Super Stardust HD Message Board

Super Stardust HD, arguably the most popular PlayStation Network game, is celebrating its fourth year on the market in July. And to commemorate the event, Housemarque, the game's developer, is holding a competition that any player with the game downloaded can take part in...

#ps3 The great PlayStation Network shooter Super Stardust HD may be approaching its fourth birthday in June, but developer Housemarque isn't finished with the twin-stick addiction just yet. It's bringing something new to the shooter this spring with "Impact." More »

If Super Stardust HD has steadily sunk in your PS3's XMB Game list, we can understand -- it's nearly four years old! You may be inspired to scroll down to it in the coming weeks, however, once the new "Impact Mode" DLC is released. That's right -- new DLC.

"We want to thank all the fans around the world for your continued support -- it has made Super Stardust HD a top-selling PSN-exclusive and enabled us to keep creating new content for the game even now over three years after its release," wrote Ilari Kuittinen, CEO of developer Housemarque, in the DLC announcement on the EU PlayStation Blog.

Making its debut in Super Stardust Portable for PSP, Impact Mode does away with weapons and outfits your ship with "an experimental new matter-to-energy boost engine technology" -- in other words, "once you activate the boost, you can stay in boost as long as you can hit meteors and enemies with it!"

The mode will be available for Super Stardust HD on March 30 (in the EU PlayStation Store) for €1.99/£1.59. The exact release date ("Spring," for now) and price for the North American release are pending.

Described as a Super Stardust "pro," the phenom known as Tlo-Mek has joined Housemarque's team on account of "his gaming prowess." Sony announced the new hire alongside this gameplay footage of Tlo-Mek straight killing Housemarque's impending PSN release, Dead Nation. That's some way to land a job!

3D gaming isn't entirely new, but will be a big focal point for Sony this year -- and what better way to show that than by turning one of 2007's bright spots into a full 3D experience. Super Stardust HD is undergoing a HD facelift right now and during an interview with Digital Foundry (via Eurogamer), engine lead Seppo Halonen and creative director Harri Tikkanen talked about adapting the game to 3D and some of the technological leaps and bounds made by Housemarque Games. What makes SSHD different than other 3D experiences -- specifically, Avatar and other 3D games like Invincible Tiger -- is that it'll be running at a native resolution of 720p at 120 frames per second, 60 frames per each eye, and doesn't use low-res buffers to create the effect. Housemarque accomplished this by having the engine render everything twice, added stereoscopic cameras and moved the vertex processing from the GPU to the SPU. This took up about 50 percent of the SPU's resources, leaving them with enough to pre-process a lot of the game, allowing things to render much faster than before. As for future Housemarque games on PS3, don't necessarily expect those titles to be in 3D. Tikkanen says that because some titles "lend themselves better to 3D than others," all future 3D compatibility will be decided "on a game by game basis."

Of the three 3D PS3 games, this 2007 shooter was getting the most buzz.

See this crazy shooter in beautiful 3D.