Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category:
Cliffy B: Borderlands is the Diablo of FPS
Cliff Beszinski, better known as Cliffy B, showed his love for Borderlands by tweeting “Borderlands, I adore you. You’re Diablo for a generation raised on first person shooters. I want a Claptrap.” He’s quite right, Borderlands might just be the Diablo of FPS games, considering that you’ll be spending a lot of time looting and managing your inventory. For more on the game, read our Borderlands review.
Game Boy inducted into toy Hall of Fame
It’s always an honor when a great athlete gets inducted in a Hall of Fame — earlier this year for instance, Micheal Jordan was inducted into the NBA hall of fame, and now, more importantly to us gamers, Nintendo’s original Game Boy has been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame, specifically, the Strong National Museum of Play’s Toy Hall of Fame.
The original 8-bit Game Boy was released in 1989, and its subsequent variations, have sold over 120 million units world wide since then, with the best game being Tetris, selling a whopping 33 million copies.
Congratulations, Nintendo!
USPS worker steals over 2000 GameFly games
This will certainly add to the ongoing battle between GameFly and the United States Postal Service: a USPS worker has been caught and admitted in court that he stole over 2200 GameFly discs from his workplace.
The man was busted after surveillance showed test mailing of fake discs disappear during his shift, and found 170 discs in his SUV. It was later discovered that he was apparently trading the discs at the local GameStop.
L4D boycott ends
The Left 4 Dead boycott was started by two L4D players, called Agent of Chaos and Walking_Target, a few months ago, and gathered considerable attention. The players were disappointed by Valve for releasing a sequel only a year after the original game, and not fulfilling the promise of DLC and updates to the original game, have now ended the boycott, saying they are satisfied with what they achieved. Valve recently released a free DLC for L4D, less than a month before the sequel hits the stores. The two gamers who started the boycott group (which grew to some 30,000 members), were flown to Seattle and demonstrated Left 4 Dead 2 a few weeks ago, which probably affected their views on the sequel. Just a bit.
Tags: left 4 dead boycott
Uncharted 2 to feature Twitter compatibility
Now here’s an idea — It was recently discovered that Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will feature out of the box Twitter compatibility. No, you won’t be able to manually update your Twitter feed from in the game but instead, if you opt for it, the game will send out periodical tweets showing your followers when you have obtained a new Trophy, completed a single-player mission or even connect to a multiplayer game.
This probably isn’t the most exciting feature out there but for you avid Twitter users who feel the need to keep the world updated of your every action, this may be a god send.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will hit store shelves exclusively for the Playstation 3 on October 13th, 2009.
via joystiq
Pac-Man world record broken
Pac-Man made its debut almost 30 years ago in 1980 and has seen countless remakes and variations ever since. However, despite being on the market for so long gamers are still working tirelessly to smash previous world records for the game.
The latest record set forth by David Race managed to get to level 256 while collecting every piece of fruit and pill in just 3 hours, 41 minutes and 22 seconds. This is 42 seconds faster than the previous record of 3 hours, 42 minutes and 4 seconds.
So folks, Mr. Race now claims the top Pac-Man spot. What have you done with your life?
via kotaku
Inmate makes cardboard box in workshop, escapes from French jail
It seems that a French prisoner by the name of Jean-Pierre Treiber fashioned a cardboard box during his stay at a prison in Auxerre, Burgundy. He then proceeded to hide in the box as it was loaded onto a truck with several others thus escaping from the high security prison.
Now, you may be wondering what the hell does this have to do with video games but Metal Gear Solid fans will know just fine what it has to do. Any bets on how long until Mothers against Metal Gear makes its debut?
Swine flu spotted at PAX
Think the swine flu is all done with? Check this out — According to Joystiq, it seems that a number of PAX 2009 attendees have confirmed cases of the swine flu.
So folks, if you were in attendance and have flu like symptoms, you may want to head to your doctor. However, the CDC has said you only need to worry if you’re in a high risk group (sickly, elderly or very young) or if your symptoms get severe.
Target has gaming underwear, do you?
It seems that our buds over at Joystiq recently found themselves shopping at Target only to find a rack featuring nothing other than video game underwear. As you can see there’s Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Halo and more.
Although, the worst part about this is that there are no video game underwear made specifically for women. What gives?
Gaming community blackmails Infinity Ward over MW4 domain name
Now here’s something you don’t see everyday — It seems that a gaming communtity by the name of Ziip got their hands on the domain name modernwarfare4.com and decided to blackmail Infinity Ward for its use.
No, they aren’t asking for a large sum of money but instead a copy of Modern Warfare 4 for each member of their community.
How will Infinity Ward respond to this? Well, they will most likely just use a domain name like codmodernwarfare4.com which will redirect to modernwarfare4.infinityward.com like they did with Modern Warfare 2.
But wait, what happened to Modern Warfare 3?
LEGO to release Prince of Persia series
It seems that LEGO is gearing up to launch a Prince of Persia themed series of their iconic bricks. This is apparantly a marketing deal that Disney signed with LEGO to promote the movie coming out next April.
Anyways, pictured above is a snapshot of the Prince of Persia LEGO series that was recently shown off during Comic Con and from the looks of it they are exactly what we’d expect; LEGO toys.
If this is your kind of thing expect to see the Prince of Persia LEGO sets hit shelves right around the franchise’s big screen debut.
via Kotaku
Tekken 6 shirts from TapouT announced
TapouT, a clothing brand geared towards the mixed-martial-arts community, has announced today that they will be creating shirts based on the Tekken 6 video game. These same designs will also be available in-game for characters to wear.
“Tekken 6 and TapouT fans share a deep-rooted passion for the mixed-martial-arts lifestyle,” said Namco Bandai’s Makoto Iwai “This partnership will bring TapouT’s signature style into the world of Tekken, giving new experiences to video game enthusiasts and MMA fans alike.”
Hopefully these shirts won’t look as awful as Ecko’s Halo shirts. The new clothing line will go on sale this September.
Read (PlayStation Lifestyle)
Mark Ecko’s line of Halo inspired t-shirts
Are you a fan of Ecko clothing? I’m not, but I’m a fan of Halo effectively making the above shirts at least kind of cool.
Seriously though, what you see above a collection of 6 Halo-inspired Ecko t-shirts that are now available for purchase. They are priced from 32-38 dollars and feature Master Chief aimin’, shootin’ and (most importantly) posin’.
Sure, I have to give it Ecko for making a few cool designs but as for the rest, well, I think Kotaku puts it best when they said they look like “designs that you would expect to see adorning an unlicensed beach towel in a South-East Asian marketplace.
Read (Ecko)
Famicon Controller shaped business card holder
Has time hit you hard? You know, one day you’re a youngin’ playing NES and the next you’re sitting in front of a desk with piles of paper around you? Yeah well thanks to Banpresto you can now merge the two lifestyles.
What you see about is their ¥2,900/$31 Famicom controller inspired business card holder. The case itself is made of aluminum and reportedly has two compartments, one for your own business cards and one for ones you receive.
You’ll apparantly be able to pick this up sometime this October with no talks of a worldwide release. Although, with a bit of searching I’m sure you could find an importer willing to sell you it.
Read (GeekStuff4U)
ESA sues Chicago Transit Authority over adertising
It seems that the Entertainment Software Association is fed up with the Chicago Transit Authority’s advertising policy on M and A/O rated games and have decided to take it to court.
Now you may think it’s the CTA’s decision what they put on their buses and subways but the ESA’s argument is that there is no ban on R-rated movies or the like. This has led the ESA to suggest that this violates their constitutional right of free speech.
The ban on M and A/O rated games apparantly went down in January of this year but only now has the ESA decided to do something about it. We’ll keep you posted as this story unfolds.
via Kotaku