Yeah, we recorded this on April 2 and are just releasing this on April 12 — because during this time Jonah went to PAX East, then visited his mother in NYC, and things have calmed down about now. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the overly cute LittleBigPlanet… and to think it was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the podcast. How time has passed.
This week’s episode gets a little political as certain factions get into the videogame discussion and have some interesting ideas about them, which is enough to get Paul a little angry and a lot disappointed.
This week’s news includes:
Rust creator: “I’d have done the same thing” on Mojang deal
Conservative group issues video lambasting gaming’s feminist critics
Trade your violent games in for ice cream in California
Harmonix, MTV Games and Electronic Arts has announced their next block buster killer app: Rock Band 2. First, the most important feature is backwards compatible downloadable content. They’ve surpassed 15-million paid downloads, we want our content and we want to keep all the awesome songs for future games, else we might as well stop purchasing now, right?
The question remains, will we want to upgrade our instruments? They’re saying we’ll have “more variety of instrument choices than ever before with new and improved drum and guitar peripherals, enhanced functionality and innovative new designs – all fully compatible with the original Rock Band instruments.” Will the enhanced instruments really want to make us go out and buy them?
If these new instruments are highly desirable or add any new features to the game (or make newer features ‘easier’) then we may be persuaded to look into new hardware…yet with Guitar Hero World Tour we’re already pressured into considering another drum unit.
So confusing, but yet so much desired. I guess that’s the love hate relationship of a gamer with a passion and a, slight, addiction!
Yo! Noid was a commercial opportunity for Domino’s Pizza developed by Capcom. This retro style game revolved around Domino’s Pizza claymation style mascot, the Noid, as he adventures through fourteen stages of side scrolling action.
The game sound was much like any other 8-bit action platformer. It reminded me of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System, not the cool arcade one. Minus the turtles, Yo! Noid is a battle against Mr. Green, the Noids evil duplicate, a concept used in so many games; remember Shadow Link?
Unlike Link, Noid lost a life when he hit an enemy similar to the Super Mario Bros. style platformer but with a Yo Yo weapon. You could also gather smart-bomb type scrolls to clear the screen of all enemies, another classic side scroller arcade recipe. Yo! Noid brought nothing to the table in terms of uniqueness and relied on the standard recipe of side scrolling conflict.
This retro game may be one of the first true “total conversion mods.” Later we’d see Counter Strike born out of the Half-Life engine and way before that, Noah’s Ark 3D built out of the Wolfenstein 3D engine. Yo! Noid was a re-creation of the game Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru. Oddly enough, Yo! Noid was probably more well known than its forefather game because Capcom didn’t release Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru in the United States. Instead, we got Yo! Noid and a $1.00 off coupon on the back of the manual so we can get ourselives some Domino’s Pizza.
Although a few of us may recall Yo! Noid from our childhood, the title really didn’t create any huge waves in the game industry. Yo! Noid did show developers that a brand named product could be used as a marketing and brand awareness strategy, something we’d later see Burger King try on the Xbox 360 and find some success.
Can you tell the difference between Yo! Noid and Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru?
The game sound was much like any other 8-bit action platformer. It reminded me of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System, not the cool arcade one. Minus the turtles, Yo! Noid is a battle against Mr. Green, the Noids evil duplicate, a concept used in so many games; remember Shadow Link?