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Greetings, fellow gamers. I’m in Boston for PAX East . It’s all the fun of the Penny Arcade Expo , but done east coast hip-hop style. It’s just me and I have no idea what I’m doing, but expect a steady stream of video game goodness in the next two days. Any requests—specific game you want to see or whatever? Pick a fight with a certain publisher? Let me know!
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After news of the HD and XL iPad versions of some of our favorite games are on their way – Flight Control being one of my personal obsessions – we thought it would be fun to ponder what other boardgames would make for a fun iPad experience. Here’s our list. What would you guys like to see? Carcassonne – If you’ve never split a few bottles of wine (or tequila ) and played Carcassonne , you haven’t lived. To be able to play this with a few people on the iPad would be amazing and you wouldn’t have to carry all those cards around. The game is pretty simple – you put down random cards to build cities, roads, and farms. You place a knight on a card to claim it and get the knight back when you’ve completed a feature. However, it’s amazingly addictive and an iPad version would be great. Sim City – This game is already out on the iPhone but a version on a larger, more readable screen would be great. Civilization V – While I could spend most of my life playing Civ Rev on the iPhone, why not go nuts and rebuild Civ V for the iPad? I would totally pay a few dozen dollars for this. Burnout iPad Edition – My son and I have been playing Burnout Paradise like fiends lately and a big-screen, motion aware version of Burnout would make us both happy. Monopoly – This next set of games are boardgame classics. First up – Monopoly . It’s a no brainer. Connect 4 – There are only knock off versions of Connect 4 on the App Store right now, but a big screen version would be great. Battleship – The current version if iPhone Battleship looks great but why not buy two iPads so you can recreate Battleship in all it’s “You sunk my…” glory? Then again, maybe not. Air Hockey – This is totes magotes one of my favorites. The iPhone version is great for two players and an iPad version would be even better. Incredible Machine – Remember this insanity? The Incredible Machine was a 1990s Rube Goldberg video game dedicated to teaching kids how to make things work together. I haven’t played it in years but a 3D, Enigmo-esque version would be great. Planetfall – One of the original Infocom classics . Listen: the iPad has a usable keyboard and can support external keyboards. Why not slap together an Infocom pack for $2 and sell some imagination to these whippersnappers. Who’s with me?
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To say we were a tad flabbergasted that Modern Warfare 2 ’s 5 map pack DLC costs $15 is about right. We weren’t exactly outraged. It’s just a video game after all and really doesn’t matter that much. But $15 is a bit much for five maps with two of the recycled from previous Call of Duty games. Infinity Ward’s Creative Strategist Rob Bowling disagrees. He calls it an investment. Well, Creative Strategist is just code for Public Relations so he kind of has to say that. NowGamer A lot of people think they should be getting the old maps for free. Don’t you think 1200 MSP is a little bit expensive for what is essentially three new maps? Rob, I have no doubt that anyone who downloads this map pack is going to get their money’s worth. They’re going to feel their investment is worthwhile. Because if you’re playing Modern Warfare 2 like myself or many other people do every night, that’s actually going to give you a bunch of new mileage and a bunch of extra gameplay – to really explore and discover them and to really, you know, come up with new tactics and experience them in a whole new way. Regardless of what the price is you’re going to feel your money’s well-spent.
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These stand-alone media streamers… Why wouldn’t you buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 , then have a video game system in addition to a cheap-ish way to stream all those scene releases of “The Pacific” you downloaded? (That, or put together a full PC if you’re feeling adventurous.) Be that as it may, let’s just quickly highlight another option that’s out there, the Nationite HDVP-2 . Not the snappiest name in the world, no. MP4Nation sells it (well, will sell it: can’t find it on their Web site just yet), and it should stream pretty much anything you throw at it, at resolutions all the way up to 1080p. You connect the device to your TV, then stream over Wi-Fi your media. But then you already knew that. $100, or 100 wing-wangs as they say in Futurama, whenever it comes out. That I don’t know.
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Yup, perpetuating the idea that Doom = violent video games What do I know about Australia? Not much—I know Jim Jeffries is from there. In recent years, Australia to me has always been associated with weird censorship and video games being banned left and right. Those days may soon be behind us, as Australia seems to be inching closer toward an R18+ rating for video games . That would mean that, instead of outright banning violent games, they could only be sold to adults. Pretty shocking that it has taken until 2010 for that to be the case, but what are you gonna do? So the deal is that, thanks to the resignation of a well-known stick-in-the-mud attorney general down there, Australia could be on its way to finally introducing the much-needed R18+ video game rating. It’d be analogous to the ESRB’s M rating in that games carrying said rating can only be sold to people 17 and older. (Kids younger than 17 know to get their older brother, or the friend’s older brother, or their parents for that matter to buy said games for them.) Society has deemed that you need to be 17 years old to play Grand Theft Auto and God of War just like you have to be 18 to buy cigarettes and 21 to buy alcohol. Granted, at 18 you can sign up for the military, but you’re not allowed to walk into a 7 Eleven and buy a can of beer. But that’s a hack argument for some local talk radio show. Anyhow, in Australia the age is 18. Well, would be 18, provided all the Ts are crossed and Is are dotted. Someday soon our Australian brothers will be able to walk into Big Store and walk out with an uncensored copy of Left 4 Dead II . That’s the dream, at least.
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Last month, we reported that according to some rumors in the industry, Sony is seriously considering relaunching their portable gaming device, the PSP Go, with a price cut and marketing campaign. And today, Tokyo-based research firm Media Create released [JP] the latest hardware sales numbers for Japan, one of the biggest video game markets in the world. And these numbers indicate that sales-wise, the PSP Go is poised to go down as the biggest failure in recent video gaming history: According to Media Create, a mere 1,275 units were sold all over Japan between March 1 and 7. By way of comparison: The Nintendo DS Lite (not the DSi or the XL) found 4,316 buyers in the same time frame. The regular PSP (the best portable gaming device ever in my opinion), on the other hand, was the No. 1 console, selling 64,808 units in that week. Sony was able to sell just 17,618 PSP GO [GER] in the ten weeks between December 28, 2009 and March 7, 2010 - an almost unbelievably low number. Good for Sony that in the same time frame, 667,961 of the regular PSPs were sold, making that device the best-selling game system in Japan in 2010 (if you ignore the three-way split of the DS systems). In Japan, the PSP Go currently goes for 26,800 Yen , a more than steep price when compared to the 16,800 to 19,800 Yen buyers have to pay for a PSP-300o or the 29,980 Yen a PS3 costs (10,000 Yen=$110). It looks like the rumored price cuts, marketing campaigns and hardware changes don’t come out of nowhere.
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Short Version: The AVerMedia MTVHDDVRR is a PCI Express video capture card with HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite inputs. The card retails for around $100 (you can find it for close to $90 online) and is capable of capturing up to 1080i video. Features: PCI Express video capture card HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite inputs Records up to 1080i resolution in MPEG-2 format, also records H.264 and iPod formats Includes low profile bracket and 10-in-1 input cable, plus on-card HDMI input Pros: Easy installation Good recording quality Relatively inexpensive Cons: Included media center software looks like it’s from 1999 No 1080p recording HDMI connection is wildly unpredictable Review: The AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR video capture card (model number MTVHDDVRR) is for people who want to digitize footage of some type. Be it old VHS movies or camcorder tapes, video game console gameplay, or grabbing shows off of a DVR, the card handles most recording tasks pretty well. Setup is easy, provided you’ve cracked open a desktop and installed something before. The card face has two slots; one’s an HDMI port and the other is used for the included 10-in-1 AV cable that’s got component, S-video, and composite connectors. You can plug a bunch of different sources in at the same time and then switch between them using AVer MediaCenter. The included AVer MediaCenter looks and feels like very early DVR software. It’s got TV, Video, Audio, and Photo functions but you’ll just use the TV function to record stuff. The video player, audio player, and photo viewer are just fluff. Recording works well over anything but HDMI, which was a total crapshoot depending upon which device was hooked up. My Comcast DVR box caused the software to crash every time without fail (see photo below), my Xbox 360 would sometimes only record the sound but no picture, and a Gateway notebook with HDMI output worked fine every time. For reference, I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, the latest 64-bit Beta drivers for the card, and latest AVer Media Center software. I used the latest stable, non-Beta version of the card’s drivers for a while, too, and experienced similar results. Anything hooked up via component, composite, or S-video recorded just fine without any problems. So it’s likely an issue with HDMI’s digital handshake and could also have something to do with the whole copy protection thing (HDCP). After a while, I just stopped trying to hook things up via HDMI. Here’s a video of HDMI video capture that actually worked—a Gateway notebook playing a 720p video recorded at 720p by the card. Download the full-size original MPEG-2 file… Your format options for capturing HD video are MPEG-2 and… well, that’s it. You’ve also got H.264 and “iPod” settings but they max out at 720
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Inverted, ocean-bound “seascrapers”: aqua-communes for the future? Did you know there was a Last Starfighter video game? Energizer battery charger contains a trojan SNES cartridge plays ROMs loaded from your computer Sony reminds us of the high-cost of first generation 3D TV
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Sony has filed a patent for a new type of video game demo that’s worth mentioning here. Rather than your typical demo, where they give you level to mess around with, they essentially give you the whole game . As you play the demo, the game “disappears.” So, let’s say you’re playing a racing game demo—you have all the cars and tracks available to your. After one race, now you only have half the number of cars and tracks to select from. After the next race, half that number, and so on. Neat, right? One thing that could be an issue, today’s demos are typically fairly small in size, so if these new demos are to includes much more content, that would increase the size of the download. That might be an issue if you have a smaller hard drive, or slower Internet connection, but otherwise, yeah, let’s beat the beat up.
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As reported (and following Final Fantasy I and II , which are now available), the App Store will get another hit Japanese video game this month, Streetfighter IV . It will be the first mobile version of the Arcade game that so far was only ported to PS3, XBO360 and the PC. And today maker Capcom released the official trailer and a slew of new screenshots. The game will cost $9.99 and offer a total of eight characters (Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, M. Bison and Abel), nine less than the Arcade version. Here’s the trailer (watch out for the controls): Via Game Watch [JP]
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