All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#screens Here we are, trying to have a nice new bunch of action-packed screens for Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and Lynch goes and slips in a puddle of blood, causing a potential worker's comp lawsuit. Good going guys. More »

Two years ago, I sat in a ballroom at the Las Vegas Hilton, listening to the crowd go nuts over Sony Online Entertainment's official Free Realms announcement. Right at the front was a little boy who freaked out whenever the publisher said anything about the game; the kid looked at his father (a huge SOE fanatic) for approval and went bonkers whenever papa bear gave the thumbs up. The excessive enthusiasm was a bit odd, given that Free Realms was a virtual unknown in the competitive MMO space. I thought about him when SOE let me play the newest member of the family, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures.
You don't have to be a 12 year old to get excited about this (mostly) free-to-play video game. Although it follows the Clone Wars TV series and characters, you're able to customize an avatar using a wardrobe of Star Wars costumes from all six movies, including Boba Fett's helmet and Tusken Raider fatigues. And no, no word yet on the famous slave Leia outfit.

#screens We won't be seeing Ben Roethlisberger until at least Week Six of the NFL season. In Madden NFL 11 the embattled quarterback is available from day one. That doesn't mean EA Sports is going to tout him in the screenshots. More »

Baseball fans –

Do you think you have what it takes to strike out the reigning American League MVP? Well, this Monday, July 12, you can give it try on the virtual diamond. We’ll be at MLB FanFest in Anaheim for the All-Star Game festivities with MLB 10 The Show cover athlete, Joe Mauer, giving select fans a chance to play against Major League Baseball’s leading All-Star vote-getter on PlayStation 3. We’ll also be showing our MLB 10 The Show 3D demo, so for those of you haven’t seen yet, come by and check it out. FanFest begins today and goes through Tuesday. For tickets, times, and additional info about FanFest, go to MLB.com and join the All-Star party.

Here are the details about the event with Joe, hope to see you there!

When:
Monday, July 12
9:00 – 10:00am PST

Where:
PlayStation Patrol Truck at MLB FanFest (Area B, all the way in the back)
Anaheim Convention Center
800 West Katella Avenue
Anaheim, CA 92802-3496

Filed under: Podcasts Sure, you could listen to a podcast about video games, but there are plenty of those. Wouldn't you rather listen to dude talk about Quantum Leap for an hour and a half? ... OK, fine, there are some video games discussed (Dragon Quest IX and Crackdown 2, for example) but it's mainly Quantum Leap.

Congrats to Alan Black, who we think has eclipsed his own work.

Get the podcast:
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Hosts: Christopher Grant (@chrisgrant), Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), and JC Fletcher (@jcfletcher)
Music: "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" by Jon Black, "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer" by A.C. Newman
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New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero
The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ

See all of this week's links (and what games we played) after the jump.

#doh Who wants Red Dead Redemption for $23.99? Enough people to crash GameStop's web page, foiling the company's attempt to feature the game as this week's Power Hour deal. More »

"This is gonna change the world." Since our E3 meeting with OnLive CEO Steve Perlman and Joe Bentley, director of games & media development, wasn't filmed, we have no way to convey to you the absolute sincerity with which Bentley said these words. He further assured us, "I left a very successful startup to do this."

Indeed he did -- three years ago, Bentley quit his "architect" job at outsourcing firm LiveOps (where he built software) for OnLive, after seeing parent company Rearden Labs' Mova motion capture technology. And now? Now he's busy helping manage the launch and continued growth of OnLive. He's also busy trying to convince us of the service's promise in the coming months and years.

#ds …40 hours, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii told Kotaku today. Why 40? Why not 30 or 50? More »

Double Dragon ​Release Date: November 4, 1994 Total Gross Revenue: $2,341,309 I was big into video games back in 1994, and even I don’t remember seeing any promos for the Double Dragon movie. I actually haven’t seen it yet. I think I might need to change that!

Vent your cubicle frustration in this funny Facebook game.

Attending this year's Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas? If so, you'll probably wanna bring medicated lotion for the severe whooping you'll be receiving at the hands of international fighting game champion Daigo "The Beast" Umehara (you can call him "Beastie" for short, but we wouldn't suggest it).

As it turns out, third-party peripheral maker Mad Catz will be sponsoring the gentleman's trip to Vegas, where he'll be "signing autographs as well as giving fearless gamers an opportunity to test their skills in one-on-one bouts of Super Street Fighter IV," according to the press release. If we were bettin' folks, we'd say his appearance probably has something to do with the partnership announced earlier this year.

Mad Catz will also be giving away eight "exclusive 'Gold Plated' Tournament Edition Arcade FightSticks." And yeah, we're betting the quotes around "Gold Plated" mean that it's not actual gold, but hey, free arcade sticks!

Fat Princess fans… prepare for BATTLE!

Pirates, Ninjas and Giants (oh my!)!

Fat Princess Fat Roles DLC and Patch 1.06 is off to an amazing start! We’ve been overwhelmed with the endless positive responses for the latest update, especially for the Fourplay Party Feature.

To add even more weight to your cake experience, our friends at Atomic Operations will be hosting a Fat Princess Gaming Event in the Gamer’s Lounge in PlayStation Home. This is your golden opportunity to launch Fat Princess (with or without Fat Roles DLC) and challenge one another to online multiplayer matches and chat about the game with the Fat Princess community and Atomic Operations.

So prepare your crew, call out your rival clans, and put together your list of Q&A for Atomic Operations!

Fat Princess PlayStation Home Gamer’s Lounge
Day: Tuesday, 7/13
Time: 4 – 8pm PST
Special Guest: Atomic Operations

Until then, see you all on the battlefield, and as always…

Cake for everyone!

#science Going back in time may seem like an impossibility, but so did air travel at one point. According to Mark Thompson, the astronomy guy from BBC's The One Show, it's all a matter of side-stepping Einstein's theory of relativity. More »

We had a fan-translation of all the important bits from the third Iwata Asks feature on Super Mario Galaxy 2, but it’s always nice to have the official translation. This time around, we hear from Koji Kondo and others that contributed to the musical side of Galaxy 2. Hit up the link below [...]

#realworld The man with the Lazer Tag guns had to go to catch a flight. Otherwise I'm sure we would have been zapping each other. Nevertheless, yesterday was my chance to bring up the topic of Battle Tag to someone who works for Ubisoft and ask: Huh? More »

If we didn't know better, we'd say Ubisoft's UK marketing chief, Murray Pannell, has money riding on the success of 3D televisions. Speaking to Eurogamer, Pannell said that adoption of the technology will "start out slowly this year," then boldly claimed that he "wouldn't rule out the fact that this will be installed in everyone's living room in three years' time."

Pannell's crystal ball may be in HD (and 3D!) but only seems capable of looking into the future. If it could see the past, he'd know that the first consumer HDTVs hit the market 12 years ago in 1998, and that, according to an NPD report from May of this year, the technology has only managed to make its way into 64 percent of US homes in that time.

Of course, Ubisoft is a true believer in 3D TV, having released Avatar: The Game before 3D sets were widely available to the public, and is positioning itself as a major player in the space -- so while it's in the company's best interest for the fledgling technology to succeed, it might want to keep its predictions somewhere remotely near the realm of probability.

You can virtually visit the entire La Musée du Jeu Vidéo exhibit at the link below. You’ll get to check out all sorts of imagery and information, plus you get the feeling like you’re actually there! Tour here

Building a Prototype with LED Bulbs Iwata: Now that we’ve discussed how the ideas for the games were created, let’s discuss the next steps. Kano: Everybody brainstormed a setting for the game, and once that was decided, Mr. Yokoi would say “I leave the rest up to you.” (laughs) Izushi: And when he said that, it was definitely [...]

A portion of an EDGE review… Huge in scope and strong on detail, IX has ironed out the kinks that have made the series less palatable outside Japan, and with Nintendo’s support, IX is sure to have the wider impact that the series has craved. In providing an adventure as deep and enduringly absorbing as this, [...]

What you see above is the Outbreak Pack for Dead Rising 2. It's a limited edition version of the game that comes with everything pictured: a zombie action figure, accessories, voucher for a premium theme and other console-specific goods. It'll release alongside the standard edition in Europe on October 1.

But we wanted to know about the potential for a North American release, so we contacted Capcom. A rep told Joystiq "we are not bringing the Outbreak Edition to North America," yet offered that "something special will be announced for North America very soon for Dead Rising 2." As soon as we know, we'll be sure to pass the info along.

#specialedition PC strategy fans love them some Civilization, but do they love it enough to spend double retail price for the game plus collector swag? More »

#ps3 The PlayStation Move, like a Wii Remote bolstered by Motion Plus is supposed to tolerate people who stop pointing the controller at the TV. I accidentally completed a successful test of that yesterday. More »

Namco Bandai clarified the "October" release date for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West in a press release today. Trip and Monkey's technologically tethered pilgrimage will begin October 5 in North America. In the interim, you'll have to settle for looking at these new screenshots.

That's not a partcularly bad bargain, though -- how often do you get to see a picture of a futuristic monkey-man based on Chinese myth, surfing through a ruined cityscape? Like two-three times a week, max?

“I was really hooked on ‘Wizardy,’ the PC game, and that’s kind of where I got the inspiration for the Slime. There’s…slime-looking characters [in ‘Wizardry’], so I got the inspiration from it. I was doodling the slime-looking character and I took it to Mr. Toriyama, who did the character design, and he made it the [...]