Last weekend, a travesty befell the Gamer. After a Spring Break laden with road trips and portable gaming a la Nintendo's GameBoy Advance SP, the Gamer had wracked up some solid time on Metroid Fusion. Anticipating future hours of handheld Blue Route and general Psych lecture gaming, the Gamer dropped ten clams on the Radica Gamester, a contraption that affixes to GBA SP systems and allows gamers to switch between three games without removing cartridges. But last Saturday, not 24 hours after its purchase, the Gamester committed the cardinal sin of gaming. As the Gamer sat enjoying his newly purchased Mario Kart: Super Circuit, the SP refused to save the Gamer's progress. Mildly miffed, but not thinking much of it, the Gamer switched off the Gamester and attempted to boot up Metroid Fusion in the one-slot. Gamester refused, and the Gamer detached the hideous apparatus from his SP only to load Fusion and find his precious saves spontaneously erased. Deleted.
So the Gamer will live and learn. And never buy a Radica product again.
Thanks this week to the freshly redesigned Gamespot and its fluffier counterpart 1up.com as well as Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Uematsu is a Sell Out
On May 10 in Los Angeles, 2,265 lucky videogame music enthusiasts will experience the concert of a lifetime in "Dear Friends: music from Final Fantasy" presented by Square Enix.
Held in the ritzy Walt Disney Concert Hall, Nobuo Uematsu's scores from the world-renowned RPG series will be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Tickets to the two-hour event sold out in three days, according to 1up.
From May 12 through 14, also in Los Angeles, "Into the Pixel," a juried display of digitally composed videogame artwork, will be held at the 10th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo. The jury includes leaders in the interactive entertainment and art criticism fields. The exhibition "seeks to explore the artistic achievements of today's computer and video game artists and the place their work holds in the realm of art as it is traditionally defined."
The Revolution will be Televised
The cable channel formerly known as Game Show Network, now GSN as of Monday, has begun to re-brand by restructuring its programming content. Expect more videogame programs, including a gaming documentary this Sunday night.
UPN is also forging a path for primetime videogaming with Game Over, a CGI-animated comedy running Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. Patrick Warburton -- Elaine's boy toy Puddy from Seinfeld and protagonist in Fox's short-lived but spectacular The Tick -- voices the father, and Lucy Liu voices the mother of a family of four clichéd videogame characters. Episodes blend game paradigms from universal storylines to a stereotypical supporting cast. Credit UPN for going out on a limb to recruit name talent to an iffy project, but the Gamer thinks this project is ahead of its time. Look for Game Over to go the way of Reboot and pick up the cult hit box set next Christmas.
Violence: Not a Popular Export
According to EGM, Rockstar's Manhunt for the PS2 has become the first videogame banned in New Zealand. The single-player stealth game rewards players for explicitly murdering gang members with weapons including shotguns, hammers, plastic bags and shards of glass. Critically praised for its open-ended gameplay, Manhunt will be released for Xbox later this year.
Keen international gamers may recall neighboring Australia's actions against another Rockstar game, Grand Theft Auto 3 for the PS2, a few years back. In 2001, the Australian Office of Film & Literature Classification made it illegal to distribute or demonstrate the game, and distributor Take 2 Interactive had to tone down some of the more psychopathic elements of gameplay before GTA 3 was put back on the market. On a sidenote, look for the new GTA game, San Andreas, mid-October for the PS2.
In Europe, rumor has it Tecmo's gory Xbox-exclusive Ninja Gaiden, recently released stateside and in Japan, will be edited to reduce violent images. Graphic decapitation scenes and fatality sequences could be edited or axed all together in anticipation of European backlash.
Sequels by the Numbers
In just two months of release, Square Enix's Final Fantasy X-2 for the PlayStation 2 sold one million copies in North America. And as of February, 25 million PS2s have been sold in North America, 10 percent of them connected to the Internet. Both Sony and Square Enix hope these numbers add up to huge sales of the Hard Disk Drive, which comes packaged with Final Fantasy XI for around $99 March 23. The 40 GB drive will allow users to download game content like roster updates or new missions for FFXI and other games. Nintendo once attempted a similar peripheral with 64DD, a disk drive for N64, but the device did not have Internet connectivity, had a very limited release, was prohibitively expensive and is widely considered a practical failure in the game industry. Hopefully, Sony's HDD can show Nintendo how to innovate once more by introducing a new era to the gaming world through technical advance, clever marketing and wide distribution.
Did someone say Super Disc?
March 23 also marks the release of Valve's Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Steam users can download the game instantly after its release and save 10 bucks off the retail price in the process.
Halo 2 for Xbox is scheduled for release early this fall, though the original is selling just fine -- it recently passed the four million unit mark worldwide.
Last but not least, Sony of America is publishing Hot Shots Golf Fore!, the fourth game in the series, this summer for the PS2.
Be cool: email the Gamer at Gamer@cavalierdaily.com. Just do it.
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