Atari‘lerde aksiyon rüzgarı estiren Contra, Half Life 2 motoru ile tekrar hayat buldu.HL2 modunda dokulardan seslerine kadar Contra‘ya sadık kalınarak 3 boyutlu halini hazırlayanlar bölüm sonunda boss’u da unutmamışlar.

IGN has recently posted a developer dairy by Star Trek Online Visual Effects Lead (VFX) Artist Michael Cavallaro. The new diary talks about the visual design for Star Trek Online and what he and his team faced in developing the Star Trek universe. Given that the Star Trek Franchise stretches over forty years and 11 movies and incomposes visual styles from the low budgets on TOS in the 1960’s to J.J. Abrams slick high budget reboot of 2009 you can imagine the difficulties of fusing it all together into one style that pleased all the fans.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ” The effects changed from series to series and from movie to movie, and of course you have the J.J. Abrams version, which is different than all of them. If there is one thing we learned from Abrams it is if you make it cool enough, the fans will like it. “  said Cavallaro  ” The first step in visualizing an effect is to meet with the design team to see exactly what something does, when it’s used and how much damage it inflicts. From there we scour old episodes and movies to find all the reference for that particular effect. Sometimes we have several versions and sometimes it just doesn’t exist. In the case of different versions from different time periods, we try to find the most iconic one to build off of and give it a modern look. For new effects, we work closely with the Art Lead and Concept Team to make sure that what we are creating looks and feels like it is Star Trek IP. It’s kinda cool to think that a future Star Trek movie or TV show might use something we created as canon ”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Judging from what I have seen so far Michael and his team have done a Great job the game looks better than I was anticipating  when Star Trek Online was first announced. To read the full article go to Michael Cavallaro’s dev blog hosted on IGN.

Sentimentale Grundstimmung? Kein Bock zu arbeiten? Wie wäre es mit einem kurzen Flashback in die Zeit, als alles noch so simpel und schön war? Atari hat jüngst seine 8-Bit-Arcade-Klassiker…

…auf die eigene Website gestellt. Komplett spielbar. Für umsonst! Direkt im Browser, ohne Downloads. Als kleines Vorweihnachtsgeschenk an die alten Fans.
Auch sonst hat die Seite ein Facelift erhalten. Aber das Highlight sind klar die funktionierenden Klassiker, die in der Regel ganz simpel über die Tastatur gespielt werden. Sehr schön: Es gibt ausführliche Anleitungen in deutsch, was dem jugendlichem Nachwuchs erlaubt, einen 30-Jahre-Zeitsprung zu unternehmen und herauszufinden, was die Eltern damals so gefesselt haben könnte. Daher sind natürlich Titel wie Asteroids, Battlezone oder Lunar Lander dabei. Nette Idee: Es gibt eine globale Highscore-Liste. Männer, ran an die Waffen! [Ralf]

[Atari Arcade]

Aufgedeckt: So sehen Space Invaders in Wahrheit aus

Parade der schlechten Computerspiele

OnLive will die Gamekonsolen killen

Nunca esquecemos onde tudo começou, ganhei de natal, do Papai Noel hehe a febre do momento, tinha 6 anos quando ganhei o Atari e até hoje, passando por vários consoles, não largo essa paixão que tenho pelos jogos. Podem falar mau, dizer que é bobagem, besteria, não ajuda uma pessoa socialmente etc.. não ligo para essas coisas até por que os fatos justificam os meios e os jogos, hoje em dia, estão quase chegando ao patamar do cinema e até ajudando as pessoas da terceira idade.

Mas, deixando a história de lado, trago hoje uma notícia muito maneira, a Atari colocou a disposição 6 jogos clássicos da época, são eles:

• Adventure
• Asteroids
• Battlezone
• Crystal Castles
• Lunar Lander
• Yar’s Revenge

E pode ser jogado Online, pelo Flash..

Matem a saudade desses clássico, que eu jogo até hoje. Acreditem, eu ainda jogo “Keystone Kappers” o famoso “Pega Ladrão”.

Site: Atari

Ein weiterer Arcade-Klassiker ist im Anmarsch: Missile Command (oder ursprünglich auch Armageddon) von Atari. Bereits 1980 erschien das Spiel und wurde sogar noch bis 2005 weiterhin auf insgesamt 24 Plattformen veröffentlicht, zuletzt auf dem Nintendo DS in einer Atari-Klassiker-Sammlung. Es erschien in der sogenannten goldenen Ära der Computer- bzw. genauer gesagt, Arcade-Spiele und gilt selbst darin als eines der erfolgreichsten überhaupt. Indiz dafür ist beispielsweise das Auftauchen im Action-Film Terminator 2 und in der Nerdserie Chuck wurde dem Spiel sogar eine ganze Folge gewidmet.

Ziel ist es Städte bzw. Raumbasen, welche am unteren Bildschirmrand auf einer Art Mond oder Planet stationiert sind, zu beschützen. Dafür stehen einem drei Abwehrraketensysteme zur Verfügung, die jedoch auf jeweils 10 Schuss begrenzt sind. Man muss pro Level also mit insgesamt 30 Raketen auskommen, um die von oben herabfallenden feindlichen Geschosse zu zerstören. Als weitere Schwierigkeit fliegen ab und zu Bomber und Satelliten über die Basis hinweg, welche ebenfalls mit Raketen ausgerüstet sind und die Stützpunkte dementsprechend angreifen. Diese Raketen gilt es mithilfe eines Fadenkreuzes anzuvisieren und zu beschießen, um die Städte bzw. die Abwehrbatterien zu beschützen. Aufgrund der Bewegung der Geschosse gestaltet sich das natürlich schwieriger, als man zuerst denken mag, aber mit etwas Übung hat man die Winkel schnell raus. Schafft man es allerdings nicht rechtzeitig einer der Raketen abzuschießen, muss man sich leider von einer Stadt bzw. Raketenbasis verabschieden und somit geht einem, zumindest bei letzterem, wertvolle Munition verloren. Am Ende eines Levels kommt der Beschuss zum Erliegen und die übrig gebliebenen Städte und Raketen werde zum Punktekonto addiert – bleibt nichts stehen, ist das Spiel vorbei. Beim Erreichen von 10.000 Punkte erhält man eine neue Stadt und dadurch auch ein Leben mehr. Jedoch bleibt auch der Schwierigkeitsgrad nicht unverändert: Die Geschosse fallen schneller herab und auch für andere Gemeinheiten ist im weiteren Verlauf gesorgt.

Im Gegensatz zur Urversion braucht man im Flashspiel nur noch mit der Maus über den Bildschirm fahren und klicken, wenn eine Abwehrrakete gezündet werden soll. Damals musste man sogar noch für die drei verschiedenen Abwehrbatterien den jeweils richtigen Knopf drücken und gesteuert wurde mit einem Trackball. Eine moderne Fassung namens Lunar Command findet ihr hier. Und zu guter Letzt natürlich noch das Video:

Alex and I did a little art collaboration after the cardboard sculptures…

Zen of gaming and mutation

Medium:
Sharpie and Chartpak black marker on cardboard.

Art by Ian Arcticus & Alex (45)

Zwei Farben und ein simples Gameplay – Asteroids ist einfach Kult!

>> Asteroids jetzt for free online spielen

Do you have what it takes to stay and watch the credits when a movie ends?

There are two kinds of people in the world. 1) Those who leave the movie theatre when the credits start to roll and 2) those who stick around to actually read the credits. Obviously, I’m part of the latter group.

It all started for me circa 1985 when the 1982 comedy The Toy constantly aired during a free trial period of HBO. I loved that movie, without good reason. All I remember about it now is that at the end a kid shoots a guy in the forehead with a suction-cup dart gun. And that’s the end of the movie.

Then the credits roll. At the very end, the last thing to rise up on the screen was the symbol for The Motion Picture Association of America. At that point, I would scream with excitement, “Ball, ball, ball, ball!…”

I think the reason I was so ecstatic was because it reminded me of one of the enemies from an Atari game I played all the time. And that taught me to stay tuned to watch the credits at the end of movies. To see The Ball. At some point, my motivation stopped being to see The Ball and instead to find out actors’ names and the location of filming.

It’s always interesting to see when a movie is filmed somewhere other than Los Angeles or New York.

Plus, there’s always a possibility of a hidden scene after the credits- most perfectly executed in Napoleon Dynamite.

Since when did vampires become trendy? Everything seems to revolve around blood these days…Twilight (and all), True Blood, for the older vintage there’s Buffy…..

Luckily for Vampire Weekend, they’re named after vampires. Very current indeed. Everyone these days loves vampires (all the females in True Blood want to get bitten by them, even some of the males) and everyone loves weekends. Win, win.

I caught this video on television recently. It has nothing to do with vampires. Or weekends. But if you like alleys, then this is the video for you.

I remember a computer game years ago…on the Atari I think….it was called Alley Cat. I know, I know….I was very young.

Quem é da década de 80 (ou até antes) deve se recordar dos “Ataris” da vida. Foram os jogos desse console que nos faz lembrar as coisas boas da nossa infância, ou não! Um deles foi o não tão famoso Atari 800, certo? Se lembram dele? Olha aqui uma fotinho pra refrescar a memória.

O motivo deste post nostálgico é muito simples: Em 2009, se comemora 30 anos de Atari 800. Clássica versão do microcomputador (lançado em 1979) de 8-bits que vinha com super 8KB de memória RAM, mas com possibilidade de upgrade pra até 48KB.

O Atari 800 tinha várias funcionalidades, mas pouco utilizadas. Uma das melhores eram suas portas de entradas para quatro controles e, usando controles analógicos, era possível jogar em até 8 pessoas. Apesar de ser antigo, ele utilizava um microprocessador 8-bit Synertek 6502B, um chip adaptador para televisão, o GTIA, e possuia também um chip de áudio, o POKEY.

De qualquer forma, o Atari 800 foi pouco comercializado, mas aposto que quem teve se divertiu um bocado e tem boas recordações.

Conhecendo os consoles atuais e voltando no tempo dos 8-bits, temos um espaço de tempo de 20 anos de novas tecnologias e mudanças nos jogos. Ver que antes alguns pixels formavam um personagem e hoje é parte pequena de um cenário faz pensar em qual é o próximo passo dos vídeo games. Até lá, vamos comemorar por terem inventado o Atari 800. Parabéns a ele!

Yip yip, Hurraaa! \o/

This could just be an interesting coincidence, but I also think it answers a number of questions about Cryptic’s MMO development strategy.

Jack Emmert

In July 2009, G4TV asked Cryptic’s Chief Creative Officer (and fan favourite punching bag) Jack Emmert how many players Champions Online needed for success:

G4: Speaking of it being successful, when you’re launching an MMO, like how many subscribers do you need in order to survive or thrive?

JE: Well, I think that number is the number for success is over 100,000 for us. If it’s over 100,000, I’m skipping the light fantastic. The break-even point is somewhere below 100,000. And that’s obviously depending upon – every MMO is different – depending on how much money is spent on it. But, clearly, we mark 100,000 as success.

More recently, in November 2009, MaximumPC asked Cryptic’s Executive Producer on Star Trek Online Craig Zinkievich about STO’s business model and the number of players it needs to attract:

Craig Zinkievich

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

It is interesting that both men mention that 100k figure as a key subscription point for their MMOs. It could just be a nice round figure they both plucked out of the air, but I think the potential also exists that Cryptic is aiming to build MMOs that break even at around 100k players, with development budgets to match. In an industry where MMOs need 500k players for success or might spend over $100 million developing a MMO, aiming to be successful at the lower end of six figures might seem like a lack of ambition. However, I see such a plan as a very intelligent given the number of high profile, big budget launches that have since failed to find and keep a sizeable audience.

If Cryptic is going down this path, it explains the reduced development time (2 or so years for STO, 3 or so years for Marvel Universe Online / ChampO), the reduced time given to open betas / testing (expensive to operate), the reliance on an evolving internal development engine (cuts down development time and costs) and the introduction of official microtransaction channels (the C=Store increases per-player revenue over just the subscription fees, meaning a lower subscriber base is required for profitability). It also explains the multiple MMOs in production at one time – Cryptic could be attempting to avoid having all its eggs in one basket by having a number of different MMOs on offer, all profitable at a ‘low’-yet-substantive active subscription figure.

This isn’t to say that Cryptic wouldn’t want to develop a MMO that attracts 5 million players and sees everyone rolling around in cash. It’s just that they aren’t betting the entire studio on only one title to do it.

But What Would Atari Do?

If this was Cryptic’s plan, would Atari have signed off on it? Doesn’t every publisher want to create the next World of Warcraft?

Maybe not Atari. Going back to the original press release of Atari’s (then Infogrames) acquisition of Cryptic, a key focus was on Cryptic’s lower development costs and in creating “unique, high quality MMO games on 18 to 24-month cycles“. It would be impossible to create the next WoW in 24 months even with an existing game engine, so (unless Atari is incredibly unrealistic) they must have some kind of acceptance for the minimum 100k players per MMO for a number of different, rapidly developed MMOs. Cryptic is Atari’s MMO developer / online platform provider, so it unlikely Cryptic is operating completely free of its owner’s control and developing MMOs for 100k players while Atari doesn’t want any less than 1m active subs.

When Cryptic announces its next MMO – rumours of Cryptic’s Neverwinter Nights exist, although I still think that MMO market is open for a dark world / horror MMO that Cryptic’s development art has hinted about for over 2 years (or longer) – it will be interesting to see if they follow the same pattern of rapid development and release (next title due in 2011, according to those same rumours).

Or the 100k figure could just be a coincidence and I’m reading too much into it.

Cryptic Studios has announced that the open beta for STO will be from January 12 to the 26th  giving players two weeks to play the game prior to the February launch. Open beta keys will be given out on a first come, first serve basis, with players urged to watch the game’s official website Star Trek Online”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          “We are excited to announce the dates for the open beta phase as this is one of the final steps in launching Star Trek Online to the public,” said Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer on Star Trek Online. “We are looking forward to the launch of our first-of-a-kind MMORPG with anticipation and excitement and we expect Star Trek Online to explode onto the scene, giving fans and gamers a Star Trek experience like no other.”

Champions Online's box art: The 80s called and they want their pen and paper RPG cover back.

Massively.com recently asked the question about how important subscription numbers are to consumers. On an immediate level they probably aren’t vital, but longer-term they point to a game’s survival and potential to be a success. This is especially true for MMOs launched since 2008 – their typical active player numbers have seen sharp declines since launch, more resembling ski slopes than healthy growth potential.

Which is why I’m interested in how many copies Champions Online sold at launch. Cryptic didn’t say how many copies they’d sold, possibly because they’ve seen how trumpeting that you’ve sold huge numbers when three months later your retention rate is less than 50% works out for you. In short: badly. It could also be because they didn’t want to be compared to Aion, who was releasing in the same month and had more pull as a title. Or maybe they are pulling a Turbine and not getting into announcing their player numbers on principle. Instead, what Cryptic did reveal is that about two months post-launch over 1 million characters had been created in ChampO – a pretty meaningless statistic when it comes to assessing active player numbers.

Guesses Follow Below

So, apart from that 1 million characters figure, what other data is there? Atari won’t be releasing any financial reports that include September 2009 for a while yet, so that’s unavailable at this point. What is known is that Champions Online was the third most purchased PC box title in September 2009. Now, the PC monthly sales charts are a sad place to visit, given that sales numbers aren’t given out probably so that PC box sales don’t look so pathetic next to console box sales (Case in point: Wolfenstein launched in August 2009 on multiple platforms and bombed, selling just 106k boxes. 17k of those were on the PC, which still got it to #7 for that month’s top PC box sales – by comparison, the #7 selling non-PC title sold 130k copies, while the 59k sales for the Xbox 360 version of Wolfenstein got it to a non-PC chart #18).

Aion was the most popular title in September 2009 and NCsoft has indicated they sold 970k boxes in Western markets – since it launched end of September 2009, all of those sales would have been launch sales. It gets tricky to compare ‘box sales’ to ‘copies’ because of digital downloads, but NCsoft’s own financials refer to those numbers as box sales. However, even that 970k isn’t so straight forward, given that there was also an Aion Collector’s Edition at #5 in the PC box sales chart. So, what kind of proportion of ‘normal’ to collector’s editions might there be?

Age of Conan released those kind of figures when 111k Collector’s Editions sold out along with 700k normal editions when the title launched, while eventually about 1 million boxed versions of AoC were released. That’s about 11% of all boxes being the more expensive collector versions. Although that kind of proportion makes sense to me, it is also the only kind of data I can see on collectors versus normal edition sales for the PC – if anyone has any further data / links, I’d be interested in seeing them.

If AoC’s experience is similar to Aion, about 11% of that 970k box figure were collector editions, which is about 107k. This would mean that about 863k normal boxes were sold for Aion, putting ChampO’s box sales somewhere between 108k and 863k. Free data on sales for The Sims 3 (#2) and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King  (#4) for September doesn’t seem to be available, so right now we move from “trying to take an educated guess” to “throwing a dart while blindfolded”.

Even Guessier Guesses

I know it's a guess-timate. I'll be interested to see how right (or wrong) I am.

If there really are about 1 million players just waiting to jump into the Next Big Thing MMO, then ChampO certainly attracted some of them. But probably not to the same extent as for Aion’s launch – for one, there were quite a few MMO players saving their money for Aion to launch in the same month and secondly because ChampO was trying to do something a bit different for a MMO (different genre, different server structure, different character creation, etc – final quality of execution is up for you to decide). Difference is a barrier to entry, so it probably kept some players away.

Given how top loaded most sales charts are – the top few titles can often sell more than the rest of the list combined – it’s likely that ChampO sold closer to the 863k figure than the 107k figure. As a stab in the dark, I’d say that ChampO was looking at 400k – 500k box sales at launch, which isn’t bad at at all. If I wanted to be optimistic, I’d go as high as 600k boxes, but I think that would be pushing it.

On top of this, ChampO also was #1 for digital distribution sales by revenue in its launch week on both Steam and Direct2Drive. So for launch, ChampO did pretty well for itself.

Player retention to this point however is probably another story for this title, but that’s a different topic to cover.

Money Money Money

Here's what it is all about.

One of the things that was noticed is that it didn’t take long for discounted ChampO box offers to start appearing. This led some to assume that ChampO’s box sales weren’t that hot so they’d started slashing prices to move them. There are two potential reasons I see for this:

1) ChampO’s box sales weren’t so hot so they started slashing prices to move them. If someone at Cryptic / Atari had 1m boxes printed, or if negative word of mouth after the launch day patch was really that bad, then this is possible.

2) Someone realised that ChampO had about 20 days at which to charge a price premium before Aion launched and stole their thunder.

Discounting box costs towards the end of the month could have been a driver towards ChampO’s overall position in the PC games sale chart, but ultimately post-September 21 Aion was the hot seller. So most of the sales would have been made during the early launch period, before Aion came and the discounting was applied.

Atari has just announced a new live event for Champions Online.  The Nemesis Confrontation event will kick off on November 24, and will push the title’s Nemesis System to the next level.  In a smart PR move, Cryptic will be hosting another free “weekend” during the event, from November 26-30.  In the world of Champions, a weekend is five days.

“We wanted to take our unique Nemesis System to the next level and do something really awesome with it,” said Bill Roper, Executive Producer of Champions Online. “So we asked ourselves, what if your Nemesis could band together with your buddy’s Nemesis to take you on? Epic.”

Participating players will have the chance to receive new perks and costumes, and access a new lair.

About 2 weeks ago I posted an article about Massively Starting up a weekly Q&A in which readers submitted question about Star Trek Online  on a select subject for each week and Cryptic Studios giving you there replies. The first weeks subject was SHIPS and Massively choose the best question for Cryptic to answer. one question or should I say answer peaked my interest:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  ” Marix: Will ships of different classes (IE: escort/science/engineering) have different combat styles? Will a small Bird of Prey and defiant class move faster at impulse and do a lot of circling and swerving whilst a large engineering cruiser’s moves slower and tries to punch in as much damage as possible whilst repairing itself?

Definitely. Escorts are the quick-moving, precision-striking ships of the fleet. They’re not as hardy as other ships, but they’re tough to hit and can fit cannons, which are high-damage, almost sniper-style weapons. Cruisers are big ships with a big crew and huge engines that provide them lots of power, so they can fit a lot of guns, send big BOARDING PARTIES and repair their hull and subsystems very quickly. And Science ships can detect cloaked vessels, use tractor beams to hold other ships in place and expose a weak side, take out shields with powerful tachyon beams, and lend aid to other ships in need. ”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  There are going to be boarding parties?  does this mean we can take over someone else’s ship  or more likely a PvE ship and use it or explore it for loot I want to hear more about these Boarding Parties To see the full Q&A  just follow the link

Right, last week I decided it was time to create my first shopping list for ThinkGeek. They sell freaky gadgets, t-shirts, remote controlled zombies, .. I could go on.

One item in particular that I ordered was an Atari t-shirt. I ordered size L for a friend and size S for me. American sizes can be somewhat big for us Europeans. Belgium is where I ordered from.

I noticed right away the L and S were different. Here’s how:

On top, the L version. Sewn in Atari logo and cardboard Atari circle. Below, the size S. As you can clearly see, a generic t-shirt.
I also noticed the print was of lesser quality and the blue was not 100% the same. Well not a very big deal, I can live with that as long as the t-shirt is awesome. This was the case UNTIL I washed the t-shirt according to instructions on the “Pro Weight” label.

The print after the wash

What happened next

I started an RMA procedure on the ThinkGeek website. You can choose “refund, shop credit, replacement” as options. So I opted for a replacement. In comment I added some polite notes of what exactely happened. They shipped me a replacement almost instantly. I received a new t-shirt, with higher quality fabric and sewn in logo. As it should be. You can start an RMA up to 30 days after delivery.

Note: I have not washed the t-shirt yet, so expect an update if anything goes horribly wrong.

Conclusion

• Extremely fast delivery from USA to Europe (1 day). fact: In Belgium where I live, it takes 2 days to receive a letter posted to yourself in a mailbox 100 meters from your house.
• If the customs check your package, prepare to pay heavily (60 euros on a 150 euros package is what I paid).
• High-quality, fast after-sales service.
• Double check goods for any faults when they arrive.
• Expensive transport (45 euros on a 150 euro package)

So yes, it’s expensive. But if you want something few people have, it’s worth spending an extra penny.

]]> http://maximumoldschool.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/minigame-mittwoch-super-zaxxon/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:46 +0000 madderikk http://maximumoldschool.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/minigame-mittwoch-super-zaxxon/

Super Zaxxon beziehungsweise ursprünglich nur Zaxxon genannt, ist ein klassisches Arcade-Spiel aus dem Jahre 1982. Der Entwickler Sega schuf mit diesem Spiel eine Art Shoot’em up, welches man mit der Kontrolle eines Raumschiffs meistern soll. Meistern deshalb, weil einem auf dem Flug, wie soll es auch anders sein, zahlreiche Gegner entgegen fliegen, die nur darauf aus sind, dich bzw. dein Raumschiff vom “Himmel” zu holen. Daher bleibt dir nichts anderes übrig, als jene ebenfalls zu beschießen und somit ins Jenseits zu befördern. Umso mehr Gegner man besiegt und je weiter man sich durch die kosmische Basis kämpft, desto mehr Punkte gibt es dafür, was demzufolge eine Highscore-Jagd fördern soll. Schließlich wurde es, wie so viele Spiele aus diesem Zeitalter, auf dem Atari 2600 veröffentlicht, wo das Erzielen von Rekordpunktzahlen an der Tagesordnung und notwendig für’s Geschäft war. Als weitere Startplattform ist der ColecoVision zu nennen.

Das Besondere an Zaxxon war der Einsatz einer isometrischen Perspektive. Mit deren Hilfe konnte eine gewisse räumliche Tiefe erzeugt werden, weshalb man es kurzerhand als quasi-3D-Scroller bezeichnen kann. Nerdig ausgedrückt, wäre das  dann ein Upper-Right-Diagonal-Scroller – jedoch wäre es damit nur halb beschrieben. Es gibt nämlich desweiteren die Möglichkeit, das Raumschiff nach links und rechts, sowie nach oben und unten zu steuern. Dadurch kann man auch Hindernisse, wie etwa Mauern, überfliegen. Das Spielprinzip wurde dabei vom quasi 2D-Vorgänger Scramble kopiert. Um sich davon ein genaueres Bild machen zu können, hier ein Vorschauvideo:

Zaxxon war, vermutlich gerade wegen des revolutionären Spielprinzips, äußerst erfolgreich. Daher folgte noch im gleichen Jahr Super Zaxxon, bei dem es am Ende einen Roboter zu besiegen galt -  es wurde ein Bossgegner hinzugefügt. Außerdem wurde es innerhalb von 2 Jahren, also bis 1984, auf sage und schreibe 13 Plattformen portiert: unter anderem auf den Commodore 64 und das Sega Master System. 1987 erschien der Nachfolger Zaxxon 3-D und ein Klon namens Panther. 8 Jahre später (1995) folgte dann der letzte Teil der Serie für den Sega 32X: Zaxxon Motherbase 2000.

Aber genug der Worte: Spielt es (KLICK) !

Cryptic Studios announced late last week that the bridge would be a playable space in your ship which was a bit of a surprise to me since I assumed there was always going to be a bridge, where else am i supposed to put my bridge officers. There you go we now know for sure there is a bridge and at least 20 different ones at that, with the release of the “Bridge gameplay“ video we get to see our new home and that is what it will be were the Captains will do all there strategizing and if I read this right other Captains can beam over to see use face to face, hopefully for good and not evil. The bridge officers will be at the stations you choose for them to best help your ship in what ever endeavor it is up to. Give me the Defiant bridge with a borg at each station and lets see how long you last, I can dream can’t I. This video is mild compared to the second video “Ship Tactics“ which is in the same vein as the FUTURE PAST videos. It  is an actual walk-through of the ship systems and a first look at your HUD and how the bridge officers fit in, how they and your ship can be customized. this one is a must see for every future Captain out there. Thanks to Kotaku and IGN for the videos

I really like Kyle Orland. As a games journalist his quiet ambition for pushing games journalism beyond what it is is matched an underappreciated talent. Sometimes though even a good writer can miss the boat. That’s what I think happened in his interesting but underthought series of What if? articles at Crispy Gamer. In the articles, Orland attempts to look at key gaming moments and ask what might have happened had a different course been taken. Some of the questions he asks are interesting ones — What if Magnavox had decided to enforce Ralph Baer’s patent for a “television gaming apparatus” and gone on to become the almost monopolistic holder of the video game industry through its Odyssey 3 system? What if Nintendo had never released the Game Boy? That sort of thing. It’s an interesting concept, but Orland doesn’t really think some of the implications of the questions he’s asking through.

Take for example his segment on what if Atari had avoided the videogame crash in 1983 and gone on to face Nintendo. He posits that a forward thinking Nolan Bushnell pushes the development of the Atari 2700 — a more advanced console replacement for the 2600 that would be backward-compatible with 2600 cartridges. The console takes the market by storm and Atari survives to push upstart newcomer Nintendo into a corner of the market by 1990. What he misses in this posit is that the Atari 2700 actually existed and it was a disaster. It was called the Atari 5200 and while unlike the Orland’s fictional 2700 unit it wasn’t compatible with 2600 cartridges, that wasn’t really the deciding factor in its eventual death. The 5200 had the horsepower to compete against both the Intellivision (which it was designed to destroy) and the Colecovision (which had more graphic power but horrible controllers). Even without the backwards compatibility, the 5200 was certainly no disaster right out of the gate and after the unit was redesigned to accept 2600 cartridges could have been a success under the care of a competently run company.

The issue was really the glut of poor Atari 2600 software, the proximate cause of the great videogame crash of 1983-84 from which the Western industry almost didn’t recover. Orland’s 2700 system — even with backward compatibility — doesn’t address this problem. Indeed, it actually makes it worse because one of the first things a 2700 user would do would be to buy the bargain basement software that was currently flooding store shelves because it would be cheaper than the newer 2700 software. That would have killed the 2700 through word-of-mouth much faster than the 5200 died in the real world thanks to corporate stupidity and neglect. The institutional rot at Atari was already a foregone conclusion by 1983 and the innovation that eventually saved the Western side of the business – the Nintendo Seal of Quality – only came about because the fledgling Nintendo of America had learned the lessons of the crash. Without the crash, it’s extremely doubtful that Atari would have come up with the idea of licensing third-party software developers for the 2700 by virtue of the fact that they never thought of it for the 5200.

More importantly, Orland misses one of the real “what if?” scenarios that jumps out of Atari’s crash and burn – the fact that even if Atari had managed to survive the great crash it would not have gone on to face off against Nintendo – it would have survived by becoming Nintendo! In 1983, Atari under the “leadership” of Ray Kassar was on the verge of inking a deal with Nintendo to distribute Donkey Kong on home computers – a deal that was designed to be the precursor to Atari distributing Nintendo products outside of Japan. Given that Nintendo’s reason for wanting the deal was Atari’s impressive worldwide marketing apparatus, it’s entirely likely that the Famicom (which became the Nintendo Entertaiment System in the West in our world) would have been Atari-branded. That would have been the Atari 2700.

The problem with that scenario would have been – once again – a glut of poor software. Without a Nintendo Seal of Quality and a system of third-party licensing, there’s no doubt that crappy software for the 2700 would have flooded the market soon after the system was released. Regardless of the quality of the games that would be produced by Nintendo itself (we’re assuming that Atari would recognize Miyamoto’s genius and not try to slap a license on Super Mario Bros., by no means a slam-dunk), the 2700 would soon be buried in a bunch of crappy Chase-the-Chuckwagon clones. Atari would still have collapsed – albeit a year or two later and this time it would have taken Nintendo’s hope of Western expansion with it.

The result would have been a videogame drought that makes our crash in 1983-84 look like the glory days of the PS2. Nintendo in our world had a hard enough time getting into retail because of how badly retailers had been burned by the crash – they invented R.O.B. the robot specifically so they could call the system a “toy” rather than a videogame. After the crash of the Atari 2700 there isn’t a retailer in the Western hemisphere that would have touched a videogame with a 10-foot pole. Most Atari 2600 gamers would have either moved on to PC gaming as I did or simply forgotten about gaming altogether – except for dropping some quarters into the occasional old Pac-Man machine at a local 7-11 (the arcades also hit a big slump in this period from which they never really recovered). It wouldn’t have been the “end of videogames” but it’s entirely possible that gaming would never have become the relevant cultural force it eventually became. PC gaming could never have taken the place of console gaming because it wasn’t gaming that drove the adoption of the PC – it was spreadsheets.

In my mind, the true frontier of videogaming in such a world would probably have been the handheld system. In that case Nintendo, burned by the failure of the 2700 would have focused on expanding its Game & Watch line of products, introducing the first GameWatch Boy in 1986 (later the name would be shortened to just GameBoy) packed in with Tetris. About a year later the GameBoy would be rivaled by NEC’s Turbo Express and the two handheld systems would split the market between them, though NEC played second-fiddle to Nintendo until about 1995. Atari’s Game Gear – a joint venture between them and Sega – never managed better than a distant third in the marketplace.

In 1995 however, NEC would expand the capabilities of the TurboExpress by utilizing its heft as a consumer electronics company to link the TurboExpress into the burgeoning “multimedia” revolution by incorporating PCLink capabilities that allow users to download applications – including music and video files – into the newly renamed “TurboPod.” Eventually the TurboPod relegates the Gameboy into a niche as a mere gaming toy while NEC faces off against its real competition – Sony’s new line of Digital Walkmans that perform similar functions utilizing technology developed by Apple.

I think somewhere in that world I’m playing a lot of pinball.

Howdy:

• Simple Controls
• Huge Rosters
• Varied environments

See Ya’:

• Hit detection and boundaries can be frustrating.
• Commentary is terrible.
• Needs more create a player options.

The Backyard series of sports games has been around now for a number of years and covers a number of different sports.  This year’s version of Backyard Football ’10 has more real-life NFL players than it’s ever had, all imagined as if they were elementary versions of themselves.  Backyard Football is aimed at a younger generation of football fans, but don’t be fooled by the kiddie appearance and quirky commentators, there is a lot of depth to this game for those that are willing to look.

Backyard Football ‘10 features many of the options you would expect to find in the “big boy” versions of Madden.  You can elect to jump right into a game, hit the practice field to hone your skills, enter a bracketed tournament or play a full season.  Each of these options have their uses, but you’re probably most interested in the season mode so we’ll head straight to that.  You begin by choosing your team, any one of the 32 current NFL teams or a team created specifically for the game.  You can throw out the rosters that you know because they don’t matter in this game.  Each season begins with a draft.  You can choose up to 7 players that will play both offense and defense, with no subs.  It’s iron-man football rules in the schoolyard.  You have three boys or girls on offense that will be your offensive line, 3 specialty players that can play running back or a receiver, and your quarterback.  There is a roster of pros, some of which must be unlocked by achieving certain in-game milestones and a large selection of custom made players.  Pick your team and hit the field.

You’ll play a full schedule season of 16 games plus the playoffs, with up to four human players on a team, to determine who the best team in the backyard is.  At any point between games you can make trades among the teams, or even create a custom player that you can add to your roster.  The create a player mode is fairly basic and there aren’t a lot of options outside of clothing when you first start.  You can adjust your created players star ratings in a few categories or go with a pre-set archetype for whatever position you want to play.  You can upgrade these custom players by performing well in games and you’ll become better and better as the season goes along. 

As far is the on the field play there is a ton of depth in the play calling, and power ups that you can use to alter the course of the game.  The rosters are seven on seven, but there are more than a half a dozen different formations you can choose from each with around 8-10 plays.  You have the ability to have the computer choose the play for you or you can control everything yourself.  The difficulty mode you choose will determine how complex the control scheme gets.  Easy mode means you just have to snap the ball and flick the controller to pass.  The computer will choose the best open receiver to throw to or you can up the difficulty where each eligible receiver will be assigned to a direction on the D-pad.  Simply hold that direction and flick the remote to throw.  You have all the expected moves while running with the ball like stiff arms, jukes and spins, many of them mapped to a motion.  It was pretty intuitive and almost always responded like I expected. 

There are some issues with the on the field action that can be frustrating.  Hit detection was not always understandable and many times I felt I was being tackled by a phantom.  There was someone in the area, but it wasn’t always apparent they were tackling me.  This might have just been because the tackling in the game is pretty rudimentary.  Simply running into someone will usually cause them to fall over ending the play.  The other big issue I had was not knowing exactly where on the field the out of bounds was.  There were way too many times I felt a ball was caught two or even three steps in bounds only to have the play whistled incomplete.  I also had a number of times where I felt an opposing player was tackled at the two yard line only to have the computer credited with a touchdown.  It’s very frustrating when these issues happen and something that really needs to be addressed in the next version of the game. 

The voice acting in the game is also less than stellar.  The play by play commentator, Sunny Day, was nice enough to listen to and would add some insightful comments to the game, but the color man, Chuck Downfield, was at times downright awful.  They play him up as a Madden type of character, but his ramblings are worse than anything the hall-of-famer could come up with.  Here are a few examples.  “I don’t know how many times I’ve said this.  You’ve gotta use your hands if you want to catch the ball.”  “They just scored a touchdown, which usually results in six points.” When choosing plays for you, “You can’t go wrong with that one and I oughta know.  I’m wrong all the time.”

As you would expect in a Backyard Sports game there are a large number of unusual play areas.  You have the traditional backyard, or school yard, but mixed in with that you can choose to play in the courtyard of a castle or on a construction site.  Aside from a different view, the fields don’t change the game play in any way, but it is nice to have a variety to choose from.  The players themselves are colorful and have different animations to express their emotions during play ranging from back flips to moonwalks.

Backyard Football ‘10 is a competent alternative to anyone looking for a sports game to play with their younger gamers in the house.  The controls can be picked up quickly and they have the ability to grow with the player so as they become more comfortable more things can be added.  The game play is solid and who doesn’t want to know what it would have been like to play football with Tom Brady during elementary school.  He’s the quarterback for my Carolina Panthers and I catch touchdown passes from him all day.  If you’re looking for a good sports game that the whole family can enjoy this might be one to take a look at. 

Final Score: 3/5 Average

Review copy of the game provided by Atari.

Atari and Cryiptic Studios have confirmed that February 2nd 2010 will be the launch date for Star Trek Online for the PC in North America  and February 5 it will launch in Europe. that’s only 2 and a half months away wow when they said that It would be out sooner than you expected at their press conference in Las Vagus they weren’t kidding, will it actually be ready?. Bio Break has a few words to say about the subject and I have to largely agree with him, It does seem all a bit rushed. This game is going to draw large numbers and give Cryptic Studios a much larger presence in the gaming world if it succeeds over the long-term. Thay have one shot. so do it right because the fans will never forgive you if its bad and they feel It’s because of a beta that seems way to short or a studio that just wanted to cash in. I could be completely wrong here and the game is indeed ready for launch in that case  my worrying is for nothing and I will be the first in line at midnight to get my grumpy little hands on a copy. We now know what that copy will look like thanks to MMORPG with our first peek at the box art for STO which looks very combat oriented and fits in with the rest of their promotional campaign and some people have found fault with that pointing out that                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “Star Trek has always been more about finding the ideal solution rather than just setting phasers to kill. Sure it has to be done from time to time but the best Captains always try to find a way around the fight”     Ardue.  Nov 11, comment                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        That my be true but most people play MMO’s to kill things not to collect rocks all thought I’m sure we will be all doing a lot of that to, if I’m going to captain my own ship then battle with other ships is at the top of my list of things to do I’m not saying Star Trek should be a kill fest that would be a disservice to the whole idea of Star Trek but for the purposes of marketing a MMO  it’s what works the best.

Ya estoy de vuelta tras mi operación, todavía algo renqueante pero bastante mejor que las últimas semanas. Parece que como mi novia dice “bicho malo nunca muere”.

Para celebrar que todo ha ido bastante bien hoy os traigo uno de mis anuncios favoritos sobre uno de mis videojuegos favoritos. Personalmente no me imagino otra forma de promocionar “Donkey Kong” más “cool” y ochentera, aunque ese actor se parezca más a Luigi que a Mario…

En cuanto a las tres versiones que se presentan, la de Atari era simplemente decente, mientras que la versión de Colecovision es prácticamente una réplica del arcade (si no fuera por sus infectos mandos de control).Por su parte, la conversión para Intellivision es símplemente abominable.

Lo curioso del tema es que las conversiónes para estas tres máquinas fueron realizadas por…COLECO, lo que dio lugar a la leyenda urbana de que los programadores tenían orden de que las versiones de Atari 2600 e Intellivision fueran muy inferiores a la de Colecovision, para que quedara claro que su máquina era la más potente.

Desde luego, en el caso de la conversión a Intellivision (una máquina relativamente potente en la época) la leyenda se convierte en una posible explicación razonable, aunque personalmente creo que este lamentable título se debió más a la inexperiencia de los programadores para trabajar con un hardware diametralmente opuesto al que solían utilizar y a la necesidad de lanzar el título cuanto antes, lo que dejó muy poco tiempo de margen para hacer una conversión más trabajada.

Para completar este post, aquí os dejo los videos de las tres versiones:

Picked up 2 machines at the RCM meetup yesterday.

• Texas Instruments TI99/4a
• Atari 800 XL + 1010 tape drive.

Photos will be uploaded later.

E aí galera, estou um tempinho sem postar (sou um lerdão mesmo XD), bom, desta vez é uma rapidinha, mas das boas huaa huaa…Bom galerinha, este video meu irmão me mandou por e-mail e achei fantástico. É um video em Pixelation (vertente do Stop Motion) que é feito com Lego. O barato é que tanto a música quanto a animação é baseada no 8 bits do nintendinho. Bem legal. Para ver um post relacionado, clique aqui.

Espero que curtam o vídeo. Até mais XD