Shocking news from the music gaming front — Rock Band 3 has been confirmed for a holiday 2010 release.

A mom in Tennessee is claiming that her daughter fatally shot herself in the stomach with a handgun she mistakenly believed to a Wii controller. At least, that’s her only explanation for what could have happened.

The latest issue of Game Informer has more information on Sonic 4: Episode 1 than one could possible want, with screens and an interview that should please plenty of old school fans. At least, the old school fans who aren’t busy whining about Sonic’s legs being too long.

And you thought killing zombies with a Dreamcast keyboard was ridiculous.

This summer, Epicenter Games will release Rock of the Dead for the Wii, a title admittedly influenced by Sega’s Typing of the Dead. Originally released for Japanese arcades in the late 90s, Sega’s title had players using a QWERTY keyboard to type out words to kill hordes of shambling zombies and other abominations. It’s an idea so crazy that it worked; the game wasn’t only educational, but absolutely ridiculous and a hell of a lot of fun.

“It’s a lot like Typing of the Dead,” Epicenter’s Bryan Jury tells me of their own Rock of the Dead, “but we’re using guitars rather than keyboards.”

With so many guitars already in homes, thanks to the success of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the idea is just so off-the-wall batsh*t crazy, it might work.

“We’re not trying to sell hardware,” Jury explains, telling me they’ve no intention of trying to sell new Rock of the Dead peripherals, “we’re just trying to make a fun kind of bite-sized gameplay experience in a new kind of genre.”

Strap on your Wii guitars, folks — you’ve got some monsters to kill. Read on for details on Epicenter’s Rock of the Dead.

The gameplay concept for Rock of the Dead is simple. Players work their way through on-rail levels (think a traditional light gun shooter), taking out enemies — which range from zombies to other horror genre staples — using your guitar peripheral. (Epicenter states currently available guitars should work, be it Rock Band or Guitar Hero.) All enemies will have a measure on them, a set of notes — could be two, three, four, or more. By playing the notes in order, you’ll be able to neutralize the on-screen enemies with your faux-musical prowess. The game’s lead designer, John Sahas explains the different types of enemy killing segments, broken up into “timed” and “untimed.”

“So the enemies who have just a bunch of notes attached to them, you can take out any enemy you see on the screen that you want, in any order you want,” he states. “You just play the notes; they’re not timed, they’re not moving across the screen. So those are more kind of action oriented segments.”

He likens the guitar to being “sort of like a machine gun,” with rapid button presses and strumming lending itself to faster paced gameplay. The other segments, where you might be faced with a boss enemy or a more complex area, work in the way a more traditional music game would. The music changes, drops to a background beat, and you’re faced with having to play a riff that scrolls across the screen. Play those riffs in time with the song, best the beast with your powers of rock n’ roll.

Fans of Guitar Hero and Rock Band might note that the game’s notes scroll horizontally, versus the expected “note highway.” According to Jury, this horizontal gameplay fits, which was their number one priority. He admits that it’s a legit concern — that it might be difficult to get used to — for players to have. Having ten enemies on the screen at once, he explains, it would be difficult to present it any other way, though. It might look strange in screenshots, he tells me, but it’s really a case gamers having to get their hands on the game before writing it off. But more important are the legal reasons; Jury calls the scrolling note highway gameplay a “patent minefield.”

“The vertical note highway is actually a patent that’s owned by another company,” he reveals, “and so while we’re kind of frustrated as creators and developers that we have to kind of work around a legal system in order to make a game, it worked out for us since we wanted to horizontal.”

Rock of the Dead can also be played with a friend (offline only) in what Epicenter is calling “competitive co-op.” While players can work together to rock the crap out of baddies, the game will also keep track of each player’s score and kill count. Players can both work on taking out a single enemy, too — if one player starts working on an enemy, another player can begin hitting the notes faster, stealing the points. In other areas, you might want to coordinate, with one player working on a main boss and the other focusing entirely on its minions.

“So it’s definitely an interesting dynamic,” says Sahas, “You can be as co-op as you want to be, or you can kind of be as cut-throat as you want to be.”

The game takes an interesting approach to rock music, as well. Epicenter decided to commission bands to create “rocked out” versions of classical pieces, stuff from legendary composers such as Brahms, Bizet, and Bach. It’s stuff you’ll recognize, too, popular classical pieces that — even if you couldn’t name them — you’ve heard before in other mainstream sources. Only this time, they’ve got a rock twist.

“We know these rocked out versions of these classical pieces are kind of goofy,” Jury confesses, saying it lends to the game’s deliberately campy feel, “but it works at the same time, so it works on a couple of different levels.”

Outside of the public domain re-worked classical arrangements, there’s a chance you’ll hear some rock or metal music from your favorite artists, but Epicenter doesn’t have anything to announce right now. Jury tells me they’re “moving forward” and “working with a couple of licensees,” and that cost could ultimately the issue. But more importantly, the music has to fit the game, to “serve the experience” as Sahas puts it.

“We explored a bunch of options,” he states. “we didn’t want to just have ‘Oh, I’m killing zombies and there’s this rock track playing in the background because it’s a popular song on the radio’ or something like that. So it was more something that just comes together as a whole experience. There are a couple of artists out there that are actually totally suited that, so we’re working on it.”

So Rock of the Dead has you killing ghouls with guitars, and that’s great. But why are you doing this again? Yes, there’s a plot, and it aims to be as campy and tongue-in-cheek as you’d expect a game about slaughtering monsters with music should be.

“Essentially, it’s a made for Television motion picture [that you might see] on the SyFy channel,” Jury states, “except it doesn’t take itself so seriously, and those movies always do.”

You play as a rocker kid who lives in a trailer park, just jamming on your guitar when meteors begin falling from the sky. The mysterious fallen stars brings crystals with strange properties to Earth, turning animals into blood thirsty monsters, bringing the dead back to life, and more. As it so happens, you’re just rocking on your guitar at the time of the attacks, and for whatever reason, it’s this rock music that can be used to exterminate these fiends.

Joss Whedon fans take note: Rock of the Dead is somewhat of a Dr. Horrible reunion. Neil Patrick Harris lends his voice as the rocker kid, who moves through the story trying to get to his girlfriend (voiced by Felicia Day) who works at a local news station. Even though both Patrick Harris and Day regularly get gaming voice over pitches that they end up turning down (their nerd cred is through the roof), Jury tells me that the Rock of the Dead project seemed to appeal to the actors.

“I asked them what made them interested in this,” he explains, “[and] they were actually interested in the game themselves. They’re as nerdy as their personas are; it was really kind of cool to hear them ask me about the game, instead of just showing up to do some work.”

Rock of the Dead is scheduled to ship for Wii early this summer; I hope to get my hands on the game next week at GDC, so keep your eyes open for a hands on report. The dead are so gonna get rocked.

source Destructoid

When the news first starting going around about upcoming Wii RPG Xenoblade, you might remember that I was freaking out over some of the music that the Japanese webpage featured. It was so beautiful that I was dying to know who the composer was.

My nonconformist ass imported the White Classic Controller Pro for more comfortable Wii gaming. It turns out that I could have waited a bit and got it for cheaper.

GameStop has a listing for the White version of this lovely controller, so that you might game in style when you play your Virtual Console titles and fighting games. They’ve a pre-order page up, with a ship date set for April 1st. No April Fools with the $19.99 price tag, either. The only fool was me for not waiting.

Is it just me, or is this your best controller. Analog sticks on an even level, solid hand feel, great buttons, killer d-pad. Why is this a secondary controller on a motion-based gaming system?

Of course, if you’re getting Monster Hunter Tri, the black one is bundled with it.

source Destructoid

The headline basically says it all. Enterbrain has released the Japanese lifetime sales numbers for the current generation of home consoles,

and here’s how it all plays out as of February 28th:

Wii: 10,007,736

PS3: 4,766,408

Xbox 360: 1,235,049

The Wii took 170 weeks to break the 10 million mark, which was 39 weeks longer than the PS2 took back in the day. They’re not “winning” by any means, but it’s nice to see that the Xbox 360 passed the 1 million mark. Microsoft made a mark with their system, perhaps gaining a foothold for their next release.

Japan: Lifetime Wii, PS3, 360 Sales Revealed [EDGE], pic via Akibablog

source Destructoid

Fredrik Liliegrin is the former CEO and co-founder of DICE and is now running a gaming company called Antic Entertainment. As such we should take his view on things very seriously and get really angry when he says things. Here’s the thing to get angry about (or concur with him on, I suppose):

…the Wii, to me, I would describe it as a Virus, that doesn’t stick. Everyone comes home, it’s a toy, people have got to realize the Wii is a toy, not an entertainment focused product. People come home, someone, they play Wii for a bit, feel it’s really cool, blah blah blah, they go out and buy one. Ask people how often they play the Wii, that are not the core game consumer that buys one because they’ve an Xbox 360 and a Wii or a PlayStation 3 and a Wii. The people that only own the Wii, ask that consumer how often they use their machine. They just don’t use it, it was cool, but they’re not gamers, so they put it away. Other than the Wii Fit phenomenon that helped a lot of people get a nice cutie voice telling that they’re fat and need to go work out, they need to find other alternatives. Nintendo is smart in that way in that they realize this is not a video game machine, this isn’t a games game machine.

Aside from the fact that his virus metaphor kind of falls apart about half way through and whoever typed the quote up could have sharpened it up a bit, do you think he has a point? I know my Wii has been turned on nearly constantly recently, but I’m the hardcore gamer he’s talking about. Is everyone else just shelving the thing? If the answer is yes, it’s sad to see so many people missing out on great games.

Free world wide web high five to whomever insights the first fanboy argument.

Former DICE CEO: ‘The Wii Is A Virus’ [Gaming Union]

source Destructoid

There’s little mystery behind why the classic “whodunit?” board game “Clue” is so popular. Everyone likes to feel smart — piecing together puzzles for those “ah-ha!” moments — and everyone likes to point the finger. But there’s a catch, as with most board games… all of that clean up.

Cards and other game pieces require set-up and post-game clean-up, which usually falls on one poor soul as the remainder of the players scatter off to use the restroom or fix their hair. Okay, I admit it – I’m a bit lazy. And since I’m too busy to get my detective’s license, what’s my substitute to scratching that gumshoe itch?

Disney Interactive’s Guilty Party, developed by Wideload Games (Stubbs the Zombie, Hail to the Chimp) just may be my answer. The four-player Wii-exclusive title mixes the crime solving of “Clue” with Wii Remote-based mini-games. The title’s being designed exclusively for Nintendo’s console with “family fun” style play, both cooperative and competitive, in mind.

At Nintendo’s Media Summit this week, I had a opportunity to get a first look at the game, as well as solve a few cases myself. Best of all? No mess.

Guilty Celebration introduces players to the Dickens Detective Bureau, a group of elite sleuths made up of crime solver stereotypes, designed to appeal to as many people as possible on the planet as possible. For example, there’s Charlotte, the petite and elderly granny who just happens to know kung-fu, or

If the new Wii Legend of Zelda doesn’t come out this year, Nintendo’s Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing Cammie Dunaway is going to owe Wired’s Chris Kohler a steak dinner.

In an interview conducted earlier in the week, Dunaway hints strongly that we’ll see the new Zelda this calendar year. She was so confident, she bet a steak dinner on it. Release dates for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M were confirmed at Nintendo’s media summit earlier this week, but Dunaway went out of her way to tell attending press that Nintendo was only showing titles for the first half of 2010. The second half, the exec told Wired, should be just as strong.

“One of the things that’s true for Nintendo is that we’re not driven by a calendar for our release dates,” she explains, leaving the door open for Kohler to be on the receiving end of said dinner. “When the games are ready to go, when the quality is perfect, that’s when we release.”

We may get to see the quality of the new Zelda this June — Nintendo is expected to show off the title at E3 this year.

Q&A: Nintendo’s Cammie Dunaway Says Wii Might Have Peaked [Wired]

source Destructoid