Sonic Rush Unlockables
The gaming industry has quite a few figure heads in terms of video game characters, which have pushed the whole genre forward through the adventures that they have been on. One such famous character is Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, which made history during the early years of gaming.
Sadly, in recent years, things haven’t been so good for the blue hedgehog, as Sega’s resident Sonic Team hasn’t made the best titles for it. But, fortunately for the speedy animal, the developers collaborated with Dimps and delivered Sonic Rush, one of the first Sonic titles for Nintendo’s hugely successful DS handheld platform.
The game was released on November 15, in North America, while the PAL region received it on November 18, and Japanese fans got a taste of Sonic on November 23, all in 2005. Even though the blue hedgehog wasn’t popular those days, the top-notch gameplay and graphics of the title made it a best-seller and prompted some big critical acclaim from reviewers. Read more
XNA Game Studio 3.1 for Vista SP1 and XP SP3
Microsoft has released and made available for download the latest iteration of its gaming development solution designed to permit developers to build video games for Windows-based PCs, Xbox 360 consoles, but also Zune digital media player devices. XNA Game Studio 3.1 went live on the Microsoft Download Center on June 11, 2009, and is now up for grabs for free. According to the Redmond company, Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 are the supported operating systems for XNA Game Studio 3.1.
“This release is incremental to XNA Game Studio 3.0 and contains many new features, including avatars, Xbox LIVE Party support, and video as well as enhancements to existing features. For the full list of improvements in this release, see the “What’s New in XNA Game Studio 3.1” section of the documentation once you have installed the product,” revealed Rob Cameron, Microsoft industry evangelist. Read more
NVIDIA GeForce 185.81 Beta Drivers
Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has recently introduced a new series of GeForce graphics drivers with a new Beta release of their 185 series. The new release offers support for all of the company’s latest graphics accelerators, including the most recent GeForce GTX 275, as well as other previously-released GeForce cards, part of NVIDIA’s GeForce 6, 7, 8 and 9-series of desktop GPUs. In addition, according to the release notes of the new GeForce drivers, users of NVIDIA graphics accelerators will be able to take advantage of a series of performance increases.
The company’s new GeForce Driver release 185.81 Beta includes support for its latest GeForce GTX 275 graphics processing unit, as well as a number of new features. According to the release notes, users upgrading their drivers to the latest beta release will be provided with support for Ambient Occlusion, a new setting in the NVIDIA Control Panel, CUDA 2.2, for better performance in GPU-enabled applications, and expanded support in the NVIDIA Video Encoding library for GPUs that use less than 32 cores. Read more
These Are the Best-Selling PC Games of March
PC gaming hasn’t been going through the best times in recent years, and, at least according to some analysts, it will be dying out in a matter of months or possibly years, succumbing to the popularity of consoles, which are more user friendly to gamers and, in some cases, piracy free.
But the platform is still very stubborn and keeps on going, with the help of organizations such as the PC Gaming Alliance and with companies that are still devoted to their early roots on the old platform, like Blizzard, Electronic Arts or Bethesda. Read more
Microsoft Pushes Gaming Technology Event into 2010
For the time being, Microsoft has kept “2009” for what should now be Gamefest 2010. However, the Redmond company did announce that its gaming technology event had been pushed back into the next twelvemonth. Rather than holding Gamefest 2009 by the end of this year, the software giant revealed that the conference was re-scheduled for the start of 2010. The company explained that the new date for the event was the logical response to the feedback received from its partners.
“Gamefest is Microsoft’s premier conference on game development, and so it should revolve around game developers. We sought out feedback from developers who attended Gamefest 2008 and we found that, given development schedules and ship dates, the conference would be more impactful if held earlier in the calendar year rather than right before the busy holiday season. Read more
NVIDIA to Prep Dual Chip and 40nm Cards
nvidia
It seems that NVIDIA is working on a dual chip solution right now, although it’s trying to keep it secret. It is not sure what chip the green company will use to power the card, yet there are some voices stating that it may be a GT200 55nm. The same rumors say that the dual chip solution may be due for a December launch.
The Santa Clara graphics card manufacturer appears to be silent on its future plans. It only talked about CUDA, PhysX and Graphics plus concept with its partners, yet it is focusing on the graphics solutions for gaming or other segments as well. The new card that the company is rumored to be working on may prove a power hungry and really hot product, yet it won’t matter that much if it manages to perform a lot better than Radeon HD 4870 X2, the leader of the extreme performance market today. Read more
Xbox 360 Takes on the Nintendo Wii
September 5 is the date when Microsoft will officially cut the price of the Xbox 360 line of consoles in North America, following the cut in Japan earlier in the week.
The interesting thing in the press release that details the price cut is that it puts the emphasis on the Xbox 360 Arcade and on the way it offers the promise of social interaction. It reads “Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies from Netflix, live out their musical fantasies through “Rock Band 2″ (Harmonix/MTV Games) and “Lips” (iNiS Corp./Microsoft Game Studios), star in their own Hollywood classics with “You’re in the Movies,” or have the power to never miss the latest episode of “Heroes” all from one device, starting at $199.” Note that they’re not promoting one hardcore game and they mention video streaming twice, which is kinda weird for what is mainly still a gaming console. Read more
Microsoft Unveils New Gaming Peripherals
SideWinder X6 Keyboard and the SideWinder X5 Mouse are the new pair of gaming peripherals unveiled by Microsoft at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. According to the Redmond company, both products will hit the market as early as September 2008. The SideWinder X6 Keyboard will come with a price tag of $79.95 while the SideWinder X5 Mouse will be lowered to $59.95. While the SideWinder line of peripherals is not new to Microsoft, this is the first time when a keyboard is released under the label.
However, the release of the SideWinder X6 Keyboard marks yet another first for Microsoft, and for the entire industry for that matter. SideWinder X6 is the first keyboard with a switchable key pad. This means that end users can switch the key pad from on side of the keyboard to the other to get increased flexibility. Read more
New soccer MMO announced
Most of the massively multiplayer online games are slowly turning into social networks, offering their players a chance to make more friends, talk with different people from all over the world and have fun at the same time. The most important thing is that this trend can be associated with any type of MMO, including sports titles.
This will be proved by the most recent game from Elephant Entertainment and Sleepy Giant – Goal Or No Goal (GONG!), a soccer simulation that comes with a pretty neat 3 vs 3 multiplayer format. The game also has a few adventure elements for those who wish to do even more than play soccer matches and socialize with new friends. Read more
Introducing the Popfly Game Creator
Game development, like it or not, remains a territory largely off limits as it involves hard coding. And if this is the general rule, Microsoft offers the exception. The Redmond company has evolved its web and mashup tool in order to accommodate game creation. Now, the fact of the matter is that users won’t be able to create their very own sequel to a preferred title, but Popfly will enable the creation of simple, casual games without writing a single line of code. This is now possible through the addition of the Popfly Game Creator.
“Popfly is about more than mashups and web pages. It’s about making it fun to build things and share them with your friends. And one of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is that games are the kinds of things that people would like to try to build. What kinds of games can you create? Just about any kind of two-dimensional game, a category that includes things like the original Super Mario, Frogger, Asteroids, and a host of other old arcade games”, revealed a member of the Popfly team. Read more
