..and I haven’t updated.

It’s not that I don’t like video games anymore, or that I don’t have opinions on them, I just think the time has come where I don’t have the dedication or interest to write at length about gaming. There’s already far too many gaming sites out there anyway, so I’m sure your gaming news needs are adequately filled already.

I’m going to keep the site open for now, since it’s not costing me anything, but I’m not likely to post much of anything here for maybe another couple of years. I have somethings I still want to say on the topic of gaming, but they can all wait.

Remember yo can post comments at the bottom of this article, so feel free to do so. If anyone wants to write on this site in my place, you can let me know in the comments too.

I’ve really been getting into the site 2old2play, a gaming site dedicated to gamers over 25, of which I am one. Today I came across their article New Technology vs. Old Gamer Classics, an article which starts by asking why patches and instability are tolerated by today’s gamers and finishes by tugging at any life-long gamer’s heart strings by recalling the innocence of the gaming of old;

What we really would like is a game that we can buy today that makes us feel like we did twenty or more years ago. Will that game ever exist? I am not sure.

It makes me feel quite old realising that there’s kids in high school who know nothing of gaming prior to the playstation. Oh well, c’est la vie.

(via slashdot)

Revolution Report, a site I’m staff on, conducted an interview with John Swinimer, ATi’s PR man following CES.

It’s getting a good bit of coverage from other sites, but there’s a few interesting points to be made. Firstly IGN stated the Revolution’s Hollywood GPU was believed to be an extension of the Flipper GPU (the GameCube’s GPU), which is countered by Swinimer;

Hollywood is a specific design and is in no way reflective of PC technology. Even when the Flipper chips came out, people were asking that question: “Is this a spin-off of something done on the PC?”, and the answer is no. It is designed the same as the Flipper was — from the ground up for a specific console.

I’m glad that was cleared up. Although to be fair, IGN never said for certain that Hollywood was and extension of Flipper, it was merely assumed by developers. And on the subject of developers, Swinimer stated;

When you have a game developer developing [for] this, the goal is to ensure that they don’t have to worry about the complexity that is required to develop the games by making them “jump through hoops.” That was one of the benefits of working on the GameCube; developers were saying that it is quite easy to develop for and there are not a lot of complexities so they could produce titles easily.

Finally, a question I posed; “Do you expect there will be an ATI sticker on each Revolution like we saw with GameCube?”, was skillfully side-stepped.

[…]If it makes sense for the chip and from a consumer perspective, certainly we would be very glad for that logo process to happen. But I can’t comment on whether or not that will that will happen at this time.

Touché, Mr Swinimer, and well done Revolution Report.

Go Nintendo were lucky enough to receive a copy of Toshio Iwai’s Electroplankton from Nintendo, and did the decent thing in reviewing it.

For those of you who have never heard of this game, which is more a piece of art work than goal based entertainment, Electroplankton allows players to create music by manipulating sea life on the Nintendo DS’s touch screen. It’s difficult to explain, so a quick visit to Wikipedia along with watching these videos is in order.

Go Nintendo ended up giving it a perfect 10/10 score, which says a lot for the non-game and adds to my frustration as I’m unable to acquire a copy due to it’s limited release. Here’s hoping Nintendo is paying attention to the reviews and makes the decision to release Electroplankton worldwide.

I’ve just set up a comrades page, where I’ll put links to sites that are cool enough to link to me. First on the list is RawmeatCowboy’s Go Nintendo, a site I’m a big fan of.

If you’d like to join the list of comrades, details are on the comrades page.

This got me laughing. It’s not that piss-take of the contoller unveiling that we’ve all seen, it’s a mock-up of how the revolution controller will work; give it a try.

So, it seems Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer can’t get his hands on a 360. According to Joystiq, everyone’s favourite angry man of IT said;

the Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet. I’m in the same boat as many of you

Joystiq comments that;

If you are currently in possession of this holiday season’s hot item, be happy in the knowledge that you are superior to the CEO of a major corporation. At least, in some respects…

Those of you out there who don’t have a 360, however, can rest assured, you’re superior to Ballmer in most respects.

Ikaruga is several years old, first appearing in Japanese arcades in 2001, then on the Dreamcast in 2002 and finally on the GameCube in 2003. I regard it as one of the best games available on the GameCube and as such, I present my review in retrospect.

The crew at Treasure are the sultans of swing so far as 2D shooters and especially those of a vertically scrolling nature are concerned. Though they occasionally take breaks from their orgies of destruction to create masterpieces such as Mischief Makers for the N64 and the unfortunate Wario World for the GameCube, the developers are well regarded in what has become a niche genre even within the hardcore gaming community. From my perspective as a VSS fan, it was delightful to to hear that Treasure were porting Ikaruga, which made it’s home console debut on the Dreamcast, to the GameCube and I picked up a copy at the first opportunity I had.

As with all other shooters of this ilk, Ikaruga thrusts the player into a tiny, deceptively powerful ship and fires them head first into wave after wave of enemy ships. What sets Ikaruga apart from others in this genre is the simplicity of the two systems involved in getting a top score and to a lesser extent, the graphical presentation.

Ikaruga is a 2D game that uses a 3D engine resulting in a fantastic visual feast. The explosions are huge, the sound and music is loud and perfectly suited to the theme of the game, and the enemy ships explode with a satisfying boom. Surprisingly, there is apparent slowdown when end-of-level bosses descend to their explosive deaths, although it is unclear whether this is intentional or not, as the Dreamcast version had a similar “problem”, the game is otherwise presented in as fine a manner as anyone could ask.

Weapon power-ups as seen in games such as 1942 or Xenon 2 are absent from Ikaruga, instead the game play demands the player use their craft’s shield to absorb the ensuing attacks of the enemy ships and release it later in a furious hell storm. This is achieved through the shield/bullet colour system, whereby enemy ships come in either black or white and fire black or white bullets respectively. Changing your ship’s hue to one of the aforementioned colours allows you to absorb the attack and add charge to the power bar on the left hand side of the screen. The more power you have in your attack bar, the greater the damage you’ll inflict on the surrounding ships when you fire your charge-weapon.

The other half of Ikaruga’s strategic trouser bulge is building up chains. A chain is the act of destroying three or more ships of the same colour without destroying an alternatively coloured craft. The larger the chain, the more points you get and the better your rating at the end of the game. The level design and attack formations present tactical choices throughout the game, the player must choose which creed of ship to take out first and whether a strategy of leaving one colour of ships alone will result in higher points from a larger chain or a lower final score from missing smaller chains.

It’s the simplicity of these two systems that forces the player think creatively and strategically from the very first to the climatic final instance of play. It’s not a game you’ll have much success in at the end of an evening and an intimate knowledge of each level is essential. Ikaruga is an exceptionally difficult game and even though it only features 5 levels in total, it will take a large investment in time and practice for anyone to get to the end and then score an A+ on every level. Casual gamers and those with little time or patience need not apply.

The controls and options of the game are excellent as Treasure lets you do everything you should be able to do in a vertically scrolling shooter. The options include flipping the screen sideways, giving you the option of an arcade-like vertical screen – a fantastic feature. Controls are superbly responsive and as customisable as they should be and the GameCube controller is well suited to the game play as Ikaruga is essentially a two-button affair (fire and change your ship’s colour).

The frantic strategy and memorisation required to advance through the levels make Ikaruga akin to a mixture of a puzzler such as Tetris and an accuracy game such as Kuru Kuru Kururin. It’s frantic, loud, visually stunning and a thrill to play or watch. Though it’s not for everyone, I highly recommend Ikaruga to those of you who enjoy a challenge as I regard this game as one of the best in the GameCube’s library.

There’s been a bit of talk regarding the hint Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime dropped regarding a redesign of the DS;

as soon as [the DS] was launched, [Nintendo] started looking at ways to tweak it visually.

So, in a few comments threads, I’ve been posting my first concept that I conceived upon hearing about the DS. Back then the actual machine had yet to be revealed, all I knew was it had two screens, possibly four buttons and was backwards compatable with the GBA. Here’s what I came up with;

It can’t be folded, although that wouldn’t be too difficult to add. I’ve missed out speakers, again easy to place somewhere, and the shoulder buttons would have to be set back slightly for better comfort. But all in all, I like my design over what Nintendo produced. I just don’t think the DS is sexy. It’s just too fat : )

I’m not a FPS fan. I used to be, back in my teens when Doom and Quake rocked the roost, but so far as I’m concerned, the FPS genre is stale and stagnant.

However, I do think of the FPS as an important genre for the industry as a whole, so I came to thinking, following the viewing of this guy’s attempt at a Revolution controller, just how a FPS would work on Nintendo’s new console. After a few minutes of alchemy utilising a deadly combination of witchcraft and sesame seeds, I conjured a control scheme that wouldn’t require the nunchacku analogue stick add-on to enjoy full, free and accurate control in a shooter. Allow me explain.

As Jim Merrick of Nintendo Europe put it;

People say, “You don’t have enough buttons to support the games”, but actually, I’ve got way more input than you’re getting out of a standard controller and I haven’t even pressed a button yet…

…There’s no barrier for my manual dexterity and there’s no need to educate myself how and which button does what, it just works

And it’s true. You could play a full game of Quake, Unreal Tournament or Doom3 with one hand. Leaving the other free to clench into a fist and wave in the air in utter distaste, or to throw those wicked gang signs you’ve been practising.

Let’s look at how the controller could be used for each action that’s needed in a shooter from the perspective of the first person. I’m assuming the requirements from the perspective of someone who hasn’t touched a FPS in a few years, so if there’s any major new control inherent in modern FPSs that’s I’ve missed, leave a comment and let me know about it.

Motion

The ability to control 3D motion without even touching a button gives us the ability to look and aim by simply pointing at what we want to shoot or look at, just like a mouse on a classic PC shooter. Movement forwards and backwards as well and strafing could be achieved using the D-Pad, in a similar manner to the “w”,”a”,”s” and “d” key scheme used in desktop based shooters.

Jumping and crouching? Simply flick the controller up or down. You could add the ability to roll or jump to the left or right by flicking the controller diagonally down or up in the desired direction. So, that’s 8 key’s worth of motion and an analogue input using nothing more than the D-Pad and the motion detection, all while leaving us with a spare dimension (in and out of the screen).

Guns and Shooting

With everything you need to move around and aim taken care of, we’re left with the main aspect of a FPS, shooting your opponents where it hurts.

To fire, use the B-trigger button on the controller’s shapely belly, whilst reloading, an option that only some games use, could be done by using the final dimension. Consider a pump action shotgun. To reload simply move the controller towards and then away from the screen. *chik* *chik*. You’re ready to fire again.

Finally we encounter weapons mode switching and luckily we have a button left – the A button. Just rock you thumb back from the D-pad and the weapon mode is toggled. If you’re in front of a door or panel that needs interaction, “A” fills the roll too, thanks to context sensitivity.

And that’s it. 13 actions that would normally be performed by pushing 12–13 buttons, plus analogue control, all done using 2 buttons, a D-pad (which you could count as 4 buttons), and the motion detection of the Revolution controller.

This is, however, ignoring weapon-dependant controls, such as pistol-whipping or using a garotte of some description, but keeping it simple would be paramount, as I imagine making the controls over complex would be easy.

In conclusion, for those talking the remote-come sword simulator down, especially when it comes to FPSs, I ask you take a second look. This controller has enormous potential beyond it’s initial “gimmick”.