Only a few days after Capcom France’s boss Antoine Seux made some decidedly anti-Wii comments to French website Gamekult, Capcom Europe’s had to scramble their public relations fighters in an attempt to make nice with the world’s top hardware manufacturer.
A small, delicate statement issued by Capcom in the wake of Seux’s comments reads:
Further to comments made in a recent article on French website Gamekult, Capcom would like to confirm its commitment as a multi-platform developer and publisher of interactive software.
Kind regards
Capcom’s European PR Team
And that’s it! Short, to the point. Curt, even. Antoine Seux, you have been officially rapped over the knuckles for being a silly sausage. Next time, exne on the wiisucksne when you’re talking with the video games press.
(Though, you’ll note they don’t fall over themselves saying he was wrong…)
How can television manufacturer LG Electronics make its latest batch of big black rectangles stand apart from the crowd? While CES is full of bigger-than-last-year TVs and high-def 3D displays, it’s LG’s new “Magic Wand” that intrigues us.
The TV maker says that its new LE9500 and PK950 sets “incorporate a unique ‘Magic Wand’ remote system that provides an immersive interaction with the set.” The interface “brings together menus, component controls and even embedded games, which can be accessed using a simple remote that combines minimal buttons and gestures to control the on-screen activity, mirroring a ‘Wii-like’ experience.”
That would mean the circle is now complete, is it not? The Wii Remote, inspired by the television remote, has become the inspiration for a new way to control our high-def displays.
We’ve seen more than our share of motion control attempts at CES, few of them something we’d prefer to use outside of a convention center. But we’ll be hitting up LG’s booth to see if we can experience the “magic” of controlling a television this way later this week.
Cracked takes a thoughtful look at what five iconic v8-bit video game characters would look like if their sprites were magically granted life. The results are just a wee bit disturbing.
If archeologists in the far future unearthed a blocky, sprite image of Mega Man, what would they think? How would they translate the 8-bit into a real-life creature? Cracked’s Robert Brockway uses deductive reasoning to determine just that, with often hilarious results.
Its facial features are roughly 70 percent eyes. Being a visually oriented hunter, this is clearly a valuable asset. We can also see the relative size of the mouth is greatly exaggerated. This suggests the Mega Man robot was likely powered on some sort of bioreactor, where the gaping mouth would allow the maximum flexibility in consuming energy sources. Look at the size of the energy containers, for example: They are roughly the width of his entire body. In order to consume power-ups like these, the Mega Man must have had the ability to unhinge its jaw, much like a snake, to accommodate the largest possible energy refills.
See? It makes perfect sense, sort of. Robert also takes on Q-Bert, a Space Invader, Pac-Man, and Link. Let’s see how Link turned out.
Well now I’m terrified.
Video Game Zoology: How 5 8-Bit Characters Would Really Look [Cracked - Thanks Irixyu!]
With Sony’s motion controller due later this year, some of you may be thinking ahead. To the future. A future with killer robots, alien overlords and an Uncharted 3 that maybe uses motion controls.
We don’t know about the chances of the first two, sorry, but we do know that Uncharted developers Naughty Dog aren’t too keen on bringing the exotic control setup to their award-winning adventure series.
“We really don’t have any interest in using the motion control to do a third-person action game”, Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells told G4. “If we were going to make a motion controller game, I think we’d want to tackle it from the bottom up and make sure that we were designing the game around the motion control, the way the best Wii games are designed.”
This is something we’ve heard in relation to Microsoft’s competing motion control technology, Project Natal; that while both peripherals were initially shown off supporting existing franchises, it’s making more sense to developers to start from scratch.
Try and come up with a Wii Sports as opposed to a Madden 07, if you will.
Reaction Time: Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells Reflects on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [G4, via Eurogamer]
Sony and Panasonic have announced plans to increase the capacity of Blu-Ray discs (such as those used by PS3 games) from 25GB to 33.4GB. Hideo Kojima will be so pleased!
According to a report from Nikkei, the increase comes courtesy of some new ways to evaluate content on the disc. Or, in more technical terms, is thanks to new partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) signal processing, which “assumes inter-symbol interference, which makes it difficult to base optical disc quality evaluation on jitter, as is widely done now for Blu-ray and many other optical discs”.
Now, there’s good news, and there’s good news. Good news first: this advance will be compatible with all existing Blu-Ray players, as all that’s required is a firmware update. So the technology will find its way to PS3 games soon enough.
And the good news? The increase applies to all layers of the disc. So as soon as dual-layered Blu-Ray discs start becoming common, you’ll be able to fit 66.8GB of data on a disc.
From 25 to 33.4 GB per Layer, Even Larger Blu-ray Discs on the Horizon [Nikkei]
The trailer for the Awakening expansion to Dragon Age: Origins shows off some of the new faces we’ll encounter on our adventures in the new land of Amaranthine, along with the welcome return of a few more familiar ones.
The rumored expansion became official reality this morning, and now BioWare has posted this trailer along with some additional information at the expansion’s website. The most exciting news for me is the five new companions who’ll fight by your side, as exploring my companion’s backgrounds was almost more exciting than the overall adventure in the main game. That, and the return of a certain jocular Warden who missed out on the tail end of my particular play through is quite welcome indeed. Maybe he’ll bring back my damn Blood Dragon armor, the ass.
If your gold subscription to Xbox Live renews this month – or not, heck, this is a card with a code – Amazon is offering 12-month subscriptions for $34.99 which is 30 percent off.
That means if you have the dough now, you can save yourself $15 later. I’d say this is a run-go-get it deal. No telling when it expires, or when they run out of stock at this price.
Xbox 360 Live Subscription Gold Card [Amazon, seen via Blast]
The Scottish Sun – “Scottish Newspaper of the Year” mind you – reports that a woman gave her 42-year-old husband an ultimatum: Ditch that six-foot-tall World of Warcraft orc statue, or I move to Canada. Who did he choose?
Surprise! This is actually a story about rational people. He put the orc, which he’d owned for six years, up for adoption. “Dee means more to me, so he had to go,” said Robert Cushnie, a 42-year-old telecommunications manager.
Seems Cushnie had acquired the statue when a games store shut down. He married his wife in February, but she, standing 5-3 was mildly repulsed, if not intimidated, by the six-foot orc. The statue is now with an elderly couple, whose 16-year-old granddaughter adores it.
Oh by the way, the Cushnies are still moving to Canada, Dee’s country of origin. See? Happily ever after. We can do that here, too.
It’s Him Orc Me [The Scottish Sun, via HBG]
[Image via GizmoWatch; it's not the statue in question, but close.]
Waiting for me in the office upon my return from vacation this week was a copy of the Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer’s Edition. So many records in there. So let’s randomly highlight a few feats.
Ah, but let’s have some fun with this. The book’s about 200 pages long. So, write a page number in the comments section and, if there’s a world record listed on it, I’ll tell you the record.
I’ll start…..
How about page 45?
OK. On that page, we learn: “With 24.84 million copies sold, Halo is the best-selling first-person shooter franchise ever.”
Huh. Guess it trumps Doom.
The first 10 people to drop a page number in the comments will be told Guinness World Records. By me.
UPDATE: Scroll down (and click to reveal) all the comments below and you’ll see I’ve provided 10 records to 10 readers. Please refrain from further requests. I’m off to other ridiculous endeavors.
It’s like we’re writing a post together, a verifiable nominee for Most Reader-Friendly Gaming Blog Post Of All Ever.
In November, we reported that Eric Ruth Games was creating a Nintendo Entertainment System-style Left 4 Dead “de-make” for January. Guess what? It’s January. And the game is now available for free download for PCs.
Here’s a description of the game from Eric Ruth’s official site:
Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead is a retro de-make of Valve’s hit zombie killing masterpiece. Lovingly recreated in a fashion that would have been acceptable in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, this de-make stands as the flagship title of the upcoming Pixel Force series from Eric Ruth Games. Go alone, or invite a friend for 2 player co-op against the zombie apocalypse in all 4 of the original game campaigns. 2 difficulties and all 4 of the survivors make a glorious 8-bit appearence, complete with first and second tier weapons scattered along your path to escape. So, grab your controller of choice and kick back with an award-winning retro take on the end of the world with Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead.
You can download the game from several sites, all linked from the Eric Ruth page.
Here’s Left 4 Dead’s Death Toll mission rendered in Ruth’s game:
Team Kotaku has not played the game yet, so we can’t tell you if it’s any good. But, hey, how about you tell us?
Thanks to Strategy Informer for the tip. That site is among those hosting the game for download.
Only a few days after Capcom France’s boss Antoine Seux made some decidedly anti-Wii comments to French website Gamekult, Capcom Europe’s had to scramble their public relations fighters in an attempt to make nice with the world’s top hardware manufacturer.
