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Dare I say that..but I already did.

Whenever I see a little blue or red pill, Matrix, Morpheus, and tight black leather immediately comes to mind, but these suckers (no pun intended) may flip what I know. The Mario mushroom awesomeness is in a set of three and the site description reads they’re mints, but sour…? Which is a tad confusing for me. I’ve never had sour mints before, have you?

Oh well, who cares. It’s 1. Mario related and 2. mushrooms (especially the 1UP mushroom is all sorts of WIN) so even if the candy inside sucks ass, I’d be left with the containers. OH yes.

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As I just posted on my twitter feed, I am desperately in need of some new games for the fall, so I figured I would take an entire post and try to list a few that I am particularly interested in. I’m going to go ahead and link each game title to either the review page of overall game page (if it hasn’t been reviewed yet) from 1up.com since that is my go to source for gaming knowledge.

• Fable 2 - One of the coolest looking RPG’s this generation, and i missed the first one
• Fallout 3 - Another awesome RPG this generation, also set in Post apocalyptic Washington DC, is it weird that i like Post apocalyptic settings?
• Ninja Town - So cute yet looks like such an awesome hardcore game, its like tower defense, but with ninjas!
• Little Big Planet - If you haven’t heard about this game it is amazing, endless playability because anyone can create entire levels and there is so much to it, from making machinery, to enemies, and custom prizes, I think this will win many game of the year awards.
• Rock Band 2 - If you haven’t played the first then ill just let you know now, that this is hands down the best music rhythm game out there, right now, Yeah better than guitar hero
• Gears of War 2 - Looks to be a revision of the first which i enjoyed thoroughly, And the online horde mode should be tons of fun

Secondary List

• Banjo Kazooie - I’m a little worried about this one because it is such a break away from the originals, but i really enjoyed the first two on the Nintedo 64 and i trust RARE to make a good game, if not the one i was expecting
• Left 4 Dead - Looks to be a good co-op FPS for both consoles and PC, and its from Valve so you you know its going to play well, the problem is there is so much else to play!
• Far Cry 2 - Another open world FPS but this one is set in Africa, which is a very interesting setting.  I’m really curious about this one because i have heard good things, but again time maybe short.
• Crysis Warhead - looking like i might now play this one for a while, even though i enjoyed the first it just doesnt look like enough to get me to play it
• bunch of downloads too - from XBLA, PSN including geometry wars 2, bionic commando, and more

This is a very old article, but it’s still one of my favorites:

Would today’s tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things in this uncut version of an EGM article—now with a bonus game not included in the original story!

Your average gamer these days is in his late 20s—young enough to still find new ways to destroy brain cells, old enough to worry about bills and 401ks, and wise enough to reminisce about the good ol’ days of videogames. But was the age of Pong, Atari, Mattel handheld football, and Donkey Kong really all that great, or are we just blinded by fuzzy, warm nostalgia?

That’s the question we asked—and answered—back in the November issue of EGM, in which we rounded up nine children of the PlayStation generation—ages 9 to 12—and forced them to play a variety of titles from the late’70s to the mid-’80s. Now read what the little scamps had to say, plus check their comments on a bonus game—Super Mario Bros.—that got cut from the EGM article. If you grew up with these classics, prepare to feel very old.

Note: Everything written here was actually said by these kids. Really. The only change we made was to remove the more gratuitous usages of the word “gay”.

Niko: Hey—Pong. My parents played this game.

Brian: It takes this whole console just to do Pong?

Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?

John: I’m just going to do this [twists the paddle controller as rapidly as possible].

Tim: John, don’t do that. You’ll die.

Andrew: This is a lot like that game. Um, whatchamacallit—air hockey.

Sheldon: Except worse.

Andrew: Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.

Becky: I don’t even see the point of having sound on this.

Andrew: Wow. The score is tied. It’s so exhilarating.

Brian: I saw a documentary on this. The game was so popular in arcades that it got jammed up with quarters.

John: In this thing? [Points to the Pong game console]

Tim: I would never pay to play something like this.

John: I’d sooner jump up and down on one foot. By the way, is this supposed to be tennis or Ping-Pong?

Becky: Ping-Pong.

Gordon: It doesn’t even go over the net. It goes through it. I don’t even think that thing in the middle is a net.

Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.

John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.

Sheldon: Hey, why does it say Sears on the controller?

EGM: Sears sold it for Atari.

Andrew: Isn’t Sears, like, a clothing company?

Becky: Sears makes everything. Actually, I’ve never been in there.

EGM: Guess how much this thing cost when it came out.

Kirk: Twenty bucks?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $50?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $100?

EGM: Yep.

Kirk: My God—I could almost buy a PS2 for that. I’m sure when this came out, it was better than whatever else was out. Want to play chess with me, son? No way, Dad.

Brian: I want to play Pong!

Tim: Oh, I’m starting to suck. John, you drained my skill.

John: Yes, I used a power-up.

Tim: What? There’s no power-ups in Pong. The concept of a power-up hadn’t been invented yet.

Becky: It looks like a Mario that got run over by a car.

Andrew: Really. I mean the man is almost flat.

Gordon: He’s a funny color.

Sheldon: His face looks pink.

Becky: What color is he supposed to be? Green? And why can’t we get past this first level?

Andrew: Someone take over before I lose my dignity. [Mario picks up the hammer power-up]

Andrew and Niko: Hey, that’s from Super Smash Bros.

Andrew: So that’s where they got the idea from.

Gordon: Nooo!

Andrew: You got the hammer and you still got killed.

Tim: Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That’s it? All you get is points? That’s lame. Can’t you do something with the umbrella?

Tim: They just put totally random stuff here for points. Oh, you’ve got an umbrella. You’ve got a purse.

John: Watch out, Tim—fire. It’s smarter than you think.

Tim: It’s strange that fire moves in this and has eyes. Oh no, the fire’s coming. It’s going to eat you. Are these barrels alive, too? Everything’s alive. And Donkey Kong’s mouth is made of pluses. Look: Plus, plus, plus, minus. They’re trying to teach you math by brainwashing you.

Brian: How can you die from a fall of a whopping 3 inches?

Kirk: He’s only an inch tall. He’s a little short fat guy who eats way too much pizza.

EGM: Who’s that chick Mario is rescuing up there?

Brian: It’s Princess Peach.

Kirk: It’s a hooker.

Niko: She looks cut in half.

Tim: Oh wow—she’s one of those pole dancers.

Handheld Football - Mattel • 1977
Everyone who grew up in the ’70s owned one of these portable two-player pigskin sims, which used red LED lights to represent players.

Brian: What’s this supposed to be?

EGM: Football. It’s one of the first great portable games.

Brian: I thought it was Run Away From the Dots.

John: I don’t see how this has anything remotely to do with football.

EGM: Which team are you playing?

Kirk: The red lines.

Tim: They could’ve just as easily called this game anything—Baseball, Bowling, Escape From the Monsters.

EGM: Did you score?

Kirk: I bumped into a dot.

Tim: Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?

EGM: Sorry, they don’t explode.

Becky: This is boring. Maybe if it had characters and stuff and different levels, it would be OK. If things blew up or something or—

Sheldon: If there were bombs.

Becky: Yeah, or special bricks. Like, if a yellow brick touched a red brick it would blow up and you’d have to start over.

John: Why haven’t I won yet? I’ve paired up so many of the same color.

EGM: Don’t worry about colors.

John: I just lined up six of the same color. Why didn’t they blow up?

EGM: Nothing blows up.

Kirk: We’re not going to play any mature games, are we?

Tim: I think mushrooms are like steroids in this. See how you get bigger and stronger?

EGM: What do you think of those graphics?

Niko: In those days it was like, “Whoa—awesome!” But now…it’s no Splinter Cell.

EGM: In those days? What days are those?

Becky: My mom and dad’s days.

John: The graphics are simple. At least the screen actually moves in this game.

Brian: This is Mario’s world. It’s supposed to look simple. You have mushrooms walking around. What do you expect?

Brian: No, they’re Koopas. My last name’s Cooper, so it works. And the King Koopa’s my dad.

Tim: What’s the Queen Koopa like?

Brian: They also had that Super Mario Brothers movie—

Tim: That had nothing remotely to do with this. They had, like, laser guns that turned people into monkeys. What the hell is that?

E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial - Atari 2600 • 1983
The original lousy licensed game, E.T. had players fishing phone parts and Reese’s Pieces from holes in the ground. EGM voted it the worst game of all time. We forced the kids to play it because…well, we had to when we were little. Why shouldn’t they suffer, as well?

[E.T. falls into a pit]

Tim: What just happened?

John: Ah, you’re trapped forever!

Brian: This is sad.

Tim: Why did my head just get farther away? I can’t get out.

Kirk: Maybe you should try to go over those dark green things.

Tim: I’m trying. I don’t know how.

John: He’s using his E.T. powers! What does this have to do with the movie? I don’t remember the parts where E.T. falls into pits and makes his neck longer….

Kirk: Quit falling into the stupid pit, you piece of s***!

Tim: Can I stop now?

Brian: This controller’s crap; you need to sit on top of the TV to play.

[An icon appears in the pit]

John: Yay! You got a…thing.

EGM: What did you get?

John: A backwards C?

Brian: Reese’s Pieces? Am I in a different pit this time?

[Ten minutes later, Brian escapes the pit]

Tim: Whoa, someone has you!

John: It’s a lady.

Tim: No it’s not. Her hair is E.T.

Sheldon: No! No! Not E.T.! Kill! Kill! Kill E.T.! Glock E.T.!

John: This game is so confusing.

Kirk: No wonder it’s the worst ever.

Brian: A flower grew!

Kirk: Piss on it.

Tim: Oh look—it’s a dork!

[Points to Elliott on the screen]

John: He put himself inside your body. He bestowed his life force upon you.

Tim: [Points to lava lamp on TV stand] That thing’s more interesting.

John: Yeah, let’s watch the lamp. It’s more fun and less predictable.

Tim: E.T. is unpredictable: You never know when you’ll fall into a pit or when a kid is gonna enter your body…I mean use your skin as his own.

Nico: Didn’t they bury this game in Mexico or something?

Gordon: Is that a woman?

Becky: It’s Zeus. He’s taking you away to the Acropolis.

Andrew: The point of E.T. is to see how bad they can piss you off…

Nico: …before you turn it off.

Becky: Maybe another movie company that didn’t want you to like E.T. made this game.

Andrew: Yeah, it was some sort of corporate sabotage.

Sheldon: Hurry, make him die!

Gordon: Please.

[E.T. finally dies—general clapping and hurrahs]

Andrew: Eeeeeteeeee phone home.

EGM: This game was so popular in Japan that—

John: They made it into a TV show?

EGM: Well, no. It was so popular that they ran out—

John: Oh, did they make collectible trading cards for it?

EGM: Um, no. It was so popular that there was a shortage of the coins used to play it.

John: But you can get this game on a cell phone. Why would you want to pay for it in an arcade?

Andrew: I’ve seen a game like this in the arcade, but it’s tons faster.

Sheldon: …and it’s in color.

Andrew: …and your spaceship looks more like a spaceship.

Nico: …and not like a little box.

Gordon: It looks like food.

Andrew: Where’s my rapid fire?

Nico: The aliens look like spiders…

Becky: …and squids and crabs.

John: Maybe this is what seafood will do in a thousand years.

EGM: How long could you play this game before you got bored?

Sheldon: About 15 minutes.

Andrew: If you take it on the road and play it on your cell phone, then you might play it pretty long.

Nico: There’s nothing else to do.

Andrew: Except look at nature.

EGM: Would you rather play this or play outside?

Andrew: Outside.

Nico: This game needs a super bomb or something.

Tim: This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can’t steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him.

Kirk: And you can’t pick up an AK-47 and go kill—hey, those aliens on the top row, you use them in EGM for stuff.

EGM: Yeah, we use them to end our articles. They do kinda look like they’re from Space Invaders, don’t they?

Tim: They’re going to sue you.

Kirk: I’m sure everyone who made this game is dead by now.

Source :http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3109674

Look at this. I know random. But I felt it should be put up. People are ridicolus. I don’t what’s crazyer. The man, the woman, or the police.

Mortal Kombat II inexplicably fell to the bottom of The Pit a few days ago, disappearing completely from PSN and from download lists of those who have purchased the game. At least it appears your suffering is finite: Sony tells 1UP that it’s “working diligently” to get the game back up on the service. So what’s the problem? Sony says “A Mortal Kombat II specification is being upgraded in connection with the release of the latest firmware update.” If you don’t speak public relations, that’s code for, “We have absolutely no idea what happened.”

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]]> http://marcomc2.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/strange-days-well-not-really/ Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:51:33 +0000 marcomc2 http://marcomc2.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/strange-days-well-not-really/

Times are finally ‘normal’, which feels sort of odd and weird to me, because for the past couple of months I’ve been busy as shit doing college work, internship stuff, and dealing with family things (paying tuition - which isn’t paid yet, three months late now, but its all good). So for me to be sitting here right now, no real work to do - feels strange. Don’t get me wrong, its amazing.

It’s tuesday, and I don’t really have anything real to say, except for a couple of quick little bulletpoints. For those of you reading this - if there is anyone actually reading this - who play videogames, use twitter, or any of that stuff, let me put some of my info up here.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/marcomc2

Xbox Gamercard: marco mc

1uP Page: http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5952079

That’s pretty much it. This post is useless. I’m going to work out now, go to French class, and take a shower. Peace in the middle east, chicken grease, and Karma Police.

The build-up to Dead Space has been a bit of a rollercoaster (albeit a very gentle one) for me. Despite my better judgement, the teaser trailer (all very generic Event Horizon-y) really interested me. A survival horror set in deep space? Yeah, sign me up!

Then the other trailers and previews made it look more like a standard Doom-style FPS, which is really not something I’m too enamoured of at the best of times, so my interest duly waned. And then I learned about the tie-ins: a comic and Dead Space: Downfall, a feature-length animated movie which ties in with the game, and I was interested again.

Then I read Eurogamer’s less than glowing review of the game, and once again my level of interest dropped. In a nutshell, Eurogamer’s stance seems to be “It looks good, and shooting things is satisfying, but the gameplay’s only just up to standard and it’s artificially lengthened and really it’s just a shooter rather than a survival horror.” And as all of those are Bad Things in my book, when I read the review, you could colour me ‘meh’.

But then I watched the 1Up Show (which features some remarkably impassioned defence of Dead Space, along with some pretty-looking footage) and read the 1Up review of the game, which mentions the same points as Eurogamer, but sees them defferently. After the show and the review, I was upbeat again.

But then…. Then I watched Dead Space: Downfall (I’m reviewing it for Videovista this month) and it’s turned me off the whole enterprise again. The film is designed to be ‘mature’ in the way that appeals to 14-year-old boys. There’s blood and bad language, and plenty of both, used gratuitously and often unnecessarily. But the interesting parts of the Dead Space world are barely touched on (and I’m almost certain they’ll be ignored completely in the game): the planet-destroying mining industry, the religious movement that opposes it and the way these fit into the wider context of humanity expanding through the cosmos.

Only time will tell though. Dead Space is out on Friday (October 24th) and I’ll be grabbing a rental copy as soon as I can, so that I can write a properly-researched review of the film. Expect an update then.

Too good to be true, isn’t it? Another nice item for my wishlist!

I couldn’t believe when I saw the lovely 1up mushroom from Mario’s for sale!!! So cute!

It’s available on Thinkgeek’s website (where else?) and it costs an unbelieveble US$9.99 (approx. £5.80)!

I just love it! Will order my one right now!

During the Tokyo Game Show 2008 1UP’s Thierry Nguyen interviewed Brian Jarrad and Luke Smith, both are Bungie employees.

Here is a shameless copy and paste of the interview which I found here. I underlined the parts that got my interest Enjoy

1UP: Can you talk a little about the naming strategy? On one hand, you’ve built up a sort of branding with the Recon Armor in HALO 3 multiplayer. But then, you’ve already seen the jokes and theories that Halo 3: Recon is going to be a squad-based shooter in the vein of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter….

Luke Smith: You’re correct with the first assumption; I think we’ve captured a lot of mindshare with the term “Recon” just on the account of Bungie-specific armor. And because the project is an expansion project, we felt like it made doubly good sense for the Recon name to be used [not only] as something that the fans already can associate with but also something they’re going to associate with Halo 3. It serves that purpose. And the second purpose is what Brian has said before: reconnaissance. You even get a little hint of that in the teaser trailer, where you see this ODST [Orbital Drop Shock Trooper] looking out at a small Brute pack and then staying in the shadows, investigating the situation. What did happen on New Mombasa? There’s a bunch of questions that the teaser trailer asks that won’t be answered until the game comes out.

1UP: Is former Ghost Recon creative director Christian Allen even working on this game?

LS: Christian Allen is not on this project.

Brian Jarrard: There really was no — the only implication from “Ghost Recon” was us being like “Hmm, damn, I wonder if this is going to be too much of a problem to actually call this game ‘Recon,’” and Microsoft did all of the trademark and legal stuff just to make sure everything is cool. But we always liked the name Recon for all the reasons Luke described.

1UP: Historically, Bungie doesn’t do expansions, even stretching back to the Myth days. Was a Halo 3 expansion always part of the plan, or is Recon really a spur of the moment response to the community?

LS: It’s definitely more of the latter. It’s also a product of our schism from Microsoft; where now, one of our core tenets as we left Microsoft is to be a multiproject studio that’s able to focus on new IP. So as we begin to focus on new IP, and we have multiple projects spin up at once, [the idea of] meeting our fan desire for more Halo 3 content, and doing it with a team of incredibly grizzled veterans at Bungie, made perfect sense to us.

1UP: You’ve mentioned before that Bungie had at least two other projects going on in some form or other. How does this compare, ambition-wise, to those games?

LS: This is a smaller dev team, and as a result a smaller-scope project than the other stuff we’re currently working on.

1UP: Can you talk a bit about the production process? Bungie hasn’t made small expansions before, so what was the production cycle like? Did the multiplayer downloadable content team just one day decide to take on the expansion?

LS: The content-ratio pipeline, in the wake of Halo 3, has been really focused on augmenting the multiplayer experience, and from that, a group of guys, who were originally working on [Halo] Chronicles — that’s been well discussed — like Joe Staten, Paul Bertone, CJ Cowan — these are those grizzled Bungie veterans, and they spun up on this project and very rapidly iterated through a preproduction phase. Actual game development and production started just a handful of months ago. The whole process has been very swift.

BJ: Yeah, we’re not saying this is two year’s worth of work, even though it comes out two years after Halo 3 shipped.

1UP: Are you comfortable with putting a specific time on the actual production phase? Was there a day when people were like “OK, now we’re officially working on Recon?”

BJ: I don’t know when that magic date was. It was earlier this year. But it really didn’t begin in earnest until a couple of months ago.

LS: That’s part of the reason why — I mean, the project is so early that we only have a CG trailer.

1UP: Is it early enough that things could change drastically from what you say today to when it’s released? Could someone take a comment you make today and possibly use it against you when we see the actual game for the first time?

LS: [Laughs] I don’t think we’ve made any Peter Molyneux-esque statements today. We definitely talk about things loose enough that if things do change….

BJ: The vision of the game has pretty much been locked. Because the timeline to make it is so short, and the team is so small, we had to make all of these decisions early and sort of streamline the process. In a little way it is kind of an experiment for the team in terms of how we make games; we haven’t tried something like this before. Like you said, we haven’t ever done a smaller, quicker release or expansion-type product before, so it’s a little bit of an exercise to see what that’s like as a studio. But I don’t think we have the luxury of time to go back and make drastic changes at this point, like suddenly saying that the fans all say it needs squad-based components and decide how to do that. What this game is is pretty much set in stone now.

1UP: Sometimes, when there’s “feature creep” — ideas for features that come up after you’ve already locked down what your game’s going to be — developers sort of treat an expansion as a “let’s put things that we couldn’t fit into this game” type of deal. Is that the case with Recon?

LS: We actually did manage to shoehorn everything into Halo 3 that we wanted to get in. When you’re talking about feature creep, the things that were on the cusp of being cut from Halo 3 all shipped.

BJ: I mean, there was no “mission to play as the ODST” that we cut at the last minute, and now it’s turned into a new disc. These are all assets being built for this project. I think guys like Joe and Paul and the team had ideas that they thought might be cool to explore, like not playing as Master Chief in a typical fashion. It’s not like these things were just cut last minute and are being repackaged at all. It does represent an opportunity to explore those different takes on Halo.

1UP: OK, a sort of random multiplayer question: Will the scoped pistol return in Recon? After all, if the ODST is weaker than the Master Chief, maybe you balance it out by giving him a pistol that can hit from further away….

LS: Would it really make sense, fictionally, for the UNSC soldiers to have better weapons than their supersoldiers? That would seem, on the design level, a pretty bizarre choice for the UNSC….

1UP: I was just thinking about how you can compensate for having a weaker protagonist by giving him a nicer gun to counter the fact that he can’t do things like flip over Warthogs or possibly not be able to regenerate health….

LS: So I’m a UNSC general, and I’m doling out weaponry to people, and I’m saying, “My best soldiers get my worst guns?” I just don’t think that….

BJ: You also mention multiplayer, and I want to make it clear that there’s a distinction, because the Halo 3: Recon campaign where you play as the ODST and all that might entail does not cross over into Halo 3 multiplayer. The multiplayer maps and whatnot are Halo 3 multiplayer; the campaign is a totally separate piece. You would not be playing as an ODST in multiplayer, for example.

1UP: You mentioned feature parity to Halo 3 — how different will Recon be? Obviously, some weapons and vehicles might be different to a certain extent, but are we going to see the equivalents of the ones in Halo 3, without mentioning specifics, or something drastically different?

LS: I feel like that’s a question for you to duck.

BJ: We’re not bullet-pointing the sandbox, but keep in mind that it’s a pretty short development cycle. We are just trying to build on top of Halo 3. I wouldn’t expect to see the equivalent of adding the Brute sandbox in Halo 3, where it’s a whole suite of weapons and vehicles attributed to a single race; that was just a much bigger scope project that we’re not trying to do in Recon. There might be things that are specific and contextual to playing as the ODST, but I can’t really detail those out today.

1UP: Not one gimmick weapon? No gravity gun?

BJ: [Chuckles] That’s a good idea.

1UP: Do you see Recon as a first step toward an episodic model like Valve is doing with Half-Life 2, where you have smaller, more focused adventures on a regular, as it is, schedule?

LS: Nah, we’re actually looking at Halo 3: Recon more as an endcap to the Halo 3 experience. We’re going to be putting a pretty fine point on the Halo 3 experience with Recon, and after that, we’re gonna roll the people off of those projects on to other things.

1UP: Is this going to be the next Bungie game we see? We’re not going to see another Bungie game between now and Recon?

LS: This is the only project that we’re anywhere near being ready to talk about.

1UP: You mention before that it’s still quite early, and therefore that’s why you have a CG teaser. Can you give any indication as to when we might see actual gameplay?

LS: Sometime before fall 2009. Oh man, that is such an ass answer [Laughs]

1UP: You couldn’t even give us a season!

LS: I absolutely gave you a season: before fall 2009. North American fall 2009.

1UP: Now that the game has been announced, what’s been the stupidest, or funniest, comment, reaction, or fan speculation that you’ve seen online?

BJ: I remember reading something like someone saying that Master Chief just got out of the drop pod? (!)

LS: Someone wrote that; that was pretty spectacular. For a moment, you see a fleeting tip of a gun and a black boot, and I guess you have guns and black boots in Halo 1, 2, and 3, so maybe it was the Chief!

BJ: Actually, it’s been more of the opposite, even with the teaser trailer weeks ago. There’s been some kids out there that were 100 percent correct.

LS: Eerily so.

1UP: Is it still be early enough that if some kid happens to magically stumble onto the exact storyline for Recon, you could change up the story a bit?

LS: It might be early enough to do something like that, but the guys who wrote the story for the game pretty much wrote it in a vacuum. While the fans do impact a lot of the things we do at Bungie, I don’t think we’d really….

BJ: That’d be a very dangerous cycle, where we’ll always be trying to play “stay a step ahead of our fans”….

LS: Eve Online does that, right?

BJ: No, we’re not in that game, necessarily.

1UP: Well, OK, We don’t want to take up much more of your time….

BJ: Don’t forget — Mythic Map Pack coming early next year.

1UP: So is it January, or just “early”?

LS: We’re saying “early.”

1UP: So it’s not hidden in the trailer as “1/6/09″? That’s not a date readers should go by?

BJ: I wish I knew; we don’t have a confirm date. We at Bungie want the maps to be released as soon as possible. The sooner the better. We know our fans — we know people want them right now. But “early next year” is all we have to go with right now.

1UP: Actually, to clarify: There’s the Mythic Map Pack, and then there’s the additional multiplayer content in Recon. Will there be another map pack in between Mythic and Recon?

BJ: I don’t think there would be.

LS: We joke, but that’s it.

BJ: But there’re definitely maps allocated for Mythic and ones for Recon, so there’s already been stuff allocated like that.

1UP: With the additional multiplayer content in Recon, do you think there might be a DLC package as an option for people who don’t pick up Recon?

LS: That’s a Microsoft item. Those questions are open items when we have discussions with our publisher.

BJ: It’s totally TBD, but we think there’s a lot of value to the disc itself. We don’t want to start 18 different SKUs and methods to get this content; pointing to the disc is hopefully going to be the best experience and is what we prefer people do. But there’s been no more talk of whether we break it apart and make it DLC later or not.

1UP: Are you intending for this to be a full-price game?

BJ: Well, we at Bungie have nothing to do with setting price points, period. Certainly, our intention, and the spirit of this game, is that it’s more of an expansion pack. The campaign in Recon, compared to the full campaign in Halo 3 — they’re not really within the same scope and scale with one other. I would hope that would somehow turn into some value-oriented package that was a great value and had lots of great content, but it has not been determined yet.

1UP: Random last question: Halo 3 was tuned to be played on Heroic difficulty. Since Recon is a sort of “thank you” to hardcore players within the Halo community and expansion packs tend to be harder than the things they’re expanding, are you going to tell people to play Recon on Legendary difficulty?

LS: That would just go against some core design tenets. I don’t think Legendary is something that we would necessarily recommend, as it’s a pretty significant challenge. [Pause] If you’re not a wuss, you play on Legendary.

Tsssk, that Bungie employee’s got some nerve, calling me a wuss

People’s opinions in polls be darned, Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans has apparently confirmed to 1UP that the user-created levels from the LittleBigPlanet beta will be transferred to the final game. Evans tells the site that they’ll continue running the poll on the Official PlayStation Forums to gauge people’s reactions to the news, but it appears this is now a done deal. The LBP beta ends this Sunday, the game will be out beginning the week of October 21st.

Sorry for lack of afternoon update. Had some good news this afternoon that I might share farther on down the line.

It seems that Zachary Hinchliffe, a guy that has worked on previous games like the Key to Adventure: Episode One, has made an Atari-based version of Portal. The game, which is called a demake, contains 10 levels of custom Portals gameplay with Atari graphics. While I haven’t tried it yet, it seems like a good way to kill an afternoon or just to try a different spin on Portal. 1up has been doing a lot of weekly stories on these custom games, so stay tuned with them for other unique twists on games.

In more news after Nintendo’s big DSi handheld, it seems the PC game Cave Story will be coming to WiiWare this winter. For those that don’t know, Cave Story is a Japanese game that got a pretty good cult following in the United States. The game won’t be just a direct port, though, as some new content will be added for the Wii. Hopefully they don’t overcharge for a free game on the PC, but it might be nice to pick up on the Wii to see what the content is about. If it’s cheap, I would definitely recommend it.

That’s all for the update. Stay tuned for hopefully a bigger update tomorrow, along with maybe my first weekend review.

So, get this: Nintendo, having had pretty incredible success with the Wii, is going to make another one! We know, it sounds crazy … but so did the idea that we’d still be having trouble finding Wiis into 2009. Despite our fears that Nintendo will continue trickling Wiis out the door until 2027 – at which point it’ll finally offer a second, soon-to-be sold-out color offering – former 1UP editorial director John Davison says that “Nintendo is currently showing early presentations of its next home console hardware” (according to “multiple sources in the game development and publishing community” that is!). So what’s Wii 2 (Super Wii? Wii Advance?) got? According to Davison, the few that have seen this mythical beast have dubbed it “Wii HD” – it’s got HD visuals (duh), “a greater emphasis on digitally distributed and backwardly compatible content,” as well as a familiar “emphasis” on what’s in your hand instead of what’s next to your futuristic HOLO-TV. With R&D spending at the Big N tripling since the Wii launched in 2006, we’re not certain that’s just a plain-old-Wiimote anymore. Our best guess now: a HOLO-ARM.

For the complete story see the What They Play Blog.

We told you a contest would be coming, and to all who want to win, it will come. Want to score yourself the Kratos Costume AND a free copy of Mirrors Edge? Then look no further. All you have to do is submit your own LBP wallpaper or Mirrors Edge wallpaper! Fairly simple, no? If you don’t do photoshop, you can scan and send in your drawing to. All submissions must be sent to chadhughes8706@hotmail.com . This contest ends the 25th, so get your entries in quick!

It seems that, without chaos, there is no order. Without alpha, there is no beta. And without beta, there are some 24,000 fans of Little Big Planet that came a weekend too late and are just about ready to do anything (and I mean anything) to get their hands on an online beta of this game.

It seems that LBP is captivating young and old minds alike. Contrary to the fact that the game has a kid-like, squeeze’em teddy bear look and feel to it, the sheer brilliance of the design and gameplay elements has led to a psychopathic rabid group of followers for the title. The Playstation 3 build and play platformer is one of the breakthrough games this generation, as it not only enables players to construct their own level designs, but also puts you in the majority as you can share those levels, and play them with your friends online at any time.

We usually tend to see characters retain similar design, even in the cartoonish games. Though one may be cel shaded, the other might be anime styled. Following in the footsteps of their own Ragdoll Kung-Fu, the characters are shaped completely differently in the form of a sackboy (quiet, you immature pervs). The SB is remniscent of a scarecrow that has a cute, cuddly teddy bear feel - unless, of course, you use the Kratos costume (which I will be,without a doubt in my mind). Veering off course to be different definately pays off this time, as the fanbase can’t get enough of what they view, nevermind the fact that a lucky beta player has already made a mockery of the xbox 360, and for what it’s worth, it’s quite funny! All of the links to that stuff and more are at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy this month, content will be flooding, along with some goodies and secrets.

Little Big Planet: Xbox 360 Oh Noes Video

1up Little Big Planet University Page

More details on the Little Big Planet Beta Codes!

Straight from 1up.com.

We’ll be handing out 500 codes each day for the next four days, and each time we’ll be posing a tricky LBP-related trivia question. You’ll need a 1UP user profile in order to send us your response. The first 500 users to private message SackBoy with the correct answer each day will snag the coveted codes. SackBoy will contact the winners each day, so keep a keen eye on your 1UP inbox to see if you won. Head over to our Little Big Planet University page to see today’s question, and be sure to get your entry in as soon as humanly possible. Just in case you don’t get lucky on this first round of 500, you’ll want to bookmark the Little Big Planet University launch countdown for the latest, up-to-the-minute news from the beta test. Good luck!

Good luck in getting your codes!

Even Snake is upset.

[By Giancarlo]

In a recent interview by 1UP, the legendary Hideo Kojima says that he is upset with the Konami registration process used for Metal Gear Online, and states that the tedious process is responsible for the lack of players in the multiplayer portion of Metal Gear Solid 4.

It seems that so many fans that have complained about it are finally starting to get some support.  But is it really the reason for the small numbers on MGO these days?

I believe it was Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men who said, “That’s foolish.  You pick the one right tool.”  As bad as the haircut was, he was right.  In the Sony realm, that one right tool is PSN.  Hideo agrees:

“Honestly, officially, I can’t say anything on Konami ID and Game ID. It’s a company policy. But frankly speaking, the idea wasn’t a very good one. The fact is that Konami’s direction was that we create a Game ID and Konami ID for the online components, and now we’re seeing that it’s not working so well, and we have to think about how to turn it around. It was a concept of an online Konami group thinking, so there’s not much I could do at the time.” 

To register for MGO being a hassle is an understatement.  Playstation Network was cut out of the loop in simply every aspect of multiplayer gaming: in-game messaging, account registration, map and weapon purchasing, and every other type of update.  But the fact also remains that Konami’s vision of a tactical game isn’t the most prolific multiplayer game on the market today.  Many problems still exist, including the dreadful headshot business, and lets not forget the annoying message popups.  Perhaps Konami should focus on renovating the entire multiplayer experience if they want to see an increase in numbers.  Another answer to this problem is trophy support, and sooner than later.  At this busy time of the year for the gaming industry, and the stagnant performance of Konami, MGO will not last through the winter, guaranteed.

Also in the interview, when asked about the future of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Hideo replied that he would like to work on other projects, and leave MGS to his younger staff.  They are already brainstorming ideas about the fifth installment, and I foresee disaster.  Can we let this cinematic masterpiece of a game and Solid Snake rest at last?  The epic finale of MGS4 was a beautiful bookend to one of, if not the greatest action thrillers and iconic characters in gaming history.  Put this cash cow down please, and contain the experience that all MGS fans felt sticking with the franchise for 10+ years.

The rest of the interview at 1UP can be read here.