Archive for the ‘opinion’ Category

Bit Generations – Overview

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

I’ve had the whole Bit Generations series for a few weeks now and thought it was about time I wrote a little bit about them.

 

Premise

The whole idea of Bit Generations is: really simple, pure yet modern games (think clean graphic design, electronic music and clean game play). There are 7 games in all with each one coming in its own beautiful packaging and on a Gameboy Advance cart. Its a liitle bit expensive seeing as they could all fit on one but then you wouldn’t be able to have a significant other playing one while you play the other. Each game focuses on a popular gaming type: puzzle, racing, adventure, audio and simplifies it to its core. Dot stream for example is Bit Generations take on racing, think Tron light cycles, you can only steer up or down, you leave a light trail, crossing another trail slows you down and you start with 3 lives/turbos.

 

Happiness

As someone who is going through prototyping at the moment and trying to set up his own games company these games reinforce why I am doing what I am doing. Each of these games shows that a simple concept with simple yet beautiful graphics can still be fun and purchased by games players. They are in essence, to me, what our prototype should be like. If I can get our demo(s) to be as fun and as pure as this then I will be very happy.

 

More to come

I hope to do more writing about Bit Generations in the coming weeks.

 

-Nic

Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

I just got Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon – Blue and I’m really enjoying it. Sure there are flaws to it but man its nice to play a different take on the whole Pokémon gameplay and universe.

 

Gameplay

You start as a Pokémon, or a human turned into one, who has to find a way to turn back. You get a few psychology type questions at the start which seem to determine which Pokémon you will play as, I got Mudkip! Then you get to choose and name your buddy, well doh Pikachu obviously.

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Dead Xbox 360 part 2

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

Well MSoft have my 360 and it should be repaired soon and back in my paws hopefully by the end of the week :)

 

I can’t wait as I now have Lego Star Wars, Dead Rising and finishing of Enchant Arms. That combined with all the great downloads from TGS and X06 and I need it now (I hope the downloads are not removed by the time I get it back).

 

I will definitely be checking out Need for Speed Carbon, the Banjo and Kazooie movie, Doom, FEAR and just for laughs Sonic.

 

-Nic

Dead Xbox 360 :(

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Well my Xbox 360 has had a happy life until this weekend when he couldn’t manage the strains of next-gen graphics anymore :(

 

I was playing the excellent Enchant Arms and it appears that my launch 360 had a fault which was just hiding in wait for the right time to strike. This weekend was when it chose to do so. 

 

The news is not all bad though! Although I have moved to Australia and my 360 was a UK launch model ever gracious Microsoft have whisked it away and are in the process of diagnosing its ills. I should be back up and running in no more than 10 days…

 

In the meantime I think I will try to complete my Pokemon collection (arggh) and finish off with the delightful Bit Generations range on GBA (more on them in a future posting).

 

-Nic