General gaming

General gaming

1UP's Holiday Buyer's Guide 2011

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:05 PM PST

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1UP's Holiday Buyer's Guide 2011

Need a few pointers for your game-related holiday shopping? Let 1UP's editors steer you right with their personal picks.

Holiday Buyer's Guide 2011

It's time once again for the annual frenzy of holiday shopping, as retailers rush to cut prices low enough to entice you to buy so much merchandise in the space of a month that the global economy is miraculously saved despite the bargain-basement prices and loss leaders. And, as always, 1UP is only too happy to help steer you in the direction of the best and most noteworthy games (and game-related goods) available this year to help ensure a 0% gift returns rate for everyone on your shopping list.

Rather than simply run through the most highly rated games of the year, we've chosen instead to speak up for our personal favorites. These are the games we'll be picking up for our own friends and loved ones (shhh, don't tell) -- and if they're good enough for us and our own, we think they're worthy of you and yours as well.

Browse by category:

Vita's First-Party Launch Lineup in PAL Territories Includes a New MotorStorm

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 04:15 PM PST

PlayStation Vita will be out in less than a month, on December 17, in Japan, and it'll follow in North America and Europe on February 22. With Sony hosting a Vita-focused event in London today, the first-party launch lineup for the system in PAL territories -- including Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia -- has been officially confirmed.

Among the titles that will be available alongside the system on February 22 are many of the usual suspects: Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, Little Deviants, and Super Stardust Delta. One of the surprise titles is the newly-announced MotorStorm RC, a new racing game in the works at series developer Evolution Studios.

Black Friday Videogame Deals - 2011 Edition

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 02:05 PM PST

Black Friday

Black Friday is just a few days away, and for many shoppers in the United States it's even an more exciting day than Thanksgiving. This year features no shortage of deals on videogames and videogame systems; the struggling economy has resulted in retailers going all-out to get people into their stores (or onto their websites), as evidenced by a number of stores opening on Thursday as opposed to waiting for midnight or early Friday morning.

Below you'll find the highlights of this year's videogame sales from many of the nation's top outlets like Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart -- even the Xbox Live Marketplace is having a big sale. Amazon is currently in the middle of a Black Friday week special, but its deals set to launch on Friday are currently unknown.

From Computer Nerd to Dragon Quest Programmer: The Koichi Nakamura Story

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 11:02 AM PST

47-year-old Koichi Nakamura is one of those guys who joined the Japanese game industry early on and never quite left it. His company Chunsoft (which will formally merge with Spike next year) has held an influential role in the business for years -- it programmed all of the Dragon Quest games until the sixth; it created the "sound novel" adventure genre, and it also pioneered the randomly-generated dungeon RPG genre on consoles with titles like Shiren the Wanderer. Way back in the day, however, it was just Koichi Nakamura. And Koichi Nakamura was an abashed computer nerd.

"I was living out in the rural areas of Shikoku [western Japan] back in high school," he told Famitsu magazine for their retro-gaming column. "I didn't have anyplace to sell my games, so getting them published in magazines was the best I could do. It was over an hour by train to the nearest computer store, and that was the only one in the entire prefecture."

Review: Real Honest Fighting Never Looked so Good as it Does in The King of Fighters XIII

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 11:00 AM PST

In a day where matches can't seem to be won without the use of some crazy comeback mechanic, one has to wonder what happened to all the real honest fighting games. I miss the days when you're down to your last sliver of life, and nothing was going to save you except flawless execution and the will to win. While we've seen some old classics come back on XBLA/PSN, for the most part I had given up hope on ever seeing a game that didn't have some gameplay mechanic that resulted in easy-mode comebacks.

That is, until I laid my hands on King of Fighters XIII.

Four Million Gamers Using Call of Duty Elite, One Million Paying to Do So

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 10:30 AM PST

Call of Duty Elite

Call of Duty Elite is an interesting subject as it's the first service of its kind. Whether it succeeds or fails -- and there have been predictions it'll do both -- is, unfortunately, no indication of whether a comparable service would follow suit as no game has the sort of user base that Call of Duty does. Regardless, while the service is still not at 100 percent, it managed amass four million registrations after only six days, one quarter of which are paying for premium memberships.

That's a full one million people who shelled out extra to gain access to Elite's premium perks which include access to all downloadable map packs, Elite TV access, extra storage space for replay videos, daily tournaments where real-life prizes can be won, and more. It comes at a cost of $49.99 per year, although the $100 Hardened Edition of Modern Warfare 3 included a year's worth of access for free.

Japan Review Check: Mario Kart 7, Sonic Generations

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 10:23 AM PST

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

- Mario Kart 7 (10/9/9/9, 37 points): The point winner in this week's issue was a pretty predictable one. "The game's made so you're always able to stage a comeback, making it approachable and enjoyable for anyone," Famitsu wrote. "Competing for time is also exciting, and there's more than enough room for hardcore play here. The Community feature makes netplay a lot more accessible than before, and finding opponents via Street Pass is also impressive. It's really exciting to think how the community's going to unfold."

Xbox Dashboard Update Adds Cloud Storage, Kinect Control, and More in December

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 09:24 AM PST

Xbox fall dashboard update

After months of waiting, Microsoft has finally provided a release date for the upcoming Xbox 360 fall dashboard update: it'll be out on December 6.

The free download adds a wide variety of features, including those we first heard about during E3 in June. The redesigned look of the dashboard lets Kinect owners navigate it with either gestures or voice control -- the latter is also one way of using the new search functionality that will allow you to find content on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more. As this is a Microsoft product, search is powered by Bing.

Yasunori Mitsuda on 10 Years of Indie Music Composing

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 09:12 AM PST

It's been ten years since Yasunori Mitsuda, the vaunted composer on classics like Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, founded Procyon Studio and began a new life as an independent game-music guy. "When I left Square, my intention was to become a solo composer," he told Famitsu magazine in an interview published this week. "However, when Monoloth Soft contracted me to work on Xenosaga Episode I, I wound up handling not just composing, but the entire sound package, including programming and SFX. Hooking up with the staff there made me realize that being able to provide a complete package like that allows me to be much more closely involved with the game and its creators, and that results in much higher-quality results. So I formed the company with that group from Xenosaga, a few people I had known for a long time."

Despite that initial success going indie, the studio faced some pretty rocky times at first. "There was a period of around two years after we established the company where there was pretty much no work," Mitsuda recalled. "It wasn't easy. If you don't have any work, then everyone in the office starts to lose steam and the whole atmosphere starts to fall apart. At the time, all of us in the company were pretty much equal and we'd all handle our own company negotiations to get work, but ultimately what that meant is nobody ever did anything. There was a point where I considered disbanding the outfit because there was no real point to us having a company like that. By the time we were about to disband, enough of the staff had quit that ultimately we were down to the three people we founded the company with."

Miyamoto Talks Up Mario Kart 7

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 08:23 AM PST

Given all the attention devoted to Zelda the past few days, it may perhaps be easy to forget that Mario Kart 7 is hitting the 3DS December 4, less than two weeks away. It's coming even earlier than that in Japan and elsewhere, and Famitsu commemorated the event by chatting up Nintendo software boss Shigeru Miyamoto in this week's issue.

Not that Miyamoto was rocking the boat -- or the tea table -- very much with this game, mind. "Mario Kart is a pretty stable series, all things considered," he said, "so production duties were chiefly handled by Hideki Konno while I mostly oversaw the complete picture. With Mario Kart Wii, that included the idea of the steering wheel, and with this one, that included things like the idea of adding hang-gliding stuff to Mario Kart. I make the decisions involving new things to build the gameplay with, in other words."

Posted by Shri Krishna

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