It seems recent news that Capcom are potentially getting sued for making a game about zombies in a shopping mall wasn’t all just Internet Nonsense and hot air after all.

In typical “just get your damned hands off my stuff, yeah?” style, Dawn of the Dead’s evil owners MKR owners have gone all out and engaged Litigation Mode in that curious way Americans find oh-so very very agreeable:

“Both works are dark comedies. In both, the recreational activities of the zombies and absurdly grotesque ‘kill scenes’ provide unexpected comedic relief.

Both works provided thoughtful social commentary on the ‘mall culture’ zeitgeist, in addition to serving up a sizable portion of sensationalistic violence.”

Watch this, very carefully. Not only for more ‘unnecessary quotation marks’, but also because if it goes anywhere, you’re going to have to tread very carefully where parody, pastiche and homages are concerned in future…

In short, :(

Here’s the link.

Bow Street Runner’s a kooky little web-based pointy-clicky made as edutainment by Britain’s once-glorious Channel4.

From Goz over at the ever-awesome Chewing Pixels who laid down the original design for the thing:

“The aim of the game is to educate players about the work of the formative British police force, The Bow Street Runners, through some Georgian detective work in a Broken Sword-ish style.

The broadcaster is wanting to create quality (whisper it) ‘edutainment’ - that scourge of the late-nineties classroom - the difference being that this time around the titles are being worked on by people who actually know games. Additionally, the budgets are large enough to facilitate fairly heavyweight work with some quality talent (hence the appearance of Julian Glover in the game, he of Indiana Jones and Star Wars fame).”

I’m not going to give you a link directly to the game, because I think it’s worth reading Goz’s semi-postmortem first. I find knowing a little of the background of a game often helps you really get into it, and it worked for me.

This is the first webgame I’ve ever stumbled across where I’m looking forward to getting out of the office away from the beady eyes of my “you should be working” boss, and going home and playing it through in its entirety. Exciting stuff.

Microsoft have announced that they’re opening up Xbox360 to User Generated Content, which presumably means more dross than you can shake a stick at.

Expect to sift through no end of rubbishy Breakout clones and an over-abundance of cornflower blue, all in an attempt to find the occasional gem.

Like bobbing for apples in a bucket of raw sewage. Can’t wait.

Press Release!

Later this year, via the Virtual Console, we’ll be able to play classic C64 games on Nintendo Wii!

There may be little to no chance of ever seeing an HD remake of Myth: History in the Making, or Splat! but at least we’ll soon be able to play them in our living rooms in all their original glory!

Of course, insta-loading kind of ruins the C64-vibe - presumably the loading screens will disappear into the ether too, but then you can’t have everything. Nor will you be able to have all the C64 games you loved unless you have money trees growing in your back garden, as it would seem that Nintendo will be charging 500 points per game (that’s about £3.70).

Having said that, I’d pay £3.70 to play Splat! from my sofa. Next up: Proper Atari joystick for the Wii please!

More info here!

Gosh it’s a veritable marketing blitz from Peter Molyneux today, isn’t it?

First we had news on Fable2, now it’s an interview where he speaks his mind on consoles and the state of PC gaming.

And by crickey, it’s rather no-holds-barred…

The fascinating thing is when [PopCap, Big Fish and Reflective] first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery Files and Alice Greensleeves and Diner Dash, and it felt quite exciting. There was a lot of innovation going on. Okay, there weren’t great graphics, but there was innovation.

In my view, that has completely stopped. They’re doing the same game over and over again with a different wrapper. It’s like a mini-universe in itself which is emulating what’s happening in our industry.

Wowzers! A pretty contentious argument there, Pete. Quite possibly alarmingly accurate however. He also goes on to pretty much blame The Sims and World of Warcraft for “sucking all the air out of the PC market”.

Read the full interview here!

After the resounding lack of support for my “is this the cutest videogame creature ever” from the completely awesome-looking Spore on Nintendo DS, I thought I’d try again. This time, courtesy of the it-could-go-either-way Fable 2. Frankly, if this lovely screenshot fails to emote some sense of excitement then you have no soul.

Because that’s one lovely sunset.

In fact, this is all shaping up to be an exceedingly beautiful game indeed. Add to that the amazing pet dog AI and you’ve got me sold already. Of course, with the plethora of features that Mr Molyneux raves about to Eurogamer in their preview, there’s just the hint of possibility that it may all be too complex for its own good. “Keep It Simple, Stupid”, a wise man once said.

More screenshots here!

Yep, seriously folks. Students across the world will soon be able to get their grubby little mits on XNA 2.0, Visual Studio 2008 (professional), Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft Expression Studio all completely free! They call it DreamSpark!

Currently rolling out across the US, UK, Canada, China and most of Europe, all you need to do is sign in, get yourself verified as a student (the system is linked to organisations that can confirm status), and then download away!

Almost too good to be true really. More information here (including an interview with Mr. Gates).

John Wilbur ‘Wild Bill’ Stealey Sr., who co-founded MicroProse Software with industry legend Sid Meier back in 1982, is set to return to the Games Industry with his new company, Thriller Publishing.

Stealey, a retired United States Air Force Lt. Colonel (gosh!) aims to develop, market, publish, and distribute wholly owned espionage and military-based properties. According to their website, specific themes which Thriller Publishing wish to explore include:

• Military: modern, historical, future/sci-fi
• Spy/espionage
• Related offshoots of the above
• Grounded in authenticity, realism, sensibility even if presented in a spoof style
• Good always triumphs over evil in the end; evil must never win
• Impart knowledge about world issues and conflicts; opportunity to enlighten
• No gratuitous violence, random killing or glorification of the enemy
• Made BY people who understand war and weapons FOR use by people who understand and respect the same

According to Stealey, “there is always opportunity for another compelling brand of quality games to emerge in this constantly growing industry”.

Fellow veterans Fred Schmidt and Jim Bull are joining Thriller Publishing - both of whom worked with Stealey at MicroProse during the 80’s.

Full article here!

Oh, Peter…

Whenever will you learn to just be a little bit more ’ssssssh’ when you’re writing games until you’re putting the sticky labels on the damned things?

“In the six years since Black & White, [the developers] have been working improving the great things that underpinned that game, and now they are getting pretty close to something that is very significant. It’s a very big thing. A new franchise and as close to something revolutionary as I have ever seen. And we’re close to announcing it.

If you think back to the one thing about Black & White that was most fascinating, you’d have to say it was that creature that learned behavior and seemed, for a certain glimpse, to be alive. Imagine if you could take that and multiply it by a billion…”

I’m no expert, but AI a billion times biggerer sounds like an awfully big AI to me…

The Canadians have just had their Electronic and Animated Arts awards (the Elans), set up to reward achievement in the videogames and animated arts genres for companies based in Canada, in which BioWare’s completely amazing Mass Effect scooped five of the awards!

Categories in which it won included Best Game, Best Art Direction, and Best Writing for a Game Production.

Read the rest of the awards here!