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The Best of 1UP: News

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 06:01 PM PST

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The Best of 1UP 2011: News

We look back at some of the best news stories of 2011.

By: 1UP Staff December 19, 2011

Every year feels like it's full of news for the video game industry, and looking back 2011 was no different. It was a year packed with plenty of highs and plenty of lows. While we saw no shortage of big stories in 2011, we don't want to overlook some of the smaller ones -- sometimes, they're even more interesting than the headline-grabbers. So, for example, despite all the excitement that Nintendo's new Wii U caused at E3, we were just as intrigued to learn why Project Draco won't work with an Xbox 360 controller. Together, these extremes make for a healthy mix that puts everything that happened in gaming this year into perspective. Check out the full list below.


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  • Wii-U Reveal

    Nintendo's reveal of its next home console, with a large touch screen that can be used in creative ways, was certainly the biggest news story of the year. It was so big at E3 2011, in fact, that Nintendo has said nothing significant about the console since and it's still what everyone talks about when they think 2011 news. We have lots of questions about how it will work, how powerful it is, and what the game lineup will be, but the creative approach got people talking in a way few other announcements did this year.

  • Ken Levine on Making BioShock Infinitely Believable

    Ken Levine dishes on how developer Irrational Games crafts BioShock Infinite's character-driven narrative and points out some of the studio's philosophy and tech during the creative process.

  • Why Project Draco Doesn't Support 360 Controller

    Director Yukio Futatsugi delves into all the reasons why upcoming Kinect game Project Draco -- a game that's reminiscent of the on rails formula from Panzer Dragoon -- wouldn't work using a regular Xbox controller.

  • Videogame Journalism Pioneer Passes Away

    The word "pioneer" is oftentimes thrown around with reckless abandon, but believe us when we say that Bill Kunkel was a true forefather of video games journalism. Without his creative vision, this site would not exist in its current form. As a co-founder of Electronic Games magazine, he saw the potential held within the enthusiast press long before it became a mainstream staple of our industry. Kunkel's work influenced every single video game-related website, magazine, and blog that followed, and for that we are all immensely grateful.

  • 3DS Price Drop, Early Adopters Get Free Games

    The last thing anyone expected from the DS's successor was for it to hit the market with a resounding thud. But thud the 3DS did, in large part because the smartphone gaming market had disrupted Nintendo's turf the way the DS and Wii disrupted Sony's. To their credit, Nintendo worked quickly to reposition the system, beginning with a $70 price drop less than half a year after its launch. Early adopters weren't forgotten, either, as Nintendo gave them 20 exclusive NES and Game Boy Advance games by way of apology.

  • Lack of Itagaki's Trash Talk Saddens Tekken's Harada

    In his closing comments during a 1UP interview at Tokyo Game Show, Tekken series overlord Katsuhiro Harrada lamented the absence of trash talk from former rival and Team Ninja general manager Tobunobu Itagaki -- a man who selected the first five Tekken games as his most hated video games ever.

  • TGS's Coolest Merchandise

    The size of the Tokyo Game Show in recent years can't match the event's former bi-annual glory, but the lines for strange merchandise seem just as long every year. We looked into this strange gathering and found Mario Dolls, $300-plus Bayonetta Glasses, and Resident Evil 5 gun replicas might land you in Jail should you sell them in the US.

  • PlayStation Network Compromised

    We usually associate security breaches with high level affairs such as Watergate or data theft that affected the banking industry. But in early April, the hackers hit our industry. After a sudden outage, which stretched into nearly a week, Sony Computer Entertainment America then admitted that there was an intrusion, and that user data -- ranging names and addresses to credit card information -- might have been compromised. It still remains as the largest and most public data breach in games, and a reminder that no one is safe.

  • Does a High-Powered Console Fit Nintendo's Strategy?

    A month before the Wii-U's official debut, news, rumors, and leaks about "Project Café" quickly surfaced. Again, since this was before Nintendo's E3 press conference, all we had to work off of was "a Nintendo system with high-definition graphics." Despite only having that morsel of information, we took a step back and examined what this possibility meant for Nintendo. And we also noted how -- despite readers' misgivings and theories about Nintendo abandoning its vision -- such a system was indeed in line with Nintendo's philosophy.

  • Hip Tanaka Shares His Thoughts

    EarthBound's soundtrack might not be the most important achievement of Hirokazu Tanaka's storied career, but it's one of the most memorable. Jeremy's TGS 2011 interview with the Nintendo visionary covers one of the 16-bit era's most idiosyncratic soundtracks, and the influences that made it so special.

Wii U Will Be at CES, Just Don't Expect Anything New

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 04:07 PM PST

Wii U

Nintendo traditionally does not have a presence at the Consumer Electronics Show. Following a report that Nintendo would be at CES 2012, taking place next month, Nintendo has announced it will demonstrate the Wii U for the media -- it just won't be doing it with anything new.

After months of rumors and speculation, the Wii U was formally revealed at this year's E3 in June. A variety of third-party games were shown, as were demos of Zelda HD, New Super Mario Bros. Mii, and a handful of other things. You might be hearing about those games once again in a few weeks' time -- CES takes place January 10-13 -- but we won't be talking about anything other than what was seen at E3.

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Over Sony's Anti-Class Action Lawsuit ToS

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 02:24 PM PST

PlayStation Network

A Terms of Service clause seeking to prevent PlayStation 3 owners from suing Sony or entering into a class action lawsuit against the company has resulted in nothing less than a class action lawsuit against Sony.

GameSpot reports the lawsuit was filed against Sony in Northern California in late November. This was done by a man on behalf of PS3 owners who bought a PS3 and signed up for PSN before September, when the updated version of the Terms of Service were released.

GameFly's Unlimited PC Play Client Enters Open Beta

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 01:00 PM PST

GameFly PC client

GameFly has launched a public beta of its digital PC client today, making it possible for all of its members to try out the Unlimited PC Play feature announced back in August.

An ongoing private beta allowed a select number of GameFly members to try the new aspect of the service for themselves. Unlimited PC Play, just as the name implies, offers downloadable version of certain PC games which can be played as much as you'd like. These don't count as rentals; you can still have a physical game out in addition to any PC games you download, but these digital games are only playable as long as you remain a paying member of GameFly.

Steam Holiday Sale is More Than Just a Sale

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 11:37 AM PST

Steam Holiday Sale

As if the Steam Holiday Sales in years past was not enough, Valve has decided to continue the trend established this summer of making Steam sales much more involved than mere sales.

Like the Steam Summer Sale, there are plenty of deals on games, including special daily deals. Today's include Fable III ($12.49, from $49.99), Just Cause 2 ($4.99, from $19.99), Portal 2 ($7.49, from $29.99), Sam & Max (the complete series for $12.49, from $49.99), Orcs Must Die ($3.74, from $14.99) and Metro 2033 ($4.99, from $19.99). There are also deals on bundles like PopCap's Complete Pack for $49.99 or the Super Indie Bundle (containing Cave Story+, Limbo, Revenge of the Titans, and more) for $19.99. Other individual titles are on sale as well, though there are far too many to list them all here. (Two that caught my eye: Evil Genius for $2.49 and Terraria for $4.99.)

PlayStation Vita Unboxing Video

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 11:33 AM PST

The PlayStation Vita released this weekend in Japan. While the rest of the world patiently waits for their turn to celebrate the release of Sony's next handheld system, 1UP's Jeremy Parish went ahead and ordered a Vita to bring you this unboxing video and impressions of the Sony's latest portable.

Silent Hill 2: The Last Survival Horror Game

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 10:57 AM PST

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Silent Hill 2: The Last Survival Horror Game

By: Bob Mackey December 19, 2011

Rape. Incest. Sexual frustration. Suicide. Euthanasia. If these themes had been at the center of any other game in ultra-sensitive autumn 2001, the pundit outcry would have been greater than the unanimous finger-pointing directed at Grand Theft Auto III. Yet, just a month before Rockstar's game dropped like an atom bomb, another sequel -- this one masking its controversial content behind layers of subtext -- snuck onto store shelves, featuring subject matter rarely found in a game. As the franchise's sequels would soon prove, Silent Hill 2 didn't go unnoticed, though it arrived and departed without much pomp and circumstance and met more than its share of critics.

So why, some 10 years later, do fans so fondly remember it as not only the high point of a long-running series, but also one of the most emotionally resonant experiences in all of gaming?

BioWare Aware of The Old Republic's Long Server Queues

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 10:13 AM PST

Star Wars The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is currently only playable by a select number of users who decided to pre-order the game ahead of its release tomorrow, and yet the wait to log in can, at times, be downright unbearable.

If you've played an MMO of some sort before, it's possible you've run into a server queue. At its most basic level, you're forced to wait to log in to a particular server because of the large number of users currently on it. You're of course free to move to a server that is less populated, but that typically means leaving your character(s) behind unless you're willing to pay a fee.

Alan Wake's American Nightmare Plays Like a Flannel-filled Shooter

Posted: 19 Dec 2011 08:00 AM PST

Alan Wake's labyrinthine plot and teasing dialogue that answered simple questions with even weirder questions tended to do two things: intrigued or outright alienated players. In that regard, let me lay down the basic story premise for the upcoming stand-alone and downloadable (think inFamous: Festival of Blood) Alan Wake's American Nightmare, so that you can determine which kind of player you are: Barry Wheeler (now a manger for the band The Old Gods of Asgard) falls asleep in his hotel room one evening, and on the television is a re-run of the in-game show inspired by Twilight Zone, Night Springs -- an episode written by Alan Wake and featuring, well, Alan Wake as he explores the remote Arizonan town of the same name. So it's very possible that this stand-alone downloadable title (longer than an Episode from the original game, but shorter than the actual game) is a tv show in an alternate reality that forked from the main game's universe due to the events of said main game. Still with me?

Remedy Entertainment CEO Matias Myllyrinne and head of franchise development Oskari Häkkinen both describe American Nightmare as a pulp action-adventure -- more in the vein of Quentin Tarantino than Stephen King. Using the television show narrative device (down to featuring that show's internal narrator as the main voice you hear as opposed to how Alan used to narrate his adventures in the core game), the developers use this to shift from making a slower-paced psychological thriller into a faster-paced shooter.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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