Top 10 Games
1 Wild Metal Country
2 Anacreon
3 Hidden And Dangerous
4 Warzone 2100
5 One Must Fall 2097
6 Castle of the Winds: A Question of Vengeance
7 Ultima 4 - Quest of the Avatar
8 Freespace 2
9 Descent
10 Fish Fillets
Game sites
Reuters - When Dr. Julio Bonis awoke one Sunday morning with a sore shoulder, he could not figure out what he had done. It felt like a sports injury, but he had been a bit of a couch potato lately.
Reuters - When Dr. Julio Bonis awoke one Sunday morning with a sore shoulder, he could not figure out what he had done. It felt like a sports injury, but he had been a bit of a couch potato lately.
NewsFactor - The year was 1981: Big hair, high-waisted jeans and popped-up collars were popular fashions, "Bette Davis Eyes" topped the charts, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" hit theaters, and everyone was saving up quarters to play the latest video games. Pac-Man was introduced to arcades around the world and would soon become a pop-culture phenomenon.
Game Master writes "Billy Mitchell has long been one of the gaming industries most recognizable players. He appears in a new documentary, King of Kong, which has been screening to very positive reviews at film festivals around the country, and has been picked up by a major motion picture distributor. The movie, which portrays Billy in a very negative light, has come under fire recently in an article posted at MTV.com, where Billy and others spoke out about what they believed to be an unfair portrayal in the film. 'Ultimately, the documentary hasn't settled the Mitchell/Wiebe debate, which has been going on for nearly a half-decade. Mitchell, Day, Mruczek and several other arcade aficionados are now compiling a response to the film, a timeline they plan to post on TwinGalaxies.com in June. An early draft of the document lists [what they refer to as] KOK fiction, like, "Billy Mitchell will stop at nothing in order to keep his DK score," and promises facts that will prove those assertions wrong.' The end of the article seems to imply that legal action may follow."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MSNBC is running an interview with Blizzard designer Rob Pardo discussing a number of facets of the upcoming StarCraft II. Informational tidbits include the fact that, unsurprisingly, the game won't be released this year, and some background on the game's long development cycle. "Penny Arcade figured it out! We keep games under code names and we teach developers to refer to games by their code name. And we're just really careful about talking about the game internally. We don't bring external folks through unannounced product areas. But I think even I'm surprised that we were able to keep it under wraps all the way to the end."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sanya Weathers, known for many years as Tweety, was the Community Manager for Dark Age of Camelot essentially since that game's launch. Known throughout the games industry as truthful, caring, and innovative, she almost created the position of Community Manager out of whole cloth. Many elements of Massively Multiplayer communities we take for granted today originated at Mythic in Sanya's hands. Now doing work freelance, she has time to blog about her experiences keeping Massive gamers happy. It is entitled Eating Bees, after a Penny Arcade strip on the subject of forum management. So far she has two posts up, one looking at what professionalism looks like in the position, and a hilarious fictional day in the life for a CM. "Bob forwards Gertrude's email to Jake, a programmer. Jake is not the one who coded the original element on which Gertrude's system is based. THAT guy, Wayne, is somewhere in the Caribbean coked up along with a bunch of strippers, where he has been ever since he cashed his FunFactory stock options, opened his own studio, and sold THAT one to MegaCorp for millions of dollars. Wayne was also a self-taught genius who adhered to no known coding formalities and whose comments were in haiku. Since Wayne left, approximately two dozen programmers of various levels of ability have added layers of complexity. Jake is very young and enthusiastic, but his joy at finally being in the gaming industry is starting to dim from coping with a ten year old pile of what is called "spaghetti code.""
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AP - Just when you thought the beloved plumber Mario might be nearing the twilight of his more-than quarter-century career, Nintendo comes out with a game for the Wii that pumps new life into two retro video game genres.
Yesterday at the Penny Arcade site Gabe shared the news that Ron Gilbert is working with them on Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. The well known designer, veteran of several LucasArts adventure titles as well as the creator of the SCUMM engine, has apparently been assisting the duo in planning out their first commercial game title. Says Gabe, "We had our first meeting with Ron pretty early in the design process. Tycho and I were getting the story fleshed out and we had some ideas about the design and over all pace of the game. We laid it all out for Ron and then he picked up a whiteboard marker and started teaching class. I'm not sure how many people can say they got a game design 101 course taught by Ron Gilbert, but that's exactly what Tycho and I got that day. His insights into the way you move the player through an interactive story so that they get to explore the world but don't loose the narrative were incredible." 1up also has commentary from Gilbert, who says, "I have been a fan of Penny Arcade because I have always found their comic so funny and biting. When I first heard they were making a game and that they had chosen to weave adventure game elements into it, I knew immediately I wanted to be involved. Working with the Penny Arcade guys and the team at Hothead has been an absolute riot."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Eurogamer has the news that The Simpsons will be coming to a new videogame title sometime in the near future, a new game with an interesting twist. Instead of playing as the Simpsons inside a more typical genre, such as the arcade smash-em-up from the early nineties or The Simpsons Road Rage, EA's newly-announced title will lampoon other videogames using typical Simpsons comedy. All of the cast members will be lending their voices to the title, and hints about the type of games we can expect were already available when the press release went out. A mock poster with the words Medal of Homer flying above a war-torn battlefield suggests what we might see in the game. "Described as a 16-level 'action comedy' with a storyline penned by the long-running TV show's long-running writers, the new Simpsons game is due out on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS and PSP this autumn. It's being put together by EA Redwood Shores, and is full of touches that EA reckons fans of the series - now 400 episodes old - will find exciting, like individual title animations and stories for each of the 16 levels, which are being treated like episodes."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Joystiq mentioned earlier this week that two-time Slashdot interview subject Wil Wheaton, world-famous blogger and writer, is scheduled to keynote this year's Penny Arcade Expo. Other headlining elements of this year's geekstravaganza include a Tokyo Games Show trip for the Omegathon winner, and another year of the 'face-melting' Minibosses as the big musical act of the event. From Gabe's Post: "We'll actually be taking a lot of steps this year to make the Omegathon a more important and interactive part of the show experience. I can't say much more about those ideas right now but I can tell you what this year's Omegathon prize will be. I think each year we've been able to out do the previous year's prize and this year is no exception. The winner of the 2007 Omegathon will receive a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show along with $5,000 is spending money. We'll be taking care of everything for you from airfare to hotel and giving you some cash to spread around once you get there."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
