New Page Update:

Well guys, thanks to the recent addition of Brett our new nintendo guy and movable type wizard, http://www.gamerandy.com will be online and fully operational by late tonight, or early tommorow morning.

There are gonna be some bugs, so bear with us, but yeah - things are moving VERY fast.

In other news, we've now got an affiliate blog/blogcast from a gent by the name of TwixMix... his site is gonna be up probably tommorow or the next day at Http://twixmix.gamerandy.com

Wow

Alot is happening: Any staff that read this, you need to get in touch with me so I can tell you the new protocol for posting on the new page.

-andy *goes back to work*

New Name and Links

Real quick reminder (I posted last night and my post got covered up real fast this morning by the rush of news,
but EVERYBODY THINK OF A NAME FOR THE NEW SITE!!!!

And everybody who hasn't checked it out already, go subscribe to the Geek Speak Radio podcast, it's good shit. I also recommended The Mana Vault which is another podcast I subscribe to that deals exclusively in the nerdery that is Magic: the Gathering

(If you want a more detailed description of this stuff scroll down to my midnight update)
-Andy

GTA Modders to ESRB: "Don't make us your tertiary scapegoat."

Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with a story that won't die:

Modders Hit back at ESRB

Patrick Wildenborg, the modder who first publicized GTA's Hot Coffee minigame hack, sent along to 1UP a letter from the administration of GTAgarage.com, the center of the GTA modding scene, addressed to the ESRB. It's a brief but effective notice. Attached is the message sent to Clinton and Yee, the subject line of which reads, "The ESRB has lied to us all."

That's fine; I have no problem with you basically telling the ESRB to own up to it's responsibility. But noooo, you couldn't let it lie could you? You had to:

Dear Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Yee, and Mr. Thompson

In recent statements by the ESRB, they have accused the mod community of undermining their ratings by putting sexually explicit material into PC games, namely San Andreas, which was already rated "M". However, if you look into a game by the name of "Singles - Flirt up your Life", it becomes quite clear they are doing a good job of that all by themselves. This "M" rated game features full frontal nudity (and not androgynous "barbies" like The Sims) and characters engaging in interactive sexual scenes. Screenshots of this game can be seen over at IGN: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/667/667197/imgs_1.html

And for that matter, what of the game "Playboy: The Mansion", which is based on the skin magazine, and is also rated "M"?!

Wow thanks for that guys, why not just give some C4 to Usama Bin Laden? Now you're NAMING other games to investigate! The longer this story goes the more scrutiny that is put on the Video Game Industry means we could wind up with only Tetris and Tetris clones as our Video Game choices.

GOOD JOB! [/SARCASM]

Semper Fi!

Valve boss Gabe Newell not excited by Next Generation.

Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with an interesting news item:

"Your Existing Code? Throw it Away"

"Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away. It's not going to be helpful in creating next generation game titles," said Newell.

I've heard a lot of dissension from developer types that support the idea that multi-processor programming is up there with rectal surgery. Done correctly? You're in for a beautiful little game. Done poorly? And you'll see a nightmare that claims to be a fun video game. Of course this is the opinion of a company that has created all of three games in the past ten years.

Valve's most recent game (And my personal choice for Game of 2005) Half-Life 2 is expected to hit the current generation Xbox this Fall.

Semper Fi!

Gaming News: 7/26/05

Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with the latest news:

Item One: Japan gets GB Micro on 13 September

Nintendo Japan has announced that Game Boy Micro will go on sale on 13 September to celebrate 20 years of Mario games

This little baby looks smaller than my iPod, just perfect for those 4 year old hands. You have to admire Nintendo's tenacity when it comes to Game Boy hardware.

Item Two: EA SIGNS MOST WANTED MODEL

Electronic Arts has today announced that Josie Maran, current cover-girl for Maybelline cosmetics and supporting actress in films including Van Helsing and Aviator, is to appear in the next installment of the Need for Speed franchise, Most Wanted. The game, which is currently in development at EA's Vancouver studios, will feature a new process developed by the company that takes Hi-Definition footage of live actors and coverts them into synthetic-looking videogame characters.

Lot's of EA stuff today? Nah, just these two, and yes not really news as such, but it's this part of the article that has me concerned:

Josie Maran said, "Video games are much more personal than films since it's an interactive experience for the audience; it's like being invited into their home.. For Need for Speed Most Wanted, we performed in front of a green screen, much like a Hollywood set, so all the gamers will see will be real-life video of the actors merged into environments from the game; it's simply amazing."

So have we gone back to having actors performing video games "Wing Commander" style? I'm not too happy about this, I thought we had moved on from the Full Motion Video stuff of the late 80's early 90's.

Item Three: EA ANNOUNCES NEW RINGS DEAL

EA has today announced that it has been granted the license to produce videogames based on the literary works of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien with the first two titles also announced as Battle for Middle-Earth II for PC and The Lord of the Rings: Tactics on PSP.

Not sure what to make of this, while the games based on Peter Jackson's movies have been really good, many of the "Original Titles" EA has produced like "Battle for Middle-Earth" or "The Third Age" didn't really send my heart a-twitter.

Guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. And finally:

Item Four: House backs federal investigation of Rockstar Games

Just after 7 pm on Capitol Hill today, the House of Representatives voted 355 to 21 to support a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The purpose of the probe will be to determine if take-Two Interactive and its publishing subsidiary Rockstar Games deceived the voluntary Entertainment Software Ratings Board when it submitted Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Don't worry folks; your government is working hard, trying to protect us from Terrorists, Stock Frauds, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas!

What a crock. Mark my words on this one: If this fraking bull-turd goes through, you're going to start to see a lot more "Governmental Process" when it comes to Video Games. Do you want Senator Hillary Clinton or President George Bush deciding that "God of War 2" cannot come out in the US because it offends some form of outdated sensibility? Or that since "Halo" has religious overtones and could offend a particular religious group, those overtones should be removed? OR ELSE?

Rockstar screwed up, no doubt about that, but why is it every time someone screws up it's always the little guy, meaning US, that has to pay the price? My advice? Any politician in your area that talks about the evils of video games? PLEASE DON'T VOTE FOR THEM.

That's today's news, Semper Fi!

Project Gotham Racing 3 Screens

This one is looking more and more promising. I'm at least glad that they showed a snippet of it in motion at the tokyo conference. I loved the first two as they combined to suck up hours of my life.





Now if only EA will show us some screens and vids from their next-gen Burnout game......

Gamer Andy Update #1 12:08 AM July 26th

You may have noticed there was no real news today.
You might be saying "Why Andy! Why have you left us with no new entries?!?!? Have you left us all alone to fend for ourselves in this cruel world of having-to-go-to-a-different-website?!?!"

Well gentle reader, I have not. :)

Seriously though, today has been spent mostly getting amped up for the new website (which will be a .com) and trying to pick a new name for the site!!!! Gamer Andy works well if its just me, but we've got lotsa people! And we all exert most of our creativity doing this webpage, so if anybody has a good idea for the name of the new website, please post it in the comments... We're getting kinda desperate ^_^.

Other news: Ace (Matt) has left us. He's decided he'd rather join the ranks of loyal readers than be responsible for posting on a regular basis, and having me IM him at ackward times of night asking where his latest article is.... And we're currently in talks with Brett to come on as our Nintendo/Handheld guy (My man-hands don't get along well with GBA minis).

Basically folks, this site is temporary, and the name of this site is temporary. We *SHOULD* be completely operational on the new URL by late this week or early next week.

Oh, and today we broke 1000 hits! So thanks guys, I'm really excited about this - 1000 hits in 3 days isn't bad at all since the only publicity we've had has been word of mouth.

While i'm thinking about publicity, has anybody checked out the podcast Geek Speak Radio? Its a podcast about pretty much geeky gamer stuff, which fits me perfectly. I've been listening for a few months now (Its pretty much the guys at GSR or the dorks at The Mana Vault , which is more specialized to... well.... Magic

Do yourselves a favor and check out those podcasts. Quick question though; I don't have an ipod, and listen to podcasts at my desktop, so am I technically listening to a podcast? Or is it just a... computercast.... Anybody have any insight?

Well i'm getting silly

Going to sleep now, to dream of HTML and my beautiful girlfriend

Night folks

-Andy

More Format Issues

Hey folks, we seem to also be having a glitch with certain punctuation marks appearing as foreign symbols...
We're aware of the problem and we're working on it.

If everything works out then we will switch hosts by the end of the week.

UPDATE 6:40 PM PST
Foriegn character error is fixed, was an issue with writing posts in word and transfering them to the web with incompatable charcters (thanks to Mazrim Bel Medar for catching that one)

Even so, we'll still be swapping hosts within the next week or so

Xbox 360 Japan Summit: Sound and Fury

Hi Folks, Cooper Hawkes here:

So the Xbox 360 Japan summit happened late yesterday, and it pretty much managed to equal the PS3 Japan summit from the previous week.

With the Tokyo Game Show still two months away, it's no surprise that there was a lack of surprises. IGN covered just about every aspect down to the color of Peter Moore's socks.

Click here for IGN Index to all articles.

(GamerAndy does not guarantee you will find out the color of Peter Moore's socks.)

Peter Moore stated that Xbox is on time for it's fall 2005 delivery. That's one less rumor to worry about. As for developers, instead of quoting the articles in full, I'll just sum what each company had to say:

Bizarre Creations showed off interiors and exteriors of cars used in the game that comprised of 40,000 exterior polygons and 40,000 interior polygons. That means it's more than the 10,000 polygons used in PGR2. Bizarre also showed a preview of Gotham TV, which will allegedly allow non-players to observe the races as they progress.

In short: Nothing new here.

Capcom showed off it's trailer for Resident Evil 5, again.

Konami, famous for it's Metal Gear series announced: a baseball simulator called Spirits that most likely won't hit the states, and Rumble Roses XX for the Xbox 360!

Yes, that exclamation point was sarcasm, Peter Moore probably thinks: "Thanks for the scraps Konami!" On a more positive note Konami announced a game, that they won't be announcing right now.

Be prepared to hear that statement from a bunch of developers.

Tetsuyo Mizuguchi played with Ninety Nine Nights saying it was actual game play. Check the links, it looks beautiful, but that was about all that was shown.

Namco announces Ridge Racer 6, again, with more feeling this time though, and some screens which look pretty nice.

Frame City Killer seems to be coming along nicely, and regardless of my sarcasm the graphics on Rumble Roses XX looks nice.

Treasure Software, created of Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes, and Radiant Silvergun announced they would support the Xbox 360, then announced nothing else.

Bandai announced an FPS based on the Z Gundam universe. That should be interesting, if you're interested in Z Gundam.

From Software showed off eNCHANT ARms, which is an RPG that has me very curious, EA showed off FIFA 06, and Genki showed some scenes from Tokyo Extreme Racer.

Now onto what amounts as the only surprises from the summit.

Koei announced a special version of Shin Sangoku Musou 4 for the Xbox 360, which they are going to call: Dynasty Warriors 5 Special. A game that's already out for the PS2? Peter Moore probably thinks: "Thanks Koei!" (Sarcasm set to maximum)

Finally, what was (to me) the biggest surprise of all: Team Ninja announces 5 titles for Xbox 360, one title hasn't been officially announced, but it's confirmed that it's NOT Ninja Gaiden 2.

I understand Microsoft is attempting to make headway in Japan, and the announcements given at the Summit are an OK start, nothing more. Though I doubt they would have announced the "E3 style surprise" at what essentially was a "Power Point meeting", I was a bit disappointed that pricing hasn't come up, or release dates.

If you were to ask me this was more a: "Hey! We've got stuff coming, see more at the Tokyo Game Show!" than a "showing all the cards" event. Neither Sony nor Microsoft is going to take a chance of revealing too much with another two months before the big show.

Semper Fi!

Xbox Tokyo Gaming Summit!

This article will be updated as new information becomes available


*Xbox 360 will launch in USA, Japan, and Europe in time for holiday season 2005
*Mobile Suit Gundam will be coming to Xbox 360 - The same Mobile Suit Gundam that was the only playable game at the Sony Conference on the 21st.
*99 Nights is pretty

UPDATE: 12:05 PST
TECMO announces 3 New Games in development for 360:
******DOA Extreme 2 (Sequel to the infamous DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball)
******DOA: Code Cronus
******unnamed titled code-named "Project Progressive" that was described only as "An Action Game"

UPDATE: 12:30 PST
Frame City Killer Looking pretty good, new screenshots released, New Video
More news as its revealed.
-Andy