PUNCH OUT! for the Nintendo Wii

One of the new-age "Nintendo Classics" has hit the Wii, the new 3D version of PUNCH OUT!.


This game has amplified the original classic, to fit the new style of the Wii with the same fighting style of the original Punch Out. Mac still hasn't changed much, and you still have Doc cheering you on. The basic strategies of this game haven't changed at all, however. The same style of boxing techniques used in the first game, still apply to this one. For example, King Hippo still goes down if you hit his sweet spot on his belly.

The game can be played with just a Wii-mote, Wii-mote + Nunchuck, or with the Wii Fit balancing board, and there's different modes so you can either bout in the stars of boxing in three different modes or go head to head with either a computer or another player.

Having owned the game and played it, I can honestly say that it is incredible as far as the difficulty and the controls. The only downside I saw to it was that it is pretty short game play, which isn't much different than the actual Nintendo game. The only way I could see this game lasting long is if you fought other people or played all the modes over and over again. A few good things about the game is that it is mentally challenging the further down the line you go in the Career mode and you do have to watch and play very strategically. There's always some way to take down your opponent; personally, I stopped when I got to "The Sandman", the final bout of the World Circuit. The man hits you four times and you're down for the count.

Speaking of down for the count, the feature in this game to get up, instead of spamming the A and B buttons of the Nintendo controller, is that you have to use the Wii-Mote + Nunchuck to act like you're climbing the ropes. Still have yet to get up before 4 seconds though, no matter how much I do that.

Same typical gameplay, though. You get knocked out too many times, you KO, get knocked out 3 times in one round, TKO, or it is put to the decision. I believe they added a few new characters, because I don't remember some of these guys being in the game, but overall, this game is very fun and very up to date. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the NES version of the game.

ESRB on iPhone

With all the games coming to the iPhone and no rating system implemented, people wonder how they will be able to tell if it’s suitable for children. As of now, there is no rating system on games in the iTunes App Store. Last week Apple announced that with the new iPhone Software will include a way to put parental settings on games in the App Store but never said how they would determine how the games will be rated.

Well now it appears that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) is thinking about getting in on the action. They are most known for rating all video games on consoles and computer sold in the US. Last week Apple announced that the new iPhone 3.0 Software and said that it will have parental controls for games but never said how it happen. Is Apple going to ask the ESRP to rate all iPhone games?

As the article points out, there are just too many apps in the iTunes Store for this to be a speedy process. Also ESRB isn’t free which means that someone will have to pay them and knowing Apple, they will make the developers pay because Apple doesn’t make much money off hosting the apps.

I think there are two ways Apple can avoid this. First is that they say every app that is submitted it reviewed so that it is safe to put on the app store and it doesn’t break any rules that Apple says all apps must follow. This means they hired people to review these apps even though it’s seems extremely arbitrary which gets in and not. Some apps get in and then get removed because someone found out something they can do with it that is NSFW like the e-book reader that was taken down because someone found the Kama Sutra on it while others like Podcatcher was rejected all together because it violated something the Apple didn’t want other people to do but wasn’t made clear at the time. As many people have speculated, it’s like there are four people running the approval process, three of which are lenient and the other is just being straight to the book and not letting anything through.

The other thing I think they can do which is better is have the developer of the app post what they believe is appropriate and if anything suspicious is found, ask the developer to change it or have the app approvers change it. You could also have people on the app store file a complaint about the rating of the app like what they have for podcast (on the side of the podcast page there is a link to report a concern). The ladder option makes more sense because it saves the time to get approved faster and it makes them more conscience of what they are putting in their app.

Arcade

So its safe to say that the US Videogame Arcade market is dead, if not close to it. After games like Hydro Thunder, Dance Dance Revolution and Cruisin' the World I cant seem to name any good arcade game that I would go out of my way to throw 5 bucks into coin machine. In Japan however, things are different, VERY different. Arcades all over Japan strive to the point where they have mini amusement parks in some malls with High-End Arcade machines you would never dream of. They even have carnival rides inside some of these arcades which are also games. As someone who has visited Japan before, I think I can reinforce this point by saying that while in Tokyo I wound up in at least three different Sega Arcades which had some of the coolest arcade machines I have ever seen. (8 player Mario Kart anyone?)

Just recently Kojima Productions (the creators of the Metal Gear games) announced that they were making Metal Gear Online arcade cabinets. What this means is non PS3/Metal Gear Solid 4 owners can have a taste of the MGO experience. It makes me wonder how arcades lost so much popularity in America while in Japan, they don't need to just make a new game, they can also rerelease the online portion of a game and ride the cash cow to the bank. What made arcades in America so “out of touch”? Was it marketing? Was it time? Was it variety? Or was it simply because American arcade machines simply didn't have the same appeal? Ms.Pacman, Donkey Kong, Dance Dance Revolution, and Time Crisis all originated in Japan and took the US by storm, now you don't see many new arcade games that would make you go “WOW!!!” to. It might have been that, here in the US the variety of different types of games were dry. You had your shooter, driving, and simulator....thats about it. Nothing was all that innovative compared to the next. I think that's what caused the decline of American Arcades. It wasn't the people, it was the variety.

Now that American Arcades are dead the chances of revival seem slim. Japan has a bunch of innovative arcade games that you would never imagine being seen in an arcade and these games won't see the light of day State side because the demand is next to none, which is a shame. I kinda wish a company like Sega would take a risk and internationalize their arcades and export some theres arcade games. Face it, if Donkey Kong could revive arcades then I'm sure that there are plenty of games like it that could rekindle the dead flame that is the American Arcade Indusrty.

New XBOX 360?

A rumor going around the web lately is that Microsoft will be releasing a new console, possible an updated XBOX 360, that will be made specifically to work with their anticipated motion gaming device, Project Natal. Project Natal was their motion capture camera that was announced at E3 last week. The way it works is that it uses a camera, plugged into the XBOX 360, put at the base of your TV and recognizes how people move in front of it along with face and audio recognition. It was stated at the Microsoft E3 Conference that Project Natal will work all XBOX 360s.

The problem with this is that if they are making a new console to work with Project Natal and also work with all XBOX 360s, then it probably will not work as efficiently as we want it to because its being made for one specific combination of hardware. If Microsoft wants this to succeed, they should spend their time and money on making Project Natal work on the hardware that is already in circulation.

To put this into perspective, lets talk about the other console’s hardware refreshes. Nintendo has had one version of their Wii and Sony has had two major version, one with backwards compatibility and one without. The XBOX 360 has had about 4-5 major hardware combinations because of all the ones affect by the Red Ring of Death and the later E-74 errors.

With all these iterations of the XBOX 360, it might be wise to make a completely new system specifically for Project Natal that can take advantage of the hardware more efficiently. But Microsoft did announce that the XBOX 360 is less than halfway through it’s life cycle and with announcing Project NATAL, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. After the announcement that Project NATAL will be available on all XBOX 360, it seems that Microsoft will have to release a refresh to the 360 hardware so that there is at least one system that can have optimal settings for Project Natal.

About The Blog

This is a blog written by college students. We have 4 people that will be regularly posting, 3 of which are pursuing a career in the gaming industry. This blog will display news, game reviews, and editorials based on what we believe about the gaming world and how it affects us. We will try to post at least once a day, including weekends, which adds up to about 7 post a week.

Stay tuned for more content. Thanks