It is no secret that Nintendo has been expanding the range of characters it will allow into its Smash Bros. series of games. When Smash first started, it was all Nintendo owned characters, but over the course of the years, it has allowed such characters as Sonic, Solid Snake, Pac-man, Ryu and more. Its latest character choice shows that Nintendo is not above including characters not seen on Nintendo consoles. Continue reading
Author Archives: E. Zachary Knight
Valve Making Power Play To Make SteamOS The Default Gaming OS
Over the last week, Valve has been removing the SteamOS icon from games made to work on Linux if they don’t work 100% with Valve’s own SteamOS. This follows a controversial move to replace the Linux Tux icon and replace it with the SteamOS icon. This move shows that Valve would prefer to support its own OS rather than an OS they don’t have full control of. According to sources close to the move, this is only the beginning. Continue reading
EA Steals Nuke In Bid To Outdo Activision’s Call of Duty Marketing
Yesterday, Activision launched a somewhat controversial marketing campaign for its next Black Ops game. In it, they sent out a series of tweets indicating civil unrest and government crackdown in Singapore. Many people are upset that Activision would greenlight such a tone deaf campaign.
We have now received reports that EA will not be outdone. EA itself is not free from controversial marketing campaigns. It once sent brass knuckles, a weapon illegal in most states, to games press to market its Godfather 2 game. It also created a “sin to win” campaign for Dante’s Inferno in which gamers commit “sins” to win goodies from EA. But its latest marketing stunt for Battlefield may have gone too far. Continue reading
RIAA Gives Up On DMCA, Advocating For Something Better
The RIAA recently threw lobs at the current DMCA system in effect in the US. According to an editorial on Forbes, they find the DMCA ineffective, basically one big game of whack-a-mole. “it is largely useless in the current world where illegal links that are taken down reappear instantaneously. The result is a never-ending game that is both costly and increasingly pointless.”
They are really tired of playing this game and want to find a way to head piracy off at the pass rather than pursuing it after the fact. To this end, they are lobbying Congress for something they find much more palatable. Continue reading
Indie Dev Gives Up Game Development For Career Playing Slots
After spending thousands of hours of sleepless, knuckle-cracking game development work, releasing dozens of mobile game titles and and dealing with an ungrateful audience, an indie game developer has finally given up indie game development work to play the slots. Continue reading
Leaked Konami Emails Complain About Slowing Ceiling Fans
While recent leaks have shown that working conditions at Konami are not all it is cracked up to be, indicating extremely Orwellian conditions. Yet even those reports might not show the full extent of the problems. Continue reading
Ubisoft Set To Buy The Humble Bundle
The Humble Bundle has been on an upward trajectory for several years now. This has attracted the attention of a number of investors and potential buyers. It now looks like the Humble Bundle has decided to take up one of those offers.
This offer comes from Ubisoft itself. Based on documents we have obtained, Ubisoft will buy the Humble Bundle for $10million. 25% of which will be paid to a charity that Ubisoft will pick at a later time. Continue reading
Pokemon Company Sues To End Child’s Birthday Party
Just days after filing suit to end a PAX Prime launch party, the Pokemon Company has continued its legal rampage, this time targeting a child’s 7th birthday party.
According to court filings in US District Court of Wisconsin, the Pokemon Company finds that the child’s hand drawn party invitations feature reproductions of artwork copyrighted by the Pokemon Company. Additionally, the Pokemon Company claims that the home decorated cake the mother made also violates the company’s copyrights. Continue reading
Microsoft Testing NFC Figure Waters With Minecraft
After carefully watching the NFC chip embedded figure scene for several years, Microsoft feels confident they have what it takes to do it themselves. “We were interested after Skylanders and Disney Infinity, but when Nintendo released its Amiibo series we knew we had to get in on that action ourselves,” Microsoft XBox division head Phil Spencer said. Continue reading
Local Game Store Finds Goldmine In Retro Game Sales
It is no secret that the retro games scene is a lucrative piece of games culture. It is so big that a lot of retailers are taking up retro sales, including Game Stop’s return to classic gaming. We recently caught wind of a new game store opening up and which is hoping to get a piece of the sweet retro pie.
We took a stroll through this store and found games from pretty much every generation of consoles. Everything from the Commodore 64 all the way to the PS4. But what took us by surprise were the prices on those retro games. Continue reading