Activision today announced that Guitar Hero fans will have another virtual destination to join together and rock with the launch of the franchise’s very own space in the PlayStation Home
The 3D social gaming community that allows users to interact, communicate and share gaming experiences together online for the PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) computer entertainment system.
“Backstage with Guitar Hero” will give Guitar Hero rock stars around the world exclusive VIP access to both a themed backstage lounge and massive concert venue where they can meet up, hang out, check out videos for upcoming titles on the franchise, and share their rock and roll secrets. “Backstage with Guitar Hero” will continue to evolve over time adding new functionality.
Line-up includes Two WiiWare titles and FINAL FANTASY series for Wii Virtual Console
Square Enix Co., Ltd. (Square Enix) announced today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the forthcoming releases of new downloadable titles including... FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS and FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord for WiiWare, as well as the FINAL FANTASY series for the Virtual Console for Wii.
The release of these new downloadable titles represent Square Enix’s recognition of the growing demand for online distribution of content/services, and the commitment they have made to provide content/services that match the needs of their customers.
Square Enix will be offering two new releases for WiiWare: FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS and FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord. FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS, is an RPG that continues the story that began in the 1991 Super Famicom title FINAL FANTASY IV. In Japan, this title was released as a downloadable cellular phone application in February 2008. It has since been lauded for its deep storytelling, and a year after its release, has been downloaded over 3 million times.
FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord is the newest instalment in the FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES series, which has shipped over 2 million copies worldwide and is set to grow further in 2009. This title will be a sequel to FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a King, which launched simultaneously with the WiiWare service in May of 2008.
In addition, the Virtual Console allows Wii users to download and play classic titles released on previous game consoles, and now for the first time ever, the FINAL FANTASY series will be made available via home console download. The first instalment of the series will be FINAL FANTASY, originally released for the Famicom™ in Japan in 1987, which will be available for download in May 2009 in Japan. The release date for PAL region will be in 2009.
18 years after FINAL FANTASY IV first stole the hearts of Japanese gamers, the adventure continues in FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS.
Released as a mobile phone game in Japan, this wildly popular sequel has topped 3 million paid downloads as of 25th February 2009.
The game focuses primarily on Ceodore, son of FINAL FANTASY IV heroes Cecil and Rosa. He is ably supported by a host of familiar faces from the original cast who star in a series of additional tales.
About FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Developer: Square Enix Co., Ltd. Publisher: Square Enix Ltd. Platform: Wii Genre: Real Time Strategy Launch Date: 2009
FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord puts players in the highly fashionable shoes of the Darklord's daughter, a malevolent little Miss, charged with dispatching intruding do-gooders by strategically placing traps and monsters around the tower she calls home.
Players will need to get their hands on ever more diabolical traps and abominable monsters to stop those pesky adventurers from making it to the Dark Crystal at the top of the tower. Be warned, though – with heroes of all the races and job classes from the FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES series storming the Darklord’s lair in real time, traps and minions will count for nothing unless deployed like a true evil genius. Anything less and the Darklord’s beloved home will be reduced to rubble!
The Magic Toy Chest is a physics puzzle game for the PC and Windows platform. The Magic Toy Chest is inspired by the classic PC game, The Incredible Machine, and is great fun for the whole family. The object of the game is to pick up your toys strewn about the house. Who knew picking up could be such fun!
Physics fans rejoice! Graduate Games, an independent game developmer, announces that The Magic Toy Chest, a classic-inspired physics puzzle game is now available for the PC and Windows Platform.
The Magic Toy Chest is inspired by the classic PC game series, The Incredible Machine, and is great fun for the whole family. The object of the game is to pick up your toys strewn about the house. Using wacky physics and unique toys, Players set up Rube Golberg inspired solutions to the many puzzles throughout the game. Who knew picking up could be such fun!
The player plays the role of a child who has made a mess of the house and their parents are having a dinner party and need the house cleaned up. There are 8 rooms that need picking up and over 80 chores to complete. The game features sandbox style gameplay and encourages players to experiment and use their imaginations. The game features an interactive tutorial that teaches you how to play and the puzzles and levels can be approached in any order and unlock based on a player’s skill level. Download the Free Demo Today!
The Full Version Features:
- Over 100 Puzzles across 8 Distinct Rooms of the House - An Interactive Tutorial that explains the simple point and click controls - Beautiful and Colorful 2D graphics - Over 16 Different Toys and abilities to Experiment With - Sandbox Physics Gameplay which allows for Multiple and Imaginative Puzzle Solutions - A fully featured Level Editor allows players to create and share their own levels - 15 Trophies / Achievements to Unlock - Over 10 Different Music Tracks
Firmware 2.7 has been rumoured for some time, following comments from Insomniac's James Stevenson. A new patch for Resistance 2 is to include features not available in the PS3's current firmware.
"Resistance 2 is the first game to fully log-in two PSN accounts. [LittleBigPlanet] only logs you in locally, and does not register both accounts as online through PSN," said Stevenson in a Joystiq.com thread.
"This is a big difference, and what is required for split-screen online co-op with other folks. And it was dependent on a Sony update, hence why it wasn't in when the game shipped."
The Resistance 2 update was planned for tomorrow, but this is put into doubt with a pair of anonymous developers telling Eurogamer that the required PS3 2.7 firmware update will be available in April.
Nexon America, a world leader in free online games, today announced it will debut "Nut Shot," a new interactive feature for its widely popular first-person shooter game Combat Arms. "Nut Shot," which went live today, allows players to earn score instant kills for shooting the nether regions of their male opponents. Players can download Combat Arms for free at http://combatarms.nexon.net and take their shot at cracking a few nuts.
"We are constantly striving to bring new and exciting game elements to our fans, elements that resonate beyond traditional FPS game play," said Min Kim, vice president of marketing for Nexon America. "Nut Shot is an amusing and challenging addition to the arsenal of features in Combat Arms - designed to enhance the gaming experience through increased interactivity, exceptional entertainment value, and of course, humor."
Providing Combat Arms with a unique, comical dimension, Nut Shots are celebrated in game with a large graphic of exploding walnuts. Other players are made aware with a corresponding icon in the upper left-hand corner kill display featuring a golden squirrel, similar to the golden skull that denotes a head shot.
Female characters who succeed in unloading a Nut Shot giggle at their accomplishment, while male characters laugh heartily after hitting the target. The Nut Shot is gender specific, which means female characters don?t suffer the humiliation.
Surpassing the two-million user mark before completing its first year of service, Combat Arms excels by offering players a variety of combat styles and game maps, complete with eye-catching graphics, customized characters, and more. Combat Arms also features a high level of socialization with its Buddy Lists, Community Support, In-game Clan System and more. This essential mix of elements represents a truly unique offering in the world of first-person shooters: a dynamic, ever-evolving game that encourages both friendly competition and individual expression.
Case Closed: One Truth Prevails is a new anime/manga style police investigation game for the Nintendo Wii due for release on 1st May 2009 from Nobilis and Ascaron Entertainment. Case Closed, also known as Detective Conan, is a successful anime series from Japan and is now coming to the Nintendo Wii.
In Case Closed: One Truth Prevails the lead character is 17 year old Shichi Kudo, a very intuitive high school detective, well known in Japan as a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Shichi is on a mission to infiltrate a secret group known as the Black Organisation when he is drugged with a poison that was meant to kill him, but instead transforms him into a seven year old boy. In his new body, Shichi adopts the alias Conan Edogawa and pretends to be a child whilst continuing to secretly solve cases.
Players can use a number of special detective tools that feature in the Japanese TV series of Case Closed, including a voice changing bow tie and a solar powered skateboard. The Wii remote is used to touch or manipulate objects and also can also be used as a magnifying glass when players lead Shichi undercover to investigate crime scenes and search for clues.
Providing fun and challenges for a young audience, Case Closed: One Truth Prevails will be released on Nintendo Wii on 1st May 2009 by Nobilis and Ascaron Entertainment.
Fast facts: Publisher: Nobilis UK Distributor: Ascaron Entertainment Web: www.detectiveconan-thegame.com Developer: Marvelous Entertainment Release date: 1st May 2009 PEGI: 7+ Format: Wii Genre: Adventure / Police Investigation
Eidos Interactive can confirm that Drakensang: The Dark Eye, will be released nationwide on 27th March 2009.
Already a smash hit in Germany, where Drakensang: The Dark Eye (which translates as ‘Dragon song’) is a beautifully crafted, single player role-playing game (RPG) which offers a huge and engrossing campaign plus an intuitive combat system set within the mythical medieval world of Aventuria. Summoned by a letter from an old friend you suddenly find yourself charged with investigating a series of strange ritual murders. But getting to the bottom of this only means scratching the surface of a much bigger, more sinister plot…Only by surrounding yourself with trustworthy companions will you have a chance to prevent a dark conspiracy that threatens to change the world of Aventuria forever!
The game’s richly detailed environments are presented from an isometric perspective in which the player must manage a party of adventurers as they struggle to survive successive perilous encounters. From the outset Drakensang: The Dark Eye encourages the player to make as many friends as possible due, in part, to large numbers of enemies skulking in the dark corners of the city of Ferdok.
Drakensang’s story has been developed by the origional The Dark Eye (TDE Germany's #1 pen & paper RPG system) authors making the world feel totally authentic. TDE players won’t miss a thing, but RPG fans not familiar with TDE will dive into a medieval world that looks and feels like a trip to centuries-old Central Europe. Players will be able to explore beautiful cities built of framework houses, hunt monsters and creatures such as orks and dwarves in dark woods, search and find treasures in medieval castles and ascend the snow-capped mountains of the Kosh region, where the game takes place.
Key Features
• Huge, detailed medieval 3D world with authentic looks of historic European architecture
• Versatile, round-based combat system that brings tactics back to combat
• Talent-based dialogue system
• Rich story based on Germany's No 1 pen & paper RPG system "The Dark Eye"
• Dynamic party size
• Individual party skill development
• Rich storyline by the authors of the original The Dark Eye books and adventures
How Red Fly Studio Started Busting Ghosts Jeff Mills - Director of Production - Red Fly Studio - Stars Align (again)
At GDC in March 2007, Red Fly Studio had only been in business for about three months. Studio founders Dan Borth and Kris Taylor knew that we had to start immediately preparing for the future beyond our first title (Mushroom Men). We set out for the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco where we met with the top brass of half a dozen of the biggest game publishers in the industry.
The one publisher who seemed surprisingly uninterested in our demo was Vivendi Universal Games. They sat impatiently through our presentation, and as soon as the standard demo spiel was done, they drew us away from the screen and quickly got to the point. They had a job, and they wanted Red Fly Studio specifically to do it.
Before I left Terminal Reality to help Dan and Kris start Red Fly Studio, I had been part of production on Ghostbusters, the project TRI had been developing in utter secrecy for the previous year. Because of my foreknowledge of the project, the publisher could cut right to the chase: The publisher wanted TRI to focus their entire attention on the Xbox 360 and PS3 version of Ghostbusters without concerning themselves with producing a separate Wii version as well. We were already licensing Terminal Reality's Infernal Engine to produce Mushroom Men, and our close ties to TRI (Dan and Kris worked there along with me back in 1999) made us ideally suited to produce Ghostbusters for Wii. And it was Ghostbusters, after all: a dream job. Right?
"No way!" came the unanimous response from Red Fly Studio.
If the release date for Ghostbusters had been after Mushroom Men's release date, then maybe we could have done it. But the publisher required that we ship this new title at the same time as our current project. Pushing a single title to completion is challenging enough, but shipping two titles simultaneously is a monumental undertaking. The veterans at RFS had seen a dozen studios explode by growing too quickly, taking on jobs that they couldn't handle. We knew better. We sadly but politely declined and bade them farewell, wishing that the timing had been better.
A couple of hours later, we received a call requesting a follow-up meeting immediately. So we met with four executives from the publisher as well as TRI's top brass. It was a crowded meeting. Apparently that's how many people it takes to force the stars to align when they don't quite match up on their own. With the publisher's combined executive influence and TRI's pledge to increase their support, we agreed to join the project.
Rapid Development
The first three milestones of Ghostbusters were accomplished without a dedicated staff. Thanks to the proven workflow and universal, modular code developed for Mushroom Men by hotshot programmers James Clarendon and Kain Shin, we were able to split our time to prototype the completely unique gameplay of Ghostbusters. Everything about the two games was different (camera, combat, interface) but the Infernal Engine is versatile, and every improvement we had made during the early production of Mushroom Men was forward-thinking, allowing us to enjoy the benefits of that technology in future game development. (Or, as it turned out, tandem game development.)
Our concept artists Frank Teran and Thomas "TAS" Szakolczay went to work right away twisting the studio's unique art style to wrap around the Ghostbusters franchise. Characters and environments for the Wii version of the game would have to be built from scratch. Instead of making the same fatal mistake made by most developers when porting games to the Wii, we wouldn't even attempt to make our game look like TRI's visually. Photorealism on the Wii is not practical to attempt, especially in such a short amount of time. Red Fly Studio was built on the strength of our artistic vision, and we applied that to this beloved franchise from our youth.
When the time came for in-game art assets, we were fortunate to be joined by Bill Daly, with whom we had worked as far back as 1996 at 7th Level. Not only is he a fine artist, he was also able to quickly and completely wrap his head around the methodology we would have to employ in creating art for Ghostbusters.
We designed Ghostbusters to be highly modular, knowing that our staff and time would be limited. We prototyped the entire game with just two environment artists, several man-months of outsourced character art and a small portion of the programmers' time to accommodate the changes to camera, combat and other systems. The whole time, we were constantly interviewing new talent to bring the Ghostbuster team up to full size by the time we completed pre-production.
The publisher had agreed back at GDC that the Wii version of Ghostbusters should be its own unique product, standing on its own apart from TRI's next-gen version in more than just art style. It was exciting to develop Ghostbusters for the Wii properly from the ground up. We devised an art style that maximized the Wii's potential without overwhelming it or seeming reduced, filtered or watered down. We built the most obvious control scheme that makes players feel like members of the movie's cast, wielding the erratic proton packs to direct that distinctive orange lightning across the screen.
Miraculous Tragedy
Every developer's lament: "If only we had a couple more months to polish this!" It doesn't matter how long you've worked on a project, there's always some little tweak or additional content or wishlist item that you want to squeeze in, but schedules are what they are, and we wrapped up production on Ghostbusters mere weeks before The Merger. We were satisfied with the results of our hard work. We had made a fun game.
Every developer's nightmare: Ghostbusters was punted out the door because it didn't fit into the business model of its newly-merged mega-publisher. Every veteran at the studio had suffered such tragedy at some point in their career. It's just something that happens in this industry. But we took it in our stride, knowing that a property as awesome and popular as Ghostbusters wouldn't be left to gather dust for long. Sure enough, in a double-whammy of good luck, Atari swooped in to rescue the discarded title. But just as fortunate as the resurrection itself was the date at which it occurred.
Every developer's dream: Instead of rushing the game out the door to compete with the dozens of other top-tier games flooding the market for the holiday season, Atari wisely extended the schedule. With the 25th anniversary of the movie coming up in just a few months, Atari recognized that working with Sony Pictures Consumer Products on a combined Blu-ray/DVD and videogame release would maximize the potential of the product . By picking up Ghostbusters when they did, Atari blessed us with the one thing every developer wishes for at the end of a project: More time.
Ghostbusters the Videogame has a new publisher who understands what it is about and what it's capable of becoming. Their excitement for the game is unmatched. Dustin Dobson, Creative Lead, drives the team on to success after the brief terror of floating in limbo before Atari saved the game.
The story of the Wii version of Ghostbusters is enveloped in good fortune and lucky timing. We were given opportunities that most studios are not. We're continuing production on Ghostbusters right now: fixing, polishing and improving. As they did when the project was born, the stars have aligned once more to see to it that Ghostbusters the Videogame sees the light of day and satisfies everyone who saw the movie in their childhood and wished to be part of that story.
Leading Role-Playing Series Makes High-Definition Debut in Europe and PAL Regions this June, with Incredible Anime-Inspired Graphics, Action-Packed Battles and New Gameplay NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe today announced that acclaimed role-playing title Tales of Vesperia is heading to Europe and PAL regions in June 2009 for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. Tales of Vesperia delivers majestic storytelling and compelling gameplay on a massive scale as players embark on a grand adventure of discovery and intrigue.
The world of Terca Lumireis is in transition. Ten years of peace have led to an uneasy truce between the Empire and guilds, which desire to live by their own rules. Controlling the ancient technology known as “blastia,” the Empire has provided safety and prosperity to its citizens, but the people have grown uneasy with the heavy hand of their government. As former Imperial Knight Yuri Lowell, players will explore the complex relationship between blastia, the government and its people, setting foot outside the safe confines of the cities to explore a mysterious and dangerous world.
The first high-definition installment of the renowned Tales role-playing series, Tales of Vesperia brings a decade of gameplay heritage and storytelling pedigree to Xbox 360. Featuring an action-packed real-time battle system, players can chain together powerful attacks to create combos on the fly and give detailed commands to the rest of their party to create cohesive battle strategies. All-new battle features such as Fatal Strikes, Burst Artes and a multi-stage Over Limit provide more tactical depth to each encounter, while series traditions such as cooking and skits return with new twists to delight longtime fans.
The Zeebo company is based in California and is aiming its new console at the kind of emerging markets that Sony is looking to for PS2: Brazil, China and India. In short, billions of potential gamers. The Zeebo unit launches for $199 in Brazil (£135 - or 445 Brazilian Reais) next week.
Aside from being relatively low cost (it's apparently competing with the SEGA Mega Drive) the system also negates disc-based games. This is due to the fact that its development was based on Qualcomm's mobile phone technology.
In fact, according to Forbes, "the Zeebo will use digitally downloaded games - distributed through cell phone networks that players don't even have to subscribe to."
Game prices are also to be kept low - apparently only a few Reais more expensive than currently available pirated games, and certainly less expensive than the commercially available software that can hit the 220 Reais mark.
Yahoo reports that "Zeebo consoles will be sold with four games embedded and software for a fifth title will be available for free download using built-in wireless connections." Of these Brazilian gamers could see Need for Speed: Carbon and FIFA '09, both of which have been promised by EA to be Zeebo-compatible.
We expect to see Xbox 360, PlayStation and even Wii fanboys to start criticizing it about a day before it comes out.
Activision today announced that Guitar Hero fans will have another virtual destination to join together and rock with the launch of the franchise’s very own space in the PlayStation Home
