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'Pokémon' developer is releasing a Switch RPG called 'Town'
Game Freak, the Japanese video game developer behind Pokémon, is working on a turn-based RPG simply called Town. Thankfully, that's only a working title for the new IP, so they might still come up with something more memorable. Nintendo has announced the game during its latest Direct presentation, showing some of its characters and a short preview of its gameplay. Apparently, the game is a new story set "in a village with a secret to hide." Under the protection of a castle, the village's residents enjoyed peace until giant monsters started showing up and wreaking havoc. The villagers now have to team up and fight off the fiends with their smarts and their tools.
Black Desert shows off new features for its second beta test
The testing process for Black Desert continues apace in South Korea, and the process of staring at the monitor and speculating continues apace for Black Desert fans who are not actually in South Korea. Luckily, there's a translation available of the game's latest development blog which shows off the new features available in the game's second closed beta test. We've heard about a new region, and now we know about some of the new monsters being introduced as well as a new town. The town is a coastal fishing city known as Eferia, offering players plenty of saltwater fishing opportunities as well as the other services you'd expect from a seaside fishing town. Players will also be facing off against new monsters including what appears to be a dinosaur, a harpy, and... well, that third one isn't exactly clear. Still, it's more new stuff for players to look forward to when the second test goes live. [Thanks to levakd for the tip!]
The Daily Grind: What's the most iconic MMO city?
If you've ever tried to draw a map of the Earth from memory, you know that it's a difficult task, and yet I suspect that most of us could easily sketch out a map of the landmasses and cities of our favorite MMOs. While most MMOs scale significantly smaller than our real-world capitals, they're no less memorable. In fact, some cities practically serve as symbols of the game, from City of Heroes' Paragon City to Guild Wars' Lion's Arch to World of Warcraft's Stormwind. Be they hubs of commerce, zones for party-forming, or home to all your phat loots, we could probably navigate them blindfolded. Today we ask: What's the most iconic MMO city (and could you map it from memory)? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
NYT interviews "iPad town" officials
Last month we told you about the North Carolina town that's gone all-iPad for its municipal meeting agendas and reports. The New York Times has now published a brief interview with the town manager and police chief of Cornelius, NC, Anthony Roberts and Bence Hoyle. Both officials cite the potential cost savings of the iPads versus printing and delivering 4,000 pages worth of agendas for a meeting. They're anticipating about an 18-month horizon before the iPads pay for themselves in reduced dead-tree expenditures, not counting the goodwill benefit of not weighing down the town board with overloaded binders. They also noted that since the iPads are town property, they expect the commissioners to comport themselves appropriately when it comes to inappropriate websites and games. The police chief even noted that iPad-related mistakes can sometimes work out in the town's favor; he "hit the wrong button" and brought up a webcam feed of a local park, where he spotted a potential nogoodnik roaming about after closing hours. He emailed his deputies and they tracked down the trespasser.
North Carolina town goes paperless, embraces iPads
The town of Cornelius, NC has launched a new program designed to cut down on paper use in the town's government facilities, and the linchpin of this program is none other than Apple's tablet, the iPad. According to the local Herald Weekly paper, the town passed out iPad 2s to commissioners at a recent board meeting, and plans to use the devices for sharing agenda packets, budget information, and everything else you need to run a small town, without printing any of it out. The whole plan seems surprisingly well thought out -- the town actually ran a trial of the program with just three iPads, and the paperless agenda plan has been set up for quite a while now. It was relatively cheap, too -- the town has only spent $5200 on the iPads (not counting some document sharing software previously purchased), and fully expects to make that money right back up in saved time and paper costs. Pretty impressive move, and of course this means the town commissioners also get to use Apple's magical and revolutionary device during meetings (though they should probably keep the Angry Birds off of government property, just in case). We've seen iPads used in a professional setting before to great effect, and here's another situation where Apple's product is not only better for a few reasons, but actually cheaper as well. [via Gigaom -- but the town is not in Colorado, it's in North Carolina]
LG strolls into Town with C300 featurephone, offers portrait QWERTY for text addicts
Still on the lookout for an affordable QWERTY dumbphone? You might be in luck, as LG's just released this eye-catching Town C300 to cater to your texting and IM addiction on the cheap. Just like its predecessor, this new handset includes Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and push email integration, along with FM radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 2 megapixel camera from the hardware camp. The damage? Just a mere £69 ($108) from Orange, but don't tell your friends -- keep the extra booze money to yourself. %Gallery-102995%
LG's C300 Town spotted in the wild, textin' on the cheap
It appears we missed an opportunity at IFA to spend some quality time with LG's recently-outed C300 Town, a dumbphone in every sense of the word whose main mission in life seems to be making your texting an easier task thanks to a full portrait QWERTY keyboard. It's got a few other tricks up its sleeve, though, namely support for push email, a 3.5mm headphone jack (hopefully accompanied by a decent music player), and a 2 megapixel cam on back to capture those amazing moments with enough clarity (in theory, anyway) to make for a decent MMS. We're still waiting for details on pricing and availability, but we know that it'll be available on Orange at some point -- appropriate, we must say, considering the orange accents. [Thanks, Willeke]
