Archive for June 23rd, 2008
Filed under: News
EA is bringing the card deck game Brain Quest to the DS, which sounds like North America’s answer to Japan’s Quiz Magic Academy and Europe’s Super Brain Tease. Only, those of you familiar with Brain Quest will know that it’s not as cool as Quiz Magic Academy, not to allude that it’s for kids.
While such news probably seems like a bore to the majority of you out-of-the-demographic folks, we bet that a lot of young’ns will actually enjoy the game. This blogger remembers playing plenty of Brain Quest back in the day and loving it. Not only will it have multiplayer and single-player modes, but Brain Quest will also include a bunch of children’s Sudoku puzzles on the side.
If you know any elementary schoolers who might be interested in this title, keep in mind that it comes out this September for $29.99.
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Filed under: Hacks
If you can solder and have a basic understanding of electronics, you can add MIDI output to your DS, DS Lite, Game Boy Advance, or GBA SP. The Midify chip also interfaces with other electronics — apparently anything that has some kind of user input. For just $35, this chip adds a MIDI port to the DS.
It doesn’t turn the DS into a MIDI sequencer or allow you to output MIDI, rather, it adds a MIDI in port to the DS, allowing you to control the DS via keyboard. Confused? Imagine the DS is the microwave seen here — it has been fitted with the Midify chip.
[Via hackaday]
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Continue Reading June 23rd, 2008
Filed under: Rumors
Artdink was a developer way back with the original PlayStation who gave a lot of support to Sony. Their games were a little strange but were lauded by critics back in the day. However, they fell into obscurity due to their lack of “mainstream ‘tude” or whatever PR spin you care to put on it.
Anyway, Sony might be publishing a remake of one of Artdink’s games called Aquanaut’s Holiday, a first-person ocean exploration title. Or releasing the game in some other fashion. Regardless, Play-Asia has the game listed as a PS3 title coming out September 25, 2009. Only time will tell.
[via SiliconEra]
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Continue Reading June 23rd, 2008
Filed under: News
It seems a countdown has been spotted on Sony Japan’s website. While the game would ordinarily be a mystery for reasons soon to be revealed, Eurogamer has got a pretty good guess as to what the game is and we’re going to agree with them. The link to the website cites the title as “or2″ which has been deduced to mean Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida 2, a sequel to another Japanese dungeon crawler of the same name, sans the “2″.
Since the first title didn’t abandon Japan, we don’t have much faith we’ll see the sequel abandon the land of the rising sun either. Still, if you imported the first one, there’s some good news since more is on the way. Who knows; maybe both will get some sort of domestic release in a two-for-one pack of some kind. Then again, we also believe it’s possible to drive up a wall (note: do not attempt to drive up a wall).
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Filed under: Video, Imports
File this one as another crazy Japanese game. We knew about To-Love-Ru awhile back, but we never knew it’d be like this. As you can see in the video above, the main goal of the game seems to be slapping young ladies on their bottoms. Well, maybe not slapping them so much as clearing evil little things away from their backside.
Move over, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. There’s a new almost-obscene title in town.
[Via Kotaku]
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Filed under: Rumors
Click for high resolution
Seriously, we have no idea. This image just landed into our tips box with a short message stating that it is a leaked picture of 2.40’s trophy support. Whether that’s true or not is up for discussion. The tipster calls himself “The Patriots,” so there’s a chance that this is just the beginning of a new S3 Project which will end with us being transformed into some kind of sneaky government super soldiers. Here’s hoping.
Things that make this image seem legit include a lack of blur (seriously, why does every “leaked” image or video have to be super blurry and hard to make out?), not to allude that this is clearly photographed from a monitor. We’ve checked and that Clank avatar is a real PS3 avatar. Not exactly conclusive evidence, but enough to keep us speculating, for now.
And speculating is all we can do, at this point. If the image is real, does it show a PS3 Gamercard? You’ll notice that the trophy page is only one of three, so what’s on the others? No doubt we’ll see and hear more of this over the next few weeks in the run up to 2.40’s release. Unless the image is fake, in which case we probably won’t be hearing anymore about it for a long time. If ever.
[UPDATE] Take a look after the jump for more images, details on how trophies will work and some information on in-game XMB.
[Thanks, The Patriots]
Continue reading Rumor: Does this image show a PS3 trophy screen? [UPDATE]
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Filed under: Metareview
This week marks the auspicious arrival of a new Final Fantasy game on the DS. Fans of the two previous Tactics games, or of the Ivalice Alliance, or the beloved strategy developer Quest (Ogre Battle), who began the Tactics series once absorbed into Square, may have even more reason to rejoice; fans of the traditional Final Fantasy RPG series should be warned, as they always should with a spinoff, that Tactics is way different.
Is the sequel to the GBA spinoff of the PlayStation spinoff of the Final Fantasy series worthy of its various progenitors? It sounds like it just may be!
IGN: 90% — Daemon Hatfield misses the PlayStation iteration, but can’t deny the addictive quality still present in the Advance series: “It would be affable to get another mature Tactics game like the original, but A2 won me over quickly with its beautiful visuals and deep, strategic gameplay. This is one of those desert island games you’d want with you if you were stranded with nothing to do.”
GamesRadar: 80% — Carolyn Gudmundson of GamesRadar thought the game coddled the player a bit more than strategy games typically do, but still worthy of hundreds of hours of your attention: “Like its predecessor, A2 presents a kinder, gentler tactical RPG (it’s much easier than the original FF Tactics on PS1 or any of the Advance Wars titles, for example), so if you like your tactical action rough and punishing, we still recommend giving Tactics A2 a try, but skip straight to hard mode. “
GameSpot: 70% — GameSpot’s Shiva Stella found the opposite: a bit too much difficulty, and overcomplicated play. “One of Grimoire’s setbacks is the amount of time that it takes to accomplish even the simplest of tasks, with most quests lasting 45 minutes to an hour, although there is a handy quicksave feature. Grimoire also sports a steep learning curve for both its combat and micromanagement elements, and is a bit slow to pick up because you spend the first 10 to 20 hours mastering basic abilities, unlocking classes, and gathering equipment to play the jobs that you want.”
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Filed under: Podcasts
var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/podcasts/Xbox_360_Fanboy_2′; In this, the 74th episode of the Xbox 360 Fancast, we discuss a great many things. There were a lot of leaks last week. Like, seriously, a lot, so we talk about those. And then there’s Guitar Hero World Tour, of course, a new Halo 3 map, the EndWar beta leak and the continuing Tecmo melodrama. It was a pretty awesome week really. Show your ears some love and listen to episode 74 today!
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in Zune Marketplace (MP3).
[RSS MP3] Add the Xbox 360 Fanboy Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[AAC] Download the enhanced AAC directly.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.
Hosts: Richard Mitchell (SenseiRAM), Dustin Burg (SuperDunners), Alexander Sliwinski (Sli Xander), Xav de Matos (Snypz)
Produced by Richard Mitchell
Music: Intro/Outro: “Electromooq” by Uma Floresta. Bridge: “Raggedy Anne” by J. Dimenna
For fans: Xbox 360 Fancast Facebook group
[Thanks to Edwin Mirabal for the image]
Continue reading Xbox 360 Fancast 074 — Mansplosions
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Filed under: PlayStation Network
The PLAYSTATION Network will be down tomorrow, June 24th, from the hours of 8:00 AM - 2:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. Just as a heads up, you won’t be able to access the Store and/or play online games on the PSN. During the downtime, read a book or play on your PSP. Or, if you’re at work, this shouldn’t affect you, now should it?
Is this maintenance to implement firmware v2.40?! We’ll find out tomorrow!
[Thanks, TC!]
[Update: This is just a regularly scheduled maintenance; it has absolutely nothing to do with firmware updates. We're sorry for any confusion.]
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Filed under: Fan stuff
With Alone in the Dark finally shipping this week, we thought it fitting to cram one last post with a few gameplay videos. The first video is a melange of scenes from the game, giving a glimpse at the game’s story (and more than a few bleeped f-bombs). It certainly looks exciting, though the other three videos (embedded after the break) definitely reveal some of the clunkier elements cited in European reviews so far (voice acting, controls). As of right now, there aren’t exactly a lot of choices for 360 survival horror fans (though there are plenty on the way). As such, will you be overlooking the noted faults in Alone in the Dark in the hope that the game is more than the sum of its parts?
Continue reading Some Alone in the Dark footage to ponder
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