Paul Brownlee

Project Phoenix is an ambitious project led by Hiroaki Yura who worked on Valkyria Chronicles and Diablo III. The game is a real time strategy game blended with JRPG elements.

Read Project Phoenix Soars With Over $300,000 Raised on Siliconera!

Turn your router into a StreetPass Relay station

This is kind of neat — you can StreetPass with other people who’ve turned their router into a Relay station. Two immediate problems I see:

1. It looks kind of complicated to set up, but that might be because I don’t know computer
2. I hope this doesn’t encourage people to not take their 3DS out with them anymore, making them part of the problem

But if you’re desperate for to finish all your puzzles, this should help you out!

BUY Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL consoles, upcoming releases

Summer Carnival ‘92: Recca

One of the oddest announcements this morning — super-rare Famicom shoot’em up Summer Carnival ‘92: Recca come to the North American 3DS Virtual Console soon! Released to the Famicom with a limited, Japan-only run, Recca has received much praise from shmup aficionados — HG101 called it “possibly the best shooter on the Famicom, and without question the fastest.”

Other 3DS Virtual Console announcements from today’s Nintendo Direct:

• Donkey Kong (NES) releasing August 15
• Tecmo Bowl (NES) releasing this fall
• Wario World 3 (GBC) releasing soon
• Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) releasing soon

The pics above are courtesy of Amotix.vg.

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Even if this video is 100% accurate, do you really think it’s going to stop us from buying them at launch? Do you really?

Nobuo Uematsu’s Blik-0 1946

Renowned composer Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy) has written an ebook called Blik-0 1946, which is now available on iTunes for iPad (with iPhone and Kindle releases forthcoming). Here’s the blurb for the book, which also features art by Hiroki Ogawa:

“Blik-0 1946 is a story about a robot named Blik-0, created by a reputable artificial intelligence scientist, Dr. Mabuse. Blik-0 is a robot built with functions that let him emulate the human heart and brain. As he experiences life the way humans do, he starts to struggle with feelings and emotions like sadness, heartache, anger, and love."

The book also comes with three new original music compositions by Uematsu: “Blik-0 1946,” “Ah, But Why?,” and “So Close.” You can play these as you read. Oh, right, some new Uematsu music. I guess I buried the lead a little.

BUY Nobuo Uematsu music, upcoming releases

"Porn Sex vs Real Sex: The Differences Explained With Food" is some extremely funny -- and sexually significant -- stuff, and has one of those absolutely perfect titles that require no explanation at all.

Porn Sex vs Real Sex: The Differences Explained With Food (via MeFi)

Everyday items in Shin Megami Tensei IV

Props to Starslicer for the photo. And props to whoever started this Dirty Shin Megami Tensei Confessions website, which is starting to fill up with SMTIV entries.

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An anonymous reader writes "When Google first announced Google Reader would be shut down, the news kick-started a very competitive race to create the best alternative. At least one service, however, did not welcome the change, and is now planning to close up shop next month: The Old Reader. In fact, if you navigate to the service's homepage now, you'll be greeted by this sad message: "Unfortunately we had to disable user registration at The Old Reader." In two weeks, the public site will be shut down and a private one, available to a select few (accounts will be migrated automatically), will take its place." An update on the story says "We have received a number of proposals that we are discussing right now. Chances are high that public The Old Reader will live after all," so a reprieve may be possible.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Entire time I am putting this post together I am thinking to myself, “Damn I wish I could use ampersands in titles and tags without breaking Dueling‘s RSS feed.” I know there’s a way to replace ampersands in the titles before the RSS function parses them, but I just never got around to writing it. Just bothers me as the name of the game is Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and not Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP.

Nonetheless seeing as this infographic came from Capybara Games themselves, it’s probably one of the most accurate ones to ever appear on this site.

Take a second and watch the above video. I never watch videos in blog posts — it takes too long and I’ve been spoiled by GIFs. But seriously, just watch it. None of this post will make sense otherwise.

OK, fine. Here’s a GIF:

I needed you to see that before I continued. You see, we’ve made the hardest, most stupidly ridiculous hardcore game ever. And we’re sorry. Kind of. We even called it a happy name like Cloudberry Kingdom to help ease the pain. But before I actually try apologizing for real, let me take a step back and defend myself. I’ll be making use of the traditional Socratic Straw Man Method for my defense: below, you’ll find your unsound critiques highlighted in bold, with my impenetrable defense following. Afterward I may apologize.

Let’s start with the first reason for why you’re upset.

“Being hard for the sake of being hard is stupid, therefore this game is stupid.”

Woah. First of all, I Wanna Be The Guy has already proven in my mind that everyone wants a brutally unfair game with invisible spikes and hidden platforms that change location depending on whether you’re inhaling or exhaling.

But let’s assume for a second that your opinion isn’t wrong. Cloudberry Kingdom is actually not about being hard — it’s about being challenging. The first and foremost design principle we held to was that there should be a difficulty for everyone, and that the challenge should increase as your skill does. Here’s a view of the difficulty spread we cover:

If you look at some challenging old school platformers like Mario 3 or Lost Levels, you’ll see a lot of care taken in providing a great challenge for core players. But to the players that are real masters (or real noobs), they are left unsatisfied. The video we showed is of our highest difficulty level, reserved for the gosu elite that can beat Tetris blindfolded and who secretly cry afterward like Alexander the Great because they know they will never find a true challenge. Well, cry no more my gosu brother/sister.

“You can’t just throw a billion lasers on a screen and call it challenging. You’re a horrible level designer.”

Actually, I’m not the level designer. We designed and built an advanced artificial intelligence that designs all the levels in the game. What’s inter–

“The levels are randomly generated? Randomly generated levels suck!”

WOAH. Look, A.I.s are people too. How would you feel if I called levels you designed “randomly generated?” Doesn’t feel so good, does it? Now, granted, our AI doesn’t have “emotions,” so an apology isn’t necessary, but let me defend our AI anyway. We spent over two years teaching the A.I. how to design good levels. It understands flow, spacing, rhythm, and also how many bouncy blocks you can have before it just gets annoying. Every level it designs is possible to beat, and if you don’t believe it, you can ask the A.I. to play any level to show you how it’s done. But most importantly, we taught the A.I. how to make a level for the right difficulty, from easy up to stupidly masochistic.

If you’re not satisfied with the physics we programmed, you can use our physics editor to change gravity, friction, acceleration, and dozens of other parameters, and the A.I. will build new levels tailored specifically to your custom physics.

The A.I. was designed to serve up your every platforming need. Just ask.

“Well that does sound pretty sweet!”

Time to wrap up. I’ll allow you one more rhetorical accusation.

“Wait! Wait… um. Are there hats?”

*sigh*

Yes.

Cloudberry Kingdom hits PlayStation Store today for $9.99. In case you forgot, Cloudberry Kingdom is part of PlayStation Store PLAY. If you pick up Cloudberry Kingdom and one more (or two more, or three more) PLAY games, you’ll get bonus PSN cash vouchers. Check out the original PLAY post for more details.

Mega Man Nanoblocks

Yes, okay, one of each please. These are being released in Japan this October through e-Capcom, though Nanoblocks are sold in the U.S. sooooo there’s a chance.

Both Mega Man and Cutman come with little nano-size extras. Don’t ask Cutman for help; that guy’ll ruin the whole thing, and maybe swallow some tiny blocks

BUY Mega Man games and more, upcoming games

As you doubtless suspected, your ISP wants Google and Netflix to cough up, and bandwidth is their bat. [Ars]

Behind the scenes, in negotiations that almost never become public, the world's biggest Internet providers and video services argue over how much one network should pay to connect to another. When these negotiations fail, users suffer. In other words, bad video performance is often caused not just by technology problems but also by business decisions made by the companies that control the Internet.

Space MMO Eve Online is renowned for its player factions and epic naval battles, where ships with substantial real-world values can be destroyed out en-masse. Forces are massing right now for what's reported as one the biggest yet, reports Ellis Hamburger at The Verge—perhaps even more brutal than the legendary Battle of Asakai, which wiped out a $20,000 fleet.

A player is livestreaming the face-off here: "The reason it's zoomed out is because with all these ships, my computer will die."

CaptSlaq writes "According to the current imagery, it looks like Randal Munroe has finished the story he was telling with the Time series. The long running series that has spanned over 3000 images and spawned multiple methods of viewing and comment appears to have come to an end."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dungeon Legends has simple graphics, basic controls and is brutally unforgiving… I like it!

Inventory Controls
Shift + Hover ~ Inventory Information
CTRL + click ~ Remove Inventory Item
Z + click ~ Sell Item
click ~ Use Item

Project X1 makes life size Star Wars props. This video shares the making of Darth Vader's tie fighter.

This is Jakub from Grip Games. A few weeks ago, I introduced you to our newest creation – Atomic Ninjas, for PS3 and PS Vita. I’m back with the very first gameplay trailer, to show you exactly what Atomic Ninjas is all about!

This 2.5D competitive shooter/platformer is going to be one of the most insane experiences you’ll ever have with your PS3 and PS Vita! You’ll fight in arenas full of danger against crazed ninjas in intense and funny matches. In order to win, you’ll have to outsmart and outflank your opponents.

As you can see in the trailer, you cannot directly kill other ninjas (thanks to massive amounts of radiation and their healthy lifestyle). But there are dozens of conveniently placed hazards, like lasers, lava pits and fire that will do the job! You just need to find a way to get your opponents there and not become a roasted turkey yourself!

To help you in this uneasy task, we have added lots of weapons and super abilities. You’ll be able to become invisible, fly on a rocket, use telekinesis, become an unstoppable hulk for a few moments, and many more. Killing also won’t be the only activity on the menu. You’ll be capturing flags, defending hills, chasing treasures … alone, or in teams. There’s always something to do!

Atomic Ninjas will be out later this summer on PS3, followed shortly by the PS Vita version. We will be bringing you a lot of news and videos in the coming weeks. If you want to see more right now, you can visit the official website, or join us on Twitter and Facebook for daily updates!

See you again soon!

Capcom have shared a developer diary trailer for Dead Rising 3, discussing improvements to the game.

Read Dead Rising 3 Is Still Pretty Crazy – Here’s A Teddy Bear Killing Zombies on Siliconera!