Reviews editor Justin McElroy has been writing about video games since he started reviewing them for The Herald-Dispatch when he was 12 years old. Besides Joystiq, his work has appeared in Computer Games Magazine, GamePro, Official Xbox Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, PC Gamer, The Escapist, Gamezebo, Gamers With Jobs and GameDaily.
With massive layoffs at EA (some of which are rumored to be at Mythic) it's a troubling time to be a fan of one of the MMO developer's properties. Executive producer Jeff Hickman took fan worries as an opportunity to cradle users of Ultima Online, Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot in his arms, stroke their hair and whisper in their ears that everything's gonna be OK.
While Hickman's not making any specific promises in his open letter to the community, it's nice to see that Mythic cares enough to put on a brave face (whether it's warranted or unwarranted) for its fans.
There might be a game buried deep in the Modern Warfare 2: Prestige Edition box that showed up on our doorstep yesterday, but if so, we're not aware of it. See, we've been a little too busy harnessing the miracle of modern technology so we can see in the dark.
We've opened our eyes in the blackness and seen the green-tinted future, and now we want to share our vision with you.
(And yes, we'll be giving the whole thing away soon.)
We already knew the announced cuts coming to EA's workforce (totaling some 1,500 jobs lost) would be deep but, if a recent Kotaku report is to be believed, we're starting to get an idea of just where the gashes will come. For starters, the site says it's been told by unnamed sources that almost every member of the Command and Conquer 4 team would be let go after the game's completion, which is the very last Halo Wars feature we wanted to see copied in C&C.
More cuts are rumored to be hitting Pandemic (the house behind Mercenaries and The Saboteur) and Maxis. We'll keep reaching out to EA to get the official story. In the meantime, our thoughts are with those affected.
Our grandmother had this saying, "Handicrafts make for strange bedfellows." In fact, she believed in it so much she once stitched the saying into a pillow she made from the skin of drifters she had lured into her home and killed. True, you don't normally think "drifter murder" and "decorative pillows" as a pairing, so she had made her point. But we tried (and are still trying) to convince her that there are ways of stating her case that are both less illegal and involve less risk of contracting hepatitis C.
As designer Adam Bormann dug through old code and notes while making Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, he made a curious discovery. Along with notes from Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and crew, he also unearthed dialogue that didn't appear in the original game. Though the lines didn't make it into the special edition, Bormann, like a comedy archeologist, dusted off some of the best bits and collected them on the LucasArts Workshop blog.
Though we can see why some of it was left out, we can't help but feel a little wistful about how close we came to being able to ask Meathook for a sample of stump balm. And yes, now that you mention it, Meathook's Stump Balm would make a very good name for a band.
Troubling news for pirates worried about their fearsome image today: In a recent survey of TIGA members, a majority of developers say that while piracy is a problem, it's not necessarily a fatal one to their business. While 90 percent of those polled think the issue is getting worse, only 60 percent call it a low threat with a mere 10 percent saying it represents a significant danger to their survival.
What are the other 90 percent worried about? Well, getting caught between Mega Shark and Giant Octopus, naturally.
Zeebo, the 3G console available in countries like Brazil, Russia and China, reminds us that right after food, water and shelter, access to Resident Evil 4should be a top priority for all developing nations. It was revealed yesterday that Capcom will use the MascotCapsule eruption engine to port the well-received mobile version of RE 4 to the platform.
You know, it's funny, we know Resident Evil 4 was a classic, but we never expected it to become the new Tetris -- ported to every system imaginable. Which reminds us: Shinji Mikami, be forewarned: You're probably going to have to grow a beard.
Printing a description on something doesn't necessarily make it so, as the hundreds of XXL T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Way 2 Sexy" all over our nation's Wal-Mart's will attest. But there's truth in advertising for this purse made out of a Dance Dance Revolution dance pad, which is, in fact, pretty cool.
As a bonus with this handy how-to, you get to see several lurid close-ups of a dance pad's guts. Sure, it's not the internet's biggest fetish group, but it's nice to see them being thrown a bone.
The neat thing about doing something as unassailable and cool as designing a game for charity is that no one can make fun of your ideas without looking like a total jackass. Take Charles Cecil, the man behind the Broken Sword series, for instance. According to G4, he's creating an adventure game based on Minesweeper. It's blogger gold, until you learn that he's making it for charity game publisher OneBigGame.
So now, instead of the hilarious gag we instinctively created -- involving making a mustache out of honey and cat hair and then putting it on a mime -- we're just going to wish Cecil all the best. Dammit.
Tecmo's trying to fill the arcade-basketball-shaped hole in your heart left by NBA Street with NBA Unrivaled, a retro hoops release from developer A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Games. Though the cleverly-named company is relatively new on the scene, it has experience to draw on after helping Sony build NBA '08: The Life.
We're happy to see some fun-loving 5-on-5 take the court, but we're a little nervous about how quickly the game's sneaked up on us: It's arriving this Wednesday on XBLA, and later on PSN, barely enough time to get our sneakers laced up.
As if, in this world of economic hardship and international strife, you need another thing to worry about. iPhone developer Storm8 has been accused of stealing the phone numbers of players that downloaded its apps like Vampires Live and Zombies Live in a suit filed in San Francisco on behalf of Lynnwood, WA resident Michael Turner.
The company acknowledged the number harvesting in August, calling it a "bug," though the suit claims only specific code could have recorded and transmitted the numbers. So ... apparently that's a thing that happens. Have a great Saturday!
When John Riccitiello needs to unwind from a long day as CEO of EA, he does it with dismemberment. That's the word from an interview with Fox Business in which Riccy (No? Well, worth a shot) names Dead Space as his favorite game of the past 12 months. We're assuming he's not talking about the Wii version of the game, since it's a statistical improbability that he owns it.
After his revelation that digital distribution offset retail sluggishness, the publishing boss went on to say it takes him around "50 to 60 hours" to finish a typical game. It prompts the question: Exactly how many times is he planning on fending off the necromorph threat?
It's our angriest podcast yet as we argue about the merits of this console generation, Brutal Legend, Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed II (barely) and the films of Gary Ross. Plus, as a special bonus, we mention having giveaway bags of Blueberry Muffin Tops cereal but completely forget to give them away. So, we'll do it right here.
Comment below with your thoughts on the podcast and you could win a Brush With Fame and some of the greatest cereal on the face of the earth. Oh, and thanks to Alan Black for his eco-friendly photoshop.
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Though plenty of people -- analyst Michael Pachter chief among them -- are pretty certain that an HD version of the Wii is in the pipeline, you're not going to catch Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Amie copping to it. Speaking with Geoff Keighley on Gametrailers TV, the Regginator said, "Michael continues to be the only one who believes that this is gonna happen. I don't know how forcefully we can say there is no Wii HD."
It certainly sounds like a firm refusal, but let's all try to remember that the shelf life of a Nintendo denial is exactly 10 days.
We don't want the big guys to have all the fun, so this week we're finding out the origins of a couple of indie names. First is Comet Crash developer Pelfast, and then we've got a bonus submission from indie gaming hub 2BeeGames.
"Back in college (early 2000), I needed a company name that represented graphics/animation -- where I thought I would end up. Pixel was a little overused, so I went with the lesser known abbreviation, pel, and ended up with Pelfast after a little brainstorming. A quick internet search turned up only one hit for pelfast: some kind of WWII military ammunition, so I felt it would work."
–John Bates, Pelfast founder
"2BeeGames has several meanings. Originally the 'two bees' referred to myself and my partner who came up with the idea for an indie game destination/community. As the concept of the site evolved into a place where we would hold competitions and publish the best games on the site, the name took on another meaning, as in a place where indie games go 'to be' published onto consoles. Now as our community grows, we're running with the bee theme and our community is called 'the hive'."
{ 9 hours ago } 
Printing a description on something doesn't necessarily make it so, as the hundreds of XXL T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Way 2 Sexy" all over our nation's Wal-Mart's will attest. But there's truth in advertising for this purse made out of a Dance Dance Revolution dance pad, which is, in fact, pretty cool.
