John Bardinelli

Gaming By John Bardinelli

Aquaria blog discusses creatures, giant crabs included

Bit Blot, the indie studio behind Aquaria, recently posted a short development feature about underwater fauna players will find in its upcoming exploration game. After all, what's the point of swimming around if there's nothing to try and bite you? Expect a battery of crustaceans to give chase under the sea, including a giant crab or two, as well as the not-so-friendly sea dragon. Players will also be able to ride seahorses as shown above.Early in Aquaria's development, we were promised a thriving ecosystem of underwater creatures to interact with in the game. This is just an early taste. The team drew inspiration from the strange critters that swim Earth's seas. A thread on Bit Blot's forums is packed with images of strange and surreal animals.%Gallery-3627%

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PC Gaming

PC Gaming By John Bardinelli

Knytt Stories expansion pack ... for free?!

According to a recent forum post, Nifflas, the creator of Knytt and Within a Deep Forest, may release the expansion to his upcoming Knytt Stories for free. At first Nifflas was considering releasing the pack for a modest fee, but after considering the extra work required to charge players (not to mention the fact that the taxman will take notice if he turns a reasonable profit), he's now leaning toward releasing it for free or as donationware.Knytt Stories continues the atmospheric, exploration-based gameplay that Knytt brought to our attention, though this time there are more areas to discover and a few power-ups to find. Both the game and the editor have already been announced as free. Look for Knytt Stories at the end of August.%Gallery-3719%

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TV & Movies

TV & Movies By John Bardinelli

ReBoot gets a reboot

One of the first computer-animated TV programs, ReBoot, is about to get a second chance at life. Sure, even in 1994 the show was a bit campy and featured thin plots and bad voice acting, but look how shiny everything was! Now Rainmaker Animation is getting ready to "relaunch the brand in a new way" by releasing a series of three feature-length episodes. The interesting bit is that we, potential viewers, help sculpt the plot. Five undiscovered writers were recruited by Rainmaker to prepare separate pitches for a new ReBoot storyline. These will be posted on the Zeros 2 Heroes website where visitors can work with each production team to help refine their ideas and later vote to choose their favorite pitch. "When it comes to long-standing genre entertainment properties, the fans are the real experts.", says Zeros 2 Heroes president Matt Toner. Not a bad idea. Fans know what they want to see, and this way Rainmaker will ensure nearly everyone is satisfied. And if the ReBoot reboot tanks, fans can only get angry at themselves.[Via Ain't It Cool News]

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

DS puzzle game for the grown-ups

Aimed at what the publisher calls a more "mature audience", NEVES for the DS is a simple tangram game of shape turning, sliding, and flipping.We thought we'd get to assemble overly detailed silhouettes of Pamela Anderson, but in reality NEVES is just designed for the more cognizant mind of the older, discriminating DS player. No bright happy colors and hand-holding tutorials, just over 500 brain-hurting tangram puzzles, all with touch screen control. Atlus USA will be bringing NEVES to North America in November this year.

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

Nintendo uses beach nurses to promote Brain Age in Greece

A reader of N+ recently sent in a note about Nintendo's unique marketing approach in Greece. To help promote Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, women dress up as nurses and walk around local beaches letting sunners test their brain age. This seems a bit counter-intuitive, as hot nurses plus scantily-clad beachgoers tend to make the blood flow to parts of the body that aren't the brain. But you have our attention, at the very least. More pics can be found on Nintendo's official Greek site.[Via N+]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

New tunes from Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra: Alex Kidd, Double Dragon, Duck Tales

If you've never heard Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra, you're missing one of the few ukulele-flavored treats in the gaming realm. Just a guy with a computer, a voice, and a ukulele, Tanguy makes (often rough) arrangements of game themes such as The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, and Gyakuten Saiban. Recently three more tracks appeared on the site, including an Alex Kidd medley, the first stage of Double Dragon, and the moon music from Duck Tales. Great stuff, and we dig the organic, ukulele-in-the-livingroom feel.

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

German S.T.A.L.K.E.R. players go on strike

A German S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community has gone on strike, citing a lack of patch support from publisher THQ as their reason. The long-running fansite Oblivion Lost promises to hold the strike until THQ releases patches for every localization territory that actually work.S.T.A.L.K.E.R. launched with more than its fair share of bugs, but teams worked to patch the most critical errors as quickly as possible. The first patch squashed 68 bugs but rendered previous save games useless. Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?While they're at it, let's move to strike the periods from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s name. Boy is that a pain to type.[Via CVG]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

"Handheld" arcade games hit eBay

Retro Treasures points us to a set of "handheld" arcade games (more like tabletop) up for auction on eBay. Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Dracula have been preserved from the dark era of 1981 and are fully operational, supporting two players simultaneously and running off those not-necessarily-rechargeable things called C batteries. The auctioneer has several other tabletop arcade games on the block, including Donkey Kong and Q-Bert. The prices seem a little steep for some, but sometimes nostalgia knows no limits.[Via Retro Treasures]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Finally, Lara Croft papercraft!

Making Link out of paper or spending an afternoon crafting Quake characters is all well and good, but why choose Link when you can sculpt a curvy female forms such as Lara Croft's? Ninjatoes spent grueling hours studying every inch of Lara's polygonal body and has made a papercraft worthy of our attention. With 116 parts, this ain't no paper hat project, so if you want Lara, you'll have to work for her.[Via PaperKraft]

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Science

Science By John Bardinelli

Human Brain Cloud "proves" we think about sex more than money

Kyle Gabler, founder of the Experimental Gameplay Project and indie game studio 2D Boy, recently posted a few stats from his side project, Human Brain Cloud. The online "game" shows you a word or phrase and all you have to do is type in the first thing that comes to mind. The answers players give are amassed into a huge network of connected blobs viewable from the website. Nearly 800,000 associations have been submitted so far, connecting over 100,000 unique words and phrases. What's the most commonly submitted word? "Sex", of course. The second most common is "me", while the third is "money". Good to know the collective consciousness of the human race has its priorities straight. Human Brain Cloud lets you sit and submit as many associations as you want, and we spent more time than we'd like to admit adding our two cents to the project.[Via Independent Gaming]

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

DIY Nintendo DS Lite rumble pak

Got an old Pokemon Pinball cart laying around? Then you, friend, have a one-way ticket to frugal gaming fun ... with rumble! Xyzzy has just posted a tutorial on Instructables on how to build a rumble pak that fits smoothly into your DS lite GBA slot. Yes, Nintendo released a smaller version of the pak for the Lite, but you'd have to spend money and be like a normal consumer if you did that. With Xyzzy's plans, you can make a mess, destroy a game cart, and probably injure yourself too![Via Infendo]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Rose & Camellia: Slap your way to gaming bliss

Slapping. The fighting style of choice for people wearing mittens, women, small children, and now, gamers. Rose & Camellia is a Japanese-made Flash game where you play a woman named Reiko who married into a noble family only to have her husband die shortly afterwards. The women of the house don't respect her, so its your job to slap some good old fashioned sense into them. Fights are turn-based and you only have a few seconds to act. When it's your turn, click the "attack" button and swipe the mouse in an arc to slap the other woman. When she's on the offensive, click "evade" and make a mirrored arc to avoid the attack. Successfully dodge and you're ready for a counter-slap!

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

Dave Perry: Wii won't last, gamers want prettier games

While the Wii surfs the waves of success, Shiny founder Dave Perry says the party won't last. Why? "Gamers are attracted to beautiful looking games. When a game comes out - a game like a Halo or something, something they haven't seen before - they'll drop everything and they'll drop their Wii controllers when it does.". And while waggle control is a step in the right direction, Perry notes that he doesn't feel it's the "final solution" to user interfaces.We can see Perry's point, but a gorgeous game doesn't need a Cell processor to exist. You can, in fact, create a beautiful game on a weak system, or craft a butt-ugly title on a PS3. The Wii may not dish out the horsepower that makes it easier to push the graphics wagon further, but what makes games gorgeous is the artistic direction, not tech specs.

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Rumor: Possible release dates for Call of Duty 4 [update]

According to French gaming site Xboxygen (which doesn't cite a verifiable source), Activision has "announced" release dates for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. North America gets its taste on October 30, while Europe has to wait ten more days for November 9. CoD 4 ditches the World War II-theme for modern combat (hence the cryptic title). It also drops the familiar campaign system to unfold the gameplay like an "action novel of a television series". Check out our early look at CoD 4 from this year's E3 for more in-depth information.We're still waiting to hear back from Activision.Activision confirms that no announcements have been made: "The COD4: MF release date is Fall 2007-we haven't given out specific dates at this time."

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AI

AI By John Bardinelli

Checkers program unbeatable by humans, other computers

The computer program Chinook has been vanquishing human opponents in checkers for over ten years. Now, scientists at the University of Alberta (Chinook's home) say they have improved the program so that it can never lose. EVAR! No opponent, whether human, bacterium, or computer, can win when facing Chinook. In other words, checkers can be retired to the Pit of Practically Useless Games along with tic-tac-toe. The strategy behind checkers (which has over 500 billion possible board combinations) has been solved.If you're a masochist, you can play against Chinook online. Only 24 games can be active at once, so you'll have to wait your turn to lose like a little baby.

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Xbox

Xbox By John Bardinelli

Oops: Ferrari crashes while filming PGR4 ad

While filming a commercial for the upcoming Project Gotham Racing 4, a Ferrari F430 drifted too wide out the corner and bumped into a concrete barrier. Did a massive explosion ensue? Screams of concerned mothers from the crowd echo in our ears? Well ... not really. Very little damage was done to the car, but considering that repairing the vehicle probably costs more than we make in a year, it kind of puts things in perspective. No Gizmondo executives were harmed in the crash.The commercial is scheduled to appear in mid-August with PGR4 coming in September. Check out another video after the jump.[Thanks, JimeneX]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

GameFAQs creator calls it quits

Jeff "CJayC" Veasey, who founded the FAQ writing community GameFAQs back in 1995, recently posted a thread on the site announcing he will be leaving the company ... "eventually". Veasey created and operated the site on his own for nearly ten years before selling to CNET. Now, with a hotel-room-mirror revelation about getting older, he has decided to slowly fade away until he can leave altogether.Jeff cites nothing more than wanting to move on as his reasons for leaving, as he feels it's time to pursue other interests and let his baby run free. We imagine distancing himself from the hordes of 10-year-old gamers is a nice side-benefit, as well.

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

Martha Stewart makes an edible Wii

We're not sure if this is a good thing, per se, but the August issue of Wired magazine features a "Martha Stewart blowout" (never thought we'd write those words in the same sentence) with the queen of gracious living giving tips on a number of geek-related topics.In the spotlight: Martha shows us how to bake a Wii cake. Sounds ... yummy? Who cares, it's cake, and it looks like a Wii. We'll eat it. Hopefully another magazine will catch on to this trend and get Christopher Lowell to show us how to make a Wii-shaped entrance to our verandah.[Via Infendo]

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Apps

Apps By John Bardinelli

New non-game to ignore: Doing My Best Family Finance Diary

The non-game avalanche continues in merry old Japan, this time with a digital check register for the DS called Ganbaru Watshi no Kakei Diary, or "Doing My Best Family Finance Diary". The app lets you input all your expenses (food, bills, gambling debts to the mafia) and helps track your spending with several different types of graphs. After a month's worth of spending, cute fuzzy animals help you reach your spending goals. If that doesn't get your accounting cells are getting all hot and bothered, we're not sure what will.[Via Infendo]

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Ex-Take-Twoers plead guilty

The former chief lawyer and chief accounting officer of Take-Two Interactive pleaded guilty yesterday to falsifying business records in connection with the company's improper backdating of employee stock options. This comes just a few months after the former CEO pleaded guilty for the same crime. The "Oh, I must have hit the wrong button." defense would have never worked, so pleading guilty was the best option.Take-Two has brought in new management and is attempting to recover from five quarters of losses. Better buy GTA 4 twice if we want to see more.

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

New princess spotted in Super Mario Galaxy: Rosetta

New Super Mario Galaxy scans from Famitsu reveal a new woman in Mario's world: Rosetta. Peach has been the standard damsel in distress for most of Mario's career, with the notable exceptions of Princess Daisy in Super Mario Land and Pauline in the original Donkey Kong game. Now it seems this Rosetta lass is in need of Mario's super saving services, though Peach's kidnapping is the original reason he launches himself into space. Is Rosetta just some random lady in a dress, or are we looking at the makings of a daytime TV drama here?

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Fun with numbers: Final Fantasy Versus XIII is 1.3% complete, FFXIII 13%

Whoever writes the press packages for Sony is either Rainman-good at math or just a big pile of sarcasm. The Tokyo PlayStation Premiere press conference was recently held, and according to Sony's press materials, Final Fantasy XIII is now 13% complete, while Final Fantasy Versus XIII sits at a rather exact 1.3%. Hmm. XIII, 13, 1.3. That's an awful lot of the same number. We get the picture: stop bugging Square-Enix about releasing the games and just sit back and let them work. To help tide us over, two new images have been released, one from each game. They're obviously trailer grabs, but we'll take what we can get for now. Hit the jump for the other image.[Via PS3 Fanboy]

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Nintendo By John Bardinelli

Upcoming DS game lets you re-draw Daffy Duck, drive him insane

Games based on Looney Tunes characters have been few, far-between, and mostly forgettable. Shown at E3 last week, Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck for the DS might just change that. The game is based on the classic cartoon in which an animator constantly redraws Daffy just to piss him off. Duck Amuck follows the same format and charges you with the task of driving Daffy insane in a series of mini-games. Daffy even gets upset if you close the DS, initiating a game where you must tap the L or R buttons following Daffy's voice. Developer WayForward, the same studio behind Contra 4, had to get special permission from Nintendo to implement that feature. Duck Amuck is scheduled for release this holiday season, and early impressions have been extremely positive.

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Videlectrix releases another game parody: Where's an Egg?

Homestar Runner's fictional game development studio, Videlectrix (who also created Peasant's Quest and Thy Dungeonman 3: Behold Thy Graphics!), have just released another treasure of gaming hilarity: Where's an Egg?. The gameplay is reminiscent of old adventure titles and has you visiting a number of locations talking to people and hunting for the egg. The catch is that you only have 999 seconds to find it. Oh, and did we mention you have a gun? Yup, loaded with three bullets you can use to shoot anyone you like. Bring on the adventuring!

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Gaming By John Bardinelli

Knytt Stories preview and screenshots

Paul Eres recently published a short preview of the upcoming indie game Knytt Stories. The feature walks through a few of the major points of the game, comparing it with the previous Knytt release and the creator's other major game, Within a Deep Forest. Half a dozen new screenshots were also unveiled, shown in the gallery below. Paul's most interesting quote comes from his blog announcement of the preview: "... the more I play the best independent games, the more I don't want to play mainstream games ever again.". This game along with Aquaria could go in our book as two of the best releases of 2007. Look for Knytt Stories on August 30.%Gallery-3719%

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