-
Culture
This Week in the Business: ‘Graphics will always matter.’
What’s happened in the business of video games this past week… QUOTE | “Graphics will always matter.” – id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead reinforces the motto started by John Carmack, noting that games are nowhere near reality and id still makes graphical trade-offs QUOTE | “Total exaggeration.” – Sega West boss Mike Hayes says that…
James Brightman | IndustryGamers.com Published August 12, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallWhat do Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings Have In Common?
Rockstar North is a video game developer known and respected the world over as the creators and continued custodians of the core Grand Theft Auto series. That’s earned it a reputation as a specialist in the field of mature, cinematic video games. Games where drugs are dealt, prostitutes killed and people say fuck with a…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 12, 2011 -
Culture
The Destructive Video Game Art of Coro Kaufman
We’ve got another Massive Black artist for you today, which is always a treat. Coro Kaufman is one of the studio’s co-founders, and also serves as its art director. Needless to say, his stuff is great In this gallery you’ll see examples from many of the games he’s worked on over the past few years,…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 11, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Secret of the Secret Nintendo Song
When you talk about music in Nintendo games, the first person that pops into most people’s minds is the work of legendary composer Koji Kondo, the man behind the iconic scores for games like Zelda and Mario. We’re not talking about Koji Kondo today. Instead, we’re going to talk about Kazumi Totaka, who in addition…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 11, 2011 -
Culture
You Can Thank This Man for the Look of Gears of War
Epic Games has a common visual style running through all its games. Gears of War looks like Unreal Tournament which looks like Bulletstorm. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, well, wonder no more. It’s because of artist James “Hawkprey” Hawkins. Hawkins is a concept artist employed at Epic who is responsible for that trademark…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 10, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallDon’t Blame Grand Theft Auto for the London Riots
So, a London cop says something about Grand Theft Auto and suddenly a British newspaper sees fit to blame the series for the riots that have plagued the English city all week long. Idiots. They’re blaming the wrong Rockstar game! If the unnamed London police officer who made the statement, or anyone at the London…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 10, 2011 -
CultureFrom The Witcher to Mass Effect, This Game Art Has Seen It All
Brazilian artist Rafael Grassetti is a talented kid. We’ve already seen his amazing work on the Mass Effect universe, from sculptures to fan art, but today we’re looking at his more professional output. Grassetti has been working as a video game artist for a few years now, mostly as a freelancer on games such as…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 9, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
When Sega Wanted to Take Over the World (and Failed Miserably)
The year was 1997. And Sega, the Dreamcast still a twinkle in Segata Sanshiro’s eye, was in a bullish mood. While its rivals were focusing their efforts on winning the video game war, Sega was looking beyond It didn’t have Nintendo or Sony in its sights. It had the Walt Disney Company. Sega wanted to…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 9, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallHappy 25th Birthday, Metroid!
In 1986, a number of Nintendo’s biggest franchises made their debut on the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System. Zelda was one, and now this month, we celebrate another: Metroid Both have something in common, something that makes them stand out among other company icons like Mario or Donkey Kong, and that something is a more “hardcore” slant.…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 8, 2011 -
Culture
One and Done
Fruit Ninja Kinect? Fruit Ninja Kinect. And folks, that is it for the week. Well, EDGE, another well received (and controversial) iPhone game, hits for PC and Mac. But the dog days of August have nothing for retail shelves this week. Wednesday • Fruit Ninja Kinect (XBLA) — An entry in Xbox Live’s Summer of…
By Owen Good Published August 7, 2011 -
CultureShop Contest
Northern Overexposure
Nolan North appearing in a video game is not exactly news. It’s more newsworthy when he doesn’t. But voicing The Penguin, with a canon-defying cockney accent even, is treading the limits of overexposure even for him. One reason North can get away with this is because, in addition to having great vocal range, we never…
By Owen Good Published August 7, 2011 -
Culture
Sunday Comics
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Aug 1. – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published Aug 3. – Read more of Nerf…
By Owen Good Published August 7, 2011 -
Culture
This Week in the Business: ‘What’s the point of next-gen consoles?’
What’s happened in the business of video games this past week… QUOTE | “A force to be reckoned with.” – Panoptic Management Consultants CEO Asif Khan notes that if Nintendo’s stock continues to fall the company could be acquired by Apple, creating a gaming powerhouse QUOTE | “What’s the point of next-gen consoles?” – Epic…
James Brightman | IndustryGamers.com Published August 5, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Weird & Wonderful World of Australian Video Game Commercials
Before the internet put the entire planet on the same page, there were certain nations on Earth that were a little…slower than others. Places where the latest trends would turn up late, or turn up filtered through a few different sets of hands. Australia was one of those places. Owing to our extreme isolation, particularly…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 5, 2011 -
CultureThe Sexy, Scribbly Art of Valkyria Chronicles
You wouldn’t think a turn-based strategy game would be the type of thing you could call “beautiful”, but that’s exactly what cult 2008 PS3 title Valkyria Chronicles was. Every aspect of the game’s visual design, from intricate vehicles to a unique “pencilled” graphics filter to some wonderful costumes was a feast for the eyes, and…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 4, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallMark Wahlberg, Not Even You Could Save the Sega Mega CD
Almost every gaming platform ever released has its oddball titles. The ones that weren’t quite games, the ones that weren’t quite there. For Sega’s Mega CD add-on in the early 1990’s, that oddball was the Make My Video series. Spanning three titles, all of them released in 1992 (the year the ill-fated CD expansion for…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 4, 2011 -
Culture
The Sweeping Video Game Art of Nicolas “Sparth” Bouvier
Frenchman Nicolas “Sparth” Bouvier has been drawing pretty pictures for the video game industry since 1996, in a career that’s taken him from Darkworks (Cold Fear) to Ubisoft to id Software and now to Microsoft, where he’s working on the upcoming Halo 4 In that time his art helped shape the vision of games like…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 3, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
This Is the Coolest Stuff Nintendo Has Ever Made
You can say a lot of nice things about Nintendo games. Nintendo hardware, too. Wildly successful, iconic and timeless are just three of them. But how often can you say something Nintendo made was genuinely cool? Not very often. Unless you go back to the 1960’s, to a time before Nintendo was making video games.…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 3, 2011 -
Culture
Don’t Get Caught Out in Heavy Rain’s Concept Art
French artist François Baranger has been doing concept work for years now, and has experience in the worlds of both film and video games. Some of the movies he’s worked on include Prince of Persia, GI Joe and the 7th and 8th Harry Potter flicks. And games? Most of them are still locked away under…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 2, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallHorror Comes In Many Forms (Including Tiny Ellipsoid Cocks)
There was a PC game released in 1994 called Escstatica. It’s notable for two things: it was scary, but it was also a technological marvel. It doesn’t matter that the technology in question never really went anywhere. It was cool for the time, and this feature is all about looking back in time! Ecstatica was…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 2, 2011