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GameCube: RE4 the Best Seller in January

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Resident Evil 4GameCube: RE4 the Best Seller in January:

“Capcom’s M-rated scare-fest debuted in Japan a couple of weeks ago and has sold an additional 180,000 in the region since, according to overseas data. Combined with US numbers, the game is already set to topple the 500,000 mark on a global level.”

This is great news. Rewarding a fantastic game with good sales its the best way to ensure top-notch talent is rewarded for their top-notch work. I am hoping this means more of Leon S. Kennedy. While those numbers aren’t in the GTA/Halo 2-osphere, they are pretty dang respectable.

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 – Screen shots on WORTHPLAYING

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My top 3 arcade games of all time are Smash TV, Super Off Road, and Galaga. It is blasphemy to think a console could ever recreate the thrill of playing Galaga, so I avoid all “remakes” of that game. But both Smash TV and Super Off Road are easily translated to the TV screen, so when I heard Midway Arcade Treasures would have SmashTV as one of its games, I was immediately sold. I owned it the day it came out and me and my brother-in-law played the heck out of SmashTV. I wasn’t too keen on Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (although I may pick up a used copy) but when Arcade Treasures 3 was announced, I noticed Super Off Road on the list. Once again, I am sold. I must play Super Off Road. It’s like my destiny and stuff.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few screen shots of Arcade Treasures 3, along with a nice little trailer. After watching the trailer, I’m pretty pumped to get some Super Off Road action in. None of that 3D off-road rubbish.

Tales of a Scorched Earth: World of Warcraft big in Europe

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I still have an internal struggle about joining in on the fun of WoW. But for right now, I think I agree with gatmog, at Tales of a Scorched Earth. He says:

“Due to its level of accessibility and favourable conditions for short game sessions, I plan on getting into World of Warcraft eventually. However at this time I’m finding it more beneficial to observe this growing community from the outside.”

Same here.

Some more light reading.

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Today we are going to look at couple articles with differing points of view on the direction Nintendo is heading. The first comes from the venerable hardware site, Tom’s Hardware. (NB: I love Tom’s Hardware, a great place for hardware reviews. I haven’t read much in their video game section, but I’ll be keeping my eye on it now.)

Titled “Why is Nintendo Ignoring American Men?”, Christiaan Allebest (Tom Hardware’s video game editor) talks specifically of the future of the DS but talks about Nintendo in general. He, like many others, feel like Nintendo is ignoring the “mature” audience of us American men, video gamers who were brought up on Nintendo. After complaining about the lack of DS games that would appeal to the male gamer, Christiaan closes with

Nintendo needs to reach out to older American gamers, not with the gloved, 3-fingered hand of Mario and his balloon animal friends, but with titles that deal specifically with what fascinates American males most: shooting things, blowing $%#@& up, and scantily-clad ladies.

I like blowing stuff up, just like the rest of us males, but I just can’t agree with this completely. There’s more to gaming that shooting and destruction. For me, I’ve got to think about who’s sitting next to me when I play. I have to be selective of what’s on the screen. The next article explains why.

From PC Magazine (WHAT!? PC Magazine? Bear with me, it’s worth it) we get this article by Jim Louderback, titled “For Families, Nintendo Slams Xbox”. He’s talking about his gaming experience with his son. From the article

Very few Xbox games so far have managed to hold our attention, though. The only one of note: Shrek 2 from THQ.

Shrek 2? That can’t be good. He continues

I’m using my Xbox less and less these days, and playing the GameCube more and more. I love console gaming, and I’m really glad my son does too. Someday we’ll be playing Madden NFL, Halo, and the rest. But not today.

Microsoft would love for the Xbox to become the center of home entertainment. But if the company can’t get its family-games situation together, that won’t happen. And based on what I’ve been playing, they have a long way to go. Without a family-game strategy, the Xbox will remain the province of older boys and men. My solution: Buy Nintendo.

There’s the key, at least in my case. Nintendo has always been my system of choice, and it grew up with me, for a while. People are always saying that Nintendo didn’t grow up enough and embrace us older gamers. But here’s the hitch – gamers like us have grown up. And now, some of us are getting married and having kids. I want some fun, gory games like the rest of us. Resident Evil owned me for weeks. But that’s not the kind of game I would sit down and play with my kids until they are much older.

“Mature” games are an important part of the spectrum of gaming. But Nintendo’s kid/family-oriented games are, too. Games like Paper Mario and Animal Crossing are currently influencing gamers that are as old as we were when we played Super Mario Brothers for the first time. I know after a kid turns 13 it’s all about playing Halo 2, but up to that point they should be playing games that are less serious and more about fun. Like it or not, Nintendo has the section of the market cornered. In the process, Nintendo is building another generation of gamers who know Mario and Luigi and don’t really care about Leon and Master Chief.

EverQuest II – /pizza

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EverQuest II – /pizza – At first I thought Jason at loonyblog was kidding. Then I actually followed the link.

Ever get those nasty hunger pains playing EverQuest II?

You’re in luck – pizza is just a few key strokes away! While playing EverQuest II just type /pizza and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com. Fill in your info and just kick back until fresh pizza is delivered straight to your door.

Now I will admit I’ve used pizzahut.com to order pizza before, but this is just crazy-talk. Do I ever get those nasty hunger pains? Heck yes, I do. But I think I’ll just satisfy them the old fashion way – by leaving my computer and making myself a dang quesadilla.

(BTW, shouldn’t that be “hunger pangs”? Or are they assuming you’ve been playing EQII so much that you’ve ignored the initial hunger pangs and now the sides of your stomach are scraping together, causing actual, physical pain? Something to think about)

Poor Best Buy Plebes

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A few years ago, on my first blog (currently our family blog/baby picture site), I railed against the salespeople at Best Buy. I know they serve a special purpose in the eco-system that is a retail store, but why is it that the one time I go to the store with a specific purpose, there isn’t a salesperson in sight to help me out? I was just there the day before and I was bombarded by kids asking if they could help me. Now, in my time of need, there’s none around. Sad.

Anyway, my purpose in going was to purchase a new monitor. There’s nothing wrong with my old monitor, it’s a nice ViewSonic 19″ CRT, but it was taking up a lot of desk space. So with birthday money in hand, I went to upgrade to an LCD flat panel. I studied the review sites, read user reviews and scoured every bit of info I could find. I wanted something under 350$ and I wanted a DVI connection. I was this ” ” close to buying a Samsung 17″ 712N. The reviews were positive and the price was fantastic but it didn’t have a DVI connector, which caused me to hesistate. Then I saw the LG Flatron 17″ L1720P, also at a sweet price. I’ve only recently heard of LG, but I’ve heard really good things about them. Choices, choices.

By looking at the two monitors in the store, you couldn’t really tell the difference. Why is that? Because those renobs at Best Buy aren’t running the LCDs at their native resolution. Almost all the 17 and 19 inch LCDs run at 1280×1024. Their little demo/screen saver is running at 1024×768. (It doesn’t help that they split one signal for like thirty monitors) It looks like crap! I didn’t let that deter me, though. After deliberating (and waiting for someone, anyone!) I decided I go with the LG. Of course my Best Buy was out of stock, so I had to go this afternoon to pick one up at another store.

My first impressions? WOW. Simply WOW. It’s only been running for about 2 hours, but I am stunned at how nice it is. A pure work of art. I was worried that 1280×1024 wouldn’t be enough resolution, but it is perfect. It’s just wonderful. My arm hurts I’ve been patting myself on the back so much. After I give it a more thorough test I’ll post some more observations.

I wanna see Mario, daddy!

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Ever since I rented Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, my two-year old daughter loves to watch me play Mario games. The title is the first thing she says to me when I walk through the door. She’s been watching me play video games since I could prop her up on a pillow (she watched me play Wind Waker all the way through) but until recently, they were just pretty colors on the screen with funny sounds.

Now that she’s realizing what is going on, now that she internalizes what she sees, it’s been a lot of fun to play games with her. I enjoyed the week of Paper Mario together, it was a fun game. (I didn’t get very far before I had to return it, unfortunately). I’ve gone back to Super Mario Sunshine and she loves that and I finally got around to opening one of my Christmas 2004 presents, Mario Power Tennis.

Super Mario Sunshine has been a mixed bag. It is still a really fun game with moments of insane difficulty and frustration thrown in. I still feel nostalgic when I hear the old-school Mario songs. I think Mario Sunshine is underappreciated.

Mario Power Tennis, on the otherhand, is pretty fantastic. The tennis is fun, the mini-games are a blast and while I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, I’ve heard it rocks. I haven’t played a tennis video game in ages but Mario Power Tennis has filled the void, in the same way I hope the new Baseball, Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball game can fill another void. Oh, that Pennant Chase is like SNK’s Baseball Stars. (But what about Mario Baseball? I’m so confused!)

The best part of all this is my daughter is getting a history lesson in Mario-lore. She already can tell the difference between Princess Peach and Daisy and she knows Mario is in the red and Luigi is in the green. I couldn’t be a prouder dad right now!

Gamecube and online gaming?

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Google does lots of things very well. Translating Japanese web pages is not one of them (YET!). But I do appreciate their translation tools. If nothing else, you at least get the gist of what the content you can’t decipher means. That’s the case with a link I found on del.icio.us. The Gamecube game referenced here is called “Homeland” and it seems to be a RPG that also uses the Broadband adapter. Follow the other links on the first page and Google will handle all the translations. Expect funny stuff like this.

While there’s no mention of a US release, stuff like this always gets me excited. Here’s to hoping!

Law & Order takes on Video Games

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I’m a fan of the Law & Order franchise and I catch most of the Special Victims Unit (SVU) episodes. One thing that makes the series compelling is that the cases they deal with don’t always end up tied up with a happy little bow where the bad guy is caught and the victim can pick up and move on with their lives. Sometimes, the bad guy (or girl) gets away with murder. It something that bugs the heck out of my wife (she needs everything packaged perfectly) but I enjoy it. I don’t enjoy the fact that bad people do bad things and get away with it, I like the fact that life isn’t fair and sometimes really crappy stuff happens. So it was this reason that caused a little trepidation when I heard that tonight’s episode was about some kids doing a crime they have done over and over in a video game. I thought for sure they were going to hammer away the “violent video games make violent kids”. At first it seemed like that was the path they were going to take. It wasn’t looking good.

The officers come across a body of a hooker who’s been hit by a car, beaten and robbed. Det. Stabler’s son recognizes the M.O. as the object of a video game called “Intensity” (*cough* I mean Grand Theft Auto *cough*) where the object is to run people over and beat them up to take their money. Again, I don’t like where this is going.

Long story short, they catch the teenagers who did the crime, and their high-profile, ignorant-as-nails lawyer cooks up a plea of not guilty because they were addicted to video games and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong. My favorite character of the series, Dr. Wong lays the psychiatric smack-down on the lawyer and basically says the narcissistic adrenaline junkies knew exactly what they were doing. When the lawyer asks him if he thinks video games make the kids that play them violent, he basically says “No”. What’s this? They are actually saying the violent video game “Intensity” didn’t drive these kids to do a heinous crime? That they, of their own conscience, ran a girl over because they were sickos, not whacked-out video game players? Astonishing! I can’t believe it, but the “Main Stream Media” (the evil one?) is actually saying violent video games don’t make kids do violent things? I thought this was a no-no! Someone is gonna get it over at NBC! Didn’t they get the memo? But sure enough, there it was, laid bare for all to see. Complete with the guilty verdicts for the two teenagers on the count of 2nd degree murder. Amazing.

Overall, they did a pretty good job of portraying video games in the episode. The don’t just show them off as mindless entertainment and they definitely don’t make it seem like they’re a breeding ground for an army of killers. The company that made the game Intensity also made children’s games. The gamers weren’t nerdy looking teens, although of the game programmers did. I’d have to ding the kids who played the perps. They weren’t convincing gamers. The boy in particular seemed more like a frat gamer than a “real gamner”. But I give them credit, they did a lot of things right. The even had Stabler’s son playing a Tapwave Zodiac at the end of the episode (shameless product placement? Probably. My guess is the kid owns a GBA in real life). I thought the episode was well done, and I applaud the writers from avoiding the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the video game and getting to the root cause — these kids were just plain bad seeds.

Update (2/9/05) – It appears I wasn’t the only one who caught this episode. Andrew at Tales of a Scorched Earth posted his comments here.

Update (2/15/05) – Here are some more comments, by new-to-me Clubberjack. He also made some pretty good points.

The big Three-Oh

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The day I never thought has arrived. This day, thirty years ago, my sweet mother was in the throes of labor, thrusting the cruel world upon me in a most unceremonious way. That’s right, today is NOT my un-birthday. It is officially my birthday. But not just any birthday, this one is the big three-oh. While it’s not the end of the world, it sure feels like I’m supposed to have grown up and matured, but sometimes I still feel like I’m twenty. And not just because I still play video games. I guess I can wait another ten years to see if I’ve “grown up”.

Of course you, as a loyal Button Masher, would like to shower me, your fearless Head Button Masher, with gifts and well-wishing. Alas, I would be remiss to accept said gifts, but send ’em any way. I’ll just be remiss and deal with that myself.

As I looked back on the past thirty years, I can say I’m happy where I am at. I wouldn’t change any of it. Here’s to thirty more!