Eric came up with an idea to write parallel reviews of the same video game to see how similar our reviews came out. You can see his at Eric’s Binary World 2.0
Tetris is…”video gaming distilled to its core”
The most fun a person can have playing Tetris is completing this drop
A Tetris Review (In Four Lines)
Tetris is a game where you try to clear lines from the screen using six different shapes. The highest number of lines you can clear with one shape is four (called a Tetris). There is no narrative reason for you to clear lines. The reason for you to clear lines is because it is fun.
There’s absolutely no reason to review Tetris. The game has existed longer than I’ve even been alive. Most everyone who’s played video games has played it at least once. Everyone I know who has played it loves it. What is there to say about a game like that? I could write about tetrominoes, but I’m pretty sure most anyone who reads that word will say, “What the hell is a tetronimo?” (protip: it’s what the individual Tetris shapes are called) or I could talk about Tetris syndrome, a repetitive stress symptom resulting from endlessly watching these blocks fall into place to clear lines.
None of these actually express the point of Tetris.
The Game Boy launched in 1989, only three years after my birth and too soon for me to experience it until far later. The system sold on the market until 2001 and the original iteration came bundled with Tetris. I don’t remember the year that my older brother, Eric, got his hands on a Game Boy nor do I remember the year that I got one, but I know that we had one in 1992 and I know that I played the hell out of that game, both alone and with Eric and David. I have distinct memories of straining my eyes in the car, playing a few seconds at a time between the streetlights in Miami, probably causing the severe vision problems I’m beset with today.
Before we get any further, I think it’s time for a digression.
For the first time since 1978, the entire oeuvre of The Beatles became available again for people to buy. Just about everyone who was alive during the brief seven years that the band released albums went out and paid what former 1UP editor Jeff Green affectionately called the “60s tax” to relive the blessed music of their youth. While I’m definitely not a flower child in any sense of the word, I happen to be a pretty big fan of The Beatles. I went out and paid my dues to nostalgia to bring home the works of The Greatest Rock Band of All Time. With deliberate caution I opened up the packaging and began systematically ripping and listening to the catalog in strict chronological order. I discovered something that I already knew, but had neither the equipment nor the resources to effectively conclude: The Beatles are fucking amazing. Note that I didn’t use the past tense there, there is something undeniably timeless about their beats, their beautiful bass lines, those perfect harmonies, and the sublime percussive talents of one Mr. Starr.
I’m no audiophile, I’m no serious student of music, I’m no musician, but I fancy myself a true lover of music. It’s rare for me to entirely dismiss a genre of music, I’ll listen to it all and I do my best to collect music from as many different sources as I can. Music is something that resonates with the basic, primal, inherently human parts of me. Before there was society, before there were cities, before there was an Internet (mind-boggling, I know!), there was music. Before we knew how to rock, there were The Beatles.
The first track on Please Please Me is “I Saw Her Standing There.” Within that short, 2:54 song, a pure, simple, but complex sound bursts from speakers. From Paul’s frenetic bass line, to the clean, non-threatening vocals, the harmonies from John and George, and the pure perfection of the backbeat, it’s clear, at least from my vantage point in 2009, that I’m listening to a group that had so mastered their medium that the only logical progression was for them to take music and irreversibly change it. The Beatles may have started with a medium that was established, but they would go on to create early forays into almost every modern genre. Just glancing at the bits of trivia contained within The Beatles: Rock Band shows a group unafraid to experiment with technology and push the medium to its furthest reaches. They found ways to implement the new until they ended with Let It Be sounding almost nothing like when they started.
It’s the astute reader who already sees where I’m going with this.
A Tetris Review (In Haiku)
Four lines disappear A never-ending supply The fun never ends
Pong is a simple game. Its spartan simplicity was necessity. When it comes down to it, it’s really just two lines at the edge of a screen bouncing a pixel back and forth. You couldn’t really do more than that, but it was the 1972. Comparatively, Donkey Kong is a ridiculously complicated game released in 1981. As Jumpman, you’re required to scale ladders, hop over barrels and fireballs, possibly smashing them with a hammer, and go toe to toe with a gigantic ape to save a damsel in distress. In 2009, I’m a huge fan of Left 4 Dead, a game that requires me to keep track of my health, the health of my allies, maintain situational awareness, know how to deal with six different types of zombies, each with unique attack/AI behavior patterns, navigate huge, 3D environments, and be able to aim and fire eight or so different weapon types. Tetris requires me to manage six shapes (two pairs of which are mirror variations on the same theme) and arrange them into lines. It’s not Pong, but it’s not even Donkey Kong complex. One joystick and two buttons that ostensibly serve one purpose.
There’s a reason almost everyone alive today has played Tetris and that people who don’t play video games still love Tetris. The barrier of entry is so low that anyone can play, but, thanks to the complexity created by the interplay of these six shapes, (WARNING: cliché approaching) very few can truly master it. When you combine that with the pure joy of taking that line piece you’ve been waiting almost twenty blocks for, while your tower sits mere millimeters from the top of the screen, and slamming it as hard as you can into place, generating that happy little sound effect while instantly eradicating four lines, well you’ve got yourself some magic there, don’t you?
Eric has a house, a wife, cameras that probably cost more than an unfortunately large proportion of the population makes in one month, multiple, powerful computers, a High Definition (TM!) television, a Nintendo Wii, and countless other distractions, but, inevitably, when I ask him if he’s watched this box set I lent him or had a chance to check this or that out, he’ll tell me, often enough that this isn’t that big of an exaggeration, that he didn’t get much done on a given night because he was busy playing Tetris online against his sister-in-law. It’s just something that calls to people, gamer or not, to play and try to master. It is timeless. It is a force of nature. It is rock. It is video gaming distilled to its core.
A Tetris Review (In One Word)
Perfection
Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.
As I looked for a new video for this week’s Embedded Reporter, I came across one that was absolutely brilliant and well done. Naturally I chose to put this up instead. Hey guys, I didn’t talk about L4D2 on Friday, so I’m having some feelings of withdrawal. Enjoy!
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.
I get tired of saying it guys, but, really, MLB Power Pros 2009 is not coming to North America. Nintendo has, yet again, released a list of upcoming titles for 2009 (seen here, from Kotaku)
Seriously guys, it sucks, but we’re not getting the game.
Gamestop Getting Paid
Hey readers, surprise! Gamestop likes to make money. Since they like making money so much, they’ve launched their own digital download store for casual games.
Considering that digital download retail will be the death of the traditional Gamestop, it’s rather forward-looking and a wise business move to get on track with this.
Cost Reduction
Sony has managed to drop the production cost of the PS3 by 70%, a huge margin that can only mean great things for a console manufacturer who was selling at a pretty major loss per unit. With rumors abound about the PS3 slim swirling around and a drastic need for a price reduction, it seems Sony is right where it needs to be to pull the trigger and make something happen to increase sales. Whether or not they do so will remain to be seen.
Trailer Break!
You’ve seen the Uncharted 2 trailer, but have you seen it…in Japanese?
I don’t know about Japanese characterization, but it seems that they’ve lost the lighthearted, scoundrel-like voice for Drake while both Elena and Chloe have voices so similar that I can’t tell them apart. It’s really bizarre to see something so distinctly American with a completely different audio track, but I like it.
New L4D Campaign!
Valve stated that there was a reason that L4D2 was coming out when it was and claimed that they weren’t done supporting Left 4 Dead (obligatory L4D2 reference on this week’s GO). They made good on those claims this week with the announcement of a new campaign for Left 4 Dead called Crash Course.
Our latest adventure for our heroes has been slated as a connecting mini-campaign that bridges the end of No Mercy, in which our heroes escape via helicopter, to the beginning of Death Toll, which begins at a camp site.
It’s a strange shift in philosophy concerning the first game, as the developer commentaries mentioned an overarching narrative idea that they trashed in lieu of just having four independent campaigns. I’m not saying I mind connecting the two games together with one narrative, but the about face is a bit jarring.
Can’t complain about free (on PC) content, though! Go Valve! I can’t wait for L4D2 in November!
Big Money for EA and Other Sales Data
Guess what guys? The Sims 3 sold. A lot. The numbers are somewhere in the 3.7 million copy range for everyone’s favorite life simulator. What’s more, EA’s brilliant idea to cash in on the fitness craze with the more western-focused EA Sports Active has earned them great sales numbers to the tune of 1.8 million copies sold to date.
Other big sales winners obviously include Nintendo, who has already sold 500,000 copies of Wii Sports Resort in America within eight days of launch. Japan has seen a cool 828,000 copies leave the shelves proving that Nintendo still hasn’t lost its edge.
The other two big franchises of Japan, Dragon Quest and Monster Hunter, have seen recent releases. DQIX has hit 3.39 million copies sold this week with 3.5 million copies shipped and the new release of Monster Hunter Tri has already sold 520,000 copies this week. A few games can’t exactly revive the entire industry, but it’s nice to see that the juggernauts are still selling like hot cakes.
Delays
For the first time in ages, titles have been backing out of the holiday launch window to head for the greener pastures of Q1. Unfortunately, everyone seems to have gotten the same memo and not talked to each other, because so many games have been delayed to 2010 that it’s starting to get too crowded out in January and February.
One game whose delay has nothing to do with the aforementioned information is Blizzard’s Starcraft II. Many of you remember Blizz stating that Starcraft II would require a four-to-six month beta test to determine that it was ready. Guess what, we’ve passed the point where six months can still fit comfortably within 2009. As a result, we’re looking at a 2010 release.
I hope none of you were surprised by this, we all knew it was going to happen.
The best news of a game not delayed will come from the lawsuit settlement between Activision Blizzard and Double Fine Productions. Brütal Legend is free from legal limits to its release this fall. Rejoice all ye fans of Tim Schafer.
Seacrest out!
Guess what guys, it’s the slow season. Not much is going on…at all…
Let’s celebrate the start of this week with some Phoenix Wright!
The folks over at OCRemix have put out some mixed versions of the songs from the soundtrack.
Man do I love this series. OBJECTION! Classic.
No Yakuza?
In some seriously sad news, it seems that Yakuza 3 won’t be making its way to Western shores. SEGA smartly cites the 40,000 units of Yakuza 2 as a valid reason not to bring the sequel stateside. Can’t blame them, I guess.
EDIT: The interview where this was stated has been amended with claims that SEGA America’s statements were not an “official SEGA statements”
The Examiner further said
SEGA still hasn’t made any mention of an upcoming release or revealed plans to release it stateside.
Minor News
Fat Princess finally came out this week. I’ve yet to try it out.
Dragon Quest IX is up to 3.2 million units sold in Japan. Keep on rolling, you can hit 5 if you really try Squeenix!
Declining Rock Band sales have accounted for an 8% drop in revenue for Viacom. If you recall from last week, Rock Band and Guitar Hero sales are down almost 50%, resulting in this huge decrease in revenue for Viacom.
If you’re the type of person who cares (I’m not), Uncharted 2 will not have a mandatory install.
World of Warcraft sales are reported to be somewhere around 8.6 million. Just in the US! That’s insane.
L4D2
Obligatory L4D2 mention of the week!
Common Uncommon (or are they calling them Uncommon Common?) will feature bulletproof horde or zombies who were cops in riot gear before they were infected. Since they will be bulletproof (thanks to their riot gear), you’ll have to melee them down and then shoot their exposed backside.
On a totally different note, Rochelle can be seen in artwork wearing a Depeche Mode t-shirt. Why? The band asked to be in the game (and probably shelled out some cash). Not a bad idea. The whole story is that Valve was soliciting a few labels and bands and DM came through in a big way, allowing the use of their music, likenesses, and merchandise. If we get to shoot Depeche Mode zombies, I’m going to call this one of the greatest games of 2009.
Who am I kidding? This will probably be my game of 2009 like L4D was my game of 2008.
20 Years of Mother
The Mother series is 20!
It’s a terrible shame that we haven’t seen more than Mother 2 hit US shores. Perhaps I’ll pick up a Mother 3 cart while I’m abroad…
Comic-Con Cosplay!
Who’s that Pokémon?
It’s PIKACHU!
Speaking of Pokémon, Platinum players will be able to get the Member Card through Wi-Fi gift from 3 August to 13 September. Be sure to get it or you won’t be able to catch Darkrai!
And that’s all he wrote for this week folks! See you next week!
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover this week, so let’s get cracking right away. Will I mention Left 4 Dead 2 again? Read on to find out:
Thank God Atlus Made a Mistake
Video game companies take note: countdown timers suck. No one likes them. Stop teasing your announcements and just make announcements like normal people do.
Or you could do what Atlus just did and tease an announcement and follow it with an accidental premature reveal. The cat is out of the bag, Atlus announced another new spinoff iteration to their MegaTen series with the upcoming (comes out 8 October) Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Story details indicate that the main character is a member of a UN research team deployed to investigate some weirdness at the South Pole. I’m a fan of MegaTen in general, so I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.
Big Numbers
It seems that Dragon Quest IX has sold another 600k or so since last week. Good on them, keep it up and localize that game faster!
Rock Out!
Guitar Hero fans were so smug about the music creation tools within GH: World Tour. It turned out to be a rather niche feature that created midi-representations of songs that vocals couldn’t even be recorded for. Clearly not what everyone was expecting. Harmonix announced the Rock Band Network this week, allowing bands who hold copyrights to songs to chart their own songs and release them within Rock Band, fully realizing their vision of making Rock Band a platform for music distribution. It’s very exciting and I can’t wait to see if some of my favorite underrepresented bands will start submitting their music to the game. There are a few caveats with submission, namely that the content must remain rated T, but it’s still some of the best news I’ve heard from the company not pertaining directly to The Beatles: Rock Band in a while.
While I’m on the subject of Rock Band, research is showing that sales of boxed copies of Rock Band and Guitar Hero are down 49% in no small part due to the Guitar Hero glut diluting the marketplace. Thankfully, Harmonix’s music platform idea has caught on, earning them a cool billion dollars in revenue. They’ve sold over 40 million tracks online. Good on you HMX.
Get Rock Band 2!
Evo
Evo 2009 came to a close this year and if you know anything about Street Fighter, you can probably guess who won. Daigo “The Beast” in the West and “Ume” in Japan Umehara, playing as Ryu, faced off against America’s Justin Wong, playing as Balrog, in a fight that truly went the distance.
Known around the world for his almost psychic shoryuken deployment, Daigo squeezed past Wong with truly expert execution.
If you want to see more Daigo vs Wong, check out Daigo’s most famous moment from Evo 2004. The epic action begins at about 2:43:
Confused by what you just saw? Daigo, as Ken, parried all 15 of the hits in Justin Wong’s Chun-Li super move. This is no easy feat, especially considering that he had to jump to do one of them. He then takes advantage of Chun-Li’s recovery time to unleash a super of his own, winning the match and Evo 2004.
While they haven’t faced each other as many times, I like to think of Wong and Umehara as the Federer and Roddick of the fighting game world. Good luck next year Justin.
Swamp Fever
Come on, you knew I was going to mention it? New L4D2 details have emerged thanks to SDCC. Valve has released details and footage of the Spitter at Comic-Con.
The Spitter seems to fall into Valve’s “split up groups” policy in Left 4 Dead. Not content to allow players to sit on their haunches with the same tactics from L4D, the Spitter will disperse survivors by lobbing spit balls in a mortar-like fashion that cause continuous damage when players stand in the same spot. Combined with the Charger, this game is looking to be a lot harder.
Other announcements include the common-uncommon infected, modified common infected specific to each level. One can guess that the hazmat, fire retardant infected are one example of this innovation, but Valve has specifically named Mud Men from, I assume, Swamp Fever as common-uncommon infected. They will crawl and move very quickly.
That video actually shows off quite a bit. You can see the residue from a Spitter quickly take down Coach and Ellis and Nick is knocked away from the group and savagely beat against the ground by a Charger (the little arm is so funny looking) while Rochelle is overwhelmed by common infected. It looks intense.
The Fortress
Everyone loves Dwarf Fortress-related comics. Matt and Ian at Three Panel Soul have put together yet another strip.
Man Do I Love “Paperback Writer”
While we’re far away from the subject of The Beatles: Rock Band, how about I post the new gameplay trailer?
I need this game when I get back from Japan.
Time for Updates!
The Xbox 360 dashboard will be updates on 11 August. New features seem to be their games on demand service, movie parties (think MSTK3000), and an avatar marketplace so you can buy gear for your Mii knockoff.
Grand Theft Advertising
Chicago poked the bear by prohibiting the advertising of games rated M on their public transportation ad spaces while not also prohibiting the advertising of R-rated movies. The suit comes from the ESA who claims that the whole thing defies the first amendment. Nice work getting yourselves in trouble Chicago. Was it really worth it to get rid of GTA IV ads?
I figured I’d start with BlazBlue today, since the game just came out and I sunk an evening in playing it. I don’t have all that much to say about it yet, but it’s intriguing in a very not Street Fighter way. The fighters are all insanely detailed and designed in an intricately anime fashion, leaving no moe niche unserved and the fighting system is deceptively simple, but actually WAY complicated, as most of these things are nowadays. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to sink into it, especially because Street Fighter IV has nabbed my attention yet again, but I will keep posting impressions as I play.
Get BlazBlue!
Get Street Fighter IV!
Indie Darling Gets on XBL
Fez has been confirmed for 2010 release on XBL, according to Giant Bomb. I don’t know much about the game other than that the press loves it and you play as this little white dude with a block head. I’m sure someone out there is jumping for joy, but then crying a little bit because it means the 2009 release date has been pushed back. There, there.
Brilliant Game Design
Giant Bomb reports that Tekken 6 has finally gotten it right. The game will ship with all of the characters unlocked. Honestly, this is some of the best news that could have hit for a fighting game and I hope that other developers take up this and make it a trend. There’s no reason why players who just want to get playing online should have to spend hours completing menial tasks against the AI just to get access to the hidden players. Heck, if I didn’t bother with that I would never have unlocked Cammy, my Street Fighter IV main. I know there are legitimate reasons for doing this, namely to increase the longevity of the game that a consumer purchased, but how about making things like costumes or colors (the second of which is already a SFIV unlockable) the real secret content. Extra stages are also acceptable, since they have no real gameplay significance in, say SFIV. Either that or include an option, like in Rock Band 2, where you have all of the content unlocked, but achievements are disabled. This would be far preferential to the current methodology currently en vogue.
Now the world will know about your phat lewt
I know what you’re thinking: I love to tweet and I love to play WoW, but goddammit, it’s far too difficult to do both at the same time. I have to Alt-Tab and everything! TweetCraft has got the solution for you, an in-game Twitter client. With Peggle already integrated within WoW, I’m starting to wonder what other apocalyptic life-distracting measures are going to be added in the future.
Sad Half Year for the Japanese Bottom Line
Gamasutra reports that the Japanese gaming market is down a scary 25% in the first half of the year so far. Dan reports that perhaps we’re prematurely worried? Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, as of 8 July, has sold some ungodly 3.5 million or so units in the country while this Saturday will see the monumental release of Dragon Quest IX on the Nintendo DS (forecasts say there are already 2 million pre-orders put down for the game), and the recent release of Wii Sports Resort has seen major success as well. I think it should be a healthy year for Japan, it’s just been stacked toward the second half.
L4D2…Kinda Sounds like a Droid, no?
In unsurprising news, Valve has announced that players who pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 will have early access to the demo. This is pretty much exactly what happened with Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2, so no surprises here.
Other neat news claims that players will have access to a cricket bat a la Shaun of the Dead.
Also reported was a rumor that L4D players might be able to interface in a meaningful way with L4D2 players, meaning a less fractured player base. I hope they get it worked out; online games live and die by their player base and dividing it is never wise.
Bonus Left 4 Dead Sackboy Images!
Get Left 4 Dead!
Look! A Three-Headed Monkey!
Ok, so it doesn’t include that game, but Lucasarts is releasing a classics collection via Steam that includes seminal adventure titles such as The Dig, LOOM, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It’s great news to see that they’re finally capitalizing on their adventure game library and it, combined with the re-release of The Secret of Monkey Island, gives me some confidence that we might see other HD remakes. Day of the Tentacle remake, anyone?
Mega Awesome
Tired of adorable Mega Man videos? I’m not. Enjoy.
That kid’s little brother sure is a pain…reminds me of my childhood.
BONUS ATARI REMAKE MEGA MAN VIDEO:
Music Was Better in the Past
I’m not sure if there’s actually a re-release of the Chrono Trigger Soundtrack imminent in Japan, but this recent trailer sure seems to suggest something of the sort.
If it is being re-released, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out in September when I head over to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Get Chrono Trigger DS!
It’ll Soak Up Water!
I’m pretty sure you all know that I adore the folks over at Giant Bomb. Here’s their hilarious commercial for their iPhone app. I won’t be getting it (too much $$ for my tastes), but the commercial sure is funny.
Critical Much?
Says famed game designer Fumito Ueda regarding news that Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired by Shadow of the Colossus and built a level around that:
Yes I have played it, it was hard to not to since it was rumored that Miyamoto-san was inspired by me. But I had expected more, that segement {SIC], was like the rest of the game not so fun as it could had been. I think the fans made a big deal out of nothing when they said Miyamoto had stolen from me. The thing I am critical over isn’t that they didn’t borrow anything that isn’t unique for my game, but that they didn’t make more fun stages out of it.
To clarify, the level in question is the boss fight on the small planet where Mario must guide Bullet Bills to sensitive spots around a giant robot to defeat the boss. Way to be a jerk Ueda. I mean, your games are held to ridiculous artistic plateaus that Miyamoto’s have never been elevated to. It’s like comparing pop art to Picasso or something. I’m not saying that Miyamoto’s not a genius in his own right, but rather that the man doesn’t need to ape Ueda to make a fun game. The boss fight was a homage, not a direct attempt to bring Shadow of the Colossus to Super Mario Galaxy. There’s no need to get so pretentious!
Bonus Fact: Picasso’s full name is: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. I guess it makes sense that he only went with the first and last part, that would be hell to sign on all of his works.
Get Shadow of the Colossus!
Back Away From That Sun
Speaking of Miyamoto-san, he had this to say about all of the people clamoring for a new Kid Icarus sequel:
Wait, please.
There you have it. Chill out guys, it’s coming.
Nobody Likes a Guy Who Plays to Win
Professor David Myers, under the guise of science, played City of Heroes for a while to find out about the psychology of social groups. His account, published as Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt came to a predictable conclusion.
It seems that when Myers PvPed and fought with what are considered “cheap tactics” he was alienated and hated by everyone on the server, including people on his own faction. Myers stuck harshly to the rule set, but took the whole Heroes vs. Villains thing way too seriously for most, choosing not to adhere to social conventions within the game. To be fair, it’s pretty lame to have these accepted “Let’s not fight” zones in PvP areas. I mean, it reeks of grade school playground, doesn’t it? Anyway, it confirms what we already know about MMORPGs, the prevailing culture within the server trumps in-game rules and some things just become conventionally taboo. It’s the same with real life. For more interesting reading, check out Malcom Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker entitled How David Beats Goliath. It’s brilliant reading and conveys a lot of the same points without being a thinly veiled excuse to play City of Heroes for hours on end.
Whoops! Here’s More Work!
Back to Shigeru Miyamoto. It seems that he accidentally forced the Wii Sports Resort developers to include Golf within the game.
Says Takayuki Shimamura
“Right after getting back to Japan, he suddenly said: “You know we’re including golf now.” Apparently he’d stated in an interview that this time round golf shots would be determined by the backswing, even though at that time a golf game didn’t exist in any shape or form!”
How’s that for an origin story?
Houston…Well, I guess you can guess what comes next…
Battlefield 1943 came out this week! Kind of. The game is unplayable as of right now (as of when I write this). Servers are clogged and some users can’t even launch the game. Money well spent, I guess…
EDIT: It appears to be up and working properly now. EDIT 2: Whoa, I’m wrong. Still wonky for the most part.
This is terrible news for a small, online arcade game like this. Games like these live and die by reputation and first week experiences, unless the Battlefield pedigree will carry it until they get it fixed.
Happy Fourth of July!
Recent statistics packages on my blog allowed me to browse search terms that lead to my site. So here’s what you’ve been searching in July along with relevant links and/or answers to your questions.
mlb power pros 2009 - 68 hits
MLB Power Pros continues to be a strong draw for my blog since I’m probably one of the few guys who talks about it. Real shame too, because it’s such a great game. Many come to the blog hoping to find news about the 2009 edition, but, if they’ve hit up my post they know that I’m skeptical that the game will come stateside.
vinny caravella – 21hits
persona 4 endurance run - 14 hits
Embedding the Persona 4 Endurance Runs on this website has had a profound effect on my traffic as Vinny Caravella and the Endurance Run itself seems to draw quite a bit of traffic to me.
server.ericsbinaryworld.com – 14 hits
Not too surprising, the root search for my brother’s server yields my website.
pokemon platinum evolution table – 13 hits
I’m not quite sure what a Pokemon Platinum evolution table is, but you can find good pokedex resources at Marriland and Serebii.net
dwarf fortress stories – 12 hits
Clearly a reference to these two posts: (1, 2), folks looking for Dwarf Fortress stories can also find some great ones at the official forums. Other options include the fantastically hilarious story of BoatMurdered and the more serious, but still fun Nist Akath
claudia black nude – 11 hits
Claudia Black, newest addition to the Uncharted franchise, seems to be a rather popular figure on the blog. According to this VERY NSFW SITE, she has never done any nude roles. Sorry guys, tough luck.
power pros 2009 – 7 hits
See above!
mai shiranui nude – 6
This one shouldn’t really be all that hard to find people, seriously! Here’s are VERY NSFW links. I don’t know if that’s the best stuff out there, but I’m not really willing to look.
fallout 3 vegas – 5 hits
No real news on this.
persona 4 review – 5
No doubt searching for my review.
giant bomb achievements – 5 hits
My achievements. Let me show you them.
i bring nothing to the table – 4 hits
The URL. You can’t miss it, it’s right at the top of the screen.
timon - 4 hits
I’m guessing they mean the meerkat, but just in case, here’s a disambiguation.
gears of war 2 exp table - 4 hits
Are you referring to the new experience system? Google also gets confused cause the word Table is in my URL, despite it having nothing to do with GoW 2.
endurance run persona 4 – 4 hits
See above
metal gear solid 4 proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good – 4 hits
Totally wrong. MGS4 has FANTASTIC gameplay. It’s the story that’s seriously lacking. mlb power pros 2009 release 4
bubblegum crisis hentai – 3 hits
Kicking it old school, huh? Not sure if this link will ever work, but please don’t make me keep searching for this stuff…
pete mccullough bass – 3 hits
The bassist for Streetlight Manifesto. Their URL can be found here
endurance run persona – 3 hits
tabel van dempster – 3
I have no idea what this is or why it leads to me. Probably because my site contains the word Table and I’ve spoken about Ryan Demptser
youtube mariano rivera major league at bat – 3
Mariano Rivera got himself his first RBI on the same day he got his 500th save. What a milestone! MLB doesn’t allow video of their games on Youtube, but you can try their website. No guarantee how long it will be up.
mlb power pros 2009 wii – 3 hits “mlb power pros 2009″ – 3 hits
nothingtothetable.com – 3
My fantastic URL!
kings quest princess bride clues – 3
One big problem with this search term: It should be King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. Other than that, you can find some FAQs and walkthroughs here.
the gregory brothers – 3 hits
I love Auto-Tune the News. You can find the Gregory Brothers URL here.
best dwarf fortress stories – 3 hits
pokemon fight table – 2 hits
Again, see above.
streetlight manifesto christian – 2
You know the drill. You’re also confused. There’s never been a member named Christian and this is NOT a Christian band.
super punch out super hard mode – 2 hits
Officially called Title Defense Mode, here are some hints.
dean strelau - 2 hits
A friend of mine mentioned in this post about baseball. I wonder who was google-stalking him?
gustavo sorola – 2 hits
One of the founders of Rooster Teeth. Very funny man.
youtube boston batter shatters bat against washington 2
Pretty dangerous event. The bat almost hit Nick Green and caused him to miss the fielding.
l4d zoey track jacket – 2
Surprising that I get the L4D track jacket (available here) as a hit instead of the nude Zoey mod post I made. No complaints here.
Just about every serious adult (and employed) gamer has one thing in common, regardless of his/her tastes: the pile of shame. It sounds a lot worse than it is, because it’s definitely not a stack of Barbie Horse Adventure games or anything, it’s a stack of games that have all received critical acclaim or come highly recommended, but that the gamer has no time to get around to playing, mainly because of other releases or just being too busy.
The perfect time for burning through this back catalog is usually the summer. Releases have slowed down in anticipation for the upcoming holiday season and developers have only just started getting over E3 preparations, limiting their ability to release in the summer anyway. Plenty of other people are taking this time to burn through their backlog, but I find myself unable to focus on the rather considerable stack of games I have in lieu of achievement hunting or just purchasing new games.
It’s a serious problem when I’m in Best Buy seriously considering buying Resident Evil 5, the latest in a series of games that I never play because I hate horror video games, instead of just going home and playing Dragon Quest V or Suikoden Tierkreis, both games I’ve never played and own, or finishing the remakes that I’d started like the DS Chrono Trigger or GBA Final Fantasy VI. I keep having to resist buying Gears of War 2, even though I’ve yet to finish Fallout 3, play the Uncharted 2 Beta at all, or milk the remaining content out of Left 4 Dead or Mass Effect. Then again, should I really be all that surprised? People love the brand new and the allure of buying a new copy of Ghostbusters, despite its middling reviews, is just a part of human nature.
The main problem with my “problem” is that I don’t really have the cash to throw around to just be buying all sorts of new games. You may have applauded my self-control in resisting RE5 and GoW2, but the real deterrent is that I just couldn’t afford to buy them. I’ve flirted with the notion of starting some kind of retro-gaming feature to motivate me to both clear my backlog and give me new, interesting (video game related) writing topics. Honestly, if I could take easy screenshots or capture video more easily, I might be more likely to try and do something like that, but it loses some of its allure to have it be text-only.
This may or may not still happen. I’m going to do some research into cheap video capture mechanics and if I can manage it, then we might see me start to clear through my backlog with accompanying screens or movies. If not, well then this winding, aimless post is just me whining about having games that I don’t want to play because I want shiny new ones.
Let’s start with a little NSFW. Remember that game Left 4 Dead? Remember how Zoey was a great example of a non-sexualized hero, something Valve specializes? Remember no more, because diligent modders have released the Nude Zoey mod (Kotaku story mildly NSFW, but no actual nudity in it).
The designer of the mod wasn’t happy with just slapping on a nude skin, nope, apparently it wasn’t complete until Zoey featured realistic boob jiggle. Modders have too much time on their hands, perhaps?
Three Part Harmonix
Want to learn some interesting tidbits about The Beatles: Rock Band? Check out this interview, courtesy Gamasutra, with Harmonix’s Josh Randall for more.
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Konami, developer of hits like Metal Gear and Castlevania, have come under fire for being giant jerks. Yoko Sekiguchi is suing the company because she took maternity leave and, upon return, found that she had been demoted and docked ~$2000 for her time off. She rightfully believes that this is discrimination and is now suing Konami for $344,000. Yep, that was brilliant Konami, you were assholes and saved $2000 only to have to pay legal fees and potentially $344,000.
Voice Talent
Interested in learning a bit about the two female leads in Uncharted 2? Here’s a longish interview by Sony with Emily Rose and Claudia Black:
No Mai?
Kotaku is reporting that Mai will officially not be in King of Fighters XII. I am announcing that I will not be buying KOF XII until/unless Mai Shiranui is added via DLC. So much for that…
Says Ignition Entertainment’s Shane Bettenhausen:
I think the thinking is that they are making you wait because you want her.
Looks like I’ll be making them wait because they want my money.
Death
Death in a single-player game is a fairly private thing. You do something stupid and, if your friends aren’t there, no one knows it happened and no one can even see it. Heck, if you’re playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince will even refuse to canonically admit that he died due to their unique narrative structure.
According to Kotaku, Demon’s Souls by Atlus is looking to change some of that with some creative coding. The system they’ve got in place will generate the ghosts in the game by recording other player’s actions. Other players can leave canned messages for other players to view as ghastly apparitions or just run around. The coolest feature was that examining blood stains on the floor will allow you to see ghastly representations of other player’s last seconds before dying. Totilo watched what was probably a beta tester’s ghost appear by a blood stain and promptly miss a jump, falling to his death. It seems pretty awesome in concept, that’s for sure.
Rhythm Heaven/Paradise/Tengoku
The latest Rhythm Heaven trailer has hit the nets and I can’t not post it. Come to think of it, did I post the second in that series?
Left 4 Fashion
Ever wanted to dress like Zoey from Left 4 Dead? Now you can!
The replica track jacket retails for $65. Awesome zombie-fighting posse and submachine gun not included.
SM…L?
The theme for Super Mario Land was way underrated. Enjoy this great rendition.
TWO-BITS
I leave you with Bit Boy!! The game has yet to sell me, but its concept is pretty cool.
