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‘Shakedown Hawaii’ is coming to Wii and Wii U
The 16-bit retro action game Shakedown Hawaii will soon be available on the Wii U and, for those who still own one, the Wii. Developer Brian Provinciano announced the news on the Vblank Entertainment blog that the Wii version will launch Thursday, July 9th in the UK, with the Wii U version to follow sometime in August. Provinciano seems to admit as much, as he wrote that the idea to port to the Wii came from a “whim of curiosity” and a “jolt of Wii nostalgia.”
Retro City Rampage DX hits digital platforms next week
An upgraded version of VBlank Entertainment's 8-bit styled sandbox action game Retro City Rampage debuts for the PlayStation 4, PS3, PS Vita, Xbox 360, WiiWare, PC, and Mac platforms next week, developer Brian Provinciano announced. Retro City Rampage DX boasts a number of improvements over the original 2012 game, including a new HUD, an overhauled weapon-selection system, zoom options, tighter controls, and new graphics modes. The PlayStation Store release supports Cross-Save functionality across all three platforms, and includes a new trophy set as an upgrade incentive. "For DX, every single mission's been re-tuned," developer Provinciano adds. "Vehicles. Weapons. Challenges. Visual Effects. Visual Enhancements. Checkpoints. Difficulty. Challenges. From the game's core to sprinkles on top, such as parking garages and waypoints, it's more than just a new coat of paint." While Retro City Rampage will be delisted from digital services following next week's launch, the original version of the game will be included as a bonus extra in DX. Retro City Rampage DX will debut first on PlayStation consoles on November 11 for $9.99, and all other platforms will follow in the days afterward. [Image: VBlank Entertainment]
Retro City Rampage DX crashes onto 3DS this week
Retro City Rampage DX, the 3DS port of Brian Provinciano's indie crime sandbox game, is coming to the North American eShop on February 6; it'll be on Europe's eShop on February 20. Retro City Rampage DX will be priced at $10. Retro City Rampage DX includes some major tweaks to missions, weapons, vehicles, challenges, tutorials, checkpoints – just about every other aspect of the game has been modified toward providing a better overall experience. Retro City Rampage DX also features a slightly zoomed-in viewpoint on the 3DS, along with the most updated version of the game found on PC. Retro City Rampage has sold more than 250,000 copies across all platforms, Provinciano revealed in the 3DS release announcement. When including its time as a free PlayStation Plus game, Retro City Rampage has been downloaded more than 500,000 times. In our review, we said Retro City Rampage is "worth playing for its simple, accessible gameplay and charming, lovingly crafted world." [Image: Vblank Entertainment]
Retro City Rampage blows by 3DS in February, Steam sale today
Retro City Rampage will begin its old-school, urban crime spree on 3DS in February, developer VBlank Entertainment tweeted today. "No specific date yet," VBlank said, but it did share the price and file size: $10 and 16MB. To hype up the February 3DS announcement, the Steam version of Retro City Rampage has been updated and is today's Daily Deal, 80 percent off ($3). The update enhances some of the visuals and weapon actions, allows jumping in the middle of actions, throws in some new key bindings and more. "Another big update," VBlank wrote in the patch description. "Lots of changes/tweaks. The upcoming 3DS version's received a lot of updates, so the PC version gets them too! More to come still!"
Retro City Rampage jumps to 3DS, mayhem intact
Having appeared on nearly every other platform in existence, Retro City Rampage is now headed to the Nintendo 3DS. As the above teaser demonstrates, the game looks identical to its predecessors albeit with a slightly zoomed-in viewpoint for the player. Otherwise, Retro City Rampage seems to be as its always been: A strangely amusing 8-bit take on the open-world subgenre spawned by Grand Theft Auto perpetually colliding with the fragments of pop culture embedded permanently in the brains of those old enough to recall Jem And The Holograms. Or, as David described it in our review, Retro City Rampage is "the perfect game for gamers, an experience carefully executed to appeal directly to them." There is currently no word on when Retro City Rampage might make its 3DS debut.
Retro City Rampage 3DS won't support stereoscopic 3D
The 3DS port of Retro City Rampage will not include 3D visuals, developer Vblank Entertainment has announced. It's the game's top-down perspective that makes the feat such a significant technical burden. "With sidescrollers, developers can simply separate the background and foreground layers and distance them apart," the Vblank post reads. "However, with a top down perspective using cube-like objects such as buildings and vehicles, it would require the graphics to all be recreated as 3D objects, a new rendering engine, a camera system that players would be happy with, and further optimizations. For a new game it would be more feasible, but for an existing one, it simply would've taken too long." Retro City Rampage for 3DS, which includes the most recent version of the game with enhanced graphics, was announced yesterday. The 3DS port will be playable at Nintendo's PAX Prime booth next weekend.
Retro City Rampage coming to 3DS, playable at PAX Prime
Retro City Rampage is coming to the 3DS eShop, Nintendo has announced. The news was buried in a Nintendo press release, which we've embedded past the break, revealing playable games at next week's PAX Prime show in Seattle. Creator Brian Provinciano confirmed with Joystiq that this will be the latest version of Retro City Rampage, including the recently added Retro+ graphics mode that doubles on-screen colors and adds dynamic soft shadows to the game. He also said Retro City Rampage will be out on the 3DS eShop this holiday season. Retro City Rampage, a game we thoroughly enjoyed when it launched last year, is a humorous open-world crime game that started as a project to port Grand Theft Auto 3 over to the NES. Provinciano did the majority of the work himself – which was the subject of a rousing talk at this year's GDC show.
Indie developers cautiously optimistic about self-publishing on Xbox One
Microsoft's reversal of its publishing philosophy for the Xbox One has obvious and wide-reaching implications for the indie development community. While the original plan mandated that developers release games through a third-party publisher or broker a deal with Microsoft itself, indies will now be able to self-publish. Furthermore, retail Xbox One SKUs will function as development units, which historically are more expensive and more difficult to acquire than off-the-shelf models. "Ideally, this news could have been broadcast more proudly and loudly months ago, giving indies more time to prepare strategies for upcoming games," Minicore Studios founder and CEO John Warren told us, "but I suppose they don't owe anyone that courtesy. We know now, so now we can prepare for life with a Microsoft console, which is something I wouldn't have said yesterday." Warren and his team at Minicore are in the process of Kickstarting PC, Mac and Xbox 360 versions of their latest project, Laika Believes: The Sun at Night. "I think releasing on Xbox One without a publisher is a big step forward, of course, but the fact that (eventually) I'll be able to use my retail console as our dev kit is huge," he added. "My secondary (maybe flailing and futile) hope is that the fees for publishing won't be insane. It's one thing to only have to shell out $600 for a dev kit, but quite another if we have to spend another $10k on publishing fees. My hope is they'll be content with 30 percent of revenue and be done with it." Cautious optimism was a consistent theme among most of the indie developers we reached out to, though some had greater reservations over Microsoft's inner machinations than others.
Retro City Rampage 'Retro+' graphics crash onto PS3, PS Vita
Those purty Retro+ graphics added last month to the PC version of Retro City Rampage have made their way to Theftropolis on the PS3 and PS Vita. The latest version is available on PSN now, bringing the PS3 and PS Vita versions of Retro City Rampage up to par with the PC version. Retro+ ups the overall visual fidelity of Retro City Rampage by doubling on-screen color count and turning on dynamic soft shadows. Purists can take it the other way with "Rom City Rampage," a true 8-bit version of Retro City Rampage scaled down to mirror how the game would run on NES hardware. The final piece of this update increases the length of Retro City Rampage's trial version for all. Coincidentally, Retro City Rampage is on sale for $5 right now across PC, PS Vita and PS3. The PS3 and PS Vita versions are cross-buy enabled.%Gallery-194079%
Retro City Rampage adds mod support, 'Retro+' enhanced graphics
A new update for Retro City Rampage on PC adds mod support, allowing players to experience a small slice of creator Brian Provinciano's life by creating their own vehicles, characters, fonts and color palettes in the game. The update also includes an optional Retro+ mode, upping the visual fidelity with dynamic soft shadows and doubling the number of colors displayed on-screen at once. The Steam version of Retro City Rampage updates automatically; for GOG and DRM-free owners, they'll need to log into their respective download pages and grab the 1.11 update manually. If you have yet to pick up this love letter to video games, Steam has dropped the price to $3.74 until 10am PT today.%Gallery-192390%
Watch Brian Provinciano's Retro City Rampage talk from GDC
One of our favorite talks from GDC was Brian Provinciano's session, in which the indie developer discussed bringing his game, Retro City Rampage, to just about every platform known to man. It's a valuable talk for many reasons, giving a clear picture of what it's like working with The Big Three™ and the types of hurdles a determined indie developer will inevitably hit. Provinciano's determination to port Grand Theft Auto 3 to NES hardware escalated into a love letter to video games and pop culture. While Provinciano hasn't announced his next project yet, he says we should expect more humorous open-world games.
Expect more humorous open-world games from Brian Provinciano
"I'm definitely going to be doing more open-world comedy stuff in the future, but it might not be my next game," Retro City Rampage creator Brian Provinciano told Joystiq following a GDC panel where he broke down sales of his game across the various platforms. "I have about four open-world game ideas in my head that I'm passionate about, but I'm also very concerned about jumping into another big project. So I'm sorting out my ideas right now and figuring out if there's a smaller game idea or something different I could do in the middle, just as a palate cleanser. When I do my next big ambitious game, again it'll probably be open-world."While Provinciano is keen on making more games, he wants to "let the dust settle" on Retro City Rampage before diving into his next game. We probably won't see his next project in 2013, unless it's a smaller-scale game. "I would love to ship another game this year, but the only way for that to happen is if I get a small idea and everything just falls into place."Art was one thing Provinciano had strong opinions about regarding his next project. He doesn't want to become "typecast" as the pixel-art guy – and he wants future games to place a bigger emphasis on art and audio."I had an amazing time working with the artist and the audio person on Retro City Rampage, and I really love art and audio so I want to put more of an emphasis on those in the next games – higher production value. As much as I love doing art – so I found this artist that was doing amazing art and it was way better than me, I would still do some of the art because I love doing it and it's fun, but now I'm thinking differently. I would rather have amazing art way beyond my capabilities and have it all done by other people than have some half-assed art I did myself, just for the sake of saying 'I did it myself.' So one of the big goals in my next games is to have really high-quality art and – as much as I do love pixel stuff, and I may do revisit that in different degrees at some point – again, I want to do different art styles, to show to the world that I'm not just a pixel-art guy."Provinciano said that PlayStation 4 is on the table as a potential platform for upcoming games. At a previous panel, Provinciano confirmed he would also work with PS Vita in the future.
Where Retro City Rampage made its money
During his GDC panel, "One Man, 17 SKUs: Shipping on Every Platform at Once," Retro City Rampage creator Brian Provinciano provided a clear breakdown of the game's fiscal performance across various platforms.PSN was where Provinciano saw most of his profit come in: over $600,000 earned across over 35,000 units sold on PSN. These numbers do not account for PlayStation Plus downloads and the period of time during which RCR was offered for free with membership.The PC platform yielded the second-highest revenue for Retro City Rampage, earning over $400,000 from over 40,000 copies sold – the majority sold on Steam. Xbox Live Arcade came third with around $200,000 earned across 15,000 units sold, and WiiWare earned under $10,000 with fewer than 2,000 units sold. After the panel, Provinciano told me sales currently sit around 97,000 total, and that he anticipates total sales will exceed 100,000 next week.Provinciano said he spent the most development time on the Xbox Live Arcade port, on a platform he called the most expensive. "Knowing what I know now, I would've skipped it," he said. Though he considered the WiiWare version a $20,000 gift to fans, the XBLA port ended up costing more.Update: Brian got in touch to tell us some of the numbers in his panel were a bit off thanks to an Excel issue. "Looks like Excel didn't line up the bars up correctly." The WiiWare version sold under 2,000 units, he tells us. "It's also sold significantly more than 35K on PSN, 40K on PC and 15K units on each of the other platforms."
WiiWare version of Retro City Rampage is a '$20,000 gift' to fans
Developer Brian Provinciano doesn't expect to make any money from the launch of Retro City Rampage on Nintendo's WiiWare – in fact, he stands to lose $20,000 in development costs alone, with little chance of seeing a return."Between the office rent, hardware, insurance, game ratings and other costs, had I not done the WiiWare version, I could've saved around $20,000 – not even including my salary in porting it," Provinciano tells Nintendo Life. "And as it stands, virtually no games hit the threshold these days, so it's only being released as fan service. A $20,000 gift to the fans."The loss comes down to a few odd requirements Nintendo places on WiiWare launches: The developer must have a designated office space, even for a one-man operation, and he gets paid only if the game sells a certain number of copies. Unless that sales threshold is hit, "you don't get paid a cent," as Provinciano puts it. These regulations have been tweaked for future platforms, he says, and Nintendo deserves kudos for listening to its content creators."They listen to feedback and take action to improve things if there's a better way. In both cases, the original policies had the best intentions, but turned out to be a bit problematic."Regardless, Provinciano launched Retro City Rampage on WiiWare on February 28 because he wanted to keep his promise that the game would come to a Nintendo console: "I'm happy to see it finally out, and the many happy players. That said, I encourage everyone to buy it! I'm crossing my fingers that it will hit the threshold at least in one region."Retro City Rampage is holding its own on Vita, PS3, Steam and XBLA, in that order.
How to turn Retro City Rampage into a working 8-bit game
When Retro City Rampage comes to WiiWare tomorrow it'll include an 8-bit version of the game called ROM City Rampage. Provinciano was developing what's now become ROM City Rampage almost a decade ago for the NES, but abandoned it to focus on Retro City Rampage because of the hardware limitations - a wise choice. After releasing the open-world crime game last year, he decided to come back to his 8-bit aspirations and crunch the modern Retro City Rampage into a truly retro game.In this video, Provinciano explains the difficulties he had in creating ROM City Rampage. Even if you're not hugely interested in how games are or were developed it's a good watch, and not too inside baseball; Provinciano neatly explains some of the data-saving processes he had to employ, such as sprite mirroring and combining duplicate tiles of pixels.ROM City Rampage will be included as a playable prototype in the WiiWare release, and come as a free update tomorrow to the PC version, which you can pick on Steam at half-off for one more day.
Retro City Rampage sold 'much more' on PSN than Steam, XBLA
Retro City Rampage has been around the block a few times, establishing a steady launch stream across PC and consoles since October. Now that the game has had time to settle on XBLA, PS3, Vita and Steam, developer Brian Provinciano has a clear, surprising favorite: Vita."Indies should definitely jump onto the PS Vita," he tweets. "RCR's sold much more on PSN than XBLA and more on PS Vita than even PS3."Retro City Rampage was part of the PS Plus Instant Game Collection, but Provinciano's praise doesn't include those numbers. PSN sales, both in units and revenue, eclipsed XBLA and even Steam on their own, and any PS Plus action is an extra bonus."Steam's done far better than XBLA too, but PSN has still done the best," Provinciano says.While Vita is the "easiest console platform to develop for," XBLA clearly falls behind in Provinciano's estimation. Getting on XBLA required two rounds of pitching, paperwork and negotiation, each time taking more than six months. "It's absurd. They don't make it easy," Provinciano says.He continues, "It cost more to do the XBLA version than all other SKUs combined. Made more on all other platforms. XBLA: 'a learning experience.'"Provinciano has an idea why Retro City Rampage is doing so well on Vita: "Sony promoted the game incredibly well and Vita players are hungry for games! Make them more!" Provinciano will cover his multi-platform development process and resultant sales at GDC 2013, with a talk titled, "One Man, 17 SKUs: Shipping on Every Platform at Once."
Retro City Rampage wrecks Europe and Asia on Jan. 16
On January 16, wannabe gangsters across the pond in Europe and Asia will get a chance to check out the excellent Retro City Rampage on both the PS Vita and PS3. Developer Brian Provinciano hasn't used the extra month lightly, either – the extra time has allowed him to add extra polish to the game, he tells Joystiq.If you don't have a PC, PS3 or PS Vita, the WiiWare version of Retro City Rampage is slated to launch sometime this month, though Provinciano is unable to say exactly when at the moment. The Xbox Live Arcade version has been available since last week.
PSA: Retro City Rampage tears up XBLA today
After PC, PS3 and Vita players have been enjoying the delightfully campy Retro City Rampage for months, Xbox players can finally see what all the hubbub is about. The 2D, pixelated open-world crime game is now available on Xbox Live Arcade, offering up more video game and pop culture references from the last three decades than you can shake a shotgun at.As our review notes, if you've been playing video games for a long time, you're bound to get a kick out of it. You can snag it for $10.
Best of the Rest: Dave's picks of 2012
Joystiq is revealing its 10 favorite games of 2012 throughout the week. Keep reading for more top selections and every writer's personal, impassioned picks in Best of the Rest roundups. Borderlands 2The first Borderlands quickly established itself as one of the best co-op experiences back in 2009, and succeeded despite being forgettable in the realm of story. Not so with Borderlands 2, which not only builds on the RPG systems and excellent shooting of its predecessor in practical ways, but tells a compelling story full of memorable, endearing characters. There are few arguments for a better time with friends in 2012.
Retro City Rampage starts trouble on XBLA Jan. 2
Retro City Rampage welcomes Xbox 360 owners to the mean streets of Theftropolis on January 2, 2013. The official word comes from the game's creator, Brian Provinciano, who tells us the game's launch on PlayStation 3 in Europe and Asia, along with the WiiWare version, should also occur in January."Remember that the XBLA version has an additional month of development, polish, tuning and improvements," said Provinciano. Those updates have also been patched into the PS3 and PC versions, which have been available since October 9.In a year full of great games, our review of RCR called it the "perfect game for gamers."
