Without Japan, video games would not be very fun. Atari's early work was important, but Japanese developers, publishers, and hardware makers were responsible for almost every major advance in video games for the first 25 years of their mainstream existence. In recent years, it has often been said that they have become less relevant than Western developers. In the indie games movement— (our area of greatest interest here at Indie Games Ichiban)—Japan does not have anywhere near the presence th...
Area 51 is the most secretive military base in the United States, a base that U.S. government officials to this day still barely acknowledge because of its top secret development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. But a slew of Cold War-era documents have finally been declassified, and National Geographic has discovered a rather low-tech method the military used to hide its high-tech prototypes.
Are you familiar with Studio Ghibli? It's the dreamy Japanese animation studio responsible for anime classics Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. Regarded as highly inventive, serene, and spooky, Studio Ghibli puts out internationally renown films, loaded with magic, monsters and lovable creatures, such as Totoro (pictured to the right, and above).
For the longest time, Dead Island seemed to be... well, dead. The intriguing zombie game was first revealed back in 2007 by its developer, Techland, with a subpar teaser trailer that compared it to already shelved games in the Resident Evil series and the upcoming Left 4 Dead. But since then, it's been a ghost, thought to be abandoned—until now.
Not enough bible in your games? Damn right! Until we get Grand Theft Moses this is the next best thing. Think of this game as the Old Testament + Acid Trip + Jpop Male Idols. From the Producers of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami. El Shaddai is a very unique looking game, very much looking forward to it.
Via WonderHowTo World, LoadSave: Rock Band 3, coming this Fall, was revealed at none other than USA Today. Fully functional 25 key keyboard, 80+ songs including The Doors and Bohemian Rhapsody, Pro mode, updated guitars, and a kitchen sink are included in this new sequel. USA Today:
Oh Alice Waters and her magical Edible Schoolyard! Back in 1994, Alice Waters and King Middle School principal Neil Smith, worked with the community to refurbish their 1930's cafeteria kitchen into a wonderland of food education. The kitchen along with a one acre garden was the begining of what turned into the Edible Schoolyard project.
Arcade gaming just got about a million times cooler. VirtuSphere offers an interface that captures the players movements in 360 degrees, and then translates these movements into a video game. Rumors of the technology first emerged back in 2006, but the real life application has only recently just surfaced.
Your constitutional right to privacy cannot be violated by police, so ruled the United States Supreme Court in a unanimous decision on two cases from California and Massachusetts—a major ruling for privacy advocates worldwide.
Whether it's using precious data or wasting battery power, switching between Wi-Fi and cellular service on your Android device can be a hassle. If your Wi-Fi is off, you may not know about free hotspot networks in the area you're in, leading you to waste network data (which more than likely is not unlimited). If your Wi-Fi is on all of the time, this leads to quicker battery depletion. There are already a few Android apps, like Auto WiFi Toggler, that combat this problem, but they just period...
Isn't putting headphones in your pocket the worst thing ever? It doesn't matter how strategically you place them in your pocket, or how neatly you place them in, they always come out looking like a highway crash. However, I have a quick fix for you that will combat those pocket gremlins that never fail to tangle pocket-stashed headphones.
Shooting technique: Locking your ankle and pointing your toes down when striking the ball is probably the most important factor in developing the proper shooting technique. It is probably the hardest skill to learn in soccer, but not anymore because I am here to guide you through and help you improve. Down below I have put down some steps to improve your shooting ability and I have also applied some pictures to make it easier for you to understand and apply while shooting. Enjoy the rest of t...
Want a buddy in Fallout: New Vegas? Sure you do. In fact, you probably want a couple New Vegas companions.
Mike and Rajo from the SubStream's "Film Lab" have some tips regarding production. Set Safety: 'Striking!' Don't burn a dude or dudette's eyes out of their head, man. Say 'striking!' or 'sparking!' when you turn on a lamp! Workplace safety is important because you could get killed or injure somebody else of a film set. Use bright set lights without hurting anybody's eyes.
Dungeon Defenders is the most exciting craft game on the Fall 2011 release schedule. I got a chance to play it at PAX in August and interviewed developers Trendy Entertainment last month. After more than a year of publishing difficulty and delay, the game finally came out on PSN, XBLA and Steam. I put about 20 hours into the XBLA version over the past weekend, beating all the campaign maps and racking up a huge pile of in-game money. It is not a perfect game. But it is a huge, challenging, an...
There’s no point to playing all of the different tower defense games available today. Most adhere to the original formula, so playing 2 or 3 really good ones (like those mentioned in my previous post) would be more efficient.
A first hands look at the first chapter of the game. "When the wife of best-selling writer Alan Wake disappears on their vacation, his serach turns up pages from a thriller he doesn't remember writing. A dark presence stalks the small town of Bright Falls-"
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play with us on our free server.
Dead Island (PC, PS3, 360) had the worst launch of any game in recent memory. The wrong version of the game was released on PC, matchmaking was down for three days on PC, saves were deleted without notice making people start from scratch, and the Feminist Whore (a file found describing one of the character's skills) fiasco. The game just wasn't ready for release.
Minecraft was first released just a few years ago, but when a paradigm-shifting piece of media comes along the rest of the world is quick to take inspiration from it. The absolutely terrible XBLA knock-off FortressCraft was the first, and last month a much more interesting game called Terraria came out on Steam for $9.99. It is clearly inspired by Minecraft, and there is a long checklist of identical features. It is, nonetheless, a very different product, and just might be called the first in...
With the recent death of Osama bin Laden near Islamabad, the whole world has gone crazy for Navy SEALs. Everybody wants to know what it was like for SEAL Team Six to carry out their heroic mission last weekend. Others want to know what it takes to become one.
Like any good video game these days, controversy is a must, and that's exactly what Homefront provides. It's a good old-fashioned, controversial hot potato—isn't that the way war always is?
Black Ops gamers— you have new Call of Duty maps for your multiplayer adventures. If you have no idea what I'm talking about— you might as well just sell that copy of Black Ops and pick up the newest version of Harry Potter you can find, because you're no Black Ops soldier.
If you love playing those WarCraft and StarCraft strategy games on your PC, chances are you've also heard of a game called League of Legends.
Ever wondered how other players can get so much awesome enchanted gear in such little time? Struggling to gain experience orbs and need an efficient way to do so with very few casualties? In this tutorial, we will be going over how to build a quick XP farm with a zombie spawner (though any spawner will do). Setup
Looking for last-minute Christmas gifts? Give the gift of mobile gaming! Electronic Arts (EA) and Gameloft are having their annual holiday sales just in time for Christmas. If you've got a gamer on your shopping list with an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, a mobile game will make the perfect last minute present. Games that are usually anywhere from $2 to $10 are now on sale for just $0.99, and there's lots to choose from.
When Windows stores a password, it is done so by hashing the password in an LM hash and putting it in the Windows SAM file. In the scary moment that you lose your password, but don't want to pay some geek to have full root access to your computer, you need to recover it using Ophcrack. Ophcrack doesn't remove the password, or bypass it, it cracks the password hash using rainbow tables.
We've covered Glitch before, the oddball indie social MMO involving the minds behind Flickr, Katamari Damacy, and Game Neverending. Yesterday, the game officially left Beta and entered general release. Anyone can create an account and start playing for free, although there are freemium elements in the form of real money purchasable clothing items.
By now you may have heard that the Diablo 3 Friends and Family beta testing has begun. Diablo III is the next highly anticipated addition in the Diablo trilogy, and is the sequel to Diablo 2, originally published all the way back in 2000. The game is the product of Blizzard Entertainment, a company well known for its very successful Warcraft and Starcraft franchises. Like the other Blizzard series, Diablo III will be exclusively for PCs at launch. Console players can rejoice as the lead proje...
Shoot-em-up games, or shmups, consist of lone or small groups of players shooting at and being shot at by hordes of colorful enemies. The genre is thought to have peaked in the mid-'90s, but recent games in the indie world may be saying otherwise. Geometry Wars and other twin-stick games kicked off the trend, but newbies Trouble Witches NEO, Outland and just-released Gatling Gears have brought some much needed originality into the modern shmup scene—making it something worth exploring again. ...
Fads, Fiascoes and Good Stuff in FrontierVille This Week The second in a series of weekly columns.
In my earlier post about long-term strategies I promised I’d ask some of my neighbors who do what I call factory chicken farming (Let 1000 Chickens Bloom) if the coyotes that have shown up will change the way they play the game. The one guy who replied in any detail said that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, but he thought that he was losing 50 chickens each time he harvested them pressing “Collect Bonus” using a coop.
Fads, Fiascos and Good Stuff in FrontierVille This WeekThis is the first of what should, with luck, be a series of weekly columns.Fads firstIt’s St. Patrick’s Day in FrontierVille and it looks like staying that way for the foreseeable future, which will probably be about ten days. If you’ve ever lived in England you know about jackdaws, but I’ll explain for the rest of you. They’re small black birds who are notoriously fascinated by shiny things, and they love to peck the foil caps off milk b...
I confess, I’ve always wanted to put on an awesome holiday dinner in a big house that’s mine where I cook everything and it is AWESOME. Since I don’t yet have a house, I’ve only entertained in small ways (college parties notwithstanding, ahem), but watching Mom the Homemaker utterly tame Easter dinner this year gave me some great ideas for holiday entertaining. Check out the helpful tips I learned from watching her!
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army agreed to drop quite a big chunk of change ($461m to be exact) on 423 M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicles (ASV), made by Textron Systems.
GTA4 1st Person View Mod This mod has been out for a while, but with some people gettings Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PC last week because of the Steam sale, there has been talk about what are the best mods to get. There is a thread on Neogaf that talks about playing the game in first person mode instead of the default 3rd person point of view.
L4D2: The Port Finale The Third Chapter in The Passing is the Port Finale. It's similar to the Dead Center finale, where you have to gather gas cans spread throughout the map and fuel the generator to lower the bridge.
The arm bar is a great self-defense maneuver to use when being attacked from behind. Learn to perform the arm bar for self-defense from a professional martial arts instructor in this free combat video. Defend against a back attack with the arm bar - Part 1 of 17.
Halloween has become one of the most popular holidays of the the year in the United States. Retailers even lease out empty retail spaces to put in Halloween stores.
Shiny hair is good, shiny skin is bad. Keep your skin oil and shine free by following these four easy steps. Wash skin
