Final Fantasy IV (Original N.A. Box)

Building on the innovations incorporated in the Famicom releases of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III, SquareSoft’s Super Famicom release of Final Fantasy IV charts the intertwined tale of a much larger and more clearly defined cast of characters, whose complicated histories and interactions both aid and impede the quest to save their world from destruction.

The player controls Cecil Harvey, a Dark Knight of the Kingdom of Baron. Cecil commands an armada of airships which the King of Baron uses to attack neighbouring countries with the intent of acquiring their elemental crystals. When Cecil questions whether there is a need to employ deadly force against unresisting adversaries, the King of Baron dismisses him from command and orders him on an errand to a far away village. When Cecil’s associate, Kain, speaks in defence of the former Captain, he is ordered to accompany Cecil, and thus the adventure begins.

Along the way, Cecil will face challenges from friends and foes alike, and from unlikely places he will find aid. But if he is to defeat the true evil which faces not only his kingdom, but his planet, he will need to face his own demons and overcome them. Only then will he have the ability to help others.

Japanese cosplay remains solid.

Use the comment thread below to discuss your approach to the game, challenges you have faced, tactics you are employing, and what you are getting out of your playthrough. Do you feel that the presentation of Final Fantasy IV has held up since its original release in 1991? Are there aspects of the game that you would change, or that you would hold up as an example for modern game developers to emulate? How have your experiences with Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and other JRPGs released after Final Fantasy IV changed your impressions of the game? Tell us all about it and join in our discussion below!

The aim in this playthrough is to complete the entirety of the game in three weeks. In the final week, the goal is to complete the first third of the game (up to the acquisition of Enterprise). Feel free to join in, even if you are behind on the playthrough. Anyone and everyone is invited to participate, regardless of speed of play or familiarity with the series. Remember to comment, and please tell your friends!

Without further adieu, it is our pleasure to invite you to join the Lusipurr.com staff members, guests, and readers as we travel beneath the surface and into the skies in Wielding the Light and the Dark: A Final Fantasy IV Playthrough!

It’s that time of the year! Again! Unfortunately!

Download: Released 2016.06.13

As E3 looms on the horizon, Imitanis and SiliconNooB assist Lusipurr in presenting the veritable deluge of industry news, covering everything from game releases to new game announcements to future games in playable preview–AND the Holy Grail is found!

Now YOU TOO can look grimly emo and depressed.

Download: Released 2016.04.04

With the advent of Nomura’s long-awaited desire (turning Final Fantasy from a video game franchise into a fashion line), and Nintendo’s release of Miitomo (a content-free microtransaction-fuelled puerility zone), Lusipurr deploys scorn in great abundance.

Could this be Microsoft’s last console?

Download: Produced 2015.10.11

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB discuss the upcoming Cricket All-Stars series in America, the decline of Microsoft’s console fortunes, the deprecation of many Disney titles, the delay of Shovel Knight, Konami’s vast greed, and the first part of Chrono Cross.

Ko na mi is on fire, on fire, on fire…

Download: Produced 2015.09.27

When Konami headquarters bursts into flames, Lusipurr and SiliconNooB hurry to the scene of the conflagration, where they speculate as to the cause of the blaze, crack jokes, report on Square Enix’s manifold prevarications, and read a book about knights.

The Pikmin look as surprised as anybody that they’re getting another release.

Everything Old Is New Again!

Seeing re-releases of certain games is not an unusual thing, even when done so on the same console. The Sega Saturn saw a second release of Virtua Fighter after the initial version was horribly botched in order to make the launch of the console, and Daytona USA saw a second release for much the same reason [or even three releases if one counts the super rare netlink edition of that game]. The SNES was much the same, seeing no less than three different versions of Street Fighter II, although in the case of that game each subsequent release was a heavily revised edition of the core game, almost making them quasi sequels. Things do get a little silly when one considers the release history of Pikmin 1 however.

Much like Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA, Nintendo may have felt that the initial release of Pikmin 1 suffered because of the need to get it out within the GameCube’s 2001 launch window. That is why Nintendo re-released the game in 2004 once again for the GameCube, with some minor edits made to Pikmin 1‘s code. Fast-forward to 2009, and we see Nintendo re-releasing Pikmin 1 yet again – not merely once, but twice within the same calendar year for the Wii. That said, inexplicably North America was the one region that did not get this second Wii revision of the game until 2012, possibly because in 2009 they had not yet managed to sell all the copies they had produced during 2009’s initial re-release of Pikmin 1. It is never long between drinks where Pikmin 1 is concerned however, and August of 2013 saw the game being released yet again on Nintendo’s successor console, the Wii U. Then finally this week Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed that a sixth revision of Pikmin 1 has not only been in production, but is actually almost complete.

“It’s actually very close to completion. Pikmin teams are always working on the next one.

We can confirm that Pikmin 4 is in development but that is all we can confirm at present.”

Oddly, despite being offhandedly loose-lipped about the game’s existence, Miyamoto was not prepared to state which platform this version of Pikmin 1 is in development for. Only time will tell whether Nintendo elects to continue the tradition of dropping two revisions of Pikmin 1 per console generation by supporting the Wii U, or whether the game is intended to be an NX launch title in late 2016. Then again, this version of Pikmin 1 may simply be being ported to the New 3DS, like Xenoblade Chronicles before it.

Bartz and futts!

Final Fantasy V Is Getting a PC Release on Steam

Speaking about re-releases, Square Enix is of the opinion that the world can never get enough shitty ones, especially when they have the name Final Fantasy in the title [excluding Final Fantasy XII of course, since people actually want that one]. Thus, on the twenty-fourth of this month Final Fantasy V will be seeing its long awaited PC debut on Steam. Here are some of the amazing new features:

“Veteran character designer Kazuko Shibuya has returned to recreate the characters and graphics for an enhanced experience!

This new version also includes “The Sealed Temple” from the 2006 release, as well as the Tetsuya Nomura-designed optional boss Ennui, and an extraordinary soundtrack.”

Great, so it appears that Square Enix are completely revamping the graphics from the ground up, so as to customise it for the high fidelity PC environment! Even better, the controls have been optimised for the PC, so we should have little difficulty pulling off sick headshots with mouse and keyboard controls! And then best of all is the fact that Square Enix even thought to include some old tat that Tetsuya Nomura retconned into the experience! Brilliant!!!

Of course if one wishes to maintain this high level of enthusiasm, then perhaps consider not going to Final Fantasy V‘s Steam Page. One does not wish to sound alarmist however, and should readers venture to the game’s Steam Page then one is almost 100% sure that they will not see that Square Enix’s ‘enhanced graphics’ is merely marketing speak for the same horrid flash graphics that blighted Final Fantasy V‘s iOS release, because that would be super cynical, right? And even if due to some crazy set of circumstances the graphics did happen to suffer a little in the transition to the PC, then one can still happily affirm absolute confidence that Square Enix’s ‘optimised controls’ and ‘enhanced ATB battle system’ are more than mere afterthoughts. It is certainly not the case that ‘optimising controls’ really just means figuring out how to make the game’s touch interface work with PC control schemes, and it double certainly is not the case that the iOS touch icons are still visible down the side of the battle screen, nope, this simply will not be the case! Square Enix are releasing this port to celebrate the twenty-third anniversary of Final Fantasy V and they are charging sixteen dollars for the experience, so one has the utmost confidence that Square Enix will absolutely treat their customer’s wallets with respect by delivering to them the kind of refined Final Fantasy V experience that PC gamers deserve!

2d Mario is just missing something…

Miyamoto Explains Why the Wii U Is Bereft of a Proper 3D Mario Title

Ever since the launch of the N64 every generation of Nintendo home consoles has ushered in a new interpretation of precisely how an open-world 3D platformer can function and push new boundaries in the form of their flagship Mario series – that is until now. Super Mario 64 is still arguably the best title that Nintendo has produced in this vein. Mario Sunshine took the core Mario 64 mechanics and then added a resort town overworld and the ability to gain height with Mario’s FLUDD waterpack. The Mario Galaxy games then took Mario into outer space, and explored how to do 3d platformers in a zero gravity environment. And now with the Wii U Nintendo has provided nothing even remotely close to these experiences – they have in essence retreated within themselves, and the lack of a proper 3d Mario title has been quite conspicuous in its absence.

This week Miyamoto has opened up about precisely why 3D Mario has been on such a long hiatus – it essentially boils down to 3d platformers just being too damn hard for some people, which is tough luck for the sizable audience that actually enjoys playing them.

“[A new Mario Galaxy] is always in discussion, but even with Mario 64 there was a lot of feedback about motion sickness with the 3D or maybe us making it too difficult.

We’re always thinking, is there a middle ground where people who do enjoy the 3D worlds of Galaxy and those who enjoy New Super Mario Bros. can both enjoy it? We’re always looking at those opportunities.”

Nintendo and Miyamoto both want two different audiences to buy the same game – and to a large extent they probably do. A portion of the 2d Mario audience quite clearly does not enjoy 3d Mario games, while presumably most of the 3d Mario audience are probably quite happy to purchase his 2d outings – this much is evident in terms of game sales. What Nintendo are too myopic to realise however, is that 3d Mario fans might be happy to buy 2d Mario games, but that does not necessarily mean that they are going to purchase a three-hundred dollar Nintendo console for that privilege. Then of course there are all the people who grew up on Nintendo, but drifted away from their consoles during the fifth and sixth console generations – any one of us could be prompted to buy a Nintendo console if Nintendo dropped something suitably amazing, but this generation Nintendo are not even contesting the field. 3d Mario titles do not sell as many games as 2d Mario titles, but they do sell consoles. It is frankly insane that Nintendo did not even think to have one in development for this console generation, preferring to bunch these two audiences together in the mistaken belief that it will earn them more shekels. And how has this genius strategy served Nintendo this generation, as the Wii U struggles to outsell the Sega Dreamcast? In fact one understands that the announcement of Shenmue III has resulted in an uptick in Dreamcast sales, which is more than anything that Nintendo has had to crow about for a good long while.

Ultimately Miyamoto gives little indication that he understands any of this, being that his stance on further games in the genre being created could be charitably described as noncommittal:

“On the other hand, me and [Yoshiaki] Koizumi-san, director of Galaxy, are always looking to challenge Galaxy and do another 3D action title, however we can’t make so many games at once in parallel.

But as the hardware technology gets better and advances, I think there will be a lot of opportunity for both options.”

So much about this perplexingly stupid utterance angers one on an almost elemental level. Why does Miyamoto believe that advances in hardware technology will help these two different genres of Mario games co-exist? Does the NX console feature technology that is going to do Miyamoto’s job for him? And why does Nintendo have the capacity to re-release Pikmin 1 for the sixth God damned time, yet lacks the capacity to produce 3d Mario games – which are only their fucking bread and butter?

No word on whether Umaru is the student council president…

Anime Spotlight: Himouto! Umaru-chan

Umaru Doma is the perfect girl. Kind and diligent, she is an ideal student and excels in her studies – that is publicly. In her private life Umaru is a loud and obnoxious slob, who binges on junk food, manga, anime, and video games. Teihei is Umaru’s hardworking and long suffering older brother upon whom she relies almost exclusively. Himouto! Umaru-chan is a series which derives much of its humour from Umaru’s poor treatment of Teihei, and from the stark division between her public and private personae [to the extent that Umaru is drawn in different styles depending on whether she is at home or at school].

Himouto! Umaru-chan began its run in July of this year, and as of now there are ten episodes available. The series was produced by Doga Kobo, a studio with which one is not wholly familiar, and is being simulcast by Crunchyroll for the delectation of Lusipurr.com’s perverted Otaku readers!

Adeki is agitated.

Download: Produced 2015.08.23

When Lusipurr, SiliconNooB, Imitanis, and Mel learn that their actions as podcast panelists are agitating the notable internet personality, Adeki, Mel resigns in protest and the remaining staff members devote themselves to vengeful personal attacks.

Lusipurr enjoys pizza.

Download: Produced 2015.03.01

In an effort to prevent Lusipurr enjoying his pizza, SiliconNooB harasses him with constant gibberings and dribblings of a news- and cricket-related nature. Then, adding insult to the injury, Bup arrives on the scene, necessitating even more shouting.

Finally, freedom.

Download: Produced 2015.01.11

SiliconNooB and Imitanis join Lusipurr in a representation of three great English-speaking centres of world culture: Britain, North America, and Australia, in a podcast designed to urge Imitanis to play more Warcraft with Lusipurr for glory and mounts.

Road trip!

Download: Produced 2014.09.21

Following the Tokyo Games Show, Lusipurr fires everyone and releases scores of jitterbugs, resulting in a curious increase in productivity, Mel prepares himself for handheld Smash Bros., and SiliconNooB realises that there is no exploration in Metro.

Lusipurr, Ethos, and SiliconNooB advance resolutely into the unknown.

Download: Produced 2014.08.17

Lusipurr, Ethos, SiliconNooB, Blitzmage, and Iliya are momentarily buoyed by report of English Cricket victories, surpassing all expectations. Unfortunately, a run of depressing news is more than enough to misdirect the panelists into the doldrums.

It is an irony that Microsoft have abandoned Europe.

Microsoft Concedes Continental Europe, Axes TV, TV, TV!

This week Microsoft unveiled their final solution to the European problem, a grand purge which ostensibly seems to have been brought on through their April 2014 acquisition of Nokia, but which has nonetheless swept up Xbox’s European endeavours in the maelstrom. Over the course of the next twelve months 18,000 employees across Microsoft will be let go, of which 12,500 will be from the Nokia side of the business. Obviously the Nokia redundancies still leave 5,500 positions which must be accounted for elsewhere throughout Microsoft’s operations, and it appears that brand Xbox has not gone unscathed. Microsoft will reduce the staff of Xbox EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] by seventy-five percent, with employees having to re-apply for the remaining twenty-five percent of position available. Xbox UK is also set to lose ten percent of its workforce along with all contract positions, though this might be perfectly natural following the launch of a console.

The most significant item on this list is obviously the butchering of EMEA, which is understood to comprise marketing and localisation efforts for the regions referenced in the title. It is specifically telling on account of the fact that the Xbone will not have launched in most of these regions until September of 2014, delivering the clear message that Microsoft is already resigned to the fact that these territories will be heavily Sony-dominated, and so no longer views competing with the PS4 in these markets as a priority. Microsoft essentially gives up. What this means is that the Xbone’s September launch will likely be a much more muted affair than it otherwise might have been, and Microsoft published games may experience a longer delay when launching in these so-called tier-2 countries. Also, the Xbone’s television integration features will likely never be fully compatible with broadcasters outside of the Americas and the UK.

“We eliminated a number of EMEA roles in the UK to gain efficiencies. We remain very committed to the market and will continue to support our local development teams. We believe that the UK has exceptional games industry talent and we’ll continue to focus on game creation in the through Microsoft Studios like Rare, Lionhead Studios, Lift London and Soho Productions. Also, Europe continues to be an important market for Xbox, and we’re excited to launch Xbox One to fans in 13 mainland European markets in September.”

Another victim of Microsoft’s job cuts has been TV, TV, TV – which is to say that Xbox Entertainment Studios, a television production studio with a staff of over two-hundred that was to serve as the crux of Microsoft’s initial strategy of appealing to TV watchers, is now set to be shuttered. Microsoft’s initial strategy for the Xbone was to make it centerpiece of an owner’s entertainment set-up, and a large part of that entailed producing original television programming that was exclusive to the Xbox One platform. It appears that Microsoft radically overestimated the popularity of the Xbox One, as a third-place console with 4.8 million owners is presumably insufficient to sustain a fully operational television studio. Thus we have yet another spectacular backflip on the part of Microsoft, where the platform that was to be all about original programming opts to cut it entirely. Xboners may at least content themselves in the knowledge that television series based on Halo and Quantum Break, along with Microsoft’s ET documentary, will still see the light of day.

They’ve gone into a feeding frenzy!

Square Enix C&Ds the Final Fantasy Type-0 Translation Patch – Only a Month Too Late

Bad news for anyone who has not yet got their hands on the Final Fantasy Type-0 English translation patch, because on July 18 Square Enix lawyers delivered a C&D to Sky’s RomHacking Nest, which totally had the effect of removing a highly anticipated patch that had only been released a full month ago from every corner of the internet. The Patch [and indeed pre-patched ISO] is in no way available right now from the Pirate Bay, Torrent Reactor, or any other P2P torrent vendor, as precisely nobody thought to upload it! The bastion of top-shelf journalism known as Gameranx gave the fan patch a fitting enough eulogy via the article ‘Final Fantasy Type-0 Fan Localization Patch Canceled’, as penned by master wordsmith Ian Miles Cheong:

“ Square Enix has issued a cease and desist order of a fan translation patch for Final Fantasy Type-0. Originally created by fans for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PlayStation Vita versions of the game, the patch has since been removed from the internet due to legal threats by the publishing company.

Despite the cessation of the fan-made localization of Final Fantasy Type-0, western audiences will still be able to play the game when it is released in the future for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game doesn’t have a release date yet, but Square Enix has confirmed that the game will be out as an HD remaster for the new-gen consoles.”

Cheong is quite right to point out that the project is done for, as, as everybody well knows, once a file is eliminated at its point of origin it is gone from the internet forever. Moreover, apparently the Square Enix C&D was so incredibly potent that it had the net effect of retroactively delaying the patch’s release from the original June 9 until August 8 – effectively removing the patched game from many a hacked PSP! Sad times!

Something feels a tad incomplete…

Bamco To Shut Down Tales of Phantasia

Originally released to the Super Famicom in 1995, the initial release of Tales of Phantasia remains one of the more palatable entries in the Tales series. The number of platforms upon which the game has subsequently been released on over the years would be impressive even for a Final Fantasy title, yet despite this the game has only ever seen release on two occasions in the West – a slightly mangled version for the GBA and a very mangled version for iOS. The iOS version was released a mere six months ago as a free-to-play game with with an onerous focus on in-app purchases, yet despite its tender age it was announced this week that the title [and all associated services] would be pulled from iTunes at the end of August. This August. This is a problem for anyone who has invested significant amounts of money into in-app purchases, because Tales of Phantasia on iOS does not allow players to save their games unless they have an active internet connection [think Sim City].

“We regret to inform you that we will cease distribution of this app on 08/28/2014 (Thursday).
On this date, the app and all associated services will become unusable. This includes In-App Purchase items already purchased and save data.
Furthermore, sale of In-App Purchase items will conclude on 07/29/2014 (Tuesday).
We apologize sincerely to all of our customers for this inconvenience, and hope you continue to enjoy our products and services in the future.”

Essentially Namco Bandai have crippled the original game in service to their free-to-play model, with some inventory items costing as much as $6.99, and then when their six month old game flopped they have opted to throw the customers who actually bought into it under the bus. As a free-to-play game on a smartphone platform this iteration of Tales of Phantasia obviously has limited direct relevance to Lusipurr.com, yet its indirect implications still bare thought. This is the direction that the entire industry is pushing towards, a direction which would see gaming becoming a service industry, and savefiles becoming useless once a developer pulls support. Games used to be a permanent investment, yet the very purveyors of the medium would see them become disposable fancies which are given a one season run, or two if they are lucky. One would not want to become too invested in any one title, as it is likely to be pulled the moment it stops making money. This Tales of Phantasia debacle is precisely what the entire industry will look like if the EAs of the world are able to get their way.

Shattered Planet. Available on Windows now, with a Mac version soon to follow.

Some may call Shattered Planet a roguelike, others may call it a roguelike-like. Whatever side of the fence a gamer may fall on, everyone will agree that this is a survival-exploration RPG. Originally developed for iOS and Android, Execution Labs and Kitfox Games have brought their procedural death labyrinth generator to the PC, and soon the Mac as well.

With the blight consuming all planets in the galaxy, humanity has traced the location of a possible cure to the age-old ruins of a broken planet. This is where the player steps in, exploring the planet and destroying the indigenous creatures in the name of science. The shattering of the planet has created a multitude of floating islands in the sky. Any one could contain the key to the survival of life as we know it.

Yes, all the maps in Shattered Planet are procedurally generated. This basic requirement of roguelikes is neatly fulfilled by having small masses of land connected together by short walkways. Combat is turn-based. For each action the player takes, whether that be moving, attacking, or using an item, all the creatures on the map get to take a turn as well. Littering the floor are an assortment of flasks whose content is randomised with each game. A red container may heal the player during one game, then poison them the next. The goal of a basic game is to explore each map in the search for the teleporter to the next area, striving to achieve a greater distance with each new clone that is sent to the planets rather fragmented surface.

Collecting datalog entries is a long-term goal for the player.

Along their travels, the player will begin to fill out their datalog. This is a record of all the different enemies, equipment and biomes that the player has encountered during their time with the game. Every fifteen discoveries, the player gains a research level and unlocks a reward, such as a new class to play on subsequent exploration attempts. There are several categories of discoveries, including pets that the player can obtain by convincing one of the local hostiles to join them. To prevent players from combing every inch looking for new discoveries, the blight will be forever on their tails. Starting from the same location as the player, the blight will slowly corrupt tiles adjacent to itself, damaging the player should they walk through it. The blight can also corrupt or spawn its own enemies.

What may cause some people to say Shattered Planet is actually a roguelike-like is down to the fact that the player can keep some progression in between exploration attempts. When not risking the life of yet another clone on the surface of the planet, the player has the use of the facilities on a rather cosy space ship. Here currency found on the surface of the planet can be used to synthesise a random piece of equipment. As the player gains research levels, new facilities are unlocked for use. Here the player can purchase permanent stat enhancements for their current class, or perhaps clone one of their pets unlocked during exploration.

Ultimately, the player is trying to build up their character over time to take on more difficult challenges. Along side the exploration mode are three different ‘story’ modes. These are the same basic game with random maps, but each have a goal that the player can accomplish for a reward. These different modes also contain unique entries in the datalog, so anyone wishing to fill their lists out will need to venture into these difficult areas.

The blight chasing the player can also spawn or convert enemies to keep players on their toes.

The last game type is the daily challenge. This is randomly generated map is the same for every player on the day it is attempted, and may only be played once a day. Here the the player cannot chose what items to take with them and is instead given whatever items are chosen for the map that day. The player can still chose their own class, along with any training that class may have received, so veterans are more likely to do better. Still, for a randomly generated single-player game, it is great to be able to compare attempts with friends. To aid in this, the game has the ability to tweet scores built into it.

Shattered Planet began life as a mobile game, and it shows in its graphical style. All the art is detailed and colourful, and as smooth as they are, each unit only has a couple of different animations; resting, attacking, and moving. Currently equipped gear is reflected in the character model. The player customise the look of their character class, but this is usually hidden by the armor equipped.

Fans of the roguelike and RPG genres may be interested in Shattered Planet. Death is no major setback, and the persistence of character upgrades allow players of all skill levels to eventually tackle the harder content. Daily challenges allow players to compete against each other, and like Spelunky, the results can be posted to various social media sites for the world to try and beat. The game can get a little repetitive, but skill will allow player to push on to new areas.

Angry Birds Epic

Angry Birds started life as a puzzle game where the player used the titular birds to attack their enemies, the pigs, across a variety of flimsy fortifications. Since then the game and its cast have shot to fame and expanded into other themes with Seasons, Space and Star Wars, and other genres with Bad Piggies and Go. Epic is Rovio Entertainment’s latest foray into a different genre. This time the birds star in their own role-playing game for Android, iOS and Windows. This review is based on the iOS version.

As with most iterations of the franchise, the game begins with the piggies stealing eggs from the birds. Red begins his adventure solo, recruiting the rest of the cast as his adventure takes him across a rather large and detailed world map. Each level on the map represents a combat encounter for the player to deal with, and each level can be replayed multiple times for higher scores and additional loot. Before beginning combat, the player is shown the approximate difficulty of the battle, as well as the crafting materials that can be won from the fight. Once the player has recruited a sufficient number of allies, this is also where they will select which of the birds are taken into combat.

Combat is a standard turn-based fare. The player goes first, using each of their birds before the piggies take their own turn. Each bird has three types of attack; offensive, defensive, and rage. Offensive attacks deal direct damage to one or more opponents and sometimes have additional effects, such as Red’s taunt. Defensive abilities are usually a way of mitigating or dealing damage through passive effects. Rage attacks are all-out moves that are extremely powerful, but require a full chilli rage bar to use. The chilli rage bar is built whenever the player deals or is dealt damage, and is consumed to use a single attack.

Angry Birds Epic uses a turn base battle system.

Play continues in turns until the player wins or is defeated. Players are scored based on the value of the enemies killed and the amount of life each of their team has left. Up to three stars are awarded based on the players score for the level, and each star represents an additional piece of loot that can be collected by the player. A wheel showing all the potential prizes the player can collect is then spun, and any section that falls on a star the player has been awarded is then given to the player. After finishing a level, a flag is raised showing the most stars the player has earned there. Each enemy killed also earn the player experience. Experience is gained for the account, and gaining levels increases the attack and health of all the players birds.

After a few levels, the player gains access to crafting. All loot gained from fights are actually crafting materials used to produce new weapons, armour, or items. Made using alchemy, single use items can be consumed in battle for a variety of effects. Weapons and armour are produced in the forge to increase attack and health respectively. Recipes must be bought or found before new items can be made, and the outcome of crafting is slightly random. After something is crafted, a dice will roll from zero to three stars for it. Each star increases the amount of an item produced, or increases the effectiveness of a piece of a equipment. New gear will sometimes change a birds skill set.

The world map is impressively detailed. More areas are likely to be added in later content patches.

There are reasons to come back to Epic daily. Once per day the player can fight the golden piggy for coins, loot, and in-game currency. There also seven dungeons, one for each day of the week, that give the player the opportunity to earn more coins. For these they must use one of their friends birds in addition to two of their own. Alternatively, Piggy McCool can be used as a default friend, or one of the Mighty Eagle’s elite birds can be bought for use.

This would not be an Angry Birds without there being some kind of micro transactions or Facebook involved. Epic can be played completely free and without being connected to a Facebook account, but with both it is made substantially easier. Having friends tied to the game allows the player to collect friendship essence from them daily. This resources allows the player to spin the loot wheel again for a chance at better loot, or to re-roll the dice on crafting for better results. Some levels reduce the number of birds a player can bring, requiring them to ask friends for an extra party member. There are also friendship gates that the player needs to ask their friends to help open. Premium currency can also be used to open friendship gates, as well purchase coins, essence and upgrades to make the players life easier.

Angry Birds Epic is a solid game that introduces RPG mechanics to the franchise. Levels can be replayed for extra loot and higher scores, and become far easier with better characters and equipment. However, the whole game is let down by adverts and the ability to make the game far easier than it needs to be. This is a franchise aimed at children, and while they are unlikely to spend any real money without the parents consent, the danger of the child irritating the parents with constant requests for in-game currency is high enough that the game will be deleted very quickly anyway.

[PICTURED]: Cliffy B. throwing a tantrum.

Cliffy B. Calls Out the Naysayers

As Lusipurr.com’s Ethan Stone pointed out earlier in the week, the Kickstarter donating portion of the internet was aghast to find that Facebook had bought their trendy new toy out from beneath them – to paraphrase Mike Mika: hundreds of game developers awoke to the fact that they were now developing Facebook games. Donators were fuming on account of the fact that they were led to believe that they were donating to an indy VR champion of the people, when in actual fact they now hold a minute sliver of a stake in a product that is now corporate as all fuck.

Following the announcement Oculus Rift staff took to Reddit in order to assuage fears, yet they may as well have not bothered as the nonsense they were peddling strained credulity something fierce. According to Oculus staff Facebook is a benign investor who will just sit back and not interfere with the development of the project, and they would be very stupid indeed if they actually believed that tripe. As Ethan Stone pointed out in his article, the Oculus Rift is an extremely niche piece of hardware, so Facebook do not stand to profit from selling hardware and licensing software. The Oculus Rift may be made compatible with several potential Facebook services [IMAX movies, virtual tourism], yet if the device is set to be a niche peripheral among PC gamers, then Facebook had better believe that only a super niche group of Facebook users will buy into this expensive and obtrusive technology. Facebook as a company makes its money by collecting user data and selling it to other companies, and if they request that spyware be built into Oculus Rift then the development team will have no choice but to acquiesce – many gamers and developers understand this which is why so many people feel defrauded by their Kickstarter experience.

Cliffy B., never a man to let the chance to be an obnoxious shit pass him by, has also seen fit to throw his hat into the ring by chiding upset donators in the most patronising way possible:

“The Internet Outrage Machine loves to pile on something like this. Heck, some of the memes I retweeted because they were pretty funny. While amusing, these memes and animated gifs reek of shortsightedness. People are very rear window in their thinking online “Oh now we’re going to get Farmville VR.” Maybe Zuck sees what everyone else has seen – the future – and wants to make sure it’s more than just great games and saw that it would add value to his business?”

Yes, one can already picture the masses of Facebook users donning their VR headsets in order to do quick spot of social networking – Android compatibility confirmed! Cliffy B. then goes on to explain to naysayers that they do not understand how business works, as if they did understand how business works then it would be utterly inconceivable that they could be upset about the events that transpired:

“The final bit of outrage that I’m calling out is the fact that Oculus was Kickstartered and that some of those folks who donated are outraged. Apparently some folks don’t understand that donating to a Kickstarter gets you whatever reward you’re told when you donate, you don’t get equity, you don’t get to participate in the fruits of a sale of a company like that.

By purchasing WhatsApp and Instagram Facebook has kept its head above water, and by purchasing Oculus they’ve shot back into hyper relevance. Worried Facebook is going to ruin Oculus? Check out Whatsapp and Instagram…turns out they’re working just fine since their acquisition.”

Is Facebook entitled to free Minecraft?

Cliffy B. knows all about business, as, after buying himself a large stake in Oculus Rift, he now stands to make out like a bandit in the company’s two billion dollar sale to Facebook. Cliffy is happy and gamers should be happy like Cliffy – and if gamers are unable to be happy like Cliffy, then they should be happy for him! What Cliffy B. does not seem to understand is that it is unlikely that many [if any] of the Oculus Rift donators thought that they were actually buying equity in the company, rather they thought they were buying a very specific product, and that product has now changed. Many of the people who paid three hundred dollars for a development kit are no longer making their game for the indy community that they thought they were, as it will now [in all likelihood] be sold through Facebook’s own storefront, have to accomodate Facebook integration, and ultimately be used to collect metadata from gamers. Developers and gamers alike likely thought that they were buying into a platform-agnostic piece of hardware, but even hardware requires firmware, and Facebook can implement any system feature that they care to add.

Not content with merely making an arse of himself, Cliffy B then felt subsequently compelled to fire a parting shot at Markus ‘Notch’ Persson who had been working of a completely free Oculus version of Minecraft until the Facebook buyout took place. Apparently Notch’s decision to not develop a free game for Facebook marks him as a petulant child:

“p.s. Notch, your cancelling Minecraft makes you look like a pouty kid who is taking his ball and going home. It’s a bratty and petty move and it saddens me greatly.”

One cannot help but wonder why this man was born with the ability to communicate?

Ultimately, some good may end up coming out of this shitstorm after the smoke has cleared. Kickstarter projects have resulted in failure and disappointment previously, but Kickstarter has never shit the bed to this magnitude before. A significant portion of nine and a half thousand backers have been left feeling defrauded, and more than one journalist this week has mentioned that they will not be contributing to any Kickstarters going forward. And it is not just gamers who are revolting in the wake of this news – as Facebook stock tanked considerably following the announcement on account of the fact that investors, much like us, can recognise that this technology is not a mass market proposition, and will not make back the two billion dollar investment.

The art director of Final Fantasy Type-0 is now working on Final Fantasy XV.

Final Fantasy News

The road to a Final Fantasy: Type-0 western localisation has been a long and winding one, with Square Enix repeatedly hinting that one was on the cards, before once again going silent on the matter. A couple of months ago Lusipurr.com reported that a group of fan translators, sick of waiting for Square Enix to print money with a western release, had taken it upon themselves to translate the game, and were in fact on the verge of releasing it. As it turns out that prediction proved a touch over-optimistic, because while the main storyline has now been fully beta-tested to the satisfaction of the team, they still want to go through and polish NPC dialog. Thus, the translation team has this week settled upon a final release date of the eighth of August. This is not to say that the patch will not be released earlier if the team is in the position to do so, but rather that they have now made the commitment that it will release no later than the agreed upon date.

“There are many opinions within the team itself, about the completion date, some say we can have it in the next two month, some say three months are not enough. My personal opinion is that the game is playable in English as it is right now, being enjoyable as is. It is true that many NPC’s sound off context, and that’s why the majority of the team decided to postpone the release to have a perfect patch.

Note that this all could change at any moment depending on how the team feels about the state of the patch, meaning that the release date could indeed be pushed sooner at any time. In any case, fans now know the latest date they can play the game in English. We agree that it’s better to have a late date that we can push sooner, than having a near date that could be delayed. So be sure we’ll update as soon as we have more news!”

In other Final Fantasy news, Final Fantasy XV composer, Yoko Shimomura, has expressed some frustration with not being able to openly talk about her compositions for the game. One thing that she can reveal however, is that we can expect to hear a number of piano-based tracks on the OST, which is something that this writer is looking forward to with great anticipation. Meanwhile, this week has seen Yusuke Naora added to Final Fantasy XV‘s roster of developers as an art director. Naora’s addition to the project may simply be due to the fact that he is not working on anything else at present, or it may hint at the game’s previously stated art director, Takeshi Nozue, not being up to the task of serving as a visual director on a project of this magnitude. Nozue has previously served as director for Square Enix’s various CG FMV cutscenes, but has never had to direct the visual composition of an entire game before. Meanwhile, Naora is an old hand at art direction, having served as art director on Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, and most recently on Final Fantasy: Type-0. In another shock move for the week, it has been revealed that Yoshinori Kitasi is no longer attached to Final Fantasy XV as producer. It is possible that this is some sort of punitive demotion for the poor sales of Lightning Returns, but seeing as this is Square Enix we are talking about, it is probably far more likely that he and Motomu Toriyama have begun work on Final Fantasy XVI: Lightning’s Revenge.

One hopes that this banal shitfest never ends for the smartphone market.

Crappy Turd

Get ready to be depressed. Despite only being on the iOS app store for nine days in February before being pulled by its creator, Flappy Bird is still the best performing app on on the store throughout the month of February, and what is more Gears Studios [the publisher of Flappy Bird] was the top performing iOS publisher for the month despite their only having the one game up on the store. In short, only the very worst that gaming has to offer will do for the casual gaming masses.

It has been estimated that once Flappy Bird was pulled from the app store, a Flappy Bird clone was being uploaded every twenty-four minutes for a time. That should serve as an indication of just how much effort is required to make one of these… games. And the worst part is that the cloning seems to have paid off, with four Flappy Bird clones joining Flappy Bird in the top ten of best performing apps for the month – the most popular of which was Splashy Fish, which took second place on the list.

Sure, this kind of news is depressing and distasteful, but it is not without its silver lining. There was a time not long ago when people were talking about the cesspool of the mobile gaming market taking over dedicated hardware gaming, rendering it nonviable. That may well still be a very real risk for the gaming market in Japan, but just recently it is looking less likely to do the same to the west – in fact it is looking increasingly as though serious games have no place on smartphone platforms. This was not always the case, as for a while developers were intent on trying to replicate the full console experience [albeit with terrible controls] on smart devices, but that seems to no longer be the case. The iOS market now seems to favour games which were developed on a shoe-string and provide the simplest of distractions, and long may it remain so, for then there will always exist dedicated spaces for serious gaming, such as it is.

Puppeteer is now available for PS3.

Download: Produced 2013.10.13

After reaching the previous MAP milestone of 120 episodes, Lusipurr consolidates the Megaphones Ahoy! and Starlight Megaphone episode numbers into a single production list, and SiliconNooB and Gyme cause a ‘technical difficulty’ with obscene utterances.

Zoltan and Gilbert spend some quality time together.

Download: Produced 2013.07.28

Lusipurr (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) assembles a panel consisting of SiliconNooB, Blitzmage, The Legendary Zoltan, and Mel (all voiced by Gilbert Gottfried), to discuss Denis Dyack, Don Mattrick, and Stephane D’Astous (all voiced by Gilbert Gottfried).

The Legendary Zoltan demonstrates that he is MIDI-capable with Chrono Trigger, SiliconNooB brings a wealth of facts and information to bear upon the Xbone, and, in a stunning reversal, Lusipurr plays all of the games that he has not played until now!

* * *

This month, Lusipurr.com is pleased to present the fourth commission from our Music Director: Jahan ‘The Legendary Zoltan’ Honma!

Source Music: Chrono Trigger: Wind Song
Original Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda
Remix: Wind Song Orchestral

This is what I call an “improvement remix.” It is basically Wind Song from Chrono Trigger in its exact same arrangement but with higher quality samples. Wind Song is the music on the 600 A.D. overworld map. There are a lot of popular tunes on the Chrono Trigger soundtrack but I believe this one to be one of the greatest hits. Despite what my previous remixes might lead you to believe, I actually prefer remixes that sound and feel quite similar to their sources. Taking an original piece of RPG music and leaving all of the instrumentation, melodies, harmonies, and tempos the same to make something that “sounds just like Chrono Trigger but better” is really something I would like to do more often. Those who would like to hear more of these so-called improvement remixes should search on YouTube. I have heard some really nice Final Fantasy arrangements where the original is left completely intact and just improved in sound quality. They are quite enjoyable to listen to!

Jump out.

The Xbombs Keep Dropping

Microsoft chose to lead their Xbone reveal with a marketing bulletpoint stating that their console’s GPU has five billion transistors [a nonsense point of comparison, designed to confound the casual gamer]. It is funny that Microsoft chose to lead their conference with this information, given that the massively bloated transistor count of the Xbone APU [PS4 has two billion fewer transistors] is the reason that multiple trusted NeoGAF sources have given for confirming that the Xbone GPU is set to receive a substantial underclock, placing it at a further disadvantage to the processing capabilities of the PS4. The five billion transistor count was allegedly making the APU run too hot for Microsoft to be able to achieve sufficient yields from the fabrication process, and so, instead of wasting time and money fixing this problem, Microsoft have opted to further lower the bar of entry to the next generation.

To understand what malign misfortunes led to Microsoft’s current straights, it is perhaps best to start with a truism. As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out. Microsoft apparently made a number of poor decisions and predictions going into the development of the Xbone, which are now causing the development of their eighth generation video cassette recorder to spiral out of control. Microsoft made the initial prediction that Sony would opt to utilise similar budget hardware in the design of the PS4, and that Sony’s Worldwide Studios would be just as dysfunctional as they were leading in to the launch of the PS3. Even when it came to light that Sony were using fast GDDR5 RAM, Microsoft initially predicted that Sony could not realistically look to ship PS4 consoles with more than 2GB [and later 4GB] of GDDR5. Microsoft’s predictions have not panned out. Sony have aimed their PS4 specification at a substantially higher performance bracket, the company itself is much more of a well-oiled machine this time around, and developments in GDDR5 production have meant that the PS4 is able to ship with 8GB of fast graphics RAM. Making matters worse for Microsoft is the fact that only 5GB of the Xbone’s slow RAM will be available to game developers, which compares very unfavourably to the 7GB that Sony allots them. The Xbone was designed as a casual system intended for the simultaneous running of apps, and it shows.

Microsoft originally counted on having a higher numeric figure of slow DDR3 RAM to serve as a marketing point differential against the PS4, yet the failure of this disparity to materialise [along with the performance shortfall this hands to the Xbone] has left the design team in disarray. The Xbone’s memory bandwidth was originally set to operate at a 68.3 GB/s transfer rate, yet the PS4’s much higher bandwidth of 176 GB/s has led to the team incorporating extra components [32MB of eSRAM and several move engines] within the APU in order to notionally increase the Xbone’s memory bandwidth to over 100 GB/s. Adding these extra elements to the APU has served to massively increase its transistor count, which in turn is very bad for system thermals [while the large physical size of the APU increases the likelihood of chips being unusable on account of flaws]. Were Microsoft to continue their present course it would make the fabrication process an extremely costly affair [with relatively few Xbone units available at launch], to say nothing of the hardware attrition rate. If current rumours are to be believed however, Microsoft are about to underclock the Xbone’s GPU by a magnitude sufficient to reduce its processing power from 1.2 teraFLOPS to somewhere between eight-hundred and nine-hundred gigaFLOPS. Given the PS4’s 1.9 teraFLOPS of processing grunt, this will mean that the Xbone is set to be less than half as powerful.

Good luck convincing gamers that PS4 is not the best option for gaming!

Milking Snakeoil from an Xbone

The news only gets worse for Microsoft, as the full scope of their dishonesty becomes increasingly apparent on several fronts. Firstly, much like the state of the Xbone’s APU, the console’s operating system is currently a shambles, and nowhere near refined enough to power a piece of consumer hardware at this point. Readers who watched Microsoft’s Xbone reveal may be forgiven for regarding the previous statement as a blatant lie, but that is because the footage which Microsoft demoed was not in fact real, but rather was falsified footage designed to sell consumers on a reality of the Xbone which at this stage is a lie. The first sign that something was amiss was the fact that the episode of The Price Is Right which Microsoft demonstrated was different from the one that was broadcast on that particular day. The reason for this discrepancy quickly became apparent when Wired released a video showcasing their staff demoing the Xbone’s media and interface functionality – The interface is choppy and sluggish [appearing to run at about 5fps], while the television content streamed through the Xbone was seen to be subject to a persistent stutter. The system was clearly running on an operating system which differed significantly from the one that Microsoft deceitfully showcased.

It would seem that rather than trying to get their own affairs in order, Microsoft are now intent on leveraging their resources in order to harm their competition and mislead consumers. To this end still more NeoGAF rumours have surfaced this week revealing that Microsoft has been attempting to pay bribes to third party developers in order to have them refrain from having any of their multi-platform titles running on PS4 hardware at E3 [this includes both on stage and on the show floor]. The reason behind this underhanded stratagem is a feeble intent to dismantle the PS4’s strong identity as a console for gaming and game related activities. Thus, after burning their bridges so thoughtfully with the gaming community during the Xbone reveal, Microsoft now wishes to win back this crowd at the eleventh hour with this clearly panicked plotting. It has never been more apparent that Microsoft have no legitimate place within this industry [and should focus their attention more exclusively upon ruining Windows].

Finally, readers may be aware that several weeks ago during the Xbone reveal many publications relayed Phil Harrison’s explanation as to how the Xbone’s arcane and punitive DRM system is to function, this in turn led to Microsoft accusing these publications of misinterpreting the information. This week the veracity of the reporting was finally able to be judged after Microsoft released the full specifics of how they plan to rape consumer rights, and funnily enough their information differs very little from what was previously reported. Way to control the message.

The Fall indeed.

“I never asked for this.”

Square Enix is gifted with a very rare and peculiar talent for making bad decisions. Case and point, Square Enix heard the strong fan demand for further installments in the Deus Ex franchise, and decided that the best way to go about this was to make it for smartphones. This move appears to be one of the company’s first steps in refocusing their productions on smartphone gaming. While one would like to be able to confidently predict Deus Ex: The Fall‘s dismal failure on account of it burning the existing fanbase so thoroughly, the massive scale of the smartphone market means that all bets are essentially off.

In similar fashion Square Enix have heard the strong fan demand for the continuation of the popular single-player adventure series, Legacy of Kain, and decided that the best way of fulfilling this desire is to palm the franchise off to an external studio in order to serve as window dressing for a multi-player game!

“Nosgoth exists and is in active development, but is not a traditional Legacy of Kain action-adventure game. Nosgoth is set in the same universe as previous LoK games, but on a different branch to the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver series. The community should not be thinking of Nosgoth in terms of a single-player experience.”

In terms of multi-player gaming, the Legacy of Kain series could actually be done justice as an MMO, yet one is very confident in saying that the cost of such a production means that this is almost certainly not the case. Square Enix are not about to spend several hundred million dollars on reviving a long-dormant mid-tier Eidos series, and so fan wishes are set to be realised in the form of an odd and [presumabnly] disposable PSN/XBLA [or iOS?] experiment.

A true return to form!

Final Fantasy Tactics Set to Return In All But Substance

It would not be inappropriate for the Lusipurr.com community to this week come together in celebration of one of Lusipurr’s favourite video game titles receiving a long awaited sequel – that is to say that the Final Fantasy Tactics series is set to return with the release of Final Fantasy Tactics S! Final Fantasy Tactics was originally released into North America in 1998, and was widely hailed by gamers and critics alike. It marked the auteur Yasumi Matsuno’s first project under Squaresoft, which he followed up with the highly acclaimed titles: Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII.

Final Fantasy Tactics S is currently being developed by Mobage, a maker of social games for mobile phones, and is set to release as a freemium title on iOS and Android. The game is said to feature both single-player and social content, though it is not yet known whether Mobage will seek to recreate some semblance of the traditional Final Fantasy Tactics gameplay formula, or simply opt to turn it into an electronic card game like most of their other titles. A Western release has not yet been confirmed, but Square Enix has never been known to hold back on releasing their quality titles to the English-speaking peoples.

In other Final Fantasy news for the week, a wide number of predominantly business-centric news sources have been reporting on some Final Fantasy Versus XIII rumours which serve to clarify some older rumours that Lusipurr.com has reported on. We had previously relayed rumours that Final Fantasy Versus XIII had been met with huge delays on account of it being transitioned into a first generation PS4 title some two years ago. Nothing has happened to change this – yet it is now being reported that the PS3 version of the game has not been cancelled, and that Square Enix plans to release both versions of the game. Thus owners of Sony’s seventh generation home console will not have to purchase new hardware in order to play this long-promised PS3 title.

A question that should be asked of management.

Nintendo’s Fundamentals Are Fundamentally Unsound

Nintendo have released their full yearly sales report for the fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2013 – and it has been far from glowing. After posting their first financial loss in thirty years back in 2012 [to the tune of 43 billion Yen], Nintendo has this week revealed that they have returned to Net and Ordinary profitability in 2013 [presumably on the strength of the weakened Yen] – though they only achieved Net profitability to the tune of 7.09 billion yen [71.3 million dollars] when they had initially forecast an ambitious [and one might say presumptive] 20 billion Yen profit [which was lowered to 14 billion Yen earlier in the year]. Similarly, Ordinary income had been predicted to reach 35 billion Yen, was later lowered to 20 billion Yen, but ultimately ended up coming in at 10.4 billion Yen.

Despite this turn-around in their fortunes, Nintendo has still recorded an operating loss of 36 billion yen [366 million dollars], which can be defined as a loss recorded when considering only a company’s operating income verses its operating expenditures, while ignoring any interest accrued during this period [i.e. mitigating terms of trade due to Yen fluctuations] and non-liquid assets. Nintendo had initially forecast a 35 billion Yen Operating profit, before revising this figure down to a 20 billion Yen Operating loss earlier in the year, which still served to undervalue their ultimate Operating shortfall by some 16 billion Yen. Ergo Nintendo has achieved mixed but largely positive results on the financial front, yet their hardware performance tells a different story entirely.

Nintendo had previously predicted that they would sell 5.5 million units of the Wii U by the end of the financial year, yet earlier this year they revised this estimate down to 4 million. As predicted by Lusipurr.com, Nintendo’s Wii U failed to even hit this lowered mark, selling only 3.45 million units. Tellingly, the Wii U has only sold 390,000 units since Christmas. Similarly, Nintendo had initially forecast Wii U software sales of 24 million; this figure was later lowered to 16 million, yet the Wii U was ultimately only able to shift 13.42 million games.

Sales of the 3DS are a brighter mark on Nintendo’s ledger, but even they constitute something of a mixed bag. Continuing its drubbing of the PS Vita, the 3DS sold 13.95 million units of hardware and 49.61 million units of software, both of which are increases over the 3DS’ performance last year – yet this is largely based on the system’s popularity in Japan. The 3DS’ proportional percentage share of market sales in the US and Europe are also up in relation to last year, yet the actual number of hardware units sold in both territories is actually drastically down year-on-year. Moreover, the DS’ third year on the market saw sales of 23.56 million units, which is almost twice that of the 3DS. To put things into perspective: at this point in the DS’ lifecycle it had sold 45 million units of hardware, while the 3DS has only sold 31 million units of hardware. On the other hand, perhaps this is still a fairly spectacular result given that the DS did not have to contend with the smartphone gaming boom.

Nintendo still predicts that 9 million units of Wii U hardware and 18 million units of 3DS hardware will be sold over the course of the next financial year – perhaps they are mistaking hardware projections for software projections? At any rate, Nintendo had best have one hell of an E3 up their sleeve if they wish to turn around the fortunes of the Wii U! [Note: LOL!]

And Reggie has made damn sure of it!

Iwata Becomes CEO of NoA

It seems obvious that Nintendo management [much like Square Enix] has had their collective heads in the clouds when it came to devising their dazzlingly optimistic best-case-scenario profit expectations, yet if there is one aspect of their business which is a disproportional liability to the business as a whole, it is Nintendo of America – the underperforming wing of Nintendo located in what should be their biggest market.

It is hard to imagine a console distributor cultivating a poorer start for their new machine than NoA was able to do for their Wii U. The Wii experienced much initial success with the banal casual market before casuals and their wallets fled to smartphone gaming. To this end NoA’s actions took on almost antagonistic overtones when dealing with the products coming out of their Japanese headquarters, with NoA now famously refusing to publish Nintendo games such as Fatal Frame 4, Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower – the latter three of which were already translated by NoE, and were available at a time when the Wii’s release schedule was a desolate wasteland.

Fast-forward to the launch of Nintendo’s Wii U [being marketed by NoA as a non-core casual machine], and everything that we here at Lusipurr.com said would happen as a result of the estrangement of core gamers, is now happening to the Wii U. Casual gamers have made the [seemingly permanent] switch to phones and tablets, but even if this was not the case; casuals are not early adopters of game technology – they only flock out to buy such machines when they are already viewed as a hot fad. The Wii U is not a hot fad, and the hardcore gamers who can usually be relied upon as the early adopters to underpin a new system’s launch have been in short supply for Nintendo’s new box. Without access to Apple’s vast casual market, the faux portable Wii U’s only ostensible target demographic appears to be families with young children – and even then the Wii U has to compete with Nintendo’s own 3DS, which will inevitably prove to be losing battle on account of it not being a properly portable system.

To combat Nintendo’s negative market outlook Satoru Iwata, the President and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd, has now been made the CEO of Nintendo of America [replacing Tatsumi Kimishima], so as to have more direct involvement with this stagnating arm of Nintendo’s empire through setting its big picture market strategy. Reggie Fils-Aime retains his role as President and COO of NoA, meaning he is still responsible for the daily running of Nintendo’s American operations, but will now be directly answerable to Iwata, who will presumably be more assertive than his predecessor.

It is unknown whether the anti-core and anti-Japanese policies previously enacted by NoA were the work of Kimishima or Fils-Aime, yet jumping on the casual fad to the exclusion of all else, while remaining doggedly blind to the reality of long-term profitability seems to be a uniquely American business attribute. Thus we can probably attribute this short-term strategy to Reggie. If that is the case, then it would seem that Iwata has been sent to reign-in Fils-Aime – an interpretation that is supported by Iwata’s recent pledge to see that more Japanese software is localised, which comes off as a thinly-veiled rebuke of previous NoA policy.

When attempting to diagnose the Wii U’s challenges at American retail, Shigeru Miyamoto has pointed to the fact that the system “doesn’t have that ‘looking-fun’ element to it“. Meanwhile Iwata has identified two key reasons that the Wii U has not been able to maintain post-launch momentum. Firstly, because of NoA’s inability to effectively communicate to consumers that the Wii U is a new console [in the loosest possible terms] rather than a mere Wii peripheral – this is problem which Lusipurr.com identified prior to launch. And secondly because of Nintendo’s own inability to provide enough in the way of strong first party launch titles to attract consumers. Iwata does not plan on cutting the Wii U’s ridiculously high price tag any time soon.

Handing a password to a child is like handing them a wallet.

It has come to my attention recently (though I am sure it has been happening for a while) that Apple have been taking undue criticism from parents that let their children play with their portable devices. There is nothing wrong with letting children play games on these machines, I let my son play on my iPhone all the time. The problem arises when the child left unsupervised while playing a freemium game in which they happen to purchase in-game currency every time the game prompts them to do so.

At the beginning of March a five year old boy in the UK convinced his father to enter his iTunes account password so that he could download a free game from the App Store. The father reluctantly agreed, thinking the download would cost him nothing — but his son ‘accidentally’ bought a stack of in-app purchases priced at £69.99 ($105) each to help him progress in the game. The following day the father received an iTunes invoice for £1,700 ($2,550).

This has been a problem for Apple in the past. In older iOS versions, once a password had been entered to download a game a fifteen minute window of opportunity was still open to make in-app purchases without having to re-enter the password again. This changed with the iOS 4.3 update. From then on, the password would have to be entered again upon attempting to purchase anything once an app had been started. This means that all the current issues that parents are having are because they do not attempt to hide their password from their children, or they actually offer the password for their children to use themselves!

The password problems continues to persist to this day. Not a week goes by that some newspaper manages to find an unlucky parent whose child has run up a massive iTunes bill. Apple are usually very good about refunding the money back to the consumer in these cases, though customers querying smaller amounts may not be so lucky. Whenever I read about a parent who has been affected this way I always wonder why they let their child play a game while understanding little about its contents. Sitting down and spending quarter of an hour with a child while they play their new game should be enough to understand how a game works and whether there are any ‘optional’ purchases to speed up gameplay.

Those are some expensive berries.

Maybe it is not all the parents fault though. Over the last couple of years the average price of a game on the iTunes App Store has declined. This is because a greater number of games have adopted the freemium model. In June 2010, freemium games were still somewhat of an experiment, generating just eight percent of the total revenue. But only a year later, fifty-two percent of all the revenue of the top grossing games was generated by freemium offerings. In addition, the revenue for the top 200 grossing games on iTunes increased by seventy-nine percent year-on-year, a tenfold increase from June 2010.

With this change in business model we also see the big publishers turning well-known brands into their own cash cows. The Simpsons, My Little Pony and The Smurfs have all had the freemium treatment to varying degrees of notoriety. Upon the US release of The Simpsons: Tapped Out, the game was shortly pulled from the iOS App Store due to the servers being unable to cope with the demand and a plethora of serious bugs reported by users (sound familiar?). After a month had passed, EA set up a forum whereby users could report bug issues, but failed to offer solutions to issues or temporary updates. Some users who had made in-app purchases, discovered that their purchases had gone missing. After contacting EA, users were able to collect refunds directly from Apple. Several months later, the app finally returned to the App Store.

As long as impatient people insist on buying in-app purchases to unlock content faster, the freemium model on the App Store will continue to dominate. We need to either play these games as momentary distractions, or do away with them entirely. I would never pay for anything from these games, and more importantly, I would prevent my son from buying anything by never giving him my password.

Have you ever bought an in-app purchase? Would you rather spend money upfront for a more ‘complete’ game? Let me know in the comments!

The Athens Acropolis is the definitive acropolis for the discerning acropolis connossieur.

Produced 2013.01.20

When SiliconNooB and Blitzmage bristle at the idea of paying moderate taxes that will provide for the conservation of historical sites, Lusipurr is forced to explain the value of preserving classical heritage–a principle in which he leads by example.

SiliconNooB’s lack of reverence towards important women’s issues no doubt make him some sort of dreadful Mahogonist.

The Feminists Are Angry Again

This week saw but the latest instance of fomented feminist furor, as the sanctimonious dullards of the internet got their collective tits in a twirl about Deep Silver’s shocking mahogany towards women, by way of a dismembered necrotic female zombie bust which the studio is shipping with the Zombie Bait edition of Dead Island: Riptide. This is what happens when a population collectively forgets how to use language; scatter-brained feminists start thinking that any object depicting feminine traits constitutes female objectification, and no doubt the next stage of their penumbral putsch on Western culture will be the outlawing of female shop manikins [because sexism]. Deep Silver for their part seem to have been caught by surprise, offering a full grovelling backdown and spineless apology. Whether this will do them a single jot of good is a source of some considerable personal skepticism however, as one harbours significant doubts as to whether any of these feeble braying plaints have originated from Dead Island: Riptide‘s intended audience.

“We sincerely regret this choice. We are collecting feedback continuously from the Dead Island community, as well as the international gaming community at large, for ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver’s entire international team today. For now, we want to reiterate to the community, fans and industry how deeply sorry we are, and that we are committed to making sure this will never happen again.”

The Dead Island: Riptide Zombie Bait edition is a silly idea to be sure, in that most of these premium editions [sans Ni No Kuni] appear to constitute a colossal squandering of money that could be better used to kindle a fire, roll into a joint, or purchase numerous cat photos from the photographer, Nate Liles. That said, there is nothing in the Zombie Bait edition that is any more or less content-appropriate than a giant Master Chief helmet was to Halo 3. This being the case, it is quite difficult so see why the shrill throngs of humourless feminists would see the Zombie Bait edition as sexually objectifying towards women, though one supposes that it is certainly a more lusty and desirable item than the average feminist, so maybe they regard it as some sort of threat? The lack of orifices may be problematic, but one could no doubt whittle a Anita Sarkeesian head for the top while sculpting a Megalissa McEwan paper-mache head for the bottom, and thereby have a cunt at each end.

“A callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against own people.” ~ Wayne LaPierre

NRA To Target Children, Find an Ideological Partner in NAMBLA

With the Sandy Hook shootings one month behind us it is perhaps tempting to look back to the aftermath and contend that the NRA handled that particular chestnut in the worst possible fashion – the NRA however are keen to prove that assertion woefully wrong. How wrong? Wrong enough for the NRA to dwarf their initial magnitude of bad taste and hypocrisy by this week releasing a free gun training video game on iOS, suitable for ages four and up.

NRA: Practice Range is a game which looks to introduce America’s tykes to the world of big armourments by allowing them to fire a selection of nine different firearms at virtual targets by using either gyroscopic or faux analogue controls. Interspersing this high-caliber entertainment experience will be helpful gun safety tips and a news-feed of second amendment related bulletins – because nothing says ‘children’s entertainment’ like a steady drip-feed of politically partisan news propaganda.

One must seriously contemplate whether the NRA are trolling at this point. The correct course of action for even the most ardent automatic weaponry aficionado would have been for them to hold their tongue during the direct aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, and then to have offered a vigourous defense of automatic weapon ownership once gun control legislation had surfaced, on the basis of second amendment precedent and the fact that automatic weaponry accounts for comparatively fewer violent deaths than conventional firearms and close-quarters weaponry. Instead the NRA attempted to blame video games for the Sandy Hook shootings, even as they rushed out their own gun propaganda video game like the pack of hypocritical weasels they are. In no way have they made any inroads in arguing their case, and worse, even some of the vaccuous drones who bought into initial NRA claims that video games were responsible for the Sandy Hook shootings must surely have been left scratching their heads at news that the NRA had produced their own child-targeted video game.

Get the hose, they’re at it again!

These Are Not the Queens You Are Looking For

Since the start of the current console generation Electronic Bioturds [formerly Bioware] has been relatively consistent in offering same-sex relationship options, yet their ailing single-player MMO, The Old Republic, has until now been without such provisions. Electronic Bioturds’ rationale for leaving out homosexual relationships was that homosexuality does not exist in the Star Wars universe, which [to one’s best knowledge] is a position that is validated through the consistent absence of sodomites within the Star Wars cannon, and was no doubt a stipulation insisted upon by LucasArts. After a lengthy and embittered campaign of social justice however, Electronic Bioturds reversed their position and pledged to bring gay companion characters to the world of The Old Republic.

This week Electronic Bioturds have reached out to inform their gay fans [the entire fanbase, no?] that their initial pledge of gay companion characters will involve much more work than was previously thought, but that in the interim their forthcoming expansion pack, Rise of the Hutt Cartel, will introduce the gay planet of Makeb, where gay NPCs will strike up sassy conversations replete with fruity dialogue options, which will lead to wonton and outrageous trysts and extravagant cavorting – in short, everything that a gay player could ask for save for the inclusion gay companion characters [which are still forthcoming].

Gay people are not happy however [but then what coddled minority ever is?]. Some gay people are unhappy because the expansion will not allow for the homosexual companion characters that were promised; the implementation of which has taken longer than expected to do properly. meanwhile other gay people have complained that having a gay planet amounts to sodomite segregation [would they prefer Bioware to delete it?]. While still other gays are upset on account of having to purchase an additional expansion pack in order to be massive homos, labeling Electronic Bioturds’ significant gesture as “pay to gay”.

All of this whinging and bitching begs the question of why any studio would want to hop on the politically correct merry-go-round when this is their reward. Electronic Bioturd’s The Old Republic is struggling for its very existence as a viable MMO, and yet they have nevertheless devoted considerable resources in order to appease roughly one percent of the adult population – and yet in spite of this, their initiatives have just been met with more complaining. It certainly makes one nostalgic for the days when games only had to be games, as opposed to serving as the crystalised social conscience of Western self-loathing.

o/~ Oh, my hero…

Produced 2012.12.09

On the last day of the third England v. India test in Calcutta, Lusipurr, SiliconNooB, Deimosion, and Blitzmage lay bets on when the final run will come. Lusipurr discusses how to read books, Mega Man games are covered, and apparently there’s a feature?

Time for a hard reset.

The prophet Mohammed (may piss be upon him) has been very upset with infidels this week, on account of the name of his lord, Angry Allah, being used to adorn a rest-room wall in the popular FPS game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The offending articles in question were two paintings which featured the phrase “Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty” – a sentence which is offensive to Muslims everywhere owing to the fact that Allah is ugly and hates beauty, and thus insists that it be covered up or stoned to death.

If Modern Warfare 2 is anything like other games, then the use of the Allah paintings was probably incidental, as in-game posters tend to be duplicated and then repeated with little thought as to their placement.Yet, despite the eminently reasonable use of the word ‘Allah’, Activision is the latest publisher to give in to the unreasonable demands of quiver-lipped Muslim cry babies, by pulling the level until such a time as they can strip out the offending pictures. This of course follows on from Sony having to recall millions of copies of Little Big Planet when Muslims became angry that one of the game’s tracks featured two lines from the Quoran, and CD Project RED having to remove carpets from a brothel in The Witcher 2 when Muslims became angry that their designs looked like Muslim patterns – whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

What is perhaps most disheartening about all this is that we have yet to see any developer or publisher actually standing behind their art against the graceless braying of the Muslims hoards. It is fine for Activision to include deliberately tasteless material such as participating in a massacre of civilians at an airport, yet as soon as the suggestion of Islamist offence raises its veiled head they fall over backwards in their attempts to acquiesce to Muslim demands. Now all that remains is for Barrak ‘Neville Chamberlain’ Obama to denounce Activision as providing a fair and reasonable basis for Muslims to do murder, and we will have a fun little redeux of the whole Libya debacle… Call of Duty: Tribal Warfare.

Joyless Wretches of PETA Attack Pokemon Black & White 2

The sum totality of PETA’s contribution to animal protection.

As proof that the benighted hordes of Islam do not have a monopoly on lunacy, the universally loathed bestiality lobby group known as PETA has this week made a mockery of animal rights by slamming Pokemon Black & White 2 as promoting animal cruelty. The group have launched a tersely worded spiel against the iniquities of the Pokemon franchise, accompanied by a poorly balanced Pokemon knock-off game, wherein Pokemon are depicted savaging their owners – because that is somehow supposed to make them more sympathetic.

“Much like animals in the real world, Pokemon are treated as unfeeling objects and used for such things as human entertainment and as subjects in experiments. The way that Pokemon are stuffed into pokeballs is similar to how circuses chain elephants inside railroad cars and let them out only to perform confusing and often painful tricks that were taught using sharp steel-tipped bullhooks and electric shock prods… if PETA existed in Unova, our motto would be: Pokemon are not ours to use or abuse. They exist for their own reasons. We believe that this is the message that should be sent to children.”

If PETA existed in Unova they would be Team Plasma. They have gone about winning hearts and minds by attempting to convince children that they do not in fact adore Pokemon – a task no more or less plausible than any of the other nonsense endeavours they have put their names to. That is of course assuming that PETA are not actually a faux animal rights group established and coordinated by the meat industry, in a bid to utterly discredit the concept of animal rights.

Square Enix Attempts to Defend the Indefensible

A high price for mediocrity.

Square Enix has this week attempted to stage a somewhat novel defence of their unacceptably expensive iOS titles, which can be priced as highly as $30 USD for games that are old (Chrono Trigger), poor (Final Fantasy: Dimensions), or both (Secret of Mana). The tenuous basis for this claim appears to rest with Square Enix’s blindness toward their product’s legacy status and the economic reality thereof, along with the categorical failure to recognise that phones and tables simply do not have the tactile input to offer an experience which comes close to the quality of the console gaming experience.

“Each game is priced individually and evaluated based on the type of game, depth and overall experience it provides for players. Some of our higher priced titles offer more than 60 plus hours of game time with rich storylines, high quality graphics and challenging, diverse combat. We’ve reconfigured and optimised [the games] for the mobile platform, releasing them at a lower price than their original console or handheld versions.”

The Square Enix rationale sounds reasonable enough until one considers that many or their games are between ten and twenty years old. These are titles that made their production costs back on the original run of the games in question, and so claims as to the density of content and graphical quality are quite beyond the point. Moreover, the bulk of Square Enix’s most cherished titles are available in far cheaper and more agreeable form on PSN.