Awesome Radical Gaming

So, it looks like a LOT of people decided to pick up Castle Crashers. Which is good, the game is totally awesome. Apparently, it’s sold about 78,545 units in 3 days, breaking Arcade sales records (at least according to vgchartz).

Additionally, a post on the Castle Crashers developer’s blog addresses the bugs some users are experiencing with online play and save files:

For those of you who are experiencing online issues, saving issues, etc I want to assure you that we are all very hard at work at getting an update to the game out as fast as we can. I am gathering all of the emails, forum posts, etc, etc for all of the issues that have been reported. As soon as I get them organized I will try to post them on here so everyone can see what we’re going to fix for the update. Again if you have any issues you want to discuss with us please email them to games[at]thebehemoth[dot]com and try to put a relevant subject line on there so I can sort through them easier.

I haven’t really had any problems, well, except the one time I tried to join a random game and my Xbox froze. Besides that though, every thing has been working fine. So, some good news, some not so good news (but they’re working to make it good news) from The Behemoth. Make sure you email them any bugs you’re experiencing.

Wow, this one came out of no where. This week’s Virtual Console update includes one of the most awesome, radical games in the universe, Super Mario RPG. Any one who doesn’t have this game should buy it immediately (or whenever they have some spare time). It is, in my opinion, the best Mario RPG game ever created, far better then any of the Paper Mario games. It’s basically like this:

Square during the SNES era + the Mario franchise = awesome.

The Virtual Console update also included Clu Clu Land (NES). The new WiiWare game: My Aquarium. Seriously though, you should get Super Mario RPG if you’ve never played it before. Seriously. Not even joking.

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The Last Guy is a PSN game released yesterday in Japan, and soon to be released in the U.S. In the game you control The Last Guy and rescue citizens in a town overrun by giant insects and monsters. The cities are actually high-res satellite images from Google, which is kind of cool. As it turns out, The Last Guy isn’t the last guy, because he has to save all these other guys.

Anyway, all that doesn’t matter. What does matter is you can go here and play a flash version of the game for free. The cool part is, instead of a high-res Google map image, the game “map” can be any website you want to enter. It will blow your mind, because you’ll be playing the game on this post. It automatically generates walls based on the color differences on the page. It’s kind of hard to explain, just try it. The music is totally awesome, too. And The Last Guy appears to wear a red cape.

[ via The Last Guy ]

Sure, the summer is almost over, but that hasn’t stopped Major Nelson from announcing “Xbox Live Arcade’s Summer of Arcade”. Basically, a bunch of highly anticipated arcade games are going to be released over the coming weeks. July 30 we get Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, August 13 Bionic Commando: Rearmed comes out, and August 27 Castle Crashers. There are more titles coming, as well, but those are the three I’m really looking forward to.

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Ubisoft released its First Quarter Reports (2008-09) today. Sales for the company are up 25.8%. Titles launched in 2007-08, such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Assassin’s Creed and Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, are mainly what brought about these numbers. While this may seem like boring news to non-business people, the company did mention some titles that will be released during the second quarter of 2008-09. The second fiscal quarter will see the following main releases: Brothers in Arms Hell’s Highway and Soul Calibur IV (with Darth Vader and Yoda). I am sure everyone knew this already anyway.

Avid gamers can also look forward to the Ubisoft DS title “My SAT Coach”. I personally wish there was a gameboy game when I was younger that mixed the fun of gaming with the intelligence and vest of the SAT’s.

In other Ubisoft news the company opened up two new, randomly placed, studios. One in Kiev, no clue where that is, and Sao Paolo. Fascinating.

Atlus has taken out a two-page ad in the latest issue of Famitsu that hints at an announcement on August 1st. The text is roughly translated as:

On the day when Yin and Yang come together a new jiken (event/incident) will begin.

A lot of people seem to think it might be another Devil Summoner (Raidou Kuzunoha) game. I think it might be a new game about cats from the moon.

[ via Go Nintendo ]

Overall I was extremely disappointed…there really wasn’t anything announced for the Wii and DS that I need to get. Animal Crossing is cool and everything, but it’s not on the same level as a new Mario/Metroid/Zelda/etc. game.

3rd Party Games Wii

- Star Wars The Clone Wars - Use Wiimote like a light saber. Coming sometime in 2008.

- Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party - used balance board as a flying ironing board.

- Call of Duty World at War - use Wiimote like a gun or flamethrower. Lots of things blowing up. “Coming Soon”.

3rd Party Games DS

- Guitar Hero on Tour Decades - On the way this Fall. Share songs between games.

- Spore Creatures - Different then the Spore. Just basically looks like the creature creator, can share creatures with others.

- Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars - Coming to DS this winter. Custom game engine, same GTA gameplay.

First party DS

- Pokemon Rangers Shadows of Almia (sp?) - No real details.

First party Wii

- WiiSports Resort - Uses Wii MotionPlus. Packaged with WiiSports Resort, along with extended sleeve. Knows where your arm is in space. Showed throwing a Frisbee, riding a jet ski and sword fighting. Sword fighting looked pretty cool.

- WiiMusic - Some guy playing drums and sweating a lot. Miyamoto playing a WiiMote like a saxophone. Playing at the same time. You don’t play notes, you don’t have to know how to play a real instrument. All you do is hold the WiiMote and move like your actually playing the instrument and the game does the rest. Playing a song from an F-Zero game. Played a variety of instruments. Drums, use Wii Balance Board. Can record a music video. 4 people playing the Mario song together, look stupid.

- Animal Crossing Town Folk - See here

Technology updates

- For the DS, they talked about using it to find your gate at an airport, didn’t say how exactly. DS can earn a spot in your kitchen, in November there is a game coming out that’s basically a cookbook. Didn’t catch the name.

- For the Wii, Wii MotionPlus. Renders movement better.

- WiiSpeak - Microphone for the Wii. See here

Animal Crossing Town Folk was officially announced today by Nintendo at E3. It will be out by the end of the year. Some other details announced:

• You can go to town now and do a variety of things. There is a beauty salon, where you can put a Mii mask on your Animal Crossing character.
• The game comes with a microphone, called WiiSpeak. You can now talk to your friends online. Looks like the microphone sits on top of the T.V., it’s not a headset.
• Can go to other players towns, see how they decorate their houses, towns.

[ via E3 ]

Holy shit, this is great news. At the Microsoft E3 conference, it was officially announced by Square Enix president Yoichi Wada that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360, and should be released alongside the PS3 version. That’s totally awesome…but I guess it sucks for Sony that’s it’s no longer exclusive.

Also, Star Ocean will be out Spring 2009, which is great. Also, the Last Remnant will be out on 360 first this holiday season.

[ via E3, IGN ]

There’s a trailer after the link…

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It looks weird, so I’m interested and it’s being developed by Skip Ltd., who made Giftpia, this weird Gamecube game that I imported and tried to play even though I know absolutely no Japanese whatsoever. It would have been cool, though, the premise of the game was you overslept for your coming of age ceremony so the mayor makes you pay 5 million bell because he’s so pissed. You should read about it, the game was really weird. Anyway, in Captain Rainbow you play as Nick, who can turn into Captain Rainbow. Captain Rainbow wields a yo-yo.