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Passion For Games - April 2007

Blogger

I have also open and decided to run two blogs. Of course at Orble.com which has been a starting zone for me. Now I always had a blog open at blogger. Which I will be updating more and more and making sure I have both blogs attractive and updated with the latest information. I will continue to follow my gaming news and etc. I want to grow and want to get my voice out there.

If you will be interested in checking out my other blog. Check it out here



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April 30th 2007 @ 11:39

Posted By: gaming guru - Category: No Category
   


Clip: Ancient Atari Ad

This one is truly ancient and believe me, I should know. It's amazing to look back on these ads and remember a time when we thought those giant chunky things were the greatest thing ever. Not to mention how excited I remember being about Adventure on my brand new 2600. That square with an arrow for a sword was the most amazing thing we had ever seen, especially right in our own homes. I can only imagine what games will be like 25 years from now when we look back and say "Man those PS3 graphics sure were crap. How did we ever play that and think it was cool?"



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April 29th 2007 @ 16:37

Posted By: gaming guru - Category: No Category
   


Manhunt 2 screens



Website Computer and Video Games has posted thirteen screens for the upcoming ultra-violence fest, Manhunt 2. To say that they are disturbing might be understating thing just a bit, especially first thing in the morning. I've posted a few images after the jump, but for the full gallery, check out Computer and Video Games' site.

I can only imagine what our friend Phantom Jocks (I'm trying not to use his real name if humanly possible) would have to say about these as he sips his morning cup of bitter. As a matter of fact, I think I shall send him a link to this gallery right now...



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April 29th 2007 @ 16:34

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Championship Gaming Series Announces $5 Million Annual Player Payroll



Counter-Strike®: Source® , Dead or Alive® 4, Project Gotham Racing® 3, and FIFA 2007 Named as Official Games

First Draft in Gaming History will take place June 12 at the Playboy Mansion

The Championship Gaming SeriesTM (CGS), the first global professional gaming league, today announced that worldwide salaries and bonuses for the 2007 season will exceed $5 million, a new benchmark for professional gaming.

CGS has also announced the official games and schedule in its North American region for 2007. Qualifying for North American league play will begin April 28 and the first draft in history will take place on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

“This is the moment the gaming world has been waiting for,” said CGS Commissioner Andy Reif. “We will be paying salaries and bonuses to our players in excess of $5 million dollars during the 2007 season. The time has come for a new era of professional gaming as sports entertainment. Your chance to be a part of history starts on April 28.”

Valve’s Counter-Strike®: Source® and EA’s FIFA 2007 will be official PC games for 2007. For the Xbox 360, CGS will feature Tecmo’s Dead or Alive® 4 (DOA4) and Project Gotham Racing® 3 (PGR3) from Microsoft Game Studios.

The official CGS 2007 event schedule will feature online and live qualifiers where players will battle to reach the Regional Combine, scheduled to take place at the legendary Fox Studios in Los Angeles from June 8-10.

Players from the Regional Combine will then be drafted onto one of six city-based teams at the 2007 CGS Draft on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion. CGS online qualifiers for the North American region begin on April 28, 2007 with the first live qualifier to be held at The Bridge Cinema de Lux in Los Angeles on May 11-12.

Each CGS team will feature a total of ten athletes per team, each of whom is a specialist in one of the official league games. Five of the ten players will comprise a Counter-Strike: Source squad who will compete in five-on-five matches. The soccer title FIFA 07 will be played one-on-one. Each team will have a mixed-double team of two DOA4 players, one man and one woman, who will play against other teams in one-on-one matches on Xbox 360. The racing game PGR3 will be represented by two players on each team and matches will be played in a two-versus-two format.

Soon-to-be announced dates for the full global slate of 2007 CGS events in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and the Middle East will yield regional representatives for the CGS Grand Slam and World Championships, to be held in Los Angeles this October.

CGS events will be broadcast in North America on DIRECTV’s The 101.

For more information, please go to site here
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April 29th 2007 @ 12:52

Posted By: gaming guru - Category: No Category
   


The Return of the Metroid Baby



There are numerous iconic moments in modern art, particularly film: the shower scene in Psycho, Indiana Jones running from a giant boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first time you hear the theme from The Godfather. These are all well and good, but the question is: Why aren’t more people memorializing some of the amazing moments in video games?

In my opinion, there are just as many classic moments in gaming, but they never seem to get the credit (or respect) they deserve. Video games are an art form, for crying out loud, and some of my finest memories from childhood revolve around some of these specific moments.

This new series, The Memory Card, is an opportunity to dissect and honor some of the most amazing moments in gaming -- be it artistic, innovative, or just plain memorable.

Hit the jump for the first inductee into this honored club: one of the best sequences ever from one of my favorite games of all time, Super Metroid.

The Set-Up

At the end of Metroid II: The Return of Samus, for the original Game Boy, our heroic bounty hunter discovers a small Metroid egg. From it, a baby Metroid is born, chirping and circling Samus as if she was its mother. Samus, showing that she has a heart under all that space armor, spares the poor baby Metroid and takes it back to her ship. This is where that games ends, with the two flying off to a distant galaxy, perfectly setting up the sequel (and arguably best Metroid game ever), Super Metroid.



After returning home with the baby in tow, Samus hands the last remaining Metroid over to researchers on the Ceres Space Colony. They claim that, by harnessing the power of the Metroids, the world will one day be a better place.

However, shortly after departing, Samus receives a distress call from Ceres and returns to see what is wrong.

Super Metroid’s prologue begins as Samus enters the facility, realizing that everything has been destroyed and all the researchers have been killed. Journeying through the entire colony, Samus finally discovers the baby Metroid she donated to the scientists sitting in a canister all alone at the center of an open laboratory.

As Samus approaches the crying baby Metroid, the infamous creature Ridley surprises her and starts an epic battle. Although Samus defeats the dragon-like creature, it ends up escaping to the planet Zebes (the setting of the original Metroid) with the baby Metroid in tow.



Samus follows Ridley to the planet and this is where the meat of the game really starts. Through hours of exploring one of the richest and most well-designed games ever, Samus finally reaches the final stage … and this is where The Memory Card’s first entry occurs: the return of the baby Metroid.

The Moment

As Samus is approaching the last boss, a giant Metroid appears and immediately latches onto her, draining the paralyzed bounty hunter’s life force. Unlike all other Metroid encounters in the game, this behemoth cannot be shaken away using bombs. In fact, there is nothing the player can do to avoid the Metroid from quickly devouring you.

However, at the last second, right before Samus’s energy is depleted, the Metroid stops and backs away. It is in this moment when Samus, and the player, realizes that this creature is none other than the baby Metroid that you saved at the end of Metroid II.



Once the baby realizes it has been attacking its own “mother,” it runs off, allowing you to recover and move forward to the last enemy in the game.

The last boss in Super Metroid is a huge, screen-filled extension of the original Mother Brain. Not only is she intimidating, but her attacks pack a wallop not experienced yet during the early parts of the game. In fact, one attack in particular renders you completely helpless, unable to move as your energy is rapidly drained.



Unfortunately, this devastating attack cannot ever be avoided, so players assume the battle is physically impossible. But then something amazing happens. Right before the gargantuan Mother Brain is about to deliver her final blow, the baby Metroid breaks into the room and attaches itself to the final boss’s head, draining Mother Brain of her powers.

Once Mother Brain is severely weakened, the baby Metroid floats over to Samus and transfers the boss’s power to her. Completely drained and on the brink of dying, the baby Metroid backs off, only to be immediately destroyed by the newly recovered Mother Brain. As the singed remains of the baby Metroid fall around Samus, she stands up and uses her newfound energy (in the form of the kick ass Hyper Beam) to once and for all destroy Mother Brain.

For anyone who may not have ever experienced it (or for you who want to relive the drama), you can watch the final battle sequence here:



The Impact

The baby Metroid returning to spare and subsequently save Samus is easily one of the most memorable moments in video game history.

First off, and this applies to many games during this era, all of this was done with no voice acting, no dialogue, and no fancy cutscenes – just simple (although stunning) sprite-based graphics. I mean, the detail used to portray everything is pretty staggering. You may have to go back and watch it again, but notice the way Mother Brain slowly regenerates as the baby Metroid is healing Samus? Instead of just having the boss quickly jump up and start attacking, this little choice helps make everything feel so organic, so real, so believable. It even creates something unheard of in video games at the time – suspense.

Most Metroid games, hell, almost all games from the Super Nintendo era were not really known for their deep stories, so to not only have a character come back from a previous game, but to have said character sacrifice itself for Samus, was nothing short of remarkable at the time. One thing that surprisingly never took off over the years was a continuous story in video games (I’m talking to you The Legend of Zelda). Super Metroid was one of the first times this technique was ever used.

Looking back to the first time I experienced it and even when playing it again (and again and again), this scene packs an emotional wallop. Even nowadays, with graphics almost photorealistic, it is hard to produce an emotional response out of the player. But I will never forget how I felt after the baby Metroid killed itself to save Samus. The investment you put into these characters pays off in an unexpected and heartbreaking way.

This sequence ranks among one of the best in video game history and should always be remembered for what it is: a classic moment in modern art.




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April 29th 2007 @ 12:40

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Satoru Iwata:"We'd love to have Kutaragi"



Now, who would have thought it


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April 29th 2007 @ 12:31

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Tom Clancy's EndWar teaser

So far Ubisoft has not release any more information right now than saying it will be WW3. Most likely will be releasing only for the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime at the end of the year or early next year. I will be sure to let you all know when I get more information on this game.


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April 29th 2007 @ 11:59

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Your First Look at Call of Duty 4

Say Goodbye to World War II

Many have been waiting for Infinity Ward to finally take the Call of Duty series out of the overused World War II era and into the modern age, and today they premiered the first trailer for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and confirmed these suspicions


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April 28th 2007 @ 23:45

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Australian Games Industry Feels Threatened, Wants Cash



The Australian games industry is a little concerned. See, the bulk of local studios are outsource jobs; in fact, most of the biggest studios in the country are outposts for developers like Creative Assembly, Pandemic and Irrational. Which means most are on "work for hire" contracts, which will soon be lost as work starts going to places like China and India


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:56

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Blizzard Working on "Next-Gen MMO"



A sharp-eyed reader points out that Blizzard added three new positions on their job openings page yesterday for a "next-gen MMO


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:53

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TurboGrafx-16's Next Four Virtual Console Releases

May will bring about four new TurboGrafx-16 releases, as listed on Nintendo's own website. Not all of them are coming from Hudson Soft, either:

# Ninja Spirit (Irem Software


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:51

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NINTENDO BEER PONG TABLE

Check this site out. It is great!!!

NINTENDO BEER PONG TABLE


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:48

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Nintendo acquires majority stake in Monolith, secures future of Wii RPGs

The GameCube was always starving for good third-party content, and there was also a lack of good RPGs for the system. Many people wonder if the Wii will suffer the same fate, but Nintendo seems determined to keep that from happening: they now own controlling shares of Monolith, the developer responsible for Baten Katos on the GameCube. They also developed the Xenosaga franchise on the PlayStation 2, meaning fans of that series may not get to see any more updates on Sony's hardware.

I was always a Xenogears fan myself, but I can imagine this new may make some RPG fans unhappy


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:47

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Xbox 360 losses shrink, but so do shipments

The 360 hardware is a loss leader for Microsoft: they lose money with every console shipped out and hope to make it back via game sales and downloads in the Live Marketplace. While Microsoft's gaming division has always lost money, the company has said that it hopes to break even on the hardware sometime later this year. That could get harder now that there are plenty of signs that sales are slowing down.

Microsoft has released their quarterly earnings, and of note is the $315 million in losses the Entertainment and Devices Division reports for this quarter. Last year at this time they lost $415 million, and they clearly state why the loss has been lessened


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April 28th 2007 @ 12:46

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Wii Named One Year Ago Today



Today marks a special, some might say, infamous date in gaming history. Despite what you might have read elsewhere, today's most interesting videogame related anniversary is the official unveiling of the name "Wii


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April 28th 2007 @ 02:50

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The down low on downloads



A short time ago in a basement far, far away, two gamers battled it out in their favorite videogame for the last time. One was moving away, and soon, those late-night gaming sessions would be bittersweet memories. "If only there was a way to game over long distances," they lamented. "Can't Al Gore develop a system of tubes to carry electronic information


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April 27th 2007 @ 11:31

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Phantasy Star Universe expands

Ambition of the Illuminus to add more areas, enemies, classes to Sega's multiplatform online role-playing game this fall.


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April 27th 2007 @ 11:26

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Australian Sales Charts

These are for the week ending April 22, and prove that Nintendo Australia's new strategy of targeting a particular market then carpet-bombing it with DS commercials is working a treat.

1. Diddy Kong Racing


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April 27th 2007 @ 11:18

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Halo 2 Graphics Comparison: Windows Vista vs. Xbox

I seen this article up on Gamespot. Just realize that yes you see a difference as in Windows Vista it looks cleaner but you the game is getting old.

Check out the full write up


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April 27th 2007 @ 10:48

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Sony's Next Generation EyeToy Revealed

Also doubles as a headset for games like Resistance.


Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has finally confirmed the arrival of a new EyeToy-like camera for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Eye, which features both a microphone and a camera. The inclusion of both means you can finally take proper advantage of the PlayStation 3's XMB's videochat function


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April 27th 2007 @ 10:45

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Nintendo Planning to Increase Wii Production

Or so they're saying.

Speaking with GI.biz, Nintendo revealed they're working on increasing overall Wii production in response to massive consumer demand. "We are increasing the manufacturing capacity and forecast to ship 14 million in this fiscal year to our distributors and retail customers globally," said a Nintendo spokesperson. The company had been producing one million units a month from January to March


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April 27th 2007 @ 10:43

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Nintendo's profits up 77%, Wii at 5.84 million



Nintendo said today that annual profits increased by 77% thanks to record sales of Wii and DS. Net income rose from 98.4 billion last year to 174.3 billion yen


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April 26th 2007 @ 23:45

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Rumor: Crimson Skies 2 in Development



Some folks over at the GameFaq forums point out that the latest OXM is saying Crimson Skies 2 is in the works for the Xbox 360


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April 26th 2007 @ 23:42

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Ken Kutaragi Steps Down



Ken Kutaragi will step down from his position as SCEI's representative director, chairman and Group CEO on June 19, Sony has revealed. He will be replaced by Kazuo Hirai, current president and group COO, who will take on responsibility as leader of the PlayStation business worldwide


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April 26th 2007 @ 23:34

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'Home' Beta E-Mails Are Out

While originally we believed there would be a massive sign-up sheet on the web in order to participate in the Home PlayStation 3 beta test, apparently that's not the case. Many gamers (myself not included) have started receiving Home invites that lead to a sign-up page. Thing is, the e-mail doesn't guarantee you a spot.

"Space is extremely limited," reads the e-mail from Sony, and based on the number of people we've observed not receiving notifications, they mean it


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April 26th 2007 @ 23:30

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Pokemon DS Sells a Million

Sure, laugh at me for getting up at 5AM on a Sunday morning to purchase two different copies of a game marketed mainly to children. I'm obviously not alone, as Pokemon Diamond and Pearl have become the fastest selling U.S. Pokemon games ever, with a million copies sold within five days of release.


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April 26th 2007 @ 16:47

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Rumor: PS3 80GB Already in the Wild?



Is the 80 GB version of the PLAYSTATION 3 coming sooner than previously thought? It's possible


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April 25th 2007 @ 11:49

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Microsoft Responds to March NPD Data

March NPD numbers were released yesterday, and each of the big 3 console manufacturers has spent all morning scrambling to spin the results in its own favor. Microsoft happily announced this morning that it has continued to lead Sony's next-gen offering in sales with a total of 199K units sold in March. Microsoft made no mention of the Wii's March sales figures.

Microsft reps went on to boast of the console's attach rate, with on average 5.7 games sold per console for the month of March. Microsoft was quick to attribute these sales to several of its top-selling titles, namely Def Jam: Icon, Guitar Hero II, Major League Baseball 2K7, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2


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April 22nd 2007 @ 23:55

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You and Master Chief, all night long on Xbox Live



It's been a long, hard week, baby. Why don't you slip off your shoes, get comfortable and fire up that Xbox 360. Did you know there were new maps for Halo 2 released this week? Ah, of course you did. I know you've been coursing your way through every orifice, understanding the finer points of each arena and I appreciate that


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April 22nd 2007 @ 23:41

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Superman 64 almost had an evil twin on the PS1



Universally recognized as the worst video game ever created, Superman 64 was this close to unleashing a spawn on the original PlayStation. According to an article at PlayStation Museu