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The world (of Warcraft) is flat
Dramatized has a simple but intriguing question on the forums: "Is Azeroth flat or round?" It's got to be round, right? You can prove that the world is round a number of different ways, but do they actually work? I don't ever remember seeing ships disappearing beyond the horizon (in fact, Tydeus confirms that ships don't drop below the horizon, so either Azeroth is flat or just really, really big), and in most places on Azeroth, the horizon is actually a mountain range. And I've never seen an eclipse on Azeroth, so we have no idea what shape the world really is. The ingame map between Azeroth and Outland hints that it may be a globe, but really it's just the map overlaid into a circle -- no hints there.Neth hints in the thread that maybe even the Explorers' League doesn't really know if the world is round or not. But whether it's round or flat, it's a pretty good guess that there's a lot to this world we haven't yet seen -- if it is flat, neither the Horde or Alliance have reached the edge yet, and if it's round, you'd wonder why someone hasn't sailed from Darnassus across to Azshara (and if Northrend is what's north of the two main continents, what's south?). Remember this the next time someone asks just what else Blizzard can visit in future expansions -- there's a whole world out there we haven't been able to see yet.
iPhones from around the world
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/iPhones_from_around_the_world_forbidden_fruit_tastes_good'; Where in the world are Apple's missing 1.3 million iPhones? Iran? Holland? South Africa? Yes! Lots of other places too.We asked for pics and you answered: iPhones from around the world, from countries where the iPhone isn't even sold with service. Canada makes sense, as a quick trip across the border will land you an iPhone. China also makes sense, as it wouldn't be Hong Kong without a gray market plethora of unlocked iPhones, would it? We got reports from almost every part of the globe, and put together a nice little gallery to show just how popular this gadget is -- service or not. Where there's a hack, there's a way...%Gallery-15324%
Motorola's Z6c World Edition hits Verizon
Looking for something just a little less fancy than the BlackBerry 8830 for taking your Verizon service 'round the globe? Yeah, we hear that -- and so does Motorola, releasing the Z6c slider with both CDMA / EV-DO and GSM radios on board. The phone is largely identical to the Z6tv, save that the MediaFLO-based VCAST TV support goes to the wayside (who thinks they're gonna be able to use that action in Greece, anyway?) in favor of the "World Edition" branding and support. You also get a 2 megapixel cam, microSD slot, and the full host of Verizon features like VZ Navigator, VCAST Music and Video, et cetera (which are all naturally CDMA-only) packed into a shiny metal shell that just might not tip off passers-by to your "I'm an American carrying a weird hybrid phone" status. Grab it for $180 after rebate.
Mobile phone subscriptions hit 3.3 billion
Just last month we heard that there were some 2.68 billion mobile accounts currently active in the world, but a new study by Informa has found that there are actually 3.3 billion subscriptions. This number is somewhat significant considering that it's approximately half of the world's population, but alas, not half of all Earthlings actually own a cellphone. Researchers found that 59 countries had mobile penetration over 100 percent, suggesting that some individuals actually accounted for numerous mobile subscriptions. Sure, the figures here could be picked apart in a myriad ways, but why not just raise your handset to commemorate hitting the big three point three? You are one of them, right?[Image courtesy of W3]
Planet Earth: now home to four billion phone lines
Go on, pick your jaw up off the floor -- this isn't that staggering, now is it? Considering all those cellphones that have been sold here recently, and the plethora of folks who just refuse to ditch that landline, four billion total phone lines seems just about right, truth be told. According to the International Telecommunications Union, our planet is now home to about "1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts," but the total number of people represented by these data is much less clear. Notably, the study found that "61-percent of the world's mobile subscribers are in developing countries," and further added that China and India were greatly to thank for reaching the milestone. And just think, there were less than 1 billion lines combined across the globe just 11 years ago.[Image courtesy of OwlRecruitment]
VC Tuesday: Dead moon over the demon castle
Even though we usually support the more obscure VC releases, we can't help but focus our attention on this week's most mainstream title: Castlevania. Finally making its appearance on the Japanese Virtual Console, Konami's side-scroller is a must-buy. I personally consider "liking Castlevania a lot" as an important component of my personality. What an awesome night to have a curse.Like Castlevania, Power Sports and Dead Moon have both already arrived in the US (Power Sports as World Sports Competition), and Ichidant-R, a Bonanza Bros. spinoff, is the sequel to Tant-R, seen on the Sega Classics Collection. A multiplayer puzzle minigame collection, Ichidant-R is sort of a precursor to Mario Party and Wario Ware.Hajimari no Mori is a graphical text adventure from Nintendo! Let's all hope for a miracle localization for that one. Akumajou Dracula (Famicom Disk System, 1 player, 500 Wii Points) Hajimari no Mori (Super Famicom, 1 player, 800 Wii Points) Ichidant-R (Mega Drive, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points) Power Sports (PC Engine, 1-5 players, 600 Wii Points) Dead Moon (PC Engine, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)
Breakfast topic: WoW in the world
It's been a while since we last did this, so let's do it again: Where have you seen WoW in your real life world?Umi on WoW Ladies sees BOP, and automatically thinks Bind on Pickup. I was once driving around looking for a party, and had been playing WoW so much lately that when I realized I was lost, my first thought was to type /1 (without a computer in the car, mind you), and ask where the party was in General chat. No one was in the car, but I felt pretty stupid after having a thought like that.And my favorite lately came from that post on boss quotes the other day. Here's what happened to commenter Thingy at work:Person 1: "How about we get that stuff in next week?"Person 2: "Too soon"Me: "You have awakened me too soon, Executus."*odd looks from the rest*Me: *finally realises what I just said*Funny. Where have you seen WoW in the world?
DS Daily: Custom stylus
We've touched on the issue of the stylus before; many people use thicker, professional styluses from PDAs or whatnot, while others use some of the special edition ones seen around the internet. But it's a free-thinking world, guys and gals, and reality is such a ho-hum place.Let your mind drift and dream, and tell us, dear readers: in a penultimate world (that's a clever pun, see?), what would your stylus be? Any reasonably cylindrical shape will do. We're partial to the deadly eastern dragon above, of course.
Debunk: sleep easy, the iPhone's still a quad-band worldphone
There's been a lot of buzz these past couple days about the iPhone's FCC filing and what it says -- or rather, what it doesn't say -- about the handset's internals. The fear basically revolves around the fact that a lack of testing on the GSM 900 and 1800MHz bands indicates that it lacks those bands entirely, but we can assure the globetrotters out there jonesin' for an iPhone come next month that there'll be a full range of RF spectrum waiting for you. How do we know? Well, first of all, in the year 2007 (or 2005, for that matter) it's simply idiotic to release a wide-appeal phone with any fewer than four GSM bands. Quadband GSM chipsets have been commodity items for some time now and add virtually no expense to a handset's internals. Second of all, quadband phones never have their non-US bands mentioned in a filing, particularly in a test report. Follow the break for a walkthrough of exactly what we mean.
Ultra Rumor: CVG says Blizzard announcing Starcraft MMO
CVG is reporting that Blizzard's big announcement at the Korean World Wide Invitational (WWI) May 19 is an MMO based on Starcraft. Either CVG has the best inside Blizzard source ever, or some writer at CVG is begging for a pink slip reporting this as fact. CVG says, "The unveiling of the new installment [of Starcraft 2] has previously been rumoured for the South Korea event, though we now know that the title is in fact (emphasis ours) an online spin-off and not a new RTS game as previously assumed."Despite saying the information is straight-up-fact, we can't help but be in shock and awe of the information. If true, it would open up a Pandora's Box of questions. How far is this MMO along? Will Blizzard really unleash another MMO to compete against their already insane mega-hit World of Warcraft, which sits comfortably perched atop the MMO ladder with 8.5 million subscribers? Starcraft 2, as an RTS, being announced at the Korean event would have made perfect sense, but this "fact" based information that CVG received seems to blow that out of the water.
Animal Crossing is 'Shenmue without the plot'
If you've been tethered to Nintendo consoles for the last eight years, then you might have missed Sega's epic Shenmue. Nominally, it was a game about taking revenge on the man who killed the protagonist's father. In play it was more about walking around town chatting with people.Sound like anything you know? It did to Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh, as well, and his feature on GameCareerGuide is an excellently in-depth discussion of the open-ended, generally optional gameplay found in both games. It'll make you appreciate Animal Crossing more than you already do. And since we're probably not going to get another chance to mention Shenmue on DS Fanboy, we'd like to suggest that anyone looking for a neat adventure game/RPG would do well to pick up a Dreamcast and a copy of the game. It's not everyone's favorite, but we couldn't have loved it more.[Via GameSetWatch]
Cellphones are dangerous/not dangerous, bee killing edition
Apparently, we should all feel incredibly guilty for simply using our cellphones, as not only are we encouraging the growth of ear tumors within our bodies, but now we're hearing that radiation flying out from our mobiles are demolishing the world's supply of crops. All jesting aside, a controversial report is now claiming that "radiation from mobile phones are interfering with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving (and pollinating) species from finding their way back to their hives." The comically-named Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is reportedly being seen on a much larger scale in the US and Europe, and elusive "evidence" is purportedly backing these dodgy claims up. Backers of the shocking data are even going so far as to suggest that in the future, our refusal to set aside the cellphone could cause "massive food shortages as the world's harvests fail." Man, this sounds worse than Y2K, for sure.[Via Slashdot]
A Wonderful World of brand new screens
Famitsu has some great new shots from It's a Wonderful World that reveal a little more about the protagonist, Neku, and the gameplay of the forthcoming Square Enix RPG -- if, of course, you can either read Japanese or feel like wading through an automatic translator. If you're anything like us, though, you'll probably just stare and poke the screen while babbling about the pretty colors. We're easy to please.
A new look at a Wonderful World
It's a Wonderful World just keeps getting more wonderful, and, um, worldly. Now in addition to the graphic style, we're hyped about the gameplay! Jeux-France has posted some scans of the game in action, highlighting the touch-screen weapons system, which uses badges to assign different attacks. The attacks shown include Patrol Shot, Piercing Shot, Black Hole, Burst Shot, and Velocity Crash. All of these attacks are done with stylus gestures. The scans also state that part of the game takes place in Shibuya, making the game even more Jet Set Radio-like than we thought. We don't know how wise it is to anticipate a Square action game, but we can't help it. This looks so awesome. See for yourself after the post break.
New It's a Wonderful World screens
Some new screenshots of Square Enix's bizarre action-RPG It's a Wonderful World (Subarashiki Kono Sekai) have surfaced, and they are ... interesting! We think that this game is the best use of Tetsuya Nomura's distinctive style yet. We're actually getting something of a Jet Set Radio vibe from the near-future Tokyo/kids in baggy clothes theme, and we love getting Jet Set Radio vibes.The control scheme is pretty clearly on display here, we think-- the arrows represent commands given to the character on the top screen, while the bottom screen is stylus-driven.We're excited! Much more than we ever were about Kingdom Hearts, and not just because that's a mainly-PS2 franchise. Wonderful screens are posted after the break to test your Action-RPG Excitement Potential.
News Alert: Syrian prez doesn't play video games
The controversy surrounding the positive and negative effects of modern video games has drawn commentary from luminaries ranging from the governor of California to the Pope. But among all this high-level pontificating, one question has loomed large: What does Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad think of video games? Apparently, he doesn't like them. This according to an interview Al-Assad gave to Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer, who figured that since the dictator has "talked about the internet," a question about video games was appropriate. Al-Assad tersely answered that he uses the internet "for information, not for video games" before moving on to important topics like his favorite movies and what's on his iPod (we're not kidding). Al-Assad's discussion got us wondering how the world might be different if more heads of state actually were gamers? Could President Bush gain a deeper understanding of history through Civilization? Could a nice, calm game of Mario soothe Tony Blair's nerves after a long day in front of Parliament? Could the world-gobbling power of Katamari Damacy satiate the ambitions of Kim Jong-Il? The world may never know. [Via NewsBusters]
Wonderful World trailer gets caught in the internet
A trailer for It's a Wonderful World has hit the net, allowing us to see some of the gameplay in the flesh. All it has done is strengthened our desire to get our hands on a localized copy of the game. Based on the video, which is available past the jump, would you say the same?See also: It's A Wonderful World revealed TGS 2006: It's A Wonderful World preview Concept art explosion: It's A Wonderful World It's A Wonderful World's wonderful scans It's a Wonderful World (of scans)
A very merry Virtual Console Christmas [update 2]
Hold on to your mistletoe, folks, Nintendo is dropping all kinds of radiological bombs come Christmas morning. Let's skip the preamble and just head right on in: Super Mario Bros. (NES) - Finally, is all we have to say. The defining "retro" title in video gaming history is finally up for grabs, and you might not have a soul if you don't pick it up. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (SNES) - One of the most influential titles in the 16-bit era, Street Fighter II is revered by millions of angry, violent gamers worldwide. And Chun-Li is still hot. Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - The beginning of the modern Castlevania games, this title features more hot whip action than your mistress on Friday night. And unholy werewolves, too. Toe Jam and Earl (Sega Genesis) - We've been raving about this funkotronic title for weeks, and it's finally here come Christmas morn. Get your groove on and ignore your holiday dinner ... that's what we're doing, anyway. R-Type (TG-16) - An apparently famous shooter that we ourselves have not played. We hear it's quite the hit, though. Any takers? This is gonna be one hell of a Monday. Who said presents needed to be encased in paper and under a tree?[Thanks, Benny!][Update 1: Also, on January 1st, Nintendo will be releasing both Baseball (NES) and Urban Champion (NES). Not that it'll matter. We'll be too busy playing these games to bother.][Update 2: And no, none of these games are free. Cheapskates.]
Zelda goodies in Animal Crossing
Much to the surprise of, well, just about every person we come in contact with on a regular basis, we still play Animal Crossing: Wild World. Perhaps we aren't alone though, because word on the street is that Nintendo is issuing out another free goody to celebrate the launch of some game called Zelda on the Wii. We're going to be keeping a close watch on this situation due to our continued support for the game and love of all things free.For those who would like to join us, the time to log into Wi-Fi Connect is during the week of November 17th through the 24th. Upon connecting, players will receive the rare gift enclosed in a letter, which will be patiently awaiting them in their mailbox outside of the house. It's totally legit information, originating from the 210th volume of Nintendo Power magazine.[Thanks to all that sent this in!]
The Official Nintendo World handbook in all its glory
A very patient and hardworking soul at Kotaku has posted the entire 60 pages of the Nintendo World Handbook for your viewing pleasure. His scanner went belly-up on him, so he had to physically photograph each page and work the post up like that. Zoinks! Now that's some dedication. So if you missed Nintendo World, you can at least read the handbook. That is, if you read Japanese. Some of these images look like a travel brochure for a Utopian society that will brainwash you into wearing all white, but we're content just to look at the pretty pictures until our Wii arrives. Speaking of which, how many mailmen, UPS delivery guys, FedEx dudes, and DHL grunts are going to get mugged on the way to people's doors that day? They'd better arm themselves with the Pen of a Thousand Truths, or some bear foam mace.
