METAL GEAR AC!D COMING TO MOBILE PHONES
When Metal Gear makers Kojima Productions threw together their December teaser for a new game in the franchise, speculation ran rampant and hit about every possible outcome, but among the most logical was that the team might port its strategy card-game spinoff Metal Gear Ac!d to the iPhone.
In the end, while Kojima did make a move to the iPhone, it was instead with an original game based on the latest PS3 chapter in the franchise. But, Pocket Gamer are reporting, Ac!d still is going mobile with a new port by mobile games giant Glu, along with a new graphic re-design.
This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise — the franchise recently made a move onto Nokia’s N-Gage service, and a port of Ac!d is probably not too far behind. Whether this also means — based on the performance of fellow iPhone versions of Dance Dance Revolution and Silent Hill — that an iPhone update is on the way as well is anyone’s guess, but its gameplay would be perfectly serviced by a touch interface, and it remains high on our crossed-finger list.
Metal Gear Acid 2 snaking its way toward the mobile [Pocket Gamer]
Previously:
A Metal Gear you can touch – Offworld
Metal Gear's December Surprise – Offworld
See more posts about: N-Gage, Offworld Originals
THE OFFWORLD 20: 2008’S BEST INDIE AND OVERLOOKED
Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead, Metal Gear Solid 4, Rock Band 2, Mirror’s Edge, Spore, LittleBigPlanet — as we’ve reached the end of the year, the lists have become as plentiful as they have predictable. So, instead of reshuffling the same list of 10 (admittedly amazing) games as everyone else, I’ve taken a different path and put together The Offworld 20.
Covering every current platform (PC/Mac/Linux, PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, DS, iPhone, N-gage), the 20 isn’t just a list of independently made and under-appreciated games, it’s a list of the games that celebrate what makes Offworld Offworld: the beautiful and the bizarre, and the games trying to push the medium forward and give us something we’ve never seen before, in whatever incremental way.
In it you’ll find time-manipulators, slacker assassins, satellite viewed superheroes, vector vegetation, bubble blowers and balls of tar, techno invaders, spirits of the wind, and, refreshingly, not one single space marine.
I’ve compiled and written up the list in no particular horse-race order other than alphabetical, and included the best examples of gameplay so you can see it in motion — let us know via the comments below if there’s anything you think we missed.
See more posts about: N-Gage, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
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.
See more posts about: N-Gage, Offworld Originals
