Last week, we recorded a show with Jonah on the E3 show floor, while Paul made a cameo to discuss Zelda and Lego Dimensions before leaving with the Nerd Flu.
But better yet, we have a E3 LOOT SWAG CONTEST, with a crapton of stuff to give away, including a T-shirt and an ACTUAL Loot Crate, as well as an NBA 2K17 gold Kobe Bryant coin complete with exclusive DLC for NBA 2K16.
How do you enter? Be in the continental US and listen to the podcast to learn how to win a bunch of E3 goodies.
Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 Studios is growing a large pool of talented folks for their MMO endeavor. First, we heard R.A. Salvatore (writer of the Dark Elf series) was heading over to work on a story, art direction by Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) and now Irena Pereira from Blizzard and a sound designer, Aubrey Hodges.
Hodges has done sound for games like Kings Quest, Quake and even Madden NFL. Pereira was a World of Warcraft interface designer which allows us to invision a bit about what 38 Studio’s MMO may look like from a user interaction perspective.
The MMO, currently titled Copernicus has a tentative launch date of 2010, which seems short for a full MMO design but they’ve been hard at work for roughly two years. Not too shabby a team for a privately held company founded by baseball star Curt Shilling.
It’s important to note Shilling is an avid gamer and loves massive multiplayer online games. What else does a man with a lot of money do as a side project? Fund a company based on the hobby he loves! If anyone knows the best directions and qualities of an MMO it should be an experienced team guided by someone with a passion for the game genre.
We’ll have to wait and see!
Read on for the full press release
One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.
This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.
The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.
A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.
Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)
Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)
All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.
Nintendo has announced the continuation in a series that started in 1984 known as Punch-Out!! for the Wii. Once upon a time we all got to pop coins into Punch-Out!!, later we were able to power on our NES and play Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! or, if you’re younger, the version of Punch-Out!! with Mr. Dream (since Tyson’s contract expired with Nintendo and he wasn’t the champion anymore).
At Nintendo’s press conference today they announced Punch-Out, Another Code, Dynasty Warriors and Sins & Punishment 2. Although Dynasty Warriors sounds like it might simply rock on the Wii, Punch-Out really digs down into the history of Nintendo and brings back one of the older franchises.
Perhaps Nintendo is hoping Punch-Out will provide proof they’re serious about the franchise titles on the Wii console. Gamers have been skeptical considering they’re getting one (real) Mario and one Zelda game every few years. Many of us buy Nintendo for their popular mascots and to relive some of the nostalgia of being a kid. Punch-Out may definitely bring back some Nostalgia.
Hopefully, Punch-Out stays true to the original series and is designed to utilize the Wii controller better than Wii Sports Boxing.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
I’m anticipating the new South Park game!
“the purge”
Thank you for letting me enter for swag!