However, out of the woodworks a New York plastic surgeon came and ripped all meaning from the popular film. Hank Chien is the name of this freshly dubbed record holder, who achieved a score of 1,061,700. The score has been verified by Twin Galaxies, who served as the official judges in the documentary as well.

The title “King of Kong” has been highly sought after amongst the gaming community, so much in fact that Steve Wiebe was transported to E3 2009 by G4TV, and was broadcasted live in his attempt to reclaim the record. Wiebe has also been confirmed to have an appearance at GDC 2010, where he will attempt to break the record once again, similar to his attempt at E3.

Now that Billy Mitchell has been dethroned, will we see a reemergence by him? Wiebe has been periodically attempting to reclaim his title over the last few years–between his musical endeavors, but Mitchell has had no reason to speak up until now.

Donkey Kong World Record Beaten [PRLog]

The UK PlayStation website held a fan Q&A with Heavy Rain director David Cage and executive producer Guillaume de Fondaumière. In this Q&A Heavy Rain fans were given the opportunity to ask the creators of the game about the development and focus.

On more than one occasion the question of inspiration came up, and if any parts of the game were based on real experiences. Considering the events that take place in Heavy Rain, it’s hard to believe any of it would happen in the real world. David Cage, writer and director, proved this sentiment false with his answer. Apparently, two fairly large–and moving–moments of the early game were inspired from events that took place in his life.

The first moment Cage had experienced was losing his son in a crowded mall, and the second was when he had two fingers cut when he was a child. The effect of Cage experiencing these traumatic events prior to them being created in Heavy Rain, makes the result much more believable when you come across it in the game.

Cage says that because these events happened to him firsthand, he knows what it feels like to go through, and can accurately translate the experience into gameplay.

Interestingly enough, another question dealing with these traumatic events that take place in Heavy Rain came up in the very next question. The question asked if the Quality Assurance testers had any problems going through specific parts of the game. David Cage responded that quite a few testers had difficulty playing through the previously mentioned finger cutting scene multiple times.

The job of a QA tester is to play through a game in every possible combination to assure there are no bugs or glitches that would take away from the experience. Considering this finger cutting scene has quite a few different outcomes, going through this experience possibly hundreds of times could potentially be painful for the testers.

The People vs: Heavy Rain – part two [UK PlayStation]

Before this confirmation Valve had updated the original Portal on more than one occasion, adding sound files and even changing the ending. The sound files most interestingly were able to be turned into pictures by the Steam community. Below are the 22 pictures that were able to be created from the 26 original sound files. (The remaining 4 were simply Morse Code, unable to be constructed into images)

These were made from sound

Skipping most of the technobabble along the way involving BBS lines, login information, and a whole lot of ASCII images, Valve eventually changed the ending to the original Portal ever so slightly. Instead of fading to black, Chell is dragged away by what seems to be an android.

That was all over the past couple of days. But just recently the new cover of Game Informer was released, confirming the suspicions of a new Portal game, and in the process crushing hopes of Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

Game Informer Cover

The cover of Game Informer seems to suggest leaving the confines of the test chambers and venturing into the outside world. Portal has been speculated to take place at the same time as Half-Life 2, which means the outside world is controlled by the Combine.

Communities are continuing to decode the clues left by Valve, even in the announcement of the game. The following is the official announcement made by Valve, note the underlined text.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007’s Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards.

The underlined portions of the announcement spell out “drattmannh0nee” which can be used as a log in on the previously discovered BBS line. Using this username and password the BBS has revealed the following images, which seem to hint at a co-op mode.

The recent update to the Portal 2 page on Gamestop supports this claim of co-op as well.

The game’s two-player cooperative mode features its own entirely separate campaign with a unique story, test chambers, and two new player characters. This new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals. Success will require them to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively.

Who knows, it’s possible there is another announcement waiting to be revealed.

Portal 2 will be available this holiday season.

April Cover Revealed [Game Informer]

Portal 2 Announced [Steam]

]]> http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/05/portal-2-announced/feed/ 9 http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/04/wii-sports-helping-depression-patients/ http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/04/wii-sports-helping-depression-patients/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:28:23 +0000 Tovan http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/?p=12146 There have been many reports over the past few years stating that games such as Wii Sports and Wii Fit help elderly patients stay healthy physically. But taking a new spin on things, the researchers at the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say that the Wii can help patients between the ages of 63 and 94 with depression, more specifically subsyndromal depression.

19 people within this age group were observed playing Wii Sports for 35-minutes three times a week. The results were reported by Dilip V. Jeste, the project lead, who said that a third of the patients had a 50 percent–or greater–reduction of symptoms of depression. Jeste also stated that,

Many had a significant improvement in their mental health-related quality of life and increased cognitive stimulation.

Before questioning the legitimacy of the experiment, Jeste was the first person to say that the study needed to be expanded to a wider variety of patients before any data could be taken seriously.

Playing Wii Sports May Well Help Depressed Geriatrics [GamePolitics]

Reports have been flooding in from players confirming the death of their PCs. Those who have already installed the driver have been asked to uninstall it immediately. The new drivers essentially melt your PC by causing the fan to work incorrectly to the point where it builds up too much heat.

Blizzard has confirmed that the drivers affect StarCraft 2 in addition to Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. This error could potentially turn into a major problem, many players will not take lightly to their $1000 PCs breaking.

The following is a quote from Blizzard Tech Support concerning the issue,

We’re getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.

A fix is currently in the works by Blizzard.

NVIDIA 196.75 Drivers Kills StarCraft 2 [Inc Gamers]

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Garry’s Mod, it is a modification to the source engine (Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source, etc.) and the official website describes it as the following,

Garry’s Mod is a game where you build things. You weld things together, add wheels, motors, thrusters. It’s kind of like lego, except on a computer. Unlike regular games there aren’t any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play.

The Fretta Contest offers those who enter a cash prize of $5000, $2000 and $1000 for the gamemodes that come in first, second and third place, respectively. These top three winning gamemodes will “ship” with the base game of Garry’s Mod, and allow the creator to add achievements as well as update the gamemode via Steam.

Contestants worked for months on their gamemodes, warranting a deadline extension to the 1st of March. That date has come, and some of the entries are astounding. Keep in mind that these gamemodes were created from a game based off a first-person shooter, which makes some of these entries even more impressive.

The gamemodes range from side-scrolling, platformers, mini golf, airplane battles, hide and seek variants, lasertag, Wario Ware inspired games, and more. The wide variety of gamemodes that have been created shows how imaginative people can be when given the right tools. How someone can turn a first-person shooter into a mini golf game is beyond me.

The Fretta Contest will be judged in the coming weeks, but you can view all the entries and their descriptions here. You can also view a few screenshots from some of the gamemodes below.

Fretta Contest Gamemodes [Garry's Mod]

Ascension

Suicide Barrels

LaserTag

GarryWare Two

Zinger!

]]> http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/03/garrys-mod-contest-shows-creativity-of-players/feed/ 9 http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/02/playstation-2-export-linked-with-terrorism/ http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2010/03/02/playstation-2-export-linked-with-terrorism/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:05:31 +0000 Tovan http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/?p=11995 Fifty-six year old Khaled Safadi is a Paraguayan citizen with a U.S. residency in Miami Florida. Safadi was arrested, and is now free on bail, for supposedly funding terrorism by shipping $720,000 worth of PS2 consoles and digital cameras to a mall in Paraguay.

The shipments were sent to the Galeria Page Mall, which the Treasury Department believes is used to fund Hezbollah–a resistance movement based in Lebanon which the United States officially listed as a terrorist organization. Countries such as Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom have also labeled Hezbollah similarly.

When delivering the PS2s and cameras to the mall, Safadi provided false addresses in an attempt to hide the shipments. The resulting punishment is a release with a $1.55 million bail, which Safadi is confined to his home.

Two other men were arrested as a part of this controversy, Ulises Talavera and Emilio Gonzalez-Neira, who helped to forward the shipment to Paraguay. The owner of the mall, where the items were shipped, was not arrested.

Safadi’s lawyer is not happy with the way the situation turned out, saying,

“He is being accused of shipping a children’s toy to Paraguay. It’s a shame that the government has pumped this thing up as a terrorism case.”

It’s a tricky situation, on one side it can be seen as a harmless shipment, but when you look further, the story becomes a lot less innocent. What are your thoughts on the story, is Safadi to blame in this situation?

Doral man charged in terror-related case obtains bail [Miami Herald via Gamepolitics]

The vSv Entertainment Team–which don’t let the name fool you, only consists of one person–took note of this similarity and created a fusion between the two games. The fusion was made possible by using an editor created by vSv, which replaces enemies and tiles using the game engine in order to remake Super Mario Bros. levels.

While the fusion may not be perfect, the developer of the engine points out that it is still in beta stages, so enemy damage may not be up to standards quite yet–explaining the reason behind enemies withstanding multiple jumps before being defeated.

Keep an eye out at the end of the video for yet another Mario fusion.

The developer at vSv has some interesting ideas, and more of this fusion project can be viewed on his/her youtube page. The project is in no way limited to only Zelda, it takes resources from a number of game.

Here’s Mario Mixed With Zelda II [Siliconera]

But the beta cannot last forever, StarCraft II–surprisingly enough–will be released at one point. Blizzard’s latest podcast gave fans a hopeful time frame to expect the full game release, as well as the end of the beta.

Chris Sigaty, production director, dropped the information by saying,

We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we’re really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point. We are still targeting the first half of this year, so with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end whether it’s even worth it putting out the map editor at that point.

If Blizzard has a correct time estimate, players will only have to wait 2-3 more months to get their hands on the full game of StarCraft II. However, this is Blizzard we’re talking about, so only time will reveal if their estimates hold true.

BlizzCast #13 [Blizzard US via BigDownload]

More recently, Game & Watch has received a few nostalgic nods from Nintendo, such as it’s inclusion as a battle stage in Super Smash Brothers Melee, and having a few games transferred onto a DS cartridge and given away to fans as a prize at Club Nintendo.

Regardless, there is a following of Game & Watch fans, and Japanese toymaker TakaraTomy is hoping to cash in on this lovable handheld by releasing a solar powered keychain of the Game & Watch system. Unfortunately, there is no playable game in regards to the keychain, the solar power attributes only to the built in alarm and clock.

How much would you pay?

If you are really itching for this knickknack and have the right resources to get your hands on it, the keychains will be available for purchase in March for $11 US.

Tomy Game and Watch keychains live up the nostalgia [Newlaunches via Kotaku]

But who knew that a game released in 1990 would sell so incredibly well nearly 20 years later. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the best selling digital game for Nintendo last year, managing to sell 1 million copies for $5 each on the Virtual Console. The game that Nintendo created two decades ago is continuing to rake in an immense amount of money.

To offer a little comparison, New Super Mario Bros. Wii–a brand new game in the series–sold 1.4 million units last year. The fact is that NSMBW is a full priced game, so compared to a $5 download it may not seem like much of an accomplishment. However, the fact of the matter is that Super Mario Bros. 3 already went through it’s own release cycle 20 years ago, and being given another chance in the market has made Nintendo an extra $5 million.

To drive this point home, the most successful selling game on Xbox Live last year was Battlefield 1943–also a new game. Compared to the 1 million copies Super Mario Bros. 3 sold on the VC, Battlefield sold only 830,000.

The proof of concept is obvious, the market is clearly open to the idea of buying older games that want to be given a second life. While this idea may have been realized previous to this point, the fact that SMB3 sold so well compared to new releases last year offers evidence to this trend.

Super Mario Bros. 3 sells another million copies 20 years later [TrueSlant]

The entire package will run you 3200 points ($40). However, if you are bold enough to purchase all three games as well as secure the Game Room download, Microsoft is willing to credit your account 400 points ($5). This is very similar to the Summer of Arcade that happened in July and August of last year, just on a smaller scale.

If a $5 refund isn’t good enough to convince you to purchase this group of games, Gold members will also receive a free month of Xbox Live credited to their accounts. For those without a Gold account, Microsoft is allowing anyone and everyone to play the Block Party titles with free online service from March 26-29 at 12 pm ET.

The Block Party is shaping up to be quite the event for Microsoft, particularly the release of the Game Room will add an entirely new layer of games for Gold members to access.

Xbox Block Party [Xbox]

The interesting part of this announcement is the fact that the game will be released on XBLA before WiiWare. The reasoning behind this is the fact that the game will be able to contain more content in the XBLA release as opposed to the content in the WiiWare title. As it stands, the game is only half finished and already has a file size of 35MB. Nintendo limits all WiiWare games to 45MB, leaving little room for the team to expand on the Wii release.

The XBLA release will allow the game to be finished without cutting content, giving more breathing room to the team. The release will include some kind of online play, and each version of the game will include exclusive content, such as special characters.

The game has also been seen on PlayStation 3 test kits, but there are no plans to bring it to PSN as of yet.

Super Meat Boy Coming to XBLA [IGN]

The newest and arguably most controversial step in DRM has come from the guys over at Ubisoft.

The DRM was originally revealed when a review copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 was sent to PC Gamer, who then went on to confirm everyone’s fears, that the game requires constant net connection and communication with the server. If at any point your internet connection drops, the game either kicks you out or pauses indefinitely. The following is a description of the DRM from PC Gamer,

“The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you’re not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft’s ‘Master servers’. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen—all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.”

Players who rely on a wireless connection, or any connection that tends to drop from time to time, won’t have an enjoyable experience playing Ubisoft games as long as this DRM is in place. Just as well, if you planned on playing any Ubisoft games on a laptop away from internet service, you won’t have that option anymore.

Ubisoft has gone and defended their new DRM saying,

“As long as you do not quit the game, the game will continue to try to reconnect for an unlimited time. Once the game is able to reconnect, you will immediately be returned to your game.” “Where exactly you are reconnected in the game may differ from title to title. Settlers 7 reconnects at the exact point where the connection was lost, AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint (and not the last auto save, as indicated in the CVG article). There are many checkpoints so you’re back to the point where you got disconnected in no time.”

So it’s ultimately up to the specific game’s save structure to determine how much data you lose from your internet connection dropping.

So far this DRM solution doesn’t seem like it will be very popular amongst the majority of PC gamers.

Official explanation of controversial Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM [Ars Technica]

The engine for Civilization V has been completely remade, allowing the landscapes of your newly found civilizations to look better than ever. The gameplay itself promises deeper strategy along with more realism. The hexagon playing titles allow for an entirely new style of combat and maneuverability. One of the newest strategies that can be deployed is the idea of ranged bombardment, which allows players to fire weapons behind the front lines of combat, challenging them to develop new and more complex strategies to ensure their victory.

Players can also look forward to fully animated world leaders, as opposed to the previous games in which each leader would have only a handful of animations. All in all, you can look forward to a wide variety of improvements over the previous games.

Sid Meier’s Civilization V is being published by 2k Games and developed by Firaxis, and can be sought after on PC this fall.

2K Games Announces Sid Meier’s Civilization [2KGames]