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Game Commercials of Olde Versus Today

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:46:17 +0000

At a message board located somewhere over the rainbow and to the right of Candyland, I’m engaged in an interesting discussion about game ad campaigns in the past, and how they relate to the present.

The ’90s were probably the most memorable time for game ads. Technology was advancing quickly, but people were, for the moment, comfortable with their 8-bit Nintendo. Then Sega launched an aggressive ad campaign that changed video games.

The Sega Genesis pre-dated the Super Nintendo considerably. There was no question that the Super Nintendo was a finely-crafted system and the most powerful 16-bit console of the two, but how many of us knew it back then? Sega’s ads made sure it was as few as possible.

Sure, if you compared Genesis and Super Nintendo games head-to-head, you would notice that the Genesis games looked duller, sounded far tinnier, and (to my little girl hands) did not have a controller that was as decent as the SNES’. As it stands though, very few of us were able to do that. The late ’80s and early ’90s were a little rough in terms of recession; we were lucky to get one system out of the two (you young punks!), and there was no GameTrailers.com to compare game footage.

All there was was Sega talking about “BLAST PROCESSING!!!!1″, a fantasy term that supposedly gave the Genesis mystical processing powers over the SNES and made games faster. Here’s the commercial that tricked a very gullible generation:

Looking at the commercials now is pretty funny. Sega used Sonic the Hedgehog 2 footage to pwn footage of Super Mario Kart.

One of those franchises is a joke today, while the other remains widely beloved and in fact just sold millions of copies with a sequel. I’ll leave you to guess which game is which.

Sega’s ads were outright attacks against its competitor (one YouTube comment makes an accurate and funny observation: Sega’s commercials were an early rendition of today’s Internet trolls). They were juvenile, but they were also brilliant. Kids who grew up with Nintendo were ready for something cooler; Sega’s campaign agreed very clearly that it was time to grow up. To make things worse for Nintendo, they stayed meek and refrained from retaliation…for a time. Does anyone remember “Play It Loud?”

What’s interesting is that Sony tried to attack Nintendo directly with its Crash Bandicoot commercials, wherein Crash taunted Mario and put down on his latest at the time, Super Mario 64. The style resembled Sega’s attack campaign, but it wasn’t nearly as effective. Were people wise to it? Probably. By then the Internet was widespread and game media was accessible instantaneously. Game reviews evolved in a similar manner to let players know what was hype and what was worth owning.

Game media has irrevocably changed to become more mature—maybe to a fault. What does a baby doll in a room with a Playstation 3 tell me, exactly? I’m not sure if I miss those old Sega commercials that made me furious in my defence for Nintendo (I had a Super Nintendo), but managed to make me laugh at the same time.

Either way, commercials are all about pushing buttons and being rewarded with the response you want. Sega’s “attitude” did that well in its day, but when you come right down to it, it didn’t save the 32X.

On the other hand, nothing could’ve accomplished that.

(Ecco the Dolphin copyright Sega)

Tags: Crash Bandicoot, game commercials, media, Nintendo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Kart

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GTA IV: Will It Blend?

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:33:38 +0000

What’s the best console on which to enjoy Grand Theft Auto IV? The Playstation 3? The Xbox 360? The real answer is a Blendtec Blender.

The white-coated Tom Dickson has made Blendtec Blenders famous on YouTube by blending anything he can get his hands on (keep your babies close). This has included several games—and even consoles—over the years.

Dickson is irritated with GTA IV, but not in the manner of a typical old person (”Kids are violent because of game tapes and the news told me to be scared of them and my false teeth huuuuuurt!”). Rather, he’s annoyed that Nico is unable to steal ‘68 Mustang. Into the blender Nico goes. Fight that war, my Eastern European friend.

Sometimes I think I missed my calling; I should’ve been a sociologist because I find YouTube comments like the one below fascinating and mystifying:

Tags: Grand Theft Auto IV, just for fun, lol, media, Will It Blend

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Hands-On: Dead Space and ‘Strategic Dismemberment’

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:20:22 +0000

The buzzword that the developers of Dead Space kept throwing around during a recent demo was “strategic dismemberment.”

Hitting the game’s alien enemies in center mass won’t do much of anything, they said. What you’ve got to do is take out their crazy tentacles and appendages.

“That gun you’re using looks quite conveniently spaced to that alien’s tentacles,” I pointed out. “Are some guns going to be specifically matched to enemy types?”

As it turns out: Yes.

Electronic Arts’ upcoming outer-space shooter, set for release this
Halloween on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, is drawing many comparisons to BioShock. But for my money,
it looks more like a high-res Metroid Prime 3, with its
abandoned-space-station vibe and glowing blue futuretech scattered liberally throughout its environs.

Speaking of which, I was really impressed with how Dead Space handles
the issue of life bars and info gauges. They’re all on the back of your
character’s suit. Even when he’s running out of oxygen, the timer that
shows how long he has before he asphyxiates is shown in glowing type on
the back of his crazy space-corset.

Going hands-on for a brief few minutes after the guided demo, I was quickly thrown into a deadly situation and performed just like every other journalist in the room: Poorly. I got my ass kicked pretty hard by the swarms of aliens and their perfectly-spaced tentacles. Yes, I was able to fire off a couple of well-placed three-bullet rounds and strategically dismember the alien shown above, but soon after I was overwhelmed.

Is Dead Space brutally difficult, or are its designers just a bunch of sadists who enjoy throwing journalists into the hardest part of their game without any preparation? You never quite know, but we can all find out together later this year.

Image: Electronic Arts

Visit the Patent Arcade in Second Life

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:07:57 +0000

I now have a presence in Second Life, on the PG (i.e., ok for all ages) region of Pumori. My XboxLIVE gamertage is Aviator, so naturally keeping with the theme my SL avatar is Aviator Kidd. Our Second Life Outpost is lakeside in Pumori. Stop by and say hello.

Second Life URL (SLURL) (if you have Second Life installed, you can click the link to teleport to our outpost)

Here is the SLURL if you want the details: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pumori/144/111/31

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Return to Oddworld

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:54:13 +0000

Looks like the denizens of Oddworld will roam the console-scape again.

During a talk at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University, Maxis co-founder Jeff Braun revealed his involvement in a new game for the dormant Oddworld franchise.

What can we expect? According to Braun, a "revolutionary new 3-D animation system" that will rival current CG films. Also, the game will be released as a series of episodes.

For those of you not up on your Oddworld lore, the series of side-scrolling puzzle-heavy platformers — from developer Oddworld Inhabitants — was originally planned as a quintology. The first game, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, was released on the PlayStation in 1997, with the last release, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (not part of the quintology) coming out on the Xbox in 2005.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play all of the Oddworld games — the Xbox is the only modern console I didn’t own — but I was always in love with the concept of games sharing a universe from the get-go, with new entries offering distinct heroes and chapters, all under an overarching storyline.

Image courtesy Oddworld Inhabitants

Report: Maxis Co-Founder Reveals Oddworld Return [Gamasutra]

Funcom Celebrates Age of Conan Launch With New Trailer

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:37:03 +0000

To celebrate Tuesday’s launch of Age of Conan, Funcom has released the game’s official launch trailer to the teeming internet masses.

Tuesday’s launch was especially notable as it marked the first major MMO launch in recent history that didn’t result in the game’s servers collapsing under the initial player rush.

Though Funcom hasn’t released information on how many players the game has so far accrued, or how many people logged onto the game this week, the performance of AoC during its first few days of life was remarkably smooth. In a genre where massive server failures and horrible, gamebreaking glitches are the expectation, Age of Conan remained solid and playable.

It’s still too early for Funcom to claim victory over its competitors, but it’s certainly doing an excellent job so far.

I can’t keep my hands out of the code

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:24:33 +0000

Things have been pretty busy lately as I complete the process of moving my family to Boston. That doesn't prevent me from jumping into the code and breaking things every now and again… If you didn't know, 360voice has no real dev environment. We like to live out there on the edge… everything is coded directly in production against production systems… it keeps us spry… on edge… if you haven't tried running a software product with NOT development or staging I suggest you try it… it makes you question the need for complexity.

Although I have been known to roll back some of Squidpunch's code from time to time… I know we have a mantra around here that when something breaks, blame Steve (Fatty Chubs)… but lately it should be changed to blame Trapper (ChangeAgent).

I did jump in and add a few things lately that I never called out.

Added gamerscore to the Top 20 Most Played list on the game pages.
This is fascinating because I sort of assumed that people who played 313 DAYS of Oblivion would have all 1250 points… not so! Craziness! So click around a few of the popular games. You might be surprised at what you see. A special thanks to Himself0890 for the suggestion!
Rearranged the challenge trash talk to match the blogs.
This was something I have been meaning to do. When I redid the comment layout for the blogs I never did the trash talk, so now it should be much easier to read. I have seen in the forums that you might have to refresh your style sheets (CTRL-F5) otherwise it might look funky.

So that is it for now. Look for a few bigger new features this week! And for all those wondering, we will be recording another podcast here soon as well.

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Joystiq Interviews TellTale!

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:10:50 +0000

With all the hub and the bub going around the internet about the delicious looking new game from TellTale, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, people are clamouring to be the first ones to interview the developers. And it’s a good idea, because you get to hear about a lot of crazy stuff that’s been going on down at TellTale and how coo. it is to develop a game with the very awesomeable Strong Bad.

Well, Joystiq being Joystiq, they have of course asked for interviews with the company and those interview requests? Totally granted.

This interview talks about the Brother’s Chap involvement with the game (there’s a lot), the length of the games, price of the game and some other random stuff in which we learn about Strong Bad.

If you want to check out the interview, which has a lot of interview quality coolness, you can do so here.

And just for fun, here’s a trailer of some game play from the first episode.

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Ashely Tisdale

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:55:46 +0000

Angelo asked for her so I went looking. I figured if he was for her as well.asking for her then others were probably salivating

Click here for your very own Tisdale.

Tags: Ashley Tisdale, Free Sims 2 Download, High School Musical, sims-2, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody

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XBLA: Positively Clueless

hiphper — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:43:34 +0000

Are Microsoft purposely throwing this round? XBLA was, in my opinion, their strongest asset this generation. It’s certainly not their sales, quality control, or non-FPS game lineup. Go read Oddbob’s rant, he hits it straight on as usual.

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