Category: Games

A 25th-anniversary celebration is in the pipeline for Mario
When Shigeru Miyamoto, then an artist at Nintendo, drew a short, stubby character to serve as the hero in arcade game Donkey Kong in 1981, little did he know the mustachioed Mario would leap right into pop culture.
Since then, Mario has appeared in more than 200 games.
“I personally wanted to keep on using Mario as a character in a lot of the different games I thought I would be creating going forward,” Miyamoto said in a recent interview. “Did I think he would become this well known and familiar to people? No.”
Miyamoto and Nintendo are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., Mario’s most popular game ó and the best-selling video game ever until Wii Sports in 2009. There are new red Wii systems ($200, with New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Sports included), DSi XL handhelds ($180 with Mario Kart DS) and Wii remotes ($40). And Super Mario All-Stars, a collection of original NES Mario games upgraded for the Wii, is due Dec. 12 ($30).
“It is something for people who have a lot of fond memories,” Miyamoto says. “It also is something that is new and accessible for some of the younger players. … I just hope people will pick it up and again celebrate with us the history of the series.”
In the beginning, Miyamoto recalls, Mario was barely a character. Unlike today’s big, detailed game canvas, “Donkey Kong was a 16-by-16 (inch) screen. The character I came up with to fit that best was this little guy with a big nose and a mustache, the characteristics that would stand out in that medium.”
In fact, Mario’s first vocation was carpentry. “With Donkey Kong, this gorilla grabs this gal and runs away with her, and you have to chase the gorilla to save the lady. The game’s stage was a construction site, so we made him into basically a carpenter.” It wasn’t until Mario Bros. in 1983, which introduced brother Luigi and moved the game underground, that “we decided he could be a plumber. The scenario dictates his role.”
Mario’s fame quickly grew. “They did a popularity survey somewhere and found at that time Mario was higher on the scale than Mickey Mouse,” Miyamoto says. “I thought, personally, Mickey Mouse was a character who had been around for 40 years at that point, and (Mario) being compared to Mickey Mouse was something that I was really embarrassed about. I wasn’t comfortable with that.
“That being said, I saw the way Mickey had evolved, and we decided that Mario was going to be a character who would evolve and change with the advances in digital technology.”
Indeed, with today’s 3-D trend, there is a new, deeper Mario under construction. “We are working on a Mario product for the Nintendo 3DS. I can tell you that,” he says. “And for the first time ever, Mario will be on a handheld system with an analog stick for controls. That’s new.”

Xbox blocks W.Va. gamer over town’s name: Fort Gay
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. ñ Microsoft Corp. and the chief rules enforcer for Xbox Live are apologizing to a small West Virginia town and a 26-year-old gamer accused of violating the online gaming service’s code of conduct by publicly declaring he’s from Fort Gay ó a name the company considered offensive.
The town’s name is real. But when Josh Moore tried to tell Seattle-based Microsoft and the enforcement team at Xbox Live, they wouldn’t take his word for it. Or Google it. Or check the U.S. Postal Service website for a ZIP code.
Instead, they suspended his gaming privileges for a few days until Moore could convince them the location in his profile, “fort gay WV,” wasn’t a joke or a slur: It’s an actual community of about 800 in Wayne County, along West Virginia’s western border with Kentucky.
“At first I thought, ‘Wow, somebody’s thinking I live in the gayest town in West Virginia or something.’ I was mad. … It makes me feel like they hate gay people,” said Moore, an unemployed factory worker who plays shooters like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty and Ghost Recon under the gamertag Joshanboo.
“I’m not even gay, and it makes me feel like they were discriminating,” said Moore, who missed a key Search and Destroy competition because of last week’s brief suspension. His team lost.
Angry and incredulous, Moore contacted customer service.
“I figured, I’ll explain to them, ‘Look in my account. Fort Gay is a real place,'” Moore reasoned. But the employee was unreceptive, warning Moore if he put Fort Gay back in his profile, Xbox Live would cancel his account and keep his $12 monthly membership fee, which he’d paid in advance for two years.
“I told him, Google it ó 25514!” Moore said, offering up the town’s ZIP code. “He said, ‘I can’t help you.'”
Mayor David Thompson also tried to intervene, but with little success. He told television station WSAZ, which first reported the dispute, that he was informed the city’s name didn’t matter. The word “gay,” he was told, was inappropriate in any context.
“It was so inappropriate for them, they wouldn’t even say the word,” Thompson told the AP Wednesday. “They said, ‘that word.’ It’s beyond me. That’s the name of our town! It’s appalling. It’s a slap in our face.”
Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live blamed miscommunication.
“Someone took the phrase ‘fort gay WV’ and believed that the individual who had that was trying to offend, or trying to use it in a pejorative manner,” Toulouse said. “Unfortunately, one of my people agreed with that. … When it was brought to my attention, we did revoke the suspension.”
Complaints, he notes, come to agents with no contextual information, including who the suspected offender is or what games they play. The agent simply looks at the language and determines whether it complies with policy.
The Xbox Live player’s contract says users cannot “create a gamertag, avatar or use text in other profile fields that may offend other members,” and lists potentially dangerous topics such as drug use, hate speech and racial, ethnic or religious slurs.
Fort Gay has been a community since 1789, when 11 people tried to establish a settlement at the junction of the Tug and Big Sandy rivers, across from what is now Louisa, Ky. It was incorporated as Cassville in 1875 but was simultaneously known as Fort Gay until 1932, when town leaders changed it to the latter for good.
Toulouse said he will contact Moore and apologize. Staying ahead of slang and policing Xbox for offensive is a constant challenge, he said.
“In this very, very specific case, a mistake was made,” he said, “and we’re going to make it right.”

Get ready to experience Michael Jackson the video game
Dancing is eternal.
More than a year after the pop icon’s death, Michael Jackson has a new video game on the way, one that teaches players to moonwalk, spin and slide like the King of Pop once did.
Michael Jackson The Experience, due in November for Wii, Xbox, PS3, PSP and DS (rated E10+ for ages 10 and up), lets players try to match some of his classic moves.
John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate, say they had been looking for a video game to showcase his legacy. (His last game, Moonwalker, in the early ’90s, had him dancing to defeat “Mr. Big” and save the children.)
“The game needed to incorporate Michael’s music and dance moves into the most innovative technology available, continually pushing the envelope at each turn,” according to an e-mail by their press representative.
With the Wii version, you wave the wireless remote to mimic the moves of an on-screen dancer that resembles Jackson. To the right of the screen, upcoming steps scroll by, showing you where to position the remote as you shake your body down to the ground to Bad, Beat It, Billie Jean, Workin’ Day and Night and The Girl Is Mine, among other hits.
The Xbox 360 version will use Microsoft’s upcoming Kinect full-body control system to track the player’s moves, and its camera will project the player into the game environments, all based on Jackson’s videos and concerts. The PS3 version will use the motion-tracking PlayStation Move technology. (In the Wii version, up to three additional players can sing along with the dancing player, but their performance doesn’t affect the score.)
The Experience continues Jackson’s posthumous portfolio diversification:
ïLast year’s film This Is It, which documented Jackson’s rehearsals for a comeback, was a global box office hit. The soundtrack went double platinum, 1.6 million copies; on video, This Is It sold more than 1.2 million.
ïAn album of unreleased material is due in November.
ïA Cirque du Soleil show based on his music is expected to begin touring in fall 2011; a permanent show is set to open in Las Vegas in late 2012.
The video game’s strength is that players will “know what it feels like to be in his shoes, performing in front of millions,” says Ubisoft’s Antoine Vimal Du Monteil.
To be good at the game takes talent, so fortunately, the developers have included rehearsal tutorials, says Andy Burt of GamePro magazine. The game “has the potential to be competitive in a crowded market,” he says. “It will no doubt prove popular with both fans and casual listeners of his music.”

Video Game Hall of Fame inducting Pac-Man and pals
What are the latest cultural artifacts that preservationists want to safeguard for future generations?
Pac-Man and his pals.
Though the era of video games is far younger than those of books and film, early arcade and home games of the ’70s and ’80s are rapidly deteriorating, breaking or being thrown away.
But as awareness about games’ influence on pop culture rises, “what comes hand in hand with that is the recognition that this is a heritage that is valuable and should be protected so things are not lost,” says Walter Day, a video game historian who is helping establish the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa.
The Hall gets its first class of 29 inductees ó including Pac-Man as the first game to be inducted ó this week with four days of ceremonies starting Thursday in Ottumwa. Other inductees: Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Namco founder Masaya Nakamura, the Microsoft Xbox design team and competitive game champions Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe and Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel.
Why Ottumwa? In the early ’80s, the city’s Twin Galaxies arcade, owned by Day, emerged as a national destination for competitions. The arcade is now gone, but TwinGalaxies.com remains as a global video game scorekeeper.
Supporters hope the activities spur fundraising for a Smithsonian-style museum for the Hall (www.ivghof.com). The goal: to collect at least one each of the more than 100,000 coin arcade and home video games produced in the last 25 years.
Day and city officials liken the project to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. “This is something Tokyo, Los Angeles or New York should be doing, but it is Ottumwa that is stepping up and taking a swing,” he says.
Already existing archives and libraries are turning their sights to game preservation, too:
ï Home video games. The University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture and Engineering Library video game archive has amassed about 2,000 games for 20 different systems since opening in fall 2008. Faculty and students “are beginning to be interested in video games as an academic subject,” says archivist David Carter.
ïGame industry documents. The University of Texas Video Game Archive has a growing repository of publications, concept art, posters and extensive documentation from game developers. How games were created “is really important culturally,” says assistant professor Megan Winget.
ïVirtual worlds. University researchers at Illinois, Maryland, Stanford and the Rochester Institute of Technology are researching how to digitally preserve video games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft. The project is partly funded by the Library of Congress, which has a growing collection of thousands of video games among its films and audio recording holdings. .
Says Preserving Virtual Worlds investigator Jerome McDonough of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: “If you can figure out how to preserve games, including some of the unusual input and control devices, you’ve gone a long way to figuring out how to preserve software in general.”

New Guitar Hero to feature Rush’s 2112
Rush fans let out a collective “oh my God” on Thursday as Activision announced the Canadian band’s seminal album 2112 will be heavily featured in the upcoming Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock video game, out for all consoles in September. The game will include the entire seven-song, 20-minute 2112 “suite,” which tells the story of a future society in which music is banned.
For the uninitiated, 2112 isn’t your average rock album. It’s about the fallout from a galaxy-wide war in the year 2062, which ended with an oppressive organization, known as the Red Star of the Solar Federation, in charge. The federation exerts its influence over cultural matters through their conduits, the Priests of the Temple of Syrinx. But things begin to change for the better in the year 2112, after a rebellious man discovers a guitar in a cave and proceeds to rock out. Essentially, it’s the plot of Footloose, but with a bunch of spacey, Ayn Rand philosophy thrown in.
The album is considered a prog-rock masterpiece and, along with Moving Pictures (1981), it’s generally thought of as Rush’s best work.
The boys in the band are big fans of Guitar Hero, even if they’re not that good at it — the games have certainly turned a new generation on to their music. Rush songs have been featured in Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, going back almost to the beginning, with the instrumental YYZ in Guitar Hero II (2006). The entirety of Moving Pictures was released as a download for Rock Band II in 2008.
As Geddy Lee says in the trailer for Warriors of Rock, “I love the idea of Guitar Hero, I think it’s a great way to be introduced to the music of various bands.”
The new Guitar Hero will also feature songs by A Perfect Circle, Dire Straits, Def Leppard, The Cure, Queen, Stone Temple Pilots and ZZ Top. Led by Rush and their thought-provoking songs, the game will likely do well. Probably better than last year’s Guitar Hero: Van Halen, which was mostly about chicks, booze and cars.

‘Rock Band 3’: Keyboards are the key
Ever since Rock Band expanded the musical video-game stage in 2007 to add drums and vocals to the Guitar Hero experience, players have been clamoring for keyboards.
Consider that request filled. Rock Band 3 (due for the holidays for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii) expands the virtual band to seven (drums, lead and bass guitar, keyboards, lead vocals and two harmony vocals). “With the introduction of keyboards, we get to bring a ton of amazing new music onto the platform, which will help feed the appetite for music for years to come,” says Alex Rigopulos, CEO of game studio Harmonix.
Among the 83 new songs to be included, Rigopulos says, “it’s hard to pick a favorite, but for The Doors to be making an appearance on Rock Band finally with their classic Break On Through, I love that one. And Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is endlessly fun.”
The success of Rock Band and follow-up Rock Band 2 propelled sales of music games to more than $1.6 billion in 2008 ó with the help of competing Guitar Hero titles. Despite a wide variety of new games in 2009 including The Beatles: Rock Band and DJ Hero, annual sales fell by nearly 50%.
That slide inspired the Rock Band 3 development team to try to recapture the fun “that really started this whole phenomenon in the first place,” says project director Daniel Sussman.
During the game, green, red, blue, yellow or orange keys flow on a “stream” representing the notes to be played on five corresponding keyboard keys. In a new authentic Pro mode meant to help players segue to actual instruments, all 25 keys are used; the streams shifts left and right to cover the correct keys. The keyboard also works as a MIDI keyboard that can be connected to a computer. “This is a real instrument and a real device,” says senior designer Sylvain Dubrofsky.
In addition to the new keyboard controller, also due for the game’s release are two advanced guitar controllers that take advantage of the Pro mode, one a full-sized, fully functional Fender guitar (all sold separately, no prices yet).
Other Rock Band 3 advances: improved animations, refined gameplay features ó players can drop in and out of games, or change instruments and difficulty settings without stopping songs ó and a easier-to-use song menu.
“Our ambition for Rock Band 3 was really to re-energize and reinvigorate the (music game) category and advance it and move it forward,” Rigopulos says.

Green Day immortalized in ‘Rock Band’ Edition
NEW YORK ñ With a hit Broadway show and now their own edition of the “Rock Band” franchise, Green Day is establishing themselves as a punk rock brand.
“I just like being diverse and trying new things as far as Green Day is concerned,” says front man Billie Joe Armstrong.
The Grammy-winning, multiplatinum trio joins the Beatles as the only other act immortalized in “Rock Band”; the video game is being released next Tuesday.
“It’s like a glorified karaoke machine,” Armstrong said. “Or ‘Mortal Kombat’ with guitars.”
As players progress through the game, they gain access into the band’s media vault, where they can unlock rare collectible images, and over 40 minutes of unreleased video. These include performances, outtakes, interviews, and even a tour of their transportation.
“You see old footage of us from the Bookmobile, and weird old performances and stuff no one’s looked at in almost twenty years,” Armstrong said.
Bits from those old performances help recreate the kinetic energy of the band playing live. Developers went through many hours of footage to get it right, and even used stand-in performers to fine-tune the computer-generated version on the punk rock trio.
“As far as video games are concerned it’s pretty close,” Armstrong said. “The Beatles wrote some of the greatest songs ever, but it wasn’t challenging to get their movement down (on ‘Rock Band’) because they didn’t really move that much.”
Regarding their computer-generated likeness, the consensus was positive.
“Oh man, we’re hot on computers,” said drummer Tre Cool, while Dirnt joked: “I don’t know if they got enough pimples on me.”
In the game, players perform in three different venues, each significant to the band. There’s a punk rock club, which is an amalgamation of various places Green Day played in the early days; the Fox Theater in their hometown in Oakland, California; and the site of their first stadium show.
“The Milton Keynes (stadium) show was quite momentous for us. It actually was the concert that was filmed for ‘Bullet in a Bible,” Dirnt said, referring to the live DVD that was recorded in 2005 on the band’s “American Idiot” tour.
It was at the cast party for the Berkley, California, version of the Broadway musical “American Idiot,” now nominated for three Tony awards including best musical, where the band was introduced to “Rock Band.”
“Everybody got drunk and was playing ‘Beatles Rock Band,'” Armstrong said. “We were just having a good time with it.”
But that doesn’t always equate to success. After playing the game for the first time over a year ago, and experiencing their own edition, how good a player does Armstrong consider himself?
“I suck,” he said. “I’m not very good at it.”

EA brings NHL game to Wii
Wayne Gretzky admits it: The Great One is just an average hockey player.
Well, not really. Only when it comes to EA Sports’ National Hockey League franchise coming to the Nintendo Wii in September, just in time for the start of the next season.
“I’d be what would be considered a 10 goal scorer if I was comparing this to the NHL,” the Hockey Hall of Fame player joked in an interview with The Associated Press.
And that’s not too good considering that during his 21 years in the NHL Gretzky accumulated a long list of accomplishments and awards and is the only player to have ever recorded 200 points in a season.
Gretzky is also one of the first hockey players to have his name associated with a video game. He is teaming up with EA as it skates into its first version of its NHL for the Wii with “NHL Slapshot.”
For sports fans who grew up dreaming of being Gretzky, this is their chance ó hockey stick and all.
Producers of the franchise say “NHL Slapshot” will capitalize on some of the best features from its top-selling PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 teammates, but takes the game even further by using a hockey stick as the controller.
“It’s one of the those games that you could sit down and you’ll be able to play for hours. It’s very realistic … it’s almost like playing in the NHL,” Gretzky said. “People as much as they love to sit down and play video games, they also love to sort of participate and pretend like they’re actually playing.”
Gretzky said video games have come a long way since he graced the cover of Nintendo’s “Wayne Gretzky Hockey” in 1991. Certainly the graphics are better, the game is more realistic and players have more control over their simulated counterparts on the TV screen.
“It’s like the game of hockey itself, the game keeps getting better every 10 years,” Gretzky said. “There’s no question the game is better today, which is exciting for everyone.”
For the controller, players fit the Wii Remote and Nunchuk into a hockey stick casing complete with a foam stick blade. Players use the hockey stick to take shots on net, move around players and check opponents into the boards or lift another player’s stick. Players also have the ability to play as the goalie using the Wii controllers as the glove and blocker.
“It’s just such a natural extension to use the Wii with the motion controls to make a hockey stick,” said David Littman, creative director for EA’s NHL franchise, who took one of his most expensive hockey sticks, cut it up and duct-taped the controllers to the stick to make a prototype.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re 6 years old or 60 years old, when you look at the stick and you put it in your hands, and you take your first slapshot, it doesn’t matter what age you are, it just is this incredible experience.”
Among the highlights are the split-screen and minigames, as well as the “Pee Wee to Pro” mode that lets users create a 10-year-old version of themselves playing on a backyard rink and work their way up to the NHL. Players can also choose to play as a “peewee” version of Gretzky and some of hockey’s other great stars. Gretzky also serves as a coach in the “Pee Wee to Pro” mode giving players tips to get to the NHL.
“If you are somebody that has loved hockey … Wayne’s pretty much as big as it gets,” said lead producer Joe Nickolls.
And with the new title, EA is again facing off against one of its main opponents, so to speak.
EA’s NHL series is among the top five-selling sports games in the world. For years, both EA and 2K Sports created competing NHL franchises for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Then 2K Sports decided to focus its NHL efforts for 2011 on the Wii, ditching versions for the other consoles at least for the year.
“We make games for the consoles when we believe it’s right and we’re going to make the best game,” Nickolls said. “For sure there’s competition from lots of different players for all of our sports games. Yes, we pay attention to them, but it really doesn’t change how we make them.”
The technology used for the Wii version also may be a precursor to versions using motion control technology planned for both PlayStation2 and Xbox 360.
“This is going to be a really good test,” Littman said.

Drew Brees lands cover of `Madden’ video game
Drew Brees has another prize to put next to his Super Bowl MVP trophy: He’s the cover model for this year’s edition of the “Madden NFL” video game.
The New Orleans Saints quarterback led his team to a 31-17 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in this year’s Super Bowl. He says landing the cover of “Madden” is “a great way to cap off an amazing year.”
The announcement was made Thursday.
Brees was chosen by fans who voted online to determine the game’s cover athlete. The other choices were Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne and Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen.
“Madden NFL 11” will be released by EA Sports on Aug. 10.

Music video games primed for new dance revolution
DENVER (Billboard) ñ Music games are about to come full circle, with the next stage of the struggling genre coming from the familiar category of dance music, driven by new motion-capture controllers expected to hit the market this fall.
Microsoft plans to have its Project Natal motion-capture game controller available for sale in time for the holiday season. The device is a camera that recognizes user gestures and body contortions as a means of controlling gameplay. Sony’s Move, announced at the Game Developers Conference in March, is more like Nintendo’s Wii system, with a controller that users hold in their hands, a sensor to track its movement and a camera to project it all into the game.
A host of game developers, including “Rock Band” developer Harmonix, is expected to release games that use these new motion-capture controllers as early as this year, although most titles aren’t expected until 2011. Sources say they expect developers to unveil some of these new titles at the E3 video-game conference in June.
Dance-based games will feature heavily in that rollout and should provide a much-needed shot in the arm to the music-game market. Sales in the category plummeted last year as interest in the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” franchises faded. The problem, according to Jesse Divnich, vice president of analyst services at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, is that there wasn’t any innovation in features within the genre despite a flood of new content. And content, Divnich says, will sustain a franchise for only so long.
The precursor to music and rhythm games like “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” was Konami’s “Dance Dance Revolution,” the hit arcade game that later migrated to home gaming platforms. The game relied on an exclusive floor-pad peripheral, which underwent little evolution, much like the guitar and drum controllers of “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”
“It was massively popular, but it didn’t really reach a mainstream audience like ‘Guitar Hero,'” Divnich says. “Project Natal and Sony’s Move will allow the dance category to reach a broader audience … This could be a billion-dollar category over the next 24 months.”
NON-EXCLUSIVE CONTROLLERS
Unlike the “Dance Dance Revolution” floor pad — or the “DJ Hero” turntable or the band kit for “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” — these new controllers aren’t exclusive to any one franchise. That means developers are free to create games using their functionality rather than developing exclusive peripherals. Analysts expect between 10 percent and 20 percent of existing console owners to buy a Natal or Move device, and both Microsoft and Sony are expected to bundle the controllers with new consoles shortly after their release.
A recent survey from Game Informer on the state of music games found that readers were most interested in “different music genres” (35.7 percent) and “more realistic gameplay and peripherals” (32.3 percent) when asked which features in a new music game would excite them most. Dance games based on Project Natal and the Move will feature both.
Current Wii hit “Just Dance” is an early indicator that dance games based on motion controls have great potential. Taking advantage of the Wii’s motion-based controllers — as well as tracks like MC Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This” — “Just Dance” has defied negative reviews to sell more than 850,000 units in the United States since its debut in November, according to NPD Group. In February it was the fourth-best-selling game stateside and the third-ranked game in the United Kingdom.
Moreover, the dance category allows for a broader sampling of music. While “Guitar Hero” and “DJ Hero” focus heavily on the use of specific instruments, dance games can incorporate all manner of musical styles so long as they’re danceable.
“This gives all sorts of different bands the opportunity to get their music into these games,” Wedbush Morgan Securities gaming analyst Michael Pachter says. “Everybody dances. Maybe we suck, but we’ll try it.”
Cynthia Sexton, executive vice president of global brand partnerships at EMI Music — which contributed about half of the 32 songs on the “Just Dance” soundtrack after submitting more than 200 for consideration — says dance games are already starting to pay off.
“For me as a label person and for our artists, it just means more revenue,” she says. “I won’t tell you what the check looked like, but it was very, very healthy. And I look forward to the next game, whatever that is.”