Tag: gaming

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Nintendo Unveils NFC Action Figures For Future Wii U Games

Nintendo NFC Figure 2During Nintendo’s fiscal year briefing, after announcing four straight quarters of losses and acknowledging the luke warm reception the Wii U has received, Nintendo released info they hoped would generate some excitement within their fan base.

First we got confirmation on Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart 8, and it was announced that Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire from the Gameboy Advance will be getting remakes.

What was also announced was a new gaming platform built to leverage Nintendo’s insanely popular characters, using figurines with NFC chips built into them. Following the success of Activision’s Skylanders franchise, and Disney’s attempt at cracking that market, Nintendo has to know they’re sitting on a potential gold mine with the first party IP they own.

Nintendo NFC Figure

Dubbed “NFP”, for “Nintendo Figurine Program”, players will be able to collect figurines which are then scanned by the Wii U controller, and will be compatible with various software title. Small pieces of information can be stored on the action figures, so while the exact plans haven’t been announced for future games, it’s not difficult to image each figure retaining leveling stats like Skylanders toys can.

It’s another platform for parents to invest in, but with franchises like Super Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon available, this could be a smart tactic for Nintendo to explore. We’ll have more info on NFP during E3 this year in June!

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WSU Engineers Teach One Computer to Teach Another Computer How to Play Pac-Man

Pac-Man (1980), will go on show at MoMA in New York in 2013Well I for one welcome our robotic overlords…

Matthew E. Taylor, Allred Distinguished Professor in Artificial Intelligence at Washington State University has published a paper detailing a system where one computer can share information and processes with another computer. The first practical demonstration? Video games!

One system “taught” another how to play Pac-Man, and the “student” system was eventually able to surpass its “teacher”.

A system for delivering “advice” could be an exciting breakthrough, especially if these systems can share information and processes between computers with different hardware builds. Often a set of instructions wont work if you change hardware parameters.

If you’re worried about Skynet happening soon, Taylor had this to say:

“They’re very dumb.”


(via WSU News)

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APP Review: MOVE by NiTako

moveA copy

Do you love a game that can really change your mind? I may just have the brain shifting game for you!

MOVE developed by NiTAKO has really done an outstanding job of developing a game that really puts your brain to work! MOVE starts out easy and laid back. So here’s the deal. You need to maneuver 3 different colored circles into position. Those circles move together as one unless they are blocked. The less moves you make will give you a higher ranking.  MOVE will get harder with each level when you have to move 5 circles instead of 3.

wp_ss_20140105_0052    wp_ss_20140105_0053 Continue reading “APP Review: MOVE by NiTako”

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Your New Reality Is Ready – A look at the newest VR and Augmented Reality from GDC

As I take in the sights and sounds of Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2014, and the occasional suspicious smell, which I overhear someone claim is that of hot dogs, a deep feeling of suspense starts stirring within me.  A merciless coup is forming poised to strike with undaunted ferocity.  The harbinger, a very specific new trend with the capability of completely disrupting everything we think we know about gaming.  No, more than that.  Reality itself.

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Virtual and augmented reality is about to mount a full-scale invasion on your sense of “the real.” It is about to change the way you consume interactive and passive content.  An assault, amassing so much power and such allies, before it even lands upon the shores of our consumer collective consciousness, it is doing everything in its power to win the war before a single shot is fired.

At every recent tech convention, the absolutely longest line, by far, to experience the latest and greatest in entertainment and gaming is not at any long-established heavyweight veteran’s booth.  It is, instead, snaking along the perimeter of a brand new, fresh-faced, hyper-ambitious startup’s booth.  The banner reads, “Oculus.”  And this phenomenon is repeated at every other booth showcasing their wares via a “generation one Oculus developer’s kit.”

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Having taken the Oculus experience for a spin at CES a few months ago, I will not be waiting in the hour-plus line to demo a couple minutes of the developer’s latest generation Rift, sporting 1080p displays, much wider field of vision, and low-latency buttery goodness.  I will say, at CES, it lived up to every shred of hype I had heard prior, even exceeding my unfairly high expectations.  But here at GDC, what I was more taken in by was the very fact that I was staring at a booth filled with dozens of people jacked into Rift headsets, lost in a world separate from this one, truly immersed and interacting inside in a virtual sphere.

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Then… the trumpets sounded, the heralds cried, and Sony announced Project Morpheus.  Their own version of a totally immersive, HD, virtual reality headset, complete with infrared head-tracking, stylish blue LED-glowing trim, and tailor-made to be a bold companion peripheral to their own Playstation. Continue reading “Your New Reality Is Ready – A look at the newest VR and Augmented Reality from GDC”

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‘Free to Play: The Movie’ – An Intimate Look at Professional Gaming and E Sports

free to play the movie documentary valve film posterIt’s the dream of every gamer, to not only be paid for playing a video game, but at some point be considered the best in the world.

The industry has embraced various tournaments featuring games like Madden NFL Football and Street Fighter, with prize pools ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Free to Play, from Valve Films, follows the individual members of competitive DOTA 2 teams, as they compete for a $1 million grand prize during a 2011 tournament.

Competitive gaming has already earned a fair amount of respect in many Asian countries, and its popularity is on the rise throughout Europe. Free to Play peels back some of the internal pressures players face, conflicts with family, work/life balance, schooling and social expectations. These players are held up as the vanguards of a generational shift, often with parents who don’t quite understand what the stakes are. The film posits that soon we’ll look back at these earlier tournaments, and take competitive gaming for granted.

It’s not too far fetched an idea either. The video gaming industry now regularly unseats Hollywood in generating revenue, and we’re into our third generation of people living on this planet that don’t know a world without electronic entertainment. Just as physical sports like football generate incredible revenue, while we’re ostensibly watching grown men play a school yard game, there exists the potential for e-sports competitors to make a similar mark on fans.

While I’m not terrifically familiar with the game play of DOTA 2 (described in the film as a blend of Chess and Soccer) it’s easy to get drawn into the drama of what these players face. They carry the expectations of their fellow team members, their fans, and often their home countries.

The million dollar grand prize is important, but maybe not as valuable to some as defeating their rivals.

Valve has released the film for free to stream, and in a variety of languages. Embedded below is the USA (English) version.

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Playstation 4 Price Rising to $449 in Canada Starting Today

sony ps4In an odd response to “changing market conditions” Sony is bumping up the price of the PS4 console, Playstation Camera, and the Dualshock 4 controller.

Starting today, the PS4 will jump $50, from $399 to $449, the Dualshock and Camera now retail for $64.99, and games will also increase in price by about $10 over USA prices.

This move makes sense to a degree as the current exchange rate puts the Canadian dollar at around 90 American cents, which would bring the price difference pretty close to that rate adjustment, as $399 USA is about $443 Canadian at the time of this posting.

As a platform strategy however, the timing on this increase is tricky. Sony still enjoys a sales lead, but rival Microsoft has been chipping away at that, and currently has no plans to raise the price of the XBox One which remains at $499 in Canada. Sony’s bump here brings the stock PS4 (without a camera) to within $50 of the XBox which includes the Kinect camera and tracking system.

Consoles exist to move software however, and Microsoft is only adding a $5 premium to their games up north, largely eroding the cost advantage Sony enjoyed when you factor in a console, and additional controller, and actually buying a game to play on that new system.

NPD sales data for February showed Microsoft selling just over 90% of what Sony moved over the same time period, and we’re about to see the impact of Titanfall, which has all the buzz and momentum of being the first true “Next Gen” hit. It’s impossible to declare any kind of “winner” this early into the console life cycle, but thankfully the competition is about to get a lot more interesting.

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BBC Releases 30th Anniversary Hitchhiker’s Guide Text Adventure Game Online!

hitchhikers guide 30th anniversary text adventure game

Damn if this don’t take me back. This game and Space Quest we’re probably most responsible for teaching YoungGadgetGuy how to type.

See, younger people might mock the simple graphics of older games, but I’m not sure how many kids today realize that some of our games didn’t have ANY graphics AT ALL! We just had to make due with our formidable imaginations. Plus we had Lazer Tag for when we got bored of staring at DOS prompts… So we had that going for us…

Anywho, following the storyline of perhaps the greatest book ever written, this text adventure game throws you into the hilarious shenanigans facing humanity during the last day of Earth’s existence, and the many adventures which befall the only person to survive. If you’ve never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (or just haven’t played this game), you’re in for a treat. I’m almost jealous enough of the novelty you’re about to experience to consider the possibility of giving myself just the tinniest bit of a lobotomy so I could experience it for the first time again too… Sigh…

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Game – 30th Anniversay Edition

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Microsoft Releases Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Mahjong for Windows Phone

microsoft solitaire collectionI’m honestly surprised it took them this long.

For those of you who like classic Windows games, fire up the Windows App Store on your WP device and get downloading! The updated and pretty versions of Solitaire, Mahjong and Minesweeper that you would find on Windows 8 computers are now available for Windows Phone 8 handsets. Before we flung angry birds and crushed candy, these were the height of computer casual gaming. It was a simpler time…

All three feature XBox Live integration allowing you to earn achievements, and all of you friends will be able to see how much you suck at old games. They’re all free, so go get at it!

Minesweeper for Windows Phone 8
Mahjong for Windows Phone 8
Solitaire Collection for Windows Phone 8

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