Blogcritics

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

ECGXpo 06: Building a Better Controller

Aaron Auzins — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 18:48:55 EDT

While gamers can identify most anything the East Coast Gaming Expo, the folks at Ransai and Desktop Arcade brought along a custom-made gaming accessory that many attendees didn't recognize.Both companies assemble custom Pop'n Music arcade replica controllers that bring the control of the Pop'n arcade cabinets to the comfort of home. When building the controllers, both companies use actual arcade parts and provide plenty of customization to ensure players get a one-of-a-kind controller.Alex "Dewgy" Olah was present at the expo as a representative of Ransai and explained the controller making process began to give players of the game more of an arcade experience than what Konami, the developer of the Pop'n Music and Bemani series, offered players."Ransai began making controllers in early 2004," he explained. "The goal was to make a cheaper alternative to (Konami's) official controller. It was hard to import and get a hold of, it was $400-$500, made of plastic and different parts were used to construct it."Scott "Random" Trenda constructs the controllers as a side project and builds each unit on a made-to-order basis. Olah explained Trenda's disdain with the official Konami controller lead to the construction of his own arcade-specified controller."He really wasn't happy with it so he made his own," he said. "He has family that is in carpentry and what he created is basically an indestructible wooden box."To make a point of the controller shell's durability, the official Ransai site details a test conducted by Ransai's first customer - he ran it over with a car and the shell remained completely intact. Durability is a main concern for a Pop'n Music controller especially on high difficulties where the sheer number of notes to hit requires a player to "basically beat the controller senseless" as the Ransai website puts it.Trenda constructs about 50 controllers a year on an individual basis. The base controller with basic switches, wiring and design runs $250 with the price increasing as customers customize the controller how they want. Those who order can request custom paint jobs and even add lighting for the buttons.Ransai sees more demand for the controllers as the release of a new version of the game approaches. Pop'n Music 13 Carnival is set to release for the Playstation 2 in Japan at the end of the month and while Olah noted the game is rising in popularity in the U.S., its fan base is still fairly limited."Many people just don't know about it," he explained. "A lot of people take one look at the box art and immediately dismiss it as a kid's game. It's for anybody and it stands on its own as a music game that doesn't simulate anything. It's not like playing a guitar or any other instrument; it's just hitting buttons and making music. It's irresistibly fun."Much of Pop'n Music's allure to players is the wide number of music genres it covers, said Olah."It covers more genres of music than any other music game," he said. "It has everything. You can play classical, rap, reggae, death metal, anything you can think of."Along with Pop'n Music controllers, both companies also offer arcade-style controllers for the Bemani game Beatmania IIDX. Unlike Pop'n Music, the DJ simulator has found its way into the U.S. market with a couple of limited arcade releases in the late '90s (re-named HipHop Mania) as well as a home release, which launched in March.

Aaron Auzins, better known as "nestlekwik," is an avid gamer and collector who resides in Ohio. He has written video gaming reviews for The Northwest Signal, The Disclaimer, personal Web sites, GameFAQs, BitSmack and on Sony's invitation-only Web log - The Gamer Advisory Panel.

ECGXpo 06: Selling Games From Overseas

Aaron Auzins — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 18:25:47 EDT

With the sheer number of games that release only in Japan every year, it's a given that some U.S. gamers feel jilted about the how selective companies are about domesticating titles from overseas. This is where dealers like Carlson Stevens, founder of Mad-Gear Games, comes into play.Selling imports on Ebay since 2000, and showcasing his wares at conventions since 2004, Stevens was on hand at this year's East Coast Gaming Expo to vend imports ranging all the way from the Famicom system up to current-gen titles for the Playstation 2."It originally started as a side business," he said. "I did it on Ebay for years to make a couple extra bucks and subsidize my collection. I recently started doing it full time."Stevens' table not only featured home console games but also portable games for systems such as the Game Boy Advance and Wonderswan. He said he gets major help importing the games through friends he has in Japan."I've always liked the more obscure stuff," Stevens said about getting into the business. "I always enjoyed reading the features in DieHard GameFan (magazine) on games from Japan and the Turbo Grafix 16 was my favorite system. I really like systems where the best games were never released in the U.S."While Stevens gets a lot of traffic to his exhibition, he noted the people who come up to his setup always react to what he sells on two different extremes."I either get the people who take one look, say 'I can't play this,' and leave or I get people who take a look and say 'Explicative, explicative, I can't believe you have this,'" he explained.While he still gets the people who believe they can't operate or enjoy playing imports, Stevens noted gamers have a lot more assistance with the Internet than importers had even a handful of years ago."There's just a lot more information out there now," he said. "It's like they have the perfect information at their hands. The buyers are now more knowledgeable and they know what they want because they can research. Before people just didn't know and it took a while to figure out what type of import game was for them. Now they can look up any game and what its about, what it costs, everything."Stevens noted the real hot import property right now are games for the Nintendo DS. Among the top-selling leaders of the pack are the games Jump Superstars, which features characters from Japan's Weekly Shonen Jump manga magazine in Smash Brothers-style melee combat, and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, a rhythm-based game finally being domesticated to the U.S. under the name Elite Beat Agents.He explained many of the DS games sell well because they are a "throwback to a simpler time." With no tutorials or long-winded explanations, many of the DS imports have the pick up and play aspect to them, which are perfect for short spurts of gaming on the go.However, even for the most complicated games, Stevens noted help is just a mouse click away and with the customers becoming more knowledgeable about imports, the business has seen a rise from previous years. In fact, he is considering a brick and mortar location to sell his imports along with domestic games."With the Internet, anyone can get into imports," he said. "You can find translations and walkthroughs to help you out. There's always someone who can help you and it's really helped the industry. Having informed gamers can only be more beneficial for the businesses who sell the games."Those who are interested in checking out what Stevens has to offer can visit mad-gear.com to browse his Ebay store and view his convention schedule.

ECGXpo 06: Video Game Art

Aaron Auzins — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 18:16:16 EDT

Pixels were brought to life at the East Coast Gaming Expo as Nick Gatens transferred classic gaming characters from the screen to real-life artwork.Using colored beads, Gatens is able to re-create retro game characters from the era of the NES and Super Nintendo. Among those on display at the expo were Final Fantasy's white mage, Contra's Bill, Pac-Man and more. Gatens showcases his work at between one to three expos every year and also does requests for those looking for a character not present at his display."I got a lot of requests for Pac-Man and Zelda," he said. "Those are definitely my two biggest requests."Having a few years of experience, Gatens is able to use a character's pixels to accurately re-create the hero, villain or even items such as Link's ocarina."It began a couple of years ago," he said. "I started with Legos and made a few characters with those. My first character was Alex from River City Ransom. But the Legos were expensive and there weren't as many colors for me to work with as I needed so I switched to the beads about two years ago."Gatens said the choice to make video game characters stems from his love of gaming."It's something I grew up with," he said. "I've always enjoyed it."While most of his creations are handheld in size, he also works on projects even larger in size. Gatens has constructed a number of ability cards from Kirby Superstar (the icon that appears in the HUD when you inhale an enemy) that measure in at 8 � X 11 inches and consist of 3,000 beads each. His next big project in progress is the dragon robot boss in Mega Man II's Skull Castle."I've got it started," said Gatens. "It's not finished but it looks like it's going to take about 8,000 to 9,000 beads. It should be several feet in size."While Gatens takes requests at the expos he travels to, he said is looking to set up an online store real soon at downfall.etsy.com. The site will allow people to order pre-made creations as well as request custom characters.

ECGXpo 06: Nintendo World Championship 1990

Aaron Auzins — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 18:07:57 EDT

Many gamers have heard of it, but only a select few can claim ownership of the highly coveted Nintendo World Championship 1990 competition cartridge. One such gamer, Ed Fleming, was on hand at the East Coast Video Game Expo to proudly display what is commonly known as the "Holy Grail of NES collecting."Fleming prominently displays the cartridge while promoting America's Video Game Expo, which he founded. However, what may be the best part of the display for gamers is the chance to actually play the cart.Used only in the Nintendo World Championship tour in 1990, the cartridge is a special challenge combination of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris. When a judge starts the competition with the second controller, gamers are then cued to get ready and prepare for about five minutes (depending on the dip switch setting) of high-pressure gaming.While anyone can just play the games as intended, the addition of scoring as high as you possibly can in just a few minutes in multiple games adds quite an edge for gamers looking to test their mettle. Challenge one requires players to tally 50 coins as fast as they can in Super Mario Bros., then challenge two pits them against stage two of Rad Racer. Once the exhaust settles from Rad Racer, the competitor uses any time left over to score as high as they can in standard type-A Tetris.Once the time is up, the game tallies your total score, which was used as the competition scores during the time of the 1990 tour. A total of 116 cartridges were printed during the tour - 90 were given away to the NWC finalists and 26 special gold-version cartridges were awarded as Nintendo Power prizes. Given the extremely limited print run, it's no surprise the cart sells for thousands of dollars."On Ebay it currently goes for about $9,000," said Fleming. "I've even been offered $9,000 today (at the East Coast Gaming Expo). It's said in about 15 years the value will rise to about $100,000. It's like the Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle rookie card for (video game) collectors."Fortunately for Fleming, his price tag was a lot lower - free."I received it from a friend who worked at Tengen at the time," he said. "He was a finalist in the competition."Fleming told him about another competition in China which he could not attend and his friend gave him the cart. Even though Fleming keeps an eye on what value the game carries, money is no object to him."I always get offers," he said, "but I just can't sell it. I love this stuff. We go out (to events) and try to evangelize it and just let people know that it does exist. I hope when kids see this they get interested in collecting as well and it lets them know that someday they too could have something like this. It's a great initiative to grow the industry."