- McFarlane Toys Makes Guitar Hero Action Figures

McFarlane Toys Makes Guitar Hero Action FiguresMcFarlane Toys Makes Guitar Hero Action Figures

June 26, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 8:10 pm

Activision has decided to take Guitar Hero to the next level: Action Figures. This is a great move for the company, striking the iron while it’s hot! The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises are growing in intensity while big blockbuster titles like GTA IV are waning in sales and profit.

Pretty soon you and your children can purchase action figures in the liking of Guitar Hero, would you consider this or is it just a gimmick?

McFARLANE TOYS ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH ACTIVISION
TO PRODUCE GUITAR HERO(tm) ACTION FIGURES

TEMPE, Ariz. ~ McFarlane Toys announces a partnership with Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) to produce action figures from the hit video game franchise, Guitar Hero®. The first line is expected to hit store shelves this fall.

The hugely popular Guitar Hero franchise delivers the ultimate guitar-bending experience and enabling aspiring axe-shredders everywhere the chance to Unleash Their Inner Rock Star. Featuring a wide variety of music spanning five decades, the franchise is highlighted by countless original recordings from many of the most beloved artists of all time.

Represented in the first line of action figures are four of the Guitar Hero game’s most popular characters:

JOHNNY NAPALM
AXEL STEEL
LARS ÜMLAUT
GOD OF ROCK

“We have very recently begun creating toys based on video games,” says McFarlane Toys CEO Todd McFarlane. “With Activision, we get to work on arguably one of the biggest video game franchises out there, and capitalize on the wide-ranging demographic that encompasses this game.”

Each figure has 15-18 moving parts. Additionally, a unique guitar is included with each character that is removable and interchangeable with the other figures. Each figure also comes with a sculpted Guitar Hero logo base.

McFarlane Toys’ 6-inch action figures retail for $10-$15.

Visit www.SPAWN.com for updates and the all the latest and to-the-minute news.

About McFarlane Toys
Grammy-and Emmy-winning producer/director Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn and the founder of SPAWN.com, is the force behind McFarlane Toys, one of America’s top action figure manufacturers. With an eclectic array of movie, TV and music licensing tie-ins – as well as the officially licensed teams of the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, McFarlane Toys has become a leader and redefined the standards within the action figure industry. For complete information on this pop-culture powerhouse, visit SPAWN.com.

About Activision, Inc.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products. Founded in 1979, Activision posted net revenues of $2.9 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008.

Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan and South Korea. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s website, www.activision.com.

PopCap: Casual Gaming in AsiaPopCap: Casual Gaming in Asia

June 26, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 8:43 am

PopCap will try their luck in the Asian market for casual games. The US market and the Asian market are clearly different and have different likes and dislikes when it comes to video games, this can be seen in the division between the US first-person-shooter genre running wild and the success of FPS franchises in Japan (a great example being the Xbox 360 console).

Many eastern style games have a casual feel to them and PopCaps going to see how they’re feeling about titles like Zuma, Chuzzle, Peggle and Bejeweled. James Gwertzman, their new Asia/Pacific VP says, “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.” He believes success will be the result of this endevor.

What do you think, Asia/Pacific, ready for US casual games?

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End of 100 Million Dollar Games?End of 100 Million Dollar Games?

June 25, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 10:11 pm

Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.

Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.

Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.

Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?

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TD Gaming Podcast 76: GamingPodcast.netTD Gaming Podcast 76: GamingPodcast.net

June 24, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 10:23 pm

Welcome to the TD Gaming Podcast! This week we discussed:

Microsoft releases Xbox 360 before everyone else, will they do it again? (1up)
Ubisoft’s Play Zone label/division for Wii mini-games (next-gen)
Guitar Hero World Tour Rumors (gamespot)
Atari’s Hunts Negative Alone in the Dark Reviews (shacknews)

We take a walk down memory lane with Baldur’s Gate as this weeks Gaming Flashback, take a deeper look into RPG’s and “Devil Worshiping” and we’ll also read a great listener comment regarding video game mascots, what mascots did you enjoy?

Call of Duty 5: World At War TrailerCall of Duty 5: World At War Trailer

June 23, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:18 am

One thing Activision does very well with the Call of Duty series is making you feel like you’re part of the war and not just a gamer. It may be the coloring, the life-like environments, explosions or movie-style filtering, whatever it is makes their series feel like a world at war.

Now, we’re heading back to WWII but from a brand new perspective, the Pacific Theatre. Why did it take so long to produce a game in this area of the world? Our guess, to gain the intensity and power of the battle we needed higher end console/pc processors to properly render the jungles, waters and terrains in a life-like manner.

Or, maybe nobody thought of it? In any case this is a must buy game for myself and probably many others, regardless to multi-player capabilities. World at War will be released for Wii, PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, and PC.

Gaming Flashback: The Incredible MachineGaming Flashback: The Incredible Machine

June 22, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 6:19 pm

The Incredible Machine (TiM) is a game designed and developed by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnel (now co-founder of GarageGames and their successful title Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 and co-founder in Dynamix makers of A-10 Tank Killer and The Red Baron). At the time, The Incredible Machine series came out of the shop known as Jeff Tunnel Productions.

Jeff Tunnel Productions published the first Incredible Machine games from 1993 to 1995 while Sierra Entertainment published all the rest of their titles all the way up to 2001. What is The Incredible Machines all about? It’s a game where you must build a series of Rube Goldberg devices in a “needlessly complex fashion” all to perform some simple tasks. That is the entire point to a Rube Goldberg device, which was originally defined as “accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply.”

I think everyone has seen a Rube Goldberg device, their are examples in science museums, and entire Myth Busters Episode about them, they appear in many movies (Goonies used one to open the fence to let in Chunk after he does his dance as did Doc Brown in Back to the Future to cook his breakfast and get his dog food).

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Community Expands: Team Fortress 2 Has a BlogCommunity Expands: Team Fortress 2 Has a Blog

June 21, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 11:52 pm

The Internet has given us a communication mechanism which allows developers to better understand their audience. You can use community sites to market your content and your brand but you can also use them to better understand your market and bring your strageties and progress to your fans.

Valve Software has taken their latest successful franchise title Team Fortress 2 and followed it up with a website or “blog” which can keep their fans “in the loop.” Teamfortress.com will, no doubt, be the launch pad for much hype, community offerings and up-to-date news about the TF2 game and any updates.

“Now that we’ve settled into regular releases of content, we’ve found ourselves wanting a better way to talk directly to the TF2 community about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices we’re making. Our hope is that this blog will accomplish that, and give everyone some better insight into our development process as well.” (teamfortress.com)

Now, there is a great chance Valve will use their new launch pad to talk about upcoming games and lead you to demo’s and downloads to the TF2 title; they already link to the valve store to purchase the game. But, blogs bring in users searching for fresh content about the game and give official word to kill any bad rumors.

Call it marketing, call it journalism or developers notes, there is nothing wrong with having one more resource which represents the voice of Valves TF2 development team. Congradulations guys!

Classic Cinematics: DiabloClassic Cinematics: Diablo

June 21, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 11:37 pm

Diablo is a classic title with endings for each class you can play, but all give you the same result: hell and torment. You battle your way through a very difficult game, defeating legions of evils minions, piling their corpses upon the floor as you dig deeper into hell.

Eventually, you battle the essence of hell itself: Diablo. However, the ending does not give you warm fuzzies. The ending shows the results of a man with a burden and ends with the transfer of such burden.

Pure evil. Pure fun. Exciting and well crafted ending. For more talk on cinematic endings, listen to the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 75.

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Gaming Flashback: Mega ManGaming Flashback: Mega Man

June 21, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 11:17 pm

Mega Man, a series franchise was born in the month of December, a series we rarely hear about today but one that inspired many great games in the side scrolling genre. Mega Man was foundation brick in the early Nintendo consoles and a bread winner for Capcom, he was a mascot to represent a genre typically dominated by Mario.

The name Mega Man, in the 1980’s was synonymous with the word awesome. It was also synonymous with the word difficult.

A character that had so much potential you can now find him in mobile phone gaming and the virtual console in Europe.

“In the year 200X, master robot designer Dr. Thomas Light, and his assistant, Dr. Wily, worked on a project to create human-like robots with advanced intelligence.” (wikipedia) Each robot was designed to perform a specific task, Cut Man was designed to cut down trees, Guts Man is designed to pickup heavy things, Ice man for arctic exploration, etc. His assistant grew envious of Dr Light so he reprogrammed the robots to do his bidding, which was nothing but evil. Your job is to undo this evil.

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Gaming Flashback: Lode RunnerGaming Flashback: Lode Runner

June 21, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 8:12 pm

Lode Runner, a game many of us logged hundreds of hours upon. Lode Runner has a great deal of replay value thanks to its great map editor. The game was first published by Broderbund in 1983, but was first prototyped by Douglas Smith, an architecture student at the University of Washington.

The Lode Runner prototype was called Kong and was originally written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer on campus, but shortly after it was ported to the VAX minicomputer. Originally programmed in FORTRAN and utilized only ASCII character graphics (the most basic of characters).

In September of 1982 Smith was able to port it to the Apple II+ (in assembly language) and renamed it to Miner. In October of that same year he submitted a rough copy to Broderbund and he’s said to have received a one-line rejection letter, “Sorry, your game doesn’t fit into our product line; please feel free to submit future products.”

The original title had no joystick support and was developed in full black and white…not exactly exciting. So, Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. Around Christmas of 1982, he submitted the game, now renamed Lode Runner, to four publishers and quickly received offers from all four: Sierra, Sirius, Synergistic, and Brøderbund.

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