Gamer Limit Top 10: Cancelled Games | Gamer Limit Games get cancelled. Some are good, some are bad. Some are great, some are so great that the mere fact that they were cancelled leaves you crying yourself to sleep every night whimpering their name. 10. That’s right, not Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong. We never found out much about the game except for a few screenshots depicting different characters. 9. Dead Phoenix was originally announced as one of the “Capcom 5″; a set of five Capcom-developed games originally planned as GameCube exclusives. Very little is actually known about the game, as it was cancelled in early stages, but you appear to be a winged-man, flying through what appear to be open ended levels and fighting monsters. 8. In 1998 we were introduced to one of the coolest videogame characters of all time, Glover. Glover was received with mixed reviews, and no-one really knew what to think of it. 7. Shenmue is one of the most loved adventure series of all time. 6. New to Gamer Limit?
How to become an iPhone developer in eight easy steps | Technolo You've probably heard all about iShoot. Written by a programmer at Sun Microsystems in his spare time, this Worms-style artillery shooter blasted to the top of the App Store charts earlier this year and stayed there for weeks earning its creator enough money to pack in his day job and become a professional developer. You may also have seen the news this week about nine-year-old programming prodigy Lim Ding Wen who has developed his own simple painting app for the iPhone. Doodle Kids is doing reasonable business, attracting 4,000 downloads in less than a fortnight and gaining its author international news coverage. There's no question about it, iPhone has become the people's platform. While the PC maintains a healthy indie development scene, Apple's handset, with its low barriers to entry and seamless consumer purchasing system, is the real rags-to-riches machine. Publishers? Or can they? 1. "Objective C was actually created by Next Computing owned by a certain Steven Jobs. Go! 5. 6. 7.
Philip Oliver of Blitz Games Interview // PC /// Eurogamer - Gam By Gestalt Published Friday, 11 August 2000 Blitz Games (neé Interactive Studios) carved something of a niche for themselves during the 1990s, pumping out a whole string of games based on established licenses, ranging from Chicken Run to Action Man, and Frogger to Wargames. We spoke to the company's co-founder Philip Oliver to find out more about his long history in the gaming industry, Blitz Games, and their latest project - "Titan AE". Now In Colour! Grand Prix 2 - one of the Oliver twins' many hits from the 1980s The Oliver family first entered the digital age back in the early 1980s - the start of the microcomputer revolution, and the golden age of garage game development. "Andrew and I first got interested when out older brother Martin bought a ZX81. The year was 1982 - gamers were mostly computer enthusiasts, and games were still simple enough for many of them to be distributed as long print-outs of code, which you then had to type in for yourself before you could play them! Saturday
PR Passion – Why Startups Should Never Outsource Public Relation You have been planning to ask your long-time girlfriend to marry you for months and the big day has finally arrived. In order to reduce your risk of failure, you ask your roommate, who has proposed to several women previously, to pop the question on your behalf. Sound crazy? This is the approach many startups take when they communicate their story to the market. Rather than directly explaining their value proposition with all the passion and heartfelt stridency that only an entrepreneur can deliver, they outsource this communication to a Public Relations (PR) firm. Keep the Passion In-House As noted in Beware The Consultant, you cannot effectively outsource positions that require passion. PR is sales. Share and Enjoy John Greathouse is a Partner at Rincon Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in early stage, web-based businesses. John is a CPA and holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School. Note: All of my advice in this blog is that of a layman.
Blitz doubts self-publishing dream // News Andrew Oliver, chief technical officer of UK developer Blitz, has poured cold water on the idea that independent developers can enjoy a bigger profit by self-publishing games on services such as the PlayStation Network, Wii Ware or Xbox Live Arcade. Although Oliver would not not clarify whether he was talking about one service in particular, he suggested that format holders may not be so keen to entice independent studios to their services. "There's some funny politics around all of that, to do with digital downloads," he said, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz. "They're not so inviting as they make out to be." Blitz is currently working with Namco Bandai on Invincible Tiger, a 3D title for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. When asked whether he thought format holders want too much money from developers looking to self-publish, he replied "Yes.
PowerUp Forever Review Top-down, two-stick shooters are still the rage on Xbox Live Arcade even though the most popular of them, Geometry Wars, was released when Xbox 360 originally launched in 2005. PowerUp Forever is the latest title to try and cash in on the popularity of the genre and, of course, it presents its own twist of sorts to separate itself from the crowd. PowerUp Forever touts itself as featuring an unlimited swarm of enemies, an unlimited number of levels and a ship that morphs and changes procedurally. But is that enough to offset the lack of multiplayer and only a handful of game modes? Sadly, not quite. The idea behind PowerUp Forever is pretty ambitious on paper. The only downside to this selling point is that it isn't all that impactful when it comes to playing the game. One strong point for PowerUp Forever is the art style which does a good job of providing each level with its own flavor and overall color temperature. It's clear that the true star of PowerUp Forever is its art style. Okay
Blitz Unveils Stereoscopic 3D Game Tech UK-based Blitz Games Studios (Tak and the Guardians of Gross, Bratz: Girls Really Rock) says its proprietary technology enables stereoscopic 3D on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games, and it demonstrated the tech for the first time at Los Angeles' 3D Entertainment Summit today. The company says its in-house tech can "replicate the full HD 3D experience" as seen in 3D theaters. Blitz Games co-founder and CTO Andrew Oliver says that 3D games will be "even more immersive" than existing titles, but noted that the industry still needs to learn design issues associated with using 3D. The company says its technology allows for its games to run in both 2D and 3D in a single version by "simply flicking a switch," and Oliver also expects that 3D-capable television sets are likely to gain in popularity as more compatible film and game content proliferates.
Five Ways to Use Twitter to Improve Your Marketing - ClickZ Heidi Cohen | May 18, 2009 | 13 Comments inShare0 Marketing considerations and how to measure the impact of using Twitter. Do you tweet? If so, you're part of a fast growing trend. Deeper analysis reveals some other interesting insights that can help marketers tap into Twitter's strength. What does this mean for marketers? Fuzebox - Open Source Game Console The Fuzebox is a fully open-source, DIY 8-bit game console. It is designed specifically for people who know a little bit of programming to expand into designing and creating their own video games and demos. A full-featured core runs in the background and does all the video and audio processing so that your code stays clean and easy to understand. Full 256 simultaneous output colors, 240x224 pixel resolution Tile & sprite support Two player ports, either with Super Nintendo or classic Nintendo controllers NTSC RCA composite and S-video out (PAL not supported at this time) 4 channel output mono audio for music and effects SD/MMC card support for future expansion Built on an Atmel AVR core, 64KB flash and 4KB of RAM Main microcontroller chip is preprogrammed with an STK500-compatible (sometimes referred to as Arduino-compatible) bootloader Write game code in C, using fully open source tools on any platform
Arcade Mode - Part Two // Interview Q: Continuing on the Dare to be Digital subject, you feel that the competition allows individuals to learn more about working cross-discipline? Chris Swan: Yes - that's crucial. You've got to have that element. Q: Blitz spends a fair amount each year on training graduates to bring them up to scratch - how important is it for developers to be pro-active with regards to the education system? Chris Swan: I think that's a key thing that we all need to join together and focus on. Because most people who would be good at game development are still making games. So I do think we need to work closely with the academic world to make sure that courses are appropriate. Q: Is it also partly a problem that the industry moves so quickly in terms of technology and platforms? Chris Swan: Yes, that's definitely a factor, but it can't be just games that has that problem. That's the solution that I would have thought would have been better. Q: How important are things like peer reviews or recommendations?
Blitz launches 1-up scheme to help indie devs UK independent plans to help other Britsoft firms; Stickman Studios signed as first partner Blitz Games Studios has unveiled a new scheme to help fledgling developers find their feet and get their games released. Called 1-Up, the UK independent stalwart wants the scheme to use its resources to help smaller developers get their titles to a wider marketplace, including frontiers such as console digital distribution typically hard to approach by small studios. “In the current climate it’s very hard for a small team to realise their goals on some of the larger platforms. “With more than 230 employees, we’ve amassed development experience in most areas, from solid work-for-hire titles for retail and download to generating our own IP and self-publishing. The range of services potentially on offer ranges from resources such as audio and QA to the company’s established and cross-platform BlitzTech engine, access to its PR department and even funding.