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The Best of 1UP 2011: Blogs

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 06:32 PM PST

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The Best of 1UP 2011: Blogs

A collection of the best stories from our editorial blogs in 2011.

By: 1UP Staff December 21, 2011

1UP's editorial blogs -- Retronauts, The Grind, Chiptuned, and all the rest -- enjoyed a renaissance this year. Old favorites were revitalized, forgotten blogs were relaunched and reinvented, and new ventures were set in motion. Altogether, our blogs represent a space where editors (and 1UP readers!) can share thoughtful musings and intriguing insights on topics both mainstream and arcane. Among other subjects, our blogs hosted in-depth discussions on major news events like the death of Steve Jobs, the potential retirement of Shigeru Miyamoto, and more. Check out some of our favorite entries below.


Jump to: Best of News | Best of Podcasts | Best of Blogs | Best of Previews
Best of Features | Best of Community | Best of Guides | Best of Video
Best of Reviews | Best of Retrospectives


  • Shigeru Miyamoto's "Retirement" is (Would be?) Great News

    A treasured game developer laments his position as corporate overseer? Gasp! Though Miyamoto never intended to tell the press he planned to wash his hands of video games for good, the pairing of his name and "retirement" in the same headline gave many gamers the vapors. In his take on the issue, Jeremy shows how a change in position for Miyamoto might be the best thing to happen to the Nintendo in years.

  • Like Skyrim? Here's What Else You Should Play

    Nearly everyone loves Skyrim! But it's not a beautiful and unique snowflake -- it's a damn fine execution of the age-old idea that we call the Really Big RPG. In this entry from The Grind, we outline a whole range of RPGs that offer different takes similar to the Skyrim experience.

  • The Dark Souls Death Diary: Part 1

    With the phrase "Prepare to Die" proudly tattooed across its marketing campaign, few were surprised by the difficulty of Dark Souls. Our Demon's Souls veteran chose to do something a little bit different by prefacing his review with a series of Death Diaries to chronicle the early steps of his pain and suffering.

  • Steve Jobs Almost Made Me a Millionaire

    After the death of Steve Jobs on October 5th, thousands of blogs flooded the Internet with thoughts on the man and his legacy, but few were as personally poignant as Jeremy Parish's. A day after the news hit, 1UP's Editor-in-Chief wrote this lengthy entry about how Jobs and Apple as a whole had a major impact on his personal and professional life for the past 25 years. Let's just say that Jeremy handles the theoretical loss of millions of dollars much better than most would.

  • The Silver Lining in the 3DS Price Drop

    When Nintendo dropped the price of its new handheld console from $248 to $169 four months after launch, message boards lit up with excitement -- fans felt concerned that they had just wasted $80, while some others were ready to pronounce the thing a failure. But in a noble gesture, Nintendo made a peace offering to appease as many people as possible over the news, with a group of 20 retro games for free. For 1UP's Jeremy Parish, that was a pretty big deal.

  • A Look Back at the Beavis and Butt-Head Game that Didn't Suck

    Bob Mackey celebrates the return of Beavis and Butt-Head to America's airwaves by revisiting the dynamic (?) duo's greatest video game appearance.

  • The Let's Play Primer, Vol. 07: Voiced Commentary

    1UP contributor VoidBurger assembled an all-star cast of Internet Let's Players to provide 1UP readers with the definitive example of how you absolutely should not create a Let's Play narration. Every nerve-shredding mistake you could ever make in presenting a game playthrough for entertainment is condensed here into one awesomely embarrassing video.

  • Figure Review: Street Fighter IV Play Arts Kai Chun-Li

    We love to focus on the culture that surrounds games here at 1UP, and created the For Love of Game blog in order to do just that. No post this year supports that goal more than this in-depth look at Play Arts' Chun-Li action figure. In this post, Jeremy Parish tests the limits of this ultra-poseable Play Arts Kai figurine and poses the following question: Can this plastic Chun-Li reproduce the exploits of her on-screen counterpart? Using sprite work from her appearance in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, he puts that thesis to the test.

PS Vita Video: Hands-on with Uncharted and Katamari

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 05:46 PM PST

We received our PlayStation Vita hardware from Japan a few days ago. Now we have games, too! Join me and Matt Leone as we check out the two hottest games for the system: Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Touch My Katamari. Both are Japanese retail versions, but interestingly enough Uncharted runs completely in English if your system is set to English-language. Pretty handy for us American types, eh?

Hands on with Uncharted:

Hands-on with Katamari:

BioWare vs. Bethesda: The Battle of the RPG Titans

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 02:02 PM PST

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BioWare vs. Bethesda: The Battle of the RPG Titans

We pit these legendary developers against each other in the ultimate Battle of the Time-Wasters.

By: Scott Sharkey December 21, 2011

The last month or so has seen our social lives utterly devastated by the release of Skyrim. And with Mass Effect 3 on the horizon, we can look forward to continuing to avoid our friends and loved ones when we finally stop playing in the snow with elves and move on to shooting/sleeping with aliens. It's probably a good thing that the release dates of Bethesda and BioWare's blockbusters never seem to overlap, but some rotten little part of me wishes they would be forced to go toe to toe in a knock-down, drag-out fight for the privilege of keeping me from getting anything done.

Once upon a time BioWare and Bethesda had a lot in common, but over the last decade or so the two premier Western RPG producers have drifted in such radically different directions that their games could probably be considered completely different species, or at least genres. Sure, we could just agree that different people like different things, and maybe some of us can even like both without any actual conflict of interest, but that's no fun. We'd much rather argue about who would win in a fight.

BioWare Recommends Avoiding The Old Republic's High Population Servers

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 01:32 PM PST

Star Wars The Old Republic

Even before Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially released on Tuesday, long server queues were a problem for many during the early access period. The long waits to play have only continued now that the game is available for everyone and, in certain cases, that's not about to change.

"As many of you know, we're experiencing high load and corresponding queues on some servers," said senior online community manager Stephen Reid on the game's official forums. "This is to be expected during launch, as a high number of people want to play the game, and for long stretches at a time."

Kojima's Next Game is Set in an Exploration-Friendly Open World

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 11:38 AM PST

With Platinum Games handling development of Metal Gear Rising and the future of the core Metal Gear Solid series unclear, Hideo Kojima is currently busy at work on a new game that will be less linear than the sort of games we're used to seeing his name on.

"The kind of game I'm making is some game that has a very wide entrance, a very open entrance," Kojima told CNN. "Rather than making something very cinematic, [I plan to] make something very free."

First Modern Warfare 3 DLC Debuts on Xbox Live in January

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 10:09 AM PST

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3

Update: Bowling has released the first screenshot of the content coming in January on Twitter. What you see above is the first look at a new level named Park.

Original Story: The first batch of downloadable content for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be available in about a month's time, but only for Call of Duty Elite subscribers on Xbox 360 at first.

Hironobu Sakaguchi on Final Fantasy I's Roller-Coaster Development

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 08:28 AM PST

Few Japanese game makers have had crazier careers than Hironobu Sakaguchi. He created Final Fantasy; he founded Mistwalker; his games have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Sure, his turn as a film director nearly torpedoed Square in 2001, but who can hate the mustachioed JRPG kingpin?

Back in the early '80s, though -- back when he was a shiftless college student and Square was a computer shop run as a side project for a construction company -- Sakaguchi's name didn't exactly turn heads. "I heard there was a neat computer shop in the Yokohama area where I lived, so I went over to check it out," he recalled in an interview published in Famitsu magazine this week. "They had all these PCs set up against the wall and you paid by the hour to use them -- PCs were kind of expensive back then, so it was hard to buy one all by yourself. There's a campus of [prestigious private school] Keio University in the area, so a lot of pretty smart college students hung out there. I think the president kind of figured the place would naturally evolve into a software house over time."

What Japan's Game Biz Will Be Like in 2012

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 07:47 AM PST

It's toward the end of the year, and Japan's Famitsu magazine is obliging in this week's issue by asking some people what 2012 is going to be like for the country's game business. They asked two analysts: Masashi Morita, who works for Okasan Securities...and Yusho Fukuda, the guy who writes the magazine's horoscope column.

"The Nintendo 3DS, released in the first half of last year, faced major difficulties at the expense of cell phone-based social gaming, which boomed by comparison," Morita said. "That started to turn around in the second half with the price cut and subsequent launch of several big-name titles. I'd like to see the 3DS regain its momentum in the holiday rush and use that to make bigger strides in 2012."

Japan Review Check: PS Vita Launch Edition

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 07:25 AM PST

The PS Vita is finally out in Japan, and this week's edition of Famitsu magazine finally features the editors' full roster of launch-game reviews. Their verdict? Pretty glowing -- nearly every time in the lineup, from brand names like Uncharted and Hot Shots Golf to less well-known titles like Ubisoft's Dark Quest received at least 30 out of 40 points, with only Michael Jackson: The Experience failing to impress much of anyone.

"[The launch lineup] is nearly all ports of established series," editor Reona Ebihara wrote, "but I'm glad to see all of them adhere to at least a certain level of quality. If you want the broadest picture of the Vita's capabilities, I'd recommend Dynasty Warriors Next, Power Smash 4 and Uncharted. Those interested in long-lasting gameplay could do better with Lord of Apocalypse or Hot Shots Golf 6. Dark Quest is also good fun, if not very flashy -- raising characters and collecting items is addictive, and you find yourself wanting to pick it up whenever you have a spare moment."

Posted by Shri Krishna

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