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Born for Wii: BattleTanx: Global Assault
by Wesley Fenlon 
{ Jan 13th 2009 at 12:47PM } 
Sometimes looking back at the games of our childhood days can be painful. More than a decade later, it's hard to imagine how Combat Cars for the Sega Genesis was ever...well, fun. Ah, the indiscretion of youth: hoarding your money, saving for that one, glorious moment when you pick out a new game to take home and devour, only to realize, years later, how terrible it really was. Still, blind purchases could occasionally lead to good things, and a few weeks ago I went home and recovered my Nintendo 64 from its years of storage exile for the express purpose of reliving some of those magical gaming sessions of my youth. In this case, the game in question was BattleTanx: Global Assault.Likely one of the few good games to ever come out of the offices of the now-defunct 3DO, BattleTanx is about as straightforward as its name implies. The game turns 10 years old in 2009, and despite the fact that it looks and play like a Nintendo 64 game from 1999, it's still a lot of fun. Simple, arcadey gameplay, a multitude of tanks and a solid lineup of secondary weapons guarantee hours of mindless fun. The single-player is easy to plow through in short order, but fun enough to come back to -- and the real draw lies in the multiplayer, which rivaled Goldeneye, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart for four-player mayhem. Ready to take up arms with Battlelord Griffin Spade and Born for Wii as we assault the post-apocalyptic globe? Hit the link below.
Every week, Born for Wii digs into gaming's sordid past to unearth a new treasure fit for revival on the Nintendo Wii. Be sure to check out last week's entry in the series, Super Mario Sunshine, and for more great titles that deserve your attention, take a look at Virtually Overlooked.Jaffe comes out for a unified game console standard
by Kyle Orland { Jan 11th 2008 at 12:15PM }
Vocal support in the industry for a single-console solution continues to gather steam, with roustabout game developer David Jaffe airing the case for an uber-system on his blog. On the surface, his arguments have some merit, but we feel the the case for a "unified" console begins to break down when you really examine it. If you will, let us play a bit of devil's advocate with Jaffe's case:"We have it with DVD, we had it with VHS. We have it with televisions (in the sense that- for the most part- every TV is capable of broadcasting the same signal). So what do we lose by having it for game consoles?"
Jaffe seems to be forgetting that VHS only became the monopoly "standard" after a bloody battle with JVC's Sony's competing Betamax format (edit: brain fart). There was no consortium of companies deciding what would be "best" for the market -- competition simply decided that one format was overwhelmingly better for the price. Sony had similar near-monopoly control in the PlayStation 1 and 2 eras, and it was competition, not cooperation, that brought it about. And for every cooperation success story like DVD, there's a flop like Phillips/MCA's LaserDisc format.
As for television signals, they require a monopoly of sorts because of the limited broadcast spectrum. When you take that away, you get the channel-building, selection-expanding competition between cable, satellite and FIOS TV services.
Industry flamebait: the PS3 is a 3DO
by Andrew Yoon { Oct 1st 2007 at 2:30PM }
David Cole of DFC Intelligence notes: "The PS3 has all kinds of software support, billions of dollars in backing, a well known brand name, they are able to do marketing and it sold more units in its first few days on the market than the 3DO did in the 3 years or so it was on the market. PS3DO sounds cute and catchy, but as an actual basis for comparison it is pretty useless."
Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities also agrees: "It's a pretty stupid (and unfair) comparison," he said. "3DO was a new platform, no brand ID, not compatible with legacy software, and with no first or third party support. The PS3 has a great brand, a loyal customer base, is generally backward compatible, has a ton of third party support, and an ever-increasing number of good first party titles. I hope the industry veteran was kidding. If he was serious, he's a fool."
A fool, indeed. To see what the creator of 3DO has to say, check out GameDaily's complete feature.
Today's most failure-prone video: Console duds
by Zack Stern { May 7th 2007 at 12:00AM }
In today's video pick, GameTrailers counts down its list of the top ten console failures, including the Jaguar, Virtual Boy, and 3DO. We were tortured by watching footage of these console failures, yet we couldn't turn away, wishing that the hardware had succeeded while laughing about all the obvious reasons the systems bombed. The list covers the systems we expected; would you have added others?See the video after the break.
ESRB uncovers new retro games
by Steven Bailey { Feb 15th 2007 at 10:45PM }
Lately the ESRB has been a better source for game announcements than gaming magazines. This time the game rating reveals have a definite theme; retro gaming. The first up is one we've been aware of for a while, EA Replay 2. I bet there'll be a sports game or two in the collection (call it a hunch). The other listed collection was Taito Legends Power-Up. Taito has some quality games, but will there be enough recognizable hits to warrant its purchase? I suppose we'll have to wait until Bub and Bob's keeper releases it in stores.
I can't wait until all that's left to do are 3DO or Ocean game collections.
[Via Gamespot]
Games that pushed the limits, parts 2 and 3
by Christopher Grant { Feb 28th 2006 at 2:15PM }
Racketboy has returned, as promised, with the second and third installments of his look at games that pushed the limits. We're not talking about games that pushed the limits of decency, like Sega's Night Trap, or the limits of human patience, like any version of last year's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but pushed the technical limits of their respective platforms.
The platforms in part two are (arguably) the redheaded stepchildren of console gaming. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're not considered to be successes. Atari's Jaguar (and the super-popular Jaguar CD add-on), the ill-fated 3DO, Sega's x-citing 32X add-on, and Sega's "sneak-attack" Saturn. Part three includes big boys like Sony's party-crashing PlayStation, the cartridge'd Nintendo 64, and the Dreamcast, the console that history has--and will--remember kindly.
Part four will cover portable gaming and--based on the release schedule of the earlier installments--should be up any day now.
