atarianer

Grass is all around me; in my hair, clothes, shoes, orifices.

Grass is such a token, staple of everyday life that it passes without comment, like an extravagantly rude innuendo or wind in an elevator. Few people look out into their small squares of suburban garden and proclaim ‘children! Wife! Look – the grass is terrific today’.

They might have killed their grass, cleaved it in favour of stones or slabs of concrete best used on a 60s high-rise. Some may have even saved grass, perhaps from their football team's pitch upon a stadium move, and they clutch it at night lightly sobbing, slowly grasping the fact that they are fans of Coventry City. People travel hundreds of miles to see grass without buildings. Grass on hills, next to lakes, sweeping across fields. People love grass, silently. But who says they love grass?

I do! I love grass! Particularly I love digital grass. For me not the soft brush of dirt across my trousers or the crippling hay-fever as I pass yet another field of barley for my work; no, I long for the swathes of pixelated graminoids that glisten in the sun, move entirely unnaturally out of a heavy-footed character and wilt under the hot, hot death of a spaceship's thrusters. Who has ever discussed grass in gaming? No one. Why? Because it would be ridiculous.

AND YET HERE WE ARE.

 

5) Star Fox Adventures (GameCube)

Star Fox Adventures is famous for two things: featuring characters that posh English people like to chase on horses, and grass. It was the last game developed for a Nintendo home console by Rare before they nestled into the thick, wadded buxom of Microsoft.

The shrubbery wasn’t the only appeal to this game, as alluring as it is, flashing its soft grassy legs under that long, black dress. Star Fox was graphically superb, with dazzling water-effects, character models and luscious worlds. But that grass. Detailed in a way unseen in console gaming at that point, you could see, nay feel the threads of individual leaves thrusting up from the dirt. And thus began my obsession with grass.

 

4) FIFA 15 (Everything)

How could it not be here, the series that gave to the world such wonderful manicured grass as that found in FIFA 98, FIFA 02, and the seminal FIFA 09. Even forgiving the black-sheep of the series, FIFA Street, which unwisely featured no grass at all, EA Sport's inexplicably popular series has always been at the forefront of quality grass interpretation.

You can almost touch it, smell it, roll around on it twenty times after being kicked by a young millionaire. It looks terrific - like a bowling green. The grass is better presented than the players, grotesque and lifeless as they are.

Sorry, I was getting the game confused with real life again.

 

3) The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GameCube)

Look! It's grass. But not. It looks real, in a cartoon way. Cartoon way. What the fuck Nintendo?

Many hated the new-look Wind Waker when its makeover - videogaming's own take on 'Snog, Marry, Avoid' - was revealed. More were converted when they finally played what was, arguably, the finest Zelda game.

But nobody hated the grass. It came in so many forms; flat, sticking up, slashable. It was filled with money, and sometimes floating hearts. What more can one want from their grass? My grass when I cut it merely results in shorter grass, but Link becomes a millionaire. More importantly, it was beautiful, befitting a beautiful game.

 

2) Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (PC)

Leisure Suit Larry was the game every teenage boy in the 80s wanted to make, and wanted to play. I was not alive in the 80s, and my only concern in that hedonistic decade was to be conceived. Eventually.

Leisure Suit Larry, among its many star turns, featured an awful lot of grass as you strolled through his boring, stilted world. Fields. Gardens. Cannabis. Marijuana. It is up there with the Grand Theft Auto series for 'best use of grass in a game.' In-fact, I was so inspired by the exploits of Larry that I visited my finest up-market dealer, which is how we come to this here article.

 

1) What Were We Talking About Again?

I can hear you all now:

'Wait, I got dragged through that nonsense for an infantile play on words?'

Yes.

Mucho gracias!

Thanks. That's another. I field your pain. Man, these jokes are cutting. Don't be too fore-lawn. Just another mow-tor mouth, right? I hope this ex-seeded your expectations.

I'm here all week. Try the chicken - it's delicious.

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/259711/top-5-grass-in-gaming/

Search85 hat zwei interessante Bundle-Angebote für den Nintendo 2DS bei Amazon Frankreich hingewiesen:

• Nintendo 2DS + Pokémon: Alpha Saphir für 100,42€ inkl VSK (Vergleichspreis: 130€)
• Nintendo 2DS + Mario Kart 7 für 96,89€ inkl VSK (Vergleichspreis: 115€)

Wie immer bei ausländischen Amazon-Shops gilt, dass ihr für die Bezahlung zwingend eine Kreditkarte braucht, falls ihr noch keine habt, könnt ihr ja mal in meinen Artikel zu kostenlosen Prepaid-Kreditkarten reinschauen, auch wenn es für das Angebot hier dann wohl zeitlich nicht mehr reichen dürfte.

 

Der Nintendo 2DS ist im Prinzip ein ausgeklappter 3DS ohne 3D-Funktion in günstiger und minimal schwerer. Es laufen natürlich alle Spiele, die auch auf dem 3DS laufen mit Ausnahme der sehr, sehr wenigen Spiele, die speziell für den New 3DS entwickelt werden.

Pokémon: Alpha Saphir

Mario Kart 7

One of the greatest aspects of the retro gaming community is seeing the various projects and creations its members undertake. From gender-balancing console variations (such as the Nintendo Virtual Girl) to even unofficial sequels to games like Donkey Kong Country, each and every week brings along a newly threaded mix of nostalgia and love for the hobby. The latest of these is a crocheted rug sporting the opening world map from the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros 3 - something which has taken a massive 800 hours to complete.

According to NintendoLife, Nintendo of Europe asked acclaimed racing developer Criterion Games to develop a new F-Zero title for the Wii U.

Criterion is most well-known for developing the Burnout series of racing games and more recently worked on the Need for Speed series.

According to NintendoLife's source the discussions took place in 2011 and centred on persuading the developer to pitch an F-Zero game that could be shown at that year's E3 and which would then go on to be a high profile launch title.

Criterion's Alex Ward has confirmed that these discussions took place but that, unfortunately, because Criterion was too busy with other projects to work on the title and Nintendo wanted the game to be released on a very tight timescale, nothing ever came of the discussions.

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/259668/nintendo-asked-criterion-to-develop-a-wii-u-f-zero-title/

Nintendo has taken some heat over Amiibo figure shortages. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has told The Wall Street Journal that Nintendo is doing everything it can to produce more Amiibo figures:

"We are producing amiibo as quickly as we can and getting them out into the marketplace as quickly as we can. With the most recent wave, over about a 30-day period, we sold just in the U.S. over a million amiibo. Through the end of March, we’ve sold 10.5 million amiibo globally, more than two-thirds in Canada, the U.S. and Latin America.

There’s a huge amount of demand and that demand is even more concentrated in the Americas. It is a manufacturing process that takes some time and we had to scale up our supply chain, and it’s still scaling up to try and meet that demand."

________________________________________________________________________________________

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/259635/reggie-we-are-producing-amiibo-as-quickly-as-we-can/

In a lengthy interview with NPR Shigeru Miyamoto has explained why he thinks the Wii U has struggled to gain traction.

Miyamoto gives a number of reasons for the platform's limited success, including the fact that the eventual price point was "a little higher than we wanted" and that "perhaps people didn’t understand the system".

Another factor the famed developer notes is the competition in the tablet space meant that by the time to Wii U and its tablet controller came to market it was no longer a unique feature:

"I think unfortunately what ended up happening was that tablets themselves appeared in the marketplace and evolved very, very rapidly, and unfortunately the Wii U system launched at a time where the uniqueness of those features were perhaps not as strong as they were when we had first begun developing them."

Miyamoto believes this is all part and parcel of trying out new things and developing innovative products though, and he's hopeful for the future:

"So what I think is unique about Nintendo is we're constantly trying to do unique and different things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they're not as big of a hit as we would like to hope. After Wii U, we're hoping that next time it will be a very big hit."

Source: [NPR via VG24/7]

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/259648/miyamoto-explains-why-he-thinks-the-wii-u-has-struggled/

Update: Seit dem heutigen 13.8. findet ihr Fallout Shelter auch im Google PlayStore.

Weiterlesen

With all the chatter about Fallout 4 hopefully you didn’t miss the news that Bethesda’s latest game, Fallout Shelter, is already available for free on mobile devices and happens to be a lot of fun. At the very least it’s worth giving a look for some of the completely insane conversations your dwellers get involved with.

This collection of some of the best conversational interactions between dwellers is just a slice of the strange things they say to each other when left to their own devices. You might even miss them if you don’t zoom into the rooms to watch them. Check out the rest on imgur, but here’s some of our faves so far.

Bethesda came out of the gate swinging at their first ever E3 Conference Sunday night. Among all the hype for Doom, Dishonored 2, and Fallout 4 came a few smaller announcements. One of those announcements was a new Fallout mobile game called Fallout Shelter[Free], a partnership between Bethesda and Behaviour Interactive, and it is just adorable. I mean, in a horribly grim-dark sort of way. Basically it’s a Tiny Tower [Free]style town management game set in the alternate history world of Fallout, and it is just oozing that Fallout style. The main points I’ll be covering are the Basics, Population Control, Baby Making, Caps Acquisition, Room Rushing, and Happiness.

Basics

So just what is going on in this crazy irradiated world, and how do you get ahead? I’ve been playing it non-stop since release, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes that I want to help the rest of you avoid. After choosing your very own Vault number you’re thrown right into the management with a handful of new vault dwellers. The key aspects that you need to manage are food, power, and water purification. If you run out of food and water, people start dying, and if you run out of power, you can’t produce those resources. The rooms will just go dark. The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat system of Falloutfame makes a return here. That’s Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, for those not in the know. Each dweller has these stats and each stat is used to increase the efficiency of certain rooms. Here’s a breakdown…

• Strength: Power Generator, Nuclear Generator.
• Perception: Water Treatment, Water Purification.
• Endurance: Storage Room, Nuka-Cola Bottler. Staffing the storage rooms doesn't seem to have any effect on the vault, but may effect staffed dwellers happiness.
• Charisma: Living Quarters, Radio Studio. Very important for baby making and drawing new vault dwellers from the outside world.
• Intelligence: Medbay, Science Lab. Used to make Stimpaks and RadAways. Extremely important.
• Agility: Diner, Garden.
• Luck: Dwellers with high Luck are more successful at rushing rooms and potentially getting Caps bonuses whenever collecting resources.

Learning SPECIAL and keeping track of where each dweller should be can be a bit complicated at first, but it’s a pretty easy system to learn. As you drag a dweller from room to room, you’ll see what letter that room utilizes AND what stat number that dweller will contribute. Likewise, whenever looking at a dweller’s stats, even without blowing it up to see the exact numbers, you can tell which stat is which by quickly spelling and counting it out in your head. The tab in the top left lets you easily sort dwellers by status, SPECIAL, name, level, job, and happiness, only from largest to smallest. This makes it easy to find the right people for any job. If you see someone on a 'Coffee Break' that means they're wandering aimlessly, and should be assigned somewhere or sent into the wastes.

Each room can be upgraded twice to increase efficiency. You can also build larger rooms, up to 3 cells long, by merging the same room-types together. The rooms have to be of the same level to merge, however, if you’re wondering why they aren’t. A single cell room can be staffed by 2 people at a time, and naturally it’s 4 for 2 cells, and 6 for 3 cells. The cost of a new room increases based on how many you have, but the upgrade costs remain constant. The main balancing act of the game is re-allocating people as things change. The game makes this easy for you. As you drag someone over a room, if it’s already full, a plus or minus will show up next to the stat number, showing whether it’s a positive or negative gain, automatically replacing the lowest stat person.

 

As your vault population increases, you’ll unlock more buildings that give you more abilities. Storage rooms that let you have more outfits and weapons, a Medbay and Science Lab for creating Stimpaks and RadAway for healing and irradiating your dwellers, a Radio station to broadcast out into the wastes, hopefully drawing in new vault dwellers from the outside world, and then training rooms for each individual stat…

• Strength: Weight Room
• Perception: Armory
• Endurance: Fitness Room
• Charisma: Lounge
• Intelligence: Classroom
• Agility: Athletics Room
• Luck: Game Room

Beyond that you have special new versions of the main three resource rooms, and eventually a Nuka-Cola bottling factory, which confers both food and drink, but shockingly no extra Caps, even in tiny amounts. Training goes faster if more than one person trains at a time. Likewise, training rooms do indeed count towards happiness, as the 'right room assignment' mission objective helped me understand.

Aside from the SPECIAL stats, vault dwellers can also be equipped with an outfit and a weapon. Outfits confer stat bonuses and weapons are used to fight off Radroaches, raiders, or to help your dweller survive if you send them scouting for items and Caps out in the wastes. They also level up over time, but leveling up doesn’t increase their stats. It only increases their health, which is still very important for fighting off those previously mentioned random disasters. Vice Versa, people in training rooms only increase stats, and don't level up.

Fun fact. The game is smart enough to realize that when you pull in people from surrounding rooms to fight a disaster that you want those people BACK in those rooms right after. I’ve almost never had issues with getting people back in their assigned rooms. Also, weapon management is a pain if you give a bunch of people weapons and can't remember who. Then you have to tap on each person and check, one by one. Make sure if you give people weapons for a crisis, you take them back immediately.

Population Control

The main balancing act of this game is in the population control. As you get more dwellers, you’ll need more clean water and food, and space. As you build more rooms to accommodate, you’ll need more power. Beyond the intro of the game, gaining new followers is generally molasses slow. With a single cell, level 2 radio room, staffed by two people with near max Charisma (19 out of a possible 20) I almost never got new dwellers from the outside. So how do you increase your population? The old fashioned way. Make new people. I mean, it is the apocalypse. It is your civic duty to repopulate the earth and ensure the survival of the human race, right?

Baby Making

You do this through the living quarters. Like the old saying goes, if you put two people in a room together long enough, eventually they’re going to… um. ‘Woohoo,’ to borrow a term from The Sims[Free]. Dwellers with higher charisma will speed up the process. My one dweller with max Charisma had some dwellers throw themselves at him within seconds of entering the room. It was amusing. It’s easier from a game mechanics standpoint to just use the same few men and cycle in different women. This all sounds kind of creepy, I realize, but that’s OK.

Here’s where I made some mistakes. After a while, I had no issues with resources at all, and was focused entirely on expanding my population to unlock new rooms. So for a while there, I had more than half of the women in the vault pregnant at all times. When they’re pregnant, it only means that they won’t fight or put out fires, but otherwise they can still work, and they can still train their stats. If you don’t have room for more population, the babies will stay in their mother’s wombs indefinitely. Birth is automatic, and happens when it happens. This is pretty much the only way to grow your vault with any kind of speed. As a side note, if you notice two dwellers in the living quarters not acting all flirty or dancing, zoom in. They’re probably related, and they’ll probably say something about being related. Thankfully, this game keeps track of such things, and you can name each baby to make sure you know their parentage. No creepy, Game of Thrones, Crastor’s Keep stuff in my vault!

This was all fine and dandy until a certain birthing boom raised my population by 13 in the span of half an hour, and then I was struggling like mad to keep everyone happy and healthy, running low on food and clean water. Then, when I built new diners and water treatment rooms, I was running low on power. It was a nightmare. Pro-Tip: I deleted a bunch of stat training rooms to try to conserve power, only to learn that they had no noticeable effect at all. Same for storage. Other times when I was low on power, those rooms did go dark however, so it's hard to say. It would be nice if the game charted power usage in specific integers and variables. Either way, don't go doing that. The Caps refund is uselessly small and it’s very wasteful.

This was all compounded by the fact that most of my vault dwellers weren’t very high level, had low SPECIAL, and happiness was low all around. When happiness is low, vault dwellers work more slowly, which only stacks with your other problems. I’ll talk more about happiness later. On top of all this, my dwellers were irradiated to heck, talking about their bodies falling apart. This had never been an issue for me, so I didn’t have very many Stimpacks and RadAway. I had a full stock, but your maximum number is tied to how many/how big your Medbays and Labs are. So I ran out of those right quick too.

Outlived Their Usefulness

If you want to be really heartless, it is possible to reduce your population. You can either send someone out to the wastes empty handed and wait for them to die, or you can have someone rush a room over and over, until the fire and Radroaches kill them. More on rushing later.

So I’ll tell you right now. Don’t be over-eager to expand. It’s manageable at first, but once you have several dozen people, many of whom are low level with low stats, things get icky quick. It’s much harder to keep track of everyone and you have no time to really get to know who is who among your population. It’s agonizing to pace yourself in this game, but only birthing a few children at a time, keeping people’s stats up in the training rooms, and keeping some Caps in reserve and upgrading rooms before building new ones seems to be the best way. Any major changes can really offset your game. Speaking of Caps!

Making Bank with Nuka-Cola

Caps are essential in this game, especially if you need to build new rooms quickly. So how do you make Caps? Here are all the ways.

• Selling Weapons and Outfits
• Exploring the Wasteland
• Completing Objectives
• Leveling up a dweller
• Successfully rushing a room
• Sometimes earned by dwellers with high luck when collecting resources

As a freemium game, the monetization here is leagues better than most. You can’t even buy Caps directly! Kind of… Technically, every Lunchbox you buy is guaranteed to have some Caps in it, but it can also have various resources, weapons, outfits, and even characters, with one of those guaranteed to be rare or better.

If you really want, you can save these for when disaster strikes. It shouldn't be necessary, and there's no guarantee you'll get the resources you need. Smart management should prevent this, and even I managed to survive my bad times with no loss of life. Awful happiness, but still no loss of life.

Rushing a Room

Room rushing is an interesting mechanic. It’s a complete gamble that isn’t even monetized and doesn’t exist to take advantage of you. If you rush a room’s timer, you can gain bonus experience and bonus Caps with every success. If you fail, you’ll have to deal with fire or Radroaches. As you continue rushing, the chance of failure will go up, but even at 75% and above, there is still a chance for success. And the higher that failure chance is, the more Caps you’ll get. Someone with high Luck is much more likely to succeed here. If you want to farm Caps, a couple high level people with high luck and good weapons in a room can be a godsend. Just be careful. Sometimes even one or two Radroaches can do massive damage. Don’t let your dwellers die unless you want to waste all those Caps you just earned reviving them. Even if you fail a rush, you'll still get some of the bonus experience from fighting off that disaster.

It isn’t generally advisable to rush a room when you’re low on resources. Yes, you can get a bump in the meter from this, but if you fail, that down time spent fighting whichever disaster befalls you is a huge waste of time. Maybe rush once or twice when the failure rate is around 30%, but not beyond that if you’re already struggling for resources.

A Happy Dweller is a Productive Dweller

The last thing I’ll talk about is happiness. You want your vault dwellers to be happy. They’ll produce more resources and they won’t make you look at their dumb sad faces. Generally, as long as you’ve got plenty of resources, spirits will be pretty high. The way to push a vault dwellers happiness up is to have them working in a room that they specialize in. If they don’t specialize in anything, get them training. This brings most up to 75% or 85% happiness. For that last boost, sometimes the only thing to do is make them mate. Dwellers have always come out of WooHoo time with 100% happiness in my experience, and it lasts a while.Your happiness level will be tracked every 24 hours, so make sure you check in for your Caps. Once you’ve checked in 7 days in a row, you get a lunch box. When I had around 50 vault dwellers, happiness and management was easy. People in the Game Room ALWAYS had 100% happiness as well.

It's worth mentioning that there are Game Center leaderboards in this game. One for points/score, which I don't fully understand. One for best happiness, and another for highest number of rooms. Playing this game can feel a lot like spinning plates. Just keep growth slow and steady, and you’ll be fine. The tortoise and the hare and all that. Happy Overseeing!

The Nintendo 64DD is often regarded as being one of those highly collectible items we’d all love to own, but in reality the lack of available games for the add-on make it a tough purchase to justify. Although the lure of an F-Zero X Expansion Pack, Sim City 64 and the first appearance of Doshin The Giant may be tempting, there’s finally an alternative to importing all this expensive gear from Japan - and all you need is a Nintendo 64 flash cartridge.

Keine Lust in den Kurznachrichten Facebook & Co. mitlesen zu lassen? Threema ist da eine sinnvolle Alternative.

• Threema Messenger [Android] für 0,99€ (sonst: 1,99€)
• Threema Messenger [iOS] für 0,99€ (sonst: 1,99€)
• Threema Messenger [WP] für 0,99€ (sonst: 1,99€)
• bis zum 21. Juni 2015

Zuletzt gab es die App anlässlich des Schweizer Nationaltages günstiger. Seitdem ist der Preis leider nicht mehr unter einen 1 gefallen. Die Nachrichten werden anders als beim Pendant WhatsApp verschlüsselt womit die Möglichkeit des Mitlesens (durch wen auch immer) ausgeschlossen werden soll. In der Zeit gab es einen interessanten Artikel über den Entwickler der App.

Die Stiftung Warentest hat die beliebtesten Messenger-Apps WhatsApp, Threema, Telegram, Blackberry Messenger sowie Line mit Fokus auf den Datenschutz untersucht. Und ohne jetzt massiv spoilern zu wollen: Threema hat mit der Bewertung “unkritisch” abgeschlossen. Die anderen Apps? Von “kritisch” bis hin zu “sehr kritisch” war alles dabei.

Ich selber habe auch Threema auf dem Smartphone, nutze es aber kaum. Zu groß ist die Bequemlichkeit auf der einen und vor allem zu gering die Verbreitung in meinem Freundeskreis auf der anderen Seite. Bei dem Preis solltet ihr aber bedenkenlos zuschlagen können. Und vielleicht überzeugt ihr ja eure Freunde, Verwandten & Bekannten es euch nachzumachen

App Annie, the service that tracks downloads and rankings on the App Store, has released a new report showing how multiplayer games are important to mobile, but there's a really interesting little data point showing world wide spending in the first quarter of 2014 and 2015 among the App Store, Google Play, and handheld systems. Let's just say that the numbers don't look good for handhelds like the 3DS and Vita:

Oof. From the looks of it, iOS and Android separately have grown more year-over-year than what handheld system software sales are worth in their entirety. And that excludes the ad revenue being brought in to developers. Do you see how lucrative mobile is? There's more users, and far more money there. App Annie estimates 1.1 billion mobile devices being used for gaming, and while maybe users are spending less per user than dedicated systems, there's a lot of money to be made, potentially.

Another interesting takeaway from this report is that multiplayer games are rather lucrative; they are about 30% of all downloads, but about 60% of all spending, and both stats have grown year-over-year. However, this data includes pretty much anything with leaderboards, like Crossy Road [Free], which seems like a uselessly-expansive definition of 'multiplayer' so as to render it useless. Still, social features are useful for developers, it seems.

[GamesIndustry.biz]

You probably think you know your way around an FPS or two, but could you ace an arcade shooter and play-act your way through the whole thing to the entertainment of all around you? Could you look as awesome as this guy?

This is Rungkij Tsanon, a pro gamer from Thailand who was working with the Galaxy Group company around the time of this video of him playing Ghost Squad. It’s not just that he’s pretty good at it, it’s that he manages to act his way through the whole video, taking cover, giving a thumbs up to his colleagues and even kicking down a door in mime. We should point out, we’re pretty sure this isn’t a motion controlled game. There’s really no need other than to look cool doing it.

So watch it for yourself and see if you can pick up some tips.

We’d love to see a proper Zelda TV series, but we’ve been burned before. The Eighties Zelda TV show was awful, besmirching the good name of the franchise and making us all hate the phrase, “well excuuuuuuuse me, Princess!” Urgh. It made us throw up in our mouths just thinking about it.

Which is why this beautiful short is brightening up our day so much. Created by Callegos Yavolitak, the short follows link on his quest for a new shield. There’s action, comedy, and lots of smashed pots. It’s a glorious example of how brilliant videogame-based animations can be – we seriously recommend taking a look at Callegos’ other videos, too. They’re pretty great.

For now, though, just sit back, relax enjoy:

In the early nineties Ocean released a quirky platformer for the 16-bit consoles known as Mr Nutz. Although a great game in its own right, its timing was somewhat unfortunate due to the flood of hero based platformers already on the market. As of today though, Mr Nutz could be making a comeback as the game's original producer is currently gauging interest for his return via Facebook.

MP3-Download (109 MByte) Besetzung: Heinrich Lenhardt, Michael Hengst, Mick Schnelle, Roland Austinat und Stargast Henrik Fisch. Aufnahmedatum: 26.05.2015 Themen: Die Anwesenheit des Ex-Kollegen Henrik Fisch inspiriert die Runde zum Austausch von Redaktions-Anekdoten, schließlich hatten die anderen Veteranen alle schon mal mit Henrik gearbeitet. Einige spannende neue Kickstarter-Projekte werden diskutiert, insbesondere die Kampagne für The Bard’s Tale IV. Unser vollständiges […]

Alien Isolation ended up becoming one of the best games of 2014, but do you think it would have had the same terrifying impact were it a third, and not first, person survival horror game?

At GDC 2015, Creative Assembly’s Alistair Hope let us stop wondering and finally see what that would look like in action. During his panel on building fear in Alien: Isolation, the developer revealed four minutes of footage for the first time.

“When we started survival horror looked like this – or at least that’s what mainstream survival horror looked like,” explained Hope. “The 3rd-person perspective had been established as the default by a number of fantastic games. Although our original demo had been in first person, there was a fear that Isolation needed to be third-person, otherwise it wouldn’t be recognised as survival horror.”

We’ve long known that the game started off as a third-person game, though it’s bizarre actually seeing it in action. We could have gotten a completely different game folks, so thank Creative Assembly for sticking to its creative vision and fighting to get the game locked down as a first-person horror experience.

You can see it in action here, it kicks off around the 16 minute mark.

Trip Hawkins Leaves EA To Found 3DO

EA is well-known as one of the world’s largest gaming companies. 3DO is mostly remembered for a failed hardware platform and roughly four billion Army Men games. The key man in both cases is Trip Hawkins, who left EA almost a decade after founding it to found 3DO in 1991. EA went from strength to strength. 3DO… didn’t.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ronald Wayne Sells His Share Of Apple

While the two Steves (that’s Jobs and Wozniak, fact fans) are well known as founders of Apple, Ronald Wayne is less well known. Like Steve Jobs, he was working at Atari when the company was founded – but unlike Jobs he chose to stay there, selling his 10% share of Apple for $800 less than two weeks after co-founding the company in 1976 and sticking with Atari until 1978. When Apple went public in 1980, shares sold for $22 each and around 300 people became millionaires.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Atari Turns Down The NES

Back in the early Eighties, Nintendo’s American operations were tiny and the company was looking for a distributor for its new console, the NES. It turned to Atari, then the dominant player in the games industry, and was almost ready to sign a contract in 1983. The deal soured over the fact that Nintendo had licensed Donkey Kong to Atari’s rival Coleco, and by the time it was cleared up Atari had lost too much money to pursue the deal.

With Jurassic World due to open shortly, we felt it was the perfect time to share this gem of a game with you.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park appeared on the PlayStation and Saturn, but many don’t realise that it was also released on Sega’s Mega Drive, some 10 years after the console was first released. Due to its late arrival many people wouldn’t have played it as they would have moved on to the 32-bit consoles.

It also means they would have missed out on some of the best Mega Drive graphics around. Check out the following videos which highlight some of the brilliant mini-games found in this 16-bit adventure. We’ve added where the best bits are so you can go straight to the action.

Raptor Chase (0.35 seconds)

River Raft Assault (0.20 seconds)

Pteranadon Attack (1.05mins)

There’s nothing quite like music to evoke nostalgia for a game. Sure, you can look at screenshots or browse some old reviews, but it’s the music brings the memories flooding back – the tune you heard over and over when doing a difficult level, the bouncy intro that sets you up to enjoy the game, and other such things.

That’s why we love this video of the University Of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra performing a selection from Banjo-Kazooie’s soundtrack. Memories of the N64 came flooding back, augmented by the rich sounds of the orchestra. Better yet, original composer Grant Kirkhope is in the audience and the banjo is played by Mark Cromer, a long-time musician for Microprose and later Firaxis who is best known for his work on the Civilization series.

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Remember yesterday's news of a cryptic countdown from Bethesda? Well, somewhat expectedly, it turned out to be the Fallout 4 reveal trailer. I expect we'll hear a lot more from Bethesda over E3 about it, but so far the game is coming to PC and consoles. If I had to guess, I'd say this is going to be their killer holiday 2015 title, but they're not discussing dates yet.

It's not too surprising that their countdown didn't turn out to be for a mobile game, but consider this- Bethesda's PR people were pretty aggressively trying to get us to come to their press event this coming Sunday. The question that of course raises, is Why would Bethesda want an iPhone site at their event? Seats are usually very limited at this sort of thing, so typically you consider your invites very carefully.

I wouldn't count a mobile something out just yet.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A new Chibi-Robo platform/adventure title has been announced by Nintendo during its latest Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation. The last entry in the series was 2007's Chibi-Robo!: Park Patrol for the Nintendo DS, so a new title comes as something of a pleasant surprise.

You can check out the debut Japanese trailer below:

A new Chibi Robo Amiibo will also release alongside the game.

Guru-Guru! Chibi-Robo! is set to release on the Nintendo 3DS this fall in Japan. Again, no word on a Western release.

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/259255/new-chibi-robo-game-amp-amiibo-announced-for-3ds/

Ask any Amiibo collector (or former enthusiast) and you'll likely hear the same things. They'll tell you that the process for pre-ordering and acquiring new releases is broken. Nintendo isn't producing enough to fill the supply chain. Things need to get better.

As a consumer, I wholeheartedly agree. I've almost stopped collecting them. I couldn't help but pick up the lone Girl Inkling Amiibo that was available alongside my Splatoon purchase. I did turn down Pac-Man, though.

Retailers have dropped the ball. GameStop [Disclaimer: GameStop is Game Informer's parent company] saw a meltdown of its point-of-sale system on pre-order day. This led Toys R Us to stealthily put its exclusive character up for order in the middle of the night. The ire Toys R Us incurred led Amazon to save itself with a scheme that saw individual characters up for sale at very specific times.

None of these plans are ideal, and with so much demand clearly evidenced, you might be wondering why Nintendo doesn't just push more into the channel. The answer becomes apparent when you look at things from the corporate perspective.

Nintendo doesn't have an Amiibo problem, customers do. More importantly, Nintendo isn't motivated right now to solve that problem for people who are shelling out money as fast as they can when new figures are released.

I won't go so far as to suggest that Nintendo is unaware of the scalping issue that's faced the phenomenon. Rather, it's not a primary concern from the corporate perspective. 

Nintendo is on the road to financial recovery, and diluting Amiibo value by flooding the supply chain might as well be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Collectors who are now buying every single figure immediately (because that's their only chance), might be more conservative if they know Shulk, Greninja, Ike, Rosalina, and Robin will be available any time they decide to buy.

Right now, Nintendo is pushing nearly all (if not the entirety) of its stock to retailers. That means that 100 percent (or close to it) of Amiibo expenses are immediately recuperated as revenue. There are no inventory-holding costs that linger as expenses.

This isn't just "not a problem" for Nintendo. It's the ideal manufacturing scenario. 

Further, Nintendo has shown that it is willing to issue different versions of the same characters. It need not push a second run for figures right now. 

Many players can't access the Amiibo features in these games due to scarcity.

Instead, the company can simply wait until those characters appear in a new game, and release the same limited supply with the same functionality in a new sculpt. Diehard collectors will still want them, and the company's conscience is clear about making compatible figures available for a second time.

At some point, interest will wane. Collectors will move on to other items and those who want to use the figures in games will write off those functions rather than suffer the process of securing figures.

That's when Nintendo can move into its second phase for the product. We'll start seeing slightly more of the most common characters at retail. Nintendo would also be wise to initiate some kind of "Club Amiibo" subscription plan.

Other collectible sites use a subscription model that helps set manufacturing expectations. Club Matty, Mattel's site for collectors, has offered year-long subscriptions for Voltron, He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, and other classic figures lines.

For the consumer, subscribing is a security blanket. You provide a down payment and on a regular period throughout the year, your credit card is charged and the next figure shows up at your door. 

For Nintendo, that revenue goes on the books as a short-term liability called "deferred revenue." That's money that has come in, but for which related services or goods haven't been provided. (This is also how publishers recognize money paid for season passes before all the included DLC has been released.) Still, it's guaranteed money, and after the hassle of getting the first 20 or so figures, I am confident there would be widespread interest.

With DeNA building a system to replace Club Nintendo (and more), a more robust store and capacity for fulfilling subscriptions could be in the cards. Just don't expect Nintendo to start implementing these convenience options any time soon. Remember, the company doesn't have an Amiibo problem yet, and it won't until you kick yours. It's not going to start raining Amiibo figures until interest begins to dry up.

MP3-Download (81 MByte) Besetzung: Heinrich Lenhardt, Jörg Langer, Mick Schnelle, Petra Fröhlich, Roland Austinat. Aufnahmedatum: 30.04.2015 Themen: Petra hat sich in den regulären Kader hoch gelevelt und berichtet von ihren Jury-Erfahrungen beim Deutschen Computerspielepreis. Ansonsten plaudern die Veteranen über neue alte Computer, Erschütterungen der Medien-Landschaft und aktuelle Spielerfahrungen. Beim Heftgeblätter gibt man sich relativ modern und greift zur […]

If anyone had any doubts about how central mobile gaming is to the global games market as a whole, SuperData Research has just published a report that proves our impressions are correct and shows that the mobile gaming world is now the leading sector in the global market, which is great news for all of us who play or work on mobile games. Specifically, the total global games market for 2015 came at about 74.2 billion dollars, a number that according to the research shows a booming market that has tripled in size over the past decade as a result of a range of innovations (including smartphones and novel revenue models). From that 74.2 billion, mobile has a huge part of the pie with 22.3 billion dollars, more than the retail sector, seven times more than digital consoles (3.1 billion dollars), and more than social games and F2P MMO games combined. The report also noted that mobile broke a record this April with 137 million Americans playing games on their phones or tablets. This report, combined with other ones that we've talked about recently, spell good tidings for anyone who enjoys the mobile gaming world.

The report also talked about how "playable media" is the next era of interactive entertainment; with gaming going mainstream, people are increasingly becoming an active part in it by, among other ways, streaming games and taking part in competitive gaming. If you want to read the whole report (available for free), go here. We are definitely experiencing changing times in gaming, and it's a good time to be a gamer. With gaming becoming increasingly mainstream and with mobile constantly expanding, times are looking good for all of us.

Einige Amiibo Figuren sind sehr rar. Nun soll in Japan der Bewohner eine neue Optik, sowie eine neue Auflage erhalten.

Wir hatten schon mehrfach davon berichtet, dass Amiibo Figuren teilweise richtig schwer zu bekommen sind. Zum einen weil sie bei Sammlern sehr beliebt sind, zum anderen weil Nintendo die Nachfrage unterschätzt hat. Doch was tun? Einfach nachproduzieren? Ein schreck für Sammler. Eine mögliche Lösung könnten Veränderte Figuren sein.

Ein Bild der Figur „Bewohner“ aus Animal Crossing zeigt nun, dass genau dies mit der Figur passiert. In Japan wird es dazu eine neue Auflage bekommen, die auch leichte Veränderungen erhält. Am deutlichsten sind dabei die Augen weiter nach unten versetzt.

Wir finden dass dies eine gute Lösung darstellt. So dürfte die erste Auflage deutlich an Wert gewinnen. Was sagt ihr?

The post Japan: Amiibo-Figur „Bewohner“ bekommt neue Auflage appeared first on WiiUForum.de.

Nintendo and Universal Parks & Resorts have teamed up to introduce the 'world of Nintendo' to Universal theme parks.

The press release states that the deal will produce "spectacular, dedicated experiences based on Nintendo’s wildly popular games, characters and worlds".

"Universal theme parks offer incredibly popular, innovative themed family entertainment experiences based on compelling stories and characters – using powerful storytelling and innovative technology. Nintendo has created remarkable and imaginative worlds filled with captivating stories and beloved characters. Now, for the first time, those stories and characters will be brought to life in entirely new ways – only at Universal theme parks

The immersive experiences will include major attractions at Universal’s theme parks and will feature Nintendo’s most famous characters and games. More details will be announced in the future, as the Nintendo and Universal creative teams work to create specific concepts."

Full Article - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/258985/nintendo-amp-universal-team-up-to-introduce-nintendo-theme-park-attractions/

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Im Jahr 1996 erschien mit dem Nintendo 64 die letzte Heimkonsole, die auf Module statt auf optische Datenträger setzte. Das amerikanische Retro Video Game Magazine plant eine Konsole für Retro-Fans zu produzieren, die ebenfalls mit Cartridges funktioniert. Finanzieren möchten sie das Projekt mit einer Kickstarter-Kampagne, die diesen Sommer anlaufen soll.

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Most in the gaming enthusiast community know of Star Fox; a fan favourite among the Nintendo faithful and other gamers alike. What many do not know is what lead to the circumstances of its creation, and how it all started with an independent British games developer called Argonaut Games. Argonaut was founded in 1982 by a sixteen year old Jez San. This young developer had gained a keen interest in computing at an early age and had taught himself the Assembly language by the age of thirteen. He started developing his first game, Skyline Attack for the Commodore 64 in 1984 and he also became a Wizard (Admin) for Essex MUD, which is reported to be the world’s first MMO.

In 1986, the company finally started to become profitable and gained the ability to hire other staff in 1986, following the release of Starglider; a title recognised as one of the earliest break-out 3D games.

Argonaut Games managed to successfully design 3D models for the NES and the Gameboy, becoming the first developers to do so. This feat attracted the attention of Nintendo, who then signed a deal with Argonaut Games to acquire their services. What they had done to pique the interest of Nintendo, Jez said “They had the Nintendo logo drop down from the top of the screen, and when it hit the middle the boot loader would check to see if it was in the right place.” Nintendo had engineered their games in such a way that they would only boot if “Nintendo” dropped down to the correct place on the screen. Argonaut had modified this so that they could drop down any word, but with a resistor and a capacitor installed. This meant that Argonaut could make the game think that it had read the text and successfully boot, essentially circumventing Nintendo’s copyright protection.

It is at this point that NesGlider comes in. Jez and Argonaut games had a working prototype of the game running on the NES console. NesGlider was merely a placeholder name and it came about due to the fact the game was similar to their StarGlider game and was being developed for the NES console. Argonaut Games also developed a prototype of the game for the new Nintendo hardware the SNES.

The game did really look quite rough as can be seen in the gameplay demo that can be seen online (and leaked thanks to Hidden Palace, here’s a backup copy), it seemed very slow and the graphics were shaky. This was because the SNES console was not primarily built with 3D games in mind. NesGlider on the SNES looked like it was not as good as the previous StarGlider game which used quick movements and looked a lot smoother. This is why Jez told Nintendo “This is as good as it’s going to get unless they let us design some hardware to make the SNES better at 3D.”

Nintendo whole-heartedly agreed with Jez and invested one million pounds for the new hardware to be developed. It was called the Super FX chip which was comically codenamed “MARIO” (Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation & Input/Output) the chip would render 3D polygons that would assist the SNES in rendering 2D effects. The chip would actually be placed on the games cartridge and this allowed the SNES to finally utilize 3D graphics that may look archaic by today’s standards but were groundbreaking for a console at this time.

Argonaut then gave the prototype NesGlider to Nintendo to allow them to work on it, this was a completely collaborative effort as developers from both companies worked on the game. Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo was made the producer for the game and he picked his own developers, artists and other people from Nintendo so that NesGlider could become a more “Nintendo” type game.

This is where the prototype did a complete “Barrel Roll”, Miyamoto wanted to give NesGlider a more arcadey feel and wanted there to be more action. This is where the collaboration came in and Argonaut games gave Nintendo the idea that the player would be in a spaceship and fly to other planets instead of the way that the prototype played, which in gameplay seemed to be on Earth fighting tanks and walkers. Miyamoto also did not want the game to be considered boring and so decided that all the main characters would be animals and the reason that he chose a fox was that it was a prominent feature at a nearby shrine.

NesGlider is not a cancelled game but is purely a super early prototype for the highly regarded StarFox. If it was not for Argonaut Games and Jez San this hugely popular franchise would have not come into existence. This kind of collaboration between Nintendo and Argonaut was the main reason for the success this title deserved and with a bit of give and take between developers and publishers amazing games can be created.

Argonaut did also go on to start development on StarFox 2 for the SNES, this was ultimately cancelled though due to the imminent release of the N64. Unfortunately in October 2004 Argonaut had to lay off 100 employees and was put up for sale, this was reported to be because of a lack of deals with publishers which had led to cash flow problems. Then in 2005 the company was put into liquidation and finally dissolved in 2006.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! 

The post NesGlider (StarFox) [SNES – Prototype] appeared first on Unseen64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.