Cheer up, gamers!

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Dan

I am a positive person. I love me some brutal sarcasm, but at my core, I really do look on the bright side.

In the game industry, I am apparently alone. Every new product announcement, every bit of news, every fresh screenshot or video is seemingly greeted with scorn, or mild disapproval, or outright dismissal. There’s always room for something negative, justified or not, and these rejections are rarely built on any sort of research or first-hand experience.

If there is one thing that makes me want to seriously, once-and-for-all, pack up my shit and go back to reviewing music — or switch careers altogether, for fear that this poisonous opinion-mongering is utterly widespread in our cynical media age — it’s this trend of “hate first, think later.” And it’s only getting worse, as more and more outlets think they have something to prove, rather than a reader to serve. Cool kids? They hate stuff. Really cool kids don’t feel anything one way or the other. Apathy is the ultimate review. You, game industry, will never win their love. Perhaps you should stop trying, too.

I expect that if that day ever comes when I do get so frustrated that I need to beat feet outta town, many negative things will be said about all the opinions I’ve ever published in the past, from a bunch of people who have never actually read them.

Posted in Etc, Games | 5 Comments

Battling Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Dan

I have a “thing” for real objects from fake worlds. On my desk at work I keep a model of the puzzle box from Hellraiser. I searched high and low until I found Marty McFly’s baseball cap from 2015. And on stage, I play Um Jammer Lammy’s guitar. So how I missed this project when it was completed a year or so ago, I don’t know, but I have nothing but love for Doc and the crew at Rogue Synapse for creating the greatest videogame that never was, Starfighter.

Yeah. Like from movie, The Last Starfighter. Alex Rogan plays this coin-op without realizing it’s “an Excalibur test” meant to recruit would-be cockpit jockeys for interstellar combat. Dreams ensue, planets are saved, and every kid walking out of the theater in 1984 wanted to be Alex Rogan. Atari was supposed to make a real game for it, but it never came out, so years later, it fell to the fans to make it. And they did. And it’s arguably better than whatever would have come out of the “close enough to make money” licensing arrangement from the 80s.

Who else but the fans of the film would completely analyze every frame of the movie to reverse-engineer the gameplay that the game would have had, if it had really existed? Who else would go to any lengths to get the HUD right, the sounds, even the two-joystick controls? Who else but the fans would create blueprints for other fans so you can build your own arcade cabinet?

Centauri would be proud. Download it! Have fun! May the luck of the Seven Pillars of Booloo be with you at all times!

I think this would work well with a 360 pad, assuming you don’t have a dual-joystick arcade controller connected to your PC. (I have two, but they’re both downstairs at the moment, and I’ll probably just install it on my MAME rig.)

And of course, if Starfighter isn’t your thing, there’s always Space Paranoids…

Posted in Games, Geek | 2 Comments

Pinatas and parodies

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Dan

Due to the very minor success of Palette-Swap Ninja’s first release — now available for download — I have spent a few days looking into the legality of parody songs. This was encouraged by, um, Future’s lawyer, and rightfully so. But it appears that parody is not only sorta kinda barely protected as fair use, it’s also incredibly unlikely that anybody would come after us — we are not charging for it, though airing it on KOXM could, in turn, be seen as a for-profit venture (just not for Jude and I; we are doing it for fun and will continue to do it for fun whether it airs on OXM’s podcast or not). Still, at least I have a name of someone that I’m supposed to call to ask for permission…but seriously? The more I look into it, the less I think I need it.

Meanwhile, I was really honored to find kind words not only from the VP community but also from someone at Rare, no matter how brief those words were. I liked Viva from the first time I saw it under NDA around this time last year, and our goofy little tribute is heartfelt.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments

Guitar Hero 360 bugs

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Dan

Tried to do some co-op with the OXMmers tonight to unlock some of those juicy two-player achievements; there were about eight profiles/gamertags between two memory units and a hard drive. End result: 70 points, two corrupted save files (including the total destruction of one that had all the tracks unlocked) and a third player who got Achievements for things he never did (but one of the other players had).

In both corrupted save instances, it happened after an autosave to the same device that stored the currently in-use save file — I’m guessing Player A’s save file was in use and Player B’s profile attempted to save to Player A’s space, and then it all went to hell. The new save appeared as “Unknown Player” instead of the proper profile name, and the original save file was no longer accessible.

I think RedOctane has some patching to do. Proceed with caution, yo.

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New Fountains of Wayne today

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Dan

Fountains of Wayne makes me so happy I cannot express it. Clever pop is proof of the existence of a higher power. New album Traffic and Weather is out today, and it’s the first time I think I’ve pre-ordered an album a month in advance. First listen? So not disappointed.

Go. Buy. Thank me later.

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Shame on you, Guitar Hero fanboys

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Dan

Why is this 900-Diggworthy news when it was on page 62 of OXM’s March 2007 issue, which came out in early February? This thrilling information is two months old, and their version lacks quotes from the development team.

Maybe it’s not that print is dead; maybe it’s that online journalists aren’t paying attention to all their potential sources. How about we give each other credit where it’s due, huh?

This secret bias against print doesn’t make sense, and I’m getting tired of it, if not cranky about it.

Posted in Games | 6 Comments

Urgh! A (Gaming) Music War

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Dan

The day before Guitar Hero II drops for 360, Harmonix (developer of GH1 and 2) and their new publishing partner EA announced that they will release Rock Band by the end of the year. Rock Band is basically “Band Hero”: four players online, handling guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, playing along to the original licensed tracks. GHII took some flack for being only two player and not being online at all and, to a lesser extent, using cover versions (even though I personally think that is one of its strengths — the track can be tailored to the gameplay and mixed appropriately).

Guitar Hero III is in development from Neversoft, the Tony Hawk people, but with GH publisher RedOctane still at the helm (freshly bought by Activision…and Activision owns Neversoft, so it was a keep-it-in-the-family move). It was bad enough that they were going to have to prove themselves to “live up to” Harmonix, but with Harmonix combining all of its experience doing Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero and then taking it somewhere new…well, with this announcement, GHIII is already behind in the minds of nerdy hardcore gamers. But I have spent time with the Neversoft guys, and they are both smart and passionate, so I am not counting them out. We haven’t even seen what they’re up to yet, and seriously — RedOctane would not put the franchise in the hands of someone who wasn’t worthy of the mantle.

However, Rock Band is exactly what everybody’s been begging for over the last year (people play Guitar Hero and say “You know what I would love to see?”), so if Harmonix and EA can do it right…they may instantly win the mindshare war, and there will be encores until we are all dead.

But…do you really want to sing with strangers on Live? I sing on stage but even I feel embarassed to sing in my living room, let alone in my living room where both the neighbors and the interwebs can hear. And I love this quote from the USA Today story: “You could have one guitarist in Germany and another one in Texas, a drummer in New York and a singer from somewhere else, and they can play together online.” We all know that lag makes that an impossibility, right? I have played Uno and Texas Hold ’em with people from Australia, but high-latency games tend to stick a little closer to home. In theory, you can rock around the world, but I suspect I’ll be making beautiful music with people in my own time zone.

In any case, I predict music games will be the new WWII shooter…which was the new snowboarding game, which was the new platform hop-n-bop.

Posted in Games, Guitar | Leave a comment

Presenting…Palette-Swap Ninja

Posted on March 31, 2007 by Dan

So Jude and I got to talking, and then we got to laughing, and then we got to work. The result is a musical side project for video-game related parody songs under the name Palette-Swap Ninja. We have our own MySpace page but the songs are debuting exclusively on the OXM podcast. Our first track, a rework of the 1979 Rupert Holmes hit “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” that will only be even remotely amusing to people who know Viva Pinata, debuted this week as part of episode 58. I think it’s around 20 minutes into the show. Once it’s had a good run there, I’ll post it in full on MySpace so people can download it or link to it or what have you.

I like having an excuse to do this stuff. I’m hypercritical of anything I make, especially music, but this felt fun. My production skills are not so hot (they used to be good, when I was in college, but the tools are totally different now and I’ve done just enough to stay vaguely aware of what digital recording rigs should and can do) and we are just doing this for fun with the gear we have lying around our respective houses. In my case that’s an obscene amount of gear so it was finally nice to put it to some legitimate use. I know I’m spoiled, but when I hear a solo on record and think “That sounds like a Les Paul…I’ve got one of those, let me plug it in and see,” I find myself very grateful for what I’ve got.

Track #2 is already secretly underway in the Rainbow Dojo.

Posted in Games, Guitar, Music | 2 Comments

Kat’s take on Survivor Fiji

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Dan

“‘Rocky,’ ‘Mookie,’ and ‘Dreamz’? I have to ask: Where are the other Fraggles?”

Posted in Movies & TV | Leave a comment

Egosurfing extreeeeeme

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Dan

Kat is considering getting her own domain for business purposes — she’s an independent contractor/freelancer now, so it sort of makes sense to get her name as a domain, or her business name. We already have PlayRecordPaws.com for our indie professional ventures, and I was planning on splitting it into her stuff and my stuff. But, you know, if you are trying to establish yourself as your own brand, your name as the URL makes a certain amount of sense.

Alas, Katrin.com is already taken, apparently by a disposable paper company in Sweden. (The paper is disposable, not the company.) She’s a brand name there. Hell, Swedish readers may have already used Katrin Ultima Toilet 680 Plus and not even known it.

Curious, I looked up Dan.com and found it to be even more embarassing.

Posted in Etc, Geek | 6 Comments