All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Well…which boxart do you think is the best? I’m in a toss-up between Japan and Europe…with North America’s boxart sitting in last place for me.

Two GDC articles from our friends at GamePro… The 12 best games/trends/announcements of GDC 2010 Here’s something interesting to think about. Development budgets on the 360 and PS3 are at an all-time high, reaching dollar amounts that have never been seen before in the game industry. On the flip-side of things, rough estimates show Wii [...]

I absolutely love Maniac Mansion. I actually had a conversation about it while attending the Nintendo media summit. That game seems to come up with all sorts of gamers, be they long-time players or lapsed industry fans. If there were ever an adventure game that deserved a sparkling coat of paint, Maniac [...]

Gyouretsu no Dekiru Houritsu Soudansho (nds,jpn) - commercial 1 - commercial 2 Shounen Oni Ninden Tsumuji (nds,jpn) Mario Strikers Charged (wii, kor) Thanks to Cadaver for the heads up!

The NES is indeed largely responsible for getting the console landscape to where it is today. Without that console’s success, who knows what would have happened to the game industry. Much in the same way, the Game Boy kicked off the portable wars…a race that Nintendo is still winning to this day. [...]

A portion of a Nintendo Life review… The novelty of being able to hear the words you’re seeing on the in-game flash cards is great, but the lack of a quick-reference feature really hurts this game’s usefulness during actual travel. Save your points for some actual games to play on the plane and pick up a [...]

Look at the numbers for House of the Dead: Overkill, especially the Amazon rank. Every week, I’m blown away by just how well the game continues to do. Sure, a rank over 100 might not seem that big, but when you factor in those sales week after week, you can come back with [...]

#crysis Crysis 2 is at the Game Developers Conference, seemingly there not just for its own ends, but to help developer Crytek shill its engine, CryEngine 3. It's doing a very good job. More »

#europe It's a pretty slim week on the PAL PlayStation Store, but then, looking at the stuff Europeans and Aussies are missing out on - like the Tester - maybe that's not such a bad thing. More »

#rumor According to "a trusted source", IGN is reporting that Insomniac Games - creators of both Resistance and Ratchet & Clank - is about to abandon the land of PS3 exclusivity and become a multiplatform developer. More »

#gdc I may have liked Tetrisphere, but I am not a man who believes the puzzle games, like Mario games, can be as good in three dimensions as they are in two. More »

#gdc10 There's been a flood of information coming from Sony about the new PlayStation Move controller for the PS3, but Sony's technically inclined folks showed off some of the more technically capable members of GDC, getting down to the finer details. More »

#screengrab A deadly cocktail of nerd poisons, featuring the toxic element from EA's Command & Conquer series combined with a few equally sly Dune and Star Wars references, as seen in Lady Gaga's (slightly NSFW) "Telephone" video. Thanks, Matt & Charles! More »

#gdc Almost lost amid the CCP booth loaded up with free kegs of beer, the PS3 Move set-up and Nintendo was the tiny Zombrex booth packed with faux syringes and a shotgun behind glass. More »

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week -- but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews.

While it's certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu's latest saga fare under more common rubrics?

• IGN (8.5/10): "You're getting this intense story about Japan's seedy underbelly that's set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you're earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I'm going with this -- one minute you're slamming a crowbar into a guy's face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you're taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish."
• GameSpot (8/10): "While the pace and events of the story are enough to propel you towards its conclusion, the non-story peripheral content gives Yakuza 3 a welcome sense of diversity. There are more than a hundred side and hitman quests that allow you to do everything from carrying ice cream for a father who has overpurchased, to playing UFO Catcher claw machines in the arcade, to chasing down a bag snatcher, to offering financial advice to a man deep in debt and precariously perched on the edge of a bridge."
• Eurogamer (8/10): "From the publisher that brought us Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yakuza is essentially a mashup of all three, which is hardly surprising but does mean it's the stuff of Segaphile fantasies. Liberally sprinkled with their genius, it's the grateful beneficiary of some of their most satisfying elements, in a context which delivers a uniquely Japanese -- and uniquely Sega -- flavour."

#hollywood When you've built a zillion-dollar video game brand, you're not going to be hurting for future opportunities no matter how hard your former employer fires you. That said, Call of Duty's creators have signed with Hollywood's biggest talent agency. More »

Immediately following his well-attended GDC panel, Nintendo's Yoshio Sakamoto talked with us about (what else?) Metroid: Other M. In addition to all sorts of questions on the unique Team Ninja collaboration, we asked Sakamoto about the long-rumored Metroid Dread project and, barring a confirmation of that product, when we'd see another 2D handheld Metroid.

Joystiq: Speaking of the core Metroid development team that last worked on the GBA, there have been rumors of a game known as 'Metroid Dread' - purportedly a 2D Metroid game for DS. First question: Was 'Dread' a real project? Second question: If not, where is a 2D Metroid on DS?

Yoshio Sakamoto: It seems we get a lot of questions about Metroid Dread, especially at interviews following E3 for example. But nothing's ever been announced about this game; it's all just been rumors so far. So we never know exactly how to respond to questions like this.

While there actually was a point where some teams were meeting to discuss if it was possible to create a 2D Metroid for DS using a relatively small team size, it's not something that we ever really announced or thought of as "Metroid Dread." But whenever people bring out that idea, we recognize that the basic concept is something that we can't say never existed. But at the same time, we can't of course, make any official comment about a Metroid Dread-like project coming out.

Our main goal [with Metroid: Other M] is to, as I said earlier, first raise knowledge about the Metroid universe and the Samus character before we start to introduce different elements like online or even going back to another handheld game for the next in the series. So there's nothing coming immediately, we want to think about these new challenges first.

But, of course, we never say never.

Last month, Krome Studios‘ Steve Stamatiadis introduced you to Blade Kitten, an upcoming hi def 2D action game coming exclusively to PSN this Spring. It’s about time we hear more about the cat-girl with the pink hair, yeah?

Good thing “Space Captain” Steve flew in from Brisbane, Australia to show off Blade Kitten to us during GDC. In this interview, Steve talks about the game’s origins as a comic-book-meant-to-be-the-origin-for-a-game, the game’s vivid art style, and when you’re going to get to play it – along with some never-before-seen video.

Let us know what you think so far, and I’ll pass your feedback to Krome!

Whatever happened to the fabled Nintendo DS Metroid adventure? The producer speaks.

The Game Boy Color design gets a remake and a pack-in gadget. But does the core gameplay still hold up?

The Game Boy Color design gets a remake and a pack-in gadget. But does the core gameplay still hold up?

#law An effort to impose fines and even jail time for selling mature games to underage kids has reached Rhode Island's legislature. "The bill won't survive a court challenge, nor should it," says a certain disbarred Florida lawyer. More »

We know, we know -- we've been desperately waiting for more new media on April's South Africa-themed FIFA release as well, and today we've finally got some more. Arriving care of GDC 2010, EA Sports released the trailer you see above and the smattering of new screens seen below (for Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 as well as the Wii).

The trailer urges players to take their own country's team to the World Cup, though we should issue a word of warning to those of you in the contiguous United States who choose to bring our fine nation to the top: it's just a game. Okay, okay, sorry -- we were just joshin' ya! We suppose it's possible. Maybe after the robots take over. Maybe.

Who got their PC on my console?

Lean into these new images.

Tubular bro!

A few small and deadly screens for you.