As featured on our game night two weeks ago!

Probably the second highest selling PC game ever, (The Sims being the first) it’s also one of the best real time stretegy games ever made. Player scan battle through an intensive single player campaign with three different factions (each with their own different abilities), play free online games on Blizzard’s Battle.net, or even create their own levels in the Campaign editor. This game is especially popular in South Korea, where players compete in televised gaming leagues! Even though this series has only 1 game and an expansion pack, (and a canceled third person spin-off) it rivals the entire Command and Conquer series in RTS action. With this special box set, you get Starcraft, it’s Expansion (Brood War), two strategy guides, a skill development chart, and even a free 14 day trial to Blizzard’s other big game, World of Warcraft.

So what makes Starcraft so special? For one, it’s gameplay is different. Instead of simply building units and hoping to overrun your opponent by creating as many as possible, players have to take into account the abilities and limitations of the units that are produced by their race. For instance, the Terran units each have advantages and disadvantages against different units, so creating a mix of different units is a key to a good offense. The Zerg however, are weak alone, but are cheap enough to be produced in massive quantities. Resource management is also a key factor, as you constantly need units to gather gas and minerals, while keeping an eye on their depletion levels. Between levels, a sci-fi plot complete with cinematics will keep you on the edge of your seat. With Starcraft 2 having just been announced, now is a good time to check out the original. Oh yeah, this game was also ported to the Nintendo 64 in 2000.

System Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 95 or later (including Vista)/Mas OS 7.6 or higher Power PC
Processor: Pentium 90, equivalent, or greater
RAM: 16 MB (32 MB RAM for multiplayer on MAC)
Storage: 100 MB Hard Disk space/80 MB for Mac
At least 2x CD ROM drive (4x for cinematics)
Video Card: Local Bus SVGA, Direct X compatible
Sound Card: DirextX compatible soundcard for audio

This weekend was supposed to mark the release of the Dead or Alive movie after a year of set backs but that did not happen as a result of last week’s disastrous limited release. Why is anyone surprised that it didn’t make the top 10? It was a limited release. I certainly never had the oppurtunity to go see this movie, as much as I’ve been intending to for quite a while.

Since it’s original international release in September 2006 this movie has been jerked around so much with plans for a straight to video release on and off and and eventual frequently delayed theatrical release. I’m not sure how much interest we’re expecting to have in a movie with so little studio support. Why didn’t we get this thing a year ago? The video release in Europe was months ago and people have been able to get this movie in some form for half a year.

Did anyone see so much as a commercial for this movie? I certainly didn’t. Hell I didn’t even know it had been released in Europe until after it was out on DVD. How lame. A movie’s initial weekend numbers are not based on it’s quality but rather on what advertising and hype are generated for the movie. It was treated like an independant movie and got those kind of numbers.

Oh well now we can finally get a DVD release of the movie like we should have gotten last year if the studio didn’t F this movie in the A.

Thanks for nothing Weinstein Company.

Now check out my Dead or Alive movie review from way back in March.

I had planned on doing a segment on this a while ago, but never got around to it. Back in April, the touring video game orchestral event known as Video Games Live visited Yale University for one of the performances on their list. Usually the tour brings it’s own large orchestra and choir to perform massive feats of gaming music awesomeness all over the USA and Europe, and often accompany it with video segments from games shown behind the orchestra/choir on a huge theatre-like screen. Kind of like a living game music video.

This time around, however, things were a bit different and more special.
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It would seem I haven’t been keeping up on my gaming news as much as I should. Madhouse animation studio had been pumping out trailers for the new Devil May Cry animated series well before it’s June 14th debut in Japan on the WOWOW network.

Based on the popular action/sci-fi gaming series by Capcom, the anime series will focus on Dante’s exploits between the storylines of the games. It would appear that the series takes place somewhere after DMC1, as Trish and Lady both are slated to make appearances as well as some new characters not seen in the games.

Thus far, the artistic styles used for the animation look top notch and the character designs are dead-on in terms of looking like their gaming counterparts. Twelve episodes have been announced to comprise the series, making it short, but that’s probably a good thing considering you don’t want the story of the anime to get too over-involved to where it seems unrealistic to the story of the games. I suppose that’s why they have Bingo Morihashi as a writer, since he was also the writer for the second, third and fourth games.

Here’s the teaser trailer that was released on the Japanese website.

Finally, the triumphant return of the Grandpappy of action/shooter/platformers, (and more importantly, a return to sweet, sweet 2-D). Set to be released sometime in 2007, players will take control of one of four characters, (including the unfortunately named Lance Bean), and blast their way through horizontally side scrolling levels as well as vertically between the DS’s duel screens. Check out the official press release after the jump.

With E3 a scant few weeks away, we can expect to see the game in motion soon.

One more thing…grappling hook!
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Secondly only to Capcom’s Tech Romancer in terms of obscurity, this is one of the few times that Capcom bought their fighters into 3D. With a unique control scheme, crazy characters, and a high school setting, this game was something different. Not only was it different from most Capcom fighters, it was different from other fighting games in general. Even though Capcom fans like this game even more than the Street Fighter EX series, the fact that there hasn’t been many follow ups to this game, as well as the fact that Capcom continues to make (or at least Re-make) 2D fighting games more frequently than 3D speaks volumes of Capcom’s apprehension towards 3D fighters.
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For your regular dosage from the resident Castlevaniac, we’ve got clips from the upcoming PSP game, Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles. This preview delves a bit deeper than a previous trailer, in that it actually shows Dracula’s ressurrection by the dark Priest Shaft. This scene mimics the opener for the PC Engine Duo version of the game, Rondo of Blood. (except for the fact it’s not in a cheesey anime style, and Dracula doesn’t look like Trunks from Dragon Ball Z)

Here’s the original opening –

If you got a fairly high-end PC, head over to http://www.theprodukkt.com/ and download this slick game, which was featured in last month’s Game Informer. Even though it’s only a beta of episode 1, the graphical quality is pretty good and can hold it’s own against most PC first person shooter games. The game is a bit rough around the edges when it comes to frame rate, weapons, and enemies, but it is only a beta, and hopefully the functionality will be improved in the final version. The main draw about this download is it’s size, which is only 96k! This is done by using procedural generation methods in order to process the textures and shapes. The textures are stored by creation history rather than a pixel by pixel basis. (Other PC FPS games take up so much space because of their graphical engines and textures.) You can read more about it at it’s wikipedia entry. Technological terms aside, that’s one heck of an accomplishment. It’s small enough to fit on your floppy disk and then some! The game is only one level, but if this is what the beta looks like, then I can’t wait to see the finished version. This may not be Unreal Engine 3, but it’s nice looking!

System Requirements:
Operating System: Windows
Processor: 1.5GHz pentium 3 / athlon or faster.
System Memory: 512MB Ram
Graphics: GeForce4Ti / ATI Radeon8500 (equivalent or higher) with at least 128 MB or VRAM with pixel shader 1.3 support.
Direct X 9.0b
Storage: 96k RAM
Sound: Direct Sound Compatible hardware

There may be some bugs. Read the FAQ on the site for more information. Also, your anti-virus software may detect the game as a virus or Trojan, ignore any warnings that may pop up when the game downloads.

A few notes about the technology and it’s developers
.theprodukkt is an ongoing project created by a group of German developers. It’s goal is to create a system that contains all the functions (scene management, textures, shading, etc) that developers use to create 3d computer graphics, integrate aspects that are needed for game development (i.e. AI, Interaction, and music), and is highly productive for experienced artists and programmers. .werkkzeug3, the creation tool which was used for .kkrieger, is available as a free or commercial download from their site. The game won first place at the Breakpoint 96k game competition in April 2004.