Editors at our big sister site Gamasutra (OK, including me) are crawling the halls of the Tokyo Game Show this week — attending keynotes and sessions, interviewing members of the Japanese development community, and scoring the hottest of hot scoops.
The show runs until Sunday, October 12, and with the first day wrapped, we’ve compiled our first salvo of on-location coverage. Conveniently collected for your consumption:
Announcements
Microsoft Announces Halo 3: Recon, To Debut Late 2009
“During Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft announced Halo 3: Recon, a new Bungie-developed ’standalone expansion’ which uses Halo 3 as a basis for an all-new campaign and multiplayer experience due out in Fall 2009.”
TGS: Microsoft’s Schappert Reveals Tekken On Xbox 360, Nov. 19th Xbox Live Update
“Microsoft Xbox corporate VP John Schappert announced a robust line-up of Japanese-developed Xbox 360 titles including a Tekken entry, promised a November 19 debut for the new Xbox Live interface, and […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back

[’Diamond In The Rough’ is a new column by Tom Cross focusing on an unusual innovation that a game makes on an old, tired aspect of game design — one that might get overlooked, because the game is not otherwise remarkable or is hindered by major design flaws. This week, Tom explores the possibilities for meaningful and deep narratives in Clive Barker’s Jericho.]
It’s often hard to say exactly why most video game stories are terrible. There are so many reasons — overwrought acting, nonexistent acting, nonexistent characters, hideously clichéd characters, and finally, settings and plots we’ve seen a million times — that when a game actually has a good script, or actors, or story, we almost don’t know what to do with it. How do you say something is good, when so much is bad, and for what reasons is it good?
One way to identify a good story (or […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Thomas Cross) and software by Elliott Back

Seriously, why hasn’t this come out yet? Republic Commando was one of the best Star Wars games I’ve ever played, for a few reasons. It featured clone troopers and I can’t get enough of the Star Wars clone troopers. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m totally got a rod on for any and all clone trooper action. Why? They are the embodiment of everything cool about a sci-fi army of bad asses.

Republic Commando wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill first person shooter. It was a squad based shooter that had squad mates that didn’t act like total idiots. It was easy to direct the squad and it felt like you were a part of a team, rather than a baby sitter.
Another reason the game ruled was that it had character designs that were much darker than a normal Star Wars game. Super Battle Droids were seriously frightening and don’t get […]

Original post by Paul and software by Elliott Back

[Starting to update from Tokyo, and I have to say the TGS Business Day keynote from Wada was really eye-opening - don’t often see such high-profile Japanese creators talking about issues.]
At his Gamasutra-attended keynote at Tokyo Game Show on Thursday, CESA chairman and Square Enix president Yoichi Wada presented a passionate keynote that addressed the problems of the Japanese game industry head-on.
The executive suggested, in particular, that the country’s game biz has “lost its position” as the leader in the global marketplace, and offered some possible solutions for all developers.
In terms incredibly blunt for the director of a Japanese industry association, Wada explained of the local game industry, “We do have issues that we are confronted with. …We have not been tackling these issues into a straightforward manner.”
(He noted that his abstract talk would be difficult for the Japanese-to-English interpreter — which indeed it was — but managed to […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back

[Game video pastichers Mega64 continue to make large slices of the Internet happy, but they don’t get interviewed nearly enough. Therefore, Brandon Sheffield chatted to them and Leigh Alexander helped cut it up into something that wasn’t completely random - though perhaps we must share the complete transcripts at some point, because it’s… interesting! Anyhow, onward.]
The creators behind Mega64 first gained underground acclaim with its San Diego public access TV show, before its video skits were released on DVD through the publishing arm of equally random community site SomethingAwful.
With a practically anarchic glee, Mega64 has since branched out to help publishers and events promote (or is that just make fun of?) its events, producing several video skits for Ubisoft titles, for the Spike TV VGAs, and for the 2007 and 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC — including that famous Miyamoto sketch.
But the promotional angle still seems […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back

[From time to time, Gamasutra Editor-At-Large Chris Remo makes a neat post on his weblog. At which point, we steal it — with his permission, folks — and crosspost it here. This one is about the odd story of a homeless game designer — outsider game design in full effect.]
This man wants to become the best game designer ever.
As such, he’s making a game. He is also homeless, buried in credit card debt with nearly no money to his name, and living out of a shelter, equipped with nothing but a computer and a copy of Game Maker 7.0. As he states in his blog profile, “I hate working!”
At first, it is difficult to know whether to believe his claims, this being the internet. A bit of investigation reveals that he asked on the GameDev forums, “Is it possible to design and/or program games, while being homeless?” In that post, […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back

[’GDRI Wisdom’ is a bi-weekly column presenting highlights from select interviews with overlooked game developers of years past, as seen on Game Developer Research Institute (GDRI).]
Our interviewee in this edition is a bit younger than the people we usually talk to at GDRI. But like Daniel Auld, he was a Westerner working in a strange land.
Meet Steven Dwyer, a native of Scotland. He worked briefly at Osaka, Japan-based Now Production as a game programmer, working mostly on the original Sonic Riders. You can also hear his voice on Mario Superstar Baseball for the Nintendo GameCube.
Now Production (”NowPro”) has been a company of particular interest to GDRI. Like the infamous Tose, it has done many games for big name publishers such as Namco and Hudson. Unlike Tose, it has been publishing and developing more and more of its own games over the past decade. But enough about that - on […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (gdri) and software by Elliott Back

Welcome to the first, and most likely only, installment of Who Cares? Gaming News. In order to write this sub-par gaming blog I have to read a lot of gaming news. It’s nice that the internet can provide much more gaming news items than a magazine ever could, but the good thing going for the magazines that I only had when I was growing up (I’m very old) is that they cut out a lot of the fat. For every interesting article, there’s about ten thousand posts that I couldn’t give a monkey thrown crap about. Here’s a couple that I ran across recently:

Sneak peek at Blizzcon’s Pass: Oh man, thanks for posting this. I can finally get some sleep tonight.
EA to Deliver Trivial Pursuit Across PC, Consoles and Mobile Platforms: Really? *Yawn* No, Really, tell me more. I’m listening.
British Sales Charts: Because I really need to know if […]

Original post by Paul and software by Elliott Back

So, I may be in a small tin object barreling towards Japan as we speak (or a few hours ago, perhaps!), but the GameSetLinkDump must continue, oh yes, headed by a provocative Gamers With Jobs article about girls and girl protagonists in games.
Also clogging up the WWW arteries are a tour of the Stern Pinball factory, still in production today (mm, pinball!), as well as an Artsy Game Incubator interview, Bill Harris on used books and used games, and Tom Chick getting a BIG ROCK BAND 3 SCOOP, oh yes.
And ze linkz:
Beauty and Brutality | Gamers With Jobs
'momgamer' on Heavenly Sword: 'We're used to watching big brutal guys do big brutal things. A big strong girl doing the same brutal things doesn't work quite the same.' Interesting.
GAMBIT: Updates: Introducing Oozerts!
'Oozerts is a self-contained, math-based puzzle game designed for the Nintendo DS that extends the universe of Labyrinth - an […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back

If you know me well then you’re god damned lucky, because I’m so awesome. But that’s beside the point. One thing that defines me as a person is that I’m not big into sports and by not big, I mean almost totally uncaring towards almost all forms of athleticism. My only sports affiliations involves maybe going to a baseball or hockey game occasionally and even then most of my time spent at the game involves me not paying attention to what’s going on and thinking about spaceships or boobs.

This sports non-obsession seeps into the world of gaming. The only sports games I own are from the ancient era of the Sega Saturn (not counting the Atari sports titles I have), which I got on clearance. That’s why it’s crazy to think that I own NHL ‘08 for the PS3. I got the game through someone who gets games […]

Original post by Paul and software by Elliott Back