Video Games
Monday, November 03, 2008
Nin-ten-do
I’ve had this stuck in my head for some reason. May you all suffer with me.
This commercial used to be on every single commercial break when they were trying to sell it (during cartoons, of course).
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Xboxing Again
I received my Xbox 360 today after sending it out a month ago because of the red ring of death.
It seems to be fine again. I had very few problems with it before the red ring.
Included with the console was a card for a one-month gold live subscription. A proper thing to do seeing as I couldn’t use my subscription for a month.
I’ve yet to test the movie we downloaded just before we had to send it in. Blood Diamond, and in HD. You have 14-days to watch the movie, and 24 hours once you start it. I hope I don’t have to pay for it again, or pester support more. I tried asking Xbox support about this on the phone and wasn’t understood. I then tried emailing and was told I’d have to call. Hopefully I won’t have to.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
The Potential of Wii
Jeremy’s down on the Wii, which is launching in two months.
I’m on the flip-side here. I have to give some credit to Nintendo. They’ve completely moved away from the “mine’s bigger/faster/prettier” thing that MS and Sony have going on and just concentrated on playing a game and having fun. I won’t make the same mistake I did with the DS/PSP choice. The DS continually puts out games I don’t recognize that well, but are really fun, and the Wii has the potential for the same.
I know I’ll be getting it, and early. The lineup does look “just ok” now, but I have a more open mind about what I might actually like after my experiences with the DS and hell, even the Xbox 360. The simple Live Arcade games sometimes keep me entertained more than the $60 blockbusters.
I think the Wii is going to be huge. More and more people have more than one console. This is where being #2 might turn into being #1.
While I think the Wii will have less games, it will have online play (Mario Party or Kart+online play might be bigger than anything we’ve seen yet) and the classics will be huge, even if the library isn’t (at first). I also think the price point is far from nearly identical.
As we wait and see how this plays out, I’ll be attempting to play my fair share.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Power Up Energy Drink
For when you need some ups to get that princess.
Found this at the Nintendo World Store. It’s carbonated, like 7up/Sprite, but heavy on the lime. I’m not sure how much enery this $1.99 can of whatever is supposed to provide, but it didn’t taste that bad.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
System Error or Phone Call Avoider?
Unless you haven’t used the web in a while, you know today is the launch date of the Xbox 360 (pimpin’ Amazon link, even though it’s not available from them yet).
Anyway, I was trying to see if EB Games had some other non-360 stuff in. So I went to the website, found the store locator and to my surprise - it’s not working. EB Games and Gamestop are one in the same now, and use the same store locator, so neither site has it working at the moment.
The real question: is there a system problem, or are they purposely not displaying locations (and possibly telephone numbers) because today is so hectic and 360 supplies are limited?
Here’s an EB Games locations list from Campus Circle if you’re looking to find one by you.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Atari Releases Faux “What’s That In the Background” Home Video
Ever see those Photoshopped pics of someone standing at the top of the WTC with a plane in the background? There are a good number of variations out there of different catastrophic events. The premise is simple: someone was taking a touristy pic and they accident grabbed something in the background.
Now take one of those home videos when people are randomly recording something and get some event on camera (police brutality come to mind for whatever reason, someone always has a camera around then it seems…).
Add those two together and you get Atari’s new viral campaign for Act of War:
www.how-safe-are-we.com
Via AdJab
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Evolution of Mario
An interesting look at the evolution of Mario. Starts with a good “did you know that?”:
It’s a well known story that when creating Mario - originally called simply ‘jumpman’ - Shigeru Miyamoto made him look the way he does because of hardware limitations of the time. He was given a mustache to seperate his nose from his face, overalls so arm movements were visible, and a hat because hair was hard to draw.
Found via SimpleBits via What Do I Know
1UP Baseball Preview
1UP takes a look at this year’s baseball games:
EA’s MVP Baseball 2005, Take-Two’s Major League Baseball 2K5, and Sony’s MLB 2006
Sony’s game is PS2-only, while the other two are available for Xbox, and only MVP on GameCube. Pennant Chase Baseball will also be coming out for GameCube, but there’s no solid release date right now. Mario Baseball is a baseball alternative for GameCube.
For another baseball game round-up, check out GameSpot.
I’ll be picking up MVP or 2K5 for Xbox, hitting up Xbox Live hard. Just have to co-ordinate with friends to make sure we all pick up the same one. Drop me a line if you’ve played any of them and have a suggestion.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
NFL and NFLPA Ink Exclusive Deal with EA Sports
ESPN is carrying the story about EA Sports signing an exclusive rights deal with the NFL and NFLPA. What this means is that team names, logos, uniforms and stadiums along with player names and likenesses are EA Sports-only now. Contrary to what some are writing it doesn’t mean it’s Madden-only, just EA-only, as EA Sports also makes NFL Street (under “EA Sports Big”).
Personally, I’ve always been a Madden fan. I skipped last season for the first time in a long time, but now that EA added support for Xbox Live and all of my friends picked it up, so did I. The game has some nice improvements over two seasons ago in all aspects of the game, but it’s hard to say it was all self-motivated.
Sega and ESPN teamed up to make a rival game a couple of seasons ago and has put together a solid product that rivals Madden in all reviews. Madden carried brand name, like Coca-Cola outselling a supermarket brand cola, and dominated the marketplace for years. ESPN wisely slashed the price of all their sports games this season in order to compete with EA. $20 compared to $50 was obviously enough of a difference to start making a dent in EA’s marketshare and EA slashed the price of Madden to $30 early in November. So now they have a rival gamemaker dipping into their sales and putting out a competitive according to most reviews. Instead of dropping price on the game permanently EA was able to slash ESPN’s jugular in regards to marketability by getting the NFL (and the NFLPA) to sign an exclusive deal for all things NFL.
Anyone familiar with the NFL is familiar with their exclusive deals. Visa, Pepsi (along with Pepsi product Gatorade) and DirecTV are all exclusive NFL partners. Anyone in a large metro area with no possibility of satellite or just anyone who prefers cable over satellite knows how irritating the DirecTV deal is. You’re a consumer with no options. It’s DirecTV or nothing (but broadcast and ESPN games). Not good for the out-of-market fan or the guy who wants to invite all his friends over each weekend.
So what good can come of this for the football video game fan? Probably nothing. I don’t think EA is suddenly going to scale back development on it’s Madden football product (or NFL Street, although with Midway not releasing a new NFL Blitz, there’s no current product comparison anyway); but without competition burning the speed of development can certainly slow down with little worry of a superior game coming out. Innovations in a competing product won’t appear for EA to mimic (and vice versa, as it could have been).
ESPN meanwhile is left to ponder whether or not they’ll even release a new football game. If they do decide to continue they’ll have to change the franchise name. “NFL” obviously needs to be dropped from it. Look for some nickname to appear in the title, like Pigskin 2K6. Phrases don’t fit well in titles and can misrepresent the game. For example, you can’t name a realistic football game “Two Minute Drill” unless you want everyone to think the game is all about the long passing game and speeding through your plays.
ESPN would then have to make up 32 team names, shouldn’t be too hard, just pick some “tough” names and some animals not used by NFL teams (example: how many times did you see the NY Knights in a generic sports video game?). Player names aren’t too hard either - but you do have to make sure that your generic Johnson on your made up Tampa team doesn’t accidentally match a position played by a Johnson on the Bucs, whether it’s Brad or Dexter.
What you do need to have, in order to have any hope of competing, is a fully customizable game, including at least these features:
- Stadium names and attributes (dome, no cover, movable roof, turf, grass, capacity, etc.)
- Player names and attributes (besides skillset, the look of the player)
- Team names and attributes (logos, uniforms, possible history)
However - that’s not the complete selling point of it - the ability to share your customizations has to be. This means you can put it on a memory card or swap with a friend online or even possibly allow people to set up spaces online to download from. Don’t worry - someone will do it. It’s the nature of sports fans. You might even see a loyal ESPN fan base split up the work and each swap a team or two until someone’s compiled all the correct NFL teams and rosters to allow others to download from.
Despite all this, it would still be tough to sell a game with generic teams and players. Besides having to do a little work to actually get the real ones in there, even if it’s just downloading them from a website, ESPN would likely need to fall back on to the generic rosters to keep online gaming fair.
In the end, fans do have to wonder about what will come from new Madden games over the next five seasons, and what they would have been like with some real competition.