The huge news of the days is the exciting reveal of Duke Nukem Forever at PAX 2010.  For all of you that don’t know, this game has been over 10 years in the making and was the butt of many industry jokes.  Seriously, 10 years!  A lot has happened over that time.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane:

July 1991 – Duke Nukem, a side scrolling shooter is released for PC.  Available on 3.5″ floppy!

August 1991 – The Super NES debuts, 2 years after the Sega Genesis.  Marking the beginning of Nintendo’s fall in to ‘kiddy’ games.

August 1992 – Mortal Kombat is released in the arcades.  Virtual disembowelment has never been this realistic!

December 1993 – Duke Nukem 2 is released for PC to little (if any) fanfare

May 1995 – The Sega Saturn debuts!  Stock in fork lifts soar as consumers have to use them to carry their Saturn controllers around.

January 1996 – Forever’s predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D is released for PC, pubescent teens everywhere (including your’s truly) were giddy over the strippers, toilets and masturbatory jokes

March 1996 – After 7 months, the Virtual Boy is discontinued.  Nobody cares.

September 1996 – The Big N releases the Nintendo 64 with launch title, ‘Super Mario 64′

January 1997 – Final Fantasy VII is release for Sony’s Playstation (yes, there HAS been 6 Final Fantasy’s before a sequel to Duke Nukem)

April 1997 – Duke Nukem Forever is announced to MUCH fanfare.  It is scheduled to be released no later than Summer 1998.

June 1998 – 3D Realms decides to switch Forever from the Quake II engine to the Unreal engine.  Effectively restarting the project.  Pricks.

Sometime around 1999/2000 – Someone (anybody?) at 3D Realms actually does some work.

October 2000 – The Playstation 2 is released, will go to sell over 6 times as many units as the Gamecube, released a year later (and still counting!).

June 2001 – A trailer is released at E3, fans are excited, ecstatic even.

June 2005 – There are rumors the game will be shown at E3.  Much to the surprise of nobody, it doesn’t.  Nobody cares anymore.

January 2006 – George Broussard is interviewed by 1up.com. Declares the game is close to finished.  It isn’t.

November 2006 – The curiously named ‘Wii’ is released and flies off the shelf.  Grandmother’s everywhere go bananas for them.  No actual games are sold.

December 2007 – Another teaser is released

May 2009 – Development suspended due to lack of funding *yawn*.

September 2010 – Game shown in playable form at PAX 2010, release date set for 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.  I’ll believe that when I see it.

e-play, a movie & game kiosk provider, is putting up kiosks in Walmarts nationwide to buy back used games from savvy gamers for store credit.  This replaces the traditional system of having to walk into Gamestop and actually talk to someone when you are getting bent over for your decrepit games.  Don’t even think about gaming the system as it has numerous safeguards in place to prevent hell-bent heathens from scoring some virtual cash.  In fact, you will be looking to get the damn things to work at all, according to jazzking2001 at neocrisis.

They are already being placed in Walmarts in the Northeastern US, so look for them in your local store soon!

And I thought it couldn’t get any worse for Sony.  According to NPD’s most recent numbers the PS2 outsold the PS3 by about 45k units in April.  The PS3 sold around 127,000 to PS2’s 172,000 which secured them the 5th and 6th spots in the console wars.  A price drop is the ‘official’ explanation.  Who the hell was waiting for the PS2 to drop to $100 before buying one?

I am a huge fan of the Lego series of games.  These games are cute, highly addictive, and provide countless hours of replay value.  However, it takes a special franchise to translate to a good Lego game.  The franchise needs to have plenty of recognizable characters, lots of action ‘scenes’, and a decent story.  With Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Batman behind us (and Rock Band aside), we are left wondering what they will do next. 

• Harry Potter – This is most likely the next game as this post at Kotaku suggests.  This does not excite me at all as I am one of the few non-fans of Harry Potter (though I read the first four books).
• Lord of the Rings – My vote for the next game and surely to excite many adults such as myself.  I would absolutely love to see this made in the Lego universe and it seems like a perfect fit (unlike Harry Potter).
• Ghostbusters – This has been rumored before.  I am not a fan but can see how this could work.

What series would you like to see as the next Lego game?

So it’s that time of the year when the nights are long and gaming is short.  There is a gigantic void in the gaming industry in the  middle of the summer, that is only made palatable by the anticipation of exciting news coming out of E3.  Except, E3 is no longer what it used to be.  Gone are the days of waiting patiently for your magazine subscription to hear the latest news from the show, and gone are the days of millions of people sitting and refreshing their browsers on their favorite video game website, in hopes of being one of the first non-attendees to hear breaking news.  This year (and future years) we are stuck feeding on the table scraps of the few companies who are still participating in this affair.  Nonetheless, here are my predictions for this year:

1. Bungie will indeed announce a cross-platform game.
2. Song lists released for the next Guitar Hero and Rock Band. UPDATE: Rock Band Track List
3. Nintendo will announce the much anticipated, Kid Icarus and provide very little details.
4. Microsoft will drop the price on all the Xbox 360’s by $50, worst kept secret ever.  UPDATE: Worse yet, the $50 price drop is only until the 20 GB model runs out and gives way to the new 60 GB one
5. and, Sony will talk some more about the ill fated Home (or be suspiciously silent, maybe everyone will forget), which one is worse?

Now that seems drab.  Hopefully, there will be at least one exciting announcement.  What I would like to hear:

1. Activision and EA are cancelling the next iterations of Rock Band and Guitar Hero due to the fact that they are just fancy karaoke games and will soon be relegated to drunken, old, fat men playing in seedy bars on Sunday nights.
2. Nintendo is going to drop the D’s from 3 to 2 in their next Zelda game, since the last time the series had a decent game was in two dimensions.  Oh yea, and they will announce that it will be out by Christmas.
3. Friend codes will be removed from all Nintendo products, gamers will be treated like adults, and the Big N is implementing some kind of original ‘achievement’ type system.
4. Sony is going to redesign their PS3 console so it doesn’t look like something out of a flash forward in a low budget science fiction flick from the 80’s, and lighten it so it doesn’t weigh as much as my couch (is there a brick in there?).
5. Microsoft is going to add Blu Ray support to the 360, in the form of an external drive or Xbox Blue Edition, seems like a no brainer to me.

Needless to say, I am not holding my breath…

So over this past week Blizzard has been teasing us with daily changes to the splash page of www.blizzard.com. Everyone is expecting that these changes coincide with a major announcement coming up at the World Wide Invitation in Paris. I’ve been trying to keep up with the speculation and have decided I will add my own analysis and what I think is on the way.

First, the cracked ice background. Every day more of the ice is broken away and a new “rune” is added. Right now there are five of these “runes”, which are unknown symbols really, and they appear to form a pentagram. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

 In addition to the daily changes of the above image, there is also a hidden change to the page’s CSS document. Each day a new hidden CSS class is added and linked to an image. These images can be pieced together to form a drawing of a creature that resembles Barney so far. (Figure 2)

Figure 2

 The other cryptic thing about this is that each image is given a number as a file name. There has been a lot of people suspecting that these numbers correspond to letters in the alphabet. Let’s look more deeply at the CSS changes.

Figure 4 is a table illustrating what order the images were posted in, what CSS class they are a part of and what letter the image file name corresponds with. The second table is in the order as it appears in the CSS document.

The most recent class is Harbinger, which means a sign of things to come. The pentagram that can be drawn from the “runes” coupled with harbinger really hints at Diablo 3 being the answer to the riddle. Also, the eyes and scaly forehead that appear in the middle of the broken ice look very demonic.

 However, it can easily be argued that since the names of the CSS classes are all about cold and the new area, the Northend, in WoW will be cold that we should be looking for the Lich King. So I did, see figure 3. You know what, it very well could be Arthas, the Lich King there. I weened myself off of Warcrack a few years ago and I would love to see Diablo 3, so as I may be reaching a bit I am still going to try to convince myself that we can expect a Diablo 3 announcement.

Figure 3

If you associate the image file names with the letters and put them in the same order as the CSS, you get D-P-O-H-W. This may be the title of the game, perhaps it is “Diablo: Prince of H—– W——”.

The World of Warcraft players have been hoping the announcement is the start of the beta test for the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I really do not think that’s what it is, especially now given the facts, but I do not think Blizzard would put this much hype behind a beta release. I mean everyone knows the game is coming and the WoW fan boys and girls are anxiously awaiting the new classes, level cap and areas. However, I do see where the face behind ice could resemble Arthas, the Lich King. So a Wrath of the Lich King announcement is my second guess, but I am still leaning toward Diablo 3 for the time being. Starcraft 2 has been announced for a while, God knows when we will see it. I really do not think it is a Starcraft related announcement.

Right now, all fingers are pointing to Diablo and for me it is hard to do anything else. The pentagram, the eyes behind the ice, the letters and we have been expecting it for some time now. The only thing that has me confused is the purple monster. I suppose it could be a creature from Diablo 3, but to me it does not look devilish enough. Perhaps it has a face that was beat with the ugly stick, hopefully we will find out tomorrow. Maybe it’s Diablo 3 AND Wrath of the Lich King! *Splooge*

Figure 4

First off, I love the XNA framework goal and implementation.  A lot of people do not understand how it really works.  I have heard people complaining that Microsoft will not pay it enough attention or will be slow to certify games.  What these people do not realize is that Microsoft is not supposed to be a part of the process.  It is a community-driven process, similar to the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process”>JCP</a>.

The JCP has been in process for 10 years now, and has been arguably successful.  It allows the community to give feedback and shape the direction of the Java programming language.  In the JCP you generally have large companies such as Oracle, or Red Hat participating.  In the XNA process it will be regular people like me that our XNA enthusiasts.  I am not involved in this  process, nor am I an expert XNA programmer.  While I hope, in my infinite spare time, to be able to better my understanding of the XNA framework and game programming in general.  I expect I may never reach the level that is required to become a member of the XNA approval process.

What does all this XNA stuff mean to you the casual gamer?  Quite frankly, not much.  Except to know that Microsoft is handing over the reigns for the community to produce content for the XBox.  This is a welcome change and something that has never been seen in the console gaming world before.  Another important thing to note is the cost, XNA Game Studio Express is completely free.  However, to test and run on your XBox will cost you $99 / year (compare to ~$1700k for Nintendo’s SDK).

What is Microsoft trying to get out of this?  Quite simply, a devoted community will be creating content for which they will take 65% of the sales and never have to pay out a cent. There are overhead costs of developing and maintaining the service.  More importantly for Microsoft I think this is an attempt to combat piracy.

Recently I have been debating on buying the R4DS chip for my Nintendo DS.  I wanted to play a neat little homebrew game that I have seen called Pocket Physics for the Nintendo DS.  Normally I wouldn’t bother with pirating and modding my systems, but, if I had a legitimate reason to put a chip in my DS, the temptation to acquire every single game made for the DS for free would be too much to resist.  Do you see where I am going with this?  Microsoft has taken away our moral excuse to mod our XBox.

EA recently extended it’s exclusivity rights deal with the NFL through 2013. As expected, this drew an audible groan from many video gaming enthusiasts. As a result of their success, EA is experiencing some negativity from the community. Many people think it is unfair that EA is the only company that can produce NFL games. You likely haven’t heard much about Take Two’s exclusivity deal with MLB, which runs until 2012 (it applies to 3rd party developers only, Nintendo could make an MLB game). Like it or not these deals, while despised by the community, are probably here to stay.

The NFL actively sought an exclusivity deal with EA because of their reputation for making a quality product. The NFL does not want to see their brand tarnished by cheap inferior video games, so they pursued an exclusivity deal. Since the Madden franchise is one of the top selling games every year, EA was the natural choice for this deal.

According to vgchartz.com, as of this writing, Madden NFL 08 has sold about 6.25 million copies. Compare this with the blockbuster hit, Call of Duty 4 at 7.4 million, or Halo 3 at 7.1 million and you will see it is in very good company. Keep in mind, this game comes out EVERY year, Call of Duty 4 and Halo do not. However, Madden sales seem to be a bit down from last year (8.7 million), so maybe people are finally getting tired of it. Though there is a long way to go for it to be anywhere near the closest competitor, All Pro Football at 250,000 copies.

So, like it or not, exclusivity deals and EA are likely to be around forever. In fact, EA has recently attempted a takeover of Take Two Interactive, which, would make them the sole producer of NFL and MLB products. If this is bad news to you, vote with your money and quit buying their products. As for me, I will be patiently waiting for the next MVP Baseball, with a smile on my face.