Bleep, Bleep. Bloop, Bloop. Video Games.

For the week of July 5-11: Street Fighter 4 and hotdogs, the Wayne Gretzky of the Dice world, dissecting level design and the $17,500 game. Oh, and Wii Sports Resort and the Summer of Arcade.

NEW RELEASES

This week Nintendo released its follow up to Wii Sports, the sure to be juggernaut, Wii Sports Resort and introducing Nintendo’s newest peripheral, Wii Motion Plus, a smallish dongle you attach to the back of your Wiimote that gives the controller much more of a 1 to 1 type feedback.

You already know if you’re interested so I’ll save you the details. While Wii Sports was more an exercise in tech and what the new controller was capable of, Wii Sports Resort is a more fleshed out game with lots to do and more control to do it with. Just remember, it’s best played with a group and with only one Motion Plus coming packed in you may want to shell out for at least one more.

Microsoft has released details regarding this years Summer of Arcade, a little campaign they put on to highlight the whirlwind of strong Xbox Live Arcade games released in succession. I don’t believe this year is as strong as last years line up of Bionic Commando, Geometry Wars 2, Castle Crashers and Braid, but there are some games that look promising.

This year you can look forward to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-shelled, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Splosion Man, Trials HD and Shadow Complex. All $15 games except for Splosion Man. Personally I’m really looking forward to Epic Games Shadow Complex for a little military Castlevania type action. Looks very cool.

NEWS

Street Fighter 4 fans in Calgary have a reason to get excited. Everyone’s favourite hotdog/concert venue/fun zone Tubby Dog has announced Street Fighter 4 nights every Wednesday from 7pm to closing. So head on down to 17th Avenue to enjoy some SF4 action against live opponents, beverages and world famous (well, city wide famous) Tubby Dog. Hit me up if you’d like some company, it’ll give me an excuse to get out once in a while.

Lou Zocchi isn’t exactly a household name, but if you ask me, he sure as hell should be. The guy is the Wayne Gretzky of Dice and could make even an episode of The Hills sound interesting. What this man has to say about 20 sided die and why he makes his a certain way and why the competitors product is complete garbage had me riveted for the entire 20 minutes. He invented the Zocchihedron folks! That’s the 100 sided die. It’s basically a golf ball in dice form!

Part 1

Part 2

Anna Anthropy over at auntiepixelante.com has written a fantastic post about the finer details of level design and has dissected a small part of one level from Super Mario Land. When you’re running through a game you tend to notice things working out or present interesting challenges, but to sit back and pick apart all the thoughts and ideas in laying out a well designed level will make you appreciate good level design that much more.

Here’s a small excerpt of her post but definitely click the above link because it’s one of the better reads I’ve had in a while.

halfway through world 1-3, the first ‘indoor’ stage of the game, the player is given a choice. the path rightwards splits into three routes – up, middle and down – though the choice is in fact between only two of them: either of mario’s states makes one of the routes inaccessible. the upper route is blocked by bricks that only big mario can break by hitting them from below. the lower route’s entrance is only one block tall – little mario alone is short enough to enter.

this is interesting because little mario is, most of the time, an undesirable state to be in. little mario can’t break blocks, is only one hit away from death, and must find two power-ups to be able to wield the ’superball’ weapon[3]. here, mario is given access to a special place as a kind of compensation for this otherwise weaker state – and the bottom route is in fact the most lucrative of the three.

but note that it’s not obvious to a first time player that the bottom route has the best outcome, because at the moment of the player’s choice the screen hasn’t scrolled far enough to the right to reveal the horde of coins. because the entire height of the stage fits the height of the screen, though, a player on the upper route will see the treasure she’s missed. this helps to mitigate the frustration of losing a life against the tough enemies to come: starting over halfway through the stage – and mario returns as little mario, regardless of what state he died in – means an opportunity to nab the coins i saw earlier.

And finally I leave you with news of a rare NES game recently purchased for $17,500.

For what was dubbed the Nintendo World Championships, 116 competition game cartridges were made, 90 being grey versions and 26 in gorgeous gold for the winners. The game itself is interesting because it consists of three Nintendo games and you run through them trying to accumulate as many points across all three games within the 6 minutes and 21 seconds time frame just like you saw the autistic kid do in The Wizard. Not exactly an amazing experience but definitely unique and definitely a rare one.

The guy who bought the game put up a post on his blog about the highs and lows of the auction and explains a bit more about ‘why’.

Until next week.

Dale can also be found over at www.8bitcyclops.com, looking at design, photography and old video game magazines or follow him on twitter @fatwreck.