Grand Theft Auto vs. Frogger [Gagfilms via CollegeHumor]

A press release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicates that the machines were valued at $138,000 and capable of being sold for $672,000.

And these games, which were discovered in a shipping container that arrived in Los Angeles from China, played the classics:

The machines contained several copyrighted video games, which are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and recorded with CBP. The video games found on the coin-operated machines were Frogger, Scramble, Time Pilot, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3 and Donkey Kong. CBP seized the items when the importer was unable to provide authorization from the owners.

The machines were seized on October 23.

[PIC]

Perhaps the most exciting game to come out as part of this week's Nintendo Download is Excitebike: World Rally for WiiWare (1,000 Wii points). It's not just because it is a return to the original motorbike racing title, complete with a track editor that lets you share your creations with friends, but simply the fact that this isn't Excitebots or Excite Truck. If you'd rather fear the road than own the road, you can always grab Frogger Returns (500 points), another 3D update to the classic 2D traffic-dodger.

Rounding out the WiiWare triple-play this week is Dragon Master Spell Caster by Stickmen Studios (500 points), a game that sees players doing battle on dragon back, casting spells and spewing fire in either the single player story mode or split-screen multiplayer.

DSiWare gets six new titles today, through five of those are Electroplankton mini-games available at 200 DSi points apiece. When you're done playing microscopic musical fishies, you can blow them out of the water with Bomberman Blitz (500 points), which delivers the classic Bomberman experience to the DSi with both local and online eight player multiplayer battles.

Rounding up this week's rather massive list of downloadable titles is the Virtual Console, which adds the platforming goodness of Sega's Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (500 points) and Cybernoid for the Commodore 64 (500 points) to its ever-growing lineup of classic titles.

So what's your poison this week?

WiiWare

Excitebike: World Rally
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: Prepare to face daredevil jumps, crazy obstacles and other racers in the newest installment in the venerable Excitebike franchise, available exclusively on the WiiWare service. Choose from multiple camera angles as you tilt your way to smooth landings using motion-sensitive controls. Compete in races around the world in four championship circuits. Use Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection to invite friends to a race. Or if you're feeling brave, take on anyone else looking for a match. Feel like tackling a challenge of your own design? Use the intuitive Track Editor to choose from the available obstacles and put together your dream course, then share courses with friends to see whose creation skills reign supreme.

Frogger Returns
Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Frogger Returns takes the heart-pounding challenge of arcade Frogger and moves it into the next dimension. Classic top-down 2-D game play is updated with colorful 3-D graphics, a new perspective, new levels, new enemies and game-changing power-ups. A local multiplayer mode lets you race a friend.

Dragon Master Spell Caster™
Publisher: Stickmen Studios
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) – Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: The Dragon Lords have returned to the magical world of Nakiha, bringing ultimate power to whoever controls them. Choose your champion, then master amazing magic and fierce dragon attacks to defeat the rival Champions and their Dragon Lords. Choose from four different paths and decide the fate of the world in the fantastic story mode. Battle your friends in two-player split-screen arcade mode and tailor your tactics with different dragon and rider combinations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Marvel at the effects of mind-blowing spell collisions. Mix spells and unleash their ultimate power. Control your Dragon Lord and crush, bite and burn your way to victory.

Nintendo DSiWare

Bomberman Blitz
Publisher: Hudson Entertainment
Players: 1-8
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) – Comic Mischief
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Bomberman makes his downloadable debut on Nintendo DSiWare with Bomberman Blitz. Dive into a classic multiplayer Bomberman experience with eight-player local or online multiplayer using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Hone your skills and learn the maps, then take the battle online. Change map and item preferences for enhanced customization. Delivering unparalleled multiplayer excitement, Bomberman Blitz lets Nintendo DSi users enjoy the addictive fun of Bomberman anytime, anywhere.

Electroplankton Trapy
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Trapy plankton make sounds as they swim over graceful lines made up of linked triangles. The creatures follow the lines you trace along the water. There are six types of Trapy in all, each with a unique color and sound. All Trapy plankton produce different tones depending on the direction they swim. They produce the lowest-pitched sounds when they swim to the right and produce higher-pitched sounds as their path veers to the left.

Electroplankton Hanenbow
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Normally aquatic creatures, Hanenbow sometimes use floating leaves to launch themselves out of the water, creating strange sounds and melodies as they bounce off the leaves. Entire schools of Hanenbow have been known to launch out of the water, one after another. As a leaf is repeatedly hit by flying Hanenbow, it gradually changes color. This also alters the sound made by bouncing Hanenbow. When all the leaves turn red, a flower will bloom. It remains unclear why the Hanenbow display this curious behavior.

Electroplankton Rec-Rec
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Rec-Rec are fishlike plankton that feed on sound waves. They absorb sound waves transmitted through water and use them as a form of nutrition. The sound waves that the Rec-Rec eat are then stored inside their bodies until they have been digested. Once the digestion process is complete, they play back the sounds in perfect four-second intervals. While these sounds are playfully emitted, wave patterns can be seen pulsating on their bodies. Rec-Rec always swim side by side in schools of four. When they swim at different speeds, the frequency with which they emit sounds also changes.

Electroplankton Nanocarp
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Nanocarp have very sensitive hearing. Using their two ears to sense vibrations coming through the water, these plankton can distinguish sound quality and frequency. They display very interesting reactions to the sound of humans clapping or breathing. Nanocarp are also excellent swimmers. They have a tendency to swim in formations of 16 and react together when they detect sounds. These plankton emit sounds on their own when they sense waves on the water's surface. When this happens, the pitch of sounds they produce changes depending on where the Nanocarp is located.

Electroplankton Beatnes
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Beatnes are curious plankton with geometrically shaped heads that form vertical strands like seaweed. Their bodies are made up of eight sections, each featuring a distinctive diamond-shaped tail. The sound of a Beatnes can vary wildly depending on which segment of the body is tapped. However, all of the sounds closely resemble the short-wave and triangular-wave sound effects from a Nintendo Entertainment System™ sound chip. When Beatnes are tapped in time with a rhythm, they continue to repeat the sounds in perfect time for a short period.

Virtual Console

Wonder Boy™ III: The Dragon's Trap
Original platform: MASTER SYSTEM
Publisher: SEGA
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) – Mild Cartoon Violence, Tobacco Reference
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap is widely considered to be one of the best games produced for the SEGA MASTER SYSTEM. The direct sequel to Wonder Boy in Monster Land, it starts in the final lair of the previous game. This game is the first in the series to allow Wonder Boy to roam freely by using various animal forms, but as with previous games in the series, Wonder Boy can also buy various weapons, armor and items to help him in his quest.

Cybernoid™
Original platform: Commodore 64
Publisher: Commodore Gaming
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) – Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Federation storage depots have been raided by pirates, who've taken valuable minerals, jewels, ammunition and the latest battle weaponry. You have been commissioned by the Federation to retrieve the cargo and return it to storage within a specified time limit. The pirate craft have activated all planetary defense systems, which you must negotiate along with the pirates themselves. If you fail to reach the depot within the time limit, or if the value of your retrieved cargo is insufficient, you must forfeit one of your Cybernoid ships.

Image courtesy of IGN

My brother and I spent those sweltering days in Maryland, Thailand and Korea coming up with ways to torment one another and sometimes even have fun together. From the fabled pine cone wars faux fought in the nearby woods, to endless games of tag, cops n' robbers and spotlight, we never ran out of things to do.

I can't pretend that children today have those same sorts of childhood experiences. Many spend their days inside watching TV, reading books and even playing video games. That's not a bad thing, but it does lack some of the sweaty charm of a day spent running with friends.

Here, mostly for my amusement, is a collection of games meant to be enjoyed outdoors. I've taken some of my favorite video games and tried to turn them into the sorts of games you play with friends on the lawn, in a park or anywhere there's space.

Included are homages to Katamari Damacy, Super Mario Bros. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Frogger, and Metal Gear Solid. Enjoy, but don't blame me if you break something... even a sweat.

Instead of straining your eyes trying to read all of these, how about just downloading the PDFs instead?
Katamari StickWithMe
Pac-Tag
Leapfrogger
Dodge Space Invaders
Metal Hear Hide and Sneak
Super Hopscotch Bros.

Images remixed by Kotaku. Originals by Eleanor Campbell, Keith Ward and Robert Childress.

Katamari StickWithMe
Pac-Tag
LeapFrogger
Dodge Space Invaders
Metal Gear Hide and Sneak
Super Hopscotch Bros. Part 1
Super Hopscotch Bros. Part 2

Sorry, make that three. Frogger's coming along for the ride as well.

Silent Hill will be a touch-screen port of the mobile game Silent Hill: The Escape. So nothing really new there. The Dance Dance Revolution title - DDR S Lite - looks a little more suited to the touch-screen, although without the dancing, it doesn't really have much of a point.

And Frogger? Well, it's plain old Frogger, and considering the waking nightmare most iPhone ports have been over the past few months, it...well, it may actually turn to be the best of the lot.

[Konami Touch]

Fishing Girl is a simple fishing game played with one button. It illustrates a design pattern called sequentially linked mechanics. Often when you try to simulate a complex exercise like fishing, you can’t easily create a single game mechanic that captures the entire experience. Instead, you string together a series of activities. Each activity is simplistic by itself, but in sequence yields a good approximation of the complex experience. The fishing game is split into the following activities:

1. Casting
2. Positioning the lure
3. Hooking a fish
4. Reeling in the fish
5. Scoring the fish
6. Buying new equipment.

Each section should take 1-3 evenings to prototype in Flash. String them all together and you have a fishing game. The nice thing about this challenge is that it is all about bite sized chunks that are easy to build and iterate on.

I'll be looking forward to seeing the results and seeing if someone manages to put together a 'gold medal design.'

Fishing Girl: Game Prototyping Challenge [Lost Garden]

Every time I ever saw the game in an arcade I would go out of my way to not play it, not even look at it, because on many levels it just irritated the shit out of me. It was a game that rewarded patience and punished my natural tendencies. But the thing is, when I was living in Seoul, Korea it was one of the only games available to play (besides Ms. Pacman) in the Officers Club on base. So of course I played the hell out of it.

Recently, I had a chance to revisit the game in iPhone form.

Konami's iPhone build of the game doesn't really do much to change the formula. Actually it doesn't do anything to the game outside of the controls and a bit of a touch up to graphics.

I was happy to see that while the game gets a bit of shine, for the most part it looks very much like the original version of the game. No cartoon-ish frogs here.

Controls for the game come in three flavors, but only one really works. The tilting controls for the game are abysmal. No matter what I tried to do with the sensitivity, cranking it up or down all of the way, I couldn't get the frog to keep moving forward through traffic and over those logs. Fortunately, you're not forced to play with the tilt controls. You can also play by sliding you fiinger in the direction you want the frog to move, but that wasn't very comfortable. The best method, and it worked pretty well, was tapping on the screen in the direction you want the frog to move.

By tapping I was able to move the frogs around pretty quickly. The only issue I ran into with this method is that I would often accidentally tap above the screen when I got close to landing my frog in his clearing. This happens because you want to keep tapping well above the frog to keep him moving and you just run out of real estate. It's not a big deal though.

Overall, the game is fun to play and I'm sure Frogger fans will love it. It seems a bit pricey at $10, but no more than a few dollars more than I'd want to pay for it.

Thanks for the heads up, Robert.

New International Track & Field [Konami]

Game Stooge, baby brother of established game blog 2old2play is the newest in an ever expanding world of game sites on the web. Currently, it's updated rather infrequently, but they do have a pretty funny article up right now listing the top 10 Xbox 360 achievements that we'll never see. It's a great list and I got quite a few chuckles out of it, so I thought I would share some of my favorites.

• Viva Pi ata: No Incest Unlock this achievement by breeding worms that are not related as brother and sister or as mom and dad. Worth: 20G
• Frogger: Childhood Reborn
  Unlock this achievement by purchasing this game thinking it will help you regrasp your inner child to find out it's really just...Frogger. Worth: 200G
• Dead or Alive 4: Got Skillz?
  Defeat an opponent without mashing buttons. Worth: 10G

There are a few more good ones on the list, but I'll let you go to Game Stooge and see them for yourself. Which ones are your favorites? Flynn De Marco

Top Ten Achievements That Will Never Be [Game Stooge]
[image courtesy lovegreen.dk]

The email comes with cutesy / disturbing instructions on how to redeem your codes, warning against giving your console a tongue bath. Since several of you have been kind enough to send in the whole damn thing, I'll toss that up after the jump.

And there you have it. Enjoy your rewards, people who remembered to register, and for those who didn't...yeah, me too. Michael Fahey

Thanks Hector, Rajan, Nate, and I'm going to stop there before I start sounding like Romper Room Magic Mirror lady.

I didn't know Frogger lives in Ohio, did you? Well, he does, and he drives a Caddy to boot! Brian Ashcraft

Thanks, Quan!

More Here [Official Site] via Siliconera

Konami is bringing a fistful of classic titles to Xbox Live. Take the PlayStation 2 classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which will be making its appearance on Xbox Live next year. The game is regarded as the Castlevania game. According to Konami, this doesn't mean the title is an XBL exclusive. Other upcoming Live titles include Frogger, Contra, Super Contra and Track & Field. Think the Contra code will still fly? Damn better. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [1Up]

Microsoft just confirmed that we'll be seeing Wednesday Live releases, once a week, from now until August 9th. The list is as follows:

• July 12 - Frogger
• 
  
• July 19 - Cloning Clyde
• 
  
• July 26 - Galaga
• 
  
• August 2 - Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
• 
  
• August 9 - Pac-Man

And they aren't just the same old, same old either. Says Gamasutra:

Xbox Live Arcade's Frogger has been enhanced for the Xbox 360, and features new, enhanced artwork that matches and complements the original style. In addition, according to Microsoft, the game's audio, including sound effects and music, has been modernized to sound crisp and clear on today's high performance sound systems.

You hear that? Special Edition Frogger! Camp your Xboxen, gentlemen. Eliza Gauger

Read More [Gamasutra]

Stop-motion impressario PES lets loose with food and Frogger in this classic-gaming stop-motion carnival of deeeeelight.

I'm video-whoring today because I'm exhausted from driving to Utah and back this weekend. I was trying to intercept Crecente before he got out of the country, and I knew he had a layover in Salt Lake City. I found him in one of the sleazy airport bars, swilling watery Utah beer and trying to pick up a stewardess who'd been finely aged in recycled cabin air, like fancy cheese in a French cave.

'What is it, Gauger?" he snarled as he caught sight of me. "I'm on vacation, you little twerp."

I told him to untwist his official Day of the Tentacle boxer-briefs and settle down, I wasn't there to steal his frag. "You forgot something," I said, slipping the seemingly empty phials under the lip of the bar to his sweating hand. "You forgot your mission."

He should be well on his way by now. Just between you and me, faithful readers, I'd stock up on surgical masks, Spaghettios and bottled water while there's still time. Eliza Gauger

Retro Remakes is sponsoring a huge honking contest to create the best remake of a classic video game. There's 3692 worth of prizes to be won for "Good remakes of good games that anyone can play, regardless of their ability."

We're puzzled by that last qualification: certainly, developing a game for people with, say, amniotic banding syndrome in mind is a rather large requirement to win a copy of a 2D scroller programming book. We assume, then, that what they really mean is "Good remakes of good games that even the stupid and incompetent can play." A lofty, if perhaps equally out of reach, goal.

So if you're a dev who has just always wanted to give birth to a Frogger clone but never could justify the time, head on over and check it out. The prizes look quite good and the world could always use some more retro clones. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Retro Remakes: The Big 2006 Compo [Retro Remakes]

The lovely cuties over at Wonderland posted up these great retro polos that turn your amorphous torso into the pixellated game field from Donkey Kong or Frogger.

Donkey Kong and Frogger Polos (Thanks, Wonderland!)

I'm still not sure why I wanted the golf balls...

Anyway, eToychest reports that Konami will be celebrating the anniversary with a bunch of events throughout the year. The first will be at New York City's St.Patrick's Day parade. Someone take pictures.

Frogger 25 [Anniversary Website, via eToychest]

The Make Magazine folk took a Roomba vaccum cleaner and turned it into a Roomba Frogger. They slapped the white vaccum cleaner in a green t-shirt and then created arm, legs and eyes with paper cups.

After making it look like a giant squashed frog, they hacked it to make it controllable with a laptop and then took turns rolling it across Sixth Street around traffic.

It died under the wheels of a 4Runner. Poor Roomba Frogger, it never had a chance.

Roomba Takes Frogger to the Asphalt Jungle [Cnet]

Best prices on Roomba robots [Shopping.com]