Sometimes I play old games and get the feeling that developers need to stay a step back and look at the good old days of gaming. I'm not some old dude that's stuck in the past that thinks the last console worth owning was the SNES, but I do find myself playing games from the 1990s and think "why aren't more games like this?" So, here's a quick look to four games and the lessons developers can lear... more.

“It was also crucial to emphasize to him that while having the biggest military is cool and useful, the game isn't reductive: that's not the only way to win. This is a pretty big idea, especially for a new player. He wanted to know what genre the game was, and I told him that its genre was Civilization, and the victory condition is to create something of lasting value.” -          ... more.

Gamasutra has an article up that deals with designers and audience assumptions. Dave Grossman, at Telltale Games, had his mother-in-law play the first Sam and Max episode from the first season. In the game she had to give cheese to a rat, the problem is Sam and Max don't have the swiss cheese he wants. The solution is to use your gun on the cheese to put holes in it and this solution never occurr... more.

[originally posted at my blog, Lo-Ammi, and pictures from the Book of Lost Memories taken from the site Translated Memories] I've had a craving to play some Silent Hill recently, which was particularly maddening since I have my PS2 packed away. Between this and always having a few choice Akira Yamaoka tracks on my iPod, I got to thinking about the Silent Hill movie and how I think a Silent Hil... more.

As gamers, we have done our share of dying. We've died at the hands of monsters, aliens, demons, soldiers, terrorists, flowers, bats, and anything else that could conceivably damage our frail little bodies. Dying is so ingrained in our gaming sub-culture that sometimes we find ourselves using it as a synonym for lost – I've certainly died while playing Tetris! As gaming as advanced, there has be... more.

I'm sure we've all see the NES Harmonic, well it seems people are still trying to find a use for their old NES cartridges. You can buy portable hard drives which are placed in classic NES game cartridges. Need an extra 500 GB to store all your Nintendo hentai? Well then you can buy a hard drive in Star Wars, Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 2, Dr. Mario, and Castlevania cartridges. Perhaps you're favo... more.

QuakeCon has come and gone this year. We got some new screenshots of RAGE, Fallout: New Vegas, Brink, and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge – essentially QuakeCon has turned in BethesdaCon. The big news of the event wasn't the rumoured Doom 4 reveal; sadly, Doom 4 was a no-show. Instead, iD's John Carmack showed off a version of RAGE on the iPhone, this version being designed specifically for this pla... more.

University and colleges and all those other great post-secondary educational institutions are starting up soon! That means in a short while you'll have classes and mounds of readings to do for class, but you'll goof off instead. It's alright, we all do it. The night before my first ever university final I stayed up all night playing Persona 3. In my defence, Persona 3 is fucking addictive and way ... more.

At this years Comic-Con fans of the Blue Bomber got a surprise announcement. Not one, but two new Mega Man games are in developement, of which only one was been revealed. Mega Man Universe was a big enough announcement by itself. The trailer shows no gameplay, just a kid dreaming of Mega Man kicking ass in clayamation and 2D forms. It's obvious that all of our favourite Capcom characters will some... more.

Battlestar Galactica MMO The Battlestar Galactica MMO will be a browser-based MMO game. However, as Quake Live proved to players recently, this need not be alarming news. Quake Live, for those not in the know, is a free version of Quake 3: Arena is the original game played in one's browser. Our browsers are no longer as limited as they used to be and the Battlestar MMO is more awe-inspiring than ... more.