Gaming News Message Board

Casual giant Zynga is shutting down its Street Racing game on August 2, immediately rendering void all the in-game items players bought with real money. Zynga offered no explanation in the announcement, simply suggesting that players try other Zynga games. Naturally, people whose fake worlds have crashed around them are upset, starting a petition in Zynga's forum to stop the game from disappearing.

Zynga told Develop that it wouldn't be offering refunds on the money spent in-game, opting instead to give credits equivalent to the cost of any purchase made in the last 90 days, plus an extra 100 units of virtual currency, all usable in other Zynga games. Which is really going to satisfy the people planning to stop playing Zynga games when Street Racing goes away.

Yeah, now that we think about it, Princess Zelda in Spirit Tracks wasn't exactly the most flattering portrayal of the titular heiress. In Ocarina of Time, she masqueraded around as this badass ninja, in Twilight Princess, she was a killer with a bow and arrow -- heck, in Wand of Gamelon, you actually get to play as Zelda. As Awkward Zombie points out in last week's Wrapup-winning comic "Off Track," all she can do in the series' second DS outing is follow a dotted line, often into a wall, obstacle or slavering jaws of a hideous beast.

Second and third place went to Digital Unrest's "Incognito" and Penny Arcade's "Planting a Flag," respectively. If you've got a strip you'd like to see in tomorrow's Wrapup, make sure you drop a link in the comments, or send in a tip!

#tellusdammit It's a me, Friday! Time for Tell Us Dammit. Dammit. More »

System 3 has announced yet another Ferrari-licensed racing game, Ferrari: The Race Experience, presumably a follow-up to last year's Ferrari Challenge Deluxe. Like System 3's previous efforts, this will be hitting both Wii and PlayStation 3. However, PS3 owners will only be able to find the game on the virtual shelves of the PlayStation Network. Why? System 3 explains that it's become too costly to deal with retail. "The vast amounts of money required in securing a decent in-store presence through co-operative marketing [makes it] easy to see why some games are doomed before they start. By going down a download only route, System 3 is quietly confident that it can service consumer demand directly and efficiently."

While many of System 3's future releases will be exclusive to download platforms, the company did admit that it can't give up on retail altogether. "Obviously we are not moving away fully from boxed product as we are committed to maximising our games across all formats and Wii games, for example, are still only released as physical product."

#nsfw This is 8-Bit Shit, from LA, who may well be the world's only video game-themed dodgeball team. More »

#facebook Yesterday, select Facebook data from over 100 million accounts turned up on a 2.8GB torrent file. It may shock you to know that employees at companies like Sega and Lucasfilm were interested in downloading said information. More »

If we were to place a single bet on what we thought Square Enix's recently filed European trademark for "Gun Loco" would end up being, we'd almost certainly be proven wrong within a few months. Instead, we've got three hypotheses, which we've ranked below in order of likelihood. Now all our bases should totally be covered. Gun Loco: A stylish, fast-paced shooting game. Features over-the-top gunplay and comedically bad voice acting. Gun Loco: A psychological thriller about an evil scientist who invents a laser capable of driving ordinary people into irreversible fits of insanity. Gun Loco: An FPS in which the hero locates a gun capable of shooting entire freight trains at enemies. (Please, please, Square Enix -- let it be this one.)

#screengrab So long from Comic-Con, and the indoctrination of another generation of gamer/geeks. Picture via Shiraz Malik. More »

Rumors have been flying around about a subscription-based Call of Duty game for some time now -- Activision boss Bobby Kotick loves the idea, because he loves money, and the company's other subscription-based game, World of Warcraft, is quite the cash-printing machine. So why not go down that road?

Many still believe Activision will, including Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey. With the publisher's plans to break into China and Korea, Hickey told IndustryGamers he sees Call of Duty as the perfect platform for accomplishing that goal and strengthening ties with NetEase, the online powerhouse of the Chinese market. "We expect the Company [NetEase] could extend their relationship with Activision Blizzard, by establishing an additional license to operate Call of Duty Online in China and Blizzard's unannounced MMO, which will likely leverage their Battle.net platform," he said. "The eventuality of COD in China could bring an additional +$50 to +$100 million in sales and +$0.15 to +$0.30 in EPS in its first year of operation." EPS, to clarify, is short for "earnings per share."

Who knows what's in store for the future, but for now, rest assured: you won't ever have to fork over extra cash to play Modern Warfare 2 online.

[Image Credit: Cuteoverload] How does one turn a hot dog into a chili dog? Open a bag of ice on the floor! Speaking of, It's been pretty hot lately (northern hemisphere bias!), but thankfully we haven't noticed it with the embarrassment of riches that's been the summer release schedule. Check out our reviews section if you're looking for the latest. What's everyone playing this weekend?

#idsoftware This year's gathering of first-person shooter diehards at Quakecon will feature more than just id Software's Quake, Doom and Rage. Bethesda's showing up too, armed with Brink. More surprising is an appearance by the former heads of Infinity Ward. More »

#sega If you thought Darius Burst's transition from PSP game to old-school super widescreen arcade cabinet was an odd choice, Sega's arcade return to old school might blow your mind. That is if you've ever heard of Pengo before. More »

#getlamp Do you love the computer adventure game? You know, Zork, Planetfall, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and anything that falls under the "interactive fiction" description or bears the Infocom publishing label. Then get Get Lamp, Jason Scott's long-in-the-making documentary. More »

#screengrab The Cincinnati Bengals receiver scoured the used bin at his local GameStop today. I'll never again doubt his gamer bonafides. Seen via Twitter. More »

#mac The creator of Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal has a plan to increase the number of Mac games that are available through its digital distribution service, Steam. Valve plans on giving away* "some" of its Mac-specific game code to developers. More »

#announcementofannouncements We haven't had a year without an Insomniac Games-developed release since 2001, but this year is looking to be both Resistance and Ratchet & Clank-free. At least we have an Insomniac Games announcement to look forward to very soon. More »

#arcade For 30 years Chinatown Fair Video Arcade has stood at 8 Mott Street in New York City's Chinatown, entertaining gamers. Despite its age, it also stands as an environment for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) youth to just be themselves. More »

#consoletaisen While the PSP may sit atop this week's list of bestselling hardware in Japan, it's still the Nintendo DS that Japanese gamers love more than anything else. More »

Valve has singlehandedly reinvigorated the Mac gaming world by making its Steam content delivery service compatible with the Mac. It has been steadily populating the service with Mac-friendly versions of its mega-popular games; however, apparently that isn't enough. Now Valve is going to help other developers make Mac games, by releasing elements of its graphics code.

Business development director Jason Holtman told GamesIndustry.biz that Valve will release some code to developers signed on with the company's Steamworks infrastructure, in order to expedite the development of Mac games (and thus speed up the population of Steam). "So our Steamworks partners will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac," Holtman said, "and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games -- and our hope is it gets them there faster."

Holtman also provided clues as to the success of Steam's Mac edition, stating that "we're seeing between a 15 and 20 percent increase in games that have a Mac version on Steam." It turns out that Mac owners will buy games if they're available!

#clips Don't worry, I highly doubt the murderous psychopath Lynch was directing the question towards you in the latest ultra-violent trailer for the upcoming Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. More »

Filed under: Podcasts Honestly, we don't even know what to say about this one. When we don't have many video games to talk about, we start making our own, like Dolphin Olympics 3 and Halo: The Creek, which is both about Dawson's Creek and a social game, but also Halo.

The is the podcast where you either unsubscribe or emerge a changed man or woman. It's hard to predict, frankly. A big danke schoen to Alan Black whose photoshop is a big hit with the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies and dickheads.

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes
[Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace
[RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly

Hosts: Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk) and Chris Grant (@chrisgrant)
Music: "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" by Jon Black, "Red Eye" by Ben Kweller
For fans: Joystiq Podcast Facebook group
New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero
The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ

See all of this week's links after the jump.

#event Short notice, but Lil Poison, a documentary about a kid who became the world's youngest pro gamer plays at 6pm ET in New York City at the New York International Latino Film Festival. More »

#science When you play with thermoelectrics, you're bound to get burned, or possibly chilled. More »

#preview Earlier today I showed you that the first LittleBigPlanet was customized by a gamer to play like Xbox downloadable darling Limbo. Last week, however, I watched its sequel play like Xbox downloadable darling Shadow Complex. LBP2 is wonderfully flexible. More »

Double vision.

#destineer Were Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and Dragon's Lair II: TIme Warp too hard for you? Then you'll want Destineer's Dragon's Lair Trilogy for the Wii, featuring a beginner moves guide and Watch Mode, so you don't even have to play. More »

#gameface Seen outside the Hong Kong convention center at the Hong Kong Comics Festival and Game Fair today. More »

This message is for the many Joystiq readers who are also in charge of business development at game publishing companies -- or for those few impulsive, wealthy Joystiq readers eager to start a new business venture at the drop of a hat.

You see, there's this DS game Fractured Soul. It takes the "two worlds on two screens" concept (as seen in titles like Reflection and Chronos Twins) and makes a fast-paced arcade experience out of it, with the player shifting back and forth at high speed in both platforming and shmup levels. Unfortunately, we can't play it, because developer Endgame Studios needs a publisher. N3V Games has already signed on for Australia, so that leaves ... everywhere else in the world.

That's where you come in. Watch the trailer after the break and give it some thought.

#pokemonred Pokémon games are normally quite tame affairs. The worst that happens is some weird animal gets knocked out for an hour or two. But in Pokémon Black, there is death, nothing but death, and it is all around you. More »

#pc F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife may have given video games the name of one of the medium's best franchises, but what did F. Scott ever give us gamers? The Great Gatsby game? Apparently, it's not good, though that's not his fault. More »