good games get pushed off the shelf before they have a chance to catch on, and hype surrounding a computer game's release has more to do with the success than the quality of the game.

The game developers stated that the publishers keep up with the huge boxes because they are afraid some small box would get lost amoung the rest of the huge boxes on the shelf. The developers also hoped that if one game shrank the box size, and sold well, that the rest would follow suit.
You can still fit a lot into a double-sized jew case. Look at Lunar: Silver Story Complete for PlayStation. It came with a good sized instruction book, 3 CD's, and a full-sided map!

-Kefabi out.

Check out this 35-page article on the long development cycle of Daikatana and the beginnings of Ion Storm.

The game really wasn't that bad of a concept, the problem was Romero had a totally unrealistic view of software development, and lacked management skills. It's really quite a textbook case.

Everybody loves Daikatana! Look at all these great reviews:

• Sharky sez it rawks! yeah right
• FiringSquad: "It is absolutely inferior in almost every conceivable way."
• Damage Gaming say: "I gave it a 3 out of 5, and that's generous"
• CTNews: "in the end all I got was frustration"
• GameSpot gives it a 4.6 out of 10
• DailyRadar: "Ultimate Gas Hands. Need we say more?"
• GameProWorld damns with faint praise: "It's not that bad."
• Computer Games Online gives it 1.5 stars - "amateurish epic lands with a spectacular thud"
• PC.IGN: "It's finally here. And we reviewed it. What? What else do you want us to say?"
• Honest3D - "You all know that I didn't enjoy Soldier of Fortune - well I liked it a lot more than Daikatana."
• GameCenter gives it a 3 out of 10: "Daikatana is a waste of your time and money. Go play Half-Life again instead."
• Happy Puppy: "It'll make you wish it never came out at all"
• GameZone actually seemed to kind of like it
• GameSeek really did like it! "f I had to describe this game in a word or two I would say that it is most entertaining!"
• Ingava didn't hate it all that much
• Game Revolution: "[A]lthough the game is nowhere near as good as it was promoted to be, ... it is not the worst game released this year. It is, however, stunningly outdated and mediocre."
• Maximum PC: "Four years for this?... It sucks. It sucks big-time. In fact, it sucks so bad, we have to wonder what kind of curious monstrosity the developers could have created with an eight-year product cycle.
• GameFan: "It's not as bad as you think."
• PCGamers.Net: "Final Score: 70 out of 100, and I'm disappointed. Sigh."
• GamePig: "Daikatana isn't a bad game, and was often fun to play. However, it's got several flaws that kept me from really enjoying it."

If you're at all curious about how the hell this happened, GameSpot has a great article called "Knee Deep in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana" that gives all the gorey details. They also have a complete walk-through, though the concept kinda makes me shudder...

--
Anonymous cowards are looking forward to the DVD letterboxed release of Ishtar

Everybody loves Daikatana! Look at all these great reviews:

• Sharky sez it rawks! yeah right
• FiringSquad: "It is absolutely inferior in almost every conceivable way."
• Damage Gaming say: "I gave it a 3 out of 5, and that's generous"
• CTNews: "in the end all I got was frustration"
• GameSpot gives it a 4.6 out of 10
• DailyRadar: "Ultimate Gas Hands. Need we say more?"
• GameProWorld damns with faint praise: "It's not that bad."
• Computer Games Online gives it 1.5 stars - "amateurish epic lands with a spectacular thud"
• PC.IGN: "It's finally here. And we reviewed it. What? What else do you want us to say?"
• Honest3D - "You all know that I didn't enjoy Soldier of Fortune - well I liked it a lot more than Daikatana."
• GameCenter gives it a 3 out of 10: "Daikatana is a waste of your time and money. Go play Half-Life again instead."
• Happy Puppy: "It'll make you wish it never came out at all"
• GameZone actually seemed to kind of like it
• GameSeek really did like it! "f I had to describe this game in a word or two I would say that it is most entertaining!"
• Ingava didn't hate it all that much
• Game Revolution: "[A]lthough the game is nowhere near as good as it was promoted to be, ... it is not the worst game released this year. It is, however, stunningly outdated and mediocre."
• Maximum PC: "Four years for this?... It sucks. It sucks big-time. In fact, it sucks so bad, we have to wonder what kind of curious monstrosity the developers could have created with an eight-year product cycle.
• GameFan: "It's not as bad as you think."
• PCGamers.Net: "Final Score: 70 out of 100, and I'm disappointed. Sigh."
• GamePig: "Daikatana isn't a bad game, and was often fun to play. However, it's got several flaws that kept me from really enjoying it."

If you're at all curious about how the hell this happened, GameSpot has a great article called "Knee Deep in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana" that gives all the gorey details. They also have a complete walk-through, though the concept kinda makes me shudder...

--
Anonymous cowards are looking forward to the DVD letterboxed release of Ishtar

This type of attitude bothers me a lot. Romero poured his heart and soul into this game, and even though it was totally over-hyped and underachieving in the end, Daikatana made it to store shelves. I think this was an incredible learning experience for John Romero and I hate to see people criticize him non-constructively. Obviously the game did not turn out the way it should have ideally, but the least people could do for his time would be polite...

I read an interesting quote once, "Once you finish the first 90% of a project, then you have to finish the other 90%." A lot of people think John Romero is an immature partygoer that never does a full days work. I disagree. It would have been so easy to give up at the end after being delayed so many times, but he bit the bullet and saw it to the end. Congratulations to him!

Take a look at this article to take a good look at the "Daikatana Process". It's quite long (took me an hour to read) but very in depth and thorough.

http://www.gamespot.com/fea tures/btg-daikatana/index.html

Gamespot did a feature on the top ten games which should be remade. Doom finished third for atmosphere. A link is here.

to some screenshots for Act II and Act III. They look pretty good to me.
--

to some screenshots for Act II and Act III. They look pretty good to me.
--

Sorry, link is here, my bad

You must be level 21 to enter Baghdad, but newbies are welcome to help overthrow Central American dictators.

Oh, and watch out for the pkillers.....

I knew this would happen, and I'll try to find the article on it, but it was published on more than one Website fairly recently. Unfortunately, these were video game Websites, and searching their archives is a chore, but I'll try...

Ok, here's one, Japanese Game Makers File Suit, it's from 1998. It may after you lived there that they made it illegal, or just after that they decided to crackdown on it. I suppose it is also possible that this article is a hoax, but I'm guessing it's legit because I remember seeing it more than one place when it came out.

A little more info than the measly paragraph www.uo.com gave us can be found here. Personally I think others more able have stepped into the RPG arena a while ago, I don't think Garriot can quite handle developing decent RPGS anymore but that's another story.

GameSpot has a bit more information in their article here.
Though it's mostly unconfirmed, it seems that Garriot was layed off because he and EA had differing views on Origin's future.

But it's all meaningless until I see the games.
A handful of games have been officially announced from US publishers. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Ready 2 Rumble 2 are some of the games currently in the works. As it stands now, the list of developers and publishers includes (but is not limited to): Electronic Arts, Konami, Eidos, Namco, Acclaim, Infogrames, Activision, Capcom, Take-2 Interactive, Ubi Soft, THQ, Sierra Studios, Lionhead Studios, Midway, Hasbro Interactive, Universal Interactive Studios, Rockstar Games, Fox Interactive, Koei, Titus, Hudson Soft, and Bungie. Realistically, it's pretty hard to develop a game for a box that has just started to begin the design phase. They're not even completely sure on what OS it will run ... tho it will likly use a variant of Win2K's kernel.

And I love this bit about a "proprietary AV connector." There's Microsoft, Embracing and Extending again. Who's going to use that, anyway? If the X-Box is going to work with current TV's (and it has to), it'll have to have an adapter of some sort. Better to throw in a $10 adapter with a TV than make something you can only hook one thing up to; monitor manufacturers have done this for years with Mac monitor adapters.
The custom A/V-out port does not just do TV... it also supports CRT monitors, LCD flat panel, and high-definition TVs for a maximum resolution of 1920x1080.

Honestly, MS; you're getting sloppy (in tactics; you always were with coding but that's beside the point). WinCE failed to capture the PDA market.
I disagree ... I think WinCE has been an incredible success. Has there been any other palmtop since the Palm Pilot series that has made a dent in the consumer market? I can't think of any other than the WinCE palmtops. But we'll save that topic for another discussion.

By the way, in case people are interested in seeing screenshots:
Some Game?
MPEG demo

yes xbox was unveiled, officially or not, at GDC 2 weeks ago. Since then there has been more info come out about it. Gamespot's article is one of the best I've seen. Gamespot also has an xbox faq. Thresh's Firing Squad also has some analysis. And the demo unit looks like a big, black X. (pics in some of those articles)

yes xbox was unveiled, officially or not, at GDC 2 weeks ago. Since then there has been more info come out about it. Gamespot's article is one of the best I've seen. Gamespot also has an xbox faq. Thresh's Firing Squad also has some analysis. And the demo unit looks like a big, black X. (pics in some of those articles)

I loved X-wing and TIE fighter. I still replay them from time to time, even though they won't run under DOSEMU.

But other Star Wars games weren't so great. Here's an article on Star Wars games, good and bad.

Check out Quantum 3d's website for some heavy duty 3d using a "ruggedized" version of Win95 for arcade systems and high end simulations. They have sub- systems ($40,000 for the 32 CPU version) that can use up to 32 of the new VSA-100 chipsets (Voodoo 4/5) and it just rocks. I have flown a 35 million dollar Beoing 777 simulator (my brother's landlord is night security and has access) and there is very little difference in speed and quality between the two. The flight simulator does have adavantages in all the other areas of course. I haven't spent enough time with the Quantum 3d to see it crash but I have seen every other OS crash at least once including consoles. The real question is if they can build it as solid as other consoles. I believe they can IF they don't try to make it do more than it should.

Here are the spec from Microsoft X-Box Site

600 MHz x86 compatible CPU Custom 3-D NVIDIA graphics processor
64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
Custom 3-D audio processor
8GB hard drive
4X DVD drive with movie playback
Four game controller ports
Expansion port
Proprietary A/V connector
100 MBps Ethernet


All this for $299 USD
I think the coolest thing that the X-Box has going for it is the badass 3D support (Comeon NVDA is pretty damn cool) and the 100 MBps Ethernet.
It looks like this puppy is going to be broadband ready with this fast network port.
If the price is cheap enough these thing could make decent Linux web servers or firewalls.
I'm sure M$ would love that. :) (I'm sure the would need some more ram tho)

There is also a mpg demo of the 3D capabilities of the x-box. It's a demo of mech. You can grab it here for MPEG and here for QT4

There were rumors that Sega might back the X-Box, but those have apparently not panned out