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Video Games and Mixed Martial Arts--- UFC Reaches New Video Game Deal with THQ
Originally Published on MMAWeekly

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a new edition of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in video game form, but that will be changing in the not-too-distant future, as the UFC has struck a deal with video game publisher THQ.

In a story first reported by entertainment trade journal Variety, THQ has signed a five-year contract with Zuffa to be the exclusive publisher of UFC video games through the end of 2011 for "all console and portable platforms, as well as wireless devices."

While no specific game platforms have been announced for the first UFC game from THQ, the primary platforms for UFC games in the future would seem likely to be the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, though modified versions of UFC games could also be released for the less powerful and younger-skewing Nintendo Wii.

Drastically altered versions of the games could also be released for portable systems such as the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP in order to maximize revenue and help offset the higher development costs of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games.

THQ is not a company that develops video games itself; THQ is a game publisher that hires game developers to create games. THQ funds and supervises the development of these games, and THQ is then responsible for marketing the finished products.

The quality of future UFC video games will be heavily dependent on which developer(s) THQ has contracted to develop the games. In an interview with IGN, THQ executive Kelly Flock refused to answer when he was asked to name the developer of the game.

THQ is also the publisher of WWE video games, and the fact that WWE and UFC games will now be released by the same game publisher has upset the management of WWE, which has seen its domestic pay-per-view buyrates collapse in the same year that the UFC's PPV buyrates skyrocketed.

In early 2005, the UFC started airing on the same cable network as WWE (Spike TV), and when WWE's contract with Spike TV came up for renewal later in 2005, Spike TV made the choice to break off all renewal negotiations with WWE, which then returned to USA Network for significantly lower rights fees than it had been receiving from Spike TV.

THQ's Flock said in an interview with Variety, "We see WWE as an entertainment brand, while UFC is a true sports brand." The WWE games that have been published by THQ had been fairly well received from a critical standpoint for years, but have received decidedly mixed reviews over the past few years.

THQ previously published "Pride FC" for the PlayStation 2, a game that is widely regarded as the best MMA game to date. As for UFC-branded video games, the first effort on the Sega Dreamcast was well-received, but the last several UFC games from publishers such as Crave Entertainment, TDK Mediactive, and Global Star Software (a brand of Take-Two Interactive) were almost universally panned by critics.

Video games based on MMA are inherently difficult to create due to the complexity of the sport and the fact that fights can end in any number of different ways, which makes it hard for developers to create an entertaining, but still true-to-life gameplay experience.

When asked by IGN about the degree of difficulty in such a project, Flock acknowledged, "We're well aware of this difficulty to made this game work out, especially the mechanics, and Zuffa, LLC was also aware of this when they picked us to publish their game."

THQ has been mum on the details regarding its first UFC game. The Variety and IGN articles said that the game would include online multi-player functionality (which is a given for any sports game) and would feature "current and former UFC fighters."

The specific fighter line-up could be a key factor, as previous UFC games were missing some notable fighters who wanted to be paid fees or royalties for their video game appearances in the same way that athletes in any other sport are paid when they appear in video games. In football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and other sports, this is handled through the Player's Association of each respective sport.

THQ's Flock also said that he envisions new releases once per year after the first UFC game has been released, as he said to IGN, "UFC lends itself to an annual update, so we expect to have annual iterations of the game with new features, updated and upgraded graphics and gameplay, the whole deal."

No titles or release dates have been announced, though the Variety article said that the first game would likely be released in late 2007 or in 2008.

However, given the fact that the deal between Zuffa and THQ was just signed in late 2006 and that a new gameplay engine is presumably being created for the game, a late 2007 release date would seem to be very unlikely. A one-year development cycle would be unusually short and seemingly rushed for the first generation of a new game franchise running on a new gameplay engine.

Beyond the core gameplay itself and the features that are standard for any sports or fighting game, fans of previous MMA video games will also be interested to know what innovations the game will offer in its "Season" or "Career" modes, how deep the simulation aspects of the game will be, and how many fighters the game will include. It's conceivable that the game could feature dozens of fighters, given the massive size of the UFC's real-life roster.

THQ's biggest motivation for signing a deal with the UFC is obvious. A top-selling video game can generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue or more, and the UFC's popularity has exploded over the past two years.

THQ's Flock said to IGN, "The popularity of the UFC has really kicked into gear. It's amazingly popular right now. We saw the numbers, how it was taking off, how our demographic was interested, and we felt like it was time to bring it back to the interactive arena. The response from people [who] know about it all think this is a great move."

Labels: Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), UFC News, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:34 PM

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Video Games--- The Xbox 360 is off to a heck of a start at retail, with gamers all across the country lining up to get their systems. Countless gamers and parents have been turned away from retail stores without an Xbox 360 (though I'd be willing to bet that Jack Thompson was not among those waiting in line), due to the fact that the strong demand for the system far outweights the supply.

The most critically-acclaimed original games at launch have been Project Gotham Racing 3, Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and Condemned. Personally, I bought Madden NFL 2006 with my system and immediately rented Tiger Woods 2006, because I'm a huge fan of both franchises. The next game on my "to-do list" is Project Gotham Racing 3, which has been heavily praised for its single-player modes and even more so for its online multi-player modes.

The mainstream media and the video game press extensively covered the massive launch hysteria with plenty of stories about the long lines and angry mobs. One of the strangest bits of news came in a GameSpot news story. Here is an excerpt from that news story:

"On Tuesday, GameSpot staffers witnessed even more chaotic scenes at the local Target in Colma, on the peninsula south of San Francisco. There, a lone security guard spent most of the night shooing an increasingly unruly crowd away from the parking lot. The situation nearly spun out of control at around 7:00 AM, when the guard left his post for five minutes, prompting a mass influx of would-be customers eager to receive vouchers good for an Xbox 360.

When he returned, the security guard's attempts to get the 100-plus-person crowd to form a line were rebuffed until the arrival of police and a California National Guardsman at around 8:00 AM. A trio of veteran [GameSpot staff members] witnessed the Guardsman quickly take control of the situation and move to the head of the line--- where he promptly turned around and asked for an Xbox 360 voucher himself. The Guardsman then fled the scene, voucher in hand, leaving police, Target employees, and a visibly agitated crowd to fend for themselves."

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:47 PM

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Video Games--- Nintendo Falls Off the Deep End with its Next-Gen Controller
Is Nintendo, now more than ever, the laughing stock of the video game industry? You be the judge. Just take a look at the controller for the company's next-generation video game system (click here for a picture). That sound you hear is Sony and Microsoft laughing hysterically.

It turns out that Game Informer Magazine wasn't that far from the truth when it published a fake news story in its annual April Fool's issue earlier this year, in which the controller for Nintendo's next console just had one big button called the "DO!" button.

When a previous Nintendo flop called the Virtual Boy (may it rest in peace) was introduced as a "virtual reality" successor to the Game Boy in the mid-90's, there was clearly no one at Nintendo who stood up and said something like, "Wait a minute, isn't this going to hurt people's necks, give them headaches, and cause eye damage just from putting their heads into the system and staring at bright red laser images?" That didn't turn out too well, and now in a similar situation, there is clearly nobody at the current-day Nintendo who had the testicular fortitude to stand up and say to their bosses, "Wait a minute, isn't this going to make it extremely difficult just to play the vast majority of game genres?"

In controller-related news that is far more sensible, Sony made sure to plaster the words "Conceptual Design" all over its displays of the butt-ugly PlayStation 3 controller (click here for a picture of it) at the Tokyo Game Show. Those two words were not attached to the controller at E3 in May but have appeared a few months later at the TGS, so we can only hope that Sony is strongly considering a change from the current "boomerang" design.

Let's keep this in perspective, though. The PlayStation 3 controller, as it exists right now, is very ugly and probably a bit uncomfortable, but that's the extent of its downside. Nintendo's controller, on the other hand, is a mixture of 1) The mostly useless, gameplay-hindering novelty of the Nintendo DS handheld system, 2) The non-gaming-friendly shape and design of a tall and skinny DVD remote, and 3) A button lay-out that takes video games back to a pre-Super Nintendo level of basic functionality for the vast majority of game genres. On the other hand, I'm sure it will work wonderfully with Nintendogs, so I guess that makes it all worthwhile...

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 10:53 PM

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Video Games--- What is fanatical Florida-based activist Jack Thompson angry about now? It's The Sims 2, which completely blurs out nudity whenever one of the Sims takes a bath, changes clothes, etc. But what happens if you download a hacked, unauthorized patch (which violates the game's End-User License Agreement) and manage to disable the blur? The blur is removed to reveal... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

The Sims are just like Ken, Barbie, or Clay Aiken under there... no genitals, no nothing (not even nipples). In the initial letter that he sent to dozens of mainstream media outlets, Thompson did not acknowledge the fact that the un-blurred Sims are simply devoid of anything underneath the blur. In fact, he actually listed various private parts and falsely claimed that depictions of these private areas were part of the game and could be unlocked with a code. Thompson has since acknowledged that there is nothing to be seen under the blurring effect even if it is disabled, according to interviews that he has done with GameSpot and NextGen.

Nonetheless, Thompson still refers to the blur-disabling in The Sims 2 as "the video game industry's dirty little secret," and something that will cause "much delight to pedophiles around the globe." Thompson said that Electronic Arts is "working... to put porn into the hands of kids" and that EA "absolutely loves it."

Thompson wants the game's rating to be changed from "T for Teen" to "Adults Only," which is the same as classifying a game as hardcore pornography. In addition, Thompson is calling on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the federal government to force EA to recall all copies of The Sims 2 worldwide. (Strangely, Thompson did not call on the Mattel corporation to recall all of the Ken and Barbie dolls that have ever been sold.)

You've really out-done yourself this time, Mr. Thompson. Your impersonation of Senator Joe McCarthy is second to none.

(On a related note, click here to see an e-mail exchange in which a gamer tries to be nice to Jack Thompson and actually agrees with the vast majority of his arguments, only to have Thompson completely dismiss the e-mailer as worthless and stupid, simply because he plays video games.)

PlayStation 3 News
In other news game-related news, Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi revealed at the "PlayStation Meeting 2005" in Japan that only 450 development kits have been shipped to PlayStation 3 game developers worldwide. That is a surprisingly small number given the fact that the system is tentatively scheduled to be released worldwide in the spring of 2006. I would say that a summer of 2006 launch seems a lot more likely unless game developers are going to get an insanely huge amount of work done in a fairly short period of time.

Also, regarding the expected hefty price-tag of the PlayStation 3 due to all of its multimedia functions, Kutaragi said, "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to... I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it will be expensive."

Sony also announced that they have now shipped a grand total of 91 million PlayStation 2 systems worldwide since the console was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000. Of those 91 million systems, approximately 37 million were shipped in North America; 33 million were shipped in Japan and the rest of Asia; and 21 million were shipped in Europe.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:12 PM

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Video Games--- I had the opportunity to interview a lot of executives and developers in the video game industry during the time in which I ran Master Gamer as an active web site, and my interviews with Oddworld Inhabitants president and co-founder Lorne Lanning were among most newsworthy of any interview that I conducted.

Though informal rumblings of Oddworld Inhabitants' displeasure with the PlayStation 2 were widespread at the time, it was in the following interview that Lorne Lanning first expressed his displeasure with the PlayStation 2 as a platform on which to create video games. At the time that this interview was conducted in January 2001, the PlayStation 2 had recently been released in North America, while the launch of the Xbox wasn't scheduled to take place until late 2001.

In this interview, Lanning was the first of what would eventually become a long list of developers who had problems with the PlayStation 2 and chose to speak about those problems in a public setting. Prior to Lanning's comments, the development community mostly grumbled amongst themselves, and always remained "politically correct" in public interviews to avoid upsetting Sony.

In retrospect, the final question of the interview, and in particular Lanning's answer to that question, would prove to be prophetic years later in ways that nobody could have imagined at the time.

Lanning's comments about Nintendo only wanting to be "a toy company" and not a top contender in the video game console business would also prove to be quite prophetic. That was considered by many to be a blasphemous statement in 2001, and is now just an accepted fact of the video game industry in 2005.

Lanning still maintained in the interview that the Oddworld's first "next-generation" game, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, was going to be released for the PlayStation 2 in June of 2001. However, there were strong hints that Oddworld Inhabitants as a company was considering the prospect of leaving the PlayStation 2 behind and eventually focusing on the Xbox instead.

One week after this interview was published, I wrote an editorial on Master Gamer (also re-published below) in response to the massive outpouring of emotions from the video game community about what Lanning said in the interview. Little did I know at the time of the editorial's publication that at some point in the week between the interview being published and the follow-up editorial being published, Lorne Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants made the decision to completely abandon the PlayStation 2.

Oddworld's decision was announced two days after the publication of the editorial that you'll find below. Munch's Oddysee was turned into an Xbox game, and would ultimately be released as a critically-acclaimed Xbox launch game in November of 2001.

Interview with Oddworld Inhabitants
Originally Published in January 2001 on Master Gamer

Ivan Trembow: Since the last time I interviewed you about a year ago, what have been the biggest accomplishments in the development of Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee?

Lorne Lanning: It would probably have to be the AI system that we've developed. It's very exciting and extremely powerful. We've been aiming for a convincing sense of life for our characters and simulations. It's taken a lot of planning and problem-solving, but we've got it up and running and it's awesome.

Ivan: What have been the biggest pitfalls in Munch's development from a game design standpoint?

Lorne: The actual game design was well established on this project a long time ago. The thing that's been difficult is getting all the tools written for the game designers to use. Game design is often at the mercy of programming because the designers can't fully lay-out or build scenarios unless the game mechanics have already been programmed. And of course, the game mechanics are never fully programmed until near the end of the project. This is always a challenging reality of game design that we have to deal with.

Ivan: Is Munch's June 2001 release date pretty much set in stone, or is that a tentative release date?

Lorne: That is the delivery date for the PlayStation 2 version.

Ivan: It's been no secret that Oddworld Inhabitants has encountered a multitude of shortcomings in the PlayStation 2's hardware. What specifically have been the problems, and how have you been able to work past them?

Lorne: Well, the more ambitious you're trying to be and the higher your standards are with a game, the more potholes you're going to find in the system. When we found these potholes in the PS2, some of them caused design changes because the system wasn't delivering what we thought it could. Other problems were solvable, but we had to invest time and money in areas that completely surprised us. All of the surprise costs or diversions ultimately came out of the game's budget. Some of these were projected and expected because it's a new system, and others were more debatable. As a developer, I'd rather be putting money into the game rather than hardware quirks.

Ivan: Would do you think might have been Sony's rationale behind such technical choices as only giving the system four megabytes of video RAM?

Lorne: I have no idea. If the hardware designers [at Sony] had asked good game developers, "What kind of system would you like to have?" it's hard to believe that we'd still be looking at the same configuration of hardware.

Ivan: Has it ever popped into your mind while struggling with the PS2's hardware that you could abandon the PS2 for the seemingly greener pastures of the Xbox?

Lorne: Yes, but who's going to pay the bills while waiting for the Xbox?

Ivan: Regardless of your long-term PS2 plans, do you plan on making games for the Xbox at some point?

Lorne: The Xbox looks extremely exciting and it's our desire to take full advantage of it.

Ivan: Are you aiming to give [the gameplay in] Munch's Oddysee a higher or lower level of difficulty than Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus, or will it be about the same in terms of difficulty?

Lorne: In the past, our games have been more difficult than we would have liked them to be. With Munch's Oddysee, we're striving for a balance that increases the immersion and fun factor while reducing the frustration factor. The menu screen will have multiple difficulty levels, and the controls have been simplified greatly while giving the player more abilities at the same time. The characters move around more smoothly and feel more intuitive to control. We've spent a lot of time insuring that Munch's Oddysee doesn't let you get caught in conditions that leave you stranded or stuck just because you don't have the twitch ability for some particular challenge. If you encounter something that seems too difficult, there are always going to be ways around it, ways to avoid it, or alternative solutions.

Ivan: You told me in our last interview that The Hand of Odd would probably be released six to nine months after Munch's Oddysee. Has development on The Hand of Odd stopped or at least slowed down so that you can focus on finishing Munch, or are you still working on both games simultaneously?

Lorne: Both games have the same core of technology. Munch is the title that proves this technology, and Hand of Odd is the title that will take it further into the multi-player zone. The problem is that the infrastructure for online console games has yet to reveal itself with solid clarity, so until it does, we're going to be focusing on Munch's Oddysee and Munch's Exoddus much more than The Hand of Odd. As soon as we have a solid online model for a particular console system that works for us, then we'll be putting efforts right back into Hand of Odd.

Ivan: The last time we talked, you spoke as if The Hand of Odd was a definite PlayStation 2 game. Is there now a possibility that it will be released for other systems instead?

Lorne: Yes. Hand of Odd will be released, but what system it will be on is currently undecided.

Ivan: I remember hearing a couple of years ago that Oddworld was working on a full-length feature film set in the Oddworld universe, but I haven't heard anything on it since. Is it still in the works?

Lorne: We have been and continue to be in talks discussing the Oddworld movie, but nothing has officially started yet. We're not in a big hurry. We have serious ambitions when it comes to what Oddworld should be when it's on the big screen.

Ivan: Do you find that it's a delicate balance to release info on Munch to keep the press interested while still saving surprises for gamers to experience on their own? What do you think is the best way to maintain that balance?

Lorne: The balance is in not giving it all away. With a deep, rich, and new type of game like Munch's Oddysee, it's a lot better to surprise gamers when they actually play it, even if you told them a lot about the game leading up to its release.

Ivan: Shortly before the Nintendo GameCube was announced, you told Hyper Magazine, "Nintendo has made it clear that they are a toy company only and have no interest in being a true media entertainment company." What specifically makes you have these opinions about Nintendo?

Lorne: Well, when you're a hardware manufacturer and you keep on hinting at unique, hybrid storage devices for your new system, I wonder where your interests are coming from. One example is that developers shouldn't be negotiating how much memory their game can have in it like developers did in the SNES era and still do with the N64, only to be blind-sided by games like Star Fox and Zelda 64 that have special technology packed into the cartridge. This is technology embedded into the cartridge that third-party developers aren't given access to. This type of business model has served Nintendo well in giving some of its own games advantages over third-party games that are competing in the same marketplace. One company shouldn't be able to one-up the delivery system for its products, while other companies are forced to adhere to a status quo standard. This isn't the business model of an entertainment company, this is the model of a consumer electronics or toy company. No real entertainment medium is dictated by a hardware company that much. Think about it. That's like Panavision telling a major film studio to cut out certain parts of a
movie. It's like Kodak making the rules as to what can be shot on their film.

Ivan: How has Oddworld been affected by Infogrames' buy-out of GT Interactive?

Lorne: Very little. Our relationship with GT was good, and our relationship with Infogrames is good.

Ivan: Most games that combine multiple genres are decent in all genres and great in none. With all the talk of genre-merging in Munch's Oddysee and Hand of Odd, do you think that's a risky move to make? How have you managed to juggle the strengths and weaknesses of combining multiple genres into one game?

Lorne: Basically, all of that comes down to creative design and smart implementation. I don't feel that this has been a risky move for us from a design standpoint. If the chemistry of the genre-merging is done well, then each genre is distilled to simple essences and the overall experience is heightened. This has been a risky move for us from a financial standpoint, though, because it takes a lot more work and money to pull off this type of challenge.

Ivan: Will Oddworld be one of the initial pioneers in online console gaming, or will you wait several years until it's firmly established before jumping into the fray?

Lorne: We have been designing for online console gaming for some time now and are extremely confident that we have feasible and awesome content, but we're not going to rush into releasing our first online console game. We'll watch and when the time is right, we'll hit the market full force. We will release pioneering games, but we don't want to be one of those premature pioneers who end up with arrows in their backs.

Ivan: What are your thoughts on the Dreamcast? Do you think that it realistically has a chance over the long run?

Lorne: It's hard to imagine that it's going to hold up against the new consoles that are coming out in the next year.

Ivan: Is there any chance that Oddworld Inhabitants will ever make a Dreamcast game?

Lorne: It could happen, but it's highly unlikely that we would develop it internally. Our own sweat and blood is focused on more powerful systems that will handle more ambitious games.

Ivan: You have said in the past that Peter Molyneux is the person you admire most in the gaming industry because of his work on Black & White. Who are the next few people on the list after Peter Molyneux?

Lorne: [Shigeru] Miyamoto wears the crown to date for console games, but not for games that I really enjoy playing personally. Being a 35-year-old male and not caring about rescuing princess Zelda, I would have to say the crew at Blizzard. They build consistently solid games that are always fun and challenging. I also think that Ensemble Studios is a force to watch in the coming years. Richard Garriott also gets big kudos for Ultima Online. Even though stronger online games have come along since then, Ultima Online broke the online mold.

Ivan: You have also said in the past that Black & White is "dabbling with several concepts similar to Munch." What in particular do you see as concepts that the two games share?

Lorne: I think it's the elements of being in a persistent universe that focuses on a few central characters. These characters are shaped by the gamer in many ways, which in turn influences the behavior of the greater majority of the population on the landscape. Also, both games take into account the moral behavior of the gamer and allow the gamer to watch their moral decisions manifest in different responses from the game world. These kinds of ideas are going to help define the games of the future.

Ivan: On the surface, it seems that the power of the next-generation systems allows developers to focus on more creative details rather than technical details because the hardware is so powerful that there aren't as many limits. But would it also be accurate to say that because any half-decent company will be able to pump out a game with awesome graphics, they won't feel a need to focus on gameplay as much? Or that companies will have to spend so much time dealing with all of the PS2's technical problems that they won't have enough time to focus on gameplay?

Lorne: If you're dealing with a system like the PS2 where a lot of infrastructure code needs to be written, then you're right. It will be a while before you start getting to the really cool, creative stuff. But with a system like the Xbox that uses DirectX, you will get to the creative stuff much sooner. Unfortunately, I think we're going to see a lot of disappointing games that suffer from the pressure of needing to be released before they've been able to pull themselves together. This next generation of consoles is going to reveal much bigger gaps between developers who can handle the pressure and those who just can't cut it.


Oddworld Editorial
by Ivan Trembow
Originally Published in January 2001 on Master Gamer

In the week since the publication of my newest interview with Oddworld Inhabitants, the outpouring of reader response has been immense. These letters range from "I agree with every last word that Lorne Lanning said" to "Lorne Lanning has no idea what he's talking about" and everything in between. Overall, there have been more letters disagreeing with Lanning than there have been agreeing with him. In this feature, I will provide my own personal take on what Lanning said, focusing on his controversial comments about the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

If you're one of the PlayStation 2 fans who wrote to me expressing disgust with Lanning's statements, I do understand where you're coming from, but I also hope that you understand where Lanning is coming from. He said in the interview that he doesn't expect any development environment to be perfect, and that there are always problems with any system.

However, the PlayStation 2's problems go above and beyond what is to be expected from a new system. Simply put, it's a hard-to-work-with mess that makes writing good code the equivalent of (to steal a line from Jerry Seinfeld) plowing a farmer's field with a couple of pool cues. It's not just Lorne Lanning who has that opinion, it's a large percentage of the third-party development community.

The difference between Lanning and the rest is that Lanning has the guts to stand up and say on the record, "It's a pain in the ass" while not using those exact words. Meanwhile, the rest of the development community grumbles quietly and bickers amongst themselves. Personally, I think it takes a lot more guts for a developer to stand up and let his voice be heard than it does to be politically correct and keep his mouth shut to avoid upsetting Sony.

Another thing to keep in mind that is that Oddworld Inhabitants is a relatively small developer that doesn't have $500 million to throw around whenever there's a technical problem. Lanning said in the interview that Oddworld is taking a big financial risk just to be developing a game as ambitious as Munch's Oddysee in the first place. Combine that with Sony's poorly-put-together PS2 development kits, and I can understand Lanning's frustration.

Still, I have to question the logic behind Oddworld's decision to not "give into temptation" and abandon the PS2 altogether. The Xbox is going to give developers much better results for a lot less money (and time), especially in the case of a smaller developer like Oddworld. Lanning's argument against this was, "Who's going to pay the bills until the Xbox arrives?" That would have been a very valid argument if Munch's Oddysee had been ready as a PlayStation 2 launch game, and we would be talking about a delay of a full year.

But Munch's PS2 release date is June 2001, which is just 3-6 months before the release of the Xbox. You mean to tell me that with a game like Munch's Oddysee that has a three-year development cycle, an extra 3-6 months is going to kill the project? I don't believe that to be true, but if it is true, then Munch's publisher (Infogrames) needs to re-think its entire strategy for the video game industry.

Overall, I disagree with most of the inflammatory statements I have received from readers about Lorne Lanning, but I do agree that Oddworld should cut its PS2 losses and move on to the Xbox.

Note: Two days after this editorial was originally published, Oddworld Inhabitants announced that it was abandoning the PlayStation 2 in order to focus exclusively on Xbox development.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:50 PM

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Various Topics--- Today we're talking about spoiled draft picks, fictional "non-fiction" movies, jurors who have difficulty putting together complete sentences, and the mainstream media's continuing ignorance about video games.

Pro Wrestling: Draft Picks Have Been Spoiled by WWE
Thus far in the annual WWE draft lottery, WWE has been making it way too obvious when certain wrestlers are going to get drafted to the other brand. I mean, really, the minute they said on Raw, artificially and out of nowhere, that Triple H vs. Batista at Vengeance is "the final showdown" and the end of their feud, it didn't take a genius to figure out that Batista is going to get drafted to Smackdown in the week after Vengeance.

When Kurt Angle and Booker T's feud on Smackdown was suddenly having a match billed on Smackdown as "their final showdown" with statements like, "Whoever wins this match wins the feud!" it completely spoiled the fact that Kurt Angle was going to get drafted to Raw the following Monday, which is exactly what happened.

Now we've had a blow-off resolution to the feud between The Big Show and Matt Morgan, so would anyone be surprised if one of those two wrestlers is drafted to Raw this coming Monday? Also, in the commercial at the very end of Smackdown for next week's Guerrero vs. Mysterio match, the commercial conspicuously said while recapping the feud, "How will it all end? Find out next Thursday!"

That pretty much gives away the fact that either Guerrero or Mysterio is going to get drafted on Raw the following Monday. Why doesn't WWE just have giant, flashing, neon signs that give away each draft pick before it happens?

Movies: Cinderella Man Takes "Creative License" to a New Level
Cinderella Man may very well be a good movie. Its star, Russell Crowe, seems to be a very primitive man who is physically incapable of going more than a few months at a time without physically assaulting someone in public (as he was most recently arrested for throwing a telephone at the face of a hotel worker), but that shouldn't affect the story being told in the movie, right? Well, how about the fact that the story being told in the movie is fundamentally twisted and false?

In an effort to make the hero of the movie, James Braddock, all the more heroic, the creators of the movie took the creative license that any moviemaker does legitimately have when making a movie "based on a true story," and they violated that creative license by outright fabricating what kind of man Braddock was going against when he won the title in 1935. His opponent, Max Baer Sr, was not a reprehensible monster of a man who took great joy in the fact that two of his opponents died in boxing matches. In fact, boxing historians say Baer was haunted by their deaths.

Baer wasn't an angel, either, but he was no monster. The creators of Cinderella Man saw fit to completely change the facts to suit their movie, even if it meant they were no longer actually making a movie based on a true story. Bob Costas said much the same thing on a recent episode of HBO's "Costas Now," and so have many other people who know a little bit about boxing's history. Hopefully that fact, along with the fact that Russell Crowe may very well be arrested for assault a few more times between now and the next Academy Awards at the rate he's going, will prevent Cinderella Man from winning any major awards in the movie industry.

Michael Jackson Jury May Have Average IQ of Less Than 80
The jury in the Michael Jackson case had the right to come to any decision they saw fit, and you could certainly argue either way based on the evidence in the case whether it was absolutely proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Michael Jackson sexually molested this particular accuser. With that said, is there anyone who has watched the interviews with the Jackson jurors on legal shows like "The Abrams Report" on MSNBC who hasn't come to the conclusion that these are some of the most vapid, confused, dim-witted people to ever serve on a jury?

One of the jurors said that the first vote among the 12 jurors on one of the counts was "7 to 3 to 4" before realizing a few seconds later that those three numbers add up to 14, not 12. Another juror was unable to answer basic, simple questions about certain testimony in the case. Being nervous to be on TV could make you seem somewhat clueless, I'm sure, but it can't make you seem "Jessica Simpson clueless."

Video Games: Mainstream Media Ignorance about Video Games Continues
Does Tucker Carlson really know so little about video games that he thinks none of them involve any creativity, thinking, strategy, or thought development? Does he really think it uses more creativity for a child to be given a ball and told to "go outside and play with the ball," as he said recently on his new MSNBC show, "The Situation with Tucker Carlson"?

I'm wondering if Tucker Carlson ever heard of or played video games like Civilization. How about Populous? Black & White? Final Fantasy? Deus Ex? Theme Park? Theme Hospital? The Sims? Knights of the Old Republic? Sim City? Splinter Cell? Metal Gear Solid? ICO? Fable? Age of Empires? Rise of Nations? Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee? Any of the other Oddworld games? Any of the general manager or "Franchise Modes" in most sports games?

Somehow, I doubt it. Max Kellerman was absolutely right in his response when he said that it's a generational thing. If Tucker had grown up when sophisticated video games were prominent in society, he would understand them and would not make such broad, generalized, blatantly false statements about them. I respect Tucker Carlson and have enjoyed his new show a lot, but on this topic, he's way off the mark.

Labels: Politics / Current Events Commentary, Video Games, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

posted by Ivan Trembow at 3:52 PM

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Video Games--- It seems like ages ago, but it was actually only a few years ago that an elitist attitude existed within the video game industry and among gamers themselves that if you wanted to play a top-notch game in the first-person shooter genre, you would have to do it on a PC. Playing a first-person shooter on a console system was deemed to be inferior and was looked down upon by legions of PC game fans with their noses up in the air.

In the fall of 2001, a little game called Halo for a new system called the Xbox changed that line of thinking forever. Halo showed that a console first-person shooter could do anything that a PC first-person shooter could do, and then some. It could be more playable and have more intuitive control than the PC's much-praised "mouse and keyboard" control set up, it could look better graphically, it could offer far more content, and it could have more balanced gameplay. Halo blew the lid off the whole "PC vs. Console" debate when it came to first-person shooters.

Halo 2 did the same thing three years later by showing that you could do all of the above AND do it online with an online gaming service (Xbox Live) that is far better than any PC online gaming service. In addition to taking the experience online, Halo 2 was just as good or better than Halo 1 from a gameplay standpoint while offering a fundamentally different gameplay experience than the original Halo (as opposed to a typical sequel re-hash).

What many people have forgotten in recent years is that even before Halo, there was another game that laid the groundwork for console first-person shooters to be just as good as their PC counterparts. I'm not referring to Goldeneye 007, which was released in 1997 and was an excellent game that still had its fair share of flaws. I'm referring to Goldeneye's non-licensed sequel, a game that was released during the Nintendo 64's dying days in May of 2000: Perfect Dark. As a precursor to my complete review of Perfect Dark from back in 2000, it's important to understand the significance of the game in hindsight.

At the time Perfect Dark came out, the game that first-person shooter fans around the world were playing was still Quake 2 for the PC, even though Quake 2 had been on the market for over two years by that point. Perfect Dark showed that console first-person shooters could hold their own up against any PC first-person shooter.

Perfect Dark was also years ahead of its time with the use of "Simulants" (not to be confused which "stimulants," which is what 90% of Major League Baseball players take before every game). In Perfect Dark, Simulants were computer-controlled opponents that you could go up against in multi-player games. You could do a "multi-player game" with just yourself and a bunch of Simulants, or you could add several Simulants on top of a genuine multi-player game with yourself and several friends. At that time, not a lot of first-person shooters had anything resembling Simulants, and those that did offered robotic opponents that were nothing like playing against a human.

It might be hard to imagine these days, now that online gameplay against thousands of possible opponents is just a fingertip away for anyone who owns Halo 2 and has an Xbox Live subscription, but it used to be that the only way you could play console first-person shooters in a multi-player setting was to go against friends on a split screen. If you wanted to play a multi-player game at 3:00 in the morning and your friends couldn't come over because they were all asleep, you were out of luck.

Perfect Dark's Simulants changed all of that, as now you could play against a variety of different Simulants at any time, day or night, to improve your skills or just get in a few games before going to bed. Even a year and a half later when the original Halo came out, it had no "Simulants" or any equivalent option for multi-player games. People played a lot of multi-player Halo from 2001 to 2004, but they could only do so when they had someone physically over at their house to play the game with them.

Even with the release of Halo 2 last year and its huge online gameplay component, it would be even better if it had Simulants to add on top of all its great offline and online multi-player options. Several first-person shooters have tried to include Simulant-like options in recent years, but none of them have ever come close to matching the variety and intelligence of Perfect Dark's Simulants. To this day, no first-person shooter offers the amount of multi-player game customization options as Perfect Dark, and that includes Halo 1 and 2.

Another thing that's interesting to point out is how the terminology has changed over the years. Nowadays, thanks to the complete dominance of the Halo series, the word "Slayer" in the context of a video game is known to any first-person shooter fan as a multi-player, free-for-all mode of gameplay... you know, the mode that used to be called a "deathmatch" before Halo arrived and redefined first-person shooters as we know them. Reading through my Perfect Dark review years later, I am reminded that back then, the "Slayer" was actually a weapon in Perfect Dark that was basically another name for the rocket launcher. It's strange to think that "Slayer" could have ever meant anything other than what it means now in the video game world, but sure enough, it meant "rocket launcher" five years ago.

One footnote to add to my Perfect Dark review is that the developer of the game, a British company called Rare, had been owned by Nintendo and developed games exclusively for Nintendo systems for many years, but that's no longer the case. After a series of quarrels between Nintendo and Rare, Nintendo decided to sell Rare to the highest bidder in 2002, and that high bidder was none other than Microsoft, which also happens to be the publisher of the Halo series. Rare will now make games exclusively for Microsoft's next-generation video game system, the Xbox 360. Rare's first big game for the Xbox 360 is due out this fall and is a sequel to an old Rare hit. The name of the game is Perfect Dark Zero.

Without further ado, here is my review of Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 from way back in 2000.


Perfect Dark Review
Originally Published in June 2000 on Master Gamer

"It's even better than Goldeneye," said the hordes of preview-writers and PR representatives. It seems like people say that about every first-person shooter for any console these days, but in this case it's actually true. Not only is it better than Goldeneye, but it's also better than Quake 2 and every other first-person shooter ever made.

Like most first-person shooters, the heart and soul of Perfect Dark is the multi-player game. Sure, the single-player game is well put together with a decent story and unique mission objectives. Plus, the co-op mode adds to the replay value of the game significantly, as does the innovative Counter-Operative Mode. Despite all of this, though, it's the Combat Simulator modes that really make Perfect Dark a classic.

Notice I said "Combat Simulator," not "multi-player modes." No matter how many friends you have, there will still always be plenty of times where you're all alone and you crave an intense deathmatch experience. On these occasions, you can play a multi-player-style game by yourself with up to eight computer-controlled players, or Simulants.

The Simulants range in difficulty from the almost helpless MeatSim to the almost invincible PerfectSim. Unlike the computer-controlled players in other first-person shooters, Perfect Dark's Simulants actually behave a lot like real humans rather than robots. Even the EasySims are far from easy when you're first starting out with the game. Rather than just having their accuracy stats boosted like the sims in Turok: Rage Wars, each increase in difficulty level causes the Simulants in Perfect Dark to get significantly smarter.

In addition to changing the difficulty level of the Simulants, you can also make them a specific kind of Sim. Besides the obvious things like TurtleSims that are very slow but have high armor, there are also innovative things like VengeSims, which go out of their way to hunt down the last player who killed them. It's also fun to play with PreySims, which go out of their way to hunt down the player or players who have the lowest health or fewest weapons (and the JudgeSims, whose sole purpose in life is to kill PreySims).

Perfect Dark's graphics won't amaze you like a Dreamcast or PS2 game, but they're still impressive in their own right. There is a surprisingly large amount of blood present for a game published by Nintendo, and the squeamish can still turn off the blood completely in the options menu.

The game looks better if you have an N64 Expansion Pak, which you'll need anyway unless you don't mind missing out on the three-player, four-player, and main single-player games. If you play the game with the Expansion Pak, you have the option of turning on Hi-Res Mode, but it's actually better to leave this mode off. The Hi-Res Mode doesn't really make the game look better at all, but it does lower the frame rate considerably.

You can tell when the frame rate drops in three or four-player games with lots of Simulants because there is some noticeable slowdown. However, this doesn't happen very often and even when it does happen, it's very minor and it's equally distributed across all players. The frame rate goes down intentionally when you're punched by an enemy, with an annoying motion-blur effect that can prevent you from seeing much of anything at all if you're punched repeatedly.

Perfect Dark's sound gives me the impression that Rare correctly identified the flaws in Goldeneye's sound and worked hard to fix them. Goldeneye's music could be more than a little annoying at times, while Perfect Dark's music is actually quite catchy. Whether you're listening to one of the game's better music tracks or not, the music is always much less obtrusive than it was in Goldeneye, making it much easier to tune out if you want to.

Goldeneye's weapon sound effects were mostly generic with only a few exceptions, while Perfect Dark's sound effects actually make the game more entertaining. For example, when you hear the high-pitched sound of a rocket being fired from a Slayer, you might not know who fired it or where they are, but you do know that you better run like hell or fight back quickly if you want to survive. The same goes for the distinctive sounds of the FarSight, Reaper, and so on.

The amount of options at your disposal in the multi-player game alone is mind-boggling. There are lots of pre-set scenarios with different groups of weapons in them, but you can also have the game randomly select the weapons, or customize a pre-set group to your liking, or put it on random and then customize what comes up, and the list goes on and on. Not only can you decide which weapons show up in any game, but you can even rank their availability from one to six, with one being the most common and six being the least common.

You can also change the body and head of your character and the computer players, choosing from a seemingly endless list of heads and bodies. All of these can be mixed and matched, so you can play with the head of my friend Andy Reiner from Game Informer Magazine and put him in a dress, or any other combination you can think of. The only thing you can't do is put your own head into the game through the use of the Game Boy Camera (this feature was taken out of the game for political reasons).

I can't be held accountable for my actions if I hear one more person who doesn't own an N64 say that Perfect Dark can't be that good because it doesn't have the PC's almighty mouse-and-keyboard set-up. You can customize Perfect Dark's control set-up any way you want on the N64's controller, but the default setting is just about flawless.

You can quickly activate each weapon's secondary function by holding down the B button. Also, you can now switch to a particular weapon quickly and effortlessly (even if you have six of them) by simply holding the A button to bring up a little menu. Other than these two changes, the default control set-up is identical to Goldeneye's, which is just fine with me. I have spent a lot of time using both this button lay-out and the PC's mouse-and-keyboard lay-out, and I think they're both about equally effective and intuitive. The much-heralded "mouselook" feature of the PC (which lets you look around using the mouse) is easily duplicated by the N64's analog joystick.

Also, when compared to any first-person shooter on the PC, winning and losing in Perfect Dark has a lot more to do with skill and a lot less to do with the speed of your Internet connection. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's no skill involved in doing well in a PC first-person shooter, but the lag factor is always there to give some players an advantage and other players a disadvantage. In a console shooter, lag isn't a factor and players win or lose based solely on their own skill.

Many people complain that the Quake games are based too much on running around finding items, and that it would be better if everyone had the same weapons at all times. I don't agree with this method of thinking as it relates to the weapons, do I find that Perfect Dark is more skill-based as a result of its lack of health power-ups. With no health power-ups to be found, how long you can survive in the game is actually dependent on how much damage you have taken, not how many health power-ups you have managed to stumble across.

It's important for any multi-player first-person shooter to have good level design, and Perfect Dark comes through in this area. While there are certainly some arenas that you won't enjoy as much as others, none of the arenas just plain suck, and most of them are excellent. The arenas have multiple elevations while still not having any safe sniping spots, and they're also spread out nicely while still having rooms that always seem to be crowded. Three arenas from Goldeneye (Complex, Temple, and Facility) are also playable in Perfect Dark, and they have been slightly re-designed to increase their playability even further.

Perfect Dark's biggest problem from a balance standpoint is that the weapons with splash damage, essentially the rocket launchers and grenade launchers, are just a little bit too effective. The problem lies in the fact that even if you don't actually connect with your target, the explosion from the rocket or grenade still has a good chance of killing the target. Even if you're one of those people who think weapons that can kill you with one shot are cheap, the fact of the matter is that you have to aim at your target with precision accuracy and connect with them. With Perfect Dark's splash damage weapons, you just have to connect with the general area around your target.

The splash damage weapons can be particularly frustrating when you're playing with Simulants. At the first few difficulty levels, the Simulants aren't very good at hitting you with their weapons dead-on, but they don't fire wildly and shoot their weapons so that they don't come anywhere near you. So, they don't hit you directly, but they come close to hitting you directly, and that's all you have to do in order to kill someone with any of the splash damage weapons. Despite all of this griping about the splash damage weapons, they are still balanced somewhat by the fact that it's very easy to accidentally kill yourself with one of them, and the Simulants accidentally kill themselves fairly often.

Other than the splash damage issues, Perfect Dark is almost flawlessly balanced in every possible way. The last several months of Perfect Dark's development were spent balancing the game to perfection. This hard work and patience paid off, making Perfect Dark one of the few Nintendo-published games that's actually worth the long wait. Perfect Dark has a huge variety of weapons, and almost every single one of them can be devastating if used to its fullest potential. Herein lies the beauty of the game: Almost every weapon has something about it that makes you think it's one of the coolest weapons you've ever seen, but it also has something about it that prevents it from being too powerful for the sake of the game's balance.

Take the FarSight, for example. The FarSight in its simplest form is basically a rail gun, and it also has an extremely cool Target Locator that goes through walls to scan the level for enemies, which you can then fire at by pressing the Z button. To balance things out, the scanning cursor moves very slowly, making it easy to kill a stationary target but hard to kill a moving one. And of course, the whole time you're using the Target Locator, your character is standing in one place on the level, completely defenseless to any attack.

If you don't already own a Nintendo 64, it will be worth every penny to buy one along with Perfect Dark and an Expansion Pak. Not only does this game not get old as you play it more, but I actually seem to develop a greater appreciation for it with each passing hour, day, and week. I have no doubt that I'll still be playing Perfect Dark months and possibly even years from now.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:44 PM

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Video Games--- I recently wrote an article about Nintendo's unveiling of its next-generation video game system, and how the company still doesn't seem to "get it." There was a time, prior to the start of the most recent generation of the console wars, when Nintendo faced many of the same issues that it faces today.

There are certain steps that Nintendo has to take if it ever wants to be a serious player in the video game industry again, and until it takes those steps, it will always be relegated to the third-place system of any hardware generation.

Looking back into the archives of my video game web site, Master Gamer, I wrote an article in May 2000 called, "How to Turn Around Nintendo." Many of the issues that I wrote about back then still apply to the company today. Please note that the "Dolphin" was the code-name for the system that would eventually come to be known as the Nintendo GameCube.

How to Turn Around Nintendo
Originally Published in May 2000 on Master Gamer

In the past decade, Nintendo has gone from the undisputed leader of the video game industry to a shell of its former self. While it's too late for the N64 to have a chance of catching up with the PlayStation's installed base, Nintendo can still come out on top in the next-generation system race if they play their cards right (and by "cards," I mean their business strategies, not the Pokemon Trading Card Game).

In order for the Dolphin to end up being more successful than the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, Nintendo needs to take at least a few of the following suggestions to heart. Some of these are fairly obvious things that Nintendo might already be thinking about doing, and some of them are bolder ideas that I doubt they have the cahones to do.

Sell the Dolphin for $99
Former Nintendo of America president Howard Lincoln already hinted at this in an interview that was conducted last year before he retired. It would surprise me to see the Dolphin launch at anything more than $150, but there's a big difference between $150 and $99 in the eyes of the mainstream consumer.

Nintendo needs to take advantage of the low-cost manufacturing process it has set up with IBM and sell the Dolphin at a mass-market $99, even if it means losing money on the hardware like Sony is doing with the PlayStation 2. Nintendo can afford to do this thanks to billions of dollars in cash reserves. Nintendo's annual net profit fell from $800 million to $500 million last year, but $500 million is still nothing to sneeze at.

Reach out to Third-Party Developers
There are three ways in which Nintendo needs to reach out to third-party publishers and developers. The first is to stop being such a tight-ass with royalties and licensing fees (this one is pretty much self-explanatory). The second is to make it clear to third-party companies that Nintendo's ultimate goal is to end up back on top of the video game industry, and the company is not content to sit back twiddling its thumbs and raking in millions of dollars off the Pokemon franchise.

Finally, Nintendo needs to make the Dolphin extremely easy to develop for. This would seem to be an obvious objective in the development of any video game system, but it seems that some companies have under-estimated the importance of making a system easy for third-party developers to work with. Despite the fact that the N64 is more powerful than the PlayStation, it's a pain in the ass to make an N64 game, so the PlayStation has always had much more third-party support (and third-party support ultimately makes or breaks every video game system).

Now it seems that history is repeating itself with the Xbox being much easier to work with than the PlayStation 2, only this time the system that's easier to work with is actually much more powerful, too. Regardless of anything else that Nintendo does, the Dolphin has no chance of winning the next-generation system war if doesn't have great third-party support, and it's not going to have great third-party support if it's hard to work with. Nintendo should think twice about pulling a Sony and sacrificing ease of development for raw power. Sometime before the N64 was released, Nintendo said to itself, "To hell with third-party developers." I hope Nintendo doesn't make the same mistake twice.

Create a Separate Brand for Kids Products
It's a simple idea, but creating a separate brand called "Nintendo Kids" would increase Nintendo's standing with hardcore gamers considerably. It's one thing if Nintendo wants to continue to pump out kiddie-oriented crap like Mario Party for the sake of profit, but it's slap to the face of hardcore gamers everywhere when games like Mario Party are mixed in with the rest of a system's lineup, indistinguishable from real games like Perfect Dark from a branding standpoint.

Nintendo should encourage retailers to have two sub-sections for Dolphin products: One for games that are in the Nintendo Kids line, and one for games that aren't in the Nintendo Kids line. This would make it easy for hardcore gamers to look in one place for games that are targeted at them rather than hordes of six-year-olds, and it would also make it easier for parents to pick out "appropriate" games when they're shopping for their kids.

Give Shigeru Miyamoto Some Focus
Nintendo's famed designer Shigeru Miyamoto recently told Famistu magazine that the wait for the first Zelda game on the Dolphin will be "only one year and a little bit... recently we came up with a technique to make the game in two years." Of course, this statement doesn't mean any more than any of Miyamoto's previous statements to the same effect over the years. It has been a very long time since Miyamoto developed a game in under three years, and there's no real reason to think that this is going to change anytime soon.

If Miyamoto is to have a chance to develop a game in under three years, he needs to spend more time developing games and less time supervising the development of games. Miyamoto should develop one or maybe two games at a time rather than supervising the development of a dozen. Miyamoto himself said in an interview last year that he wants to cut back on the number of projects in which he has "creative input."

Miyamoto wants to focus on less projects, and it's in the best interests of the company for Miyamoto to focus on less projects. Somehow, these two facts have not passed through the thick skull of Nintendo's principal owner Hiroshi Yamauchi. (If you think it's brash of me to say that Yamauchi has a thick skull, consider this: Yamauchi recently told Famistu that the Game Boy Advance will have performance similar to that of the Sega Dreamcast, despite the fact that the GBA can't even handle basic polygons.)

Never, Ever Delay a Game for Market Reasons
Nintendo and Rare have enough problems with delays for the sole reason that they're two of the slowest-working companies in the world, but it makes me sick to hear about Nintendo delaying games for "market reasons." You know, like when some executive decided, "I don't want Perfect Dark to ship in 1999 because it might cut into Donkey Kong 64 sales," or "I don't want StarCraft 64 to ship in 1999 because it might cut into Command & Conquer 64 sales," or "I don't want the Game Boy Advance to ship in 2000 because it might cut into Game Boy Color sales."

If a product is ready to ship to retailers right now, then for the love of God, ship it! Every company has to draw a line somewhere between maximizing profits and serving the needs of consumers. Nintendo has made it clear that they are more interested in squeezing every last possible dollar out of all their products than they are with pleasing their loyal customers.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that this is going to change anytime soon. Nintendo of America's head honchos Minoru Arakawa and Peter Main recently said in an interview with Games Business that if the Game Boy Color continues to sell well, the Game Boy Advance might not be released until 2002.

"When It's Done"
If Nintendo can't meet their own conservative release deadlines, they should stop announcing release dates all together. Adopt Id Software's strategy and give every Nintendo and Rare game a release date of "when it's done." This would be a bold strategy that would probably face bitter opposition from the marketing department, but it would be worth it.

It would finally put an end to the seemingly never-ending cycle of every single game from Nintendo and Rare being delayed at least once, and usually two-to-four times. Granted, it would be harder for the marketing department to come up with advertising schedules, but Id Software never seems to have a problem selling their games...

Stop Lying to Consumers
This is the most important suggestion of all, and the one that Nintendo is least likely to listen to. If Nintendo isn't willing to adopt a "when it's done" release date strategy, they could at least stop lying to consumers. Whether any Nintendo employee wants to admit it or not, the fact of the matter is that Nintendo has made a habit out of blatantly lying to consumers over the years.

It must have been embarrassing for Nintendo when Rare said that the Game Boy Camera functions in Perfect Dark were "fully operational" and "removed for political reasons" less than one week after Nintendo claimed the features were being taken out of the game because "they weren't working properly." Would you guys like a napkin to wipe the egg off your face?

When Nintendo originally announced that the Nintendo 64 was going to be released in the fall of 1995, do you really think they believed that? Or do you think they wanted to convince as many gullible people as possible to hold off on buying a PlayStation or Saturn because the N64 was "just a few months away"? Do you really think there was ever the slightest chance that the Dolphin would be released in the fall of 2000 in either the US or Japan, or was Nintendo just thinking about cutting into Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 sales?

Even now, the Dolphin is officially scheduled to be released in the spring of 2001, despite the fact that a fall 2001 release date is much more likely. Rare was scheduled to release four games for the Nintendo 64 this fall: Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Tooie, Dinosaur Planet, and Mickey's Speedway USA (yes, Mickey's Speedway USA). Surprise, surprise! None of these games are going to be released this year! All four games are now scheduled to be released in January or February of 2001, and even these new release dates are very questionable. These games are much more likely to be released in mid-to-late 2001 than January or February, especially the nowhere-near-finished Dinosaur Planet.

I'm not saying that Nintendo should announce a release date for a game and then stick to it no matter what. As much as I am annoyed and angered by Nintendo's constant delays, I still prefer delays over games that are released in unfinished form.

What I am proposing is that if a particular product is, realistically, not going to be released until the fall of 2001, the release date that Nintendo should announce is "the fall of 2001." It's not rocket science. It's simply telling consumers the truth, something that appears to be a foreign concept to Nintendo.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 3:39 PM

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Video Games--- At the official unveiling of the Nintendo Revolution video game console earlier today in Los Angeles, Nintendo confirmed what most industry insiders have known for the past five years: Nintendo is not interested in competing on the same level as Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is simply interested in releasing new systems that appeal to its core demographic (eight-to-thirteen year-old males), and that it can sell cheaply as the "budget brand" while still making the company a tidy profit.

Before I get into what Nintendo did reveal at E3 regarding its next game console, let's get into what the company didn't reveal. There is no release date window other than "2006," which is believed to be Nintendo's way of saying "mid-to-late 2006." There is no price other than "cheaper than the other two systems," which is a given for reasons explained later in this article. There was no controller shown, no technical specs, no games other than tech demos. The Revolution is clearly nowhere near as far along in development as the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, as Nintendo is operating in its own little world. Nintendo spent more time at its press conference talking about yet another re-release of the Game Boy Advance (another new look on the outside, same exact technology on the inside) than it did talking about the Revolution.

Hardware Power
In many ways, it's still the case that Nintendo simply doesn't get it, and never was this more evident than at the company's E3 press conference earlier today. The most glaring example of this fact is how remarkably underpowered the Revolution will be. As I wrote yesterday when comparing the Xbox 360 with the PlayStation 3, if you're going to release a video game console six months or a year after your competitors, you'd better make damn sure that it's significantly more powerful than the previously released systems.

In its own little world, detached from marketplace realities, Nintendo is simply thumbing its nose at this accepted reality of the video game industry. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will be anywhere from ten to thirty-five times more powerful than their predecessors--- it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but it's clear they will both be giant leaps over the original Xbox and PS2.

On the other hand, Nintendo has come right out and said that the Revolution will only be "two or three" times more powerful than the GameCube, which was an underpowered system in its own right With its nose in the air, Nintendo actually said at the press conference, "It's not all about having the turbo power, it's what you do with it." While that statement is true, it also completely misses the common-sense point, which is that your competitors are going to be able to do a heck of a lot more with their systems if they're in a completely different (and higher) technological ballpark.

DVD Movie Playback
So, on the proverbial list of ways in which Nintendo simply doesn't get it, number one is the fact that the Nintendo Revolution will be ridiculously under-powered. Number two is not a huge deal in and of itself, but it serves an example of how out of touch with reality Nintendo is. The Revolution will be able to play DVD movies... if and only if you buy an optional add-on that Nintendo described as "an internal attachment." That's right, the Revolution will be released SIX years after the PlayStation 2 hit the market and offered DVD movie playback right out of the box, but it still won't offer DVD movie playback out of the box. There's no justification for that. In 2006, that's just silly.

Hardware and Controller Design
Another disappointment is the hardware design of the Nintendo Revolution. Again, not a huge deal in and of itself, but it's just another example of how Nintendo simply doesn't get it. The Revolution system (picture available here) is literally the size of three DVD movie cases stacked together, and the person's hand in the picture is almost as big as the system. The Nintendo Revolution looks more like a cable modem or a carrying case than a video game system.

The system's controller was not shown at E3, but it's heavily rumored to use the same kind of touch-screen as the Nintendo DS handheld system. Having a touch-screen is a gimmick that's amusing for about five minutes on a handheld system... it's not something you want on your next-generation video game console.

Third-Party Support
Nintendo was keen to point out at its press conference that it will be easy for developers to make Revolution games, and I would certainly hope so given that it's almost a current-generation system being released in the next-generation marketplace. While Nintendo announced that every first-party franchise you'd expect will eventually be released on the Revolution (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Super Smash Bros), E3 is also an occasion where you're supposed to show up with a boat-load of third-party support and say, "Look at the huge amount of developers who are making games for our system!" Sony and Microsoft did that yesterday, but there was no specific third-party support for the Revolution mentioned in Nintendo's press conference. That doesn't mean that the Revolution won't have third-party support, but it does likely mean that it won't have as much third-party support as its competition, which was also the case with the GameCube and Nintendo 64.

On the (Sort of) Bright Side
On the bright side, the feature that sounds the coolest on the surface is the ability to download old NES and SNES games to play on the Revolution for an undisclosed fee. That's a great feature, but do you really want your new system's most impressive feature to be the fact that it lets you download games from your company's "glory days," before the company became an industry joke? The Nintendo Revolution will also be backwards-compatible with the Nintendo GameCube software library (such as it is...), and it will finally support online gameplay in some form, though Nintendo has still offered no specifics when it comes to a centralized online gaming service for the Revolution.

Nintendo is even further behind than Sony when it comes to a centralized online gameplay network, and if you want to know what Nintendo's core beliefs are when it comes to online gameplay, you can look at years' worth of quotes just like this one. This quote is from Nintendo head Satoru Iwata at the Japan Economic Foundation just last year: "Connection procedures to the Internet are still not easy... customers do not want online games." Iwata then said he could "prove his point" by comparing the sales of an online golf game for the PlayStation 2 to the sales of an offline golf game.

That kind of thinking serves as yet another example of the fact that Nintendo is years behind both Sony and Microsoft when it comes to understanding the video game industry that it once dominated. So far, there has been no indication that the Nintendo Revolution will be a departure from this trend.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 7:42 PM

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Video Games--- The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have both been officially revealed to the public. I have put together a comparative breakdown of the information that has been revealed about both systems, everything from the hardware to the controllers to the online gaming networks to the games.

-PlayStation 3 Launch Date: Sony has announced a release date of "Spring 2006" for the PlayStation 3. When video game companies announce release dates, "spring" normally means that they're planning on a March, April, or May launch. In the case of the PlayStation 3, Sony would not be specific about which market or markets will get the system in "Spring 2006." Until Sony says otherwise (which hasn't happened yet), the widely held belief is that the Spring 2006 release date only refers to the Japanese launch of the PS3. A release date in the summer of 2006 is much more likely for the North American and European markets.

-Xbox 360 Launch Date: The officially announced launch date for the Xbox 360 is Fall 2005 (most likely November) not only in North America, but also in Japan and Europe.

-PlayStation 3 Price: Mum's the word from both companies at this point. The expectation for any new system is that it will be no less than $300 and no more than $400, and there's no reason to believe that the PS3 and Xbox 360 will be exceptions. Previous reports were that a souped-up "multimedia version" of the PlayStation 3 with all kinds of extra functions would be released for over $500, but none of that has been confirmed or denied by Sony at this point.

-Xbox 360 Price: Again, mum's the word, but the expectation is somewhere between $300 and $400.

-PlayStation 3 Hard Drive: Sony announced at its press conference today that the PS3 will have a hard drive, but the company never specified whether the hard drive would be bundled with the system. Given how vague Sony was about its hard drive plans, it has to be considered a legitimate possibility that the PlayStation 3 hard drive will be sold separately, which would cut down on the number of games that are developed to take advantage of the hard drive's capabilities.

-Xbox 360 Hard Drive: Microsoft has announced that every Xbox 360 system will come with a 20 GB hard drive, so third-party developer support for the hard drive will not be an issue.

-PlayStation 3 Backwards Compatibility: It was expected that the PlayStation 3 would be backwards compatible with the PlayStation 2, and Sony didn't disappoint. Sony announced that not only will the PS3 be capable of playing PS2 games, but it will also be capable of playing PlayStation One games.

-Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility: The big question for Microsoft going into E3 was whether or not the Xbox 360 would be backwards compatible and able to play games from the original Xbox. It was considered unlikely as recently as a few weeks ago, but Microsoft surprised everyone (including Sony) by announcing today that the Xbox 360 will indeed have backwards compatibility... but only to a point. The Xbox 360 will be able to play most, but not all, Xbox games, in much the same way that the PlayStation 2 can play most, but not all, PlayStation One games.

-PlayStation 3 DVD Movie Playback: You'll be able to play DVD movies right out of the box, just as with the PlayStation 2.

-Xbox 360 DVD Movie Playback: You'll be able to play DVD movies right out of the box. You will not be required to buy a "remote control add-on" in order to watch DVD movies, as was required with the original Xbox. There will be a DVD remote control made by Microsoft for the Xbox 360, and it might even be bundled with the system, but it will not be required to watch or control DVD movies on the system.

-PlayStation 3 Hardware Design: To be perfectly honest, the PlayStation 3 console (picture available here) looks like a copy machine or a desktop computer printer. It's bigger than the Xbox 360 in terms of its physical dimensions, and it just doesn't look like a video game system. It's not hideous in a "My GameCube looks like a damn lunch-box!" kind of way, but it's far from pretty.

-Xbox 360 Hardware Design: The Xbox 360 console (picture available here) has a slimmed down and very sleek-looking design, and it has the "Ring of Light" that will be a consistent theme on the system and the controller, and it has a side opening for the hard drive to seamlessly slide in or out of the system so that you can take your game saves and Xbox Live identity to a friend's house. Like the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 will be able to stand vertically or horizontally.

-PlayStation 3 Appearance Customization: Sony picked up on the "customization" theme that consumers are now demanding with multiple color choices for the PlayStation 3 (gray, white, and black).

-Xbox 360 Appearance Customization: Microsoft really nailed this on the head with the whole "removable face-plate" concept. This allows you to completely change the look and feel of your Xbox 360 console simply by removing the default system face-plate with the press of a button and replacing it with your choice of hundreds of custom face-plates that will be available. The whole "Pimp My Ride" culture that is increasingly prevalent with cars and cell phones is already going nuts over the Xbox 360's removable face-plates.

-PlayStation 3 Controller Design: To be brutally honest, if there's any area where the comparison is not even close, it's this one. The PlayStation 3's controller (picture available here) has a downright putrid "boomerang" shape, which might have looked good on an artist's sketch pad somewhere, but it looks like it would be very uncomfortable to hold in your hands. It's not like the boomerang shape is some kind of new, revolutionary idea... it has been tried many times before by many different third-party controller manufacturers, and it has always failed because it's simply not comfortable. If the original Xbox was hurt by its original controller design, the PS3 will be hurt far more by its awful controller design. On the positive side, both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 controllers will be wireless, so there's no more worrying about cords.

-Xbox 360 Controller Design: The Xbox 360's controller (picture available here) is pretty much what you'd expect--- wireless, looks nice, nothing revolutionary. All Microsoft had to do in order to top Sony in this category was do better than "putrid," and they've done that.

-PlayStation 3 Technical Specs: This has been the most surprising thing to me so far. If you're releasing a video game console six to nine months after your competitor's console, you better make damn well sure that it's far more powerful than the system that is already on the market. That's why it was so ridiculous when the GameCube was released in 2001, a full year after the PlayStation 2, and was in some areas actually slightly less powerful than the PS2. There's no doubt that the PlayStation 3 will be more powerful than the Xbox 360, but again, it better be if it's launching 6-9 months after the Xbox 360.

-Xbox 360 Technical Specs: What's surprising is that the PS3 is not really leaps and bounds above the Xbox 360 in the technical specs department, as we were led to believe it would be in recent months (the number floated had been "about three times as powerful as the Xbox 360"). In some areas, the PS3 is only slightly more powerful, and in one particular way, the Xbox 360 actually has an advantage. Having 512 MB of unified RAM will make it easier and more efficient for developers to make games for the Xbox 360, as compared to the PS3 with its 256 MB of RAM dedicated to the CPU and 256 MB of RAM dedicated to the graphics processor. Again, there's no doubt that the PlayStation 3 is the more powerful system, but that's not a surprise given the launch dates.

-PlayStation 3 Online Gaming Network: Sony has never had a centralized online gaming service and was very vague during the press conference about its plans for the PS3's online network. The phrase "PlayStation World" was used once, but it was not clear if that will be the actual name for the online gaming network. What Sony did say is that the network "will be fundamentally focused on community, communication, commerce, and content." Believe me, if Sony had specifics to show off, they would be all over the place right now. The lack of any specifics could mean that Sony is well behind Microsoft when it comes to developing and nurturing a centralized online gaming community, which would not be surprising given that Sony is about four years late to that particular party.

-Xbox 360 Online Gaming Network: The Xbox 360 will feature the next generation of Xbox Live, which will be backwards compatible with Xbox Live for the original Xbox and will allow members to seamlessly transfer their accounts from one system to the other. The big points for Microsoft are the "GamerCards" that will give you a complete online identity, as well as a host of other community-building features. There will also be a two-tiered service plan. What we now know as "Xbox Live" will be "Xbox Live Gold," and now there will also be "Xbox Live Silver," which is free and will still allow people to have unlimited voice-chat with friends, transfer files, and play games for free on certain weekends. Every Xbox 360 system will come with one free month of Xbox Live Gold so that hopefully more people will stick with its added features and seven-days-per-week online gameplay.

-GAMES: The most important thing, as always, is the game line-up for each system. In this area, both companies (Microsoft and Sony) have shown off a huge number of games for their respective systems. Sony has not been specific about the number of games it expects to launch alongside the PlayStation 3, while Microsoft has said that it expects somewhere from 25 to 40 games to be released in the Xbox 360 "launch window," which Microsoft characterizes as being released at launch or shortly after launch.

Both Microsoft and Sony announced and/or displayed a number of new installments in existing franchises, some or most of which could end up being released for both systems companies instead of just one or the other. The only exception to this is first-party games, meaning that a Microsoft-published game is never going to be released for the PlayStation 3, and a Sony-published game is never going to be released for the Xbox 360.

In the case of the Xbox 360, the third-party franchise games on display include brand new installments of Quake (not Doom), Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Dead or Alive, Call of Duty, Madden NFL, Tiger Woods Golf, Need for Speed, Tony Hawk, Battlefield 1942, Burnout, Test Drive, NBA Live, NBA 2K, Top Spin Tennis, and Amped (Top Spin and Amped are now going to be published by 2K Games instead of Microsoft). First-party franchise games that have been announced, which will definitely be Xbox 360 exclusives, include brand new installments of Halo, Perfect Dark, Fable, and Project Gotham Racing.

In the case of the PlayStation 3, the third-party franchise games on display include brand new installments of Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, Tekken, Fight Night, Unreal Tournament, Red Dead Revolver, Spider-Man, Formula One, and Mobile Suit Gundam. First-party franchise games that have been announced, which will definitely be PlayStation 3 exclusives, include brand new installments of Gran Turismo, Warhawk, Killzone, and The Getaway.

So, both systems have a lot of games in the pipeline that are new additions to existing franchises. The most startling thing about the game line-ups so far is that the Xbox 360 appears to have an advantage in the number of new franchises being created on the system, at least in terms of what is being shown at E3.

The PlayStation 3 has MotorStorm and Heavenly Sword from Sony, a new first-person shooter from the creators of Ratchet & Clank, Killing Day from Ubi Soft, and Fifth Phantom Saga from Sega, but the list of new franchises being displayed for the Xbox 360 blows away the number of new franchises currently being shown for the PlayStation 3.

On the Xbox 360, the list of first-party "new franchise" games, all of which will be published by Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox 360, includes: Two new RPG franchises from the original creator of Final Fantasy (called Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey), Kameo: Elements of Power from Rare, and Gears of War from Epic Games, the creators of Unreal and Unreal Tournament.

The list of third-party "new franchise" games for the Xbox 360 is staggering. Despite being shown as Xbox 360 games at and before E3, many of these games will also be released for the PlayStation 3 eventually, but many of them won't be. These games include a new horror game from the original creator of Resident Evil, Ninety-Nine Nights from the original creator of Space Channel 5, two excellent-looking games from Sega called Full Auto and Condemned, The Outfit from the creators of Homeworld and Sigma, Saint's Row from the creators of Red Faction, Alan Wake from the creators of Max Payne, Dark Sector from the creators of Unreal Championship, Frame City Killer from Namco, and Dead Rising from Capcom.

Two franchises to keep an eye on in the future will be Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy. Grand Theft Auto has been hinted at for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but Rockstar is keeping its cards very close to its vest and is not going to reveal anything until the next-generation Grand Theft Auto game is much closer to completion. The game could be released for one system and not the other, or it could be released for both systems at the same time, or it could be released for one system and then be released for the other system six months later (which has been the set-up with the PS2 and original Xbox).

As for Final Fantasy and other games from Square Enix, it appears that the company is no longer in bed strictly with Sony. After completely shunning the original Xbox, Square Enix has announced that the massively multi-player online RPG Final Fantasy 11 is coming to the Xbox 360 with full Xbox Live support, and it will be cross-compatible with the PC version. Square Enix also showed video footage of a currently untitled new game for the Xbox 360. As for the single-player RPG Final Fantasy 12, Square Enix has announced that the game will not be released until 2006, and it is apparently still scheduled to be for the PlayStation 2, not the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

So far, I'm more excited about the Xbox 360 than I am about the PlayStation 3, but there's plenty to be excited about on both fronts. I'm not someone who is going to put all my eggs in one basket and say, "System A rocks and System B sucks!" Why anyone would have that kind of attitude in today's day and age is beyond me. Right now, both systems are looking like must-haves for any hardcore video game fan.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 11:56 PM

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Television and Video Games--- Other than mixed martial arts, the two industries that I cover closely are the video game industry and the television industry, and it just so happens that this is a very big week for both of them.

The biggest video game trade show of the year, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), is taking place this week in Los Angeles, while the TV industry has its annual upfront presentations spaced out from Monday to Thursday of this week. The upfront presentations are where the TV networks reveal their fall line-ups and also drop the axe on numerous shows.

The schedule for the upfront presentations is that NBC is presenting today, ABC and The WB are presenting tomorrow, CBS is presenting on Wednesday, and Fox and UPN are presenting on Thursday.

Status as of first post at 4:02 PM:
-So far there's nothing new on the E3 front that hasn't already been reported on Ivan's Blog, as the show doesn't actually start until Wednesday. However, Sony is expected to hold a press conference before the end of the day today (Monday), and the scheduled topic of discussion is the PlayStation 3, which isn't expected to be released in the United States until mid-to-late 2006. With the huge splash already made by the Xbox 360 and the fact that Microsoft is launching the system this year, you can expect Sony to come out swinging and do whatever it can to muffle the impact of the Xbox 360. More updates from E3 and the upfront presentations as events unfold...

UPDATE at 4:48 PM:
-Huge news as NBC officially cancels the newest Law & Order spin-off, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, after just a few months on the air, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf is extremely unhappy with NBC's decision...

-NBC officially cancels poorly-rated shows The Contender, Committed, American Dreams, and Medical Investigation...

-NBC renews the critically acclaimed but poorly-rated The Office and has it on the fall schedule in the Tuesdays at 9:30 PM timeslot...

-NBC renews West Wing despite ratings collapse in the past two years, will move the show to Sundays at 8:00 PM...

-Moderately rated Scrubs and Fear Factor are both renewed by NBC, but are not on the fall schedule and will instead be used as midseason replacement shows in early 2006...

UPDATE at 5:20 PM:
-Remember, these are pretty much just the headlines, more details on all of this news will be forthcoming on Ivan's Blog in the coming days...

-Fox officially RENEWS Arrested Development for a full third season of 22 episodes, this comes amid low ratings but tons of critical acclaim, Fox made this announcement today despite the fact that its upfront presentation isn't until Thursday...

-NBC renews Joey and Will & Grace despite only moderately successful ratings and will keep both shows in the same timeslots, Joey was considered a question mark for renewal after one season...

-NBC has The Apprentice on the schedule for this fall instead of holding off until 2006, showing that they learned nothing from the overexposure that was caused by scheduling the second and third seasons too close together...

-Speaking of overexposure, the "Martha Stewart" version of The Apprentice from series creator Mark Burnett will air on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM...

-The Biggest Loser, the reality show about weight loss, will return for a second season this fall in the Tuesdays at 8:00 PM timeslot...

UPDATE at 5:46 PM:
-News leaking out of Fox like a faucet despite the fact that the network's upfront presentation isn't until Thursday...

-Fox set to cancel lots of low-rated shows, including Quintuplets, Life on a Stick, and a trio of failed Thursday night shows (Tru Calling, Point Pleasant, and North Shore)

-Fox rumored to be renewing The Bernie Mac Show despite very low ratings and very little critical acclaim, the show was considered as good as dead a week ago...

-Fox also said to be renewing the very low rated King of the Hill...

-Fox apparently renewing That 70's Show and Stacked despite moderately low ratings, while status of Trading Spouses is still unknown...

UPDATE at 6:17 PM:
-Numerous ABC rumors making the rounds, including the network renewing The George Lopez Show but NOT renewing My Wife & Kids, which was a breakout hit just two years ago...

-ABC mercifully cancels new series Eyes and Blind Justice, but is rumored to be renewing Jake in Progress for some reason that mankind will never truly understand...

-ABC rumored to be cancelling Eight Simple Rules and Complete Savages on the Friday night line-up while surprisingly renewing Less Than Perfect, whose ratings have been less than perfect, the cancellation of Eight Simple Rules is very surprising...

-Reality shows Wife Swap and Super Nanny rumored to be getting season renewals from ABC, as is freshman comedy Rodney...

UPDATE at 6:44 PM:
-The WB and the producers of Reba got in a huge dispute over licensing rights fees, WB was almost forced to cancel one of its highest-rated shows, but the dispute has apparently been resolved at the last minute and a renewal of the series is expected to be announced at tomorrow's WB upfront presentation...

-WB set to give season renewal orders to One Tree Hill and Blue Collar TV...

-Status unknown for WB shows What I Like About You and Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge...

-WB rumored to be cancelling Jack & Bobby, The Starlet, and Summerland...

-The only networks that are not willing to leak out info at this time are CBS and UPN, which just happen to be the two networks owned by Viacom...

-More updates from the upfront presentations to come tomorrow...

-In the meantime, check out this hilariously over-the-top and intentionally cheesy commercial for the cable channel G4's coverage of E3. Just click here and then click where it says "Watch the Video." Since E3 isn't open to the public, it would be exciting for the average gamer to be able to go to E3 or even "watch E3," but these guys take it way over the top, and that's the joy of the commercial. You may have seen the 30-second commercial if you've been watching G4 in recent days, but the link above takes you to the full-length three-minute version. Be prepared to have the theme song implant itself in your brain and not let go...

Labels: Television (Non-MMA), Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 4:02 PM

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Assorted Topics--- Today, we've got word on the unveiling of the Xbox 360, Jane Fonda making better use of her time, and the second-round match-ups in the Pride Grand Prix.

Video Games: Xbox 360 Unveiled
Microsoft's next-generation video game console, the Xbox 360, has finally been unveiled with a sleek hardware design, some revolutionary upgrades to the Xbox Live online gaming service, and a huge list of games in development (including exclusive new franchises from the original creators of Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and Space Channel 5).

The biggest piece of information that wasn't previously leaked out is that it appears as though every Xbox 360 system will come with a 20 GB hard drive (which will be removable and highly portable), thus putting to rest the theories of "one bundle with a hard drive, one bundle without a hard drive." The launch date has been revealed to be "Fall 2005" worldwide, not the previously expected scenario of, "Fall 2005 in the United States and much later everywhere else." The price is still unknown and is believed to be somewhere between $300 and $400, which is the normal range for a new game console. More specifics on the launch date and price are expected to be announced next week at E3.

GameSpot wrote two excellent articles covering the Xbox 360 unveiling, one of them with all of the pertinent details about the system, and the other with an inside look at the creation of the system and Microsoft's vision for it.

And yes, that is the Xbox 360 on the cover of Time Magazine this week, along with the following tantalizing quote in Time's article from none other than Bill Gates himself: "The day Sony launches the new PlayStation, they will walk right into Halo 3." This would seem to confirm the persistent rumors that Microsoft is planning to counter the launch of the PlayStation 3 by releasing Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 on the very same day (the PlayStation 3 is expected to launch in the United States in mid-to-late 2006). Given that Halo 2 has already sold nearly seven million copies worldwide, and has driven Xbox hardware sales worldwide, and has literally doubled the subscriber base for Xbox Live, it seems like a brilliant strategy to launch Halo 3 on the same day as the PS3.

This is not an underhanded tactic on Microsoft's part. Not only would Sony do the same thing, but they already have. You may recall that Sony timed the release of Final Fantasy 8 for the original PlayStation to fall on September 9, 1999 in the United States, which just happened to be the US launch date of the Sega Dreamcast (may it rest in peace).

Movies: Jane Fonda Takes Time out of Busy Schedule to Make Critically Panned Movie
Jane Fonda was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule of giving aid and comfort to countries at war with the United States to make a stereotypical mother-in-law comedy with Jennifer Lopez, whose career is equally stagnant at this point. The movie is currently averaging a score of 32 out of 100 from movie critics, according to MetaCritic.

Mixed Martial Arts: Pride Announces Second-Round Grand Prix Match-Ups
I previously wrote about The Bracketology of the Pride Grand Prix and all of the possible match-ups that Pride could make in the second round. Now Pride has officially announced the second-round match-ups. Defending champion Vanderlei Silva will face Kazuhiro Nakamura, the Brazilian Top Team's Antonio Rogerio Nogueira will face Chute Boxe Academy's Mauricio "Shogun" Rua in a Brazil vs. Brazil match-up, Igor Vovchanchyn will face Alistair Overeem, and Ricardo Arona will face Kazushi Sakuraba.

This scenario is very similar to the "Brazil vs. Brazil" scenario laid out in my previous article, except Pride only made one all-Brazil match, and they refrained from making the obvious Japan vs. Japan match-up of Nakamura vs. Sakuraba. Purely from a business standpoint, I think Pride is going to regret the way they have made the brackets for the second round, because they left open the possibility of having three Brazilians in the final four, and they have almost assured their "nightmare scenario" of having zero Japanese fighters in the final four. Nakamura will be a huge underdog against Silva, and Sakuraba will be a huge underdog against Arona.

As for the other two match-ups, Vovchanchyn vs. Overeem is a fight that Vovchanchyn will be favored to win, but Overeem should not be underestimated by anyone (as Vitor Belfort found out). Pride has put the tallest fighter in the tournament up against the shortest, as Overeem will have an eight-inch height advantage in this fight.

In my previous article on this subject, Nogueira vs. Shogun is the one match-up that was in all three of the "top three scenarios that make the most sense from a business standpoint." This match simply had to happen, and the style match-up has "Potential Fight of the Year" written all over it. Nogueira is a master of the ground game with his Jiu-Jitsu skills, but is also very good at stand-up striking. Shogun is a master at striking with his Muay Thai skills, but also knows what he is doing on the ground. One could easily envision Nogueira winning this fight by submission, or Shogun winning by knockout, or either fighter winning a very close judge's decision.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 7:20 PM

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Video Games and Television--- There are two big events on television tonight, and it just so happens that they are both airing at the same time. The next-generation Xbox system will be unveiled on MTV in a half-hour special from 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern Time, while the season finale of The Apprentice airs on NBC from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern Time. If you have a TIVO, you already know that there is a way around this (and if you don't have a TIVO, shame on you!). The Xbox special re-airs on MTV at 1:30 AM Eastern Time, so if you want to watch both shows you can just watch The Apprentice live and watch (or tape) the replay of the Xbox unveiling.

I have previously written about who I think will be the winner on The Apprentice (in a word: Kendra). After the three-hour death march of a season finale that The Apprentice offered in its second season and the ensuing backlash about it being too long, NBC has over-reacted this year by making the season finale only one hour. I agree that three hours was too long, but I believe just as strongly that one hour is too short.

There is a logical reason for this happening, though. NBC wants to have the heavily-watched season finale of The Apprentice lead into the season finale of ER because ER needs all the help it can get at this point. After being untouchable in the ratings for almost ten years in the 10:00 PM timeslot, the mighty has finally fallen this year as CBS' Without a Trace has consistently beaten ER in the ratings. Last week, for example, Without a Trace drew a 12.3 rating compared to the 10.5 rating drawn by ER, something that was just unthinkable as recently as one year ago. Giving ER a strong lead-in like The Apprentice season finale is simply NBC's response to this problem on this particular week, and I don't think they're all that concerned about whether ot not it will hurt the quality of The Apprentice season finale

As for the next-generation Xbox unveiling, Microsoft should make a mental note that goes something like this: "Do not invite dozens of celebrities to your gaming system's premiere party and expect them to honor the non-disclosure agreements that they sign." Pictures from the unveiling have already leaked out on numerous web sites, along with the fact that the official name for the system is "Xbox 360" and the official launch date is November of this year. The mysterious grass-roots marketing web site, OurColony.net, has been counting down for weeks to 9:30 PM Eastern Time tonight. What will happen when the countdown reaches zero? I don't know, but it will likely involve a continuation of the "Colony" posters being plastered all over major metropolitan areas throughout America.

Labels: Television (Non-MMA), Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 4:09 PM

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Video Games--- As a new feature on Ivan's Blog that will be recurring once every week or two, I'm going to re-posting some old gems from Master Gamer on the new site. For any new visitors to this site who don't already know, Master Gamer was a video game web site that I ran from 1997 to 2002. In addition to praising the games that deserved praise, I was never shy about brutally ripping into the games that deserved to be brutally ripped into.

One example of this would be Carmageddon 64 for the Nintendo 64, which may very well be among the top five worst games of all time. It's worth pointing out in retrospect that Titus' reputation for releasing horrible, buggy, unfinished games would continue to plague the company until consumers simply stopped buying its games and the company finally went out of business in 2004. Carmageddon 64 may have been the low point in Titus' history, and that's really saying something.

Carmadeddon 64 Review
Originally Published in December 1999 on Master Gamer

The kings of crap at Titus have struck again. Titus, Interplay, and several other companies that want to spread the blame as thinly as possible have turned a great PC game into one of the worst Nintendo 64 games ever created. I can't begin to imagine the mental pain that the developers of this game must feel when they wake up in the morning and look themselves in the mirror knowing that they dedicated over three years of their lives to creating Carmageddon 64.

There are three modes of gameplay in Carmageddon 64, none of which are the slightest bit of fun. You can partake in your basic "kill all of the other cars" scenario, you can race to reach a bunch of checkpoints (which the instruction manual actually refers to as "Boring!"), and you can kill all of the zombies in a level. The original Carmageddon was a very gory game with humans and red blood, not the zombies and green blood of Carmageddon 64. The zombies in this game run in slow motion and sometimes get stuck in walls, making them impossible to hit.

The graphics resemble a first-generation Super Nintendo game, and a bad one at that. Actually, no SNES game ever looked this blurry and all-around ugly. Red cars look just like bombs from a distance, and there's no way to tell what it is that you're approaching until you're just about ready to collide with it. The draw-in that takes place in the backgrounds is absolutely ridiculous. You can easily find specific spots on the levels where it happens, causing background objects to appear and disappear at your will. One of these background objects is a billboard with a clown's face on it that says, "FUN." Is that supposed to be funny?

You've just got to love the creative character names and designs, such as "Batmad" (instead of Batman) with his neon pink, checkered car. It also seems that the developers added a little mini-game to the character select screen, which sometimes requires you to press the A button up to four times before the game finally realizes that you're trying to select a character.

The inconsistency of the entire game can be summarized by the damage model. In theory, you have to worry about your health bar running out if you take too much damage. In execution, you don't have to worry about that because you can replenish your health at any time with the money you earn from crashing into other cars and zombies. Repairing your car costs a couple hundred dollars, and it's not uncommon to have $50,000 or even $100,000 in your pocket. This begs the question: Why have a health meter at all if you can infinitely replenish it?

The water is also very inconsitent. Sometimes crashing into the water does nothing; you just press the L button to "recover" and go merrily on your way. Sometimes crashing into the water will cause you to eventually drown to death if you're out of "recover credits," but not until you've spent several minutes trying to move around in the darkness, occasionally trying to go towards the light of what appears to be land in the distance. And of course, sometimes water will inexplicably make your car explode.

There are three things that you would have to accomplish in order to have any fun with Carmageddon 64, and you should consider yourself very lucky if you're able to do any two of these things at once.

1. See where you're going
2. Control where you're going
3. Know where you're going

You can't see where you're going because the developers of this game decided to put a giant status bar on the worst possible spot on the screen. The only way to get past this is to switch to first-person mode, which is very disorienting in its own right. Also, you're pretty much screwed if you're Player 2 in a two-player game. If Player 1 changes his or her camera angle, yours will sometimes change against your will, but only after a delayed reaction.

You can't control where you're going because any attempt to move left or right at a high speed will cause your car to skid out of control. Therefore, the only way to smash into another car is to face off with it head-on, then back up and smash into it again, and repeat this process until you eventually lunge for the power button.

Finally, you can't know where you're going in the level because all of the textures and level designs are as generic as can be, making it hard to distinguish one area from another. And if you happen to be on one of the darker levels, you can just forget about knowing where you're going right from the get-go. Some of the levels are so dark that your car will be completely surrounded by blackness at times. Somebody give those artists a raise!

Imagine for a moment that you're in your house walking towards your dog to give it a dog biscuit. In one hand you've got the dog biscuit and in the other hand you have a Twizzler that you're planning to eat. Somehow as you're walking along, you're not paying attention to which object is in which hand, and you accidentally take a bite of the dog biscuit. This would be horribly unpleasant, but still would cause you more pleasure than Carmageddon 64 at its best. Both experiences will leave a bad taste in your mouth for days to come.

Carmageddon 64's inhuman sucktitude is made all the more inexcusible by the fact that the PC version of Carmageddon is actually a very good game. You might want to laugh at Carmageddon 64 and mock it with your friends for a while, but it won't be long until one of them asks, "Can we play something else?"

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 3:50 PM

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Video Games--- Now that the cheat and glitch fix for Halo 2 is out, it is much harder for people to cheat, and those who do cheat are getting suspended or banned at a drastically increased rate. Bungie has also made subtle changes to the weapon balancing, such as making plasma grenades and melee attacks more powerful while making certain weapon combinations less powerful. The balance-tweaking and the cheat-fixing have combined to significantly improve the Halo 2 online experience, and it's only going to get better when the new maps come out this Monday.

When asked on Bungie.net how it will deal with people who break the rules in Halo 2, Bungie offered the following diplomatic response:

"If you're cheating, it's very easy for us to detect and you WILL be banned from matchmaking. Also, are you being an idiot online? Cursing continually? Making threats? Being a racist jackass? BANNED. Oh, and a word to screamers – BANNED. Synonym for a group of musicians? BAND. Things are going to get a lot tighter around here. We have more tools and better awareness, and all you have to do to avoid being BANNED is QUIT BEING AN IDIOT. You're not funny. You're not clever. You're a boring loser and people hate you. And I hope you get boils. And I hope the boils are full of acid-spewing spiders that burst out and hump your face."

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 4:53 PM

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Video Games--- One of the most frequently asked questions that I receive is, "What's the deal with the PS2 hard drive? Where the hell is it? I thought it was supposed to be out months ago!" From everything I have heard, it was just earlier this year that Sony finally started to realize how much of a nightmare it would be to release a hard drive add-on for a video game console, an add-on that would cost $100 at the very least. Only a tiny percentage of PS2 owners would buy it (since every peripheral over $50 has failed miserably since the beginning of video game history), and an equally small percentage of games would support the hard drive. The PS2 hard drive would basically to be doomed to failure from the start unless it was bundled with every PS2 ever sold from the beginning, which it wasn't.

Why it took Sony this long to realize such an obvious fact is beyond me, but at least they did realize that fact before releasing the damn thing. There's a small chance that Sony will still release the hard drive in the US at some point next year, but it's becoming less and less likely with each passing week and month. If they do release the hard drive in the US, it will only serve to dilute and fragment the PS2 marketplace.

As for the question of manually putting a hard drive into the back of a PS2 system and getting it to work, I'm sure it could be done and I'm sure that someone has probably done it somewhere. But once it's set up, then what? If zero games support it, there would be no use for such a hard drive. PlayStation 2 games will not take advantage of any hard drive add-on unless the game is specifically programmed to do so, and game developers have no motivation to add such a feature to their games if the PS2 hard drive is never even released in the US.

As with many other aspects of the Xbox vs. PS2 vs. GameCube war (like Xbox Live vs. the PS2's Clusterf--k Network vs. the GameCube's Non-Existent Network), Microsoft is the only company that had the foresight to get it right. Microsoft made sure that every Xbox system ever sold had a hard drive built-in, no matter how much money it would cost the company. As a result, there's no add-on for consumers to buy, and game publishers know that 100% of Xbox owners have Xbox hard drives. With this knowledge in mind, game companies are actually taking advantage of its capabilities and making better games.

Games like Project Ego, BC, Halo 2, Brute Force, UFC Tapout 2, Ninja Gaiden, Project Gotham Racing 2, Perfect Dark Zero, and Doom 3 quickly come to mind, and not one of the games on that list will be released for any other console. Developers have only hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the unique possibilites that the Xbox hard drive offers for innovative game design. As a result, the difference in general game quality between the Xbox and PS2 is likely to swing more and more in the Xbox's favor in 2003 and 2004. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that there will ever be more Xbox systems in people's homes worldwide than PS2 systems, but it does mean that the Xbox may quickly become the system of choice for hardcore gamers.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 4:56 PM

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Ivan's Blog has taken over the MasterGamer.com main page, so the URL is now simply http://www.mastergamer.com. All of the old Master Gamer content is still available at http://www.mastergamer.com/index2.html and will remain available at that URL indefinitely. Now, has anyone seen my shoes?

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 7:34 PM

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Video Games--- Where are Take-Two Interactive's lawyers when you need them? There hasn't been a more blatant case of one company recycling another company's game than Namco's recently-released Dead To Rights, which is so similar in so many ways to Take-Two's Max Payne that one can't help but wonder if Take-Two is getting a royalty check in the mail from Namco. The game concept, story, graphical style, gameplay, and Bullet Time feature (even if Namco doesn't call it Bullet Time) are all eerily similar to Max Payne.

Most laughable of all is the commercial for Dead To Rights, which may in fact just be full-motion-video of Max Payne's intro. Some of the dialogue in the commercial seems to be taken word-for-word, or just slightly reworded, from Max Payne's introductory sequence. Even the talk about the city being "alive" and being unforgiving is ripped straight out of Max Payne. The only thing that separates the two games is that Dead To Rights also offers hand-to-hand combat sequences... or should I say, simple, repetitive hand-to-hand combat sequences that suck the life out of the game.

Ah, to reminisce about the good old days, when Namco used to shamelessly re-hash its own games over and over again, before they moved on to shamelessly re-hashing other people's games. How I miss those magical days of being charged 50 bucks for such disappointing cut-and-paste-jobs as Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament, as opposed to being charged 50 bucks for a disappointing cut-and-paste-job like Dead To Rights. Unless Tekken 4 and/or Soul Calibur 2 knock the gaming public's socks off of its collective ass, I think that all of the non-Namco-fanboys among us can agree that Namco's status as an elite, A-list developer is a thing of the past.

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 5:52 PM

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Video Games--- I don't think there has ever been a worse time to be a fan of wrestling games. Everything seemed nice and peachy when THQ, World Wrestling Entertainment, and Japanese developer Aki teamed up to produce such wrestling classes as WrestleMania 2000 and No Mercy. Then THQ and Aki split up, and THQ planted its nose firmly into the buttocks of another Japanese developer named Yuke's, a company that has done nothing but develop one disappointing, over-hyped Smackdown game after another.

Things only got worse earlier this year when THQ and former UFC game developer Anchor released the god-awful WWE Raw for the Xbox, which sucks in so many different ways that it's rather puzzling. It's almost like it's all a joke and a THQ representative is going to jump out from behind a corner any minute now and say, "We got you! Here's the real game!" Alas, this has yet to happen, but what did happen is that THQ and Yuke's released the equally disappointing WWE WrestleMania X8 for the GameCube. This game was hyped up by numerous video game publications as the ultimate wrestling game despite the dubious reputation of its developer. Well, it turns out that common sense and logic were right, and the hype was wrong, because WrestleMania X8 is a crap wrestling game if there ever was one.

Worse yet, there's nothing on the horizon to indicate that things will be looking up anytime soon. What is there to look forward to? Yet another Smackdown game disappointment from the masters of clusterf--k gameplay at Yuke's? I don't think so. Legends of Wrestling 2 from Acclaim? Yeah, Acclaim will release a good wrestling game right around the same time that Sony releases a good football game. The upcoming "Backyard Wrestling" game from Eidos Interactive? That's just what we need, Eidos stinking up yet another game genre and legitimizing/glorifying idiotic backyard wrestling in the process. Ironically, the best-playing wrestling game of the near future might be EA's Def Jam Wrestling since it's being developed by Aki, but how much fun can it be to wrestle with a bunch of rappers and comedians?

Labels: Video Games, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

posted by Ivan Trembow at 3:06 PM

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Ivan's Blog is now up and running. For anyone who doesn't know what a blog is, I'll use the official Salon.com definition of the word blog: "A blog, or weblog, is a personal web site updated frequently with links, commentary, and anything else you like. New items go on top and older items flow down the page. Blogs can be political journals and/or personal diaries; they can focus on one narrow subject or range across a universe of topics. The blog form is unique to the Web-- and highly addictive."

Ivan's Blog will let you read whatever it is that comes flowing out of my brain, thanks to a handy-dandy USB port that I recently had installed in the base of my skull. Topics will include video games, mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, television, sports, and whatever else the USB port is able to process. Your results may vary; use only as directed. Ideally, Ivan's Blog will knock your socks off your ass. You brought your ass, right?

Labels: Video Games

posted by Ivan Trembow at 2:51 PM

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