All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Enjoy brutal, northern reaches of Middle-earth, in a realm where survival depends on Fellowship.

The Behemoth has posted a quick update on the status of the long-awaited PSN port of Castle Crashers. While there aren't many concrete details, the dev states it is "right in the thick of the submission process" and has cemented the price. Just like its Xbox Live Arcade counterpart, Castle Crashers will arrive on PSN at $15 (packing some new features, don't forget).

The Behemoth also detailed its plans for PAX, set to go down in Seattle early next month. The studio is bringing along the latest build of Battleblock Theater and Behemoth merchandise. The company will also be toting along a custom, 4-player Castle Crashers arcade cabinet ... which we will be stealing.

id Software just announced during a QuakeCon live presentation that Rage will be hitting store shelves on September 13, 2011 in the US and September 15, 2011 in Europe. Kotaku reports on the release date via its liveblog, highlighting one of the reasons the game still has another year of development time -- the Xbox 360 version crashed during the presentation.

If you're really itching to jump into Rage's universe, the iPhone/iPad version of the game will launch sometime this year. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions will not, however, arrive until next September.

15 years after the Virtual Boy. Whenever I think of most Nintendo games or platforms, I can’t believe how long ago they came about. With the Virtual Boy, 15 years doesn’t seem all that long ago! Nintendo is definitely trying to help consumers forget about the flop by bringing about the 3DS, [...]

#gscgameworld After fooling around with a prequel and a lesser sequel, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World gets down to brass tacks with a true sequel to popular first=person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, due out in 2012. More »

Do those feet of yours remember how to dance? Or, rather, how to flail about in four directions in accordance with a brightly colored song chart? We hope so, as you'll soon be charged with arrow-stepping once again when DanceDanceRevolution arrives on PS3 later this fall. Yes, it's just called DanceDanceRevolution. Apparently, no extemporaneous "Mixes" or "Maxes" or "SuperNOVAs," or even spaces, were required this time around.

This version of DDR -- the series' first outing on the PS3, no less -- includes some form of Move support, meaning dancers will have to move their arms in rhythm while simultaneously moving their legs, similar to the Wiimote controls of DDR Hottest Party. Also, using the PlayStation Eye, players can record their best routines and throw it on Facebook and YouTube using the console's Video Editor and Uploader. These videos are going to be absolutely thrilling, and we, for one, cannot wait to see your totally sweet moves.

I haven’t played this game online, but I’m sure a bunch of you have. Was Call of Duty: World at War worth your time spent online?

We take on TURN: The Lost Artifact, Absolute Chess, Did It Myself ABC123 and Rhythm Core Alpha.

The gorgeous shooter is set for next year.

#idsoftware id Software's next big shooter, Rage, built on its next big engine, id Tech 5, now has a ship date. Get ready to wait a little longer for Rage, for it won't be out until September 2011. More »

I don’t know how these two worlds could come together, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it happen. We’ve already seen one fan interpretation of the two universes colliding, but it would be very interesting to see something official.

The zombies from Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War DLC will make a return in Call of Duty: Black Ops, according to a listing at Best Buy Canada's online store. The description for the Hardened edition of the game details the four maps included with both collector's editions, describing them as "Four Zombie Maps Pack made famous from COD: World at War."

This information is further evidenced by multiple accounts at Black Ops fansite CODBlackOpsNews.com, where GameStop employees at several stores revealed marketing materials for the game (people even snapped pics, as seen here). The maps are said to be remakes of the World at War zombie maps "updated for the Black Ops engine." While we're glad to see the mode making a return in Black Ops, we're really concerned with something else -- zombies that can travel through time. That sounds, like, double terrifying.

Infamous Nintendo composer Koji Kondo is celebrating his 50th birthday today. I think he’s had a pretty successful career, don’t you? He created a song that can be considered the theme for our generation! It’s almost the most popular ringtone of all-time!

#quakecon Stephen Totilo is live at Quakecon sitting in as three developers walk the audience through the latest on id Software's upcoming shooter, driver, role-playing game Rage. More »

Limited edition controllers are all the rage these days. Halo: Reach has its own controller (and console!), so it only makes sense that Microsoft's other 2010 darling would get the same treatment. While it might appear that the Fable 3 controller is simply a normal wireless Xbox 360 controller dipped in delicious caramel, Kotaku reports that the design was actually crafted to resemble the Crown of Albion (you know the one). Priced at $59.99, the controller heads to stores October 5, well ahead of Fable 3's October 26 launch, and includes a token to download an exclusive tattoo for the game.

Graphics chip maker Nvidia has released its fiscal Q2 earnings, and while some of the more industry-oriented products - "Quadro professional graphics, Tesla GPU computing, and our Tegra system-on-a-chip business" - have delivered "excellent results" the "GeForce consumer business fell significantly short of expectations."

What does that mean in dollars and cents? A net loss of $141m for Q2, down from a loss of $105m for the same period last year. It's a notable drop from the company's Q1 profits of $138m. So why were earnings down, though revenue of $811m was actually up from the same time last year? "Results were impacted by a large inventory write-down," the earnings report says. "The inventory write-down was a consequence of weakened demand for consumer graphics processing units (GPUs) as higher memory prices and economic weakness in Europe and China led to a greater-than-expected shift to lower-priced GPUs and PCs with integrated graphics."

So it's the same old story: global economic meltdown leading to PC sales with cheaper - or even integrated! - GPUs. Wow, the future is bizarre.

#clips Freestyle Games creative director Jamie Jackson walks us through DJ Hero 2's Empire Mode, the replacement for the original game's underwhelming career mode. More »

Filed under: Podcasts In what's probably the manliest edition of the Joystiq Podcast yet, we've got all the shower remodeling news you CRAVE. As if that weren't enough (and it is, you know) we've got Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Monday Night Combat and, for reasons that are still unclear, Halo 3: ODST.

Plus there's nigh-infinite talk about ... well, you know. Thanks to Alan Black for his elegant photoshop blend of video games, cinema, teenage romance and our own egomania.

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes
[Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace
[RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly

Hosts: Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk) and Chris Grant (@chrisgrant)
Music: "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" by Jon Black, "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer" by A.C. Newman
For fans: Joystiq Podcast Facebook group
New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero
The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ

See all of this week's links after the jump.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold Glad I’m not the only one looking forward to this. I’m always down for more beat’em-up fun, and that’s exactly what Batman: The Brave and the Bold delivers.

#exclusive If you're planning to rule over Albion as king or queen in Fable III comes in, you're going to need a controller befitting your lofty station. The official Fable III Limited Edition Wireless Controller should do the trick. More »

EA has announced its lineup for GamesCom, both to be shown on the show floor and behind closed doors, and Dragon Age 2 is on both lists. If you plan to attend the August 18-22 event, you'll be able to meet (someone's version of) protagonist Hawke for the first time. Other games on the floor include Rock Band 3, Darkspore, the newly dated Crysis 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Meanwhile, EA will have private showings for Bulletstorm, EA Sports Active 2, EA Sports MMA, The Sims Medieval, and more. Perhaps press will get an opportunity to interact with whatever Epic's "Bulletstorm-sized unveil" is -- though we don't necessarily want any of our colleagues' heads to explode. See the full list of showings after the break. Your head will ... be perfectly fine, but intrigued!

Jordan is back and he's ready to ball.

When PlayStation Move launches in North America this September, there will be no doubt about which game is the weirdest – it’s Kung Fu Rider. At our past Move Meet-ups, I’ve been describing this game as the latest in the escaping-from-the-mafia-on-office-furniture genre.

It is not a crowded genre.

When we first saw this game (as “Slider”) at Game Developers Conference 2010, we weren’t sure if this was going to be a simple downloadable title or something more. As Producer George Weising tells us in this demo, Kung Fu Rider is going to have a lot more to it than we initially anticipated.

The music in the Famicom version of Rygar is actually different from the NES version. The thing is, the music sounds like it was composed by the same people. Why on earth did the game get localized with all weirdness intact, but the music was changed?