For years Microsoft hoovered up more and more of the games industry. It was shocking when they purchased Bethesda - a huge third party publisher and development house. By the time they secured the deal to buy Activision-Blizzard, it was much less so, and it was clear that Microsoft believed they could buy all the properties they needed to make GamePass a success. It didn't take long to see that their strategy wasn't working.
Welcome to the annual Nerds Without Pants music special, which is also the LONGEST EPISODE OF NWP EVER. Sorry (not sorry). Yeah…nothing else to say; but please enjoy some fantastic music!
Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the annual Nerds Without Pants music special! We’re coming back from hiatus very soon, but before that we have an AMAZING guest to talk about some of our favorite video game music with: none other than Megan McDuffee, the composer and singer of the River City Girls soundtrack!
I keep telling myself I'm going to be better at blogging, and I write a blog post, and then I disappear again. But then again, up until a few months ago, I hadn't been doing much gaming. And then I was too busy gaming to be bothered to blog. So, here's what I've been up to:
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over five years since I helped PixlBit ring in Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary with an exhaustive retrospective series, but here we are. Even though I missed the actual 30th anniversary of my favorite game franchise, I couldn’t let that milestone pass without doing something to show my love for this epic saga. To that end, I submit to you, our dear readers, my ordered ranking of the fifteen main games in the series. Naturally, this excludes spinoffs like Final Fantasy Tactics and direct sequels like Lightning Returns, and this is very much my list and in no way is PixlBit’s definitive order. But hey, everyone loves a good list, right? Each game features a quick paragraph reprising some of the information from the FF Retrospective, and a more personal take on each entry. I hope you enjoy!
If you told me when I was a kid that Super Mario Bros. 2 was merely a localized version of a pre-existing game from Japan, I wouldn’t have believed you. But in fact, that’s precisely what Nintendo did for the US release of the next chapter in the Mario series. This was mostly due to the fact the original Japanese sequel was nearly identical to Super Mario Bros., only with slightly improved graphics. There was also concern that the game’s high difficulty would be off-putting for American audiences. The solution? Take Doki Doki Panic, swap out the main characters, slap a “Super Mario Bros. 2” label on that bad boy, and you’ve got yourself Nintendo’s best-selling game of 1988.
Good morning Pixlpeeps! The plan for today is to either go watch Rogue One which starts at 2pm or save that for Monday and just do some small errands today like look for a new external CD/DVD drive for my laptop. Heck I could do both. Anyways this is the first Quick Hits of 2017 so why not do a little recap of Christmas with the peeps.
Two weeks ago, the school where I work conducted their "Black & Gold" (school colors) basketball game night to kick off the new season. It was basically all the varisty teams playing scrimmage but it was also an opportunity for a bake sale and God knows what else. Honestly, I stayed the hell out of that building unless someone reported a mess that needed to be cleaned up.
So with my interest in board games steadily increases, I’ve been drawn to the idea of crafting my own board game to play with friends and possibly to produce should it prove entertaining/smart enough. This is by no means a quick thing to do and will go through the normal process that most games go through: Thematic Inception à Setting Mechanics à Prototype à Playtest
I stood in line for an unnecessarily long time to pick up my copy of Pokémon X from Nintendo World in New York, but it was worth it. Most would have left the line and picked it up at a more comfortable or convenient location. For myself and many others, the reason why we stayed, braving the cold morning air along the streets of Manhattan, was the sense of community—the very heart of the Pokémon series since its inception. That community is one of the reasons why my time with Pokémon X has been so amazing, but it's much more than that. It's also about the way the the right improvements have been made in all the right spots, the new features, and the nostalgia. X is the best Pokémon game in a long time.
We continue our look into video games that should have movie adaptions. If you enjoy movies, and you missed any of my VG movie reviews from last week, be sure to check them out. I reviewed Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Street Fighter, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. But what games have never been made into movies that could actually be good (if done right)? Yesterday I gave three big ones. Today I conclude with three more. Not only do I suggest these games, but I also drop some names of people who should make these movies. Feel freee to share your own opinions. Here they are:
If you don't mind extremely overzealous droppage of the F bomb and a plethora of capital letters, read on.
Bioshock Infinite is a masterwork of both style and substance—its high-minded, dramatic storytelling not only challenges the intellect, but it does so in conjunction with action-driven gameplay and an atmospheric world both surreal and sublime in its beauty. This is no trivial feat, especially considering the medium’s history; traditionally, games providing any semblance of an intelligent narrative have tended to do so at the expense of both action and thrills.
Okay, so it’s been nearly a week since the news about 1Up’s fate came to light and we former-1Up bloggers packed up and vacated the place. The dust is beginning to settle and a good number of my friends have flocked here to Pixlbit as a safe haven for gaming community goodness. Within a day or two of settling down here, I decided that it this would be the perfect place to continue writing retro game reviews. But I also had a small conundrum on my hands. Should I go back an re-post all of my old reviews and lead up to my latest works that aren’t posted yet? Or should I just pick up directly from where I left off at 1Up and just move forward?
Nintendo made many an inner child quite happy this morning by announcing that the main series’ first official foray into 3D will arrive this October in the form of Pokemon X and Pokemon Y.
We reported recently that Day Z—the popular zombie survival mod for ArmA 2—might get a full retail release as a stand-alone title. We can now confirm that this is indeed the case. Dean Hall will be the lead on the game, which will be developed by ArmA’s own Bohemia Interactive.
Sony's press conference this year started off with a bang with a video that served as an overview of what would be shown. The video featured a stable of first party titles as well as some functionality announcements. Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 3 also made their presence known.
id is a company that has been synonymous with the PC since its inception. The company that brought the world Doom and Quake has always pushed the PC as the lead platform for their games. Even though Doom 3 was released on the Xbox about six months after the PC launch, id had never gone fully multiplatform on day one until the release of Rage last week. While the 360 and PS3 versions are stable, there have been plenty of issues with the PC version of the game. John Carmack, the co-founder of id and driving force behind the company’s game engines, spoke out about those issues recently.
Yesterday, Sony announced that they acquired long time development partner, Sucker Punch Productions based in Bellevue, Washington. Born from ex-Microsoft employees, the studio has been developing franchises for Sony since nearly its inception. After completing work on Rocket: Robot on Wheels on the N64, the team went on to produce the popular Sly Cooper series, which they followed up with the more recent inFamous titles.
The Virtual Console we all know and love hit the scene a little over four years ago, and since its inception has paved the way for release of 379 titles in North America. Over the past year, however, only 28 titles were published on the service spanning the 10 systems it represents. Compare this to its first full year and you’ll see a striking difference. In the calendar year of 2007, 157 titles of the available 379 were released. If anything is clear, it’s that the Virtual Console has been a bit of disappointment over the past couple of years, providing a small helping of games, with only a few gems littered in. But what does this mean in the grand scheme of the service itself?