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Patrick Curry completes his 52 game ideas
With all the New Year's celebration we forgot to check in on Patrick Curry (Stubbs the Zombie, John Woo's Stranglehold), who set out to make 52 new game ideas, one per week, for the entirety of 2006. On January 1, Curry finished his project with Swordplay, a fighting card game.The last time we checked in on him, we selected our top picks of the initial 24, but this time we can't narrow down our favorite game ideas. Go peruse his proposals and let us know your favorite ideas.[Thanks, tony]
Shopping at iTunes Japan--from America
Web vendor jbox offers iTunes Japan Music Cards from its online site. With one of these cards you can make purchases at the Japan iTS. The cards obviously come at a slight premium. A 1500 yen card, which is worth just under $13 in real US money costs $18 at the site. A 3000 card, worth closer to $25, costs $35. That means that individual tracks, which would normally cost between $1.25 and $1.30 based on the Yen/US $ conversion rate, will set you back about $1.75 to $1.80. For the convenience and access to the foreign store, that's not too horrible a deal.
Nintendo toys from the '70s collected
A lot of casual students of video game history probably know that Nintendo manufactured traditional Hanafuda playing cards for nearly 100 years before diving into the video game business in the '80s. But not all Nintendo fans know that the company transitioned into the game space with a line of traditional toys and games in the '60s and '70s.A collector going by the handle dogbowl has a posted a small picture gallery containing some of the more interesting products Nintendo produced during this period. Some, like the Ultra Hand and remote control vacuum cleaner will be familiar to anyone who has played WarioWare Inc.: Mega MicroGame$. Others, like the marble race game and the spooky-looking board game pictured above will probably only be familiar to truly obsessed Nintendophiles. You can even see the inspiration for some classic NES and arcade games in toys like Wild Gunman and Mach Rider in their toy analogues. We can only hope that one day we'll get to see a Wii game based on these delightful flash cards.(Thanks ilostmyunicorn)
Gasp! Get your Sonic Rivals internet cards before they're all gone
Sega has been known to do some off-the-wall advertising for their games, just check out Beta-7 if you don't believe me. Now Sega, to hype up Sonic Rivals coming to the PSP, has released character artwork cards, and I really have no clue why.Among the lucky characters to be included in this batch are Sonic (Of course), Knuckles, Shadow and Silver. Honestly, I'm not really "feeling" these cards so much. Is there really a point in numbering them? I don't think anyone's going to try to trade a Knuckles for a Silver any time soon.Anyway, Sonic Rivials should be released Nov. 21. That means you only have a little more than a month to collect the entire set. You better hurry![Via DCEmu]
Warhammer WarCry: Battle for Atluma coming to the PSP
While Namco appears not have struck gold with its most recent title, it may be able to strike it with its newest upcoming game – Warhammer WarCry: Battle for Atluma, which will be the PSP's first card-based battle game.The game will be based on the Warhammer card game and will give players the option of leading the Grand Alliance or Hordes of Darkness to victory. Allowing players to collect more than 450 cards, 90 different units and the ability to wirelessly connect with a friend to battle it out for each other's cards has me tickled to death with excitement. Warhammer WarCry also allows for the building of custom decks and features an extensive tutorial system for us noobs out there. I gotta be honest, I'm not too familiar with the Warhammer series; instead I've been more of a Magic: The Gathering kind of guy. But I'm up for any decent card-based battle game on the go, and we won't have too wait long, either, as Warhammer WarCry is set to ship Oct. 17.(Via Playstation.com forums)
Wiimote, sensor bar, and Spore info oh my!
Supposedly, this N Gamer magazine had much more info than we previously reported on. A large supply of information from the magazine apart from what we've reported has apparently been confirmed to be true over at Go Nintendo. This information deals with the Wiimote, sensor bar, and Will Wright's Spore respectively.The Wiimote is to take 2 AA batteries and turn them into 60 hours of gameplay. Should the player be using the sensor bar, however, then the time is cut in half to 30 hours. Either way, that's incredible. Also, the 6kb of internal memory confirmed to be included in the Wiimote is going to be used to "personalize your remote," which we assume is code for "store profile settings." As for the sensor bar, the magazine states that the previous version that was seen at E3 has been made smaller. The magazine compares the size to that of a "couple of pencils glued together." The magazine also confirms that Will Wright's foray into playing God through his game Spore is going to be possible on the Wii. Apparently, the Wii version will interact with the DS version by allowing the player to transmit data from one to the other seamlessly. This will allow players to "deform species on the fly." They also speak some on the use of SD cards, reiterating that they will be used to house Virtual Console titles. The problem is that you may not play them on another Wii. They refer to this as "Digital Rights Management."
World of Warcraft TCG: Quest Cards
The most recent TCG preview features quest cards - three of them in fact: Your Fortune Awaits You, Are We There, Yeti?, and Tooga's Quest. I find it interesting that these cards more or less mirror existing in-game quests, though fit neatly into the TCG's own structure. What's the point of quests? Well, they offer you rewards - usually extra cards, but sometimes other useful things - in exchange for resources. So what are resources? During every turn a player may play one card face down (any type of card? I'm a little unclear on this). You can use this card to pay a single resource cost. Thus, the further into the game you get, the more you can afford to pay for skills, abilities, and interesting quests.
Sneak Peek at the WoW Trading Card Game
This week's Sprawl's Scrawl has an interesting preview of the upcoming World of Warcraft trading card game. I've certainly been wondering how the World of Warcraft is going to be converted into card came format, and this certainly makes it sound like an interesting game - though details on gameplay are still very sparse. The game is packaged in starter decks, which contain a pre-constructed 33 card deck that's styled around one of the nine possible classes (which is random), two booster packs (with 15 additional cards each, to customize your deck), and 3 oversized "Hero" cards (of unknown use). The game will focus primarily on one on one PvP combat - as you test your cards and skills against those of another player - however, there are also rulesets for multiplayer and raiding. For raiding, there are 60-card raid decks that may be purchased and played, with one player acting akin to pen-and-paper dungeon master for the players attempting the raid.Can't wait to find out more? Well, the game is set for a Halloween release, but you can already pre-order starter decks and boxes of booster packs at Upper Deck's online store.
A Turtle Mount?
Remember the Warcraft trading card game that's being developed? The suggestion has always been that some of the cards you collect may convey bonuses within the game itself, though the Upper Deck website is vague on what sort of rewards they might be. Well, a recent addition to Thottbot gives us a hint - the spell "Create Upperdeck Turtle Mount," which seems to be part of the recent build on the test realms. A search of Thottbot provides other possible TCG rewards - tabards, pets, and trinkets. Somehow, the thought of my Gnome warlock riding around on a giant turtle appeals to me...
UNO gets patch love for matchmaking
Thanks to the thunderous celebration and endless trumpeting that accompanied Microsoft's announcement of XBLA Wednesdays, not many became aware of an UNO patch sheepishly arriving on the scene. The update fixes a rather glaring fault in the game's ranked matchmaking system -- the glaring fault being that it didn't actually work. The update (downloaded automatically next time you play) also addresses "other bugs" and improves theme deck support. Though the game remains a Joystiq favorite and is amusingly inexpensive, developer Carbonated Games still deserves a specially designed + 32 card for letting these errors slip through. We might have been more forgiving had the game supported voice recognition. Seriously, it just has to recognize one word. Just UNO.[Via GameSetWatch]
Crave announces World Championship Cards
Crave has been doing card games for awhile now, so it comes as no surprise that they have a new game in the works for the PSP. With a very reasonable budget price, World Championship Cards is not just limited to Poker and features 30 different varieties of classic card games including Bridge, Gin Rummy, Solitaire, Cribbage, Hearts, Spades, and Crazy 8's. The game will feature 8 player wireless ad hoc multiplayer gameplay with no word on whether players will be able to take the game online in infrastructure mode. No word on release, however the game will be on the cheap for only $19.99 US.
Eye of Judgment video from E3
Better late than never! Here's some footage of Eye of Judgement, which is like real life card playing meets next-gen hardware. If more immersive applications like this can take advantage of the PS3, then Sony just might give that Wii controller a run for its money.[Thanks for the tips!]
E3 scavenger hunt: win a Joystiq t-shirt
Are you attending E3? Want to win a cool Joystiq T-shirt? Joystiq bloggers will be swarming the show floor every day this week, and it is up to you to hunt us down (figuratively speaking, of course).All staffers are wearing one of two shirts, pictured here and here; we will all be carrying business cards, as well. Your job is to come up, say hello, and take a card. If you collect at least 7 Joystiq business cards, then you are a Royal Crown Chinpoko master. All winners can stop by the AOL booth after 12:00PM (PST) to claim a shirt of their choice.Okay, you have your mission. Get to it!
Physics acceleration: hot or not?
Physics is becoming the new buzzword when it comes to hyped-up hardware. Ageia's PhysX processor has been touted as an important step forward -- the add-in card, which is already available in Alienware's machines, goes on sale this month, though it will be some time before the games which support it are released.However, Ageia hasn't sewn up the market. NVidia is also getting on the bandwagon by supporting Havok (as announced at GDC). Ageia claim that their card can generate more objects than a high-end graphics rig can cope with, so it will be interesting to see how a dedicated graphics card handles the task of physics too. Microsoft is jumping in the fray as well -- not much is known about DirectPhysics, but if history repeats itself then a firm hand from Microsoft could do the hyperbolic world of physics accelerators a world of good. Ultimately, physics acceleration has a lot of potential, but the cost of an additional card is off-putting; as more emerges about the alternatives to PhysX, it'll be easier to make an informed decision.
iLife updates abound in Software Update
Fire up Software Update, folks, as the iLife apps have received a boost. Specifically, iPhoto is at version 6.0.1, iDVD is at 6.0.1, iWeb reaches version 1.0.1 and the all-mighty iTunes has 6.0.3 ready to go. According to Apple, specifics on each update are as follows:iPhoto 6.0.1:"This update to iPhoto resolves issues with photocasting, viewing thumbnails in large libraries, and ordering cards, calendars and books. It also addresses a number of other minor issues."iDVD 6.0.1:"This update to iDVD 6 resolves issues with integration with the other iLife applications, importing of legacy projects and some theme related issues. It also addresses a number of other minor issue"iWeb 1.0.1:"This update to iWeb 1.0 addresses issues related to publishing and blogs. It also addresses a number of other minor issues."iTunes 6.0.3:"iTunes 6.0.3 includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.2."Thanks to all the TUAW readers who sent this in!Update: iMovie (6.0.1) has been added as well. Thanks, Taylor!
