Volleyball
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ICYMI: The story of Microsoft's Solitaire and volleyball-blocking robots
Way back in 1988, Wes Cherry was a Microsoft intern and during his time at the company he created the biggest time waster the world has ever known: The Solitaire computer game. Cherry built the game out of boredom instead of being directed by his superiors. But he bosses -- including CEO and founder Bill Gates -- liked the game so much they added it to Windows in 1990. Since then, Cherry has made exactly zero dollars on his creation. And you thought your internship was bad.
Japan's volleyball team test their spikes against robot blockers
In a bid to give its national volleyball team an edge, Japan has enlisted the help of high-tech training robots. According to New Scientist, these bizarre-looking bots are used to mimic the opposing team's defense and are made up of three pairs of hands attached to a mobile torso. Mounted to a track, these new digital defense droids slide up and down to pre-set positions, allowing players to test out their spike shots against many different team formations.
When you jump, VERT tells you how high
The majority of fitness wearables concern themselves with walking or running, but what happens if your exercise is more vertical in nature? Step forward VERT, a wearable jump-rate monitor that tells you how fast you can jump, how high you can jump and, er, additional jumping-related measurements. Clip the Fitbit-sized unit to your shirt and connect to the companion iOS app and you, or your coach, will be able to see how well you're leaping into the air and how best to improve. It may be a niche technology, but it's already being used by the US women's Volleyball team, so if you want to join in, you can grab a unit for $125.
New Nintendo eShop releases: Pokemon Battle Trozei, Yumi's Odd Odyssey
This week's headline new release is Pokemon Battle Trozei, a game that mixes the series' trademark critter-battling with one of gaming's most prolific genres, the match-3 puzzler. If you've caught 'em all in Pokemon X/Y, you can get reacquainted with every known Pokemon in Battle Trozei - at last count, there were 7,543,207 known species of Pokemon. So it might take you a while. Moving on, games are always finding new ways to enliven the art of fishing, and Yumi's Odd Odyssey tries it by mixing the pastime with platforming. Yumi breaks all kinds of fishing etiquette in the 3DS game, from using her line to swing and catapult over gaps to beating up all kinds of piscine enemies. She's a fishing renegade, that Yumi. There are a few new sales and offers to close things out: Renegade Kid has a 30 percent sale on select 3DS games including Mutant Mudds, ATV Wild Ride 3D and Bomb Monkey, while Nordic Games is discounting some of its Wii U games including Jeapordy and Wheel of Fortune. Finally, Nintendo is offering free access to all of Wii Sports Club between March 21 9AM PT and midnight PT on March 23. As ever, we've got this week's full list of new releases after the break.
The Behemoth serves new Castle Crashers PS3 screens and video
The Behemoth has sent out an update about the status of the PS3 version of Castle Crashers. No, there's no release date yet. But at least the game is still in development! That's good news. "We have now sent the title off to a 3rd party vendor for final testing before we begin the submission process with Sony," The Behemoth's Kelly Revak reports. Two new Trophies have been added to the as-yet theoretical PSN game, in addition to those being ported over from the XBLA game's Achievements. "Social Networker" is earned for an "impressive" number of volleys in the new volleyball game, and "You are insane" is awarded to those who complete the game on Insane difficulty. See how that works? While you (continue to) to wait for the game, enjoy some footage of a volleyball match after the break, and some volleyball screenshots in the gallery. %Gallery-92301%
Volleyball-playing robot has Mac mini brain, heart of a champion
Volleyball-playing robots may only come around every ten years or so, but they at least bring along some fairly big improvements when they do show up -- like actual mobility, in this case. Of course, "volleyball-playing" is still a bit of a stretch. The bot is actually designed to be more of a training aid, with it making use of a range of sensors, built-in GPS, a compass, and an iSight camera (all linked to a Mac mini) to track down balls and set them up for spiking drills. As you can see in the unfortunately short video after the break, all of that more or less works as advertised, although it seems that we'll still have to wait quite a while for the inevitable robot vs. robot match.
Toshiba's decade-old automated volleyball bot resurfaces: where's ours?
If this here press releases didn't have a date of February 1997 on it, we'd swear this was some sort new fancy new development. Sure, robots have been playing sports for ages, but seeing this here creature revived begs the question: why don't we all have one or two of these laying around the house by now? The prototype seen in the video linked below can recognize spoken commands, react to incoming spheres, identify actions of nearby humans and spike volleyballs in your grille all day long. In all honesty, Tosh probably converted this into some sort of elderly assistant bot that didn't catch nearly as much press, but we're still holding onto a sliver of hope that this thing is just about ready for commercial release.Read - Volleyball robot videoRead - Original volleyball robot press release
Big Beach Sports looks more like big bore sports
With all the multi-sport games on the market for the Wii, we haven't really kept tabs on THQ's rendition, Big Beach Sports. Since the software is releasing next week for the budget price of $29.99, though, it's time to give it a closer inspection.Looking at these new screens, we have to say -- ignoring it seems like the right choice. Perhaps we're being a little harsh, but that's why we're paid the big bucks, after all. We can see that the developers were aiming for "cute," but might have gotten a bit closer to "ew ew ew."We're not ones to nitpick about graphics if the gameplay is fun, yet performing things like "the bump" with the Wiimote seem too tedious to be a good time. Perhaps the oversaturated mini-sports market has made us too cynical, and hopefully we'll be proven wrong. Yet, for now, we'll file this game under "mehware."%Gallery-25676%[Via press release]
Wii Fanboy hands-on: Deca Sports
Imagine our delight when we had a brown envelope from Hudson sitting on our doorstep Friday afternoon. As we opened the parcel up, we found the above items: a preview copy of Deca Sports and this sweet little wristband. Huzzah!But, woe was us for we would not be able to just play and selfishly enjoy the four available sports on the demo disc by our lonesome (or with some friends). Oh no, we have a job and have to let our readers know what we think. So that's what we did. But, we didn't just settle for playing the included sports and writing up a preview. No, instead we decided that we'd do a nice little video for you. And for all of you who enjoy reading things, we wrote up our opinions as well.So head on past the break for our hands-on look at Deca Sports for the Wii!%Gallery-7109%
Big Beach Sports ... better than little beach sports?
THQ is going Wii crazy. Not only is the publisher responsible for bringing aliens, bands, deadly creatures, worms, blobs, and more to our Wiis, but now beach sports, too.If you've ever had the urge to play beach games like bocce or cricket without actually going to the beach, consider yourself lucky. Big Beach Sports will feature those and others, including football, soccer, volleyball, and Frisbee golf. This THQ title will include single-player tournaments for the different sports, and also let you get your multiplayer groove going with up to three more people. Since the press release made no mention of online play, though, we'll have to assume for now that the game won't have any.Will this summer release be a good beach adaptation of Wii Sports? We can't be sure, although at the very least, Americans might finally be able to find out what the heck is going on in cricket.[Via press release]
VC Monday Madness: Blue's Journey, Volleyball and Axelay
As one might imagine, the week following the release of Super Mario Bros. 3 is a bit on the disappointing side. But, hey, just about any Virtual Console release this week would disappointing when we've gotten our hands on one of the best games of all time. Volleyball (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points) Blue's Journey (NeoGeo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points) Axelay (Super NES, 1 player, 800 Wii Points) As usual, be sure to stop back later for our video wrap-up of the day's releases.
A Wii Sports-alike on the DS? Simple!
D3 Publisher's Simple DS Vol. 29: THE Sports Daishuugo (The Big Sports Assembly) is exactly like Wii Sports. Except it doesn't look as good, has different sports, doesn't have any kind of motion controls, is probably lacking in polish to the point of glitchiness, and nobody's ever heard of it. But outside of those and probably some other things, the two are the same.THE Sports Daishuugo contains five main games: baseball, golf, volleyball, tennis, and futsal, as well as minigame variations on all of those. Like any decent casual sports game, it allows for multiplayer-- four-player single-card play.We're actually surprised by how bad this doesn't look. The characters are cute and the graphics are non-awful. We wonder if this cute sports game will take off in Japan, where Wii Sports sells tons as a standalone product.[Via Siliconera]
VC Tuesday: Be thankful VC downloads don't include boxart
You know how boxart is always better in Japan than in the US? You're looking at the counterexample. The Japanese Sonic 3 cover is arguably the worst thing to happen to the series right up until the creation of Shadow. Apparently Sega was doing their best to kill their flagship series in Japan, by throwing some Cross Colours-tinted doodles and tiled "THE MOST FAMOUS HEDGEHOG IN THE WORLD" signs on a white background and throwing it out like it's acceptable. The US box, in comparison, is spectacularly beautiful.Pretty good game, though. Other games on the list include a forgotten launch-era NES sports game and Ordyne, the adorable Namco horizontal shooter that we totally already have! This week's Japanese Virtual Console releases are: Volleyball (Famicom, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points) Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Mega Drive, 1 player, 600 Wii Points) Ordyne (PC Engine, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points)
Hudson Soft throws their cap into the minigames ring
Hudson Soft recently announced Deca Sports, a minigame collection with -- obviously -- ten different game types that actually look pretty interesting. The game, which is set to come out this year, was revealed in Japanese magazine V-Jump and appears to include tennis, archery, volleyball, go karts, basketball, and more. As far as sports collections go, Deca Sports actually looks pretty ambitious, and the scanned screenshots are easy on the eyes. Check 'em out for yourself after the break. Looks like EA Playground is going to have a little competition! Frankly, we may have to come down on the side of archery, but controls and content will certainly be a factor for each. We can't wait to see more.
VC Friday: Galaga breath
We're pretty sure we wouldn't want to smell Galaga breath (it reeks of intensity), but it makes for a great week on the Virtual Console for European gamers! Only three titles this fine Friday, but when you're talking about Galaga '90 and Breath of Fire II (oh, and some hot Volleyball action), what else do you really need? RPGs and beautiful, rhythmic patterns make for some good gaming. Breath of Fire II -- SNES -- 800 Wii points Galaga '90 -- Turbografx -- 600 Wii points Volleyball -- NES -- 500 Wii points
Itagaki confesses to drinking on the job
He's been called an eccentric, a rock star, a hypocrite and once, even a game designer. Tecmo's Tomonobu Itagaki has been called a lot of things and, following on from an interview conducted by Kinkyzoo Kakalukeia Kikizo, we suspect that "drunkard" may be the next label appended to the already impressive list. When queried about how he gets his ideas, Itagaki calmly claims that he often sees them at the bottom of a bottle of whisky. "Of course, there are ups and downs, waves, of how I drink in terms of the amount, but it's a long period of time. In the last ten years - not that you asked this question - I think I had better ideas when I was drinking whisky. When I am drinking shochu, that's a conservative drink, so the ideas are not that great. Beer is just like water to me, so it just helps me and everyone else loosen up a little bit, it doesn't really contribute to coming up with ideas." The interview mostly stays on the topic of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (a game which Itagaki says he's developing as a hobby), but does reveal that Ninja Gaiden 2 is currently in its planning stages. If alcohol is a vital ingredient in games like Ninja Gaiden, we say let Itagaki and his team have a drink and loosen up. Heck, we encourage him to drink himself into a stupor -- we're sure a couple of vomit-encrusted keyboards are worth receiving another refreshingly difficult ninja kill-em-up. The man's outspoken for certain (don't forget his 5 most hated games, Tekkens 1 through 5), but he usually does a good job of sticking to his promises. That's one trait that many game designers could do well to adopt. Well, that and raging alcoholism. [tHaNKsh enbob89! Hic.]
