After Muramasa on the Wii (easily the prettiest game this generation, in my opinion), I realized that Vanillaware is indeed something special.

And then they had to go tap into the medieval-fantasy hack ‘n’ slash genre.

Those… monsters.

It’s coming out for the PS3 and the Vita. I will frame it and put it on my wall.

I’ve noticed that getting those free “Welcome Back” games isn’t as easy as it seemed.

I’m downloading them now, but not without lack of some effort. Sure, they’re on the main splash page of PSN, and yet when you click to download them…. Where did they go? And then they’re gone as if they never existed.

If you did confirm your free goods, and can’t find them for the life of you, here’s what you have to do:

Get out of the store and follow these menus:

Account Management
Transaction Management
Services List
SCEA Promotions

Oddly enough, you get to download the games here. Sure would have been nice to specify instead of having to look up the info., wouldn’t it?

Hope that saves some of you a little pain in being “Welcomed Back”.

$250 for a Vita, you say? A portable Bioshock? Do tell more….

Next week is the Christmas of the Gaming Industry: E3. As someone who used to attend these things on a regular basis, it still pains me not to attend these things (must mend this for next year).

That said, I’ll be curious to see what is unveiled for the show.

Xbox 360 for me is mostly looking forward to the Batman, Elder Scrolls and Bioshock sequels, as well as learning more about Sonic Generations, and hopefully something big that will be brought to the table with Kinect. They are promising “big things”, and I hope so. There is still a lot of potential in the device that hasn’t even been remotely tapped into.

Sony, I hope they get their hacker issues resolved, because they are still a mess. It took me a while to find the right link to change the password on my PSP as their site is still covered in broken links and warning messages. It took me speaking to a customer service rep to find out what possible links to try, with no guarantee that it would even be “live” to fix. I think this overall bad karma is going to damage some of the Read the rest of this entry

Sorry I’ve been away for longer than I anticipated. Personal life took over, and I haven’t had much time for gaming or… well, much of anything personal, really. Work has been a bit of a monster the last few weeks.

That said, I’ve already changed to a new credit card via all of those “lovely” attacks on the Playstation Network, and now Sony Online Entertainment. I haven’t used SOE anything since 2003 (and still don’t plan to), so I’m not worried about that, but I did use the PSN for my PSP. Not a lot, but I’ve dealt with fraud before, and “Better safe than sorry”.

Of course now, it’s gone to the blame game with people (and government) demanding answers from Sony, while Sony tries to track down the source of who did it. There’s a number of oft-mentioned hacker groups, but in this situation, I wouldn’t touch credit on this thing with any size pole. I figure if they ever catch who did this, they are going away for a long, LONG time.

It’s hard to know what prompted this, and why the other gaming networks haven’t fallen prey as of yet. There’s been a lot Read the rest of this entry

1995? Has it really been that long?

My situation in getting into the “Magical World of Playstation” was different for me from the current days of going into the old store or staying out overnight in the cold to fight eBay scalpers. I was still a few months into the gaming industry, fresh-faced and far less world savvy (wearied?) than I am now. I played on the blue and green dev units, and my first games were Mortal Kombat 3 and Doom. This was back before Williams became Midway, and many years before Midway became extinct.

I was used to CD-based gaming before (read: The Sega CD), but not with some many colors, or arcade and PC comparable accuracy. I was playing Playstation four months before its retail debut, but I went to my hometown’s local Wal-Mart, bought a copy of MK3 (we developed it, but didn’t publish it), and later Twisted Metal. My roommates and I also ended up with a copy of Tekken and Wipeout, and there were many tournaments.

It was different from the Super Nintendo and Genesis, Donkey Kong Country, and Phantasy Star 4. Yet as cutting edge as it was, the next Read the rest of this entry

Amazon is running specials on gaming magazines, and I believe Saturday is the last day.

Nintendo Power for $5.00, Official Xbox Magazine for $5.00, and Official Playstation Magazine for $5.00.

Seriously, why wouldn’t you?