When I first bought my PS2 at launch, the first game I bought was Ready to Rumble 2. I was addicted to that shit. I can’t tell you how many times I beat the game with every character. Knocking out the roided-up Michael Buffer was a good time. So when this press release hopped across my desk, I got extremely excited. Ready to Rumble Revolution will be hitting the Wii this Spring.

Sure to satisfy newcomers and boxing fans alike, Ready 2 Rumble Revolution features a roster of 18 wildly caricatured cartoony boxers based on celebrities from the worlds of sports, music and movies. Celebrities enter the ring as larger-than-life “Rumble-ized” versions of themselves. Players will step right up and see if they can knock these super-sized egos down a peg or two!

Hell yeah bitches. I am all over this one. I just hope they don’t go over the top with the motion controls and ruin the experience that the game has had in the past.

Here’s the full press release:

Atari LACES UP ITS GLOVES as ‘Ready 2 Rumble Revolution’ WARMS up FOR ITS Wii DEBUT

- The Best-Selling Boxing Franchise Returns with a Huge Roster of Celebrity-inspired Fighters Looking to Land the KO Punch in Spring 2009 -

NEW YORK, December 2, 2008 – The hilarious Ready 2 Rumble franchise is flexing its muscles and planning a major, star-studded return to the ring in spring 2009 with the launch of Ready 2 Rumble Revolution, the newest game in the much-loved series. Bringing the franchise to Wii™ for the first time, the game retains all the knockout features of best-sellers Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 1 and Round 2, while delivering a knockout punch of style and attitude. Tailored to take advantage of the motion-controlled realism of Wii, Ready 2 Rumble Revolution makes landing a punch more fun than ever.

“Ready 2 Rumble Revolution is poised to take back he title as the undisputed champion of arcade boxing games and we hope to reach an even bigger audience than ever thanks to the huge popularity of Wii,” said Phil Harrison, President of Infogrames, the parent company of Atari. “The outrageous celebrity caricatures paired with a fun boxing experience made even more over-the-top thanks to the Wii controllers will make the newest version of this famed franchise a must-have for all fans of boxing and physical fun on Wii.”

“Ready 2 Rumble Revolution will put the swagger back into the boxing ring and promote an adrenaline-boosting, positive will to win attitude in the hearts and minds of fans of all ages,” said Gaspard de Dreuzy, President of Stereo Mode and executive producer of the game.

Sure to satisfy newcomers and boxing fans alike, Ready 2 Rumble Revolution features a roster of 18 wildly caricatured cartoony boxers based on celebrities from the worlds of sports, music and movies. Celebrities enter the ring as larger-than-life “Rumble-ized” versions of themselves. Players will step right up and see if they can knock these super-sized egos down a peg or two!

The game is hosted by “The Voice of the Champions” Michael Buffer, famous for his “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble®” trademark call. Characters are brought to life with hilarious moves, detailed facial animations, damage textures and fighting techniques including special moves, combos, extreme knockdowns and special “Rumble” combos. An all new Championship Mode lets gamers create their own unique boxer and nurture his skills through mini-games, developing him as a fighter and creating a completely personalized Ready 2 Rumble Revolution experience.

Developed by AKI who bring their formidable fight game know-how to the franchise, Ready 2 Rumble Revolution brings a virtual boxing arena to the living room and delivers a fun and intuitive experience in either single player or multiplayer mode. The Wii controllers provide would-be pugilists with an intuitive and realistic feel. Using the Nunchuk™ controller as one glove and the Wii Remote™ controller as the other, players dodge, weave and throw the big punches to KO their opponents.

Virtual heavyweights can fight from the backstreet gym all the way to the big Las Vegas showdown with vivid new visuals bringing the five spectacular ring environments to life. The arcade experience is made even better thanks to advanced Artificial Intelligence allowing more strategic fights.

You’re going to have to spend a good 15 minutes or more updating your PS3 again. Firmware update v2.53 is now available. What exactly does it bring? Well, it gives you options for viewing Flash on websites.

• Full-screen mode playability
• Live movie (using RTMP format) playability

As someone who never uses the PS3 web browser, I’d like to say “who gives a shit?”. Whatever your preference, you’ll have to get the update if you want to connect to the PSN. So plan some extra time before you fire up Resistance 2 or LittleBigPlanet or whatever your game of choice is currently.

Version 1.0 of Fieldrunners arrived at the App Store back in October.  At that time it was a great game but was without audio and only included a single map.  Even with these shortcomings, the game was a huge success.  Subatomic Studios has listened to their fans and brought version 1.1.1 down the pipeline with all sorts of game play enhancements and features.  Could this single update bring new life to an already great iPhone/iPod Touch game?  The answer is a resounding yes.

Fieldrunners may seem like your basic run-of-the-mill tower defense style game.  The concept is simple, stop the invading infantry from getting through your fortress gates.  The depth and longevity of each game is what really sets this one apart.  A single game can last literally an hour, a rare occurrence on a portable gaming platform.  There is no need to worry about finishing the game in a single sitting because the game saves automatically upon quitting so you can always just pick up where you left off.  No lives are given, you just can’t allow 20 of the opposing infantry to enter your fortress, once you do the game is over.

The units consist of small grunt style troops to large mech robots and flying blimps.  The pure range of the units is what makes the game so challenging.  One round can consist of a whole bunch of troops on motorcycles that you must somehow slow down just to shoot them and the next round is loaded with tanks that barely move but require ridiculous amounts of firepower to take them down.  When a unit is eliminated, you are compensated with money.  The smaller units you get a single dollar for taking down and the large units you can receive up to twenty dollars.  The money is then banked for you to purchase bigger and better equipment to slow down and eliminate the oncoming infantry.

The towers consist of four total units.  A close range gattling gun, goo gun, missile tower and the tesla tower.  The gattling gun is of course the cheapest of the units you can deploy.  You can use these to create winding mazes to bombard your enemies with constant fire.  Deploy the goo guns to slow down the troops to a grinding halt so your guns can be unleashed with full effectiveness.  The missile tower is a bit more expensive but has splash damage and a longer range than the gatling guns.  My favorite, the tesla tower clocks in at a whopping $70 which could break the bank but is a very powerful close range weapon.  All of the towers can be upgraded at any time during the game.  Each tower has three levels to upgrade.  Each costing a portion of the original item cost which makes you have to decide, should you fill your battlefield with massive amounts of units to start or upgrade the units you already have?  The developers at Subatomic Studios have created a very balanced ecosystem to play in, everything has a trump card.

Grasslands was the only map to ship with the original release of the game.  It has a simple design, enemies come from the left, your fortress is located on the right.  If you set up enough towers down the middle of the map you can stop most of the ground and aerial units without a problem.  There are only so many ways you can play this map, that’s why the brand new map included with the update is a great addition.

Subatomic Studios has added another map with the update titled Crossroads.  In the new map, units come from two separate sides of the screen and invade into two separate parts of your fortress.  This new map adds all kinds of new twists.  Since the units come from either side, it’s much more difficult to set up your defense towers, it’s especially hard to stop the invading aerial units.

To open up the new “endless mode” you must first beat the classic mode.  Classic mode consists of 100 rounds of enemies.  Each round becomes progressively more difficult with stronger and larger number of units.  I was able to beat classic mode on the easy setting on my first play through.  I had then attempted the medium setting, only to get to round 68.  This is what we will call replay value.  The player must learn from their mistakes.  There is a hard setting but it is very difficult to take units down on this setting, they just seem to absorb every shot.  Only true tower defense aficionados need apply on this setting.

Endless mode is more of the same, beat classic mode on any difficulty setting and you can unlock endless mode.  Both maps are playable in endless mode and of course if you are a master of the game it is worth your time.

The controls work as expected.  You are able to zoom in and out on the battlefield with a simple pinch or pull of your fingers.  Drag and drop the towers located at the bottom of your screen to place them on the battlefield.  To upgrade or sell a unit, simply highlight it and both options appear as long as the option is available.  The only real difficulty with controlling the game was with a screen packed full of towers, it sometimes became difficult to select the correct tower but that is remedied simply by zooming in.

It is very important that I mention sound considering the original version didn’t have any at all.  The theme song that plays in the menus fits right in.  It definitely gears you up for some mini infantry slaughtering.  The added sound effects were a much needed addition.  It is almost sad hearing the little guys that you mow down with your gatling guns give a last squeak before you cash the money in that you earned from their lonely demise.  Thank you Subatomic Studios for making me feel bad for killing nameless soldiers, that’s what I wanted from a game.

The real issue, the reason the game doesn’t get a perfect score, is still the lack of extra maps.  I know that Subatomic Studios has technically doubled the maps and added all sorts of minor tweaks and even new units, but I still want more.  The design path they have taken when creating Crossroads is a step in the right direction.  A few more maps like this one would put a final stamp of greatness on Fieldrunners.

Fieldrunners is as close to perfection as you can get in the tower defense genre.  I especially enjoyed the balanced game play.  It looks, sounds and plays just as you would expect.  I just hope there are a few more updates down the road to add more content before we get a Fieldrunners 2.  I am elated to see a developer stay on their toes and not rest until most of their fans are pleased with the final product.  Fieldrunners is a must have iPhone/iPod touch game.

Overall: 8.75 out of 10

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Microsoft sent out a press release yesterday that the Xbox 360 outsold it’s competition (PS3) on Black Friday.

“Retailers reported Xbox 360 console sales over the Black Friday weekend were on pace to beat previous years, outselling the PlayStation 3 by a three-to-one ratio and estimating a 25 percent increase from Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007.”

In an interview on Fox earlier today, Shane Kim believes that the New Xbox Experience and Xbox Live can expand to a broader market, outside of core gamers.  He goes further to talk about their extensive gaming library of over a thousand titles, their new partnership with Netflix, and states, “there has never been a better time to own an Xbox 360.”

I think, when it comes down to it, obviously the PS3 and Xbox 360 blow away the Wii in game titles, online experience and overal quality, but does the Xbox 360 really beat PS3 in overall quality?  Maybe, maybe not, but one thing that is obvious, and is evident from the immense sales of 360’s, is that the price really effects a console’s sales.  And in my opinion, the Xbox 360 does offer more than the Ps3 in terms of the overall experiance from the console itself, and I also believe the 360 has more room to expand, right now, than the Playstation 3.

For many, the arrival of the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion represented brand new content, mobs, areas and endless possibilities for those that had been sitting at level 70 for some time. It also presented a brand new class of characters for those to try their hand at and change up the pace, the new Death Knight. The Death Knight is a hybrid character that can best be described as an undead warrior that post WoTLK can now be started at level 55 and be leveled fairly quickly.

I decided to try my hand at this new class of characters and was pleasantly surprised at the change of pace from my main character, a hunter, but I quickly realized a few things:

First off, it is nice to start at level 55 since this gets all that early grinding out of the way and makes you eligible for end game stuff very quickly and also allows you to learn talents very quickly. One problem is that the first area that is instanced does not last very long and learning to use the new Death Knight ends in about three levels. Once you are done with the initial quests, you are set out into the world of Outland. Being in Outland again is not that fun for me personally as I just leveled my Hunter after resting him for a year, so this is a bit repetitive and I also could have used some more time to figure out using this new character a bit more.

The second and biggest problem is that there are too many Death Knights out in the world right now. If you are rolling a Death Knight, it is very hard to find a group to run instances with since there are about twice as many Death Knights on the servers than any other class right now. Aside from problems grouping for instances, there are also some quests where you need a group and these are also hard to find other classes to help with, especially healers. With such a high abundance of Death Knights in the realms, it will be interesting to see how many are carried out to level 80 and used for end game runs or are they just a novelty for those that have grown bored of their main toons? Right now it is not uncommon to run around a town and see twice as many Death Knights as any other class in the game, this goes for both Horde and Allliance.

Also, some people I have spoken to do not think kindly about the new class of characters and refer to them as a Noob class. I guess the reasoning for this is because you start out at level 55 and some players don’t really learn how to use them correctly. I think that all these players are using the Death Knight now because it is new, same as a lot of people that were using Horde characters made a Paladin and Alliance made a Shaman after Burning Crusade was released. I think labeling the whole class as a Noob class is foolish and people need to relax and have fun with this game.

Join us this week as our one armed bandits discuss what they’re all currently playing, the Loot Ninja t-shirt contest, publishers buying-off reviewers, and making real Gears of War Lancers.  Some discussions of Beyonce’s new name and making your own homemade weapons get thrown in and hilarity ensues.

Entrance music: Gimme the Loot by The Notorious B.I.G.

Exit music: Montage from Team America: World Police

The Wall Street Journal reported today that in an effort to control his National Amusements Inc debts, Sumner Redstone has sold his shares of Midway Games to a private investor, Mark Thomas, who has no previous relationship with Midway Games.

A spokesperson for National Amusements said the holding company determined it would be financially beneficial to sell the Midway stake in 2008. Mr. Thomas has agreed to pay about $100,000, or $0.0012 a share, for the Midway stake and will assume $70 million of senior secured and unsecured debt

Just to give you an idea of what kind of value you are looking at here, Dec 1 closing price of Midway Games (NYSE: MWY) was 0.33, with a market cap of 30.4mm.  Redstone offloaded Midway and all the debt behind it, a smart move on his part.

WSJ says it nicely again with:

The sale of the Midway stake marks the end of a tumultuous investment for Mr. Redstone. He poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the company, only to see his investment fizzle as the company failed to create new hit games and its stock collapsed. Mr. Redstone’s stake had a market value of just $30 million Friday, but he sold it for a huge discount to even that — a condition of finding a buyer quickly and completing a deal this year.

So what does this mean for Midway?

Well its more turbulence for an already well shaken company.  Midway has recently posted losses, laid off staff, had a Board member resign, and are under threat of being de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange.  Not really happy times on the corporate front.  A low share price and market cap in an industry that a few people are trolling around for takeovers.

Midway needs a win.  MK vs DC seems to be doing alright in it’s first few weeks out, but no where near the massive success Midway needs.  The best news to hit the wire has been the top secret game Midway is working on is getting a lot of hype.  That hype is coming from inside Midway which could mean one of two things: 1. Shameless self promotion as a defense mechanism, or 2. Actual talent allowed to show itself.

The new investor with a majority stake in Midway is rumored to be a passive investor with no interest in a seat on the board or dealing directly with management.  This could be the best news of all if Midway moves from being an over-managed wanna-be blockbuster factory to the creative powerhouse that they used to be pumping out the likes of Cruisin’ USA, Killer Instinct, Area 51, Gauntlent, and NBA Jam.

Where do you think Midway is headed?

Developer: Hoplite Research Publisher: Midway Games

Myst was an amazing classic title for the PC that hardcore gamers and non-gamers alike purchased and enjoyed.  Myst managed to draw people in with its sharp graphics (at the time), mysterious setting, storytelling through the journals and books, and challenging with the puzzles providing an overall good and fairly original experience.  The puzzles were complex and confusing, and just admit it, everyone cheated to figure out how to beat some of those puzzles or they just clicked frantically everywhere.

Well the Myst experience has come back, this time on the Nintendo DS.  The beauty, the mystique, it’s all gone.  The only thing left is the challenge and the wonder as to why you bought this game.  The touch interface is how you navigate the worlds in Myst and it simply does not work.  But that is only of concern if you can manage to discern what is what display that is covered in a nice layer of pixelated spooge.  It’s not worth looking at the screenshots, you are better off sneezing on your monitor.  Unfortunately to complete some puzzles you must be able to look at the screen and tell what a certain object or emblem is.  Don’t bother using the magnifying glass function, it will just make the pixelated mess bigger. If you think you need new glasses your wrong, it’s still the game.  It’s boxy, edgy, and painful to look at.

They have added features found in other iterations of Myst, such as the zip feature, enabling you to get to a distant location faster, again handicapped by the miserable touch screen, good luck on getting anywhere.  There is also the age of Rime, but on the DS is no way to experience it, go download the open source version.  There you are less likely to encounter the wonderful bugs that don’t allow many things to move across your screen, like elevators in the Mechanical Age, you exit the elevator to find yourself on top of it…. now that’s not how the game is supposed to work….

Midway Games and Hoplite Research have turned a nice paced, interesting, classic adventure game into a shit show.  It was a port of an already hit game, graphics and controls are all they needed to really worry about and they couldn’t even bother to put some polish on there.  Only buy Myst for the DS to give it to someone you don’t like, if you are that twisted and sadistic.  Worst port ever.

Overall: 1 out of 10

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