Apr 11, 2011
Kotaku
Scott Pilgrim, a comic series never afraid to wear its gaming love on its sleeve, goes the Street Fighter Alpha 2 route for volume 5 & 6's release in Japan (via WPIP)
Share: 
Scott Pilgrim, a comic series never afraid to wear its gaming love on its sleeve, goes the Street Fighter Alpha 2 route for volume 5 & 6's release in Japan (via WPIP)
Egashira 2:50 is the Japanese comedian with a heart of gold. He also likes to whip out his dick. And during the filming of a Patapon 3 promotion, Ega-chan does exactly that.
At the beginning of the clip, Egashira says he isn't going to pull out his dingaling during the PSP promo. Skip ahead to around the one minute and fifteen second mark to see Egashira doing his impression of various Patapon 3 characters, as well as making up his own Patapon 3 character. No dick just yet.
And when his Patapon character impressions are finished, he starts doing others, such as Ryoma Sakamoto. And when that's finished, he pulls down his pants. The shooting for the Patapon 3 browser game was over eight hours long, and it climaxed in a man's penis.
According to a report on IGN, Microsoft will next year be making free to play titles available on Xbox Live. You know, the ones that like to take $5-10 of your money a month in tiny chunks instead of $60 all at once.
So think Lord of the Rings Online. Or Battlefield Heroes. Those kind of games. Not necessarily those games specifically, but those kind of games. The kind of games where you can download and start playing for free, but where you'll find you'll eventually need to start paying money on a semi-regular basis to remain competitive.
Since Microsoft already has its talons in your credit card details, the kind of constant microtransactions these games survive on shouldn't be too difficult for Xbox Live to handle.
Should be good for people who like to game on the cheap and for publishers like EA who have recently bet big on the model, but as someone who disdains this payment concept on a fundamental level, it'd be nice to see it on as few platforms as possible.
We've contacted Microsoft for confirmation, and will update if we hear back.
Rumor: Free-to-Play Games Coming to Xbox Live [IGN]
For years, Dr Pepper was never popular in Japan. If Japanese people wanted to drink cola, they'd have a Coke or maybe even a Pepsi. The Texas-born soft drink never caught on. But decades after going on sale in Japan, that's starting to change.
Dr Pepper is quickly becoming the fizzy drink for otaku, thanks to Steins; Gate. It shouldn't be surprising that it's a visual novel born on the Xbox 360 that is making the beverage popular in Japan. Steins; Gate, a sci-fi visual novel with a psychological spin, debuted on the Xbox 360 back in 2009. It's since been ported to Windows and the PSP, and an anime version debuted this spring.
Some fans are praising the anime version, saying that it's a smart and interesting take on time travel (others are finding it confusing). The show features a microwave that is able to send text messages to the past. There's a mad scientist named Rintaro Okabe, some brainy otaku girls, cosplayers, an overweight super hacker, slimy green bananas and Dr Pepper, which is referred to as an "intellectual drink". Out of all the things on the show, it's the Dr Pepper that seems somewhat out of place.
Dr Pepper was introduced in Japan in 1973, making it just in time for the country's fastfood boom, but late to the soft drink party. Japan had already produced its own carbonated soft drinks for nearly a hundred years. Coca-cola got its start in Japan in the Post World War II era, after being a mainstay on American military bases.
During the 1960s, Coke started being advertised on Japanese television, and the sugary brown fizz found its niche in Japan. Coca-Cola was aggressive in Japan, not only protecting its own soda foothold, but later expanding to bottling Japanese teas and other juices.
Dr Pepper, with its blend of 23 flavors, is an odd tasting drink. As someone who grew up in Texas and who treasured getting the drink with real imperial sugar as a kid, instead of fructose corn syrup, there is a nostalgic factor for me. Whenever I want to remember what it's like to sit under the hot Texas summer sun watching baseball, I'll buy a Dr Pepper. Thing is, in some parts of Japan, the drink isn't readily available like its rivals. Thus, heading to places like Costco can end up being Dr Pepper runs more than anything.
The vast majority of people in Japan do not grow up with Dr Pepper. The most common complaint is that it tastes like medicine, which makes sense because, like many sodas, it started in a pharmacy. But unlike other soft drinks, it has a taste all its own.
That isn't to say Dr Pepper hasn't been tried in Japan before. Colorful cans from graphic artist Rockin' Jelly Bean were a good effort back in 2006.
But thanks to Steins; Gate, the beleaguered beverage is finding its long overdue welcome in Japan. On the show, the drink is "Dk Pepper" instead of "Dr Pepper" for copyright issues. Forrest Gump style Pepper placement, this ain't.
This is the best publicity it's probably ever had in Japan, especially in geek mecca Akihabara, where Steins;Gate is set. For example, Akiba Blog reports that the vending machine in front of retailer Sangatsu Usagi is now completely filled with Dr Pepper. Inside one of the Sangatsu Usagi shops, there are even various types of Dr Pepper, such as Dr Pepper bottled in Japan to American Dr Pepper. Little placards point out that this is the drink from Steins;Gate, meaning this could all be part of some very clever promotion.
Whatever it is, it seems to be working with Sangatsu Usagi reporting Dr Pepper sell outs in its vending machine out front. Fans of the anime are even trying the drink, pointing out that its pretty good once you get used to the flavor. I'm a Pepper fan, but is Japan? Not quite, but this latest push is resulting in a handful of otaku cola converts.
[Pic]
We won't have long to wait to get our trigger fingers on Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury, as it's been revealed the game will be out on Xbox Live Arcade on May 4.
The Humble Indie Bundles - compilations of indie games that not only help charity but let indie devs get paid - will be back tomorrow with a third deal. And it might be the best of the bunch.
Teaming up with developers Frozenbyte, anyone purchasing the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle will get a copy of 2D platformer Trine, Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor. They'll also get access to two Frozenbyte "projects", one of them being the source code to an unfinished game called Jack Claw, the other a preorder for an upcoming Froeznbyte game called Splot.
It'll be available here from 0930 PST, April 12. So bookmark it!
The whole point of these bundles is that users pay what they want. If you want to pay $5 for all that, with proceeds split between the developers, Child's Play charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you can. If you want to pay $50 (what the three games are actually worth collectively), you can do that too. Or $500. Whatever.
Trine is worth good money on its own. Trine and all that other stuff? It's worth better money.
The bundle is available for PC, Mac and Linux. All games included ship with absolutely no DRM, but can also be unlocked on Steam, if that's your thing, or Desura, if that's your thing.
The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle will be available here from 0930 PST, April 12.
Today's video game news was tinged with sadness, as the world learned of the death of Jerry Lawson, the man who led the team behind the creation of the video game cartridge.
Those cartridges were used in the Fairchild Channel F, the console Lawson helped develop along with Ron Smith and Nick Talesfore. While it never set the world on fire during its tenure on retail shelves, the Channel F's legacy means it's still worth taking a closer look at.
The Channel F was released in 1976, and was originally called the Video Entertainment System. While never a huge success on the market, the VES spawned just under 30 games, all of them shipping on the console's revolutionary "videocarts", which were the world's first ever cartridge-based video games.
Another pioneering achievement of the VES was the fact its AI was powerful enough to allow a human to play against it; competing machines at the time of the VES' launch, like Atari's Pong units, could only support human vs human play.
While the VES had the edge over Atari in terms of available titles and horsepower, it's ironic that its most lasting legacy is that it basically "inspired" its competitor to release the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS, a year later in 1977. Not only was the name incredibly similar to Fairchild's VES, but Atari's machine - which also used cartridges - was reportedly "rushed" into the marketplace before other devices could make cartridge gaming popular.
Because of the similarity in name, Fairchild changed its console's name from VES to the Fairchild Channel F, in order to get out from under Atari's shadow. A second console, the The Channel F System II, was released in 1979, but by then Atari's new console - which we now know as the Atari 2600, and which was more powerful than the Channel F- had already cemented its place as the dominant system on the market. Fairchild pulled its system from the market, and despite some attempts at re-releases both overseas and in the US under different names, the Channel F was effectively dead.
While helping create the first video game cartridges was a pioneering achievement for Jerry Lawson, it's hardly the only mark he's left on the video game landscape. He helped develop one of the first arcade machine's ever released, 1977's Demolition Derby, a two-player racer. And after the Channel F went bust, Lawson founded Videosoft, and developed games for his one-time competitor, the Atari 2600.
He was also, notably, the only black member of the "Homebrew Computer Club", a notorious group of software nerds and budding hackers who met in Silicon Valley in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of his peers in the group included PC pioneer Lee Felsenstein and Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
[pics courtesy of Fairchild Channel F]
After a less than thrilling debut, EA appears to have taken the new SSX in the direction many of us were originally hoping for—by making it look like an SSX game. Yes, this is one of those "developer diary" type videos, but there's some good stuff buried within.
We get to see some of the tricking that made previous SSX games so enjoyable, plus learn about a focus to make huge swaths of the game's mountains rideable. There's concept art of SSX mainstays like the lovely Elise and some bright, beautiful, if early gameplay.
If the SSX Deadly Descents version of this game turned you off—EA has since whittled down the title to just SSX—maybe give the game another look.
Greetings, Kotaku readers, and welcome to another week of pure work fun. My week started off alright with a trip to Beverly Hills to talk to the key players in Mortal Kombat: Legacy. More about that tomorrow, so let's talk tonight.
Seven of Nine was nice enough to do some posing with me at the junket after I asked for a photo of her in the traditional Mortal Kombat versus screen pose. That didn't happen, but the above did. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to ask Black Dynamite for a photo, but the event wasn't conducive to requesting aggressive stances from famous people. So, there you go, another photo to upload to Facebook eventually.
What would you like to talk about today? This is an open thread—as you may have gathered by the above rambling—so have at it. Here's a few conversation appetizers.
Hey, you buying a Kinect this week? Maybe do so at GameStop, because the video game megastore is giving away a freebie if you pick one up soon. Now, before you beat feet to your local GameStop, that game is Body and Brain Connection.
That's the brain and body fitness game that Namco Bandai released earlier this year, the one that stars video gaming's most famous neuroscientist, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. He's the star of Nintendo's Brain Age series and the man Avatar-ized for Body and Brain Connection.
If "math, logic, reflex, memory and physical-related exercises using the full-motion capabilities of the Kinect sensor in exciting single and multiplayer modes" sounds worth investing in Kinect, make your way to GameStop by April 16.