Spore: September 7th, 2008

Maxis has announced the launch date of the latest Will Wright masterpiece, Spore.
September 7, 2008.  They even have a quicktime movie just to announce it.
My previous blog post on Spore & Will Wright is here.  I got to play with the creature builder for a few seconds at Macworld 2008 in San Francisco.  It’s [...]

SimCity Is Now Open Source as Micropolis

Very cool to see that the original SimCity code has been updated and released under the name Micropolis.
There is coverage on Boing Boing:
 SimCity has just been released as free software under the GPL version 3 license (though the name has been changed to Micropolis for trademark reasons; it was the original working title). This was [...]

Activision Blizzard: New Video Game Giant, More MBA’s per Square Inch?

Sorry, I don’t know how I missed this news for two days.
Activision, maker of the hit series Guitar Hero, is merging with Vivendi Universal Games, which owns Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft.  Blizzard, as I’ve posted here previously, is in my opinion the best video game studio of the past decade, bar none.
According to [...]

Fun Find: McDonald’s Simulation Video Game

Here it is.  The McDonald’s McVideoGame.
This was definitely not approved by corporate.  But lots of fun.  It took me a while to figure out when the expense to corrupt politicians and nutritionists was worth it.

Starcraft 2: Blizzard Website Updates

Quick post, but if you haven’t checked out the new Starcraft 2 website, you are missing out.   I’ve managed to successfully avoid getting roped into World of Warcraft, but I’m pretty sure this one has my number on it.  I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to find the couple hundred spare hours necessary for [...]

Blizzard Demos Starcraft 2 in Korea

When you play video games, you always remember the ones that absorbed huge blocks of time from your life. Starcraft was one of those games for me.
Well, it looks like the next great game from the company that brought us World of Warcraft will not be another Warcraft title or massively multiplayer game. [...]

Nintendo Video Game History: For Sale on eBay This Week!

Yes, I am shamelessly plugging my own listings. Deal with it.
I actually have 13 new listings up this week, and I thought it would be fun to highlight them because most of them are ghosts of video game consoles past. Most were dug up by my father recently, who keeps discovering new things [...]

A Kindred Spirit: Amy Jo Kim at USC on Game Mechanics

Many thanks to Will Hsu for his post today for pointing me in this direction.
Please check out this summary write-up on the O’Reilly site on the philosophy and theories of Amy Jo Kim, PhD, based on her discussion of Game Mechanics and Online Communities at ETech.
Kim discussed five key mechanics of game design, why they [...]

The Product Wars: Video Games & High Definition DVDs

Fun website I found today, as I was reading about the ongoing battles between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, the two competing high definition DVD formats on the market currently.
The website is called “The Product Wars”, and it basically just scrapes Amazon.com for data (not sure this is the best indicator vs. scraping eBay, but I [...]

Thoughts on My First 24 Hours with a Nintendo Wii

So, I actually did get a Nintendo Wii for my birthday. And yesterday, for the first time, I actually had a free moment or two to hook it up and play with it. Since then, I’ve probably played a total of 60 minutes of Wii Sports, and I thought I’d capture some of [...]

The History of Video Games

Here is a fun video that runs through the history of several genres of video games. I think I played most of them. See if you can name the game and the platform.

Too good not to share. Thanks to Chad Alderson for finding this.

Nintendo Wii Damage: Unintended Consequences of Innovation

Another fun little post for tonight.
Most of you probably know that one of the great new features of the Nintendo Wii is the motion-sensitive controller that lets you really swing the controller to control the game.  You can swing a golf club or tennis racket, punch in boxing, bowl, and swing a sword in Zelda.  [...]

Nostalgia on the Auction Block: Super Nintendo (SNES)

A little trip down memory lane today.

I’ve finally dusted off, organized, and listed my old Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) on eBay. My parents found these in their garage when they cleaned it out last year for remodeling. Five listings actually:

SNES Console, with Super Mario World
33 SNES Games
ASCiiPAD Turbo Controller
SNES Game Genie
Extra AC [...]

Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) vs. Nintendo Wii: The Game Professional Pespective

There is a very interesting Question of the Week on Gamasutra today. They asked an audience of video game professionals which console they were going to buy. The question was:
As a video game professional, are you buying a Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii or both on their North American launch later next week? [...]

South Park Episode on Nintendo Wii

With many thanks to Chad Alderson for finding this episode online.
This was the South Park episode from last week. Cartman is so obsessed with getting a Nintendo Wii, he can’t wait the two weeks, and has himself frozen. He accidentally ends up 500 years in the future, and, well, typical South Park things [...]