Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One

Well this is a real early heads-up on this game since it won't be out until Fall of 2011, but they just announced on the Playstation.blog that Insomniac just unveiled a new Ratchet & Clank title for the PS3 at the Gamescom event currently going on in Cologne, Germany - and it looks like fun.

The game is entitled Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One and offers an online coop adventure for up to 4 players. You can play as either Ratchet, Clank, Qwark, or Dr. Nefarious.

I've been a fan of Ratchet & Clank since I played Going Commando for the PS2. I actually bought that game for my nephew a few years back for Christmas but he had already received it from someone else so I ended up playing it myself and surprise surprise I really liked it.

If you've never played a Ratchet & Clank game you really should give this popular franchise a try. This is the first time the series has offered coop play like this and if I can convince 2 or 3 of you to get it too I'm all over it. Check out the trailer.

The Arcade Flyer Archive

Today's post is a "check out this site" post. I discovered the Arcade Flyer Archive a long time ago and actually their "About Us" section describes themselves better than I could so here it is:

"The Arcade Flyer Archive (TAFA) is a digital repository for advertisement flyers that are used by the coin-operated amusement industry to promote the sales of its games. Over time flyers represent much more than a marketing brochure. They capture a unique blend of the industry's history, graphic design trends and advertising campaigns. Most importantly, they bring out the nostalgia of countless people who have grown up with the culture of video games, pinball machines and arcade games. Unique cabinet designs, attractive artwork and real screen shots -- all of which represent the visual language of coin-operated games, make flyers sought after items for collectors and effective tools for restoring games to their original factory specifications."

They have high-resolution scans of flyers from all over the world - the Fronts, Backs, and Insides (if they have one - Mad Planets doesn't).

They also have zip files of Flyer Packs that you can download and unzip into the Flyers folder of your MAME fronted (MAMEUIFX if you downloaded it from my previous post). Then you can check out the flyers from all the games directly from the Flyers tab in MAME. The Flyer Packs are much smaller/lower resolution than the individual flyer scans they have posted but it lets you get more or less all of them at once so it's a very convenient place to start your digital flyer collection.

So if you like that sort of thing (like I do) go to their website here and check it out.

Pac-Man Battle Royale

Next month Namco will be releasing the first new coin-op Pac-Man game in decades. It is a cocktail table style with the capability of 4-player simultaneous competitive play and looks pretty fun so hopefully I'll see one around somewhere. Here is what Namco had to say on their webpage about the game and its impact at the Amusement Expo in Las Vegas back in March.

"'Pac-Man Battle Royale' is a four player game where 'Pac-Men' battle it out by trying to devour each other with the last one standing winning each round. The simple, addicting, winner-take-all game play had show goers coming back to the booth all 3 days. The cabinet, specifically designed with the USA bar locations in mind, allows players to party while they play. Talking, laughing, and eating each other! The party atmosphere around Pac-Man Battle Royale was contagious as it spread all throughout Namco's booth. Show attendees were spotted wearing their Pac-Man Mardi Gras beads not only on the show floor but all over the Las Vegas strip after the shows closed at night."

Check out this video of the gameplay - looks like it would be fun with a couple of friends and a couple of beers. I'd play it!

International Video Game Hall of Fame

Over the weekend a Dallas legend was inducted into the Hall of Fame. No, not that blubbering Emmit Smith (sorry, I was an Oilers fan back in the day) - I'm talking about Ben Gold the 43 year-old who was a founding member of the US National Video Game Team and set the high score records on Stargate, Millipede, and Q-Bert as a teenager almost 3 decades ago.

Ben and a slew of his industry-legend cohorts were inducted to the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa - famous (to arcade history buffs anyway) home to the Twin Galaxies Arcade. There is no actual "HALL" for this Hall of Fame yet, but plans are in the works so someday a road trip to Ottumwa will be in order for me. So for now there is a website and some celebratory events this last weekend to honor the inductees.

For an interesting take on the event check out the blog that Ben Gold wrote for the Dallas Observer. He posted 3 of them covering the multi-day event.

Here is the full list of Inductees:
Eric Akeson, Turbo Pac-Man Champion
Kevin Bachus, X-Box Design Team
Ralph Baer, Historic Industry Pioneer
Rob Barrett, Tutankham Champion
Otto Berkes, X-Box Design Team
Seamus Blackley, X-Box Design Team
Nolan Bushnell, Historic Industry Pioneer
Brian Cady, Tempest Champion
Paul Dean, Spy Hunter Champion
Ben Falls, Moon Patrol Champion
Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Legendary PC Gaming Champion
Ben Gold, Legendary Arcade Champion
Ike Hall, Past Donkey Kong World Champion
Ted Hase, X-Box Design Team
Ken House, Dig Dug Champion
Andrew Laidlaw, Galaga Champion
Chris Mansfield, Kicker Champion
John McAllister, Asteroids Deluxe Champion
Billy Mitchell, Legendary Arcade Champion
Shigeru Miyamoto, Creator of Donkey Kong
Masaya Nakamura, NAMCO Founder
Steve Ritchie, Legendary Game Designer
Perry Rodgers, Mario Brothers Champion
Todd Rogers, Legendary Arcade Champion
Scott Safran, Asteroids Champion
Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, Legendary PC Gaming Champion
Steve Wiebe, Donkey Kong, Jr. Champion
Phil Younger, Berzerk Champion
Pac-Man - Classic Arcade Game

Limbo

About a month ago I posted that I was intrigued by the new XBOX 360-exlusive Limbo – well I completed it yesterday and was not disappointed. It cost $15 on the XBOX Live Arcade and was about 5 hours of gameplay which extrapolates out to the same you would pay for a new game that offers 20 hours or so of play so that seems about right.

Limbo is a 2D puzzle/platform game made by Playdead - a new independent developer in Denmark. The only introduction they provide to the game is the tag line - "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo." You play the boy and Limbo is hell-bent on killing you and generally confounding you with puzzles you must solve to continue searching for your sister.

The gameplay mechanic itself is pretty standard for an old-school platform game - move around with the joystick, hit one button to jump and another button to interact with objects. Simple. But the creative way they implement these controls is very impressive. And the controls were tight - you might miss a jump every so often but it would be because you weren't timing it right rather than sloppy controls. It was also a refreshing change from the multitude of FPS and 3rd person action titles out there.

The unique black and white film-noir silhouette visual style of the game is apparent from the video trailer below.



There is no dialogue, no text boxes, no real background music, just the sounds of the environment that you are in which are very impressive and add to the mysterious ambiance.

The puzzle components include many standard pieces like moving crates around to stand on, diverting water to cause objects to float, etc. but they also have some not-so-common devices like giant magnets, anti-gravity, and flipping the world so that you are playing upside down or sideways. Throw in some electrified surfaces, giant spiders, angry locals that want to kill you, a forest, a giant industrial complex with giant gears and conveyor belts and you pretty much have it. The same basic puzzle elements were used multiple times but in creative new ways each time. So even after you figured out how to solve one puzzle with a giant magnetized surface you had to use it in an entirely different fashion to solve the next one. They did a great job of not letting the puzzles get old. Also, the puzzles were difficult enough that they took you a while to figure out but not so difficult that it became a frustrating pain in the butt to keep trying (I hate those!). Then when you figured it out you said ah of course!

You die a lot in the game. After a few times you start to see the threats coming and can avoid them better, but watching the various interesting ways in which you are mutilated is part of the fun so I didn’t hesitate to leap into the void on several occasions.

Like most puzzle-based games there isn’t much replay value here. So it is a cheap quick hit game then put it away. I am not one of those guys that complains about a game being too short because I like short games too – but I liked this one so much I really could’ve easily enjoyed a few more hours’ worth without getting tired of it. Still, for the $15 cost it was OK. All things considered an excellent game and I will definitely check out Playdead’s next effort. I give it a 9.0.

I also found the following interview that GameReactor did with Mads Wibroe of Playdead if you care to check it out.

Pac-Man Illusion

I saw this on YouTube and thought it was kinda cool. Short video showing a Pac-Man illusion this guy Brusspup worked up in his house. He has a bunch of others too.

Tennis for Two - 1958

Yesterday after work I did something that I haven't done in years - played tennis. Not Virtua Tennis, but real tennis where you actually sweat and everything. Barbaric! But fun.

I've read a few books on the history of video games and there have been several that have laid claim to be the "first video game". The chronological order of these games are pretty well documented so it basically boils down to the actual definition of "video game" that you want to use. Well given my tennis match from yesterday I thought I would give a respectful nod to a game that was AMONG the first - Tennis for Two. (Apologies to Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, OXO/Noughts and Crosses, NIM on the NIMROD, etc.)

In 1958, the Brookhaven National Laboratory was having its annual Visitor's Day and the staff was putting together various exhibits for the visiting public. Physicist William Higinbotham created an interactive display using an analog computer and an oscilloscope which simulated the side view of a tennis court and allowed 2 people to each use a controller with a knob and a button to hit a ball back and forth over the net at each other at varying angles - he titled the game Tennis for Two.

It took Higinbotham about three weeks to develop the plans for the game and then it was actually built by Robert Dvorak. When the people started touring it was such a hit that reportedly there were lines out the building to check it out. Check out the video below and if you like you can read more about it on the Brookhaven National Laboratory's webpage HERE.

And then 42 years later Virtua Tennis was released on the Dreamcast.

The Retro Arcade Museum (Closed?)

I've never even heard of the Retro Arcade Museum until I saw a thread about it on the forums at KLOV but it looks like a cool place in Beacon, New York (ouch - VERY far from me) where the owner has set up a huge collection of arcade games, handhelds, consoles, etc. The unique thing about the arcade games is that almost all of them are pre-1980s so there are a lot VERY early games you've probably never even heard of with some electro-mechanical games too. I remember playing a few of those games from the 70's when I was a kid and I still think they are cool. Check out his website HERE.

But the news on the forum was that a "rogue landlord" was having him shut down based on an old law still on the books banning pinball game parlors (the law was overturned in nearby New York back in the 70's but not in Beacon). So he closed down his business and was being evicted. Now the mayor of the small town is apparently helping to get a law enacted that protects "vintage arcade museums" but the timeline of its passage is unknown and in the meantime the museum is closed and this guy is is losing money bigtime, so he may not be able to reopen at this point. Yesterday he posted on the forum that CNN got wind of this story and is going to run a piece on it this Saturday August 7 on the 1:00PM show (close to the end of the show around 1:50) then again on Sunday on the 3:00PM show. (I'm assuming those are Eastern times). There are so few of these types of places around I hate to hear of one closing even when it's about 1700 miles away from me. If I'm ever in the New York area and it is open again I would definitely like to check it out.

[Updated 8/8/2010] I missed the piece on CNN but found this clip of it on their website.



[Updated 9/3/2010] One last update to this story brought to my attention by Arcade Heroes:

It looks like the city of Beacon finally voted to enact a law that would allow vintage arcade games to operate in the town - although they are still debating the highly controversial question that is sweeping the nation - "how do we define a vintage arcade game?".  Regardless of the answer this highly efficient bureacracy arrives at it will be too late for Fred Bobrow and the Retro Arcade Museum which is officially closed for good due to financial problems brought about by the city's enforcement of this archaic law while they debated the finer points of whether Space Invaders was truly vintage.

"It's a moot point whether this law passes or not. I will be closing the arcade and all the assets will be liquidated," said Bobrow, whose business was forced to shut down due to an existing law prohibiting arcades in Beacon. "I'm now totally bankrupt and have been sideswiped by the city, who has changed their story several times and obscured the truth."

The full article can be found in yesterday's Poughkeepsie Journal at: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100902/NEWS01/9020309/1006/Owner--Law-too-late-to-save-Beacon-arcade

The Insane Console History Video 2.0

I just saw this video on Elder-Geek.com that is kind of cool - the title says it all. It must have taken this guy a LONG time just to collect all the information and pics and sew it all together. The video shows over 450 consoles, computers, and dedicated game machines shown in chronological order with classic gaming music playing in the background. You might not sit through the whole thing straight through - it's over 23 minutes long - but I thought it was an interesting find.

The Insane Console History Video 2.0 from Elder-Geek on Vimeo.

The Force Unleashed

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, but I finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the PS3 last night so I thought I would post my thoughts to get back in the posting swing of things. There were several technical bugs that distracted from the game but my love of the Star Wars universe made up for a lot of that. All-in-all not a great game but not bad either - I would give it a 7.4. Here are a few of my likes and gripes in a nutshell - might be a spoiler or two but c'mon you weren't gonna play this game anyway so...:

My dislikes:

• Repetitive gameplay with no real incentive or need to learn the various attack upgrades that you acquire.
• Too many repetitive quick-time events – used the same QTEs over and over like when you destroy those 2-legged walkers (which I discovered are called AT-STs - All Terrain Scout Transports).
• Targeting system was often shaky - I spent a lot of extra time trying to face in exactly the proper spot to grip something while some nice gentlemen were spraying lasers into my back.
• The screwy camera angles during the boss battles where it zoomed way out and made the already awkward targeting system even more challenging.
• The plethora of load-screens. This game installed about 2.5 gigs on my PS3 so what’s with all the slow "now loading" screens?

My most meh moment:

• I heard about this over-hyped scene that was supposed to bring the house down where you use the force to grip a star destroyer and bring it crashing down. I more enjoyed gripping the tie fighters that were screaming by and throwing them around. Besides, c'mon even Yoda struggled a LITTLE when he floated that X-Wing around the swamps on Dagobah and I'm supposed to believe this Sith apprentice is gonna tear a star destroyer out of the sky? Sorry but no = meh.

..and my likes:

• You get to play as Darth Vader a little at the beginning. Evil shmevil - Vader is cool.
• Fighting all the baddies you remember from the movies like stormtroopers, tie fighters, Imperial guards, even Darth and the Emporer. You can even stomp some Jawas if you like that sort of thing.
• Killing baddies with the Force Lightning and gripping stormtroopers with the Force Grip and smashing them into buildings. It's the simple pleasures in life that keep me going.
• And my number 1 "hey that's pretty cool" moment - when your android buddy Proxy, who is programmed to try and kill you, attacks you and says "I still have one enemy program in my data banks that I haven't tried yet" and then he hologram-morphs into Darth Maul and attacks you with his double-sided light-saber staff. Darth Maul was the one bright spot for me in the 3 embarrasingly lackluster Star Wars prequels.