A polish website who conducted some thermal imaging on the PS3 have found that keeping the system horizontally placed actually keeps the system coolest.
Wal-Mart online is currently doing a one day special. If you purchase the new $399 PS3 then you can also get a free game of your choice (includes all the latest high profile ones) as well as a free official Blu-ray remote control!
Epic\’s Mark Rein has remarked that Sony is for sure to have a great Christmas as they have a lot going on for them at the moment. He remarked the PS3 is a great Blu-ray player and they\’re going to push that fact hard. Elsewhere Rein commented that the \’Trojan Horse\’ strategy is not a bad thing and the Xbox 360 follows the same approach in trying to be the heart and soul of the living room.
Following reports yesterday, Sony\’s blog has stepped up to confirm that their new PSP Extended Life battery kit will go on sale in the US for a suggested price of $44.99 in mid-december. The new 2200mAh battery is compatible with the new PSP slim and is said to be capable of doubling the life of the unit.
XNA Game studio is a game development toolkit that supports both Windows and the XBox 360. The beta for XNA 2.0 makes it easier to convert between Windows and XBox projects. XNA 2.0 adds networking support to the XNA Framework. This means that multiplayer games can work across the 360 and PC (some players on Windows while others are using an XBox). Opens up some nice possibilities for developers.
A recently purchased Microsoft Points Card package confirms that Xbox Video Marketplace is soon to be launched in European countries soon. The card states that the service is only available in UK, Ireland, France, and Germany. It is expected that Tuesday\’s Dashboard Update will include the service in all relevant territories.
Fox News has produced a segment which looks at online trash talking and discuss the issue of racial slurs, and other socially unaceptable phrases and words commonly used on mediums such as Xbox Live.
Major Nelson has issued a statment in response to the following video. Nelson says it was disappointing to see LIVE members behave in this manner and it is something that Xbox do not support. He suggests that you play online only with friends, turn off voice from non friends and complain should you experience such awful behaviors.
With Sony and Nintendo both gloating on recent sales data, Jim Goldman of CNBC is wondering whether MS has been \’left out\’ of the Black Friday console wars. He views a possibility that all the bad press, the Xbox 360\’s RRoD problems and a class action law suit filed by Halo 3 users may have resulted in Sony and Nintendo capitalizing on Xbox\’s misfortune and well documented problems.
The \’top\’ UK soccer coach Harry Redknapp who last month indicated that computer games were to blame for a poor output of talent in the UK soccer sector (here) has been arrested based on charges of football corruption. Redknapp claimed that passion for the real game had been replaced with unmatchable video game passion. The sheer cheek of it - next he\’ll be saying video games made him do it!
The 2007 holiday-shopping season is less than one week old, but console makers are already beginning to spin their sales numbers. Yesterday, Sony reported that North American PlayStation 3 sales have tripled since the period beginning November 2–when the new $399 40GB model was introduced–through November 24. Though the company didn’t report exact sales numbers, extrapolation from NPD’s October report puts the figure at somewhere around 322,000 units sold in the US and Canada in three weeks.
Now, Nintendo has revealed its sales figures in the US for the “Black Friday” week of November 18-24. The seven-day period was Nintendo’s best ever in the US, with over 1.03 million systems sold in the 50 states. Of those, 350,000 were $249 Wiis, and 653,000 were $129 DSes. The latter figure eclipsed the record set in 2005, when over 600,000 Game Boy Advances were sold during Thanksgiving Week. On November 23, two new DS colors–rose and gold–were introduced via bundles with Nintendogs and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, respectively.
Outgoing Nintendo of America senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications George Harrison took the time to beat the corporate hype drum one last time. “As shoppers look for ways to maximize their limited holiday-spending money, they turn to gifts that can be used by the entire family,” he said while presumably packing up his desk. “The Wii and Nintendo DS offer something for every member of the family.” Nintendo also touted the affordability of its platforms by saying they were well suited for families hit “with higher gas prices and fuel costs.”
Nintendo also reached two major milestones outside the US this week. Famitsu publisher Enterbrain is reporting that the DS has now sold 20.05 million units in Japan, thanks to the never-ending Brain Training craze still afflicting the island nation. The handheld hit the 20 million-unit mark in just three years–three years earlier than the previous fastest-selling game platform in the country, the PlayStation 2.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the warming planet, the DS was taking the UK by storm. Chart-Track–the British answer to the NPD Group–reports that over 191,000 units of the handheld were sold last week. That’s more than any other platform in a seven-day period since game-hardware sales figures began to be recorded in the UK. Previously, the distinction had been held by the PlayStation Portable, which sold over 185,000 units when it went on sale in September 2005.
But, as much as Nintendo’s cup runneth over, it’s still not enough for Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. Speaking at a conference covered by If Its Games corporate sibling News.com, the outspoken executive admitted that he rues the fact that many would-be Wii buyers are losing patience with the console’s ongoing shortage.
“At this point, we are literally trying to catch up with demand,” bemoaned Fils-Aime. “[Prospective Wii buyers] aren’t going to sleep outside of a store overnight or visit a retailer five or six times. It is literally a missed opportunity.”
There are only two plausible reasons for Volleyball for the NES to have been released on the Wii Virtual console. One is to show you just how far sports video games have come since the mid ’80s. The other, and more fitting reason, is to simply grab you by the throat and shake every ounce of nostalgia out of your brain. Volleyball is that ridiculously nauseating.
They look happier to be here than you’ll look if you play this.
There are two main modes of play in Volleyball. You can either undergo training, where you can attempt to learn the ropes of the game, or go straight to a match where you can choose from eight national teams. You can either play against an artificial intelligence-controlled opponent or a friend, with either the men’s or women’s team. The only discernible differences between the teams and the genders are the sprite art and coloring. Otherwise, the gameplay remains uniformly rancid throughout.
You use the D pad to control three team members at a time depending on where the ball is. Specifically, you’ll control the three players closest to the net until the ball passes behind them, when control will shift to the three rear players. You don’t get to determine any single player to take over. This archaic control scheme results in classic moments, such as when your net players will back up to set up a volley, only to freeze in place as control shifts to your rear players who end up running away from the ball.
Setting up successful spikes is also a complete nightmare. First, you have to position your player under the ball with surgical precision. There’s barely any leeway given here–if you’re more than a pixel off, you’ll miss the setup. If you manage to set the ball up for your spiker, a push of the B button will send the player closest to the ball flailing skyward in a laughable attempt to hit the ball. If the peak of your player’s leap doesn’t exactly meet with the ball, your attempt fails. There’s no collision detection between ball and player otherwise. There’s no hold-and-release mechanic that you can use to control when you actually hit the ball. All that’s there is a sense of pride that comes with you successfully executing an action that seems to have been programmed to fail with as much regularity as possible. Good luck getting to that point.
There’s hope for Volleyball yet, however. Yes, volleyball sports atrocious, antiquated sprites reminiscent of construction paper and paste. However, the silver lining is a disturbing yet amusing two-frame hip gyration animation that a given player sprite will display when idle. It’s especially funny to watch a sprite do this when it’s serving, revealing an intimate bond between player and volleyball. The sound effects will jar you out of any fleeting enjoyment, however, with an earsplitting whistle that plays before and after every single play. Miraculously, the music somehow manages to not be insulting.
You can do it, put your hips into it.
Trying to peddle Volleyball today is plenty insulting, however. Rereleasing this game for 500 Wii points is like trying to sell spoiled milk that never tasted good in the first place. The mechanics don’t work, the presentation is irritating, and watching 20-year-old sprites gyrate at the hips is only entertaining the first time you see it. Simply put, Volleyball is appalling.
Sports games are typically made obsolete when the following year’s update hits store shelves. Thus, a 20-year-old basketball game for the Nintendo Entertainment System had better be amazing to warrant the 500 point Virtual Console download fee. Unfortunately, Double Dribble is far from amazing.
The game gets the fundamentals of basketball right. Each player controls a five-man team, the refs make out-of-bounds or foul calls, and shots attempted close to the hoop are more likely to go in than those tossed up from long distances. Simple, two-button controls allow you to pass, block, shoot, and change the active player.
Shoot a three from the upper corner, repeat, win.
Once you rack up a few minutes of play time, you’ll start noticing some nasty design quirks that ultimately force you to play the game a certain way. Slam dunks rarely go in and most of the other shots tend to bounce off the rim. However, shots made from the free throw line and three pointers launched from the upper corners of the screen will go in nearly all of the time. Very soon, you’ll find yourself exclusively attempting shots from these hot spots.
There’s also the matter of the CPU’s unfair ability to catch up to you. If you manage to gain a modest lead, the CPU will start to steal more frequently and land shots more often. That wouldn’t be so bad, except the game isn’t programmed to ease up when it’s walloping you. When you’re down by six points, your dunks will still twang off the rim.
Not that you’d find much to sink your teeth into even if those aspects had been nailed down. There’s only the one play mode and four different teams from which you can choose. The only options you can change are the quarter length and CPU skill level, but the game does offer a two-player versus mode at least.
When Konami originally ported Double Dribble from the arcades to the 8-bit NES, people were more tolerant of the sketchy gameplay and lack of features because they were impressed by the graphics. Indeed, the large players, realistic court sound effects, and animated dunk cutaways were bleeding edge in 1987, still packing a fair bit of nostalgic charm today. There isn’t a whole lot of shot variety, but the half dozen different shots you will eventually see do look nice. Of course, apart from the nostalgia factor, the graphics look crude by today’s standards, meaning you won’t be able to overlook the game’s shortcomings as easily as you might have been able to 20 years ago.
Currently scheduled for release early in 2008, Bomberman Land for the Wii promises two distinct gameplay experiences. The first is a battle mode that faithfully re-creates the multiplayer Bomberman games of old while adding a number of new optional features. The second claims to be a story mode but actually amounts to little more than yet another Wii minigame collection–distinguishing itself only in the way that it forces you to unlock the games before you can play them. We recently spent several hours doing just that with a near-finished version of Bomberman Land. While we’re not nearly as excited for the story mode as we are for the old-school battles, we did manage to have some fun along the way.
The battle mode features a number of different rule sets.
Before we get into the story mode details, let’s talk about Bomberman Land’s battle mode. Unfortunately, there’s no online functionality, but up to four players are supported. There are also plenty of gameplay options that should appeal to newcomers and veterans alike. In addition to the classic Bomberman rule set–which can be played on no fewer than 23 different types of stage–there are modes in which your objectives are somewhat more imaginative than simply killing everyone else and being the last bomber standing. For example, crown mode tasks you with being the first bomber to reach a crown located at the far end of the level by any means necessary. Stars mode, on the other hand, challenges you to collect as many stars from destroyed bricks as possible. Bombers who get too close to explosions aren’t eliminated from the game but drop their stars all over the map for other players to collect. With the exception of a bizarre “Wii mode” in which you simply fire bombs at a level filled with enemies by pointing the Wii Remote and pressing the A button, all of the battle mode games employ conventional D pad controls.
You’ll be afforded no such familiarity in Bomberman Land’s story mode because even walking around to get from minigame to minigame requires you to point at the screen and push a button to have your character follow your cursor. The story revolves around an unruly Bomberman Land champion whose wardrobe is only slightly less offensive than his attitude toward everyone he deems beneath him, which is everyone. The only way to unseat Champion (that’s his name, apparently) is to compete in a lengthy league-based tournament that comprises about 50 different minigames. Very few of the minigames are bomb-related in any way and, predictably, the quality of the games on offer looks to be every bit as varied as their content.
Some of the minigames, such as Laser Ball (loosely based on the Pang games of old), are so much fun that we found ourselves wishing that we could play them longer. Others, though, simply tasked us with performing the same actions with the Wii Remote (mash this button, move the remote up or down, now swing it like a sword, point and shoot…you get the idea) as we’ve done in other minigame collections in the past, albeit accompanied by Bomberman-style visuals rather than those of games that star Wario, Raving Rabbids, Tamagotchis, or Miis. The majority of Bomberman Land’s minigames are designed for solo play, but a handful of them can be enjoyed by either two or four players once they’re unlocked.
The story mode forces you to walk around and talk to other bombers between minigames.
To progress in Bomberman Land, you’ll need to play at least some of the minigames over and over again because doing so is the only way to earn training points (TP), which are one of the game’s two currencies. TPs are used to purchase licenses necessary to travel to other zones, as well as various items of clothing that have the potential to endear you to the staff at Bomberman Land. If they’re impressed with your fashion sense, said employees will give you extra tokens (the other currency) at the beginning of each tournament round, essentially giving you more chances to get high scores because each game costs at least one token to play. Playing dress-up with Bomberman is more fun than you might expect largely because there are so many amusing items to choose from–at least after you’ve been playing for a while to unlock them. Ninja boots, teddy bear ears, a horse’s head, a cowboy outfit, and 3D glasses are just a handful of the more memorable items that we’ve tried on thus far, though on occasion we’ve ended up opting for less appealing items simply because they’re more highly rated on the game’s fashion scale.
We look forward to bringing you more information on Bomberman Land as soon as it becomes available.
-If Its Games
Most gamers will undoubtedly be rocking out with toy guitars or blasting some manner of alien scum when they’re not putting in the requisite family time this holiday season. Luckily, for those idle minutes, or hours, sitting around with relatives, developers are still filling the downloadable channels with a steady stream of quick-fix games.
Pain will arrive this Thursday for the PlayStation 3’s PlayStation Network. Developed by Idol Minds (My Street, Cool Boarders 2001), Pain is a physics-based slingshot simulator where unfortunate bystanders are flung across highly destructive cityscapes to their most uncomfortable landing. The game offers a number of single- and multiplayer modes, with the developer promising more content to be available for download through the PlayStation Store. Pricing information for Pain has not yet been announced.
Originally released for the PlayStation Portable in 2005, GripShift was remixed and released for the PS3’s PSN in early 2007. Now, Sidhe Interactive is again tweaking the formula of its hot-rod puzzler for a newly revamped, “definitive” version of GripShift for Xbox Live. Published this time around by Microsoft Games Studios, GripShift will include updated graphics and controls, as well as new single- and multiplayer content, a deathmatch mode, and leaderboards. While no price or release date was specified, the year-old PSN version ran for $9.99, and Sidhe noted that the game will be available this year.
In other XBLA news, it appears Atari will finally be getting around to releasing Battlezone, Tempest, and Warlords. The arcade classics were initially announced alongside Centipede/Millipede, Missile Command, and Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe in November 2006. With the Asteroids double deal hitting XBLA this week for 400 Microsoft points ($5), the publisher noted that the three remaining games would be “following through this holiday season.” As with the first three titles, Battlezone, Tempest, and Warlords will come with classic and “evolved” versions, as well as leaderboards and achievements.