I'm still not happy about the single-player Stargate SG-1: The Alliance being canceled in favor of Stargate Worlds, a MMORPG.  Despite that, I'm still following the game's development.  The latest news on the game comes from Chris Bernert, a senior game designer at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.  In a short interview with Firing Squad, Bernert discusses the challenges of developing new features to draw in MMORPG players and how the cancellation of the Stargate SG-1 TV series impacts the game's development.

We hope to avoid disappointing players by sticking to what we feel are the key components of what makes the Stargate franchise enjoyable. We also want to focus on what makes playing within the MMO space fun. Now what exactly makes the MMO space fun is an endless debate in itself but for us it’s a combination of Community, Content, and Combat. If we can nail these three ideals then we have a good chance at not disappointing our player base.

I just don't get the appeal of MMORPGs.  There's a monthly fee required to play and the game never really ends.  Eventually it all comes down to paying each month for the privilege of hunting monsters for gold required to buy better armor so the player can hunt more monsters.  No matter how nice Stargate Worlds may be, I'd still much rather have a single-player adventure on a game console.

I don't believe I've ever said this before, but I have found a video game that every single person needs to play.  This game should be a requirement for anybody who leaves their home to interact with the outside world.  It's all too evident that people these days lack basic common sense and general politeness.  Nintendo is stepping up to help change that with a new "common sense trainer" for the Nintendo DS done in the style of Brain Training and Big Brain Academy.  Kotaku has a blurb that isn't in Japanese.

The above picture shows a taxi. Each red dot represents an available passenger seat. Four company employees are about to get in the taxi. In ranking of superiority, where does the most important person sit? Brain training games are old hat. Next up, Nintendo has rolled out "Common Sense DS Adult Training." The game teaches manners for business and ceremonial occasions, economic terms and IT words.

I'm serious.  Everybody should play this game.  It could only help our modern society.  No more bad drivers, no more slobbish table manners, and no more being surrounded by stupid people.  Alright, that last one is a stretch, but a man can dream, can't he?  A man can dream.

Who would have thought that between saving the galaxy from Dr. Nefarious and rescuing the princess from Bowser Jr. that I'd have the time to write one thousand PTB entries?  It's true though, and here we are again to take a look back at my favorite of the second five hundred entries on PTB (if you missed the first five hundred favorites then there's still time to catch up).  Let's begin.

• The Best Games Make No Sense (Blue skies are a must)
• Take My Money, Please! (Why is it so hard to buy a game off the shelf?)
• Xbox 360 Shortage?  Not For The Stars (Famous trendy people are apparently better than you)
• Dishonest Disconnect (Learn to recognize players who drop connections when losing in Mario Kart DS)
• Anticipating The Mario Kart DS Expansion Pack (I'm still waiting)
• Looking Ahead To 2006 (The annual predictions piece)
• The Gift Of Games and Birthday Wishes From The Mushroom Kingdom (Personal essays about games given as gifts)
• The Lost E-Reader Levels Of Super Mario Advance 4 (The other lost levels)
• What's Captain Falcon Doing In Sonic Riders? (A little image I made of F-Zero's star racing through Sonic Riders was picked up by other sites as being legit)
• Who Will Speak For K.K. Slider? (A singing dog told me I could download games for free)
• Memories In A Box: The Best Video Game Compilations (Retro gaming hits mainstream)
• You're Not Spending Money Fast Enough! (When companies believe we should buy products just because we're told to do so)
• Proving The Existence Of Shy Guys (I put to rest a long-held pet peeve)
• It's Hammer Time! (I think I've seen that pose somewhere before)
• Equal Time For Rumors (I still hate absurd rumors)
• Chilled Tomatoes Make Great Gifts (I once tried to buy the rights for an obscure Game Boy puzzle game, Kwirk.  A old friend did the next best thing.  Twice.)
• DS Redesign Still Months Away and Nintendo Announces New DS (Curse you, David Yarnton!)
• Why We Love (Keeping personal and professional affections separate)
• Accessing The F-Zero Data Within (Create your own custom cars in F-Zero X at last)
• Meet Your New Addiction (Please!) (Throw puzzle games at the wall and see what sticks)
• Sony Fans Demand Free Games, Ponies (Keep reaching for that star, kids!)
• Solving The Wrong Problem (Free advice for Sony's PSP/UMD woes)
• Pretentious Japanese Warrior Robots (Raijingeki!)
• The Cheetahmen Will Fight For You! (The future was truly here in 1990)
• Xbox 360 Camera Gets You In The Game (Worth it for the piece's image alone)
• The Nostalgia Of Link (Zelda II deserves some love)
• Anticipating The Next Metroid Evolution (A wish list for future games in the series)
• Plok's Platforming Perfection (You still haven't played Plok, have you?)
• Some Words With Joshua Buhler About Duck Hunt And Beyond (So many neat projects in the works)
• There Goes The Neighborhood (Hell froze over in May 2006 when I bought a Sony PlayStation 2)
• Abandon All Fun Ye Who Enter Here (Journalists apparently enjoy video games too much)
• E3 Video Album and E3 Photo Album (Check out my week in Los Angeles covering the show)
• Square-Enix Issues Demands (The company's staff rushed the AMN cameras at E3 to put a stop to photography of their booth)
• Irresponsible Journalism Strikes Again (Poking holes in a local news segment)
• Monopoly: Nintendo Collector's Edition Coming Soon (This entry spread like wildfire across the Internet over the summer)
• We'll Always Have Los Angeles (Farewell to E3)
• Rebuilding The Sony Brand (More free advice)
• Keeping Time With Mario and Applause For Retro Figurines (A look at an old game watch and some Mario toys from 1989)
• You Never Forget Your First and Barbarians And Commandos And Quarterbacks, Oh My! (Remembering my first encounters with video game magazines)
• Where EverybodWii Knows Your Name (How much can fit in just 6 KB of memory?)
• Donkey Kong's Pauline Set To Return (The original damsel in distress)
• King Koopa Is Soopa Doopa (This is just bizarre)
• Let Me Play Among The Stars (Where are the realistic space games?)
• Consumables?  I Called It! (A follow-up to my essay against micropayments)
• Samus Aran's Twentieth Birthday (Never ask a bounty hunter her age)
• Gimme Back My Cartridges (There's a downside to digital delivery)

It's time to step into the Wayback Machine and journey to the era when the Nintendo Entertainment System was king.  Yes, it's 1989 all over again as the infamous film packed full of Nintendo product placement, The Wizard, has hit DVD.  DVD Verdict has a great review of the disc that includes summaries of the major points of the film and a look at the film's biggest draw: a first look at the then-unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3.

At its heart, though, The Wizard is a ridiculously cheesy pre-teen drama. It has all the major ingredients: broken homes, running away from parents who just don't understand, and coming to grips with budding sexuality. But The Wizard takes a step into a whole 'nother world of awesome cheesiness by shoving Nintendo product placement in whenever possible. When Corey equates Haley's family losing money because of her mother's gambling problem with playing Zelda, it's such an absurd moment that it's difficult to believe the cast and crew didn't just up and quit when they got to filming it.

I saw The Wizard when it first hit theaters so many years ago.  How could I not have seen the movie?  My mother and I trekked out to the nearest good movie theater nearby which was way out in Merritt Island to see it.  I remember being annoyed at some of the misconceptions and outright errors presented in the film pertaining to games.  For whatever reason every game featured in The Wizard allows players to earn thousands of points in just a few seconds (even the games that do not actually keep score).  Still it was worth it to see a few moments of Super Mario Bros. 3.

How many times have you bought Street Fighter II over the years?  Did you snap up the Super NES version, only to later buy the Sega Genesis Special Champion Addition with added characters?  And then again with the Turbo edition for the Super NES?  And the various versions of Super Street Fighter II?  Yes, Capcom's famous fighting game has been ported to just about every kind of home console.  However, back when Fighter fever was enrapturing the world, Capcom licensed the game out to PC developers to create home versions for computers.  Scary Crayon takes a look back at these versions as well as the various pirated variations of the game.

You'd think it would've been relatively simple to make a decent [Street Fighter II] port, but instead they put out a game that plays a whole lot like the other PC fighters of the day, complete with high-flying jumps across the screen and nonexistent combos and rampant cheapness and ridiculous multi-hit moves that can kill you with the proper placement. I liked this game because it was the only SF goodness I had, but once I got my fill of Chun-Li and Blanka and Dhalsim you can best believe I moved on to better PC games and deleted SF2 to make space for them.

I had the PC version a long time ago, as I'd traded away a game to a friend for it.  As this article indicates, it wasn't all that great.  It was my first exposure to Street Fighter II, and looking back on it I bet the crummy PC version was the reason I didn't have any interest in the game until several years later.  In fact, not only did I not like the PC version, but I erased the disks on which they came in order to save my progress on better games.  So much for preserving history.

I've already sworn off GameStop as a place to buy new games off the shelf (primarily because they won't actually sell them to me, as they only order enough new games to cover preorders), but now I have a reason to not buy used game cartridges there, too.  One of my favorite gaming complaint sites, Curmudgeon Gamer, happened to spot a counterfeit Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow game pak at GameStop recently.  He pointed the issue out to a GameStop employee, and...

CG: [I peer closely at the label, then in the case right above metal contacts] Yeah, that's counterfeit. Thanks.

GS Dude: Oh? That's cool. How can you tell?

CG: First key was the label. That one doesn't look like the one I own. Then when I looked at the contacts, I didn't see the word "Nintendo" on the circuit board. Look here at Game A. [I hand him Game A, pointing at circuit board]

GS Dude: Whoa. [he takes Aria of Sorrow from me] You're right, it doesn't say "Nintendo". That's cool.

CG: Yeah. If you peel the price sticker off, you can probably tell the back of the cartridge is slightly different. And if you take the case apart you'll see a nasty cheap battery and a blop of black epoxy or something over the main chip.

GS Dude: Whoa. Learned something tonight! [he hands back Game A, puts Aria of Sorrow back in case] As long as it's just between you and me, no problem, right? [he closes case]

I'm not lashing out at GameStop for buying a counterfeit cartridge from someone off the street.  These things happen and not everyone knows how to spot a counterfeit (although anyone in the position of buying games from random people should know how to spot the fakes).  The problem here is that even though the GameStop employee now knew the game was a fake, he still put it back out for sale.  Talk about utter contempt for customers.

Now I know the actions of one GameStop employee don't represent the other employees at all of the other stores, but this behavior is indicative of a larger problem.  However, if this is happening at one store then it's safe to say it has got to be happening at others, and in my experience most of the GameStop employees I've encountered in the stores are more interested in moving products than being honest.  I choose to skip the hassle of trying to sift through the games and separate the fakes from the legitimates at GameStop.  Perhaps the time has come for GameStop management (and the management of other such gaming stores that buy games off of people) to not only include guidelines for checking the legitimacy of products in training for employees, but also a little ethics training.  Actually, make that a lot of ethics training.      

AMN has word that a new Nintendo title (and property) for the Wii, Disaster: Day of Crisis, is nearing completion.  As you'll recall, Disaster features the adventures of Ray, a man who... um, that is, when chaos falls upon the city of... ah... well, this is embarrassing.  As it turns out, nobody really knows anything about Disaster beyond the fact that it exists.  Aside from a teaser clip shown back at E3 2006, Nintendo has said nothing about the game.  We don't know about the plot, we don't know about the gameplay, and we really don't know what the game is all about as a whole.  Nintendo is certainly known for its secrecy, but has the company ever been this silent about an announced game?  At least with new Super Mario or Metroid games we kind of know what to expect.  Disaster could very well be just about anything.  Here's what little we do know (courtesy of Nintendo's press site):

Survive nature's most devastating catastrophes in Disaster: Day of Crisis, a panic-inducing survival game for Wii. In a devastatingly short period of time, an unprecedented wave of natural disasters has pummeled the United States. On top of this inexplicable series of disasters, a rogue special forces unit has taken advantage of the chaos and seized a nuclear weapon. Only Ray, a former member of an elite rescue task force, has decided to take a stand. Cutting-edge physics and gripping visuals re-create the sheer terror of major catastrophes. Players race a car down a mountain to escape a roaring pyroclastic flow, dodge toppling buildings during a devastating earthquake and swim for their lives in a raging flood. No matter what happens, fight to survive.

With the development nearing completion does anyone else think the game will be a surprise launch game, jumping from the vault to the stores in a span of a few weeks?  It's been done before.  Diddy Kong Racing had been in development for quite a while before it was announced in August 1997, and once it was officially revealed the game shipped to stores three months later.  The game went on to become the fastest selling game of all time (for a while, at least), selling approximately 800,000 copies in two weeks.  Is Nintendo about to "Diddy Kong" us all over again with Disaster in the hope that the game's mysterious allure could drive sales to a new record?

Back when TV's Tiny Toon Adventures was moderately popular Konami acquired the rights to produce video games based on the series, leading to several various releases for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Sega Genesis, and even the Game Boy.  However, after Konami finished with the property Atari picked up the license and began work on a Tiny Toons game for the Atari Jaguar.  The game was never finished due to the demise of the console, but now images and production sketches from the defunct game have appeared online over at Platypus Comix.

The company that was working on this title posted images from what had been completed on their website, which stayed there until their demise. Before that, however, in 1997 somebody saved all those images to his hard drive. Then in 2006 he agreed to donate the images to my site. Here, now, are the title screens, sprites and design blueprints for this vaporware piece of [Tiny Toons] history.

These images certainly look sharp enough to make for a visually appealing game, but it's anybody's guess how the gameplay handled.  Check out the blueprint for Plucky Duck's level, for instance.  That's one heck of a sewer system in need of exploration.  After Atari lost momentum the Tiny Toons license bounced around between several different companies, resulting in games for the Sony PlayStation and Game Boy Advance.  So where does the license reside today?  Treasure may still hold the rights, as the company was working on another game in the series, Defenders of the Looniverse, for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube.  Unfortunately, it has been cancelled as well.

And now this entry's done.

If it seems like I'm on a Star Fox kick this week then it's because Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS has turned out to be much better than I'd anticipated.  Developer Q Games has really cleaned up the gameplay since E3.  Now IGN has an interview with some of the folks from Q Games in which Star Fox Command is thoroughly picked apart.  All kinds of good things are discussed including how the game concept evolved to the final version, the challenges behind punishing online cheaters, and, for the record, an official confirmation at long last that Star Fox Command is based on the aborted-but-complete Super NES title Star Fox 2.

Star Fox 2 was developed fully to completion and that was all range, there were no rails in that game either. And a lot of the people involved in that game were upset that it didn't get released. So we basically took the ideas of that game. We really tried to maintain the feel of Star Fox. Even though there isn't any rail shooting in the game, you still feel like you're playing Star Fox. A lot of people do expect there to be rail shooting and in a future game they'll definitely be implemented. The pace of the game needs to match the player, so it's up to you to decide if you want to play a quick game or a long game. It's a different style of game.

I find it gratifying that someone from within the Nintendo machine (in this case, the developers of both Super NES Star Fox titles and the new Command) has finally raised the specter of Star Fox 2.  That is one game that just totally fell off the map after it was canceled, as Nintendo has outright ignored its completed existence.  The game was finished, fer cryin' out loud.  Release it already!  Oh, and for all of us hoping to see the dead sequel on the Virtual Console download service?

IGN: Do you think we might actually see the original Star Fox 2 on the Virtual Console or the DS itself?

Imamura: Heh… probably not.

(via NeoGAF)

My little corner of the world is known for its intense afternoon and evening thunderstorms, so it was no surprise when yesterday evening a massive lighting storm pushed through my neighborhood.  The worst of the weather came just before 8:00pm, and with all the lightning lighting up the sky I turned off all the electronics and unplugged everything of value in just of a power surge.  I ended up laying in bed and playing Star Fox Command on my Nintendo DS while waiting for the storm to pass.

Let me tell you, this new Star Fox game deserves extra points for being an immersive experience.  Just as I blew up the enemy mother ship over Aquas, lightning struck the electrical transformer outside my window, causing my entire bedroom to light up with blindingly bright blue light while the intense sounds of electricity crackled and frazzled against the booming thunder.  The lights in my room flickered for a moment before everything was plunged into darkness, leaving me thinking that if destroying a mere mothership elicits this kind of effect, what will happen when I defeat an actual boss?