Aussie Ben

I'm not sure!

Well, I want the ability to dress up a robot as a frog, and Chibi Robo satisfies all my robot-attire desires.

Especially since it was at the MAJESCO booth... Myself and a couple of friends got shown this by an enthusiastic Majesco tester. It really looks quite great, and plays nicely, too. I didn't use the touch screen to change weapons though, because I was too busy trying to stay alive. Good times.

Speaking of the DF Shop, you know what would be awesome? If we could get Merit Badge patches. I'd love a Clairvoyance or even a Basic Braining Merit Badge Patch.

I like how you're seen by:

After peeking at this thread here, my curiosity was piqued. I was pretty sure I remembered some stuff that I never saw in the final game (as is the case with all games, but anyway). So, here's stuff I was able to deduce. Might be spoilers, might not - I'll put 'em in spoiler tags anyway: So there you go. The final product is still stellar, but I always find it fun to see what got dropped and rearranged. I'd be really interested to hear what the Double Fine guys had to say about stuff that got dropped or stuff that they would have liked to have included for whatever reason.

Yeah, I found those pieces of information from IGN, GameSpy and Adventure Gamer previews on Tim Fandango.

http://www.n-chicken.net/features/pnautsadventure.shtml For those who can't be bothered clicking the link, mine says: "Dear Ben, We love you and your excellent website, www.n-chicken.net. Will you work for us? Here is some money! Forever Yours, Tim + The Double Fine Team!"

Hmmm...well, according to a website I googled, a Single Layer DVD can be classified as follows: DVD-5, holds around 4 700 000 000 bytes and that is 4.37 computer GB where 1 kbyte is 1024 bytes* . DVD+R/DVD+RW and DVD-R/DVD-RW supports this format. Also called Single Sided Single Layered. This is the most common DVD Media, often called 4.7 GB Media. With a nifty modded Xbox, I was able to discover that Psychonauts (really, this is the only game we care about here, isn't it? I know it is for me.) is about 3.9 gig, just under the 4.37 gig limit for a Single Layer DVD. So, it looks like that should work quite nicely. Of course, this is all guesswork, and presuming that the Xbox uses standard DVDs, and not some kind of wacky proprietary DVD that has a 3.8 gig Single Layer DVD or something equally ridiculous. (I think the chances of that are pretty slim - proprietary formats tend to be larger than the regular format.)

Er, not really... THQ published Grunty's Revenge for GBA, and in fact, all of Rare's GBA games except the DKC ports. They also published them very poorly, with little to no advertising. In exchange for all rights to all the Kongs, Kremlings and Starfox characters Rare created, Nintendo let Rare have all their other franchises (such as Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Blast Corps). But then you get the bizzaro stuff like Diddy Kong Racing which features Banjo and Conker. Who owns that? I'm guessing Nintendo does. Then there's the legal mess that is Goldeneye. Rare owns the code, Nintendo published the game, and EA owns the Bond game rights now. There's no way you'll ever be seeing THAT game re-released.

Now that I've got my camera back, I can actually bloody enter this thing. Hopefully I can get a picture of something terrifying tonight. SUCCESS! Here's my entry. Brace yourself - it's quite terrifying:

I played We Love Katamari, and I certainly loved Katamari. I only got to play one game, and I played it co-op with a friend. For the first few minutes, we were trying to shout out directions to each other, which wasn't working. Soon enough, we got into a zen state where we instinctively knew where we wanted to go and what mayhem we wanted to cause. We got quite a sizable Katamari by the end - I remember that we were getting school walls. Don't know if we managed to get a bison, though.

I'd just like to say how much I'm enjoying Lego Star Wars. Both the console and the GBA versions are great fun - I've borrowed someone else's copy - and I'll be picking up the Xbox version of the game as soon as I get the chance. The GBA version is cool in its own right though. Everyone has a special move except Jar Jar - if you press the Special Move button for him, all he does is run around and panic. Ingenious.

Yep, what Spaff said. It's easier for developers to not support Memory Card copying for the same reason that most developers don't support Multitap or Memory Card Slot 2. Why support a barely used feature of a console that's going to take up precious development time, and then testing to make sure that the feature passes all the associated TCRs? That's valuable time that could be used to make the game look pretty or not have characters fall through the floor in the game world. Although, for the end user, it pretty much sucks. You'd expect that you'd be able to copy your game saves over, right? Isn't that pretty much a given? Oh well. I still like my Xbox - it has one giant Memory Card that is very unlikely to run out of space.

AH HA! Apparently, "WUXTRY!" is a bastardization of the word "EXTRA!", as shouted by ragamuffins selling the local newspaper. It all falls into place. Well, except for that headline...

From what I understand, the code is randomly generated. Getting access to the code requires that you have a high enough 'score', which is based on game time, the animals you've photographed, pearls collected, and so on. You were only able to get access to the game to earn MDisk #13 if your Internet Code ranked high enough. So yeah, if you want to play this game later in life, or if you're like me and have slacked off and taken too long to complete it, you won't be able to access MDisk #13. Neat, huh? Pity no-one's hacked the internet code to figure out what yours needs to be to get the cabinet code.

Galactic Pinball is a must-own if you have a Virtual Boy. A really great example of the 3D working well (it's like the whole pinball table is floating in space, quite incredible) and the tables are just so great in design, as well. None of this Mario Pinball Land/Super Mario Ball rubbish!

Geez, I've ignored First Person Shooters for most of my life and even I can tell you that one: Aida from Unreal II.

Hey, we TOTALLY need explosion stickers to stick on the boxes. Oh well, I guess you can't have everything. Anyway, I'll be sure to grab a soundtrack. And a floaty pen. Oooh, and maybe a signed copy of the game, too. I like how there's an option to enter a personalized message.

I really, really like this demo. This is definitely my kind of game. Combed through the camp and the Coach's training ground by using the arrow keys and CTRL, ALT and space for the main action buttons. (That brought back fond memories of Commander Keen!) However, the control setup confirms that when (if) this comes out in Australia, I'll definitely be grabbing it for Xbox. I definitely prefer the Xbox controller to the PS2 one for 3D explorathons such as these. Now I'm definitely not in any way at all digging through the sound files and extracting the music in any way at all for sparkling MP3 playability. No sir.

I like how the "It's Bad To Be You" song was an Oompa Loompa parody, and how all of the sound settings can go up to 11. Also, Clint Bajakian (who's name I've seen pop up in some Lucasarts Adventure games) is included in the music credits.

So, anyone get it, then? It came out here a couple of weeks ago (picked it up on the same day as King of Swing for GBA), and I've been playing it on-off every so often since I got it. It's better than I expected it to be - you get the pretty CGI interludes with the ludicriously dead serious story about genetic manipulation and the like, which is always fun. "Transformation puts a huge strain on the cereberal cortex - the human part of your brain. We don't want your mind to transform as well." (cue dramatic chords!) But basically, what it all boils down to is holding the circle button to transform into a werewolf (and later on, other creatures with different abilities that allow you to access different areas) and then beating the crap out of assorted walking corpses and giant monsterous animals and watching them splatter blood everywhere. Oh, and twisted, warped versions of some earlier enemies that have become incredibly huge and boss-like. Every boss you beat earns you either a new transformation or ability for an existing transformation, so there always seems to be a reward for destroying these massive boss things. I'm having fun with it. The story is delightfully hokey, the combat is nothing too deep, and it comes with a "graphic violence" warning at the start of the game every time you boot up, which always makes me smile. Oh, but the camera can get a bit demented, but I got used to demented cameras a looooong time ago, so it hardly detracts from the experience. After all - I played through all of Mario Sunshine, didn't I? Haw haw.

I haven't unlocked him yet, but there's pictures of him plastered all over the manual and back of the box, so I'm guessing yes. And it says he does kung-fu! What hasn't this game got? Apart from an American release, ho ho.

I really like this fancy Amplitude game. You drive down a track made out of music and shoot at musical notes to make the various parts of the song. How cool is that? Don't answer. It's PRETTY COOL.

This would probably explain why I'm also having so much trouble with Wario Ware Touched.