#sfiv
When Street Fighter IV was first released, you couldn't throw a fireball without tripping over somebody playing as Ken. Over a year on from its release, though, and it's time to find out who's really the most popular fighter. More »
#indie
Man, fishing games (that aren't on the Dreamcast and come with a plastic peripheral) are boooooooring. Know what'd make 'em more exciting? Blowing up the fish you catch. More »
If you're into console mods, racing games and straight-up forgery, you should turn your attention to a new item on Australia's EB Games: a Gran Turismo 5-themed PS3 faceplate. It features the signature of series creator Kazunori Yamauchi -- or, rather, a print of his signature. Same thing, right?
#crime
Real honest-to-goodness yakuza have already made their thoughts known on Sega's crime opus Yakuza 3. Now a Tokyo police officer and a yakuza lawyer weigh in on the game and suss out what's realistic and what's not. More »
#metroid
Sorry if that sounds a little crass, but recently Metroid star Samus Aran took to the stage during a burlesque show in LA, and that's exactly what she did. More »
Would you like to see how you'd be living if you had created Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven instead of doing whatever you've been doing? Level-5 has posted a photo tour of its Fukuoka headquarters, revealing basically the nicest-looking office ever. At a time when other Japanese publishers are hurting (in denial), Level-5 has been able to continue expanding, while keeping its employees in luxurious working environment. Show-offs.
After seeing this office, we're thinking that it might be worth any American game industry job seekers' time to keep an eye out for the opening of Level-5 International America.
#screengrab
Atari's first prototype games machine, code-named "Stella", which would go on to become the Atari 2600. As seen on Wired, via Boing-Boing. More »
#ea
BioWare's Paul Barnett, a man with a keen sense of history, realised this week that Wing Commander is now 20 years old. So he, like the rest of us, wants a re-release. More »
#nintendo
The common assumption is that "Nintendo" (任天堂) means "leave luck to heaven" or even "to leave one's fortune in the hands of fate". Those assumptions, however, could be wrong. More »
Naughty Bear has apparently become a "worldwide success" for 505 Games. Capitalizing on its "very wide fanbase," developer A2M has just released a handheld version of the game for iPhone/iPod Touch. Check out screens and a trailer after the break.
#nintendo
Legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto has been making video games for decades now, but he's a talented guy. He can do more than just design games. He also fancies himself as an artist, and wants to take on Professor Rubik. More »
Don’t know much about Lil’ Wayne, other than his legal issues. When I know more about a man’s criminal record than his music, that tells me something is screwed up. Either way, the lifestyle seems to be working for him, because Lil’ Wayne has been confirmed as the ‘face’ of Def Jam Rapstar. [...]
Let's face it, when hand-delivering the faceless, twisted corners of the internet a set of tools which are renowned for their capacity to create anything ever, things are going to get ... bad. Like, boners, we mean. Fortunately, NetDevil recently outlined the measures the developer has taken to protect the MMOs younger-skewing target demographic: Content moderation for player-made objects and names, combined with a privacy-ensuring "Lego Universe ID" system for in-game friends.
The first measure is pretty straightforward -- both player's names and the objects they create must be moderated before anyone else can see them. However, to lighten this substantial workload, NetDevil's made it so in-game friends can see each other's creations before they get moderated. Friends, however, have to exchange their personal ID codes outside of the game in order to achieve this level of acquaintance. Sounds hauntingly familiar to Nintendo's Friend Code system -- but we suppose it will help protect the childrens. That's what it's all about, isn't it? The childrens?
#tech
The Spartans of the Halo universe are capable of some pretty incredible stuff, but so they should: they're men in fancy robot suits from the 26th century. In the 21st century, it's all about the baby steps. More »
The iOS twitch platformer Pix'n Love Rush is being ported to systems with actual buttons -- namely, the PSP and PS3, for which it's being released as a Mini. The stylish side-scroller, a collaboration between developer Pastagames and the French zine publisher Pix'n Love, combines bite-sized coin-collecting platformer challenges with a variety of eye-catching visual styles, including Virtual Boy and Game Boy color schemes. The game's look is based on the Xbox Live Indie Games release Pixel (the third game in the Arkedo Series), which was a joint effort by Arkedo Studios and Pastagames.
Publisher Sanuk Games plans to release the Minis version "soon," though no specific date or price has been announced.
#pc
Given the fact the game shut down after only three months, there weren't many subscribers to MMO title APB. If you were one of the lucky/unlucky few, don't go expecting a refund, because you won't be getting one. More »
#clips
A Minecraft player with great ambition and loads of spare time is building a 1:1 replica model of Star Trek: The Next Generation's massive flagship vessel, the Enterprise D—and he needs some help getting it done. More »
Surreal horror/exploration indie title The Path was one of the finalists at last year's Indiecade festival, and it's been honored again with two awards at Bilbao, Spain's hóPLAY International Video Game Festival. The game won Best Sound and Best Design, and its creator, Tale of Tales, picked up a tidy sum of €12,000 ($16,000) in prize money.
To celebrate, the company is putting the game on sale, and you can pick up a digital copy right now for just $4.99, half of the usual price. Careful, though -- it's a creepy experience, combining a strange retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood tale with dynamically generated music and environments. Congratulations to Tale of Tales on the awards, which it says is the first actually won in its eight-year history. Always a finalist, finally a winner.
#hideokojima
Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear, may not be best known for his subtlety. But rarely have we heard the man behind Solid Snake get as exceedingly enthusiastic as he does when describing Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. More »
#review
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the first Metal Gear game I've played to completion in nearly 15 years. It also almost became the last. More »
WayForward is rewarding its true fans who buy both Mighty Flip Champs and the upcoming Shantae: Risky's Revenge, with an unspecified bonus in the latter. If you have Mighty Flip Champs installed on your DSi, you'll find something special in the "import room" in Shantae's Scuttle Town.
The exact identity of the bonus will depend on your progress in Flip Champs, but, as WayForward's email announcement notes, "Whether you bought it, beat it, or rank among the best, a bonus awaits every MFC player." If you don't want to feel left out, you can still buy Mighty Flip Champs now and work on it until Shantae's October 4 release. For that matter, there's nothing stopping you from working on Mighty Flip Champs after Shantae's release.
Sometimes you've just gotta diverge from the game plan and just freestyle it, you know? Like, we were gonna write a post about DJ Hero 2's freestyle gameplay mechanics -- instead, we're talkin' about penny loafers! They're comfortable, fashionable, and ... just watch the video below.
After playing the TGS demo for Ignition Entertainment's starkly unique action game, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, we were intensely curious about ... well, how it came to be. It's such an unlikely combination of action, platforming, art and Biblical themes, that we honestly couldn't figure out how someone could come up with it.
According to director Sawaki Takeyasu (who started at Capcom doing art for Devil May Cry, and moved to Clover Studio and then Platinum Games before starting his own company, Crim) it was an equally unlikely combination of corporate edict and personal idiosyncracy. Find out about its origins, as well as the game itself, in our interview.
Joystiq: The first thing I wanted to ask about is the style: it's very abstract. How did that style come about?
Sawaki Takeyasu: The art style in the game is based on three major points: the intention is to, before that, it's not that I tried to make it eccentric and make it stand out. We wanted to make it simple, a simple visual. The second point is that it's a constantly changing screen, so that even if you leave the controller for a few minutes then it's still moving, it's always moving. Another thing is variety in levels. There is so much variety and different styles of levels, so that you can be constantly entertained and so that we can bring refreshment and change throughout our gameplay.
#yay
Washington Wizards' starting center JaVale McGee (pictured, far right), miffed that NBA 2K11 rated him a 59, complained about it last week over Twitter. 2K Sports responded today that it'll goose up his overall number to at least a 64. More »
