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Atari announces Mizuguchi's 'QJ' for Wii, 'Q3' compilation
Atari is banking on Tetsuya Mizuguchi's next project, a music game with the working title "QJ," to reestablish the celebrated developer at the top of his, uh, game -- or to strike a chord with Wii owners, at least. The publisher announced today that it will bring Q Entertainment's QJ to Wii, but omitted further details. Marching behind a string of Lumines sequels, Mizuguchi has stumbled offbeat with his last several experiments, including Ninety-Nine Nights, Gunpey and Every Extend Extra Extreme. But QJ's music foundation suggests that Mizuguchi could be drumming up renewed inspiration from his own cult classic, Space Channel 5. Additionally, Atari announced the Q3 ("Cubed") compilation disc for Xbox 360, which will include Mizuguchi's XBLA games: Every Extend Extra Extreme, Lumines Live and Rez HD, along with all released DLC. The collection has been given a tentative price of €30 (roughly $40) and has yet to be dated for release.
Synaesthesia imminent: New Mizuguchi music game announced for Wii
Okay, we're doing our best to calm down enough to type this out coherently. Atari has announced a new music game, tentatively titled QJ, for the Wii. According to the very short announcement, the game is being developed by Q? Entertainment founder Tetsuya Mizuguchi. We can assume from the title that his company is the official developer. Either that or it's tied in to the website.That's all the information we have, but it's enough to make us FREAK OUT. While still at Sega, Mizuguchi was responsible for the pioneering music/shooting game Rez and the incredibly awesome dance-rhythm game Space Channel 5. To celebrate, let's all enjoy the Mizuguchi-produced "Heavenly Star" by Genki Rockets!
Kid makes PSP play Wii games
Using a LocationFree Player and a homemade sensor bar, obiwan222222 has crafted an ingenious way to play Wii on the go. However, with a six second lag, most games would be nigh impossible to play. Hey, at least he can participate in some of Wii's non-gaming functionality, like the Everybody Votes channel.Is there any use for having this kind of setup? Not really. But it demonstrates the strange things that people are doing everyday with their PSPs.[Via QJ]
Is Skype coming to the PSP? [Update 1]
This mumbo-jumbo that appears on your screen happens to be code extracted from a decrypted version of firmware 3.10. MaTiAz from QJ appears to have uncovered a reference to a "skype_plugin" within the code. While the functionality is clearly not present in the current revision of PSP's firmware, it appears that Sony's working on something for a future upgrade. Historically, it appears that hints to future functionality is hidden away in the code: references to the PSP camera and GPS were found in earlier decrypted firmware, long before they were officially released.A similar Sony product, the Mylo, has implemented Skype functionality in the past. Certainly, being able to have some kind of VoIP service (free, or not) would increase the value of Sony's portable even more. Will you celebrate if Sony releases this in a future firmware revision?[Via digg][Update 1: Updated image due to QJ's request.]See also:Sony spills it; PSP to get camera, GPS, VoIPHow the PSP can overcome the PSP-inspired Mylo
Dead Head Fred interview
Dead Head Fred was one of the games I said "you should keep your eyes on." And for good reason: it's an original action game, made exclusively with the PSP in mind. QJ had some time to sit down with Eric Peterson, president of Vicious Cycle Software to get some info on the game. Here are some of the more interesting comments: "Dead Head Fred is a very ambitious game and we plan to deliver on all fronts. We want people to buy a PSP just to play Dead Head Fred." "Currently our load times are extremely fast and we are pleased with the results... the E3 demo that we showed, allowed for 30 min of straight gameplay without the player ever experiencing a load time." "The last thing we want people having to do is fight then camera when they should be fighting the enemies in the game." You acquire new powers by attaching new heads to yourself. Here's a few examples of heads you'll find in the game:"The Mutant head helps you survive radiation fields. The Scarecrow head lets you float on the water. The Stone Idol head makes you sink underwater. The Shrunken Head lets you get into tight spaces and glide along high wires. The Corpse head allows you to inflate with air and hover over obstacles; you can also fill it with water or gasoline to generate different effects and attacks. The Dummy head allows you to interact with citizens without scaring them out of their minds. " The full interview has details on the graphics engine, combat, mini-games, and more. The developers would love to do a downloadable demo for the game, so hopefully we'll see one down the line. The game has still a lot of development time left: it comes out next year.
Death Jr. 2 to feature HDR lighting?!
Death Jr. was the first PSP game to be publically shown, and it wowed a whole lot of people with its technical prowess. If a new interview at QJ.net is to be believed, it appears that we'll be wowed again. Chris Carla commented:Well, we used Renderware on our first game on PSP, and it wasn't exactly perfectly tuned for PSP. After we removed it for [Death Jr. 2], we found our framerates hit 90fps... before we knew it, thanks to our fantastic tech staff, we had light blooms, High Dynamic Range lighting, and lots of other lighting and frame buffer effects running in the game. The net result is that we've probably got some of the most technically advanced features of any title on PSP at this point, which is pretty cool. We've done a lot more than that as well; I think people will be pleased by the tech in the game, and our loading times are still extremely short.Can this really be possible on a handheld? Death Jr. 2 seems to address the problems of the original and throws in a multiplayer co-op mode to boot. The sequel comes out this Halloween, but until then, don't forget you can check out the original for only $10.
