BY PRESSING DOWN A SPECIAL KEY IT PLAYS A LITTLE MELODY
There’s a fantastic meta-game the Nintendo elite like to play with every game scored by long-time company composer Kazumi Totaka, who is oft-noted as the not entirely coincidental spitting image of Animal Crossing‘s K.K. Slider (the dog’s Japanese name, Totakeke, being a bastardization of Totaka’s name).
Totaka has notoriously been hiding a vaguely arabesque 19-note melody in each game he’s worked on, from import-only original Game Boy game X (notably created by now-PixelJunk Monsters/Eden studio head Dylan Cuthbert) through more recent DS and GameCube games.
And so, after only days of searching, the song — known simply as Totaka’s Song — has been discovered in the Wii’s new Animal Crossing title, City Folk. Sitting idle in Kapp’n’s opening-scene bus for enough time will net you the whistled reward.
More on the phenomenon can be found via YouTube user ‘PhilBond’s three part series exhaustively cataloging the appearances.
Animal Crossing City Folk- Kapp’n Whistles Totaka’s Song [YouTube, via Tiny Cartridge]
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ONLINE MULTIPLAYER COMING TO NEW AURORA FEINT
Investor news site VentureBeat has a very lengthy preview on the online multiplayer online features coming to Aurora Feint II, the sequel to the Puzzle Quest meets Tetris Attack iPhone game, which sounds like it’s coming together nicely:
One person plays a level of the game (which is, at its heart, a puzzle game) and when he or she is done, sends that data to the game’s servers. As a competitor, you can then download this data (which includes not only scores but also a play-by-play of how the player made his or her moves), and put it into your game, creating a sort of “ghost” competitor…
But what’s cool is that you can actually manipulate the opposing player’s score by making certain moves at the right time. This may seem a bit odd since the other person has already played, but using weapons, you can alter their game and work toward a victory.
Where the first hit was free, Feint‘s developers are banking on the hope that fans of the original will return for this $10 update, which greatly extends its social networking features.
Aurora Feint II: The Arena brings asynchronous online multi-player gaming to the iPhone [VentureBeat]
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REZ, LUMINES DEV MAKING N-GAGE GAMES?
File this one under wait and see, but when Shuji Utsumi speaks, I listen. Formerly variously VP at Sony Computer Entertainment, Sega and Disney, Utsumi is now CEO of Q Entertainment, the developer behind Lumines, Every Extend Extra and Xbox Live Arcade’s Rez revival — in general, one of the top studios driving music and games closer together outside of Rock Band and Phase creator Harmonix.
So it was with some interest that I noted via his blog that he’d just returned from a quick ‘Roman Holiday’ to visit the Nokia Games Summit, where he appeared on stage (above) to tell the audience that mobile media would soon be the “center of the media, replacing TV,” and, more interestingly, how happy he was to see Nokia working closely with content creators in the area.
Sitting to Utsumi’s left is not, as it would appear on first glance, Mythbuster Adam Savage, but instead (you later can hear him referred to in the video) former Eurythmic Dave Stewart (!).
Utsumi notes in his post that Stewart was impressed when he showed off another of Q’s music properties, Genki Rockets, who are, in Q’s own words, “a music group which vocal is 17 years old girl, Lumi, a first baby born in outer space and has never been to the earth” (and is, in fact, beaming her pop videos to us from 30 years in the future).
So what brings Q and a Eurythmic together? After doing a little further digging, we can see that Stewart attended the games summit as part of the company’s “Artists’ Advisory Council,” where he is helping to introduce “up-and-coming singer Cindy Gomez through [Digital Legends’ already-announced N-Gage game Dance Fabulous] with brand new songs including the theme song, ‘Street Dancing.'”
But after more digging, we can see that while the studio isn’t currently listed, in July of this year Q Entertainment did indeed show up on Nokia’s ‘Our Developers’ list.
So, like I say, file this one under wait and see until we get solid word from an official source — it could be as simple as Q porting Lumines to the device, as they have to PSP, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC (via Steam) — but either way, along with the mind-boggling but excellent N-Gage/PC strategy game Reset Generation and the intriguing looking Yamake, Nokia appear to be gathering a solid team beneath their wing.
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PREVIEW THE NXE’S PREMIUM THEMES
Now that nearly everyone has signed on for Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience dashboard update, the community has been putting itself to good use. Above and beyond simple background pictures, the NXE allows developers to create their own premium themes that also decorate the spaces occupied by your now avatar-ized friends, the hitch being that you can’t preview a theme before you purchase.
The members of the otherwise raucous NeoGAF forum, though, have solved that with good (or, in some cases, you know, good enough) photos of each, letting me see that why, yes, I think I do want The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers theme.
The Official NXE PREMIUM THEME SHOWCASE [NeoGAF]
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2.8 MILLION SIGN ON FOR MORE WORLD OF WARCRAFT IN 24 HOURS
At a clip that the company says makes it “the fastest-selling PC game of all time,” and clearly showing no signs of slowing down in the nearly four years since its original release, publishing juggernaut Activision Blizzard says World of Warcraft‘s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King has sold more than 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours, eclipsing January 2007’s Burning Crusade expansion record of 2.4 million copies in the same time.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King [Blizzard]
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DIGITAL PICTURES AUGMENTING YOUR REALITY WITH PAPERVISION
Oh! What a time to have a busted web cam and a printer packed firmly away: while we wait patiently to see just how lovable Sony’s curiously Monchichi-esque EyePet will be, Digital Pictures Interactive have released the first stirrings of their own bespoke version which you can interact with now by printing a reference spot and training your webcam to your desk.
The studio is the same one behind their earlier Save Your Sensible campaign that also uses Papervision3D tech to do realtime 3D animation in Flash, utilizing, they say, “a file format originally created for first person shooter video games from 10 years ago (id Software’s Quake 2).”
The games potential for this type of augmented reality is obviously quite high, and while Sony is one of the few big players currently dabbling in it (also with their card RPG Eye of Judgment), we also have big hopes for Nintendo to do the same with the now camera-enabled DSi.
Let us know how you get on with your creature via the comments.
Papervision – Augmented Reality [Digital Pictures Interactive]
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OFFWORLD BBTV PREMIERE: WHAT’S OFFWORLD?
After an oxygen fire knocked our interstellar video link temporarily out of commission, we bring you our Boing Boing TV premiere via Azeroth, where my spiritual Death Knight equal gives you a little background on where we’re is coming from and where I hope to steer the ship. As usual, here’s the direct MP4 link, if you prefer a downloadable rather than the Flash.
Offworld bonus fact: in real life, my eyes and sword glow a much more vivid shade of blue. That is indeed, though, almost exactly how I shake a tail feather.
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GOOGLE SHUTTERING VIRTUAL WORLD LIVELY
Sad news today for Lively enthusiasts as Google announces that it intends to shutter its 3D online world service to “focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.”
I’d just talked with creative director Kevin Hanna of X-Ray Kid, the studio headed by Marvel and The Batman cartoon series artist Jeff Matsuda, in September, who had revealed at the Austin Game Developers Conference that the project’s then-long-term goals included opening Lively’s API to developers, hoping to make it a ubiquitous browser-embedded 3D platform for games.
X-Ray Kid, for their part, updated just days ago saying they were at work on “a large number of different, diverse and wonderful projects,” so presumably they’ll survive the blow. More discussion on the closing can be found at virtual worlds blog Terranova and at Metaplace creator Raph Koster’s blog.
Official Google Blog: Lively no more [Google]
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GRAND THEFT AUTO GETS LOST
With October and November’s dogpile of blockbusters, it’s easy to forget that the year started off with a proper bang with Grand Theft Auto IV. As the release of PC version of the game draws nearer, Rockstar has started to show off the extensive power of that version’s exclusive video editor and video sharing — and we’re genuinely excited for the wave of machinima to follow, if only because we’re secretly hopeful for more Philip Glass-scored video and more footage of the everyday/mundane side of Liberty City.
But for Xbox 360 owners, today brings first official word via USAToday on the subject and release date of the first downloadable episode, which this time will focus only marginally on Niko, instead giving players the vantage point of one of the original game’s cameo stars:
This new episode, available Feb. 17 via download exclusively for those who own the Xbox 360 version (no price yet), stars Johnny Klebitz, a member of Liberty City biker gang The Lost.
“Johnny is a very different character than Niko, with a very different background,” says Dan Houser, vice president of creative development for Rockstar Games. “I can’t go into too much detail on the story, because we try not to give away too much plot before the game is released. But I can say that the story will show you a different side of Liberty City.”
Grand Theft Auto IV [Rockstar]
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NGMOCO SHOWS OFF IPHONE’S DR. AWESOME, DROPSHIP
After a slight snafu yesterday that saw the latest trailer for Hand Circus’s highly anticipated puzzle/platformer Rolando yanked just minutes before I’d posted it, iPhone publisher ngmoco has released new trailers for its two upcoming “fast apps” (lower price-tier games like their free Maze Finger and 99 cent Topple): Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. and Dropship.
The wonderful part of Dr. Awesome? It’s not the over-dramatic Phoenix Wright/Trauma Center portrait art, or the Qix-like gameplay, it’s the fact that you’re performing surgery on your friends, as imported from your phone’s address book.
As for Dropship, I’ve got a strong suspicion that touching will be believing — I’ve been miming my fingers overlaid on top of the video trying to get a feel for how it works and though it’s not quite connected yet, I’m suitably enamored with its radiant vector design.
Check out the gameplay trailer video for Dr. Awesome after the jump. (more…)
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