Let's face it: Star Fox should have stayed in his cockpit. His initial two titles pushed the technological limits for what home consoles could pump out for players to experience, but after that Nintendo decided to make the Star Fox games a blend of on-rails shooting and a third-person action adventure. Personally it never sat right with me. The Nintendo DS's Star Fox Command did see the return of pure on-rails gameplay, but the game itself felt (and looked) like a game that should have come out between the Super Nintendo and the Nintendo 64 releases rather than in 2006. People enjoyed it, but it wasn't really a step forward for the franchise.With no new Star Fox game in sight, fans of the series are left twiddling their thumbs. Fortunately, a game by the name of Perseus 230 is shaping up to be just the game to tide us all over until the next iteration of Star Fox is released.
The winners of April's Ludum Dare 29 game jam and competition have been announced. The winners are divided into two categories, with one batch having entered the 48-hour solo competition, and the other batch having participated in the 72-hour game jam event. The 2,497 games produced during the Ludum Dare 29 event were judged over by the game developers themselves.Winners for best overall game for the 48-hour competition and 72-hour jam respectively: The Sun and Moon by Managore and Scuba Bear by _Rilem.Winners for most fun game for the 48-hour competition and 72-hour jam respectively: Hot Diggity by DragonXVI and Yojimbrawl!by Black Ships Fill The Sky.Winners for best graphics for the 48-hour competition and 72-hour jam respectively: Beneath the Cave by Feiss and LAIR M.D. by RetroEpic.
eSports is so very in right now. Clearly all the Dota 2 kids are into it. This year's International (the game's largest annual tournament) has raised nearly $6.5 million for the prize pool from in-game player purchases. That makes it the biggest eSports prize pool of all-time by a wide margin, and with months of fundraising left before the finals.The Hearthstone World Championship's $250,000 seems like small potatoes by comparison, but remember that whoever wins the $100,000 first place prize doesn't have to split it five ways.That winner will be one of 16 finalists selected from four qualifier hubs around the world. 130 players each from the Americas, Europe, China, and Taiwan/Korea will be whittled down to just 16 finalists.
On Thursday, Lucasfilm revealed on the official Star Wars website that the first standalone Star Wars film — one of the many planned to orbit the releases of the new trilogy - has locked in a director and screenwriter.Gareth Edwards (of 2010's Monsters and this summer's blockbuster, Godzilla) is set to direct, while Gary Whitta will produce the film's screenplay."From the moment I first saw the original movie as a wide-eyed kid," Whitta states in the announcement, "Star Wars has been the single most profound inspiration to my imagination and to my career as a writer. It is deeply special to me, so to be given the opportunity to contribute to its ongoing legacy, especially in collaboration with a film-maker as talented as Gareth, is literally a dream come true. I'm still pinching myself."
Zenimax Media, the massive company that owns id Software and Bethesda Softworks, has finally made their dispute against Oculus Rift official.The company is suing the virtual reality manufacturer for... Well, a lot of things, really. The gist of the situation is that Zenimax claims Oculus stole technology pertaining to virtual reality that make the Oculus Rift headset possible. This was allegedly done with the help of John Carmack, co-creator of id and franchises like Doom and Quake, and a half-dozen other Zenimax employees.According to Zenimax, Carmack and the other employees developed VR technology under Zenimax contract. After passing off this technology to Oculus they joined the tech start-up (Carmack is Oculus' Chief Technology Officer) and continued to support the technology they had already developed.
Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, if they know what's good for them.If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're missing out on one of the coolest interactive narratives we've played in recent years. Don't worry though, you still have time to catch up. Telltale has announced the release date of The Wolf Among Us Episode 4: In Sheep's Clothing.The Wolf Among Us tells an original tale set in the world of Bill Willingham's award-winning DC/Vertigo series Fables. Players take up the investigative nose of Sherriff Bigby Wolf (Big B. Wolf - GET IT??) tries to solve a gruesome series of murders in the Fabletown community.Armchair detectives will be able to continue their adventure on May 27th.
It's pretty clear the folks at Google have an appreciation for games. Their fully functional version of Pac-Man for the game's 30th anniversary garnered some attention. Searching for "do a barrel roll" will make your browser do just that, and the ever-present Konami Code interacts with a number of Google services, like Drive and the Google Play app.Today the company is celebrating a different kind of gaming. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, and in honor of that occasion you can play a fully interactive version of the puzzle block in your browser.The popular 80's fad doesn't predate video games (it was released in 1974, several years after Spacewar! and the Magnavox Odyssey) but it does hearken back to a simpler time. Though now, I suppose you might say Google has made it into a video game.
No deal has been finalized yet, but as first reported on Sunday by Variety, it appears that YouTube - and thus, Google, which owns the video-sharing behemoth - is poised to acquire popular video game streaming service Twitch for a cool $1 billion.Why would Twitch want to be purchased? According to The Verge, it's a question of scale. Twitch has simply proven so popular and grown so fast that it can't keep up with its success on its own. The recent integration of Twitch streaming into the PS4 and Xbox One couldn't have helped in that regard.Other companies have sniffed around looking to buy Twitch, including one who is already a major player in the video games industry: Microsoft. But The Verge's source claimed Twitch had no real desire to tie itself to one gaming ecosystem and may even have sold itself a little short in terms of its worth in order to merge with YouTube.