Commodore: Arcade Invader

Kotaku (9 unread)

Commodore 64 Rises From The Grave [C64]

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 5:00am PDT by Luke Plunkett

Tags: c64

#c64 The Commodore 64 is a machine beloved by many who grew up in the 1980s. Like me. Which is why it's fun to hear that it's parent brand is making a comeback. More »
Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Posted: February 18th, 2010, 1:00pm PST by Stephen Totilo

Tags: Dice 2010

Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, thought he was Luke, not Vader. And he didn't mean that thing about wanting to make game-making no fun.

"I don't know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I'm on board the Death Star." That's the second quip Activision's oft-vilified CEO said to start his talk at the DICE gaming convention today. His first was a joke about the height of his microphone, set not for his height (he's short) but for former EA chief Larry Probst.

Mistakes, Kotick has made a few and he was ready to admit them today.

Most notorious was a late 2009 comment he made that seemed to cement his position as more Vader thank Luke. No, he said today, he didn't mean to sound like, his words, "a dick."

In September he had told a group of investors: "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

Today, he said, after describing Activision as a company striving for greatness, "Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like 'taking the fun out of making video games,' it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors. It was mainly because i wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that we were responsible, in the way we made our games in that it wasn't some wild west, lack of process exercise and that we really did give some thought to the capital being used to provide a return of investment to shareholders. So I say things like 'taking the fun out of video games' knowing full well that all we're actually trying to do is keep the fun in the process because, as most of you know, when you're getting into crunch time it becomes really difficult to meet those milestones or get things polished the way you would like, that isn't a lot of fun. That is not what I meant by it."

The Kotick speech today was one of of putting on the good face of Activision and the man at the podium here at the Red Rock Casino. Kotick admitted that he's sometimes been so much the businessman that he's cost his shareholders money by not remembering to get close to game creators. "Sometime what winds up happening when you are 50,000 feet above is you can get insulated from that creative passion."

Blizzard? He should have bought them sooner. He had thought that a subscription version of World of Warcraft was "the silliest thing" he'd ever heard of.

Maxis? "When Maxis was getting sold everyone was being sold on Sim City 2000 being this fantastic product that was incredibly late and wasn't coming out." Kotick went to visit some executives at the company. In another office, Will Wright was working on a game called Jefferson. Kotick didn't meet with Wright. No one could explain the game to him. What Kotick missed was the game that would become the Sims.

For a CEO who has been vilified as a business-first enemy of video game creativity, Kotick wanted to reveal that he has made mistakes staying too distant from passionate game creators.

The most vivid example he gave was how he handled the purchase of the Guitar Hero brand and blew off the talented studio, Harmonix, that had built them, prioritizing the Guitar Hero franchise owner Red Octane and handing the development of the series to Activision-run Neversoft.

"When we were buying Guitar Hero, or buying Red Octane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix," Kotick said. "We had always known them as sort of somewhat a failed developer of music games." Activision decided that their own studio, Neversoft, made good games, so they would make Guitar Hero from now on, not the Boston-based Harmonix. He said that had Activision met with Harmonix, things would have been very different.

That's Bobby Kotick saying sorry. Note that Harmonix, now owned by MTV Games and creating the Rock Band games, has been distributed by Activision rival EA since then. That distribution deal is set to expire next month.

Kotick was warm and fuzzy, zip-up sweater over polo shirt, no suit and not much business talk. He was reminiscing in his 20s, the ex history of art major spending about $400,000 for a stake in Activision, a company he was worried was losing its soul. He wanted to explain that he was a gamer originally, then a businessman, one with apologies for some of the creators he may have ignored or insulted — and of course a company to brag about now.

"I loved Zork," he said of his gaming days. "I loved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I loved the whole idea behind Activision." That idea was that it was the anti-Atari, the company that rebelled against the corporate attitude of Atari and would champion creators.

He recalled scheming in the late 80s with his friend who had started a hedge fund to try to buy Commodore. "I tried for a bout a year to acquire control of Commodore," he said. He thought it could be turned into a great 16-bit console. The Commodore console could be better than the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System being sold in Japan at the time, he recalled himself thinking.

Kotick went from gamer to game maker to businessman. Kotick said he's not playing many games anymore. He's a single dad with three daughters and is wary of the kind of developer he would become, knowing his addictive personality (He confessed he is "addicted to food"). Did he used to be an avid gamer? "I still have callouses from Defender. I still wake up in the middle of the night and see the words 'Use key to open door.'" Does he play now? Not much: "If I was regularly playing Modern Warfare 2 I would not be able to stop and it would be at the expense of all my other responsibilities."

Kotick said that Activision is a company that supports creators and champions vision. He took barely-veiled shots at EA, comparing his interest and efforts in the past to help start companies such as Jamdat and Pandemic with the eventual fates of those companies now folded into EA and, in the case of Pandemic, shut down as an independent entity.

"If you have a company and you want to protect your creative freedom and the integrity of the creative process, if you want to retain your identity and culture, if you want the support of the mothership and the resources of the mothership, we're a really great mothership. But if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to."

Kotick made no mention of the deep cuts Activision announced earlier this week nor of the couple of hundred developers who were let go. He focused on projecting a game developer-friendly image and announced the start of a $500,000 independent games development contest.
Sony To Eliminate Half of WipEout Developer? [Rumor]

Posted: February 1st, 2010, 3:00am PST by Brian Ashcraft

Tags: Rumor

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has confirmed to Kotaku that "a number of projects" at Sony's Liverpool studio have halted. However, rumors are swirling that the restructuring goes further than that.

Originally known as Psygnosis, the studio was founded in 1984 and is best known for the anti-gravity WipEout racing games. During the 1980s, the studio released titles on hardware like the Commodore Amiga. In 1995, Psygnosis was sold to Sony Computer Entertainment and became a wholly owned subsidiary. It is the oldest SCE studio in Europe.

Sony's official statement on the Liverpool restructuring reads: "It has been decided that production on a number of projects within Studio Liverpool will cease immediately due to project prioritisation. Our North West Studio Group has been and will continue to be a vital cog in the WWS family, with a history of producing genre defining games such as MotorStorm, WipEout, Formula 1 and WRC and this decision will have no impact of the role that the North West Studio Group will play in the future of all PlayStation platforms."

Website Develop, however, is rumoring that the restructuring will ultimately slash studio staff by half. One developer told the site that the Sony measures were "looking heavy" and estimated that "around half us may be gone".

Sony did not comment on whether or not half of the studio was going to be terminated.

Sony Liverpool to halve its head-count? [Develop]
VVVVVV Micro-review: AAAAAAH!!! [Review]

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 4:40pm PST by Michael McWhertor

Tags: Review

Gravity flipping intergalactic platformer and death by spike simulator VVVVVV has already resulted in heavy casualties at Kotaku. My first playthrough of the game ended with my character dying more than 900 times.

Such is the torment of VVVVVV, an old-school platformer from developer Terry Cavanagh featuring simple controls and a smartly explored mechanic. Unlike other platformers, there's no jump button, only an option to control the direction of gravitational pull so that the player may fall upward or downward.

Assuming the role of a smiling spaceman searching for the missing members of his ship's crew, VVVVVV is as much puzzle game as it is reflex (and patience) testing platformer, a mini-Metroid-like adventure full of instant deaths by spike. Does that sound fun to you?
Loved
Every Room A Puzzle: Unlike Metroid, VVVVVV is less about exploration on a macro scale than it is on a micro one. Nearly every room features some new exploration of the play-with-gravity, avoid-the-spikes mechanic. There's a surprising amount of variation throughout, when conveyor belts, bounce pads and killer drones are thrown into the mix, ensuring that VVVVVV never feels like its designer failed to explore the gameplay possibilities.

Up To 8 Colors On Screen At Once: Simple in presentation though it may be, VVVVVV's lo-fi, Commodore 64 caliber graphics are lovely in their minimalism. Sure, there are dazzling effects like scrolling backgrounds and not a hint of flickering, but VVVVVV does not overstep its graphical bounds with excessive visual tricks. Magnus Pålsson's fantastic chippy pop soundtrack is probably worth owning (or at least VVVVVV's jukebox mode is worth unlocking).

Hated
Sometimes Frustrating Every Few Seconds: Cavanagh was generous with the checkpoints, but VVVVVV can still be incredibly frustrating, partly due to keyboard-based controls and frequent dying. It's not particularly hard (unless you're trying not to die 900-plus times) as careful thought and occasional luck will overcome any obstacle, but the game's trial and error moments can seriously test one's patience.

VVVVVV is a fantastic little indie game that's worth experiencing for the well rounded exploration of its relatively simple gameplay mechanic, its incredibly smart level design and spectacular retro audio-visual presentation. The game is peppered with witty writing and an apparent attention to detail, making, at the very least, the game's demo a must-play.

If VVVVVV has one unfortunate barrier beyond the old-school difficulty, it's the price. At $15 USD, some may balk at the two hours worth of gameplay that a single playthrough will warrant. While there's plenty to see and do after blazing through the game's core campaign, the steeper than expected asking price will probably turn some off. (But surely you've paid $60 for an eight hour game, right?)

But for the gamer who has had his or her sensibilities offended by, say Mega Man 10's "easy mode," VVVVVV is for them.

VVVVVV was developed by Terry Cavanagh, published by distractionware and released on Windows and Mac PCs on January 10. Retails for $15.00 USD and can be purchased online. A copy of the game was given to us by the developer for reviewing purposes. Played main single player game to completion, tested unlockable bonus modes. Died 904 times, obtained ten shiny trinkets and got at least two of the jokes.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.
Electronic Arts Sues to Cancel Langdell's Trademarks [Controversy]

Posted: September 29th, 2009, 1:57pm PDT by Owen Good

Tags: Controversy

Electronic Arts is asking the United States to cancel five trademarks held by Tim Langdell's Edge Games, saying the marks have been effectively abandoned. In comments to Kotaku, EA portrayed its actions as done on behalf of the development community.

Langdell, at the center of many controversies over the years regarding trademark rights to the word "Edge", has been involved in a similar dispute with Electronic Arts since 2007 concerning its title "Mirror's Edge." On Sept. 11, EA filed a petition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to wipe out five trademarks involved in the case, saying they have been threatened by Langdell for a year over the distribution of Mirror's Edge.

"EA has filed a complaint to put an end to legal threats over a trademark issue related to our game, Mirror's Edge," company spokesman Jeff Brown said Tuesday. "While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community."

Langdell, in a statement to Kotaku, called Electronic Arts' petition "a desperate attempt by EA to see if they can win the right to use Mirror's Edge by forcibly removing Edge's legitimate rights to Edge." Langdell pointed to a USPTO ruling in his favor, from August 2008, which found EA's registration of the trademark "Mirror's Edge" had been granted in error, and the company's subsequent abandonment of the mark - made official Sept. 8 - "stands as an acceptance of Edge's rights."

The USPTO database does list the trademark "Mirror's Edge" as "abandoned" as of Sept. 8, 2009. When asked about the timing of EA's filing, Brown, the spokesman, said only that the company had been unsuccessful in its yearlong attempt to resolve the dispute, and "we feel it is important to establish the rights of developers in this situation. So we filed the petition to cancel those marks."

Brown also declined to comment when asked if the petition was at all related to any upcoming product announcements using the word "Edge." Nor would he specify how negotiations with Langdell broke down.

Over the years, Langdell has been accused of heavy-handed behavior against developers who wittingly or unwittingly use the word "Edge", which he trademarked years ago for use in video games, and a slew of other associated products since then. In addition to the disagreement with EA, Langdell has been involved in a bitter dispute with Mobigame, whose iPhone game EDGE has appeared on the iTunes App Store and was later removed when he challenged Mobigame's usage of the title.

The notoriety surrounding this action in large part led to a campaign to have Langdell removed from the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association. Langdell voluntarily quit the board last month rather than face a removal vote.

"A lot of small developers who are faced with this situation settle claims because they don't know how, or can't afford to fight for their rights," said Brown, the EA spokesman. "We hope that as a result of this action, other developers will be less intimidated by unwarranted legal threats."

But Langdell counters that EA is trying to poison sentiment against his company, and that its accusations "sound like comments intended to sway indie game news reporters' opinion and deflect you away from the obvious fact that it is EA [that] indie developers need to be protected from."

In the filing, Electronic Arts alleges that Langdell has effectively abandoned these trademarks through disuse. While Langdell vigorously states his company is actively involved in the development of games, both Mobygames and this analysis say the last game published by Edge Games was in 1990.

Edge Games' Web site says it is developing four multiplatform titles, one of which "Racers," was released on Sept. 9. "Clearly, Edge has not abandoned its trademark and that allegation is obviously destined to fail," Langdell told Kotaku. Langdell's statement says Edge's games "are on general sale at this time as they have been at all times over the past many years."

Significantly, EA also alleges that Langdell fraudulently obtained the trademark registrations, filing out-of-date and even falsified specimens to obtain them. EA alleges two registrations, dated 1996 and 2006, used box covers from games published in 1989 and 1990 and were not examples of a mark used in commerce, especially as the 1990 game was developed for the since-discontinued Commodore Amiga. Another 2009 registration submitted an Edge mark used on the 1986 game Bobby Bearing, saying that game had been in use "continuously over the past five years," on mobile phones. EA claims that is false.

EA says two other registrations, in 2004 and 2005, were obtained by submitting a nonexistent magazine cover in one case, and a Hulk comic book published in the 1990s in another. (Langdell claims to have licensed trademarks to the two publications.)

Langdell flatly denied that Edge ever committed fraud in applying for its U.S. trademarks.

Langdell has also said that Mobigame told him, in an email published here, that it and Electronic Arts had formed some sort of partnership, to what end he did not say. In a lengthy public statement published last August, Langdeel seems to imply that EA and Mobigame might be working together "to seek to undermine our rights in EDGE," to get out of an agreement Langdell says Edge and EA had reached earlier.

Brown, the EA spokesman, said that to his knowledge EA has no formal relationship with Mobigame. A request for comment left with Mobigame was not answered as of publication time. Mobigame replied to Kotaku that, in May, it had been working on a video game project unrelated to EDGE, or any game involved in this dispute, licensed by a British company that was in negotiations with Electronic Arts to publish it. Those negotiations have since ended, Mobigame's David Papazian said.

According to a notice sent by the USPTO, Langdell has until Oct. 27 to respond to EA's petition. Should the matter proceed to trial, that will begin in the summer of 2010.

Electronic Arts' filing may be downloaded here, in .pdf form.

Langdell, for his part, accuses EA of playing the bully in this matter.

"The key dispute for the past two to three years ... has always been between the multinational conglomerate EA and Edge fighting for its rights as a relatively small indie developer up against the giant corporate bully, EA," Langdell wrote. "It is a great pity that another fellow indie developer, Mobigame, got caught in the crossfire, but at least EA are now out in the open with their fight, now openly trying to stifle the legitimate rights of indie developers."
Llamasoft Lets Gridrunner Revolution Fly [Llamasoft]

Posted: September 28th, 2009, 12:40pm PDT by Mike Fahey

Tags: Llamasoft

Jeff Minter unleashes another psychedelic shooting experience upon the unsuspecting PC gaming public with the release of Gridrunner Revolutions, with the original 1982 Commodore games available as unlockable extras.

Gridrunner Revolutions is exactly what you'd expect from Jeff Minter. There are swirling colors, things to shoot at, and sheep that you must collect to advance. The game comes as a downloadable 4-level demo, and I've already played through said demo about five times in preparation for this post. One time was probably enough, but there's something extremely enjoyable about shooting spaceships while a high-pitched voice exclaims, "Sheepy!" Perhaps it is just me.

Unlocking the full game will cost you $20, giving you access to countless levels and extras. To get started, head over to the Llamasoft website and download 65 megs worth of shooty sheepy goodness.
What Makes a "Real" Sport in an Unreal World? [Stick Jockey]

Posted: September 26th, 2009, 9:00am PDT by Owen Good

Tags: Stick jockey

Twenty years ago I learned how to rename the rosters for Accolade's Hardball! and rig the players' performances. Every player would be a 40-40 man, I boasted to Dad. "Not really interested," he said, "It's not real baseball."

I thought about that old Commodore 64 game a few weeks ago when a friend told me he'd taken back his Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 - and the Wii MotionPlus he'd bought to play it. Having mastered golf on Wii sports, he saw the new motion controller and decided, on impulse, it would give him an even more enjoyable golf outing. He found it came too close to the frustrating experience of real golf, with which he was already familiar. So for him, going back to "not real golf" was satisfying enough.

No other console genre - except for maybe the racers, which I would argue are a subset of sports - has such a love-hate relationship with reality. Running about a battlefield and firing off headshots, no one sincerely expects to do that in real life under similar conditions. But sports are grounded in skills that, even if one never learned them, are taught to children and shown on television broadcasts that, every day, make them look easy - even if deep down we know just how rare it is to see them performed live and in person.

There's a greater expectation that they're more repeatable than trained combat skills. But there are far more soldiers in the world than elite athletes. And if a game were to truly represent a professional sport's difficulty - and PGA Tour 10 came too close for my friend - then down goes the controller.

All of this gets back, in some way, to the definition of a "sports game," and, underneath that, the definition of a "sport."

Taken at its broadest definition - at least the one that I use - a sport is a competition played to a measurable result and contested under objectively enforced rules. If that's the case, then any multiplayer shooter qualifies as a sport. Absent exploits, one would expect any computer game to always impartially enforce rules and award goals, or at least have its shortcomings applicable to both sides. Few consider competitive video gaming a sport, however.

But there are some who consider figure skating is a sport (it is not, it's a judged competition, like a dance contest), and that bowling isn't (it is; knock down the most pins according to the rules, you win.) For them, some athletic demonstration is an essential feature of a sport. It's why some have a hard time accepting NASCAR - sit in a car and turn left for 500 miles - as a sport.

Yet turning that back to video games - the ones that take advantage of motion controls and, therefore, exertion, are almost universally regarded as less serious a sports game than their traditionally controlled counterparts. The biggest selling game with the word "sports" in its title is not considered by many to be a sports game. And that's the aforementioned Wii Sports, and its 2009 cousin, Wii Sports Resort. Nor, for that matter, does it include Wii Fit, whose caloric demand in a single game instance is greater than your thumbs simulating every play and personnel move in a full season Madden NFL 10.

Is there a way to include both in a definition of a sports game? I think so.

• A sports game allows you to imitate and reasonably achieve the results you see in a real athletic competition. Wii Sports has a home run derby. So does Major League Baseball 2K9. Wii Boxing's point is the same as Fight Night. Tactically speaking, those who half-ass their approach to Wii Golf will improve their score no more than someone who doesn't consider his shots in real life.

• A sports game keeps records and allows for progression. All league simulations feature this. Wii Sports likewise records one's personal bests. And it's a basic necessity of something like Wii Fit, which is supposed to chart your exercise progress.

• A sports game's rules and framework is not wholly invented for purposes of a video game. A baseball game draws on rules codified more than a century ago. Madden's gameplay structure is based on the NFL rulebook. Similarly, Wii Sports' tennis and golf need no tutorial - they're understood by anyone who have played either game in real life.

Note that I didn't say that a league's licensing is essential to a sports game. It wasn't in Hardball!, 20 years ago. All Pro Football and Blitz: The League have no league license either, but no one's calling them action/adventure games.

While I understand my father's distinction between "real baseball" and what plays out on a computer screen, I do think there's a finer point to sports gaming than what I thought it to be as a teenager. That after 100 cheaply won, 10-run, 20-hit victories, simply keeping a binder full of boxscores does not a simulated sport make. That's focusing on result, and not process. In other words, it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

Stick Jockey is Kotaku's column on sports video games. It appears Saturdays at 10 a.m. U.S. Mountain time.
The Nintendo Download: You, Me, And The Cubes [Nintendo]

Posted: September 21st, 2009, 9:20am PDT by Mike Fahey

Tags: Nintendo

There's tennis, a last ninja, a little strategy, and a shot of MySims in this week's Nintendo Download, but once you get past those it's just Me, You, and the Cubes.

You, Me, and The Cubes is a puzzle game for WiiWare from Kenji Eno of D and Enemy Zero fame. Shake your Wii remote to give birth to mysterious creatures called Fallos, and then throw them at cube structures in the hopes that they will keep their balance until you run out of Fallos to toss. Cubes with different properties shake things up as you play through dozens of stages in both single-player and co-op multiplayer modes. You, Me, and the Cubes is available today for 1,000 Wii points.

I will not comment on how wrong the phrase "shaking your Fallos" sounds.

Also on WiiWare this week is the return of Aksys' family in Family Tennis (500 Wii points), which involves a family, preferably yours, playing tennis.

DSiWare likewise gets two new games today, with a dose of strategy from the Clubhouse Games Express: Strategy Pack (500 DSi points), which comes complete with Backgammon, Field Tactics, Turncoat, Grid Attack, and Connect Five. If you prefer to use your DSi for cuteness rather than thinking, EA unleashes the MySims Camera (200 DSi points), an application that allows you to superimpose adorable 3D MySims characters over your real-world images.

Wrapping things up on the Virtual Console is Last Ninja 2 for the Commodore 64 (500 Wii points), the classic action/adventure game that proved the previous title, The Last Ninja, completely false.

As always, check out the official descriptions below, and let us know if you'll be making any choice selection from this week's Nintendo Download.

WiiWare

You, Me, and the Cubes
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Comic Mischief
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: Experience a unique combination of strategy and skill as you maintain a level playing field in the physics-based action puzzler You, Me, and the Cubes. The action centers around Fallos, mysterious creatures that resemble humans and have an ability to balance on a playing field of 3-D cubes. First, create a pair of Fallos inside your Wii Remote™ controller by shaking it up and down. Next, determine suitable places for the Fallos to land, then fling them to the selected cube with a swinging motion. After that, the Fallos are on their own. If your placement is sound, the Fallos will remain stable and you'll clear the stage after tossing a required number onto the cubes. But if the weight or locations of Fallos causes the cubes to tilt and sway too much, the Fallos will lose their balance and fall off. Adding to the challenge, you'll find that some cubes have different properties, making tosses tricky and further threatening the stability of the Fallos. Guide Fallos through dozens of single-player stages or invite family and friends to join you in two-player cooperative mode.

Family Tennis
Publisher: Aksys Games
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Comic Mischief, Mild Suggestive Themes
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Daddy, Mommy, Sarah and Billy return for some hard-hitting, fast-paced tennis action. Battle it out between the happy family members as you vie for the top spot. Choose from three different modes: Elimination Match, Free Match and Thrilling Rally. Play against the CPU or compete with friends. Elimination Match mode pits you against the CPU to test your skills, while Free Match mode allows you to play against another player under conditions of your choosing. Thrilling Rally mode lets you join up to three other players and rally to see who can get to 100 points first.

Virtual Console

Last Ninja 2
Original platform: Commodore 64
Publisher: Commodore Gaming
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) - Mild Violence
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: The ninja known as the Mystic Shadow Warriors were the elite fighting force of ninth-century feudal Japan. The evil Shogun Kunitoki was once beaten, but he has gathered all his mystic powers to create a modern-day tyranny in Manhattan. Face your archenemy Kunitoki in the urban jungle and conquer him with your ninja skills. Transported to 1988 Manhattan by an unknown force, the ninja leader Armakuni must find a way to defend himself against the unknown dangers that lie before him. Will this be the final battle? Can you vanquish the evil Kunitoki once and for all?

Nintendo DSiWare

Clubhouse Games Express: Strategy Pack
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1-8
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Prepare yourself for a lesson in tactics as you play through five strategy-based games in this Nintendo DSiWare version of the popular Clubhouse Games. Take on an opponent in the classic Backgammon, invade an enemy base in Field Tactics, sandwich your opponent's pieces to capture them in Turncoat, create strings of five in a row in Connect Five and guess where to attack your opponent's pieces in Grid Attack. Play by yourself or use DS Download Play to host as many as seven friends.

MySims Camera
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Players: 1
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: MySims Camera is a camera application that utilizes popular MySims characters. You can take photos and overlay 3-D MySims characters to bring them into the real world. The 3-D characters can be animated, moved, scaled, rotated and cropped. You can also draw on the photos with the stylus or use the stamp tool to add more art and style. Create a unique frame and save the photos to the Nintendo DSi Camera album to share with friends. MySims Camera is a fun, creative experience for the entire family.
Kotaku's Top 5 List of Top 10 Lists [Lists]

Posted: August 29th, 2009, 4:30pm PDT by Owen Good

Tags: Lists

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What's better? A list of those. Here's a roundup of the rundowns out there.

•Advertising 101: 10 Awesome Game Trailers to Learn From [The Bits, Bytes, Pixels and Sprites] Game trailers have emerged as a kind of art form to themselves, the same as theatrical trailers did around the late 1980s and early 1990s, when people lined up to see Batman's. The BBPS rates the best hype-builders, as a model of effective advertising. Really though, most of these are relying on past reputation for impact. Fallout 3's trailer (No. 8) was just a re-edit of the game's opening cinematic. Probably took about 20 seconds to make.

•Top 20 Mario Power Ups [Official Nintendo Magazine] There are more than 20? ONM's ranking covers pretty much every performance enhancer in the Mario continuity, beginning with the hammer from Donkey Kong. No. 1 is The Tanooki Suit. No-brainer. But just because I'm a contrarian old school bastard, I'd have thrown in the POW bumper from original Mario Bros.

•The 5 Best Console Wars [GamePro] Son, let me tell you about the old wars. Genesis versus Super Nintendo was epic, sure. But in my day, it was Intellivision vs. Atari VCS. It was 5200 vs. ColecoVision, right there on the pages of Consumer Reports. It was Commodore 64 vs Apple ][. It was fistfights in the recess yard. It was Bill "Dynamite" Douglas tossing a missile at Tom "The Bomb" Bethea's face and knocking his mouthpiece into Madison Square Garden's third row. Wait, wrong nostalgia. But let's not pretend console wars started in 1991. It's been around as long as there's been consoles. And wars.

•Five Consoles We'd Like to See Get Slim [MTV Multiplayer] MTV lays down a wildcard with "Capcom's CPS-2 Arcade Board." But for consoles currently in production, there's only one that can take a rightsizing, and it's the 360, and Microsoft's shot that down. Everything else before it - including original Xbox - can have its architecture jammed into 1/5th the space, sure. You can play Genesis games on an iPhone. How's that for slim?

• Top 10 Best Video Games for Couples [SF Weekly] I like anything that gets the qualifier "for couples" because it usually means porn. Man, this one time in my Rocky Mountain News days, my girlfriend and I were driving back from a date and she suggested we get "a movie," and then I had to waste 15 minutes pretending I didn't know where the porn store was, when if I had let go of the steering wheel the car could have probably driven itself, like goddamn Knight Rider, to the nearest spank booth and parked in my assigned space out front. Where was I? The selections here are mostly cute, non-core stuff, with Contra on the NES as one counterintuitive pick and House of the Dead: Overkill as a surprising No. 2. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved gets No. 1.