Live Arcade feature: Sideway: New York

Today, arcade has a different meaning. It's now the lesser known games offered by Xbox Live or PSN. I'm not one to have played many arcade titles but I do own a few. So today I will feature one that has caught my eye - Sideway: New York.

Sideway is not your typical platformer. While your character is 2D, the game adds depth and a 3D feel while navigating around walls and other surfaces around a New York setting as a graffiti artist named Nox transformed into a graffiti character by graffiti monsters. It's up to you now to save yourself and your friends from these monsters that attack the city's urban art.


While in this graffiti mode you travel along walls spraying graffiti to create platforms to help get around and in some cases to be able to grab various power ups scattered through out the levels. The power ups allow you to gain special abilities to battle graffiti "baddies" that have now become your enemies. Navigating the environment can become a little confusing because of all the turning and spinning it does but it's not enough to frustrate you or make you want to stop playing. Think of ilomilo. You can travel along side of the wall on a building and then turn the corner and the environment spins to keep you centered and in front of camera view. The same happens when jumping onto rooftops. There are also obstacles along the way such as thorned vines painted on the walls and major gaps. Remember, just because your a painting doesn't mean you can't get hurt!

The art is has great color schemes and is very animated. The graffiti is not over the top and allows you to focus on the purpose of the graffiti. The 3D elements have great depth. The artists have definitely done a great job of not allowing the 3D environment confuse you while playing a 2D character.

The music through out the game is very hip hop oriented. The soundtrack definitely fits the part. And it isn't your normal Top 40 hip hop and it has a more underground feel to it. Its a definite welcome to the scene.

This game is a great pick up for something new and refreshing. The game drops on 10/11/11 for $9.99 exclusively on PSN for the PS3. Xbox fans will just have to be envious

Another feat in the name of science!

Last week gamers were able to unfold the mysteries of an enzyme that would help to further find the cure for AIDS. This week they were able to locate 2 new planets outside of our solar system.

NASA has been allowing what they call "citizen scientists" view photos taken by the Kepler Space Telescope for the last couple of years now hoping that new habitable planet would be discovered dubbing it the Kepler Mission. Citizen scientists are just average people who have a love and respect for space and astronomy. Now reports are coming in that by playing the Kepler Mission's web-based game, Planet Hunters, two new planets were discovered. The findings will be published in an article in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society this week. You can read the full article here if you want to delve deeper.

How does a game offer the ability to discover planets in such a vast space? The way Planet Hunters works is by allowing the players to make use of public data from the Keplar public data and using the Transit Method. Users observe the light emitted by stars over a 30+ day period and are then asked to look for times when the light curve dips in signal. The dip suggests that a possible planet in orbit around the star is moving across the path of the star at the time. It takes roughly 3 hours for the planet to pass across the face of its star which is long enough for hundreds of light measurements, or dips, to be made. The challenge, as a player, is to identify these dips in light intensity over a course of time for a given star. The size of the planet also plays a role. If a planet is very large, the depth of the transit will be larger than that of a smaller planet, as the larger planet would block more light. Thus, we have a planetary discovery! It's like a tamer version of Asteroids.

Seeing how much work goes into this would make it understandable why more scientific research groups are allowing the public to access this type of data and create games out of them. It's allowing for science to further itself in a positive way by tapping into a form of media that is growing larger and larger everyday. Kepler realized this and so did FoldIt. Both were able to use the advantage of having gamers solve some of the most tedious jobs seeing as these research groups just don't have the manpower or the funding to do so on their own.

Now imagine what else can be accomplished if this type of motivation were presented to school students now? It's a shame that it would have to come to this in order for some students to show their full potential but it would show students what they are capable of and to what degree. Present a way to get someone involved by their own merit and they will be hooked. Couple that with text book knowledge and learning and we could see more classroom interaction. This is just the beginning of what can be accomplished.

We may not have paid attention through every minute of physics or science but every gamer loves a good challenge so long as you know how to motivate us. Come on Science, insert that quarter and show us what you got!

Throwback Wednesday: Captain N: The Game Master

Saturday mornings were that much more special for me when Captain N was on the air. Watching him get warped into Videoland and team up with Megaman, Simon Belmont and Kid Icarus to defeat Motherbrain and her henchmen Eggplant Wizard and a blue King Hippo all while eating Super Mario cereal.

If you didn't grow up watching this cartoon then welcome to this week's Throwback Wednesday! If you did make this show and comic a part of your childhood (or adulthood even) then take a stroll down memory lane.

Captain N was a cartoon created originally as a comic in the Nintendo Power Magazine. Nintendo then decided to change the original format and produce the cartoon as a teenage boy, Kevin, who gets warped into Videoland through his TV along with his dog, Duke, by way of the "ultimate warp zone" created by a Powerglove.

Once in Videoland he teams up with the "N Team" which consisted of Simon Belmont (Castlevania), Mega Man, Kid Icarus, and Princess Lana who is acting ruler of Videoland. Together they fight against the evil powers of the land which are represented by Mother Brain (Metroid), The Evil Eggplant Wizard (Kid Icarus), Dr. Wily (Mega Man), and King Hippo (Punch-Out). Each week the N Team battled with these characters and also "guest villains" such as Donkey Kong and Dracula (Castlevania series). And every once in a while there would be "guest heroes" such as Bayou Billy, Link, and Doctor Light. At the beginning of the second season the group was joined by Game Boy, a human-sized supercomputer shaped like an actual Gameboy.

In Videoland Kevin found himself equipped with a Light Zapper and a NES control pad belt buckle that he could use to execute video game type abilities such as pausing the action or jumping onto high platforms as long as the power of the controller didn't run down. He also found he could use portals called "warp zones" similar to those in Mario games. These allowed him to travel instantly between different video game worlds within Videoland. Using warp zones meant that N Team could quickly and easily travel from Princess Lana's residence, the Palace of Power, to wherever they were needed. The only problem with warp zones was that each led to only one location, and if the traveler was unfamiliar with a warp zone he could not know where he would end up.

The music on the shows consisted of variations of the music you would hear in the video games that inspired them. Sound effects were also taken from games and used for different actions in the show such as jumping and pausing. A lot of the characters looked slightly different than their game counterparts due to licensing concerns as Nintendo could not garner the licenses for games from Konami and Capcom but these characters still kept their names - for the most part.

I miss these crazy episodes. So in memory of such a great cartoon I bring you the first 8 minutes of the first episode. Enjoy!

Just another day of puzzle solving for a gamer

It's no big surprise that many gamers are advanced in puzzle solving. Puzzle solving has been a part of gameplay for as long as I've been playing games. That's why it's no real huge surprise when I read that groups of gamers helped scientist crack an enzyme that is a building block for a family of retroviruses of which contain HIV.

For three weeks, gamers were told to unfold chains of amino acids using a set of online tools in a game that was developed in 2008 by the University of Washington named Foldit. After three weeks they were able to successfully complete the task in which computers and other automated tasks have not been able to do so yet. Even the science community is shocked that in such a short time a fully completed model could have been made by someone outside of the community.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release."The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

This is great news for our gaming community as it now tells the story of how all that time spent playing video games may have helped develop an advanced problem solving side to our way of thinking allowing us to perform something that no one or thing has been able to. It has not been a waste of time as some think and it has not rotted our minds as so many who are opposed to this form of entertainment has tried to have so many believe. Now we have a new possible study in the works.

 Foldit is now also playable to the public. It is in beta but works really well. So go out there and see if you too can save the world.

Welcome to your... DOOM?

Imagine growing up and never having played Doom... That was the harsh reality for teenagers in Germany throughout the entire time that Doom has been around - until now.

17 years after Doom was first released Germany may now be able to sell Doom in any store they so please soon. Doom and Doom 2 were both classified as "Media Harmful to Young Persons" placing them in the same category as porn in Germany and getting them pulled from shelves across the country. Recently, Bethesda decided to try and appeal the decision and it was overturned. Although Bethesda has not given details as to when the games will go on sale in Germany we do know it will be soon. Of course it will have any references to Nazism removed as those images are banned it will still have all the great gameplay that we all know and love.

Now imagine all the fun that could have been missed out on if the same ban were placed in the US? Not just on Doom but any game that depicts any kind of fantasy violence? It was my understanding that the censorship is a little more lenient in Germany. This may only apply to TV I guess. I do know that GTA 4 has a huge following in Germany and it makes me question why Doom?

In any case this is a small victory for the industry. It's kind of like giving the censor board the finger. I know that I have a different mindset when it comes to these issues but it kind of is ridiculous to want to ban a game that does not clearly show violence to other humans but to fictional monsters that are trying to find a way of attacking earth. It's science fiction at its best.

Society has the tendency to want to censor so many things. Literature, movies, art. There is no media that will ever be free of being criticized and have work that is deemed obscene. There are schools that are banning books that go against certain morals of the community. Animal Farm should not be banned from high school reading. It is one of the best stories I have ever read. Such as Doom is one of the best games I have ever played. Both great works in their own artistic media. One for great writing and symbolism of how corruption is brewed in government circles and how such acts along with greed and ignorance can bring down a Utopian society, the other for showing that the bravery of one individual can overcome obstacles to help bring peace to the world that he knows and loves by doing the right thing.

Unfortunately this is the war that must be fought everyday. Just be grateful that there are those who choose to go against such views and introduce to the world what their imagination has to offer. Thanks id for introducing us to one of the bravest space marines that even Master Chief will salute.

These beats inside my head

Music within a game to me is a very major part of gameplay for certain games. I can go through FPS games without a soundtrack because it can hinder your gameplay in some situations such as in Call of Duty games where the background noises play an important role in your survival. But games such as Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Mario etc., these games have background music that has played an important part. Not only are the songs keeping up the beat of the level of gameplay but they add life to the experience.

Since I was younger I can remember going from playing Atari to playing NES and remember hearing those first 7 sounds from Super Mario Bros. world 1-1 for the very first time. It sparked something in me that had been missing from Atari games. It added an extra something special. One could walk around and hum these songs and everyone would immediately chime in. It added more emotion to the game and in my opinion it's what kept me going in some games.

The addition of background music began to drive the intensity of certain levels or even cinematics. Prime example, Ninja Gaiden for the NES. Hearing that pivotal change in music from the duel scene to Ryu reading the letter from his father set the tone from action to dramatic. You knew you were going into something bigger than just a simple duel. There was a plot behind it all that was about to be uncovered.

Fast forward to SNES and Genesis. The transition to 16Bit gaming added better music and with it the opportunity to own a game soundtrack. More and more game soundtracks started becoming available for sale in the market. My first soundtrack owned was that of Streets of Rage 2! One of the best soundtracks to this day. Yuzo Koshiro, a genius in the world of game soundtracks if there ever was one, brought to the table that music in a game is more than just background sound, it's a form of art. They transported you to a place where gaming was more than just good eye/hand coordination. It took you to a level of pure fun and bliss. It kept you in harmony with the game. Faster beats and more uptempo tracks had you pulling out all the stops to defeat any boss on the screen. Slower tracks had you pay more attention to the level and made sure you didn't overlook that one corridor and didn't leap before looking. It was a sense of direction that your subconscious held on to in order to alert you of danger. The fad kept going with the addition of Dreamcast and Playstation and was at its peak before it started plunging. Today these soundtracks are still available on the market but not as widely as before. Mainly because so many of today's games are using actual licensed songs or are using songs produced by famous artists specifically for the game and there are licensing issues. But the games that are still exploring with great original scores are leaving us game soundtrack junkies out to dry.

I know that you can still find soundtracks out there. It’s just a shame that you can’t get them readily available anymore. I guess for now I will stick with my classic soundtracks and keep converting them to ringtones. Or VG Tones as I like to call them. Well I’m off to listen to some 8Bit synth heaven…