So over at Vintage Computing and Gaming they discuss, what could possibly be, the first video game character of color."Tomorrow, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Barack Obama. In honor of this watershed moment in American history, I thought we should pay tribute to another African-American trailblazer: the first black video game character. After exhaustive research, I believe I’ve found him.Thirty years ago (1979), the first obviously black video game character appeared in Basketball, programmed by Alan Miller for the Atari 800 home computer. Read More...

Try Resistance: Retribution Two Months Before It Comes Out! Here is some good news for you that are addicted to Resistance. Like addicted to the point where you can't wait for the new PSP game that will help flesh out the story of the over all game. Also addicted to the point that you are pre-ordering the game. Yes, that sounds sarcastic, but I am not trying to poke fun. I swear. Read More...

New Information For Activision's Prototype I'm sure you've heard of Activision's new game Prototype. Right? Well if not, then do I have a treat for you. And it is a very tasty one at that too. Full of Blood, Violence, Infections, and well what looks like a ton of fun. I do mean A LOT of fun. More of that below, but let me give you a quick recap of this game and what I was able to scrounge up at the THX booth at CES 2009. There is a plethora of fun screen shots and video clips that I got for your viewing pleasure, but there is a bit more that you won't be able to take away from just those. Like for instance, why the hell was the only way to catch any of this at CES was to get into the THX booth? Read More...

Finally Some Straight Answers So last week I brought the news about a San Disk that was made for Rock Band 2 on the Wii. Check it here. It raised some questions about the need to have it and if you had to actually buy this one to use it to get some great DLC for the Wii version of the game. Well after trying to track someone down at CES that knew the answers, I finally got them near the end of the show on Sunday. Yes 4 days of tracking for you guys. I hope you appreciate it. Read More...

3D Vision With NVidia and Panasonic So you think that the games and movies you watch are 3D. Well at least rendered that way. They are, but your eyes of course still only process it still in 2D. Meaning you don't get any depth processed into your brain. That is where the two above companies stepped up and said "Hey! Lets go one step further." After playing around and testing out these systems, the future of gaming, not to mention just home entertainment will be changing. Read More...

SanDisk SD Rock Band Wii Card So when they announced that they were hooking up the Wii with Rock Band and Rock Band 2, I questioned how those users would be able to enjoy some of the great DLC for the game. Seeing as there was very limited space built into the Wii system, there is not that make room for the game to grow. Well it would seem that this was an issue that SanDisk decided to fix. Looks like they are placing out a proprietary card specifically for you to download more songs for the game onto. Read More...

I am saddened to report that Hearst-owned UGO Network has purchased the 1UP Network from Ziff Davis. In what was thought initially to help improve 1UP and its financial standings, has turned out to be a grim surprise. After officially announcing the sale earlier, Ziff Davis Media CEO had this to say, “We believe this is a smart transaction for Ziff Davis Media that places these market leading assets and teams in a great environment poised for further success. The transaction allows us to pay down debt and shift our full focus to our core PCMag Digital Network business. We thank our 1UP team members for their contributions and wish them the best of success into the future”. Read More...

A Tale Of Greek Tragedy? The Good: One thing that I really loved about this game was the story telling of the game. First that it was very Greek and somewhat very close to something one would read in their Ancient Histories class. Second, the fact that you could choose your own adventure as you go a long, with choices based on one of the four patron gods of the game. And these choices are more than what other games allow for. Like if you chose to be a dick or a good follower of Ares, it gave a totally different outcome. Read More...

Christmas in Japan turned out to be an unfortunate one for J-RPG fans around the world. AQ Interactive announces the cancellation of the upcoming Action RPG, Cry On. It was being developed by Mistwalker Studios, who previously did Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and headed up by Hironobu Sakaguchi. This was supposed to be the third in Hironobu's planned XBox 360 titles. It was also due to feature a soundtrack by the legendary Nobuo Uemetsu and character designs by Kimihiko Fujisaka. According to 1UP, when approached with the questions as to why the game had been cancelled, AQI responded with the following statement: "AQI decided to cancel the project after analyzing the current market environment and forecasts for the future. Read More...

         It seems the folks over at Kotaku have gotten their hands on some leaked screens of the new Activision game Prototype. Read More...

Give a video game franchise enough time and eventually it stops being about attracting new fans and the focus switches to catering to the hardcore fanbase. It happened to the Dynasty Warriors series, it happened to pretty much any EA Sports series, and it happened to Armored Core. So with the release of Armored Core For Answer, the thirteenth game in the series, it’s no surprise that even with Ubisoft taking over as publishers, developers From Software have stuck with the two basic elements of an Armored Core game. Fast and crazy action and a ton of customization. As a result, it pretty much means that if you’re a fan, you’ll still like this game even if you did buy Armored Core 4 sometime over the course of the last twelve months. Read More...

The last time we saw a James Bond video game that tied into a movie was the release of The World is Not Enough in November of 2000 and it wasn’t so hot. Since then there have been a handful of very good games based on original Bond stories and then of course there was an adaptation of From Russia with Love which once again fell a little short of expectations. But now Bond is going through a reboot phase in the movies, and with the license switching hands from EA to Activision, the latest Bond game Quantum of Solace, has gone through some similar changes. Being an Activision property and a shooting game, it’s probably no surprise that the game is built using the Call of Duty 4 engine but a lot of people were probably wondering would the game transfer over well. Read More...

Prince Of Persia With a little under two weeks until the release of Prince Of Persia on the PS3, PC, and Xbox 360, Ubisoft has announced several alternate skins that will be available for the game. The first two revealed are Altair from Assassin’s Creed and the classic Prince from the Sand’s Of Time. In order to unlock the Altair skin, players will have to register at ubisoft.com. Read More...

Ready to put you’re fishing skills to the test? Then check out Rapala Fishing Frenzy 2009, brought to us by Activision and Fun Labs. The game is exactly what you would expect, a fishing simulation game featuring the Rapala license. But does a fishing sim on the XBox 360 translate to actual gaming fun? Well that all depends on what you are expecting from your fishing experience. In Rapala 2009 you start off the game by choosing whether your character is a male or female, and then you come to main menu. Read More...

Quantum of SolaceESRB: TeenReviewed on: Xbox 360Quantum of Solace is Activision's first 007 game released since gaining the license from EA in 2006. It also marks the first Bond game released on 7th generation consoles (it is also released on 6th gen too). Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikklesen, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, and Judi Dench all lend their voice and likeness to the game, which does give make it seem like you indeed are playing the movie, however, this time, that's a bad thing.Quantum of Solace doesn't fail so much due to the fact that it's not a great game to play, it fails in the regard that it's based on a movie, which while containing some over-the-top action, was largely a drama-love story that couldn't hold a candle to the action found in Goldeneye, From Russia With Love, Everything or Nothing, or even Nightfire. When producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson decided to take Bond in a different direction I was pleased with what came out on the big screen but was disappointed in the fact that the toned down, more realistic action wouldn't translate well to a video game, where over-the-top is the standard. Read More...