The Code Games News Report 03.02.07
Posted by Shawn Struck on 03.02.2007
What's A Basketball RPG? Are Robots Taking Over? What Part Of Metal Gear Has Konami Given The Ax To? Nintendo Staff Interviewed By Iwata? All YouTube, All The Time? Confused? You won't be after you read this week's The Code!
Last Week's The Code, while completely formatted and uploaded early wasn't published, due to technical errors that were completely under my control, and I that I failed to correct. It's all been handled and taken care of, so this week's The Code is double stuffed for your reading pleasure, chock-full of interesting video game news large and small.
Remember, you must be THIS awesome to ride... The Code!
A New Question For Your Doc: "Does The Surgeon Play Video Games?" (via ArsTechnica)
No, really. Reporting on a study released this week by the medical journal Archives of Surgery, John Timmer writes:
Laparoscopic surgery, in which instruments and cameras are inserted into patients via small incisions, has played a key role in the development of minimally invasive surgery. But the technique involves a distinct set of skills, including reconstructing a three-dimensional environment from a two-dimensional projection, and manipulating instruments indirectly. The parallels between that skill set and gaming have not escaped the medical community. ... With the numbers crunched, some unexpected correlations fell out. Neither years of training nor number of surgeries performed would predict performance on the laparoscopy skills test. Past gaming and current skills, in contrast, would. Those who had never gamed took significantly longer to complete the skills test, and had an error rate of roughly 1.5 times that of regular gamers. Similar correlations also held when gaming skills were tested: those scoring in the top third made nearly 50 percent fewer errors, and and performed the drill nearly 40 percent faster. For those keeping score at home, Super Monkey Ball 2 had the best correlation with surgical skills, Star Wars Racer Revenge the worst. ... Both the publication and critique, however, appeared to miss what might be the most significant question about this work: were they really testing skill at remote manipulations? Part of the appeal of gaming is that we can abstract our actions from any real-world consequences—we can choose to participate in virtual death and mayhem without causing any actual damage. The surgical skills test appears to give its participants the same opportunity, namely to view the errors they make as having no consequence. It's possible that surgeons that do not game are less able to make that abstraction, and that their slow pace and (possibly nervous) errors reflect their view of the surgical drill as having similar consequences to working on an actual patient.
That last 'graph is what intrigues me the most. If you can't trust the process that produces a result, or if you don't fully understand what it leads to, then you can't trust that the process does not have some hidden flaw that will produce poor results in the future.
Much as I want to see stories out there showing the positive effects of video games, perhaps all this study definitively shows that surgeons have good hand-eye co-ordination. Which, well... duh?
"I Blame Video Games", Say Shooter. Only Problem? He Doesn't Own Any.
If you're an animation geek, a film geek, a classic video game geek, or even just a plain geek, you could "GAME OVER," a short film by PES, in which classic videogames are recreated in cupcakes, sprinkles, fossils, pizzas, and toy frogs
Snake? What are you doing!? Snake? SNNAAAAAAAKE?
In a move that suddenly makes the US version of MGS3: Subsistence look a little less appealing, Konami announced:
The last day of online service for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence in North America will be April 2nd. Konami sincerely thanks all of the Subsistence online community for their dedication to the game and support of the Metal Gear Solid series.
I attempted to contact Konami representatives via e-mail before this column for clarification on whter the Europe and Japan servers would stay online or not. A response was not received before press time.
I suppose Konami wouldn't do this without a good reason, but it must be a little frustrating for those that picked up Subsistence for this online feature, only to see Konami pull the plug after the game's been out for less than a year.
Anti-PS3 Song and Video Actually Pretty Clever
I agree with the late, great Chris Hyatte in that song parodies must be actually sung aloud to be funny. So there's this sappy song by The Fray called "How to Save a Life". If American Idol, and our landlord's teenage daughter are any indication, it's the hot new teenybopper song ("Step one: We need to talk/Step Two: Turn the radio off" CLICK! Wow, the song IS useful!)
Anyhow, a Sony hater took the tune from that song and made up his own PS3-hatin' lyrics, and someone else made a youtube video to go along with it. While the cherry picking of Sony exec quotes did induce some eye-rolling in me, it's a damn sight more accomplished than some bored writer who slapped something together minutes after he or she just figured out that Wii, PS3, and 360 all rhyme with each other.
Go ahead, check it out:
While we're on the subject of Sony getting its collective nose tweaked, here's an oldie but a goody...
"Sony's E3 Press Conference In 60 Seconds"
Introducing Tales of Game's Studios Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa
It was one man, dream, a copy of RPGMaker, some free time, five bean burritos, a music tracker, some tabasco, and some duct tape that came together to make this awesome game. From the description:
The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041, a day so painful to some that it is referred to only as the "B-Ballnacht". Thousands upon thousands of the world's greatest ballers were massacred in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide. The reason: the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful its mere existence threatens the balance of chaos and order. Among the few ballers and fans that survived the basketball genocide was Charles Barkley, the man capable of performing the "Verboten Jam"...
Flash forward 12 years to the post-cyberpocalyptic ruins of Neo New York, 2053. A Chaos Dunk rocks the island of Manhattan, killing 15 million. When the finger is put on the aging Charles Barkley, he must evade the capture of the B-Ball Removal Department, led by former friend and baller Michael Jordan, and disappear into the dangerous underground of the post-cyberpocalypse to clear his name and find out the mysterious truth behind the Chaos Dunk. Joined by allies along the way, including his son Hoopz, Barkley must face the dangers of a life he thought he gave up a long time ago and discover the secrets behind the terrorist organization B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S.
Behold the trailer:
Okay, so the game is only a demo right now, and combat is a bit of a button-mash fest, but the presentation and music are just top-notch. There's also a staggering amount of well-crafted NPC dialogs, which makes the game nerd in me happy.
I'm pretty sure this is the world's first basketball RPG, and its premise is really no more ridiculous than Shaq-Fu, Michael Jordan's Chaos in the Windy City, and Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball.
You can find the download, patches and more here.
This Week's "Now That's Cool":
I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords (via MAKEblog)
MAKE:blog has found this little gem, the automated Xbox 360 button masher, built specifically in order to hit Perfect Dark Zero's "two most tedious achievements: 1000 Death Match Games and 1000 Dark Ops Games worth 30 gamer points each (60 total)".
Both of these Achievements were successfully obtained by the xBot without having to sit there and push buttons for 40-50 some-odd hours. While it's running its course, nothing needs to be touched. Except for the occasional checking if I got my points.Why, you may ask, did I build such a thing? Because I can!
Also This Week's "Now That's Cool": The FamiGuitar
Not to be outdone by the home-made NES-Paul guitar mod, another enterprising do-it-yourselfer has electric guitar made to look like the Nintendo Family Computer (Japan's version of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System). The individual who crafted this not only created a body that looks like a Nintendo Famicom, but also make replica controllers out of Japanese timber with little wooden buttons." Check It Out Here!
Seniors say 'Wii Love To Bowl', Iwata And Then Men Behind The Wii Speak!
"'I've never been into video games,' said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach last week as her husband took a twirl with the Nintendo Wii's bowling game. 'But this is addictive.'"
Iwata: Reducing power consumption is something that's always been considered for handheld gaming devices, but this is the first time it has been thought of for a home console, isn't it?
Shiota: Yes, it is. So we had to rely on the know-how of Nintendo's hand-held gaming device team, and the cooperation of the chip manufacturer as well. We also tried to incorporate means of lowering power consumption into the entire system, and not just the IC. It felt like trying to achieve the impossible, but fortunately Nintendo has a history of knowing how to work in unfamiliar situations. A variety of techniques for quickly identifying and solving problems have been accumulated over the years, and I think this was an important factor in achieving our goals.
It turns out that having a console that used as little power as possible and a small heat footprint was essential to the vision that Nintendo had of a console that would stay on 24 hours a day.
This week's Fact or Fiction covers a wide range of opinions on everything from Metroid to gaming tournaments... and wait 'till you see what they say about Beyond Good and Evil's Jade!
Cory Moore's Fun Factor returned with a look on my favorite Wil Wright game (at least until Spore is released): Sim City, and is back for more with a look at Super Smash Bros. My favorite part was kicking everyone's butt with Jigglypuff.
And our own Nintendo para-elemental, Theo Fraser, covered Final Fantasy hype, Metroid hype, Suda 51 hype and quotes the thundering Nintendo Elemental, Reggie Fils-Aime in last week's Nintendophiles. This week, he has a first look at The Golden Compass, MySims, and Disaster: Day of Crisis, but you know what's really cool? He has the entire Donkey Kong Rap WITH Lyrics and that's all you need to know!
One of my guilty reality show pleasures last year was the geeky, entertaining "Who Wants To Be A Superhero?" on the Sci-Fi Network. They recently had auditions for a 2nd season. One of the stops was Dallas; one of the featured auditions on the sci-fi channel website was a good friend of mine, who went as the Oak King. Check it out at the link-- seriously, I think The Oak King should make it to the semi-finals; him, Odd and The Silver Mullet were the only auditions that I enjoyed at all.
Hey! Do you have a MySpace page?
Do you want the most AWESOME friend EVER? One that can update you with all sorts of news on sports, wrestling, video games, and more?
That's all for this week, though if you want to check in and see what I have to talk (or whine) about when I'm not on 411mania, I don't have a myspace page, but I have one of them-that El Jays. Feel free to mosey on over, friend me, whatever.
