EA Sports Predictions, Turtles in Time Remake and Video Game Hall of Fame in Iowa? – Welcome to the column that will donate its copy of Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust & Magna Cum Laude(as I’m probably the only guy who will admit owning both) to the Video Game Hall of Fame known as Dare to Play the Game.
Well, last week I was debating what to do with my time besides Rock Band, Poker & Bowling. I finally decided on NHL 2k9. It didn’t take long to crack it open after that and install it to my hard drive. I went with the weakest difficulty to start and turned off the part to call off-sides (always hated that call). Even though I had some trouble figuring out controls in my first game, by the third period, I was mastering skating and blowing shots by goalies.
Naturally, the game starts off very easy and I will move up in difficulty once I start the franchise mode. Most of the achievements are laughable with the only difficult task is to drive that beeping zamboni correctly. I have the worst time with that thing. I already have 9 out of the 38 achievements and all it really takes is persistence. My team of choice is currently the Flyers. May I ride the Flyers all the way to the Stanley Cup (even if I don’t even think they made it out of the first round this year).
This is actually a picture I partially created with the help of bombshellbeauties.com. The website is for the game Battlestations Pacific which is coming out next week for the 360 and the PC. You select a beauty, watch her pose for a bit and then capture some images. Then you throw some clip art around her and it’s put on the side of a plane for a neat e-postcard. It’s a bit creepy and tedious but a good waste of ten minutes.
EA Games
Electronic Arts latched on to the hype surrounding this weekend’s match between professional pugilists Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao. Simulating the brawl Fight Night Round 4,EA Sports called Pacquiao to win the fight.
Technically, EA’s prediction was right. Pacquiao knocked out Hatton. And EA’s simulated play-by-play predicted “an aggressive attempt by Hatton to limit Pacquiao’s movement early on was unsuccessful.” But that’s about the extent of what the forthcoming Fight Night accurately predicted.
Of course, EA’s prediction of the bout’s winner was a 50/50 shot, pretty decent odds.
While EA called the fight to last eleven rounds, ticket holders didn’t get quite that much fight. Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao knocked Hatton down twice in the first round, then sent his Manchester-born opponent to the mat a third time in the second round, ending the fight.
That knockout was delivered by a left hook from Pacquiao, not from a “deadly right” in the simulated Round 11. Hey, you can’t win ’em all.
Obviously, EA Sports’ job here is to provide a fun, mostly accurate boxing game, not simulate real-world events or predict the weather. EA’s had its accurate predictions in the past, calling this year’s Super Bowl contest with surprising accuracy in Madden NFL 09. The sports game maker’s NHL Championship soothsaying is still up in the air, but could still play out as NHL 09 predicted.
Nice job EA. I usually blast EA just because well they are EA. However, they have been getting pretty good with predictions lately. For the Superbowl this year, they predicted that the Steelers would go over the Cardinals and by even the same point spread. You really can’t much better than that. So they tried the boxing thing and came up pretty well for a first go. Sure they missed the round and the punch, but they certainly got the result right.
This kinda stuff helps their image as being the best when it comes to sporting games (even if we wish that 2k would be allowed to make football games again). Right now in the NHL 09 playoffs, they have the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup over the Blackhawks in 6 games. In real world sports, the Bruins and Blackhawks are currently still in the playoffs. So far, so good. We will see if it holds up.
“Would you please spit out your Stride gum already and chew a second piece?”
TMNT
Xbox Live Arcade may be getting another serving of heroes on the half-shell, as a 3D remake of arcade fighter Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time was shown to hardcore TMNT fans this week.
The original Konami-developed arcade game is already available on XBLA, but the update to the second appears to be a total revamp, and is currently playable wherever the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 25th anniversary bus tour is traveling, according to hands-on details from Ninja Pizza.
We’ve not yet seen an official announcement of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time remake, which we’d assume comes from new license holder Ubisoft, but we’ve put in word with the appropriate parties to find out what’s what.
The on-screen inputs and Xbox 360 controller pictured; directly to the right of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tattoo collage on the Casey Jones cosplayer/superfan, if you missed it; would obviously indicate an Xbox 360 release. Whether the TMNT publisher has designs on a PlayStation Network and WiiWare release remains to be seen, but we’ll sit tight for further details.
Thanks to Wes and The S: Corporate Ninja of The Department of Pastry Security for the tip!
Turtles in Time, ahhhhh fond memories. This game is prime for the XBLA format especially when they already did pretty well with the first one. The better thing though? Full HD redesign in 3d. Hopefully it will keep its strong gameplay while improving the graphics. It is true I grew up with the arcade original (and probably a couple hundred dollars in quarters) but Turtles in Time was another one I spent a lot of time on. I’m kinda curious to figure out how the bosses will be handled (there are differences between the arcade and SNES versions). We’ll probably see a price of 1200 MS points but maybe just maybe they will go the 800 points route.
BTW, also mentioned this week for XBLA/PSN is Marvel vs Capcom 2. The release date is Summer 2009 and should be out for 1200 MS Points. It will be a full redesign of the graphics, based off the Dreamcast release and have all of the characters unlocked from start. If you are on PSN, you can already snag a demo of this one. Everybody who just spooged in their pants a little, I completely understand. Gambit FTW!
The first screenshot of pure brilliance. However, I do question the weird look on Michaelangelo’s face. Is he trying to pass a bowel movement or something?
Video Game Hall of Fame
Barely a month old, the movement to place a video game hall of fame in Ottumwa, Iowa has formed a city-backed committee and is hiring legal services to incorporate itself as a nonprofit venture.
“We’re going to step carefully and make sure we don’t screw this up,” said Terry McNitt, the executive director of the city’s chamber of commerce. “This is a great opportunity. We want to do this right.”
Ottumwa, an out-of-the-way city of 26,000 roughly 2 hours from Des Moines, reasserted its 27-year-old claim as “Video Game Capital of the World” at an event Wednesday, where the city also announced plans to study and pursue a game hall of fame and museum.
Some might associate video games more with major cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, or Tokyo. But it’s hard to see a museum rising to the level of a city-wide priority in those areas right now. And many pop culture halls of fame, especially sports, have done well in smaller towns, in the U.S. anyway. If a video games hall of fame were to go in a small town, there is none in the United States with an historical claim as strong as Ottumwa’s, even if it is rooted in arcade-craze nostalgia of the 1980s.
The city was home to the now-defunct Twin Galaxies arcade, which became the first operation to sanction and certify high scores worldwide. At the zenith of arcade gaming, Ottumwa was a hub for many high-score competitions, and something of a symbolic home mentioned in press coverage of gaming’s early days.
Jerry Parker, the Ottumwa mayor in 1982 who declared the city the video game capital, attended Wednesday’s event, which drew a crowd of about 50, among it representatives from Ottumwa’s city council, its travel and tourism authority, and other community leaders. High score champions Billy Mitchell – world record holder on Donkey Kong and notorious as the antagonist in “The King of Kong” documentary – and Steve Sanders, the Joust world champion who also held Pac-Man’s world high score before Mitchell, also attended to show support. Mitchell pledged to donate the machine on which he set his Donkey Kong high score, should a museum be built.
“For Ottumwa to make this claim, and push to be the home of a video game hall of fame, it puts them at a point almost like Cooperstown [N.Y., home to baseball’s hall of fame],” Mitchell said Wednesday, before the event. “It’s hard not to be enthusiastic or supportive of it. I’ve made donations of time and effort, over the years, to push and promote competitive gameing, so it seems silly that I wouldn’t push for this. And I wanted to donate something significant to show that.”
Chris Hoeksema, an Ottumwa native whose creation of a Facebook group, almost as a lark, rallied support for the idea, now finds himself chairman of the steering committee plotting the hall project’s next move. Hoeksema said the body would meet this coming Tuesday and already is hiring an attorney to draft incorporation paperwork.
“It was quite a shock when I found out that the chamber of commerce really wanted to go forward with this,” Hoeksema said. “It’s been a great ride, and I really can’t wait to see where it goes next.”
McNitt, the chamber director, said the effort will look to establish a website presence and at least a temporary physical address almost immediately, in anticipation of enthusiasm and support for this coming from well outside Ottumwa. “We’ve had lots of calls and contact about this already,” he said. “I envision people throughout the United States and possibly overseas wanting to get involved.”
Since speaking to Kotaku in April for a story about the movement, McNitt said he’s become almost obsessed with the idea. Communities of Ottumwa’s size kill for any kind of notoriety, and something potentially as global as video games could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for business development.
“This morning I brought someone in and showed him ‘Chasing Ghosts,'” a documentary on games that prominently features Ottumwa, “just to show him what we’re dealing with here. Over the last two months, I’ve become so passionate about this I have to remember I’m still the chamber director, but I’ve become so convinced and obsessive that this thing is real and needs to be supported.
“The video game world has so much history, it needs to be put someplace,” McNitt said. “And why not Ottumwa?”
Ottumwa, where the heck is Ottumwa? Oh wait, if I read the article, I would know it is in Iowa. Pssssh, that’s what I have a research office for. Too bad they were laid off. *sigh*, I kept the secretary though, cute thing. Anyway…this is a pretty cool idea and appears to have wings as well. The project has city backing and a legal committee, heck that’s close to golden. I believe there was a traveling museum a while back that I always wanted to go see but that kinda thing never got off the ground. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to resemble a museum was this old movie theater I used to go too. They had a room over to the left when you walked in that was wall to wall video game machines. There had to be well over a 100 older machines (early to mid 80’s mostly) and you could go in there and play all you want for five bucks. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have took pictures so I could prove it to somebody.
But this project should be pretty awesome and I honestly hope it goes right through. The one thing they should try to do is get the backing of some major software company or console company like Nintendo, Sony, Sega, etc. I would say Microsoft, but then we would just see a bunch of Xbox crap which isn’t the point. The three I mentioned have a lot more history, Atari would also be a good one. Anyhow, if this thing flys, I will come visit. I promise. I have to figure what the heck to also do in Ottumwa, Iowa…but we’ll work on that when we get there.
Arkanoid and me have a love-hate relationship. Every so often, I think I love the game and want to try it out. Then I get the game, play it for 15 minutes and hate myself for doing so. It’s a robust version of Breakout and this version ups the resolutions, adds some multiplayer and has a new boss known as SKULL. I’ll be downloading the demo since I know how I am, but truth is this is a good value.
Xtreme made quite an impact when it appeared on DS not too long ago. Its trippy visuals and addictive gameplay made it a lock to come to the XBLA format this year. Xbox Live will also add 4 player co-op and versus modes. Simple/basic gameplay with addictive personalities make this another good deal at 800 points.
The last Xbox Live game this week is Zombie Wranglers. This is a kid friendly game where you have take your kiddie zombie hunter around Potters field and clean up some zombies. It’s a cellshaded game as you can tell and offers naturally multiplayer capabilities. Not sure if E rated Zombie action works, but hey it can’t be too bad at the magic price point this week of 800 points.
At some point, I would like to say…why WiiWare, why? Why must you torment me? There are penguins here and they are hungry. They need to catch fish before someone else steals them from you. Up to 4 players can play, but unless you have 3 kids age 5 or less, I’m not sure why you would want to. Is it possible to get a serious WiiWare title or is that asking too much?
Old and interesting Commodore game. There are 8 towers you have to get to the top of. There are various obstacles along the way and at the top you get to trigger the destruction switch to demolish the threat. It had awesome graphics for 1987, and at 500 points it’s a fun little romp.
PSP
Patapon 2
PS3
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
Xbox 360
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Wii
Klonoa
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
Destiny of Zorro
Night at the Museum: Battle of Smithsonian
DS
Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times
Puzzle Kingdoms
Night at the Museum: Battle of Smithsonian
Crazy Chicken – Star Karts
Imagine: Music Fest
Wow, the PS3 version of LSL; cause apparently they were missing out on all of the action. Of driving in crappy golf carts, of terrible cameras and repetitive mission design. The only real mainstream release this week is Night at the Museum which shows up on 3 different platforms. The best seller this week goes to Klonoa for the Wii. It’s a remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, a 1997 Playstation Release. It’s quite a cute side-scrolling platform game and even though its path is two dimensional, the game is actually rendered in three. It should do quite well for the Wii due to the family nature. Reception has been good so far and the only real criticism is that it is too easy. Outside of that, I would suggest spending some MS Points, 1 of those 3 games mentioned this week ought to be up your alley.
Story time. Most of you know that I had trouble with my new Blu-Ray player. Well on Friday, we packaged up the player and sent it back to Maine. *sigh*. On Friday night, I went to Best Buy. They had two deals, one for a Sony BDP-S350 at $50 off and two for 18 months free financing for purchases $499 and over. I stood there and thought about it for 30 minutes in the store. I kept walking around (bless my girlfriend for putting up with me in decisions like this) and thinking over my options. Finally, I decided to do it. We got the shopping cart, loaded the receiver first (STR-DG820) since it was the heaviest and then went over to the blu-ray players. I picked up the box for the player. On the top it said Open-Box. The one I bought off Ebay was an Open-Box return. I couldn’t do it.
I flagged down an employee and he went to the back and tried to find a new one. He said there should be three around here including the open box model. They never found the other two. I was dejected at that point. I calmly put back the receiver and went home. My girlfriend suggested I go to another Best Buy but the Blu-Ray gods had spoken and I let it go. The only upside of that visit was that I found a copy of Silent Hill: Homecoming…$10 bucks. As it would turn out, my air conditioning unit in my home is wearing thin (14 years old) and I will probably be forking out a lot of cash for a full replacement. I guess somebody was trying to tell me something. I am still determined to get a blu-ray player and capable receiver by year’s end but I’m going to let it come to me naturally. It’s for the best. Take care kiddoes.
As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)
