General gaming

General gaming

Skullgirls Emphasizes Jiggles (Not Juggles) in a Fighter Designed for Everyone

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 05:45 PM PDT

On its surface, Autumn Games' Skullgirls looks an awful lot like the sketchier kind of Japanese fighting game. You know, the one where the entire cast consists of teenaged girls with big boobs and small skirts, bouncing improbably and uncomfortably through one-on-one battles. That's Skullgirls, at least at a glance. The half-dozen or show characters the developers have revealed so far do a lot of revealing all on their own (wink wink nudge nudge), all in lavish, hand-drawn, high-definition artwork running at a slick 60 frames per second. That's a lot of detailed panty-flashing.

After spending half an hour with the game recently at New York Comic-Con, though, I was pleased to learn that there's much more to Skullgirls than lovingly rendered titillation. In fact, the fan-servicey bits do something of a disservice to the game. It's easy to make quick assumptions about a game that features a cast of female grapplers who mostly boast ample proportions, but the truth of Skullgirls is that it's crammed with far more care, detail, and consideration than any sleazy Japanese brawler I've ever seen (not that I'm much of an expert or anything).

Origin Used by 5 Million People Daily, Claims EA [Update]

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:36 PM PDT

Origin

Update: As expected, Moore didn't mean to say Origin sees five million users every day. EA clarified with 1UP that Origin has seen five million registered users. That makes quite a bit more sense than jumping from four million registered users to five million daily users in such a short span of time.

Original Story: Origin is still very much a work in progress, as you'd expect for a piece of software or platform that launched only a few months ago. Despite the short time it's been around, an impressive number of people are already using it on a daily basis according to Electronic Arts.

When Great Minds Think Alike: Six Game Designers and Their Cinematic Counterparts

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:35 PM PDT

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When Great Minds Think Alike: Six Game Designers and Their Cinematic Counterparts

These pairings might have more in common than you'd think.

By: Marty Sliva October 19, 2011

The art of filmmaking began with the Lumiere brothers projecting their 50-second shorts on the wall of a Parisian cafe in the late 19th century, and has since evolved over the past century into a three-dimensional spectacle. In roughly a third of the time, video games were born, grew, and reached an evolutionary point that's nearly identical with film's current standing.

When you take a look at them side by side, the similarities between film and video games are uncanny. Aside from being two of the more infantile art forms, they're also chimeras consisting of an amalgam of sights and sounds. And though they are both heavily collaborative mediums, video games and film each have figures that stand out as creative pillars of their respective industries. This is not a list of the most important or influential artists in their mediums, but rather a pairing of 12 individuals with careers, ideas and accomplishments that bear a striking resemblance to one another.

Xevious: The 29-Year-Old Portmortem

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:21 PM PDT

If you've played any of the five billion classic-game collections Namco has released over the years, chances are you've played Xevious. Originally released for arcades in 1982, the scrolling shooter was a massive hit in Japan thanks to its hidden secrets, challenging gameplay, detailed graphics, and oddly detailed background story. Namco has updated it several times over the years, most recently with Xevious Resurrection in 2009.

The story behind the influential shooter is all the more impressive because it was coded by a guy who studied programming for a whopping month before beginning work on it.

Final Fantasy XIV Boss on The Road to 2.0

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 01:50 PM PDT

On September 21, 2010, Final Fantasy XIV was released. On December 10, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada canned most of the lead staff, delayed the PlayStation 3 version indefinitely, and admitted that FFXIV failed "to meet customers' expectations." Even in an MMORPG industry that's laden with flashy launches and dizzying failures, it was a pretty crazy three months.

Once the dust settled, it was up to Naoki Yoshida -- the new producer and director of FFXIV -- to pick up all the pieces in early '11. "With Final Fantasy XIV," he told Famitsu magazine this week, "we lost the trust of a lot of people when the PC version was released, so the first issue to tackle was to really improve the PC version and get players so start thinking 'Wow, they're serious about this, maybe I can trust them after all.' With MMORPGs, the trust that gets built between the developers and players is indispensable."

Nintendo Hosting a 3DS Press Conference on Friday

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 01:15 PM PDT

3DS

It was just over a month ago that Nintendo held a press conference in Japan to go over plans for the 3DS. Apparently it didn't have enough time or wasn't ready to go over everything then as it has scheduled an event for this Friday where it will be talking about an upcoming 3DS firmware update, Mario Kart 7, and more.

The event is set to take place at 8pm Japan time on Friday, which equates to 7am Eastern and 4am Pacific Friday morning. It will be streamed in Japanese but we'll have your back with coverage (in English!) of any of the big announcements.

Keiji Inafune: One Year Later

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 01:03 PM PDT

It's been just about a year since Keiji Inafune, the Capcom game designer who created franchises like Mega Man, Onimusha and Dead Rising, left the company after 23 years. The resignation came after a long string of interviews where he lambasted both Capcom and the Japanese game industry in general for getting too soft and letting the West gain the initiative in his adopted business. In the ensuing 12 months, despite a lack of concrete game announcements, Inafune's been pretty busy -- penning two books, founding two new companies, and appearing in a long string of university lectures and online video conferences in Japan. Now he's formally back, with his twin outfits -- Osaka-based game think-tank Comcept, and Tokyo-based developer Intercept -- unveiling two portable titles at a conference earlier this month.

Famitsu magazine sat down with Inafune in this week's issue to get a bead on his future plans. Among the highlights of the interview:

Japan Review Check: Final Fantasy Type-0

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 12:16 PM PDT

A quick look at the highlights among the games coming out in Japan this coming week, courtesy the review pages of Famitsu magazine:

- Final Fantasy Type-0 (10/9/10/10, 39 points): A bit of a surprise here, as the PSP FFXIII spinoff (one that hasn't gotten a ton of hype overseas) just misses out on a perfect score. "The very serious story, which tries to get you crying right from the start, vividly portrays the fact that this is a deep, intense FF experience, something beyond just a side story," one editor said. "The follow camera works great and the game's overall a stressless experience. Co-op is novel and very useful, and it's addictive in how accessible it is."

Runabout Series Revived on 3DS

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 11:47 AM PDT

Runabout, a Japanese series of balls-out bash-'em-up driving games that arguably provided the inspiration for the Burnout series, is getting resurrected for the first time in eight years. Runabout 3D was announced for the Nintendo 3DS in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine, and original developers Climax Entertainment (not to be confused with the UK outfit called Climax) is back at the steering wheel.

As before, the game -- set in an open-world city environment -- has you working as a courier for a shadowy organization, carrying out "go here" or "do this"-type missions and causing as much silly damage as you can along the way. As you proceed, you'll unlock all kinds of new vehicles, from buses and bulldozers to motorcycles and even a Segway-ish thing.

Sega's Shining Series Returns to PSP

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 11:30 AM PDT

This week's issue of Famitsu magazine brought the first word on Shining Blade, latest in the long-running Shining series of sometimes-strategy, sometimes-action RPGs and the second one to find release on the PSP. The new game will look and sound familiar to fans, chiefly because series standbys Tony Taka (character design) and Yuki Kikuda (music) are contributing to the project.

The story concerns Rage, a young man who bears a mystical "Soul Blade," and Altina, a princess with the power to conjure up spirits through singing. They're journeying in hopes of restoring the earth's magical spirits, though exactly how they're doing this isn't revealed yet -- Famitsu's preview mostly consisted of background renders and character art. What is known, however, is that the fighting system will borrow a page or two from BLiTZ, the pseudo-realtime strategy system used in Sega's Valkyria Chronicles games. Hopefully this will provide a shot of novelty to a series which could probably use it.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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