Quest for holy grail of game controllers
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The quest for a wireless, robust video game controller is a hit and miss task, says columnist Daniel Etherington.
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Not every amusement needs to blink, bloop or require a power source. These fine low-tech delights will provide hours of amusement for any game lover on your gift-giving list.
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?
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At first, you might mistake Nintendo&#39;s new DS handheld game device for a high-end organizer or an ultralight laptop. But the expression on the face of whoever&#39;s using it ought to give the secret
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Tycho: I just read through one of the conduits of Leipzig gaming news, and was jolted by a piece of news: Xbox Live is going to be moving into classic board games. I don't mean, like, Chutes and Ladders or some shit - though I don't doubt that GrowPot420 would snap that up on day one. No, I mean like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone. Pillars of the tabletop gaming community, so to speak. This is probably the biggest news of that convention for me. Getting people together to play these games, or finding people to play them with at all can be a trying endeavor. This is near Goddamn optimal.(CW)TB
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Tycho: Two new shirts today. One based on the Broodax Strips, which can be found here, and looks like this:   And another shirt based on the control scheme for Starfire Saga V: Laserion, which can be found here, and looks like this:   (CW)TB
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Impressive... most impressive Remember MacSaber, the fun utility that used a MacBook or MacBook Pro's hard drive movement sensor to trigger Jedi lightsabre sounds? Well, now you can do the same thing with the much more sword hilt-like Nintendo Wii Remote.â¦
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Nintendo's new game console has been flying off the shelves at retail stores across the country this season. And some game fans are reporting that the Wii's controller has been flying, somewhat unexpectedly, across their living rooms.
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First, it was the "clapper". Then came the Nintendo Wii. Now gesture control seems to be on the verge of being used in many more products.
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Game animator I-Wei Huang is getting rave reviews for his steam-powered robots. How does he hack RC kits with steam engines? And will he ever make a rideable robot? By Griffin Wright.
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Nintendo, Sony ready rival portable gaming devices. Which one will gamers go for?
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Tycho: Keek directed me to a radical (and potentially even "badical") article on BioShock over at Gamers Wif Jobs. I've been wondering about the recent PR shift the game has gone through, because I don't just keep hearing that it is a "shooter first," but I keep hearing specifically that it is a "kick-ass shooter," even though it's a game where you learn about Objectivism underwater while helping jealous composers get revenge. I've never doubted that the game will be great, by whatever road it reaches that greatness. The recent WWE slant just had me curious about whether I'll be able to perform a suplex in-game. You may not think that is important, but it is totally important.(CW)TB
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Tycho:  It took three separate discs and two consoles to finally work out the Goddamn kinks, but we were able to play almost the entire Eternal Sonata demo.  Almost!  I wasn't aware people were still boiling discs, presumably in black iron cauldrons where carrots bob, but I don't want to live a life where boiling discs is normal.
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Gabe:  We had this shirt at PAX and next to the actual PAX 2007 design I think it was our best seller. Like the majority of our stuff this probably won't make any sense to some of you. I'll just say it's Pokemon related and leave it at that. For you trainers out there who couldn't make it to PAX the shirt is now available in our store. The Target by our office had the new PSP slim with Daxter pack today so I went and picked one up. They unfortunately did not have the AV cables so I can't test the video out stuff yet. In fact all I've done so far is open it up and plug it in to charge. I don't know how "slim" it is but it's crazy light. I thought I was holding some kind of fake display PSP and the real one was still in the box somewhere.-Gabe out
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Bang, bang Wii warriors awaiting the arrival of Nintendo's Wii Zapper gun-style Remote holder don't need to go into virtual combat unarmed. US retailer DealExtreme if offering a pair of products designed to give players a more realistic experience.â¦
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Gabe: We did a really awesome project (can I say it"s awesome, is that okay?) for Wired magazine. You can either go pick up the most recent issue and read it there or check it out on their site. They asked us to do a piece for them handicapping all three of the next generation systems. We tried to be as fair as we could and hopefully you"ll get a kick out of it.
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Compact kit for the thumb-generation