Wherein we take a look at this week’s releases. And I’m definitely looking forward to this week, because I finally get to play Crisis Core. Yay!

PSP

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Feeding my required Final Fantasy fix, Crisis Core will be released on the 25th. A prequel to the original game, and starring the much loved but little seen Zack Fair, the Crisis Core is an action RPG that covers the period of time leading up to the events at Nibelheim five years prior to FFVII. Combat is a combination of skill and luck, with the randomly determined “Digital Mind Wave” bonus popping up every now and then. I’ve had this on pre-order for months. Hopefully, it won’t turn out to be another Dirge of Cerberus.

Warriors Orochi - A crossover between the Dynasty Warriors series and Samurai Warriors series, Warriors Orochi is the PSP port of the PS2 title of the same name. It combines various gameplay elements of both Dynasty Warriors 5 and Samurai Warriors 2, and boasts a whopping 77 playable characters to choose from. I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of either series, so I can’t really offer much of an opinion on this one.

XBox 360 and PS3

Dark Sector (360 | PS3) - A third person shooter with a rather apocalyptic scenario, Dark Sector places you in the role of a covert operative inadvertently infected by an enemy with the Technocyte Virus. The resulting mutations give him superhuman powers, in particular the ability to grow a three-bladed throwing weapon from his arm. The game features solo and multiplayer modes, as well as online multiplayer combat.

Viking: Battle for Asgard (360 | PS3) - In Viking: Battle for Asgard, you must stop a banished goddess from wiping out humanity with her army of resurrected vikings. The player take on the role of a young warrior named Skarin, chosen by the gods. Primarily a hack and slash title, Viking boasts open-world exploration and massive battles comprised of hundreds of warriors, but no multi-player mode.

Wii

Obscure: The Aftermath - I love a good survival horror title, and this one looks somewhat promising, if a little campy. Supposedly influenced by teen horror movies, in Obscure you play as students at Fallcreek University who discover strange black flowers (that have hallucinogenic properties) cropping up all over campus… so of course it’s only a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong, and mutants start leaping out at you. This title is also available on PS2, for those out there who can’t seem to find a Wii yet.

Opoona - An RPG from ArtePiazza and Koei, in Opoona you play as the titular character who winds up in a hospital, with no memory of how he got there, and no idea what happened to the rest of his family. Though I don’t know much about it beyond the basic plot, the game is apparently played almost entirely with the Nunchuck attachment.

Octomania - This is a puzzle game from the makers of Puyo Puyo!. It features single player story mode (WTF?) and multi-player mode, as well as being Wi-Fi enabled. The object is to clear variously colored octopi from your screen by matching them with like-colored octopi all while infesting your opponent’s screen with sea urchins. Take a look at the gameplay here. I know I’ve seen this in less advanced versions under other titles on many a casual gaming site.

Nintendo DS

Harvest Moon DS Cute - The only explanation I can think of for this is that certain game developers think that making the main character a little blond girl and slapping the word “cute” in the title will make every DS-owning girl on the planet want this game. I find the marketing insulting… to quote the product description:

“Help break the Harvest King’s spell by tending to your garden and finding the Harvest Sprites. Start by mastering planting fields and tending livestock. Who knows, maybe a handsome guy will help you out, but watch out for that thief! Soon you might even get married and have a child. Come restore the magic. Have either a male or female child. Play as the blonde Claire from the original Harvest Moon for Girls and from More Friends of Mineral Town or the pony-tailed brunette Jill from Another Wonderful Life.”

M&M’s Kart Racing - Dear god, why? That is all.

And finally, the future. Here’s a look at some of the peripherals that are yet to come.

Part 3: The Future

The Guitar Grip - I already mentioned this in an earlier post, but Guitar Hero on Tour for the Nintendo DS will ship with the Guitar Grip add-on (and a guitar pick-shaped stylus). To be honest, I’m still trying to figure this one out. I sort of see how it could work, but it looks decidedly awkward to me. I can’t imagine you’d really get the feel of playing guitar with this thing. At all. But who knows? I could always be wrong…

The DualShock 3 - Finally, the rumble returns to Sony’s console. After having at last come to an agreement over patent issues, the DualShock 3 will go on sale April 15. About time, I say. I think I’ve gotten spoiled by force-feedback. I miss it when it’s not there. The thing looks damn near identical to the DualShock 2, as well… which in my opinion is a great thing. DualShock 2 was the best controller ever.

The Wii Wheel - I have a feeling that the Wii Wheel, while endlessly amusing to the kid in all of us, could potentially turn into some sort of deadly frisbee. If you thought the Wii Remote could do damage when you lost your girp, just imagine this thing sailing towards your head… or worse, your plasma screen. This little guy ships with Mario Kart Wii.

The Wii Cord-Free and Wii Wireless Nunchuck - Both currently available for pre-order, these two might actually be useful. After all, who doesn’t get tired of that stupid nunchuck cord? I know I do… my cats go nuts anytime they’re in the room when I’m playing something on Wii. Having a ten pound kitty swatting at your controller while you’re battling moblins gets a little old after awhile. The Cord-Free, available March 25, converts your corded Nunchuck into a cordless peripheral by stashing the cord in its base and slapping a receiver on the base of the Wii Mote. The Wireless is just what it sounds like. A wireless nunchuck (and at $35, it’s an expensive little thing). It’s available May 1. Unfortunately, despite the pictures, these are third party products and neither one of them are actually packaged with a Wii Remote (the Cord-Free doesn’t even come with a Nunchuck… it’s just a shell for your Nunchuck).

Wii Balance Board - Already making the rounds in Japan, the Balance Board (I really wish they’d called it the “Wii Board”) comes bundled with the upcoming Wii Fit, which should be making its way stateside sometime in mid-May. Yet another attempt to prove that the Wii is really a highly advanced workout machine… looks like it might be fun, though. At least until I strain something.

The past, of course is fun to look back on, but you can find just as many interesting peripherals and controllers for more recent consoles.

Part 2: The Present (and not-so-very-distant past)

N64 Rumble Pak - Since the controllers for the N64 don’t have built-in force feedback, Nintendo started selling the Rumble Pak. I love me some rumble… but this thing just added to the already-bulky design of the N64 controller… and it had a slot for the N64’s bulky memory card, as well, which, when added, really made the whole mess look pretty ridiculous.

INTEC Game Screen - The Game Screen is a 5 inch screen that attaches to the top of your GameCube like a little mini-TV. I guess it’s meant to add portability to the GameCube, which seems a little silly to me. Frankly, why anyone in their right mind would want something like this is beyond me, but then again I have an unyielding hatred of tiny screens.

Eye Toy - This is a camera for your PS2. But not just a camera… oh no. It lets you interact with games by placing you image inside the game. Kind of like that show from the 90’s on Nickelodeon… Nick Arcade. Actually, this thing would have been really cool if they’d started selling it back then. Today, though, it’s a little too cheesy for my tastes. Of course, it’s not compatible with the PS3, so if you want to play with a camera on you shiny new console, you’ll have to fork out the cash for the PS3 Eye.

Gaming chairs - I guess this isn’t technically a peripheral… or a controller… but it makes me giggle. There are any number of these so-called “gaming chairs” on the market, all of them supposedly designed to incorporate themselves with the player’s console of choice in order to be the ultimate in comfort for gamers - some of them are even advertised to cater to specific genres. To be honest, I think most of them either look like some sort of torture device, or like something someone jacked from an airliner.

DDR Mats - Actually, I love these things. Oh, how I love them so… Thanks to them, I can Dance Dance to my heart’s content, without having to haul myself out to play on one of the commercial machines (and as I’m not so great at DDR, being able to play away from the public eye is definitly a good thing for all concerned, believe me). I guess someone finally found a use for the Power Pad technology. My only real qualm with them is that the inexpensive ones (i.e. the ones I bought because I’m cheap) have a tendency to slide on certain surfaces. Well, actually on just about every surface. I finally had to resort to velcroing them to my carpet.

Xbox 360 HD DVD Player - Since Microsoft couldn’t possibly give gamers the convinience of a built-in HD-DVD player in the XBox 360, they made them go out and buy this thing instead. Of course with HD-DVD having been dealt a final blow and surrendered to Blue-Ray… well, I guess you could always use your 360 HD-DVD Player as a really expensive doorstop…

The Wii Zapper - This thing looks like the incestuous lovechild of the Zapper and the Super Scope. Honestly, that’s all I have to say on this one.

The Wii Net Connect - The Net Connect is a third party creation that lets you connect your Wii to the internet via a standard ethernet cable rather than wireless… and I’m forced to ask - Why the heck couldn’t Nintendo just build this into the damn console in the first place? Would it really have killed them to stick an ethernet port on the thing?

Coming Up: Peripherals of the Future

I usually find that gimicky peripherals, at best, add very little to the overall gaming experience, and at worst are completely and utterly useless. But they can still be pretty snazzy looking, and every once in awhile you come across something that’s actually entertaining. So today, lets look at some add-ons and alternative-style controllers, past, present, and future.

Part 1: The Past

Power Glove - I suppose this could be considered the precursor to the Wii Remote. The Power Glove was a wearable controller that allowed the player to control the game through a combination of a control pad mounted on the glove and physical movement. The only problem was that it kind of sucked. A lot. The motion-sensing was limited (and occasionally unresponsive), and holding your arm out in front of you for more than 20 minutes at a time did not make for a fun experience. On the bright side, the Power Glove was featured in 1989’s The Wizard. Suckosity aside, to this day I still can’t bear to part with mine.

R.O.B. - Looking an awful lot like Number 5 from Short Circuit (does anyone besides me actually remember that movie?), Nintendo’s “Robotic Operating Buddy” was a cute little guy that reacted to oncreen light flashes and moved around accordingly. Granted, he was only compatible with Gyromite and Stack-Up… but that was enough to earn him a major roll in 2008’s Super Smash Bros Brawl.

Miracle Piano Teaching System - This was a piano keyboard that plugged into your NES and came with a “game” that taught you how to play piano. How effective was it? I actually used to own one of these… I still can’t play anything other than Mary Had a Little Lamb.

The Zapper and the Super Scope - What list would be complete without a nod to the Zapper and it’s bastard child, the Super Scope? Yes, the zapper… so “realistic” that Nintendo decided to change it’s color from shades of grey to a blinding florescent orange. And let’s not forget that it was the weapon of choice for Captain N (again, does anyone else actually remember this?). The Super Scope, on the other hand was a bazooka-shaped battery hog, measuring a whopping 2 feet long (making storage tedious at best).

The Power Pad - Another classic not-so-useful creation, the Power Pad strove to incorporate exercise into the gaming experience. Nearly all of the handful of games developed for it involved running in place (or beating wildly on the pad with your hands, which was far more effective, in my opinion). Probably the most well-remembered game was World Class Track Meet, which was included as part of a bundle with the NES console in the late 80s.

XBAND - I’ve found that very few people remember/have ever heard of this one. XBAND was the infant stage of online gaming. Designed for the SNES and Sega Genesis, it allowed players to go head-to-head on games like Super Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat 2 and 3, and Madden NFL 96. Unfortunately, having been released in 1994, it was limited to the crawling speeds of dial-up, and many compatible games experienced severe lag during online play. It wasn’t exactly cheap, either, operating on a subscription basis, and charging for long distance if you played against someone outside of your local calling area.

Coming up next: Peripherals of the Present

The Electronic Software Association (ESA) recently announced the creation of a scholarship program that will grant on the order of $45,000 in scholarships to female and minority students pursuing careers in video game development.

Up to 15 scholarships per year, worth $3,000 each, will be available for female and minority students enrolled as full-time degree-seeking students at a four-year academic institution, in fields such as Video Game Development or Design, Graphic Design and Multimedia, Computer Animation, Computer Programming, Simulation or Digital Entertainment, Software Engineering, Computer Science, and 3D Animation.

The deadline to apply for the 2008-2009 scholarships is 11:59 PM on April 15, 2008. For more detailed information and to apply online, click here.

I’ve been playing video games since I was around 9 or so (I would have started sooner, but my parents wouldn’t buy me an NES when they first came out), so I tend to get a little nostalgic when it comes to old titles I remember playing ages ago. One of my biggest pet peeves, though, is when people dismiss the classics out of hand just because they’re old. Occasionally, I’ll ask someone if they’ve played an older title and they tell me that they don’t bother with retro games because they’re old, they’re ugly, or (my favorite) they’re too hard.

Since when did the basis of whether a game is/was/will be awesome or not depend entirely on whether or not it looks pretty? And when did challenge become a bad thing?

Of course not ever gamer is locked into this mindset, but the younger ones among us frequently seem to be, even with newer games. Take Zack & Wiki, for example… an excellent point-and-click title for Wii, but with very cartoonish graphics. There are, quite frankly, PS2 games from years ago that look cooler. But that doesn’t make it a bad game. In fact it’s a very good game. I badgered my sister into playing it while she was in town last December, and within 20 minutes she was hooked and said she’d like a copy of her own for Christmas.

The newest generation of gamers are spoiled by HD graphics, orchestrated scores, and frequent save points. Not that those are always a bad thing, by any means - I like pretty graphics, I have game music on my MP3 player, and I would have gone nuts trying to get through something like FFXII without a save point - but you can have a game that looks gorgeous and sounds amazing, but plays like absolute trash. The most important aspect of any game is how well it plays, not how old it is.

Here’s a little something for the Guitar Hero-obsessed. This summer, you’ll be able to get your fix on the go, when Guitar Hero on Tour debuts on the Nintendo DS. It comes with a Guitar Grip add-on for the fret controls and a pick-style stylus, and will feature wireless co-op and battle mode. Pre-orders are open, and the game is set for a June 22 release.

Read more over at Kotaku or visit the extremely Flash-heavy Official Site

And if you just can’t wait, you may want to check out the Guitar Hero Competitions going on at both Jillian’s and It’s Brothers next Wednesday night.

Ever have one of those moments where you just really, (I mean REALLY) need a five minute break from staring at line after line after line of endless PHP code that isn’t working right and you can’t for the life of you figure out why? No? Just me?

Sometimes the solution to a problem comes to you when just stop thinking about it altogether for a few minutes. That’s why I keep a list of quickie online games that are perfect for killing a few minutes handy.

Run or Die
The title pretty much says it all. Run. Or you die.

Line Rider
Draw a line, and the little guy rides down it. Simple, but spectacularly amusing.

The Last Stand
Kill Zombies. Isn’t that enough?

The Helicopter Game
Fly the helicopter. Try not to crash.

game, game, game, and again game
The only word for this is “bizarre”.

And for those of you with a little more than 5 extra minutes to kill, try the Submachine series.

*reaches into the Hat ‘O New Games (patent pending)* There are lots of new games coming out every week. Let’s see a few of the most recent.

PS2 (Yes they’re still releasing stuff for it)

Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection
A nifty little compilation set containing the original Metal Gear Solid, and director’s cuts of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, all for about $10 a game. Not too shabby, really.

SingStar ’90s
Nothing like a night of bad karaoke with friends, I’m not sure whether I should be nostalgic about this one, or horrified. On one hand, it offers such ’90s classics as Love Shack, One Week, and Stay. On the other hand, it also has Barbie Girl, Achy Breaky Heart, and *shudder* U Can’t Touch This.

PS3 and Xbox 360

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 | PS3 version | 360 version
I know some people who swear by this series. Personally, I never quite got into it, but maybe someone out there is interested

Wii

Worms: A Space Oddity
Worms comes to Wii. This one boasts the classic gameplay of the series, as well as multiplayer and solo modes, and party games.

Looks like Square Enix is bringing its Members website stateside. For those unaware of how good people in Japan have it when it comes to video games, Square Enix runs a nifty little members section on their S-E Japan site, which plays host to all sorts of exclusives that their obsessive consumers are interested in (usually in the vein of new game trailers and media downloads, but they’ve also got a flash-based “virtual world” set up).

Now, the Square Enix North America site includes a Members section due to open on March 24 (the day before the release of Crisis Core: FFVII… coincidence?). Pre-registrations are already open. The splash page promises “exclusive content such as interview, blogs, giveaways, and more”. I’m guessing that we’re not getting anything near as interesting as what the Japanese site has, but if you’re a fellow Final Fantasy fan, you might want to take a look.

After all, everyone like giveaways. ^_^