Joystiq

It's clear that companies aren't putting out enough great product when their biggest fans are spending hundreds of hours making remixes, covers, mashups and (sometimes) messes of older video game music.

Well, that's the industry's problem. Not ours. We're happy that VGMix is hosting these fan-made tracks and that they're not requiring registration or navigation through a minefield of popups to do it.

Zelda fans should try "Blood of Ganon" by artist virt, who says, "It incorporates my favorite themes from the NES and SNES Zeldas (anything newer is sort of outside of my nostalgic jurisdiction) and is about as metal as you'll ever hear my prog-metal get." That's pretty metal right there, dude.

It's said that Bart rocks the game music category as well. And don't forget Nullsleep or Bitshifter for non-game music performed on Gameboys.

The Guardian reports that games requiring just one thumb to play are becoming popular on cell phones and are redefining "playability" on that platform. Notes the Guardian:

One-thumb games make important concessions to mobile handset design. It is, after all, often fiddly and uncomfortable to play games that require two hands - or even two fingers. Demanding such dexterity breaks the ethos of mobile phone operating systems, which allow users to carry out complex functions such as photo messaging with a single digit.

The paper cites a few popular Korean games that can be played with just one thumb, including "Skippedy Seed," a one-thumb jumprope game featuring cutesy characters that the player controls via a single pressure-sensitive button. The harder that button is pushed, the higher the player jumps.

Now if this one-thumb movement had come out of Japan  instead of Korea we might hint that the Yakuza Yubitsume ritual was the inspiration for this innovation, but it ain't, so we won't. It's just good, old-fashioned interface design at work here. [Via textually.org]

Georgia State University researchers plan to test whether  people who are afraid to speak in public can be treated or eased of their phobia via virtual reality technology.

The researchers hypothesize that having the phobic deliver speeches in front of virtual crowds will make delivering them in front of real crowds easier. [Via Mikes List]

CNN is predicting that it's going to cost $1,710 to experience "next-gen" gaming with the Xbox 360. Here's how they figure:

• $399: Xbox 360 Console (CNN says that this next generation is likely to come in at $100 more than previous generation-consoles)

• $59.99: a single, top-shelf game (Publishers have been quoted as saying that their best titles are likely to cost $5 to $10 more than current-generation blockbuster titles)

• $1000: a HD capable television

• $250: surround sound system

 Most game afficionados already have an HD-capable display, and many also have surround sound. At any rate, one could hardly call surround-sound a requirement. CNN has inflated the costs to grab attention to their headline, but the underlying point is still valid. Next-generation gaming is likely going to cost more.

Motorola, Puma, Pizza Hut, Ericsson, Jeep, Chrysler: they're all advertising their wares in games, sometimes requiring players to interact with their products in order to advance to the next level.

It's all part of the in-game advertising trend that we've been watching closely here at Joystiq, and which is finally gaining traction in the mainstream media. And you know once they get their hands on it the trend only tends to accelerate.

This could actually be good for the industry if it becomes a significant revenue stream that supports more varied and more daring projects. Publishers are currently unwilling to take risks on titles that don't have a strong likelihood of selling enough copies to recoup development costs and then some.

If advertising revenues prove to be a viable way of earning money on a wider array of titles, then we could see more innovation (and more ads). Finding new sources of revenue is especially important with the costs of development for next-generation consoles expected to reach stratospheric new heights.

This all assumes that the advertising can be done in a way that doesn't hurt the gaming experience. Knowing where to draw the line is difficult, however. Does Everquest II's "/pizza" command interfere with gameplay because it is incongruous with the fantasy world or does it actually deepen and enrich the experience because it means that players never need to leave their seats to order food?

See also: Wired News coverage of ads in games

There's a ton to say on the culture of E3, so this post will capture just one little component of it: the wacky T-shirts that just scream "I'm a geek, and proud of it."

The Joystiq cultural anthropologist says: "The specimen sporting this shirt is not only proud of his so-called geekiness, but also of his general lack of magnetism when it comes to members of the opposite sex. This magnetic deficiency manifests itself via a surfeit of flesh and the subject's mere presence at a gathering of like-minded individuals. His ability to laugh at his own geekiness springs from a quiet confidence that comes from self-knowledge. It is also interesting to note that the subject declares his heterosexuality via this shirt, indicating that E3 is a hetero-normal environment."

PS: Said chick magnet consented to be the subject of this blog post.

ZatchBell! caught our eye because at first glance it appeared to feature little kids fighting each other. There's something hilarious about watching a little girl in a typical Japanese school uniform uppercut a little boy with such force that it sends him flying across the screen.

Supposedly the little kids are actually "mamodo" (some kind of powerful creature from the demon world) but come on: they look like kids, they're animated like kids, and they quack like kids. While that whole mamodo schtick might be interesting in the animated series of the same name that runs on the Cartoon Network, this is a fighting game we're talking about. Backstory quickly takes a backseat to frenzied fisticuffs.

The game is a delight precisely because you're dueling little kids, something that's generally never ever done in video games because it's taboo. Take away the kid-like creatures and this is just another typical fighting game with magical and physical attacks, though some of the special attacks are very fun (one attack unleashed by a little girl features a big, flying heart).

We're now one step closer to the battle royale with five-year olds game that some creative types have envisioned.

The game is due this fall for the PS2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance platforms.

Spore's the buzzed-about game of the moment. Wired news interviews its creator, Will Wright, the man behind the best-selling PC game franchise The Sims. Wired didn't score any new screenshots, but the questions they've asked Wright elicit some interesting answers, including some great information about the technology behind the game:

And that is what gives the content high compressibility, because every piece of content can be defined parametrically. Every piece of content has, in essence, a genome, which we can now transport across the net very cheaply, because it's so small, or put a database on your hard drive that has 1,000 creatures and occupies a very small amount of space.

Wright also lets on that he plans to bring a version of Spore to handheld gaming systems.

See the rest of the Joystiq spore coverage here.

Spore easily generated the largest buzz out of everything shown at GDC in March. Now the site's finally up and limited screenings of the game have begun behind closed doors here at E3.

Don't ignore the flash intro movie — that's basically the demo that Will Wright gave at GDC. All of the important gameplay elements are there.

Here's another screenshot of Civilization IV, and some more dope about the game that Firaxis games promises will be even more addicting than the original.

• faster pace: remember how the early years of a Civilization map tend to blow by, but the years approaching 2050 can take what seems like hours? Firaxis promises "streamlined" gameplay for a "faster" experience.

• easier interface: Firaxis promises an interface that will be familiar and easy for veterans and newbies alike. The screenshots we've seen look a little chaotic, but they're not showing the city interface yet.

• more flexible tech tree: Flexibility and "open-ended gameplay" are the buzzwords of the moment, so there's no surprise that every game is touting this.

• new multiplayer options: There will be a persistent, turn-based server option, and it could be huge. It'd be great to be able to line up a game with someone over the net and have some trusted server somewhere store the information. Saving game information client-side (with the players' machines) exposes it to shenanigans.

• team-play: "team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory that delivers a plethora of new strategic and tactical options"

The game's marketing team has also produced a funny little guide to help players of the game overcome their debilitating addictions to it. The brochure they're handing out on the show floor shows gamers in AA-like settings saying things like, "By the time I got to the Industrial Age, I was a full-blown junkie," and "The addiction just takes over. One more turn, one more turn, one more turn…"

Joystiq and Engadget got our grubby fingers on the Nintendo Revolution box (yes, the one behind the locked door in the secret room guarded by a beefy muscleman). We picked it up, we played with the buttons, we poked, we prodded, and we slipped a CD into it. Oops! We weren't supposed to do that. Guess what happened?

The CD just fell into the box. No mechanism grabbed the edge of the CD and pulled it in slowly, even though the box was plugged in. The CD just slid in cleanly and quickly except for brief resistance at the entrance. There wasn't any scraping or messy sound to it, so the CD didn't collide with any internal mechanism that one might expect it to collide with were such mechanisms present. To get the CD out, we just tipped the box over and it slid right back out. Really, it was as if the CD had been dropped into a small, rectangular box with smooth sides.

All that glowing slot does is just glow.

When we picked up the Revolution and turned it over in our hands, we noticed that was hefty and had a good, solid feel to it. All of the cables and plugs looked like they were functional as well. There was nothing obviously fake about this prototype except for the funny CD mechanism, but this is certainly curious. We also shook the box vigorously to see if there were any loose or moving parts inside of it but there were no sounds; everything appeared to be fixed inside the box.

Does this mean that the actual unit on display is a pure dummy model with a few weights inside it to give it heft? Does this indicate anything about how far along Nintendo is with the development of the Revolution? If we were to load a disc into the Xbox 360 or the PS3, what would happen? Is the lack of a working slot-loading mechanism worrisome, or typical in a prototype at this stage of development?

Edit: Anybody know if the Xbox 360 or PS3 models have working drive mechanisms?

Bill Spieth, Creative Director for Frog City Software (a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive), gave us a little taste of Snow, a game in which players move up from small-time pot smuggling to major cocaine overlord.

Spieth's bosses told him that they wanted "edgy" so Snow was born. In it, players become Johnny Morrell, a washed-up actor who's decided to make his money the old fashioned way: illegally. Players start by smuggling in small quantities of loco weed from Mexico and selling it in Los Angeles.

Your goal is to grow your operations and take over the major drug running corridors that lead to the big markets of Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. You do this by hiring a variety of smugglers, crooked accountants (to launder your money) and arms dealers (to fortify your territories).

Replace cocaine with corn and Snow would still work as a game because it's basically a business simulation and strategy game at heart. But the illicit nature of the product is buttressed by stylishly rendered, cell-shaded cut-scenes with racy dialog and lots of sexual tension. Think Traffic with a happy ending.

The game is only 30% complete right now, so we didn't get a chance to experience all of the different game play elements, but it's certainly got us interested in seeing more of it. One big disappointment right now: no multiplayer mode. Spieth told us that they could focus on building a great story or on building a solid multiplayer game. They've had to focus their efforts on the story.

The game is expected some time next year for the PC and Xbox platforms.

Excuse us for a moment while we wax philosophical.

Tabula Rasa, when it's not a proper noun referring to the new MMO by NCsoft, literally means "scraped tablet" or blank slate. According to the philospher John Locke, tabula rasa represented the idea that all human minds are a blank slate at birth with no pre-programmed behaviors and therefore each individual is free to author his own destiny.

John Locke would have probably liked the MMO genre, because all players enter a given virtual world as a blank slate. We create a character who enters the world naked and defenseless, and the game then teaches us how we're supposed to behave and what we're supposed to aspire to, as players.

Tabula Rasa the game is an MMO set in some far-distant future after the Earth has rendered charred and uninhabitable in an intergalactic war between hostile alien species. Surviving humans have banded together to fight against and put an end to the war, saving the universe in the process. This is one backstory that could have been popped out of the random sci-fi adventure generator, it's that hackneyed.

Luckily, the gameplay and graphics on display at E3 easily trump the story. Though the game isn't due out until February or March of next year, it's already looking fairly polished and playable. We spoke to the lead level designer about the game and he described it as "less twitch" than most typical first person shooter games, though it does have strong FPS elements to it. He also noted that the game is entirely player-versus-environment at this point though they haven't ruled out adding PvP elements later. Tabula Rasa is due in the spring of 2006. Check out the five Tabula Rasa gameplay videos here.

NCsoft's booth featured a playable version of Auto Assault, the post-apocalyptic, vehicle-based MMO that's being touted as the "fastest, most descructive MMO ever."

Think Mad Max, replace Tina Turner with mutants, and throw in a monthly fee and you've got Auto Assault, a massively multiplayer therapy session for America's raging, but frustrated road warriors.

Gameplay looks smooth, but some of the RPG elements seem clunky and out of place. Why would anyone roam a decimated countryside blowing up barrels and chickens for the game's equivalent of crafting resources and experience points? Even so, it's nice to see some diversity in MMO genres after years of me-too Orc-Wizard-Elf orgies.

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Buena Vista Games will be bringing Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge to the Playstation 2 and Xbox on October 11th.

The game picks up where the popular 1993 animated movie left off, continuing the story of Jack Skellington (our hero) and Oogie Boogie (the mischevious villain). Jack's got to go about righting all of Oogie's wrongs before the holidays are ruined.

We're wondering how they're going to sell this game. People who watched the movie when it came out are 12 years older now and are likely to find the safe violence of this title a bit too tame in comparison to more mature games. An example: Jack uses what looks like a long, sticky, green gooey thing to grab enemies, whip them around, and smash them into each other. The violence is rather slapstick, but the physics are definitely there. The game reportedly uses a version of the Devil May Cry engine.

Whips and whip-like weapons appear to be popular lately, but this weapon system pales to the visceral gutrippers used in God of War. Gutripping probably isn't a Disney-sanctioned activity, however, so this title should appeal to parents who are looking to provide their youth with the latest and greatest play mechanic without all of that messy hemoglobin and eviscera.

The coolest thing about this title is Jack's costumes. Players can quickly switch to Pumpkin Jack and use devastating fire auras to quickly clear out rooms of skeletons, or they can switch to Santa jack to open presents that pop all sorts of surprises on enemies (a snowman pops out of one and freezes enemies).

Early review scores from the game press are 79, 73, and 60, according to Metacritic.com.