All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Greenpeace harshed on Nintendo's eco-coolness last week, and this week the House that Miyamoto Built is firing back. It's released a statement to Gamasutra saying that it takes environmental responsibilities seriously, and that the company is committed to saving energy, making both of its consoles energy efficient and using carefully picked and clearly-labeled materials in an effort to make post-usage recycling easy. To be fair to Nintendo, most of Greenpeace's argument against it was that the company didn't share information about what it did for the environment, and let's be honest here: Nintendo's not really one for sharing. While Nintendo did get blamed for increasing its CO2 emissions, most of Greenpeace's other complaints (as you can see in the PDF) were not actually about mistakes Nintendo was making, but its failure to share information or release reports about its operations. We can't really blame Nintendo for that -- on at least a few of its points, it seems Greenpeace's methodology was more responsible for the big N's bottom-of-the-barrel listing. [Via GoNintendo]

With every pre-order, you’ll receive a foil pack of 8 randomly selected lenticular trading cards (each plastic card animates when tilted to show one character from Tatsunoko and one from Capcom). There are a total of 12 “regular” cards to collect (hopefully your friends are nice), but if you have the kind of luck [...]

Are you heavy into real-life sports, but you’re also planning on checking out NBA Jam on Wii? EA wants you to know that you can help create the game with them, all by participating in their online polls. EA wants to know what players from each team you’d like to see in the [...]

Hmmm…I think I could raise a lot of money for charity if I wore these. People would be more than happy to have me change into something less form-fitting. Grab your own pair right here!

As far as the 2010 Indie Games Festival goes, there’s really not much in the way of Nintendo-related games. Just because there’s not much doesn’t mean that what there is isn’t worth looking at. Even if it’s only one game that’s heading to Nintendo platforms, it’s well worth a look! That’s made [...]

Some of these are straddling the line of copyright infringement, don’t you think? On top of that, I don’t know if I’d feel safe sliding a Wiimote into a $5 shell. Something about that just screams accident to me. Thanks to Shay for the heads up!

Metal Slug: Double X -- the upgraded, multiplayer-capable PSP remix of the Nintendo DS title Metal Slug 7 -- is rounding the corner to its UMD-exclusive release February 23 on PSP. Apart from adding a new coat of paint, Double X adds support an ad-hoc two-player multiplayer mode, 70 missions and a kitchen sink full of blood and bullets. What? You don't believe the game has a hearty dose of hot lead? Allow us (and Atlus) to prove it with the brand new trailer above. Also, never doubt us again!

It's not often that console gamers get to brag to their PC gaming counterparts that their version of any given release is graphically superior; however, 2007's Xbox 360 release of Valve's Orange Box compilation included updated releases of both Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One - rebuilt with Episode Two's fancy new Source engine tech - while the PC releases sputtered on, sans engine enhancements and sans Achievements. Well, that didn't sit right in one Mr. Filip Victor's craw, who grabbed his handy coding toolbelt and started hammering away on the original 2004 game adding things like HDR High Dynamic Range lighting (see above screengrab from the comparison video, posted after the break), updated models and textures and, of course, 32 Steam Achievements (demo video here). While the legality of this project is certainly dubious, the requirement of both Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode Two should assuage your piracy concerns. Now, whether or not that assuages Valve's possible concerns with this project remain to be seen. If you're interested you'd better find a download link in this forum thread, sooner than later. And, if you're keeping score, the Xbox 360 version still comes out on top with an updated version of Episode One, though Victor is apparently "working on the EP1 part now." Until that day of parity comes, enjoy the moment console gamers. [Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

You've salivated over its pixelized undead for long enough, the day has finally come when you can play the retro, 8-bit version of Left 4 Dead that we first told you about in November. The free game is now branded Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead and is apparently the launching pad for a whole Pixel Force franchise forthcoming from creator Eric Ruth. You can feast your fingers on the two-player co-op action right here. [Via Blue's News]

Recently, some Steam users reported issues with recently purchased copies of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 -- issues said to be caused by missing serial numbers required for online play that weren't included with digitally distributed copies of the game. EA today confirmed to Joystiq via Twitter that the issue had been "quickly resolved," further adding that "all is well back in Steam land." We've followed up with EA to find out the nature of the issue and for more information on its resolution, but until we hear back, you go enjoy dropping war bears into online matches. That's what they're there for, after all.

We have a blast writing goofy CES-timed gadget announcement posts like this one, but why should we have all the fun? C'mon commenters, we'll tell you how to write your own, using the newly-announced rumbly, necklacey KOR-fx as an example: 1. Post a goofy picture of it in action -- you can see we've taken care of this already. 2. Make fun of the company's name -- the company behind this tech is Immerz. Have fun. 3. Kind of explain what it does -- i.e., KOR-fx is like the 3rd Space immersive vest, but somehow less stylish. 4. Doom it to failure -- we'd suggest touching on the $189.99 price point, but feel free to highlight a different flaw as you see fit. 5. Put a final nail in the coffin -- we're going to do it by posting the company's own marketing video after the break, but this is such a personal choice that we wouldn't dare kibitz. Enjoy.

These are some clips from Star Trek Online. Its mission: to make you buy the game; to seek out new subscribers and revenue sources; to boldly make money, like no MMO has done before ... except World of Warcraft. To learn more about Star Trek Online before you beam aboard, check out Massively's coverage of the first few levels of the 25th-century simulator. Gallery: Star Trek Online

We, as members of the video game blogging community, would like to take a moment to thank Blizzard for creating World of Warcraft. Not for making the world's most popular MMO, as you may imagine; rather, for making possible bizarre stories like this one, which could only exist in a post-WoW world: When a 16-year-old boy, of Ontario, Canada, asked his parents to drive him to a hotel to meet the 42-year-old mother of four he'd developed a relationship with inside WoW, they understandably balked. The kid nevertheless absconded in the middle of the night, prompting his parents to discover a wealth of chat logs that detailed the nature of the relationship. "He said she was his soulmate," his mother told The Globe and Mail. Now, before you worry about the outcome of the young lad's safety, know that he was found two days later in a Future Shop with Ms. Price -- the cougar in this sordid tale -- who "will not face criminal charges," thanks to Canada's age of consent: 16. "Neither the teen or Ms. Price expressed any remorse," said a local police sergeant. Unsurprisingly, the boy has had problems with computer addiction (specifically WoW), while Price's Facebook page "reveals a middle-aged woman with a large collection of friends -- many made online," the Globe and Mail notes. And while this situation ended safely (albeit, not happily ever after for the soulmates), we'll take this opportunity to remind everyone to be cautious when talking with strangers online. Especially if they graduated college before you were born. Update: Well, scratch that whole "not face criminal charges" thing. The CBC reports that Price was arrested upon her return to Texas, where the age of consent is 17. She's being charged with "two counts of online solicitation of a minor and one count of child enticement." Bail is set at $310,000. [Via WoW.com]

Update: NCsoft has informed us the issue has been resolved. Players on the Azphel server of Aion found quite the surprise recently, as their virtual coin pouch swelled to ridiculous proportions out of nowhere. The culprit: a glitch accidentally awarding players with 30 trillion Kinah. We're not sure about the conversion rates to real money, but when you can tell people you have 30 trillion of anything, we imagine it's impressive nonetheless. As a result of the glitch, the server's being restored to an earlier point right now, hopefully resolving the newfound financial success of those affected in the game. We'll update you all when the server's back online. [Via Massively]

David Perry's "It's not OnLive" service, Gaikai, recently gained $5 million in venture capital, a Security and Exchanges Commission filing shows. For the uninitiated, basically Perry wants to beam games directly into your house. We imagine the tech behind it is kinda like that crazy set-up the Riddler had running all over Gotham, hence the need for such a large sum of money. All kidding aside, Perry's been very tight-lipped about Gaikai, offering up little via his Twitter account and the usual channels. However, back in July, he did offer the first sneak peek at the game streaming service, which looks like it's coming along nicely. [Via Big Download and Venture Beat]

We've seen educational video games show up in the classroom before, and it looks like one school district is coming back for more. The Austin Independent School District has ordered up another set of edu-games from a company called Tabula Digita that provides 3D, first-person action-based games to teach students how to do basic math and algebra. One sample scenario in the games has students calculating the location of an in-game weather station on a graph, and then using the data found there to make charts and track down alien creatures. The press release doesn't mention costs, but according to its website, 15 single-user licenses to the games cost the school $1049.25 each, making up a cost of just over $24,000 for the entire 350 student program. The students, who were part of a 10-day JumpStart program and had previously failed a math retest, were allowed to play the games for 30 minutes a day, and, afterwards, 82% of the kids said they had improved their understanding of the concepts. No word on how their k/d ratio came out.

NVidia chose to show off the processing power of the new version of its mobile Tegra processor the same way many companies demonstrate their big-boy processors: with Unreal Engine 3. On stage at its CES presentation, NVidia demonstrated an FPS running on the processor -- the same processor the company demonstrated in several portable tablet-type devices. Though Epic's Tim Sweeney classified it as the "same engine" that runs on PC, Engadget described it as "A lot like the iPhone demo we saw recently. Certainly impressive, but this isn't an Xbox 360 yet." And, in fact, the environment bears a resemblance to that from the iPhone demo. Nonetheless, the demonstration prove that Tegra is quite powerful for a chip designed for handheld devices -- and one that's rumored to be part of a future DS system.

Our illicit affair with pseudo-MMO Love has officially begun, with today marking the the opening of the game's public, but paid, beta. The paid aspect of the beta is minimal, we should note -- a €3/30 days price hardly seems like a lot. As the game's sole developer Eskil Steenberg explained to us in an email after last week's news announcing the public beta, "The Beta is open to everyone, but unfortunately I need funds to run the server farm, so it will cost 3 Euros to get 30 days of access." Moreover, Steenberg stands to make no profits from the beta entry fee, telling us he simply needs "to afford the bandwidth and hardware to keep it running." We're pretty okay with it, if only for the fact that we get to tell people that we're paying such a low price for Love.

If unrelenting onslaughts of bad guys who want bad things to happen to you sounds like a good time, then you may be interested in Steam's weekend deal: Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter. The classic shoot-everything-in-sight-'em-up with retooled graphics has been discounted to a very manageable $6.79 from now until Monday on Steam, which comes out to about 817 kills for each copperhead spent. It's a pretty good deal, but be warned: You very well may look to kill anybody wearing a green or blue shirt for the rest of your life.

At CES in Las Vegas this week, Mad Catz revealed a quartet of "Premium Cyborg Gaming" mice. From the base model "Cyborg R.A.T.3" at $49.99 that offers a 3200dpi laser, to the super fawncy "Cyborg R.A.T.9" at $129.99 that drops the USB cable for a rechargeable battery and offers a 5600dpi laser, all of them certainly look like something made with the Borg in mind (as evidenced in our gallery below). The standout feature for the Cyborg line is the grip adjustability of the upper three models. "For the first time ever on a mouse, the key points of contact between the gamer's hand and the mouse are fully adjustable allowing it to be customized for any grip preference," claimed Mad Catz prez Darren Richardson in the press release that announced the line. In addition to the customization factor, the upper three models also get two additional buttons (bringing the grand total up to seven, if you can believe it). No official release date has been set, but they're expected to ship this Spring. Gallery: Mad Catz 'Premium Cyborg Gaming Mouse'

When it comes to MMO news and special features, Joystiq sister site Massively.com has you covered. Whether you're looking for info on the hottest new MMO, or you're just curious about an old favorite, you'll find it at Massively. Check out our biggest features of the week: Avatar: Why does this movie look so familiar? If you're one of the few people who has not heard the buzz about Avatar yet, we'll catch you up by saying that the film's beauty is all anyone can talk about. MMO players discussing the movie will follow that observation up almost immediately with "...and did you notice how much it looks like [insert game of choice here]?" Star Trek Online pre-orders topping Direct2Drive sales Some people may be apprehensive about the speed with which Cryptic is rolling out Star Trek Online, but that isn't slowing down the pre-orders at all. It seems that the majority of fans remain anxious to get their hands on the game. For the week of December 27th - January 2nd, pre-orders of the Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe edition took the number one spot for sales at Direct2Drive. Funcom plans a more casual direction for future games Back in December, we talked a bit about Funcom's new studio SweetRobot, which will be designing games for a much younger market than the Age of Conan crowd. Pets vs. Monsters is the first offering from the studio, with the promise of more to come.

Once more, we must throw another rumor into the gurgling vat of faint indications that Infinity Ward is planning a subscription-based MMO. This time 'round, Destructoid cites the wise council of anonymous "industry sources" that reportedly suggests that Infinity Ward is hiring developers from Sony Online Entertainment (and borrowing a few human resources from Blizzard) to work on the new project. Now, if these reports are accurate, there's no earthly way of knowing for certain if the project is an MMO, or whether or not it will even be based on the Call of Duty franchise. Then again, considering our current kill rank in Modern Warfare 2 is like 5,314,592, doesn't that mean Infinity Ward's already made an MMO? Food for thought, folks. Food for thought.

The PS3 community got a chance to get its hands on the multiplayer beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in November -- today, we learned that the PC community will get its chance to try out the shooter in a few short weeks. According to a recent post on the Battlefield blog, the beta for the PC version of the game will kick off January 28, and will be available until February 25. To get on board, just reserve the game at participating retailers and ... "e-Tailers." For more details about downloading the beta, and to find out about the map participants will be riddling with bullets, check out the Battlefield blog post.

For those of you who want a high-end gaming experience, but don't want to develop totally ripped arms from lifting a standard "gaming laptop" or carry a computer that can double as a sail, Dell-owned Alienware has introduced the M11x, which combines power with tininess. The M11x, basically Alienware's version of a netbook, features an 11.6-inch screen and an NVidia GT335M card that can be switched off to increase battery life when not gaming. Retailing for some unspecified sub-$1,000 amount (so $999.99?), the tiny computer can apparently run Crysis at 60 frames per second in 720p. Check our gallery for more official images, and see some closeups of the device over on Engadget. The M11x is simply our pick for the most neato of the many new Dell and Alienware computers unveiled at CES. Gallery: Alienware M11x laptop

Following the example set by the very successful pay-what-you-want World of Goo sale, Crayon Physics Deluxe creator has dropped the price of his physics puzzle game to the low, low, price of whatever. To celebrate his birthday, Kloonigames' Petri Purho has instituted a "pay what you want" sale through January 15. It's up to you, then, whether you follow the example of the guy who paid $150 for World of Goo, or of the jerks who paid a penny. We might suggest that paying a penny for the game that he worked on for years is a pretty crummy birthday present to give Purho. Try the demo first -- it's actually free. [Via VG247]

This weekend the Impulse digital delivery store has a handful of games on sale including the critical and commercial darling Braid. Knocking 50% off each title, the sale also includes Sins of a Solar Empire from publisher Stardock -- also known as the guys and gals behind the Impulse service. Have a few extra dollars left over from the holiday season? Here's what you can get with that extra coin: Alganon -- $21.69 King's Bounty: Armored Princes -- $27.73 Sins of a Solar Empire -- $18.47 World War 2: Time of Wrath -- $22.82 Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim -- $16.30 King's Bounty: The Legend -- $16.30 Braid -- $5.42 Supreme Commander: Gold Edition -- $16.30

What to do when you're coming off a year of huge losses but still planning to reinvigorate the company? Get yourself a new CEO! That's what Age of Conan's Funcom did, announcing that Miguel Caron would be stepping into the position at Funcom Games Canada. Caron has been working in Quebec with Lyrtech, an audio and video processing company, as well as with IT firms like BCM International and NoWire Telecom. Given his background in reducing IT costs and raising market share in the realm of digital communications, we'd guess he's got his job cut out for him at Funcom. The company says it's aiming to expand operations in Montreal, far away from its humble roots in Norway, so we'll see if Caron can summon some Cimmerian strength and get things moving in the right direction over there. [Via Massively]

We know we've built a permanent establishment in our cheek in which to house our tongues, but we're being completely sincere when we say that the above trailer for Lego Universe is one of the coolest trailers we've seen in a long time. Who knew that a kid-friendly MMO in which colorful, stackable bricks are collected could cause our adrenaline to rise in a way we only thought really intense episodes of 24 were capable of? We certainly did not know that. Check out the trailer above, then check out a fresh batch of screenshots below. They're considerably less awesome than the trailer, but they can't really be blamed for their stationary nature. Gallery: Lego Universe (CES 2009)