Late Night Consoling
The Internet connection's gone and died on me again, so apologies if this goes up late or has goofs in it. Anyway, hopefully you all had fun with last night's little game. Believe it or not, what you saw last night was significantly easier than my original model. I was going to mention some of the painfully obscure games I had originally used for it, but I decided to hold off on that. I figure if there's enough demand then next Thursday we'll run another one which I guarantee you nobody will be able to solve. As for last night's, it seems like there was only one letter that was ridiculously difficult, and that's one I was sort of on the fence about, and probably should have taken out. If you're curious, I've posted the answer to that one in the comments (with spoiler tags, of course). For the record, I doubt I could have gotten more than 75% of these without doing some serious research. Then again, the ones I thought would be easiest (like G, C and P) turned out to be really hard for most of you, while the ones I thought would be absolutely impossible (like M, R and especially Y..I can't believe how fast you guys got that one!) were solved pretty quickly. So hopefully you all enjoyed it. This was not some test on my part to prove my console superiority to you, as again, I would have had just as hard a time with some of these as you did (and I never would have gotten M...not in a million years).
| No HD in Xbox 2 Semi-Confirmed Microsoft still refuses to comment on the subject, but I guess they forgot to tell M-Systems that, as Team Xbox is reporting that in a recent interview, Dov Moran, the president of the company that recently announced a deal to create a high-capcity flash drive of some sort for the next Xbox, said quite simply, "Microsoft has taken the hard disk out of its Xbox." He continues, saying that "The only thing left will be a CD; that’s all. At some point, when users want to save their e-mail messages, copy music, or anything like that, the only storage they'll have is what we give them." |
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| More Xbox 2 at GDC Rumors GameSpot is reporting that Bloomberg Japan (hardly a source for unsubstantiated rumors) is running a story in which they say that Robbie Bach of Microsoft's Xbox division will give a talk at the Game Developer's Conference later this month, in which he will, "outline Microsoft's software strategy for the Xbox Next by discussing games that will run on the console and revealing some technical aspects about the console's format." This is very much in line with the rumors we've been hearing for months now. No final hardware, but specs will be unveiled, we'll get a logo and official name (Xbox2? Xbox Next? Ybox? Xenon? Steve? Charlemagne?) and possibly a pre-rendered CGI presentation showing an approximation of the system's real-time graphics. |
| Roll Them DICE The DICE summit is underway in Las Vegas, and many heavy hitters from all across the industry have gathered there to talk shop. You can find write ups from the summit at IGN, GameSpy and GameSpot, and of the more notable things discussed at the show, one was hints from EA's Bing Gordon, that the company has pretty ambitious (and Xbox Live-like) online plans for their PS2 titles, some more stuff from EA on their next-generation plans, and -- big surprise here -- Nintendo still sees no reason to jump into online gaming. |
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| Online Gaming Cutting into Prime Time TV Watching? This is one of those total PR BS stories of course, but it's a story nonetheless...Sony sent out a press release today, bragging that the most popular time for PS2 online gaming is from 5:00 to 11:00 PM, in other words, just before and just after TV's prime time, when television's best and brightest come out to shine. More interesting is their claim that SOCOM II players play an "average" of 4.2 hours a day playing the game. Which seems awfully high to me...that has to be higher than even the median amount of time, unless there are large numbers of gamers playing 20 hours a day. |
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| DOA Ultimate Delayed Not that anyone expected punctuality from Tecmo's Team Ninja or anything, but regardless, Tecmo announced today that Dead or Alive Ultimate, the new name for the game formerly known as DOA Online has been pushed back to this summer in both Europe and North America. |
| Serious Console Action There's already been a preview of the game at GameSpot, but that didn't stop Take Two Interactive from finally getting around to announcing Serious Sam: Next Encounter, the unfortunately titled console-only Serious Sam title from Sudeki-developers Climax Entertainment. Some new shots from the PS2 and GameCube game (along with box images) can be found at Games Are Fun, and also announced today was the simply titled Serious Sam for GBA, which will be a first person title for the handheld, and contain multiplayer for up to four people. |
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| More Mario RPG Rumors Game Informer is crediting "sources close to Nintendo" for their story suggesting "a very high possibility" that a new Mario RPG is in the works for GameCube. This rumor has been around for some time now, and has sometimes been said to be a remake or port of the excellent N64 title Paper Mario and sometimes a wholly original game for GameCube. |
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| New Rare Title at E3? IGN is reporting that murmurs at the DICE conference suggest that we'll see a surprise announcement from Rare at this year's E3 Expo in May. Games known to be in development include Conker: Live and Uncut, Perfect Dark 2/Zero and the eternally-in-development Kameo: Elements of Power, but rumors have suggested that anything from a new Battletoads to a new Killer Instinct is in the works at the developer, but there's never been anything to back that up beyond fanboy hopes and prayers. |
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| Dead Phoenix MIA Article Capcom's long-lost Dead Phoenix is the subject of the first Missing in Action column over at Cube.IGN. While there's no concrete evidence that there's any movement on the game at capcom (Kid Icarus rumors aside) this article provides some background information on the game for those curious. |
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| Dragon Quest/Warrior VIII Gets a Name Square Enix has announced the subtitle for their next Dragon Quest/Warrior game: in Japan, it will be known as Dragon Quest VIII: Sora to Umi to Daichi to Norowareshi Himegimi. This translates roughly into, "Sky, Sea, Earth and the Cursed Princess." |
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| Tenchu Kurenai Revealed The first screenshots and details from Tenchu Kurenai, the next game in this series by K2 (published in this country by Activision) can be found at The Magic Box tonight. The shots are a bit blurry and no doubt scanned from some Japanese magazine, but hey, this is the first to hit the net, so take what you can get. |
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| Psycho Mantis Details Cube.IGN has posted an article with details on Psycho Mantis' behavior in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Psycho Mantis was practically everyone's favorite boss from the original Metal Gear Solid, and so if you want to know how he's been changed for the remake, click here. This obviously is a potentially huge spoiler, so only read this if you don't want to be surprised. |
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| Misc. Interviews/Q&As GameSpot has conducted a Q&A with Pierre Roux, the producer of Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay, GameInformer has posted an interview with Kudo Tsunoda, the producer on EA's upcoming Fight Night 2004 (both PS2, Xbox) and Team Xbox is the latest site to post a MechAssault 2 interview, talking with Denny Thorley, the president of developer Day 1 Studios. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| New shots from Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7 are up at GameSpot and GameInformer has a new preview of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. |
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| GameSpot has posted a hands-on look at Onimusha Blade Warriors and new media from Transformers and Bujingai: The Forsaken City, IGN has the first shots to hit the web from Capcom's wacky Panic Maker along with new media from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 and Monster Hunter, Games Are Fun has a pair of new shots from both Jak 3 and Ratchet & Clank 3, GameSpy has new previews of Transformers and Rainbow Six 3, The Magic Box has new shots from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and GunGrave O.D. and Atari has launched their official Transformers site. |
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| GameSpot has posted new media from The Suffering and DRIV3R (both PS2, Xbox), GameInformer previews Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS2, Xbox) and Team Xbox has a new preview of Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death (GC, PS2, Xbox). |
