As a former NanaOn-Sha employee, I have met more than my fair share of Parappa The Rapper fans. With no sequel or re-release since the largely ignored 2007 PSP remake, several devotees have even admitted to recently dusting off their old PlayStations to see if they still have what it takes to master the 1996 classic.
“Maybe I’m getting old," they would inevitably say, “but I downright suck at it these days.”
Landing on Mars is hard. That’s the lesson picked up a few years back when I read Dr Steven Squyres’ wonderful book Roving Mars, which tells the story of Spirit and Opportunity, NASA’s most recent envoys to the red planet.
Now in his mid-30s, Yoshikazu Tanaka is the youngest self-made billionaire in Asia, and the world’s second-youngest after Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, you can be forgiven for likening him with Facebook’s founder. Not just because he sports similar couture: black Crocs, white socks, ripped blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a black zip-up hoodie, but because they’ve also both made their fortunes (Tanaka’s worth an estimated $4.3 billion) founding social networks.
One of the most maddening aspects of developer culture is hagiography. We tend to romanticise the past as a golden age when all were free to make whatever they wanted to, and all that was made was good. We tend to believe that much of what we see released these days is impure, untrue or just ‘wrong’. Something about newer games screams copycat, thief or poor execution. It’s as though we can see behind the code to the corporate paymasters who commissioned it, rubbing their hands together in glee at having duped player-sheep once more.
Peter Molyneux is nervous. He’s shown off new games for the first time before, of course. Indeed, he’s often done it in the same way, picking up a journalist from Guildford station in his black Nissan GT-R, then taking them to the studio for a personal tour. But it’s been a long time since he’s felt so personally exposed, and had so much to prove.
Ouya, the $99 Android game console, has now attracted more than $5 million in backing on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. It's a fantastic return for a project, backed by industry veterans including Xbox co-creator Ed Fries, which initially sought just $950,000 in funding - a total that was passed in just eight hours.
On a good day, Simon Read makes around £5,000 from his iOS hit New Star Soccer.
Gets To The Exit is not without problems. The art assets are tiny and unattractively fiddly, the audio is amateurish and annoying, and the difficulty curve is frustratingly uneven. Regardless of all that, however, the design team has hit on a puzzle mechanic that really works. While this isn’t a particularly polished game, in other words, it delivers on the kind of arcade pleasures that can often render polish unnecessary.
Given the slick-looking art and well-produced promotional material for République, you could be forgiven for imagining that developer Camouflaj LLC was a well-funded startup with sleek offices. But next to the gleaming modern towers of Bellevue, Washington – which host well-established studios such as Valve, Sucker Punch and 5th Cell – the building that Camouflaj calls home looks as though it’s seen much better days.
Two new Edge T-shirt designs are now available from online videogame clothing specialist Insert Coin.
The shirts, designed by Edge art editor Andrew Hind, are inspired by the world of vintage computer fonts. The grey shirt, E:CHARSET, references the custom characters used by programmers to create primitive art for early 8bit videogames. E:SHAD3D, available in midnight blue, reimagines the iconic Edge 'E' logo in geometry that pays tribute to everything from I, Robot to Mirror's Edge.
There will be no fix for a bug that corrupts save files in Phil Fish's XBLA platformer Fez because Microsoft insisted on "a ton of money" to test a new patch.
Developer Polytron released a Fez patch in June, but Microsoft pulled it after reports of corrupted save files from a small number of players. In a post on the Polytron blog, Fish admits that no fix is forthcoming.
There will be no fix for a bug that corrupts save files in Phil Fish's XBLA platformer Fez because Microsoft insisted on "a ton of money" to test a new patch.
Developer Polytron released a Fez patch in June, but Microsoft pulled it after reports of corrupted save files from a small number of players. In a post on the Polytron blog, Fish admits that no fix is forthcoming.
Movies and TV shows can acknowledge their tropes these days. We’ve gone past smirking at sly winks, and now enjoy watching entire genres get ripped apart and put back together before our eyes.
Dean Hall's ArmA II mod DayZ has amassed more than 600,000 players in a matter of months, propelling Bohemia Interactive's ageing game to the summit of the Steam charts - we take a detailed look at the mod in issue 244 of Edge, out August 1.
News broke that Disney was closing Black Rock, its Brighton-based studio, a little over a year ago. In the intervening 12 months the studio’s former game director, Jason Avent, has set up a new studio, and developed and released a new game - and it’s the biggest hit of his career to date.
Organisers of the ExPlay festival have revealed the first details ahead of this year's event, which takes place in Bath. Edge is the exclusive media partner for the festival's second year following its move from Plymouth.
The programme, to be revealed in the months to come, will feature industry talks, games, parties and competitions.
Also planned is ExPlay Boot Camp, a bespoke training programme that promises to help start-ups and small studios go from concept to commercially viable game in just six months.
Pete Smith, an executive producer working with external studios at Sony, knows a thing or two about videogame pitches: he's sat through hundreds. His talk at last week's Develop Conference was, it seems, not only designed to help developers, but also to make his life a little easier: he opened, with welcome candour, with "I'm sick of sitting through crap pitches". What follows is a summary of his advice on how to pitch a videogame.
Apple Jack 2’s gently melancholic opening re-introduces us to the eponymous hero, now an overworked cubicle slave who yearns to relive the adventures of his first outing on Xbox Live Indie Games. And, to a point, he does: there is nothing wildly different about this sequel, though almost all its refinements are welcome.
Videogames have journeyed from pixel sprites to near-photorealism, but our expectations for how characters should look have been satisfied more easily than our desires for how they should behave. The next generation of technology may be able to render the way light glistens on the meniscus of an eye, or scatters beneath soft skin, but will the owner of said skin be able to find her way out of a room without hitting herself with the door?
Videogames have journeyed from pixel sprites to near-photorealism, but our expectations for how characters should look have been satisfied more easily than our desires for how they should behave. The next generation of technology may be able to render the way light glistens on the meniscus of an eye, or scatters beneath soft skin, but will the owner of said skin be able to find her way out of a room without hitting herself with the door?
Dean "Rocket" Hall, creator of the hugely popular ArmA 2 mod DayZ, hopes that players will stop treating each other as hostile and work together more as the game continues to grow in popularity.
Dean "Rocket" Hall, creator of the hugely popular ArmA 2 mod DayZ, hopes that players will stop treating each other as hostile and work together more as the game continues to grow in popularity.
Dean "Rocket" Hall, creator of the hugely popular ArmA 2 mod DayZ, hopes that players will stop treating each other as hostile and work together more as the game continues to grow in popularity.
EA has confirmed that Battlefield 4 is in development, with access to a 2013 beta granted to those who pre-order the upcoming Medal Of Honor: Warfighter.
News of the game's existence - which is hardly a surprise, if we're honest - has prompted developer DICE to take to the official Battlefield website to reassure fans that it is not moving on from Battlefield 3 to work on its sequel. And little wonder: the subscription service Battlefield Premium only launched last month.