Portable Gaming Revolution

The Button Mashers Network is proud to announce the launch of our new website, The Wii Virtual Console Database! The WiiVCdb is a one stop shop for all the info about Nintendo’s Virtual Console! WiiVCdb.com brings you info on all the released US Virtual Console titles including screenshots. We also provide you with links to off-site reviews and other links of interest.

We are planning many enhancements in the future including games from other regions, cheats, ratings and more.

So check it out and let us know what you think!

As always, all bmashers.com podcasts are in their own feed, and downloadable from DSLifePodcast.com and WiiSpot.com. Please visit that site to download/subscribe for automatic download.

We are back for another episode of the DS:Life podcast. We hope that you all had a good week, as we sure did!

In this episode we talk about Konami’s Gamers day, Raid over the River, EA’s pledge to be Nintendo’s #2 developer, and of course we mention how crazy good the DS is selling in Japan. Who’d of thunk that nearly a year after it’s release that people would still be lining up to buy a DS Lite. It’s a crazy crazy world we live in.

So until next time, enjoy your DS:Life.

We are here with WiiSpot podcast episode #3! This episode is out a few days later then planned due to some strange recording issues, but it’s worth the wait. In this hour lng episode we chat a fair bit about the Konami Gamers Day announcements, a couple of cool mods for the Wii, a program on your PC that will emulate the channel menu, WiiJing, Serena Williams and much much more.

We would also like to thank you guys for your kind words and positive feedback. We are glad that you are enjoying our latest effort here at the WiiSpot podcast!

Visit DSLifePodcast.com and WiiSpot.com for downloads and subscription links.

Here is the final installment of the series of three articles that has been run by PSP Fanboy:

Tiki Games is currently developing a PSP-exclusive RTS game called “Galaxy’s End.” Read more about the trials and tribulations of being an upstart developer in this three-part series by Tiki Games President Kevin J. McCann. See Part 1 of the feature here. See Part 2 of the feature here.

That said we’ve recently begun to get some interest both from potential investors to major publishers. One of the publishers even contacted me due to Galaxy’s End appearing on PSP Fanboy – so thanks to Andrew (and thanks to Joe who originally passed us along). Toward the end of 2006 I was concerned that Galaxy’s End may not see the light of day (not to mention financial concerns since Tiki Games is self-funded). But now I’m feeling a bit more optimistic (a somewhat dangerous thing to feel, but it helps) that we’re finally getting close to landing a real contract.

I’d also like to thank the various posters at PSP Fanboy (and other forums) that have responded positively toward the little glimpse of Galaxy’s End. It’s reaffirming for us at Tiki Games to see largely positive feedback toward our game from our intended customer-base.

For those of you that feel the RTS genre can’t be done justice due to potential control issues on the PSP – we (and the publishers that have seen our game) feel the controls are solid. The key is designing the game from the ground-up with the PSP in mind – specifically designing with its controls and screen dimensions in mind. Not simply porting a PC RTS to a handheld – instead taking the most popular elements of the RTS and “translating” them to a handheld, while adding a few innovations/improvements of our own.

Likewise for those of you wanting Blizzard’s WarCraft/StarCraft or EA’s C&C series – give us a try. We’re aiming to surprise you with a solid RTS experience on a handheld. Besides, those guys are doing well already! ;)

While Galaxy’s End future is still uncertain, hopefully we’ll secure a publishing deal soon. Your enthusiasm and spreading the word does indeed help. Thanks again.

Sincerely,
Kevin McCann
President / Creative Director
Tiki Games, Inc.

The folks over at Go Nintendo have been kind enough to put up fact sheets on a couple of games that I thought might interest our readers as well. The following information comes direct from the Nintendo Press Room:

Wario: Master of Disguise
Format: Nintendo DS
Launch Date: 03/07/07
ESRB: E 10+ (Everyone 10 and older): Crude Humor, Mild Cartoon Violence
Game Type: Action Platformer
Players: 1
Developer: Suzak

KEY INFORMATION
When Wario sees a television series about a thieving master of disguises, he dives through the TV screen, steals the thief’s quick-change wand and takes over the whole show. Episode after episode, he breaks into exotic locations, like a luxury liner, watery ruins and an Egyptian pyramid!

• Draw Wario’s eight disguises: By sketching a symbol on Wario, the player puts Wario in outfits that give him powers, such as Thief Wario’s tackles and Cosmic Wario’s laser blasts. The player also uses the stylus to wield the powers
• Explore environments: Wario travels the globe in 10 missions that span nine exotic locations. The player must attack many enemies found in each location and also use Wario’s disguises to get past puzzling obstacles
• Play minigames to unlock chests: To pick the lock of each chest, the player must play one of eight stylus-driven minigames that grow more difficult as the game progresses

Game storyline: Over the 10 episodes of “his” new TV show, Wario travels the globe in search of treasure to steal. Along the way, he discovers that there’s a far greater prize to be had: an ancient artifact that grants wishes. Now if he can only find it before his rival, the master thief whose show (and powers of disguise) he’s stolen.

How to progress through the game: Using the Thief Wario disguise, players run, high-jump and tackle their way through each episode. They’ll need to switch to other disguises, frequently one after the other, to fight and puzzle through rooms full of obstacles and enemies. Players use buttons to run and jump while using the stylus to affect Wario and his environment, and they can watch the top screen map to keep their bearings in the levels.

At the start of the game, players will have only one disguise (Thief Wario) and will discover more as they proceed through the game. Players can return to previous episodes with the power to use all currently held disguises, making it possible to explore more areas and gather even more hidden treasures. Each episode ends in a boss fight that challenges players to use a variety of disguises to defeat it.

Characters: Wario is joined by his new sidekick, a wand that lets him change into eight different disguises. He’s also pursued by the master thief who wants his wand back, and who still has plenty of high-tech tricks up his sleeve. The episodes also feature more characters in search of the ancient artifact, plus dozens of new creatures. Wario’s friendly new wand helps him switch disguises. Players use the stylus to draw a key piece of each disguise onto Wario to activate the change. The wand explains how to sketch these quick-changes in a tutorial.

Special powers/weapons/moves/features: Wario opens locked treasure chests by completing one of eight random minigames that grow harder, faster and more complex as the game progresses. If the players succeed, they’ll get the treasure, key item or disguise power-up found specifically in that chest. If the player fails, the chest remains locked, the chest spits out exploding bombs and the player may return to try the chest (with a different minigame) again.

Okay.. so I posted the first part a day late – here is the second part in the series:

Tiki Games is currently developing a PSP-exclusive RTS game called “Galaxy’s End.” Read more about the trials and tribulations of being an upstart developer in this three-part series by Tiki Games President Kevin J. McCann. See Part 1 of the feature here.

Looking back, there are things I’ve done right, and other aspects that were in some senses just plain naïve. The areas that were right were our approach to the tools/technology and assembling core team members that I’ve worked with while avoiding anyone that had egos (or primadonna attitudes) and laying out the design and milestones before actually bringing the team onboard. The last thing you want to do is be writing designs while a team is being paid and waiting for you to finish designs. This happens a lot in the game industry – so I was happy to avoid it. And I targeted the RTS genre because it’s a genre I really enjoy, and I wanted Tiki Games to be the first to create a high-quality RTS for the PSP. The PSP has the power to do a very attractive 3D RTS which made it even sweeter.

But for what I did right there were also things that were naïve. It’s easy to convince yourself “I’ll create an original IP for the PSP that focuses on an untapped market – the RTS. It’s huge on the PC – let’s try to bring them over by creating an RTS from the ground-up for the PSP. And we’ll also be relatively low-cost in terms of overall budget. Surely publishers will appreciate that!”

In reality, while myself and my team had been in the industry for a long time, and shipped a number of titles, as a new start-up we’re unproven from a publisher’s viewpoint. And an original IP isn’t nearly as powerful as having a license for some big property.

So to step into this with “I’ll create a new IP in the RTS genre for the PSP. We’ll then create a solid proof-of-concept playable demo. How can it go wrong?” Well, toward the end of 2006 I did a lot of traveling (and have done similar this year so far), and while Galaxy’s End was well-received at most publishers, we’re still a new company with no shipped titles, and the RTS genre doesn’t equate to guaranteed success on a handheld.

We had some extremely positive meetings with publishers – they felt the game looked sharp, that we had conquered any control doubts (meaning the game does play well on a handheld), and they liked the overall game concept. Then the following week was something along the lines of “marketing finds it too risky.” Lots of temporary elated moments followed by extended periods of frustration.

Part 3 should be released tomorrow!

The folks over at PSP Fanboy are hosting a three-part series on the problems and issues that Tiki Games are encountering in their quest to get a publisher to bring their real-time sci-fi strategy title, Galaxy’s End to the PSP.

I figured that there are going to be tons of gamers out there who are following this story, so I figured I would do our readers justice by posting it on up here too:

Tiki Games is currently developing a PSP-exclusive RTS game called “Galaxy’s End.” Read more about the trials and tribulations of being an upstart developer in this three-part series by Tiki Games President Kevin J. McCann.

I’ve been working in the game industry for a little over ten years, always in lead designer capacity, and also wearing the dual-hat of producer for half that time as well. It’s not uncommon for game industry developers in various game studios to want to do their own thing so they “can do it right.”

When you work in a large game development studio you can start with the best of intentions and a design you feel really rocks, but along the way various levels of interference – from fellow team members all the way up through various levels of management – can and generally will alter your original game vision. And virtually never in a way you feel is favorable.

I’ve worked on large projects and they tend to be over budget and fairly disorganized. It’s also hard to establish a good team dynamic on a large team – you get various factions, unnecessary politics, and so forth. Basically things that get in the way of putting together a great game.

I’ve been trying to start my own company for several years now. And I wanted to avoid having an unnecessarily large team, and do something I’ve never had the opportunity to do on prior projects – a real preproduction cycle. So in November and December of 2005 I wrote game designs and assembled a preliminary milestone schedule for Galaxy’s End. Another thing I wanted to avoid was bloated budgets – being a self-funded start-up, the best approach was to target a smaller platform (the PSP) where a small but talented team can create an extremely high-quality game with solid production values for a reasonable budget.

In January 2006 I hired my team (folks I had worked with in the past, so I knew they could get the job done) and we began working on our first major milestone – a proof-of-concept playable build of Galaxy’s End. We also designed our tools and engine to be scalable to different genres and platforms (so that if we later wanted to make a shooter or RPG it wouldn’t be starting from scratch).

I will, of course, be putting up the other two parts as they are released. Stay tuned…

It sure does, as long as you are one of the lucky 50 frequent fliers who belong to Southwest Airlines’ Rapid Rewards Program! The airline has partnered up with Nintendo to provide the shwag, consisting of a DS Lite system along with Brain Age to say “Thank You” to their customers. This is the first time that the airline has paired up with an outside company to reward their members.

We are helping our Members welcome the New Year with low fares, frequent flights and, of course, exercise … exercise for their mind while they travel,” said Blair McGrain, Director of Marketing Planning and Customer Loyalty. “We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo to give our Members some FUN in the New Year.

I suppose you figure that the airline might want to appreciate these particular customers just a little bit when you consider that these 50 individuals have flown a combined 79.2 million miles, spent more than 132,854 hours in the air and represent more than 600 years of membership. Yeah… I guess I’d want to say THANK YOU to those fliers in a big way too!

You can look forward to the following games being released this week for our two little handheld systems:

For the DS:

• Diddy Kong Racing DS
• Lunar Knights
• Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007

And for the PSP:

• Capcom Puzzle World
• Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007

This isn’t such surprising news, when you consider the fact that WipEout Pure was one of the launch titles for the PSP and tons of people are still playing it! The secret to the games’ success? I have three words for you: Free Downloadable Content.

There were several content packs released after WipEout Pure‘s launch date, with the combined content more than doubling the size of the game. Over 800,000 downloads were recorded… those are pretty impressive numbers, boosting the game to Platinum status – it was the very first PSP game to do so. Given the resounding success of the first game, the developers have, of course, decided to include downloadable content in the next title in the series.

Downloadable content helped keep [WipEout Pure] on the shelf and encouraged people to not trade the game in,” explained development director Clemens Wangerin, adding, “Being able to cater to a much finer resolution of gamers’ tastes and maybe create more byte-sized or customizable gaming is a massive advantage.

No release date has been confirmed as of yet for the next WipEout game, but let’s hope that they keep the price tag the same for the download packs!

Tiki Games, the developers of a game called Galaxy’s End are currently shopping around for a publisher to help get their real-time strategy game out on the market… and one of their visions is to have that game be released for the PSP! Yup, you heard me right, a RTS game for our little PSP… our little handheld is getting all grown up!

Galaxy’s End, an original science-fiction RTS designed from the ground-up for handhelds and consoles, is the first game being developed by Tiki Games. Compelling 3D visuals complement a streamlined and intuitive control system that allows players to learn the game within a matter of minutes. Galaxy’s End has also received Stage 1 Approval from SCEA.

You have to admit that this move is quite ballsy for a brand new developer out there, to attempt to put a fully infrastructure supported game out there. Apparently they are having trouble coming up with a partner due to the fact that their just so darn new as a development team.

Feel free to head on over to check out some gameplay that they claim comes straight from a PSP!

Someone from Acid Mods has created an ingenious PSP battery pack mod that allows you to use standard AAA batteries with your PSP. The tutorial covers how take out the innards of a standard PSP battery pack and solder on positive and negative battery contacts to allow for three AAA batteries to used. This would definitely be useful for those long plane trips.

This time, the downloadable demo is for Medal of Honor: Heroes. You know, just in case you didn’t rush out and pick this FPS up when it was released last October… this gives you a little chance to check out the action before spending your hard-earned cash!

Here are the instructions for downloading and transfering the game onto your PSP (kindly provided by the folks over at PSP Fanboy:

YourPSP users: (European users only)
Connect your PSP to your computer and visit YourPSP. You will be able to download and install the demo automatically.

Everyone else:
1. Download the demo ZIP file
2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file
3. Connect your PSP to your computer using a USB cable
4. Go to the PSP/GAME folder
5. Copy ULED90008 folder into directory