The sun is struggling, held at bay by voluminous clouds. Yet, it succeeds in illuminating a breath-taking landscape in which a sepia-toned castle, perched upon mossy cliffs, looms in the distance. A lone, armor clad figure stands on a rocky precipice. Although there is a longing to explore this gorgeous world, it is not this hero’s fate. Read the rest of this entry »
Via Dorkly
In the wake of the 3DS press conference (February 26 2011/$299 in Japan), Capcom let slip news of a new installment in the Mega Man Legends series. If you played the previous games, you know they were serviceable Zelda clones. Not the tight platforming and twitch gameplay you expect from a Mega Man game but the game served up oodles of personality.
The chance to revisit the world and art style of those previous games makes this announcement pretty exciting. Also check out the video below to see how Keiji Inafune plans to approach this game differently.
The narrative for this console generation has largely been: “Japan has lost it”. Why exactly Japanese developers have lost it is up for debate. Many point to antiquated design philosophies and poor online integration. I’m not entirely sure what happened but after watching FFXIII do a relative face plant this year, it’s hard to argue that Japanese devs are no longer the innovators and taste-makers they where in previous generations.
This years TGS has three keynotes, two (EA, Microsoft) are from western publishers. The third is from Capcom. The publisher seems to be the most forward thinking of their Japanese contemporaries. In its keynote Capcom continues it’s east-meets-west mantra and made a few announcements.
Dead Rising 2 DLC starring Frank West was announced, along with Capcom’s acquisition of the Vancouver based developer of DR2.
Asura’s Wrath was Capcom’s only original IP announced. The game is Japanese developed but uses Unreal Engine 3. The quicktime events are cause for concern but the game makes for one helluva trailer!
Also a Devil May Cry reboot was announced and it’s co-developed by Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved). Take a look at the newer and younger, hipster Dante!
Ninja Theory director Tameem Antoniades tells the crowd “We’re taking a younger Dante, that incorporates the youth culture of today, from fashion to music to street art, etc.” (Ugh.)
Also earlier in the day, (yesterday?) Shinji Mikami and Suda 51 announced the fruits of their mutual labor, Shadows of the Damned. Published by EA via their partners program, the game looks to control similar to Resident Evil 4 but spiced up with Suda’s crazy salsa. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.
TGS has many more announcements and hopefully surprises in store. While I’m sure this year or next won’t see Japan return to its past industry dominance, hopefully this will be the start of it achieving parity with its western counterparts.
Via Joystiq comes a video that can only be described as pornography for people whose name begins with Ian and ends with Jones. It’s amazing how high production value can make a spectacle out of the mundane.
by Mike G.
Coming at us via @CaptainDeadmeat is a really fascinating lecture on TED.
To sum up, game designer Jane McGonigal, believes we can change the world for the better. And to do this we must harness the power of games and gamers.
We must fully recommend watching this video in its entirety. Even if you disagree with her conclusion(although she is very convincing), there are some amazing take-aways from this talk.
by: Mike G.
…why the hell don’t you?
Seriously, if you’re a Twitterphobe you are totally missing out. Don’t you want need to know what Kojima had for lunch?
YUM!
It’s Bulgogi, fine, you get that one for free. Read the rest of this entry »
by Steve
Megaman 10 is either almost out, out now or been out a while. I cant be bothered to look. Whatever the case may be it seems like this time it will be actually beatable, which is a plus since I gave up pretty quickly last round. It also continues with the “Its a long lost 8-bit game” concept that caused such a fuss with part 9. Sticking with the nostalgia theme, Capcom has not only made another godawful cover for the game (Isn’t this a piece of Megaman history we should be ashamed of in America and want to forget?) as seen here:
Good God
I mean its kinda cool they took the joke this far. BUT they even went further and produced this amazing long lost commercial!
and damn, they went for the gusto with this one. Soooo many little touches, from the titles to the room to even the kid! Who knew there was such nostalgia for all the shitty attempts they used to market to us as kids. Still it had me cracking up.
Also rapper Random, AKA Mega Ran, a longtime Megaman loving rap artist released a song about Megaman 10 presumably with Capcoms blessing
Eh, its pretty catchy. Probably the best megaman related rap out there. Though its worth noting that the rapper Del tha Funky Homosapien, when refering to his future self Deltron for the album “Deltron 3030″ had this to say about megaman:
” I got the idea from “Megaman X” [the video game] because the regular “Megaman” was kind of round, cartoony. They souped him up to “Megaman X” and made him futuristic. I always thought that was a dope idea.”
which I thing deserves our continued respect.
Megaman 10 will be released….. I guess now it looks like for an unknown ammout of Wii Points, Xbox Gamer Points or Playstation Store “US currency”
The votes have been cast. Alliances have been broken. Tears have been shed. However, through a super secret voting and tabulation process that even we don’t understand, we present to you “The Malden’s Top Ten Games Of 2009″.
Enjoy.
Mike G.
Peter H.
hox30
Chad C.
stevesnoey
ian