All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

The unstoppable shooter picks up steam.

#arcade The company that used to pack gamers into arcades with Street Fighter cabinets shut down two of its Capcom arcades in Japan last year. It opened none, and predicts more decline in the year to come. More »

Spoiler: Joystiq's commenting functionality needs work! And it starts with the default user icon. Our current "placeholder" avatar has long worn out its welcome; and besides, a mustached man in a red cap is simply unoriginal (despite all of the truly original user mods over the years; see above).

That's where you come in! Design a new default user icon for Joystiq commenters and you could become, uh, the designer of the new default user icon for Joystiq commenters! Heck, having earned a prestigious title like that, you'd have a Facebook status update that lasts all day. That's got to be worth a few hours of doodling up a design, right? (Protip: There's a DSi XL, plus a couple solid games, in it for the winner, too.)

Head past the break for entry details.

Gamers team up for the ultimate co-op skateboarding experience.

Hello PlayStation.Blog! I’m Kelly Revak from The Behemoth. We’re thrilled to be back on the PlayStation.Blog to give you another update about Castle Crashers for PSN!

First of all, we are happy to report that we have finished our internal testing, and have sent the title off to a third-party agent for some final testing before we submit it to the PlayStation Store. While we still don’t want to guess at a release date, we are definitely in the final stages of this adventure. Meanwhile, we wanted to tell you about another neat new feature.

We have always had more ideas for Castle Crashers than we’ve had time to implement. So since we’ve had to rewrite the code for the game anyway as we bring it to PS3, we’ve been able to add some features that have been lingering in the backs of our minds since this whole thing started. Here is an example:

Player Arena matches will now allow you to choose teams! You can play 2-on-2 or take on the world with 1-v-3. Of course, you can still do free-for-all as well. Sharing a sweet, sweet victory with your friend is like eating a delicious cake in front of your other friends while they cry. It’s like their pride is inside the cake that you are devouring, and your teammate is your stomach helping to digest that pride. And there can only be one mouth and one stomach to eat it with, so the other mouths and stomachs have to watch even though mouths and stomachs don’t have eyes. Take that, eyeless teeth and stomachs.

Speaking of digestion…please do us a favor by tasting these screenshots and watch our QA ninjas team up to beat the tar out of each other. <3 Kelly.

Let the light shine in.

Listen, we get it. You're a "pre-owned" type of game buyer. To us, and your online comrades, we're equals in the game owning world. To EA, well, you're sucking its server's bandwidth. Defending EA Sports' "Online Pass," Senior Vice President Andrew Wilson told Develop, "We want to reserve EA Sports online services for people who pay EA to access them."

We were curious to find out if the same held true for non-EA Sports titles, specifically, if this program would be implemented with Medal of Honor's online multiplayer. A company representative informed Joystiq, "Online Pass is a program specific to EA Sports. However other EA titles and franchises are planning similar offerings to reward players with bonus content and online services. No announcements today related to Medal of Honor."

Begun, the game-owner class wars have.

#clips SMBC Theater presents us with a chilling look at what happens when one video game becomes so addictive the entire world can't stop playing it. More »

Wizards of the Coast is set to shuffle things up once again, having announced that the second Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion will arrive tomorrow, May 12. The DLC will include three new decks and a new single-player campaign. It will also come packing three new cards for each original deck and the three decks from the first expansion. Finally, the DLC will also offer five new challenge levels, three new Achievements, multiplayer host migration and even some Avatar attire awards.

The second expansion will set you back 400 ($5).

Remember, I only do one of these posts a day now, and will continuously update this post if/when I come across more HD/max resolution screens/videos.

Nintendo continues strong software sales performance.

Nintendo continues strong software sales performance.

You may have heard by now that we're big fans of Zombie Cow, the studio behind the point-and-click genius of Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please. And by "big fans" we mean we love it so much it makes our hearts hurt a little bit. So imagine the squeals of pure childlike delight echoing from Joystiq's penthouse HQ when we saw that Zombie Cow's new game Privates, funded by the UK's Channel 4, had finally been unveiled.

Straying from the adventure gaming of the Dan and Ben games, Privates is a twin-stick shooter/platformer that -- and we're quoting here -- follows "a teeny-tiny gang of condom-hatted marines as they delve into peoples' vaginas and bottoms and blast away at all manner of oozy, shouty monsters."

What's more, Zombie Cow's Dan Marshall hints this journey into the body may even be slightly educational. You'll be able to find out for yourself when the game arrives for free on PC this summer and on the Xbox 360 at an unspecified time and price point.

Nintendo continues strong software sales performance.

You can't judge a grimoire by its cover.

Building an engaging experience with single- and multiplayer modes.

Here is a tutorial highlighting the Online Pass feature and how to register your titles.

Does Mario actually know anything about plumbing? If you only watched the cartoon series, your answer would be yes. If you’ve only played the games, your answer would be no. If you’ve seen the movie, your answer would be yes. If you’re been a part of all of those…you’re totally confused! Article [...]

It's going to be pretty.

As if one lawsuit regarding the removal of the Other OS functionality from the PlayStation 3 wasn't enough, two more class-action suits have been filed against Sony, reports IGN. Earlier this month, Todd Densmore and Antal Herz (of Georgia and California, respectively) filed a class-action suit against Sony, alleging that firmware update 3.2.1 (which removed the Other OS feature) made various features of the console unusable -- features that the suit claims weren't allowed to be removed without compensation, per the console's Terms of Service and System Software License Agreement.

Furthermore, a group of five US citizens filed a second suit in late April, also claiming "lost money" given the removed functionality. Both suits can be found in full here and here (warning: PDF links), and for its part, Sony reps have said "the company does not comment on pending litigation." Potentially, if the first of these two suits were to get anywhere, the implications would be rather large, as the "class" in this case includes "anyone who purchased a PlayStation 3 from November 17, 2006 to March 27, 2010 and folks who continue to own their console as of March 27, 2010."

Dive: The Medes Islands Secret is a new and unique 2D Action game exclusively for the Wii platform from Cosmonaut Games that challenges players to dive into an undersea world filled with adventures and breathtaking aquatic scenery. Players investigate the ocean’s mysterious landscapes in 2D action. Immersion and expansive real-world environments are captured in exquisite [...]

Here is a tutorial highlighting the Online Pass feature and how to register your titles.

#screengrab As seen in Capcom's Fiscal Year 2009 Presentation of Financial Results. More »

It's going to be pretty.