Wu-Tang Clan founder and world-famous DK RZA will be a playable character in upcoming game DJ Hero 2, Activision said today.
"I'm very excited to be involved with DJ Hero 2. As both a DJ and gamer from an early age, the game combines two of my passions," said RZA. "I loved working with the team and am excited for the fans to hear the two brand-new mixes I put together just for this game. Bong bong!"
Other playable DJs in the game include Deadmau5, David Guetta, DJ Qbert and Tiesto.
RZA also mixed and produced two exclusive tracks featuring LL Cool J "I Can't Live Without My Radio" Mixed With Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five "The Message" and Damian Marley "Welcome To Jamrock" Mixed With Walter Murphy "A Fifth of Beethoven."
Last month, Kotaku was told that 3D Realms' ridiculously long-in-the-making shooter Duke Nukem Forever would finally see the light of day, thanks to a saving throw from Borderlands studio Gearbox Software. Duke's reveal was rumored to happen at this weekend's PAX convention.
At the time, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford would neither confirm nor deny that his studio was giving Duke Nukem Forever one more shot at eventual completion, saying that he may have more to offer at the aforementioned show. Recent chatter from those close to the Duke Nukem Forever saga might indicate that PAX is indeed the place for a reveal.
Duke Nukem voice actor Jon St. John recently tweeted that he "is headed for PAX Seattle tomorrow."
"See you at Q&A#1 in the main theater 11:30AM Friday...ask, I'll tell almost all!" St. John teased. Kotaku has been told from sources claiming to have knowledge of the situation that Duke Nukem Forever's next appearance will happen at the kick-off of PAX 2010, possibly at the "Penny Arcade Q&A #1" session.
For whatever it's worth, 3D Realms head George Broussard more recently (and more cryptically) tweeted an image of pigs flying, perhaps an indicator that the long in development Duke game is actually happening this time.
Take-Two Interactive, which holds publishing rights to Duke Nukem Forever, has an investor call happening later today, where it may or may not shed a little more light on the situation. We'll know on Friday if rumors of Duke's revival are fact or fiction.
So many games, so many guns. Most are good, but some have to be the best, and it's only the best that we've decided to hang on our Kotaku Gun Rack. Keep the crows off our porch.
There's no room for funny guns here. Nothing stupid, or novel, or unique. No, only guns that do an exceptional job of killing things are worth a spot on our hand-crafted pinewood rack. That or ones that are just OK at killing, but have won our hearts nonetheless.
M1 Garand (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield & More)
There is no weapon in all of video games more cathartic than the trusty old M1 Garand, standard issue rifle for US infantrymen in the Second World War.
It's old. It's got a small ammo capacity. It's inaccurate. And you can't even reload it mid-clip. But that "ping" noise you hear when you empty a cartridge, and the spent casing goes flying off the screen...you know you've shot a man to death with more bullets than were needed, just for the fun of it.
Lancer (Gears of War)
The Lancer is a decent enough rifle in its own right, but its two other features that make it stand out. The first is the fact its got a reloading minigame attached to it, turning what is normally a tedious waiting period into something you can turn to your advantage.
Secondly, it has a chainsaw on the end of it.
Pistol (Halo)
There's only one pistol from the Halo universe we'd want in our collection, and it's the one from the first game in the Halo series. The backup firearm may not have looked like much, but it had it where it counted, a quick rate of fire and surprisingly hefty punch making it, pound-for-pound, the most useful weapon in the game. And the cheapest in multiplayer.
AWM/P (Counter-Strike)
The gun so good Valve had to tone it down. Back in Counter-Strike's prime, around the turn of the millennium, this gun would kill you if it even turned its barrel in your general direction. That's no joke. It was one shot, one kill. While later revisions have scaled back the sniper rifle's raw power, we were lucky enough to grab an earlier model, which now enjoys a retirement spent shooting cans off our back fence.
BFG (Doom series)
BFG. Stands for BIG FUCKING GUN. It'd be an arrogant title were it not also so apt, the weapon not only dwarfing others in Doom's arsenal, but also being one of the most powerful firearms in video game history. You walk into a room, you pull the trigger, and everything dies.
Schofield Revolver (Red Dead Redemption)
We've selected most of the weapons on our rack based on their raw kiling power, but the Schofield is a little different. It's not that it isn't a handy weapon - it's one of the game's better sidearms - it's just that not many guns in a video game are so emotional.
It's given to you by one of your only real friends in a game where most people are strangers or enemies, and from that moment onward, becomes most people's go-to-gun. Also, it's a Western. Using anything other than a gunslinger's trusty six-shooter just feels wrong, doesn't it?
Fat Man (Fallout 3)
A portable nuclear weapon launcher. We like the standard version, but it's the MIRV - which launches multiple warheads at once - that earns pride of place on our gun rack. Just look at that clip above. Look what happens.
Double-Barrel Shotgun (Doom II)
If you need an explanation as to why this is on the list, we have no idea why you've read this far down the page.
There are plenty more weapons we could have added - some Desert Eagles, maybe a rocket launcher or two from the Grand Theft Auto series - but Kotaku Tower is only so big, which means out gun rack can only be so big.
Let's say, though, we could squeeze some more weapons on there. Which would you like to see? A crossbow from Half-Life? Quake's railgun? Something from Contra? Metal Slug? Metroid? Something else?
On Saturday, Kotaku co-hosts a PAX panel during which we will inch closer to determining the best games ever made. The panel is Canon Fodder, season 2.
The panel will be co-hosted by me and video game consultant N'Gai Croal. Joining us for an hour will be 5th Cell's Jeremiah Slaczka, Bungie's Jaime Griesemer, Spy Party's Chris Hecker and a possible extra guest (things are in flux, okay?). You can attend too, if you're attending PAX.
Our guests, as well as 10 developers we've already worked with an advance, will each make one change to a list of the top 10 games of all time, working off the list as we left it at the end of Canon Fodder season 1.
The Season 1 list had started as GameRanking.com's 10 best-rated games of all time. But then we let more than 15 developers, in succession, make one change to it, revealing those changes at PAX East in Boston.
Developers could either remove a game, replacing it with a new one — or they could swap the position of any two games. Going out of PAX East and entering this weekend's PAX, the list looks like this:
1. The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
2. Super Mario 64
3. Metal Gear Solid
4. Chrono Trigger
5. Portal
6. Half-Life
7. World of Warcraft
8. StarCraft
9. Super Metroid
10. Tetris
Bear in mind that that list has already been changed by developers who we have let take turns on the list since PAX East. We will reveal those turns and have our panelists make new ones of their own, live at PAX on Saturday at 6pm at the event's Unicorn theater.
Be there to witness the madness and to yell all of your favorites. Maybe you can influence our panelists and get your favorite game added to the list.
The man who invented home video games may have known more about real guns than any other game creator in history. But, he tells Kotaku, that's not why the first game console had a gun.
Ralph Baer is 88 and still keeps busy in his lab in New Hampshire, decades after inventing the first home video game console and other popular electronics such as the Simon.
He's known by many as the father of home video games, because in 1966 he conceived of the first home gaming set-up, prototyped it throughout the late 60s as it evolved into the "Brown Box" and then, in he early 70s, as the Odyssey video game console from Magnavox..
The Brown Box and the Odyssey included one of Baer's key video game inventions: a light gun.
Gamers may not realize, though, is that Baer, who made it possible for them to shoot light guns and virtual guns in their video games, was an authority on guns. One of the world's first video game creators was an expert in real life weapons.
Baer's knowledge of guns preceded his invention of home video games by a couple of decades.
Baer was in the U.S. Army during World War II. A German immigrant who arrived in America in 1938, he served in U.S. military intelligence in the mid-1940s. Baer was part of a group of German and Italian-speaking Army officials who taught a quarter of a million U.S. soldiers how to handle Axis weapons.
In the course of teaching soldiers about weapons, Baer said, his group began acquiring them. He found himself in charge of a weapons museum in Tidworth, south England that was full of enemy armament. The museum had a German 88 —a massive piece of artillery — a half-track, anti-aircraft guns, and machine guns. The 88 came from the Spanish civil war. Other weapons came from the North African campaign. Some came from the British, from what they had acquired.
"I got more and more familiar with weapons," Baer said. "Since I could read German — I could read some French and I could read a smattering of technical Italian and Spanish — I became a self-taught expert in foreign weapons. When the war was over, I'm living in a suburb in a Paris and I'm getting ready to ship 18 tons of small arms back to the U.S."
Caption via Baer: The rifle racks have bolt-operated and semi-automatic rifles from all over Europe including Britain, France Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc. and a few Japanese weapons. No duplicates.
Guns had become a passion of Baer's. He knew so much about them.
"By the time we left Europe I could have taken any one of several hundred hand guns, machine guns, submachine guns or rifles apart behind my back in the dark and told you what they were. I could draw extensive diagrams showing the relationship between, say a Russian submachine gun and a Czech submachine gun."
Says Baer: "When I do things, I do things thoroughly."
Caption via Baer: "The "stripped" weapons are (from left to right top row) are an Austrian sub-machinegun; then a German MG 34 M.G which was already obsolete and replaced by the MG-42 (both very high rate of fire m.g.s) ; next is a semi-automatic handgun (don't remember from which country). The bottom row show the same weapons but stripped into their major components. For example, the center photo shows the barrel housing of the air-cooled barrel, which can be seen just below it, and the rest are various internal parts plus the pistol-grip assembly with the trigger mechanism.
Baer returned to America in January of 1946 and set up a museum of weapons in Fort Riley, Kansas. He wrote a book about the history of machine guns.
Despite his Army experience, Baer says that any connection someone might draw between his expertise with guns and his creation of the first gun controller for the first video game console would be "pretty tenuous."
By 1949, Baer had left the Army and became an engineer. He would spend the next two decades working on everything from surgical equipment to radar, according to a Smithsonian biography of the inventor.
It wasn't the gun-expert part of Baer that ensured a gun would be a part of the world's first video game console. It was Baer's nature as an engineer.
In late '66 and '67 the early game consoles Baer and his technicians were making involved simple experiences that lent themselves to simple types of games.
"Think about it in these terms," he said. "We've got a spot on the screen. We can move it around. That's kind of fun. We put an overlay on the screen and now I can play some sort of single-sprite elementary game that isn't very satisfying. So I say, 'What the hell else can I do with that freaking spot?' One idea is: Shoot at the goddamn thing and wipe it off the screen!"
Thus, video games would get their first gun: "I sent the technician to a toy store. He comes back with a plastic gun. We open it up. We put some electronics in it to pick up the light, put a switch on the trigger and build the circuitry and, if there is coincidence between imaging the light from the spot on the screen which is otherwise dark we wipe off the spot on the screen."
This was purely an engineering feat, Baer said, though it is obviously a mixture of engineering technology and engineering fun. To promote and sell his concept, Baer needed something that could be delightful. The shooting helped, though he said that the depth of shooting possible in that early tech limited the joy of those first light gun experiments. "We didn't have the scenario you have today where you have interactive targets running around all over the place, which is very different." No, the spot on Baer's screen originally stayed still, and, because of that, other non-shooter experiences proved to be better earlier games.
"By the time we were playing ping-pong and handball and volleyball [video games], I thought it was a lot more fun than shooting the targets."
Of course, guns and video games, entwined at the birth of the latter, would never be separated. Video games started with a gun, from an engineer who knew all about them and who knew that, when your video game is simple and you need to make it enjoyable, the shortest path to fun is to let the player get ready, aim and fire.
(Images of this post are courtesy of Ralph Baer, who describes more about his work and the history of video games on his website.)
As all stores located on Army and Air Force bases will no longer be allowed to sell Electronic Arts' upcoming military shooter Medal of Honor because an aspect of the game includes playable Taliban characters.
The Army and Air Force Exchange Services has confirmed to Kotaku that they requested the game pulled from the 49 GameStop's located on bases in the continent U.S. The ban, an AAFES representative told Kotaku, also extends to all military PXs worldwide.
In an email to employees, GameStop says the decision was made "out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform."
"GameStop has agreed out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores...," the email, obtained by Kotaku, reads. "As such, GameStop agreed to have all marketing material pulled by noon today and to stop taking reservations. Customers who enter our AAFES stores and wish to reserve Medal of Honor can and should be directed to the nearest GameStop location off base.
"GameStop fully supports AAFES in this endeavor and is sensitive to the fact that in multiplayer mode one side will assume the role of Taliban fighter."
The stores on bases contacted by Kotaku all confirmed that they no longer will be selling the game and referred us to GameStops in town to pick up the title when it comes out.
Electronic Arts declined to comment further for this story.
They have, though, made their opinion on the matter clear.
The commanding general of the Army and Air Force Exchange Services confirmed told Kotaku that his decision was based on the inclusion of Taliban in the game and impacts all PXs located on Army and Air Force bases worldwide and all GameStops located on U.S. bases.
In this video The Creative Assembly's Land Battle Programmer Ingimar Gudmunsson and Studio Communications Manager Kieran Brigden talk us through a night battle in Shogun 2: Total War.
The battle has the Chosokabe clan attacking the Takeda clan as a storm rages in the distance.
Ignore, if you can, those splendid graphics, and instead pay attention to the game's artificial intelligence. We're told that the AI now can be much more flexible in how it responds to enemies on the battlefield.
The enemy AI is also impacted by the sights and sounds of battle, responding, for instance to the sight of a mammoth forcing approaching them.
It's worth watching through this whole video not just for the eye candy, but a chance to check out some of the tactics you'll be coming up against once you pick up the game for the computer next year.
Capcom will be invading the Penny Arcade Expo later this week with a chance for you to go hands-on with eight of their upcoming games.
There's also some mighty fine swag to collect at Capcom's huge booth.
Here's the game run down:
• Marvel VS. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
• Dead Rising 2
• Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes,
• Ghost Trick
• Okamiden
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition PS3 Move,
• Bionic Commando Rearmed 2
• Mega Man Universe with new, never before seen trailers and game levels.
Cool Capcom collectibles at the show include a Dead Rising 2 Bobble Budds figure, a Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 mustache, Okamiden stickers, bracelets and t-shirts, a Ghost Trick poster, a Sengoku Basara poster and a Mega Man Universe headband.
That's right, you can walk away with a fake mustache, a headband and a t-shirt. Sounds like Capcom's booth is the perfect place to run right before that bank job you've been planning.
Capcom Returns to PAX West 2010 [Capcom Unity]
Denver police are on the hunt for a duo of thieves who they say stole about $1,200 worth of video games from a local Ultimate Electronics store, according to 9News.
Police say one of the two would distract employees as the other tucked away video games on the morning of Aug. 10. Man, that's a lot of tucking. You'd have to get away with about 20 games to score that much money in stolen loot.
Police search for thieves who stole $1,200 worth of video games [9News]
Welcome back Kevin Butler, VP of wonderful advertising, we've missed you.
[Thanks madammina]