61 Frames Per Second : pokemon

Trailer Review: Fez

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Fez? Come here a second. Let’s talk, you and I, of the way the world is. The world is a cruel and indifferent monstrosity, full of danger, heartbreak, joy, and satisfaction. The sun rises and sets on the just and unjust alike. We wake, every morning, guaranteed of but one thing: there will be a new Madden game this year. Chances are it will be good and people will buy it. Other things are not guaranteed but are most likely going to happen. Someone will make a game with a gun in it and you will shoot things with that gun. Some kids will trade Pokemon and they will laugh together about it. And, I hope, and I pray, that you will come out and we can finally, after so long, be together. Fez, the world can be a lonely place. Come away with me, Fez.

Anyways. Yeah. Fez came out of its hibernation den at GDC last week. It looks fan-flippin-tastic. Delight in its wares!

What looks good? The new interior environments, dope night and day settings, and the delectable new logo. What sounds good? The new song. What makes me believe in the promise of all reality? The release date. Woo.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Katamari Damacy Tribute
Behemoth’s Game #3
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Respect the Pokeymans

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:05:00 GMT

Confession: Pokemon frightens me. It's nothing to do with the dead eyes of Jinx or Psyduck, either (okay, maybe a little). The truth is, Pokemon is intimidating. It's a sprawling franchise that sucks you in waist-deep after two steps.

A skeptic who spares naught but a quick glance at Pokemon sees a bunch of cash-in kids' games that merely scotch tapes a few new Muppets to its roster with each new installment. So untrue. Oh, so untrue.

I was a self-proclaimed Pokemon Master through 1998-1999. No ten-year-old had a chance against my Nidoking, “AAAAAA” (“I choose you! AAAAAA!”). No job supervisor could tear me away from my heated matches for dominance—because I knew all the best places to hide.

I ran out of slacker friends to play Pokemon with, and I took a long sabbatical. A friend of mine bought me a copy of Pokemon Pearl, and I decided it was time to whup preschoolers again.

I quickly came to realise that the audience for Pokemon has grown up—and not all its fanbase dropped away as the franchise aged. Nintendo is well aware that there is a well-seasoned adult fanbase that is far beyond coddling Pikachu and drinking punch with Charmander in the shade of a big tree. They want numbers. They want stats. They want evolution and the abortion of said evolution. They want berries and balance and Ghost-types versus Normal-types and legendary dragon Pokemon that look unsettlingly like giant centipedes.

I thought I was all set in the world of Pokemon Pearl merely because I raised a Gyrados from a Magikarp. Soon, I was dragging “Super Joe” back to a PokeCenter on the end of a frayed rope leash. He smelled like a fish washed up on a beachside highway.

I mean, I imagine that's what he smelled like.

The haters are off their rockers: Pokemon isn't a kiddy sell-out franchise. It's a deep piece of work that requires equal parts skill, luck and memorisation. Granted, Pokemon doesn't punish you if you decide to strong-arm your way up to and through the Elite Four, but when I opt out of the fashion shows, I can feel my Bidoof burning a hole in the back of my head with his glare.

His pretty, long-lashed glare.

Related Links:

Gaming: A Throwaway Hobby
To Be a Pokemon Master
Summon Baphomet With Pokemon

Freaktastic Fanart: The Momachu

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:38:00 GMT

If you hold your breath and look slowly to your right, you'll see a rare thing indeed: a baby Pikachu, commonly referred to as a “Pichu” by zoologists.

Pichus weigh approximately four ounces at birth, and exit the womb with a faint yellow fuzz already present on their shoulders and backs. Over the coming weeks, this fuzz thickens into the striking black-and-yellow coat Pikachus are so well known for.

Also, I'm talking complete nonsense. But it is fun to consider Pokemon at their tiniest and most vulnerable. They're pretty interesting critters with a wide variety of talents, but I guess when you come right down to it, Nintendo's most famous mascot since Super Mario is a mammal. And mammals have an inborn set of instructions they follow when it's time to carry and raise young.

That's what makes “Momachu” by Dogsfather two parts fascinating and two parts disturbing. Pikachus grow up to shoot lightning out their cheeks, but first they have to drink their milk and grow up strong.

Momma is celebrating the circle of life just past the jump.

Click here for the full picture.

I wonder what's with the Pokeball in mom's nest. Careless breeder?

Related Links:

To Be a Pokemon Master
Summon Baphomet With Pokemon
Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS

Summon Baphomet With Pokemon

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:36:00 GMT

There's a lot of excited talk today about a game based on Dante's Inferno. This is great news. Speaking of the inevitable inferno, if any if you plan to die shortly after me, Minos is probably going to spend a long time getting through my list of sins at Judgement; just throwing it out there in case you want to bring your DS or a book.

Games have already experienced Hell on the literal and storytelling level, but sometimes the medium spawns creatures and incantations from The Pit by pure accident. The original Pokemon has a nest of ukobacks living in the cartridge, which probably surprises no one. When you make two MISSINGNOs fight one another, the unholy electricity awakens them and they start screaming. Observe.

MISSINGNO was a huge deal if you were on the Pokemon bandwagon during the rise of Red and Blue. Everyone thought it was some kind of secret Pokemon--the "Missing Number." Nintendo said, "No, you idiots, it's an awful glitch. Don't touch it!" And of course we touched it and fucked up our games forever. I'm confident about the direction humanity is going in.

Related Links:

To Be A Pokemon Master
Comparison of Wiki Articles Proves Geeks Inherited the Earth
Going Back In There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, Part 1

Yes, I Love Neopets Puzzle Adventure

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week, the NYC division of team 61FPS were treated with some hands-on time with some of Capcom's hottest upcoming titles, and there was something for everyone. Pete kicked all of our asses in Street Fighter IV, John blissed out in mid-air with Bionic Commando, and me? Well, I finally got in a few rounds of my most anticipated puzzler since Picross DS, Neopets Puzzle Adventure. Yes, that's right, I practically sleepwalked through Resident Evil 5 but was enthusiastic about playing Neopets Puzzle Adventure, and what might possibly shock you even more is that I loved it.

In case you've forgotten, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is a great big orgy of gaming goodness. It's being developed by the same team that did the sleeper mega-hit Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, published by Capcom in cooporation with Nickelodeon, and of course carries the surprisingly still popular Neopets license, one that only a few years ago was nearly as popular in North America as the unstoppable maelstrom that is Pokémon. The less said about my time playing Neopets from 2000-2002, the better, but this new (as the title accurately suggests) puzzle adventure is primed to bring Neopets back to the public's warm open hearts, and I couldn't be happier.

Just like the wildly addictive Puzzle Quest, Neopets Puzzle Adventure's story mode sets you in a colorful renaissance fantasy land with a large map of villages to visit, each with their own citizens, shops, and quests. Battles are portrayed in the form of a board game, only this time instead of slaying monsters and the undead by playing bejeweled, you are besting rival creatures by playing Reversi/Othello. To keep the action exciting, there are combo moves and a variety of special tiles for obstacles, bonus points or actions. Whereas Puzzle Quest's main game-changing mechanic was using collected mana to cast spells, Neopets Puzzle Adventure, much like its namesake, seems to focus more on the acessories, toys and pets your Neopet collects. For example, around the world map you are able to collect smaller pets for your Neopet to care for. These Petpets come into use in battle like spells did, with one I saw allowing you to swap any opponent's game piece you want for your own without costing a turn. The other noteworthy difference in Neopets Puzzle Adventure is that, in true Neopets fashion, you have a bit more control over your pet's presentation. Whereas Puzzle Quest only gave you a few classes (knight, mage, et cetera) and a couple of pre-established characters in each, this time you can choose the breed of your Neopet, its color, gender, give it a name and, of course, load it up with fashionable accessories.

With three flavorful SKUs and Nickelodeon's marketing behind it, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is reaching out to the casual gaming crowd in a manner I can only describe as commendable. The version being shown off most prominently was the Wii build and, unfortunately, it suffered from the very problem I was worried about. IR sensors are not consistantly accurate and the PR rep demoing the gameplay screwed herself over when a piece was placed on the tile next to the one she intended. When we then opted for a head-to-head battle on a pair of DSes, the game was fluid to the point of magical wonderment. It is worth noting that while filling as much as the board as possible with your colored pieces is still an important part of the game, just as important is the number of points you accumulate through special tiles and combo moves as the two are combined to form your final score and determine a winner.

I argued that the DS version will be the market leader, as the biggest target demographic already has DSes for all their pokémons and both puzzle and RPG games are best suited for portable gaming, but my friendly opponent made the fair point that the PC version could be big since that is where people are already playing Neopets (and a vast majorty of casual gamers don't own a gaming console or portable but play on their desktop). Plus, achieving certain tasks in game presents you with passwords to unlock special features on the Neopets website, which is much easier to do if you're playing both on the same computer, I imagine.

All in all, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is a refreshingly deep casual game with family-friendly graphics and hardcore-friendly customization and battling. The game hits Nintendo Wii, DS, and Windows PCs on November 25th for $39.99, $29.99 and $19.99 respectively. I, for one, am down for the DS version on launch day, and my Shoyru will freakin' eat you!

Related:
What Games Actually Appeal to Casual Gamers
Ranty McRant Rant: What The Hell Does Casual Mean?
Captivating Discontent: Where's the Nintendo Love, Capcom?
Resident Evil 5: Continuing On The Transformation Trail from Horror to Suspense
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved It's The Game And Not Graphics That Matter
To Be A Pokémon Master

All Ages: Viva Piñata and Building Games For Children

John Constantine — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT

I got no end of grief from Peter Smith when I started playing Pokémon Diamond a couple of months back. Pete’s no stranger to mindless grinds; the man’s confessed his many replays of the NES Final Fantasy games. No, he was opposed to Pokémon because, “It’s for f$?!ing babies, man.” The argument confused me. After all, Pete, like me and the rest of 61 FPS’ team of outlaw journalists, was raised on the 8-bit era’s simple designs as conceived by Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo. Though Pokémon’s billion-dollar audience is mostly made up of the Trapper-Keeper and Lunchables set, the game itself is in the age-and-gender-neutral mode that’s made Nintendo the corporate success they are today. “Family Friendly” is the accepted term but it’s just a media savvy way of saying that games like Pokémon, Mario, Brain Age, and Animal Crossing can be played and loved by very young players, but they aren’t games explicitly for children. He did get me thinking, though: Have I ever actually played a game designed specifically with very young players in mind? Not the Reader Rabbit-style edutainment so many kids have been subjected to since the early-80s. Just regular, old, played-for-fun videogames.

My first exposure to Viva Piñata was marked by cynicism. Microsoft’s monumentally expensive acquisition of Rare was just under four years old when it was announced and the partnership had yielded dubious results; bad sequels, middling remakes, one atrocious new IP, and another that had been years in development on three separate consoles before it was finally released. Between the animated series and the variety of brightly colored critters to gather in the game, Piñata seemed like a soulless and pointed marketing machine built for no other reason than to make Microsoft some of that proverbial Pokémon money. So it came as a surprise when the game turned out to be both a commercial flop (relatively speaking) and a critical success, praised for its peaceful, eccentric presentation while being ignored by gamers and parents alike. I never got around to playing the first, but its reputation brought me to Viva Piñata’s sequel, Trouble In Paradise, free of cynicism and curious about what I’d find. Turns out it’s a reputation well-earned. Even though Piñata is a brazen fusion of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing and Pokémon – surrounded by strange, brightly colored characters, you are given free reign to alter a seemingly mundane plot of land to your gardener-heart’s content but are tasked with gathering hordes of diverse fantasy creatures in order to level up and expand your domain – it is impeccably made, its charms difficult to resist.

What’s most impressive about Viva Piñata, though, is that it is explicitly designed for children. Where family friendly fare like Pokémon relies on tried-and-true game design tropes to remain accessible (simple but abundant text explanations, limited buttons, menus comprised mostly of lists, etc,) Viva Piñata relies on the language of children’s media to invite players in. When beginning a game, or garden if you prefer, you’re introduced to Leafos, a masked, soft-voiced woman who guides you through your first tasks. Rather than burden you with sheaves of instruction, Leafos points you to a small red and white symbol that will appear over your next action on the screen. The target can point to things as simple as your menu button or one of the first piñatas to enter your garden. She’ll leave you to find your own path, but when you succeed in any task in the game, she praises you for the achievement and briefly explains why what you’ve done progresses the game. You’re also scolded for bad behavior. Hit someone with a gardening tool, you get a warning. Do it again, and you’re punished by having your tool taken away. Over the game’s first two hours, you’re introduced to the other colorful characters who live around your garden and aid you in your endeavors, a cast whose similarity to Fred Rogers and Jim Henson’s compatriots is hard to ignore. After those initial hours though, you’re set free to explore and play. The game teaches and encourages the player through positive reinforcement in a secure environment rather than through text-based instruction and trial-and-error. Its hand-holding is never condescending or frustrating, merely helpful.

There’s the difference between a game made for children and any other. Viva Piñata, like Pokémon, can be enjoyed by everybody, but its design is built around how a child learns. It isn’t the toys surrounding it, just how it’s made.

Related links:

To Be a Pokémon Master
Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokémon
The B.Beard All-Stars: Hour Eight of Pokémon
Common: Rare Makes Bad Games
Raised on the Stuff

FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Time once again for a brief look at the Sega CD games that made us women and men (if you're currently a twenty-something, I mean).

The full-motion video in games like Lunar, The Silver Star is unique stuff for a few reasons. First, it was an unfiltered assault of glittery, shojo-eyed anime during an age when most game localisers struggled to hide any cultural evidence that video games indeed come from Japan. Of course, Working Designs is still known for taking some, er, extreme liberties with their own translations and localisations, but by God that's another tome for another night. All you need to know is that Lunar saw its US release in 1993, ages before Pokemon made anime mainstream (bonus fact: anime became mainstream in Canada in 1996, thanks to Sailor Moon recieving an after-school time slot).

The intro for Lunar is also made special by its...lack of animation. Maybe we were too busy drooling on the television screen at the time, but when you watch Sega CD intros in today's age of a thousand frames per second, you begin to notice that the "cut scenes" that wowed us over a dozen years ago are little more than kindergarten-grade cut-outs with pinned, movable limbs.

I'm being a little cruel, however. Lunar might not be the best-aged RPG out there, but like Sonic CD, it contains a lot of heart. And the voice acting, though nothing spectacular, is still a few notches above the horrors that would assault us on the Playstation five years later.

Still, a friend of mine claimed that the singing practise scene in Lunar (about 5:40 into the video) beat the hell out of the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI.

I'm...I'm really not sure about that.

Related Links:

Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going
FMV Hell: Sonic CD

Revenge of the Port: Dead Rising Shuffles, Moans on Wii

John Constantine — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The true death of the arcade came at the beginning of this decade. It wasn’t when gamers started opting for the comfort and value of playing at home; it was when home consoles finally started equaling (and surpassing) the technological heft of the arcade cabinets themselves. Sega, one of the only surviving arcade giants, signed the death warrant themselves when developing the Dreamcast and its arcade-motherboard-twin, Naomi. Games at home and games in the arcade, identical for the first time. The move may have had the negative effect of killing off the already declining amusement center population across the Western world, but it also had a significant silver lining: the death of the shoddy arcade port. Approximations of more technologically demanding games have been a staple of gaming in the home since the 1970s, but, with the exception of stray PC-based ports, downgraded game experiences have largely disappeared since 2000. Today, in 2008, the fracturing of the console space seems to be bringing them back in force.

Just recently, Koei announced they’d be bringing Dynasty Warriors 6 — built from the ground up for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, they said — to Playstation 2, a move no doubt meant to make an actual profit on their development investment. Today, Capcom announced that they’d be porting Dead Rising, the Xbox 360 Dawn of the Dead-style zombie game, to Nintendo’s Wii. Dead Rising was one of the 360’s first great games, a weird mixture of Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon Snap, and Resident Evil, the game put the player in a mall overflowing with hundreds of zombies in a number of substantially-sized environments. It’s strange, then, that Capcom is making Dead Rising Wii a port instead of an actual sequel or side story. The Wii hardware simply cannot put that many moving, AI-controlled objects on screen at the same time. But more Japanese gamers, and very soon more North American and European gamers, own Wiis than Xbox 360s, so bringing a version to that system will surely bring Capcom even more coin from an already successful creation.

It’s one more facet of the diversifying platform space. As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, we’re not heading to a one console future, but a more diverse console selection. Game makers will always want more people to play their games and, so, the days of the port are returning. Hopefully we’ll see more Bionic-Commando-arcade-turned-into-Bionic-Commando-NES than Street-Fighter-2-turned-into-Street-Fighter-2-PC.

The B.Beard All-Stars: Hour Eight of Pokemon part 2

John Constantine — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In part 2, I get in some nasty situations in the woods.

4:01 – My next destination is Eterna City. They may or may not have my bike. He-Man may or may not live there.

4:04 – Some kid just threw a Geodude at me. My own, Lebowski, rocked him. I mentioned the glacial pace of activity in my last Poké-log. I discovered that turning off the already limited battle animation speeds things up significantly. Fights are now just text and flashing monsters. It doesn’t sound exciting, but it remains engrossing. Never doubt the power of pressing a single number and watching a number climb.

4:10 – Another trainer jacked me. Even though all these random people just threaten you on your journey, they never carry more than one or two pokemon of their own. Very odd.

4:14 – Species diversity is another peculiar aspect of Sinnoh. Walk ten feet, everything looks exactly the same. But you’ll encounter entirely different species than you would less than a mile away. How do pokemon compete for resources anyway?

4:19 – Yet another trainer on the road. See what I was saying about a place that thrives on constant confrontation? Worse than GTA, I tell ya.

4:20 – The trainers on the road also have increasingly stronger pokémon as you go. Little obvious game fallacy right there.

4:25 – Lebowski just learned a new move. Would it really upset the balance of this game so much to allow your pokémon to learn more than four moves? It seems needlessly limiting, forcing you to make choices in the game world that make it more tedious than progressive.

4:26 – Apparently there’s an Eterna Forest that precedes Eterna City. Great.

4:28 – Thought this chick Cheryl in the forest was going to start some shit but she actually asked to join me through the forest. This is definitely new, an interesting twist this far into the game. Hope she doesn’t expect to share experience points…

4:30 – Cheryl’s using a Chancey, the first pokemon with healing abilities I’ve come across. That’s another thing that distinguishes Pokémon from the usual RPG: limited healing resources at your disposal. Money and items are scarce. How did a grind fest like this ever get so popular?

4:31 – Yeah, picnickers. Now your bugs are on fire. Never mess with PeteGabril!

4:36 – More creepy twins! Psychic twins dressed like the Wonder Twins! Their Abras killed Lebowski! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

4:42 – Eat it Wonder Twins.

I didn’t get my bike and I’m stuck in this silly forest that’s filled with bugs that travelers keeps saying will poison me. I haven’t been poisoned yet, but I’m getting pretty weary of the pace through Sinnoh. Sure, battles are a little bit speedier now that I’ve turned the animations off, but I didn’t cover very much ground in an hour.

Something I forgot to mention in the introduction was that I had my very first multiplayer experience yesterday. 61FPSer Derrick is playing through Pokémon for the very first time as well and he challenged me to a friendly match. The guy trounced the B.Beard All-Stars in just a few minutes; his team of water based pokemon let my rock, fire, and grass types know just what happens when their weaknesses are exploited. Afterward, I was eager to start expanding the roster and leveling up my existing creatures. Is multiplayer the only real appeal here? Is there even more waiting for me beyond Eterna City? When am I going to get my damn bike? Only time will tell, dear reader. See you next time.

Part 1

Related links:

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon part 1
Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon part 2
To be a Pokemon Master

The B.Beard All-Stars: Hour Eight of Pokemon part 1

John Constantine — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I wish I could tell you that I’ve gained some grand insight into the world of Pokémon. I have after all been wandering Sinnoh for just over a week now, clocking a little over seven hours. Things have not progressed much since I caught that Bidoof last Monday; I’ve been in some caves, gone to some other towns, kicked the crap out of some cult trying to give birth to a new universe. One guy made me talk to some clowns. Then he gave me a watch. It was freaking weird.

Pokémon is, pound for pound, the most violent game I’ve played pretty much ever. All you ever do is fight. The entire point of the game is fighting. There is literally nothing else you can do with the hundreds of little beasties you catch. You can give them fun names, dress them up with accessories, but all of it is in the name of making them beat the piss out of each other. Pokémon don’t kill though. The merely pound each other into exhaustion (which is really strange. It seems that none of them are predatory.) You see pokémon co-habiting and working — they are semi-sentient apparently — with other humans as you wander the land but you don’t get to engage in any of that. You can only fight. Every stranger you run into on the road? They will attack you. Sinnoh is a scary damn place.

As I enter my eighth hour, I am trying to find a bike. I’ve got to Lance Armstrong my way through some cave. Don’t ask. Join me and my team, The B.Beard All-Stars, as we look for the BMX of our dreams!

1:40pm – Just finished leveling GaryBuizel up to level 13. We’ve been in some mines fighting rock monsters and bats. She’s my Buizel.

1:44 – They All-Stars travelling with me at the moment are Lebowski the Geodude, Kulilin the Machop, GaryBuizel, The Artist Formerly Known as Shinx the Luxio, Stankonia the Staravia, and, of course, PeteGabril. Pete disproved intelligent design a couple of hours back when he transformed into a Monferno. He looks like someone remade The Warriors with monkeys. CAN YOU DIG IT!

1:50 – I’m currently trying to get from Jubilife City back to this crazy flower town filled with bug pokémon. I recently discovered that you can smear honey on trees to lure pokémon near them. How messed up is it that I’m tricking innocent beasts with sweet treats so I can shove them into balls I wear like jewelry?

1:55 – By the by, fishing is bullshit in Pokémon. All you ever catch is Magikarps. These guys are googly-eyed doofs that can’t do anything but take a punch until you’ve put them in a billion fights and then they turn into massive sea serpents. It’s indicative of how the game works as a whole; everything takes an enormous investment of time.

2:00 - I’ve left Floaroma Town again. Bought some honey, tried to get away from the creepy twins standing at the town gates.

Part 2

Where is Wii's Disaster: Day of Crisis?

John Constantine — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

The hardcore, the core gamer, the fanboy. Whatever you want to call them, it’s hard to ignore their bitterness toward Nintendo these days. I’m the first to admit that I’m one of them, but my frustration with the current king of the console hill doesn’t stem from their burgeoning commitment to the soccer mom set. It’s not even the lackluster treatment some of their core franchises (read: Zelda) have seen in the past two years. I’m angry at Nintendo because, when they first revealed the Wii and its initial line-up of games at E3 2006, they showed off two brand spanking new games, games devoid of Mario, Wario, Link, or any of the three thousand Pokemon, and neither of them have seen the light of day since. Project H.A.M.M.E.R., a fairly silly looking brawler, was actually playable at the time, but Nintendo announced that it was “on hold” as of summer 2007. Their other new IP, developed by fan-favorite studio Monolith Soft, was Disaster: Day of Crisis.

Day of Crisis has itself a fairly novel premise: you play as a chiseled special agent confronting not just nuclear-armed terrorists (not so interesting), but also the fallout from numerous natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and erupting volcanoes. From the very brief footage shown in the past, Day of Crisis looked like an action take on the Playstation 2’s bizarre Disaster Report games. Conceptually, it’s a good fit for a system with proven shooter controls and a great opportunity for motion controlled events (holding your balance during a quake, dodging falling debris, etc.) But, despite being shown here and there in 2007, Disaster: Day of Crisis has never been playable. As of April, the game had a July release date in Japan but Monolith Soft announced shortly thereafter that it had been “delayed indefinitely”.

So, Nintendo. Where the hell is this game you said you had two years ago?

Previous Where Is?

Yu Suzuki
City of Metronome
Indiana Jones 360/PS3
Doug TenNapel
Victor Ireland

Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS

John Constantine — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A strange thing happened ‘round about last October. For the first time since its release in April 2005, I was regularly playing games on PSP. I had been carrying a grudge against Sony for promising the world with their first handheld and not delivering even a fraction of the compelling software that they had on the first two home Playstations. But then, all of a sudden, there were all these fantastic games to sink my teeth into. Strategy RPGs like Jeanne D’Arc, old-school action like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and true genre benders like Crush had finally brought me into the PSP fold. The drawback? My DS went on the shelf and wasn’t touched for months. Oh, I brought it down when Contra 4 came out and on that rare Saturday morning that I felt like going back to my Animal Crossing village to do some weeding, stomp some roaches, and writing some letters. But I wasn’t playing anything new and I started wondering if the brief reign of the DS — not as a force of business but as a fount of compelling design — was over.

Man, was that stupid. For all of the greatness we’re seeing on the current crop of consoles, nothing can touch the dual-screened wonder for sheer versatility. My second honeymoon with the DS started with my introduction to the Phoenix Wright games, a series I was none too fond of at first. As I plunged deeper into the game, I became addicted to the story and the satisfaction of pushing it forward through simple logic puzzles. I never thought I would use a gaming console to read comic books, yet here I am, plowing through the second Phoenix Wright, loving every minute of it. I also mentioned last week that I’m taking on my first full Pokemon game, an experience that’s proving perilously habit-forming. My complete conversion back to the system came this weekend though. I spent time with games on opposite ends of the play spectrum, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and Shiren the Wanderer. Gaiden is a forward thinking action experience, a game as much about new ideas than it is about series tropes. Shiren the Wanderer is the pinnacle of throwbacks, a roguelike dungeon crawler as mechanically obtuse as it is simple to play. This is the essence of gaming on the DS, a constant barrage of new and old, design of yesteryear melding perfectly with fresh ways to, no pun intended, touch art. As the fall approaches and new console titles start dominating the gaming frontline, I’m sure I’ll gravitate back to playing at home. For now, I’ll be out in the sun, getting to know an old friend all over again.

Related links:

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon
Whatcha Playing: Ninja Gaiden – Dragon Sword
Whatcha Playing: How Many Buttons I Gotta Push

To be a Pokemon Master

Amber Ahlborn — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I am a Pokemon fan. Not a rabid fan but just somebody who has seen most of the movies when they hit Cartoon Network, owns a plush Pikachu (or three) and was quite disappointed that MewTwo didn't make the Super Smash Bros Brawl cut. But those are all asides, occasional distractions. When I say I'm a Pokemon fan, I mean I like the core games. I was aware of the series months before it arrived in America and dove into the Red/Blue/Yellow generation full bore. My interest waned after I played through my copy of Silver and like many a lapsed fan, I didn't start paying a lot of attention again until Diamond and Pearl hit. Having skipped a generation and a number of remakes, I found a lot of fresh and new material in Pearl, including how much more there was to training the Pokemon themselves. There are multiple layers of accessibility in Pokemon that makes it attractive to all manner of gamer, from the basic catch and battle to the whole competitive metagame. I have to ask, however, are we having fun anymore?

When you first crack open your fresh new copy of Diamond/Pearl you are presented with a very simple RPG offering up a fun little quest and not too much of a challenge. Welcome to Tier One of the metagame. Anyone can play at this level, anyone can beat this game. All you need to do is catch monsters with pokeballs, remember water types have an advantage over fire types, and grind, grind, grind to level up your monsters. At some point you may decide to put together a serious team you want to pit against your friends.

Welcome to Tier Two. The first step to serious training is to become more intimately familiar with your Pokemon, what their statistical strengths are and what moves they can learn. Crack open any guide book and with hundreds of critters to choose from you already have a lot of studying to do. You can even breed the little beasties. Pokemon breeding itself opens another level of detail; you can breed moves into a Pokemon that couldn't otherwise learn them. Pokemon also have innate traits and a variety of natures that affect how they act in battle and level up. At this point you begin to realize just how deep this rabbit hole goes.

If you know what Effort Values are then congratulations, you are hard core. This is the third and final Tier of the metagame. To turn those cute little 'mons into true battle monsters, fit to chew their way through the competition, then you want to max out their potentials. At this point you are doing some heavy number crunching and probably are a devotee of serebii.net. Every Pokemon has a range of statistical potential and how their stats increase is affected by what Pokemon they defeat in battle. This is where I just stopped having fun. Actually, I think I started to falter on Tier Two.

When I bought Pearl, I decided I wanted to put together a serious team. I wanted to do all of the breeding for traits and natures and train the little buggers to be the best they could be. Not long into this regime I realized something. This was work. In fact, it was an absolute chore and I really wasn't enjoying any of it. I had neither the time nor inclination to metagame this deeply and I wasn't interested in the super serious competitive circuit so, why bother? EV training actually put me off the game and now it sits, submerged in my backlog, waiting for me to finally get back to it.

Eventually I will pick up Pearl again. When I do it will be to play it in a more casual fashion. My team will not be super charged but I'll have fun with it. I'll also play with a different goal in mind, one no less Herculean but probably a lot more enjoyable. You see, I have never, ever, “caught them all” (or even come close). This time, all four hundred ninety-three Pokemon will be mine! Wanna' trade?

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 1

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 2

Comparison of Wiki Articles Proves Geeks Inherited The Earth

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

When teachers and talk show radio hosts moan about the decline of America's youth, they point out how so few kids can name all 50 American States yet can identify all twelve billion of Nintendo's Pokemon with seemingly no effort.

(The secret here is that Pokemon are fun and exciting where as geography is not. Oh wait, that's not a secret.)

For all the lamentations of our teacher-women (and teacher-men), it seems as if the generation that grew up with Ash Ketchum is ahead of the old fuddy-duddies. This GamesRadar feature indicates that the geeks control Wikipedia and they who control Wikipedia, control the Earth.

So what matters are given the most attention in the digital tome of knowledge that will soon be passed on to our children? Is it religion? Is it the rich history of the forefathers who founded the free world?

No, fool. Knuckles the Echidna takes precedence over all. Get your priorities straight.

Indeed, Sonic's sulky red buddy has 7,832 words dedicated to his life and history on Wikipedia. By contrast, God commands only 3,726.

Want to learn about the habits and motivations of history's worst serial killers? Wikipedia can help you out a bit with 5,602 words on the topic, which is not a bad start. But if you have to write a thesis about the bosses from Mega Man X, you're in luck: Wikipedia can help you with 8,746 words! Storm Eagle has never been laid so bare.

And what's more important than learning about the ethnic groups of Europe? Only Pokemon types, Halo races, the Orcs of Middle Earth...

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 2

John Constantine — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In the second part of my journey, I discover the joy of making small animals kick the crap out of birds for me and I meet my very best friend in the world.

2:05 – Interestingly enough, Pokémon lets me name not only myself, but also my best friend. My best friend is TheHoff. Complete strangers in the game know me and TheHoff “are tight”. He just invited me to the lake. His theme song is rad.

2:09 – No balls. No monsters. No monsters in balls. I would like to do something.

2:10 – We’re going to Lake Verity: The Lake of Emotions. This is getting awful racy.

2:12 – This is definitely more of an RPG than I remember Blue being. Is there more of an emphasis on story here?

2:13 – BIRDS!

2:14 – I found an old man’s briefcase and it happened to be filled with balls containing beasts so now I’m fending off birds with a flaming monkey. One of my available commands is “Leer” which is really kind of creepy. The battle system doesn’t give any indication as to what an attack might do, though. Is that part of strategy, not knowing what the hell you’re doing?

2:17 – For the record, that lake seemed pretty even-keeled.

2:19 – Mom seems pretty indifferent to the fact that I almost got eaten by wild birds. What a bitch.

2:20 – Oh now I have running shoes. A run button would have been fine. Hey, wait a second. These are freaking Payless. Man, my mom is cheap. What a bitch.

2:24 – So if wild pokémon live in tall grass, just waiting to beat the crap out of people, why are all the roads in Sinnoh just overgrown messes?

2:28 – That old guy is letting me keep his fire monkey. I bet it’s sick or something. I do get to name it though. Weird that you get a larger allocation of letters to name your pets than do for yourself. Ten letters. My fire monkey is now PeteGabril. Now I just need to get in a fight with an electricity pokémon and hilarity can ensue!

2:32 – In the old game, your goal was to become a “pokémon master”. In this, you get to be more of a biological surveyor. Neat.

2:36 – Mom didn’t even make a stink when I told her I was going to be wandering the world on my own studying wild animals that attack people if they walk in some grass. Pretty awesome of her to be so open and understanding with me, her only daughter. What a bitch.

2:39 – Lots of fighting, but only with gophers and birds. PeteGabril can still only scratch and leer at people as well, much like his namesake, so the purported depth of the game is still a mystery.

2:41 – Now he can set people on fire!

2:45 – Forced, unplayable tutorial on catching wild pokémon. Forced, unplayable tutorials are unforgiveable, Nintendo.

2:48 – Caught me a BIDOOF!

Well, I have to say, after an hour, I’m still somewhat mystified. The game is faster than it was ten years ago, but still a little clunky. But, as an RPG that is almost solely about level grinding and rocks-paper-scissor fighting, it’s impressive how quickly Pokémon Diamond throws you into the mix with a minimum of lengthy, unskippable dialogue sequences (especially considering it’s made by Nintendo, the reigning deities of lengthy, unskippable dialogue sequences.) I know this: I want to keep playing. I am enjoying the simplicity and airiness of the game, even this early on. I am, however, probably not going to turn into a slavering obsessive. But who knows what adventures await me and PeteGabril, here on the borders of gaming sanity!

Click here for Part 1.

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

My relationship with Pokémon has always been focused on the phenomenon, not the game. Watching the cartoon, cards, games, and films descend on Western culture between September of 1998 and December of 1999 was not unlike witnessing a natural disaster from a reinforced safe-house; I was scared but secure in other games, fascinated but not brave enough to go outside to try and document the event. I was sixteen when Pokémon Blue and Red came out, slightly too old to be caught in the flood. I got around to trying out Blue in July ’99, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was horrible. Too slow, too simple, too oblique. I put it down and never went back. Over the past decade, Pokémon has refused to die, maintaining a stranglehold on gamers of all ages, and I’ve started to wonder, yet again, if I’m missing out on something. There has to be a reason people return to these games. The brand is strong enough to survive without proper handheld entries from Nintendo, why do people keep going back for more. At twenty-six, now a bold videogame journalist, and it’s time for me to weather the storm. Join me, dear reader, as I plunge into the world of Pokémon Diamond searching for unholy knowledge of gaming’s darkest secrets.

1:50pm – Powering up the DS now. Maybe I’ll just play some Phoenix Wright instead or… NO! I must master my fear.

1:51 – This music is downright ominous. No joke.

1:53 – “At times, you will be challenged by others to a battle. At other times, wild creatures may stand in your way.” Apparently, playing Pokémon is not unlike going to a flea market or touring an Amish farm.

1:55 – You know, I love it when games let me choose my gender, even though it typically means the majority of the game will end up being gender neutral. Not sure what to do here, though. On the one hand, the guy’s hat is jaunty, but on the other, I look smashing in a pink skirt.

1:57 – I am a big girl now.

2:00 – Some old guy says my own tale of grand adventure is about to unfold. I am not comforted.

2:01 – My grand adventure started with my character watching TV. What the hell?

2:02 – There has got to be a way to move faster than this. My god, the character in Dragon Warrior moved faster. Cool music, though.

2:04 – Don’t go in the tall grass!!!!

Click here for part 2.

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:13:00 GMT

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

We cite Punch-Out!! here not for starring Mike Tyson (a controversial figure, even before his rape conviction), but for the degree to which it epitomizes a trend that would dominate gaming in the late-'80s and early-'90s: the "beat up stereotypes from around the world" gameplay model. Granted, most of Punch-Out!!'s characters are too ludicrous to really offend; it's hard to imagine Pacific Islanders getting all up in arms about King Hippo being kind of a jackass. That said, the sight of cross-eyed Piston Honda babbling "Sushi, Kamikaze, Fujiyama, Nipponichi!" as a mid-match battle cry is a little unsettling. — PS

Persona 3

I’ve written about Persona 3’s disturbing imagery before: “It’s always strange when games filled with truly troubling imagery go unnoticed by the most vocal anti-game pundits. Persona 3, Atlus’ exceptional RPG in the long running Shin Megami Tensei series, has been released not once but twice in the past twelve months without eliciting even a peep out of Joe Lieberman or Focus on the Family. For those unfamiliar with the game, the reason Persona 3 might ruffle some feathers is its protagonists, a team of troubled high school students who control guardian spirits to battle demons. And oh yeah, they release these spirits by shooting themselves in the head.” Seriously! Teens! Shooting themselves repeatedly in the FACE! No one even said anything about all the teens shooting themselves in the face. — JC

Metroid II: Return of Samus

Metroid II is about xenocide; your goal is to slaughter an entire alien species. Yes, there are many games about destroying evil alien species. Usually, though, said species are attacking the Earth or something. Or they're at least competent to make moral decisions. Metroids are space jellyfish. They're not evil, they're just hungry. And the series storyline establishes pretty clearly that the Space Pirates are breeding the things for their own evil ends. Exterminating the Space Pirates would be one thing, but the Metroids are mere low-functioning animals. As you proceed through the game, you watch a steadily declining count of how many of the poor little bastards you have left to vaporize. Imagine if this thing was set in a nature preserve. — PS

Fable

Peter Molyneux may not have delivered on his promise of creating the greatest role-playing game of all time with Fable but it was still a remarkably forward thinking game. Consider this: Fable was released in the United States on September 14th, 2004, a mere four months after Massachusetts started issuing same-sex marriage licenses and two months before senatorial, congressional, and presidential elections where constitutionally banning same-sex marriage was a tent pole issue. I applaud Molyneux for creating a game where a man can fall in love and marry another man. But I am shocked that Fable didn’t cause videogame content to be another talking point that election season. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2

Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:12:00 GMT

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4 is a game obsessed with realism, its depiction of combat situations and the tools of war meticulous to an almost terrifying degree. Early in the game, you are placed in the gunner’s seat of an AC-130 Spectre over a Ukrainian field, the night vision view of an aerial assault looking no different than an Iraq war newscast, the radio confirmation of kills unsettlingly casual; a game so realistic that it mimics a soldier’s detachment from killing. It’s strange then that the game, for all its incessant specificity, sends the player to kill Arab soldiers in “the Middle East”, and not an actual nation. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold over seven million copies in a war-weary United States in under a year. Am I the only one who finds this sort of depersonalization unsettling? — JC

Mick and Mack: Global Gladiators

Fast-food promotional games are pretty fucked up, as a whole. Selling this nasty grub to kids via smiling cartoon characters and hop-and-bop platforming — well, it may not cross over into "immoral", but it's certainly sleazy. The 1992 McDonald's promo-piece Mick and Mack: Global Gladiators, however, crosses that line by hopping onto the kid-friendly environmentalism in vogue at the time. (See also Captain Planet, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc.) The problem here is that McDonald's' own environmental record was far from clean; as a massive distributor of factory-farmed beef, the company was (and is) directly responsible for a huge amount of pollution, deforestation and energy wastage. Bastards were cutting down the same sparkling-green rainforests through which their grinning shills were merrily traipsing. — PS

Heavenly Sword

It might seem strange that we’ve chosen to single-out Heavenly Sword as our example of an absurdly over-sexualized female protagonist. Dead or Alive, a series that’s persisted for just over a decade now without causing a kerfuffle despite its bizarre, hyper sexuality, might seem like a more logical target. You might even say that Heavenly Sword’s a poor example considering its emphasis on Nariko’s empowerment in a male dominated fantasy world. But let me ask you, if Nariko is such a great warrior, savior of her people even though they hate her for being a woman, why does she go to war in her underpants? She is fighting people with swords in her underpants. No one thought mention to developer Ninja Theory that underpants are not effective armor? Nariko stands in for the legions of silly, objectified, hyper-sexualized female game protagonists. We’re giving Lara the day off on this one. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Games have been raising hackles since their inception. Howell Ivy kick-started gaming and controversy’s relationship when he designed Death Race in 1976, a simple black and white game that was, well, about running people over for points. That was enough to get America riled up, prompting 60 Minutes to run the first of many, many televised news stories about the psychological effects of gaming. But public outrage is unpredictable. Politicians and parent groups have been shocked by d-list titles like Manhunt and Night Trap while more popular, widely played games with far more inflammatory content have passed by unnoted. Today, 61 Frames Per Second presents The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial. A number of these are games that we are surprised did not cause uproar in a number of communities. The rest are games that we ourselves find seriously questionable in content. How do you feel about these videogames? Indifferent? Appalled? Leave a comment and let us know. — John Constantine

NARC

I don't know about you, but I have at least a couple of friends who have occasionally sold drugs. They're pretty lucky they grew up in the relatively permissive '90s, and not in the merciless, Reaganite '80s presented in NARC. Sure, NARC gives you bonus points for arresting dealers instead of killing them, but that's because it's almost impossible to do. Far easier is just perforating them on the spot. As my fellow blogger Cole notes, "I guess dismembering hundreds is okay if they're pushin'." In fact, there was some parental outrage over NARC's unprecedented level of gore, but its moral assumptions went pretty much unchallenged. — Peter Smith

Pokémon

Have you ever noticed that there are no regular, powerless domesticated animals in any of the Pokémon games, cartoons, comics et cetera? Let's say your pre-teen brother/sister/cousin goes out for a walk one day and comes across a pigeon in the street. They then capture this pigeon in a small cage and train it to fight the dogs, lizards and ponies that the other neighborhood kids have captured and trained to fight, as well as stray cats and sewer rats that can then be captured and trained for similar purposes. Yeah, that scenario is a little awesome, but it's also pretty horrifying, right? When Michael Vick is involved in a dogfighting circuit, the media explodes with rage, but when your kids do it in a Nintendo game it gets rated E for Everyone by the ESRB. — Derrick Sanskrit

Final Fantasy Tactics

As much as Final Fantasy Tactics’ tale of political intrigue in the feudal fantasy-scape of Ivalice is concerned with a power struggle between church and state, it’s hard to get past the game’s barely veiled indictment of Christian lore. Tactics' villains are essentially the Catholic Church. Their central figure is Saint Ajora, a 'child of God' with twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed him and sent him to his death. 'Cept it turns out Ajora wasn't really the son of God, but a power-hungry war-mongering mortal who was sneakily made divine through church skulduggery and historical revisionism. Good thing RPGs require so much reading, otherwise there might have been some good ol’ fashioned game burnings back in 1998. — JC

Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

NPD Wrap: The Times Are a Changin’

John Constantine — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

April’s come to a close and now, under the cold, hard light of math, three things are becoming clear. First, people freaking love Nintendo games. Sure, we already knew that, but over a million people bought Mario Kart for Wii in less than a week. Second, people freaking love Grand Theft Auto. Nearly two million people bought that in even less time. Third, our access to new videogames is going to change dramatically in the very near future. While these numbers may just look like numbers to us, to the people who publish videogames, the people who control when we get to engage these creations, the math is saying that 2008 is different. Tradition dictates that high profile, big hype games are held in reserve for the holiday push from late September through December and the rest of the year is just a slow trickle of quality goods. The math of March and April 2008 says that people will buy many, many games throughout the year, not just around Christmas. What happens now? Going forward, we’re going to see more games, more often. At least, until digital distribution destroys physical media and the whole issue becomes moot.

While the gigantic March sales numbers didn’t keep their drive through April, even with five days of juggernaut sales from Grand Theft Auto 4, all the players put in impressive showings. Wii sales kept pace, down to just 714K units from 721K, but Nintendo DS sales saw a more precipitous decline, down to 414K units from a powerful 698K despite the healthy software debut for both Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon SKUs. GTA4 moved the huge numbers expected, selling 1.85 million units with only days left in the reporting period but it failed to make an impact on HD console sales. Microsoft and Sony saw sales of their home consoles drop below the 200K mark but both companies can expect bigger sales through May thanks to GTA4 momentum and anticipation of marquee June titles Metal Gear Solid 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. Software sales were cool on the whole. GTA4 and Mario Kart Wii dominated, but no third party was able to replicate the success Ubisoft and EA had in March with the debuts of Rainbox Six Vegas 2 and Army of Two.

Hardware Sales

Wii - 714,200

Nintendo DS - 414,800

PSP - 192,000

Xbox 360 - 188,000

PlayStation 3 - 187,100

PlayStation 2 - 124,400

Software Sales

GTA IV (360) – 1,850,000

Mario Kart Wii -1,120,000

GTA IV (PS3) – 1,000,000

Wii Play – 360,000

Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 326,000

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue – 224,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness – 202,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time – 202,000

Guitar Hero III – 152,000

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) -141,000

Out thanks to both Next-Gen and Kotaku for their coverage.