Features

Devil May Cry 1 – Full Story Part II – Every cut-scene including the ending

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In the second Devil May Cry “Full Story” video, every cut-scene from the half-way point to the ending is shown. You even get to see some gameplay segments which includes boss fights. For those that have never played the game this is a great way to experience the story and even what it’s like to …

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Devil May Cry 1 – Full Story – Video shows every cut-scene from the first Devil May Cry game!

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In part 1 of the Devil May Cry “Full Story” videos, every cut-scene, and thus all the story sequences from the game, are shown! Well half of them anyway. (Along with bits of gameplay, including boss fights). This is great for those like Supa, who have no twitch-action video game skill of the modern kind, …

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Sony Play Station-Nintendo Super Famicom (SNES-CD) hybrid prototype console from 1991 discovered

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SNES-CDIn the mid-1980s Sony Researcher Ken Kutaragi wanted to improve Nintendo’s Famicom/NES sound chip, he contacted them and this leads to him designing the Super Famicom/SNES Sony sound chip for Nintendo.

In 1988 this resulted in Nintendo contracting Sony to create a Super Disc drive for the upcoming Super Famicom/SNES in the tradition of the Famicom Disk System (a floppy-disc add-on to the Famicom in Japan). When Nintendo began planning for the Super Famicom’s 32-bit successor, they again got help from Kutaragi who suggested the use of CD-ROMs and so development on the SNES-CD began.

By 1991,

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40 year anniversary of video games on TV

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Videogames: In The Beginning book by Ralph Baer“In 1967, a bold engineer called Ralph Baer with a vision led a small team to create the world’s first electronic games to use an ordinary television set as a medium. Wary of naysayers from within, the video mavericks sequestered themselves behind closed doors, and for good reason: They worked under the payroll of Sanders Associates, a giant Cold War defense contractor. As hippies on the streets of San Francisco stuck flowers in the barrels of guns, three men (Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch) in snowy New Hampshire crafted the future of electronic entertainment deep in the heart of a commercial war machine. On May 15th 1967, the world’s first videogames — as we know them today — made their quiet, humble entrance into the world.”

That’s how 1UP’s feature on “Video Games Turn 40” starts, in six pages it quotes the first creators of video games from their humble beginnings to massive mainstream popularity.

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The Mother of Ness gives us holiday treats, the EarthBound way

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Earthbound for Super NESDid everyone celebrate the one that brought them into the world today? I hope so and to all those Mother’s reading right now, Happy Mother’s Day to you!

To celebrate Mother’s Day (and tie it into video games of course) I decided to check the status, both official and unofficial, of the only game (to my knowledge) to actually have the title of “Mother”. Yes, that would be the Mother franchise, otherwise known as EarthBound.

And what better way to start off than with new updates to some EarthBound Fan-Comics, thanks to Starmen.net. Click on the name of the comic to go to the contents page and click the other link to see the newest update for that title.

Mother Banner

Mother – (Page #36 is newest addition) – “With a brilliant style and a careful attention to detail, kenisu brings to you the story of Mother. However, this is no ordinary retelling — in it is many of the untold events of the plot left for the player to wonder or theorize about. Join kenisu in his version of the story that started it all — the story of Mother!”

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Valve claims you can play Half-Life 3 right now instead of waiting for a future release date

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Half-Life 3: Episode One for PCLast year when Valve was asked why they went with the Half-Life 2 episodic system, Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell answered that Half-Life 2: Episode One released on June 1st 2006, Half-Life 2: Episode Two that’s now coming in late 2007, and Half-Life 2: Episode Three that’s hopefully coming in 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013, all put together serve as the third game in the series. Rather than make gamers wait another six-plus years for Half-Life 3, the developer thought people might appreciate playing the game in smaller chunks if they didn’t have to wait as long. So you’ve been playing Half-Life 3: Episode One right now!

Half-Life 3 logoTo quote Gabe: “The original Half-Life took us two years to develop. With a considerably larger team Half-Life 2 took us six years to develop, so we thought if we were going to continue our trend with Half-Life 3 we would basically ship after we had all retired.

We’re trying to come up with a better way of getting more timely updates to our customers and also come up with something that didn’t have the complexities. Projects increased logarithmically with how much we tried to do, so if you tried to put twice as much content or technology into a box it ends up taking you four times the amount of work, right, and so we’re trying to figure out a better solution.

We left Half-Life 2 on a cliffhanger …[spoiler break]… with the Citadel blowing up, Alyx is a couple of feet away from the explosion, so what’s going to happen? People were pretty clear that they didn’t want to have to wait as long as they had previously to find out what happened.

Probably a better name for [the three Half-Life 2 Episodes arc] would have been Half Life 3: Episode One, but these three are what we’re doing as our way of taking the next step forward, but Half-Life 2 was the name we used…

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Are video games good for you? Five areas video games help to improve, as shown by studies

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It’s the age-old question, are video games bad or good for the human race? While millions of people understand that they are simply objects of entertainment that can be educational, interesting, deep, emotional and, above all, fun, there are also millions of people who have it in their heads that video games are nothing but trouble for our youth. No doubt it’s thanks to years of seeing their kids and other people’s kids mesmerized by the tv screen, controller in hand.

Pokemon Diamond Version for Nintendo DSOf course this ignores the fact that much of those youth are now in their college years and are perfectly capable of understand the implications of playing video games for hours on end (which they will argue, is no different than watching TV or reading a book or seeing a movie for hours on end). And while many people of all different shapes, sizes, genders and ages play video games, that hasn’t changed the fact that most adults still don’t know the difference between Master Chief and Pikachu and still think that the majority of gamers are under 13.

And thus, articles and studies trying to prove why video games are good for kids still persist. Despite all the money the industry makes and all the excellent storytelling it does, parents and most adults (especially of the elected official kind) are still completely oblivious to our number one form of entertainment. Yahoo.com has put together it’s own list of five ways games are good for you.

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PS4, PS5, PS6 (to PS9) consoles being planned by the Sony PlayStation creator for his network vision

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The Father of PlayStation is inventor Ken Kutaragi, who will retire as chairman and group CEO of SCEI this summer. But that doesn’t mean he’ll retire from work, he’s been asked to remain on as Honorary Chairman at SCEI and Senior Technology Advisor for Sony Corporation. Despite the PS3 just being launched worldwide, Mr. Kutaragi …

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Kingdom Hearts 3 movie shows the Keyblade War

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Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+ out in JapanEverybody wants Kingdom Hearts 3. So does Reetesh who sent in the first movie that “was so cool that it sent chills down my spine.” The new video shows a teaser for Square Enix’s next RPG game in the Kingdom Hearts series.

It’s the extended, full cinematic ending to the newly released Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix + game that was released in Japan this week and might be released in English in fall 2007. You’ve probably seen the first minute and a half before from the ending of the original Kingdom Hearts II, but this cinema shows an extra four minutes of action. Watch it here, and click on the arrow on the bottom-right corner to view it full-screen:


Did Roxas just get frozen and is Mickey responding to his own Batman-signal? 😉 Will Sora still be a main character?

KH3.net translated the text into:

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Next Xbox 720 to launch in 2013-2015 according to Microsoft

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While Sony already admitted to be thinking about the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo are no doubt developing a Wii 2… In an interview with the head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division, Peter Moore, EGM magazine asked him when their next video game console would come out, and also asked if they’d drop support for …

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Star Fox 2 Walkthrough of unreleased SNES 3D shooter in 47 minutes

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Yesterday we posted an interview with the Star Fox Command producer Takaya Imamura in which he didn’t just talk about the DS game, but also revealed it had its strategy roots from the unreleased SNES game Star Fox 2, in which he’s credited with a special thanks. That’s the sequel to 1993’s SNES game Star …

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Every Extend Extra Eview AKA a night with Mizuguchi demoing the game

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Every Extend Extra on PSPVGB was invited by Buena Vista Games this Wednesday at the Kingly Club in London, UK, and this is the first hands on review on what will be “another” Tetsuya Mizuguchi classic.

I arrived at the venue at about 7.25pm to be greeted with “Hello Alan, nice to see you again” from the promoters! Nice to get the recognition, but the crash helmet can be a bit of a reminder, but hey if it works!! Down a small dark narrow stair case to what used to be a basement by the looks of it, but is now a member’s only club, very exclusive and very expensive. At the far end was a large screen running a “demo” of Every Extend Extra, from a PSP Dev-Kit.

They also had some pictures on canvas, about 60cm x 30cm. These were various images form the game, all of which Tetsuya had signed. My favourite was the image of the game cover/invite, STUNNING. I am sorry to say that these weren’t going lucky people on the night but to be auctioned off at a later date. Buggar! There weren’t too many people at the beginning as there never is, only the sad people, like me, but hey if you ain’t there you don’t know what you may be missing! I had a nice cold beer, as I was only being hospitable, sat down at a table. Eventually I decided to go and have a closer look at the demo running, which I must say was pretty impressive…

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Tetsuya Mizuguchi exclusive interview. Discover the Lumines 2 creators past, present and future plans!

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Tetsuya Mizuguchi playing Lumines 2Tetsuya Mizuguchi the creator of Sega Rally, Rez, Space Channel 5 & Lumines wanted to talk to at least one blogger during his recent PR tour for Lumines 2. VGB stepped up and quickly accepted his offer. Staff member Alan will describe the events leading up to the interview for you:

I arrived at the hotel next to the UK Launch venue for the Wii. But wasn’t able to blog. Met with Gary (handy cameraman, a job is there if you want it) from the PR company and we introduced ourselves.

We quickly went over the questions that we had for Tetsuya Mizuguchi and made some minor amendments and one removal (I hope it wasn’t yours!) Once this was finalized I was allowed to play a version of Lumines 2, jammy b’stard I hear you all cry. Gary was a bit annoyed as I obliterated his Hi-Score first time, when he had been at it all day (well nearly).

It was his last interview of the day. Other people he had spoken to were The Times, The BBC, Edge Magazine to drop in a few names. Then little old me from VGB.

Gary said it was a nice relaxed end to a very hectic day with camera crews etc taking up space and time!

Before the official interview started, he had a PSP Debug kit running onto a nice 32″ Samsung LC.

Some of the questions I amended on the fly as Tetsuya Mizuguchi is such a nice chap and I didn’t want to offer a LONG question with several different points. His English as you can see is very good, but I thought it would be polite to do so.

He did enjoy the interview. As I hope it shows from the relaxed manner in which I asked the questions and the way he took time to respond.

I do hope you enjoy the first of VGB’s interviews.



You can watch the interview full screen by clicking here or here.
Read on…

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Guitar Hero II 38 (new) songs revealed by MTV!

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MTV’s Overdrive game site show G-Hole got a preview of Guitar Hero II for the PS2, which is due November 7th in the U.S. It looks like MTV wasn’t supposed to share nearly all the song names they saw though, and probably after a firm warning from developer Harmonix, they were quick to remove/sensor all …

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Video Game Openings – Final Fantasy VIII

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There is nothing that gets your blood primed and pumped for the game ahead like a really good intro or opening. Anyone remember the first time you saw the glorious CG openings of some of Square’s best-titles? Such as those from the Playstation-era Final Fantasy titles (VIII & X are two of my favorites of …

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