It’s the weekend, which means two things: 1) Everyone gets some gaming time (I hope) and 2) another top 5 stories is coming your way. Below, you’ll find brief summaries of our top 5 stories from this week, as well as a few stories that were interesting, but weren’t quite that big to make the cut. As always, if you want to read the full story, simply click on the link hidden in the titles. If you have suggestions for future entries, feel free to email me at jeremy.tyler@bagogames.com. Here we go.
Number 5
Link Between Worlds Wins a GDC Award
Nintendo‘s latest The Legend of Zelda game, A Link Between Worlds, won the 2014 GDC Award for Best Handheld/ Mobile Game . The other games nominated for the award were DEVICE 6, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Ridiculous Fishing and Tearaway.
A Link Between Worlds is a sequel to A Link to the Past and is playable on Nintendo’s 3DS and 2DS. Help Link as he must defeat a new evil that threatens his beloved Hyrule and travel with him between the worlds of Hyrule and Lorule. Between the sentimental story, beautiful graphics and all new explorable dungeons it is easy to realize why A Link Between Worlds won the GDC Best Handheld/ Mobile Game.
Number 4
Steam’s Intriguing New Controller
Steam is the best way to purchase/ store digital computer games and keep in touch with PC gaming buddies. With well over 3,000 games available it’s high time Valve’s Steam has a controller but is it something the average Steam user will purchase? Steam’s store says it’s:
“[a] new way to play your entire Steam library from the sofa… The Steam Controller is designed to work with all the games on Steam: past, present, and future. Even the older titles in the catalog and the ones which were not built with controller support”.
The Steam Controller has been confirmed to work with ALL Steam games, despite them not being developed to use a controller
Number 3
New Oculus Rift Now Available for Developers
With the 2014 Game Developers Convention soon coming to a close, the New Oculus Rift is the talk of the internet for gamers. By going to the Oculus VR website, developers can purchase the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 for $350 and will most likely be shipped in July 2014. The new features of the Oculus Rift are positional tracking, low persistence OLED display and a built-in latency tester. This is the list of what is included in the box: headset, 2 pairs of vision lenses, external camera meant for positional tracking, a camera usb cable, HDMI-DVI adapter and a sync cable.
The Oculus Rift Developers Kit is intended for developers only. According the the Oculus Rift FAQ page:
Minimum requirements: a computer running a Windows 7 or higher, Mac OS 10.8 or higher, or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating system, 2 USB ports (at least one powered), and a DVI-D or HDMI graphics output.
Recommended specifications: A desktop computer running a dedicated graphics card with DVI-D or HDMI graphics output, with capability of running current generation 3D games at 1080p resolution at 75fps or higher.
Number 2
Koji Igarashi Leaves Konami To Start His Own Studio
Koji Igasari is best known as the man in charge of the Castlevania franchise, or at least he was. He has a now announced that after 15 years he is now leaving Konami and that he intends to start up his own development studio. Writing to fans and the press,he said ”I’ve decided to break out on my own to have the freedom to make the kind of games I really want to make — the same kind I think fans of my past games want as well. Leaving Konami was a big decision, and not one I took lightly – I’ve spent my entire career there, made many friends, and had a lot of great opportunities – but I hope all the gamers and fans who have supported me in the past will join me in being excited about what comes next. Wish me luck!”
Koji ( also known as IGA) began his career with Konami in 1989, working for them part time whilst still at school.He rose to prominence in 1997 for his work as Assistant Director on the critically acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. In the game , he borrowed many gameplay elements from the Metroid franchise such as its non-linear structure and exploration based progression path. These new features proved very popular and IGA stayed with the Castlevania development team, rising to the position of Producer.
He went on to create a huge number of Castlevania titles for many different platforms including the PS2 and Nintendo DS. This specific style of gameplay is commonly refered to as ‘Metroidvania‘. Castlevania titles that use it are named after Koji Igasari and called ‘Igavanias’. This is to separate them from games that instead use gameplay features from the NES and SNES titles, which are called ‘Classicvanias’.
Number 1
Project Morpheus: Sony’s Virtual Reality Revealed
The PS4 will be getting a dose of virtual reality. Project Morpheus, not to be confused with the Matrix film or the NASA test vehicle, has been revealed through their GDC 2014 presentation. The project is most likely named after the Greek god Morpheus, who was the god of dreams although Sony has yet to reveal the name explanation. The model on display looks rad but is the technology behind it too radical for developers?
Honorable Mentions
This week had a lot of big news and the news staff and I found it hard to narrow it down to the usual five stories:
If you missed out on the big news items this week, you can check out our weekly podcast 8Bit Proof and get an audio update of this week’s madness from our podcasting team. Listen to us as we talk about some things seriously and a few other things not so much. We guarantee this episode will make you shake your fist at times and nod your head at others.
