Amidst seemingly insurmountable financial troubles, developer Atlus’ parent company (“Index Corporation”) will be delisting its stock on July 28th, and should begin taking bids for its goods and services next week. Atlus employees continue to say that the situation won’t affect their daily operations, and the launch of games like Shin Megami Tensei IV (which came out earlier this week) and Dragon’s Crown will remain unaffected.

Index Corp. CEO Yoshimi Ochiai and Chairman Masami Ochiai plan to resign.

Via Polygon

Level-5 releases special wallpaper, is forced to include the airplane from AeroPorter due to poll results

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, General Gaming, Images, News, Wii | 0 comments

Though I’m sure they don’t mind in the slightest, game developer/publisher Level-5 was recently forced to publish a special wallpaper with characters from many of their most popular franchises… as well as the airplane and the “porter” from AeroPorter! The 3DS download title apparently held a spot in the popularity poll that they put up to determine which characters would be drawn into the wallpaper, and so many people put down their vote for the non-living, metallic flight-body that Level-5 had to include it! The airplane managed to snag 46,263 votes, ahead of the second-place Inazuma character who pulled in 38,339, and the porter himself (a character with no face or personality, mind you) got ninth, with 17,889.

Take a look at the wallpaper above, or click here to download a full-sized version.

Via Kotaku

Official ‘Earthworm Jim’ Facebook page abruptly talks about what a fourth game in the series might be called

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

The Earthworm Jim Facebook page is managed primarily by Doug TenNapel (creator), with some extra comments by MIke Dietz and Ed Schofield, all of whom worked on the series in some official capacity. Whether this means anything is hard to say… he could have just been thinking about the 3D entry in the series and pondering how fans don’t really think too highly of it!

Via ONM

Survey says the average age of a gamer in UK is 35, and they’re generally married

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii | 1 Comment

This data comes from a survey done by gaming social network “Pixwoo”. 2000 people who identified themselves as “gamers” were questioned, and they’re all from the UK:

– Average gamer in the UK is married
– They play, on average, for about 2.5 hours a day, five days a week
– Average age is 35
– They stay up until (on average) 10:58PM playing games
– The data stays relatively consistent from male the female gamers

– Average gamer owns two consoles, 18 games
– Takes around a month to complete each game
– Most of them argue more than twice a week with their partner about gaming (not sure if this means about games themselves or gaming habits)
– About 5% say gaming is a “constant cause” of arguments
– 15% have broken up with someone due to their love of gaming

– Average gamer has about 5 online friends
– 29% say they’ve met at least one of their online friends face-to-face
– 33% play multiplayer games locally
– 25% play online
– 20% play with their online friends consistently
– 44% will purchase an Xbox One, PS4, or gaming PC in the next 12 months
– Most popular console was Wii, followed by PS3, then Xbox 360

Via CVG

“The Atlus brand and consumer business will continue” amidst parent company bankruptcy, according to official statements

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, DS, General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

“From hereafter also, the development and sales of the Atlus brand as well as the consumer business will continue. Other retail and download titles that are currently on sale will continue to be sold as they are currently.”

– Official Statement from Atlus

As a big fan of Atlus’ work myself, this is great news. What will happen to the parent company (and where Atlus may end up after their rough patch) is still up in the air, but with any luck things will maintain their current scheduling at the developer themselves.

Via Kotaku

Mega Man Legends 3 is getting a fan-made 8bit “demake” with help from two ex ‘Legends’ staffers

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, 3DS eShop, General Gaming, News | 1 Comment

Despite the fact that Capcom canned the project, some hardcore fans of the now-unreleased Mega Man Legends 3 have decided to go ahead and make their own version of the game in 8bit, classic Mega Man style. That’s not all though: They’re also getting help from two former Capcom employees that worked on the Legends series, Hideki Ishikawa and Makoto Tomozawa. Ishikawa was the character designer for the series and Tomozawa composed the music. Both will be helping out by contributing box art and music to the game.

Via Destructoid

Ubisoft creative director argues that “closed loop” games without endings are a good thing, says he hasn’t finished many games he loves

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 2 Comments

“Games are loops, and if you want to leave yours closed, you will be in good company. No one has ever ‘finished’ poker, or football. There are a ton of games that don’t even have endings. Most arcade-style games and most MMOs don’t have real endings. The Sims doesn’t have an ending. Poker? Chess? Football? In fact, a broad majority of the world’s long-standing favorite games are specifically designed to never be finished. One game of Sudoku leads to another, which leads to another.”
“The ability for players to stop playing whenever they feel like it is inherent in the form. This is not a bad thing; this is a good thing. It is part of the game-design landscape. And if you learn to worry less about insisting that everyone who starts finishes, and put your attention on the advantages this fact of gaming gives you, you will not find a more personally liberating moment in game design than in designing your end.”

“Putting down the controller somewhere before the final climactic scene in a video game is not a sin. It is an intrinsic part of our art form. I never finished the first BioShock, yet it remains a game I thoroughly enjoyed. Grim Fandango? Never finished it. But I sure as hell use it as an example in design discussions! I have never finished a single Z, but, man, they are fun (usually).”

– Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe

I’m not sure I entirely agree with VandenBerghe. Like it or not, a game is a piece of art just as any other media experience is, and as a piece of art if you want to judge it you should first experience everything the game pushes you to experience. Single player campaigns are part of this, but so are things like multiplayer modes or side-content, and judging it without fully experiencing (to the degree the game wants you to) those things isn’t necessarily fair.

Via VG247

[Feature] Justifying the existence of the Wii U Gamepad, and why the device already speaks for itself

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, General Gaming, General Nintendo, Wii U | 22 Comments

“I don’t see a device that’s failing to meet its potential– I see a tool whose potential is being mislabeled.”

Author: Austin

Coming out of the vacuum that was the E3 show-floor, the last thing I expected to hear out of the gaming press was that Nintendo needed to “justify the existence of the Gamepad”. But alas, that is indeed what I heard! Writers weren’t terribly coy with their impression that we’ve yet to see a truly exceptional experience on the Wii U that couldn’t even remotely be done anywhere else, and they– by their count– certainly didn’t see anything like that at E3 this year.

Neglecting experiences like ZombiU or Nintendo Land (which is an understandable and deliberate oversight), they might be right: We haven’t yet seen a game that both uses the Gamepad in a truly creative way and manages to pass the level of critical acclaim that many people are looking for. But here’s my question “why is that what the Gamepad needs?”

Multiple ‘Shaq Fu’-related trademarks discovered

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

You heard that right: The greatest fighting-game franchise ever to grace consoles just might be returning, despite being dead for nearly 20 years. Siliconera was doing some digging around and discovered four trademarks for “Shaq Fu” registered by the same folks (“Mine O’Mine”) who registered “Shaqfighter” back in May.

Could this mean the return of Shaq to gaming? Or perhaps we’ll see a 20-year anniversary edition of the game?

Via Siliconera

Konami pre-E3 show 2013 about to begin

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

Update: Looks like there was a whole lot of nothing! No new announcements as far as I can tell…

I can’t find any embeddable streams at present, but Konami’s pre-E3 show 2013 is about to kick off. The presentation will begin at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT.

I won’t lie: there’s a good chance that Konami won’t have anything Nintendo-related to show. You can, however, look forward to the latest on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, PES 2014, and “key announcements”. Hopefully at least one Nintendo system is included in the latter.

Konami will be hosting a stream on its website here.