All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

If you've had the slightest interest in Photo Dojo, Nintendo's weird DSiWare fighting game that uses the camera to make its fighters, you should download it today. If you don't have any interest in that, you should download it today. If you've never heard of Photo Dojo, go ahead and load up the DSi Shop anyway. If you have a DSi, there's basically no reason you shouldn't download Photo Dojo today.

It's free for the next month, is what we're saying.

Filed under: Mac, PC, Meta (about Joystiq) This week we finally got a release date for StarCraft 2, and its smack-dab in the middle of summer -- a period not known for too many big game releases. Smart marketing or a risk? You be the judge. In the meantime let's look back at Big Download's highlights from the past seven days. (Hey, we've officially been live for two years now. Wow.)

Exclusive features

• Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City: We give our final verdict to the PC release of this Xbox 360 expansion for GTA IV.
• Warriors of Elysia Interview: We chat with the man behind this upcoming sequel to the Syfy Saturday movie-like game Bikini Karate Babes.
• Boot Disk: Our retro games feature checks back with Grand Theft Auto 3, the game that started the open world genre trend in games.
• All You Need To Know: We give you all we currently know about the upcoming strategy game Civilization V.
• Freeware Friday: Our free PC games feature this week checks out the newly free version of MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries.

#wellplayed Last week more than a million people logged in to their Xbox 360s, plopped down and got a taste of upcoming first-person shooter Halo: Reach. And that was just on the first day. More »

2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa held its top spot on the UK all-formats chart for a second week in a row. Meanwhile, like a good showgirl, Wii-exclusive Just Dance worked its way back into second, pushing Super Street Fighter IV down the stairs -- all the way to sixth.

Modern Warfare 2 got back into the fight this week and reached third place, thanks to "energetic promotions centered around the special edition versions," according to Chart-Track. The release of the "Stimulus Package" maps on other platforms probably didn't hurt, either. Wii Fit Plus and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 round out the top five. The complete UK top 10 can be found after the break.

Source - FIFA World Cup Scores 2nd Week at No1 [GFK Chart-Track]
Source - Latest UK Software Charts [GFK Chart-Track]

Media Molecule officially took the handmade wraps off its game-Sweding suite's sequel, LittleBigPlanet 2. How do you make a full sequel to a game that's already had a sequel's worth of free content updates? Media Molecule appears to have expanded its game-making engine significantly. For example, it is now possible to add AI characters called "Sackbots," with behavior you can record or define.

Levels can also be bundled to make a whole game, and those games don't have to be platformers. The trailer above gives us brief looks at racing games (one of which appears to involve players riding mice) and a Space Invaders-style shooter. You can even open use a "Direct Control Seat" to alter controls, allowing you to control objects that are not Sackboy, "and make a game that doesn't even remotely resemble" Media Molecule's foundation.

This sequel will even, in a way, act as yet another upgrade to the original: all of the two-million-plus LittleBigPlanet 1 levels will still work.

LittleBigPlanet 2 will be out on PlayStation 3 in Winter 2010.

Media Molecule blows our mind once more.

#clips Digital puppetry? Intelligent design? Homespun tales? Whole games? It looks like LittleBigPlanet 2 isn't just official, it's going to be amazing. More »

#film One of China's most successful actresses Zhang Ziyi (Rush Hour 2, 2046) is engaged to Vivi Nevo, a venture capitalist and a hardcore online gamer. Make that was engaged, rumors say. More »

Telltale recently introduced its "Pilot Program" for episodic games with the reveal of Puzzle Agent, claiming that some of its future franchises (starting with PA) will live or die by the initial episode's reception among players. And last last week, the company's CEO Dan Connors took to G4 to give more detail on the initiative's future, as well as its raison d'être. "The Pilot Program allows us to try some new ideas without having to [take as much risk] and learn more what people like about it before we commit to doing the whole thing." He said that committing to an entire season for a game is, in many cases, far riskier than creating a one-off pilot that may or may not succeed.

Additionally, team sizes on the pilot episodes are much smaller, but can be scaled up depending on how the audience responds. "Right now, I think the Grickle [PA] team is probably about a third of the size of an average team to get this started," Connors said. According to him, 50 percent of the work for a series is done up front -- going into full-scale production on PA would require little adjustment for Telltale. That said, he seems more interested in spitballing ideas for additional pilot games in the meantime, saying that the studio is still "in the idea phase" for more pilots. We'll see just how well that first idea pans out when Puzzle Agent becomes available this June.

Sackboy is back.

#sony 2009 was a rough year for many companies. Sony's video game business is doing pretty good, though. More »

Photo Dojo Leads a Fist-Pumping Lineup of New Downloadable Games

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is easy to understand. Mario Galaxy 2, a little less so. To help get fans of the former to purchase the latter, Nintendo will be bundling a DVD instruction manual with the galactic sequel. More »

#legal Codemasters, the studio behind racing games like Dirt and the upcoming F1 2010, is taking another developer to court, accusing it of "poaching staff". More »

#nsfw The words "kinda like" are being used loosely. The words "skirt lifting" are not. More »

#toys Collectible company Hot Toys wasn't going to let an Iron Man 2 license go by without at least one figure based on the film's aesthetic highlight: Scarlett Johansson in a tight, tight jumpsuit. More »

#apple In March 2006, Nintendo released the DS Lite. The portable kicked off a wave of Apple comparisons. Here's why: More »

#sports When EA bought casual games developer Playfish, people thought it would mean EA games based on fluffy animals. Nope. Turns out the "well-known brand" the studio has been working on is a Facebook version of football series FIFA. More »

#japan Pretty darn great, that's what. More »

#research When it comes to spending money on video games, nobody does it quite like the US of A, with research finding that Americans spent over $25 billion on the things in 2009. More »

#screengrab At all. As seen on Hawty McBloggy. More »

#nsfw This is Stree Overlord. It's a supplement for men aimed at helping with...yeah. And to help sell it, we have two of Street Fighter's most famous characters going at it hammer and tongs on the front of the box. More »

#otaku Everyone has their reasons. What's yours, sister? More »

#capcom There's a Marvel vs Capcom 3 feature in the latest issue of Game Informer Magazine, and along with some new screens of the game, a number of previously unconfirmed - though strongly hinted-at - characters have been revealed. More »

This is just one of many screenshots from old-school games, featuring text added in by various denizens of the internet. You can check out the whole archive of these creations at the link below. You might even be inspired to create one of your own!

Sometimes Nintendo opens up some websites for their games, and people don’t even notice. You’re lucky if the Big N makes mention of those sites! That’s the case for the two sites below. One for a game that’s out, and one that’ll be out tomorrow morning! Hit up the links to [...]

These details come from the Official Nintendo Magazine review. Some subscribers in the UK are receiving their issues already. - Galaxy 2 takes place in an alternate reality where Mario and the Lumas never met - the big Luma owns Spaceship Mario, which was transformed into its shape from a simple planet - the big Luma is [...]