Xbox Live Gets A Price Increase This Fall

"Share The Road" Never Applied To Mario Kart Before

The Most Badass SNES and Mega Drive II Ever

Call of Pokemon

What Does X, Square, Triangle, Circle Mean Anyways?

Coming by way of 1UP via a translation of Famitsu magazine comes some pretty interesting details about the design of the Playstation 1 and it's controller, famous for not having letters represent buttons.  I love this kind of stuff.  Hearing stories from the creator of things still in use years later is always a good thing.  I'm not talking just about video games.  I love hearing straight from the author about anything.

It is a wholly interesting read, and you should really check it out over at 1UP.  Among assorted anecdotes about demo controllers almost being thrown in anger (what?) and how the Playstation console was a box with a circle in it comes the reasoning behind those symbols that make Xbox and Nintendo gamers scratch their heads:

Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that's what I wanted.

While I understand the Japanese see circles to mean "yes" and Xs to mean "no," the western gamer will always want the button under their thumb to mean yes.  We're impatient, you see?

What's This I Found?

8-Bit Winner Layers The Awesome

Mario Through The Ages

The Intern's 8Bit Contest Reminder

Drool Worthy 3DS Pictures

Do Want.

8-Bit Youtube Makes Everything Better

Rage Like You've Never Seen Before

How And How Not To Use Playstation Move

Gaming Out of Town

AC: Brotherhood Comes With a Toy

The Harlequin is exclusive to Gamestop.

This is easily one of the coolest limited editions I've seen.

My interest in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood started at about the lowest possible point.  I thought it was a senseless, needless cash-in on the success of last year's Assassin's Creed II.  While my experience with AC II was of high opinion, I didn't think they could pull it off twice in two years.

All other retailers will have The Doctor in stock.

What I've seen, including the multiplayer trailer for Brotherhood, has really helped to turn that predisposition around.  Honestly, I think I'm pretty excited for the game if everything is balanced well and the multiplayer modes actually give players objectives that fit.

Even more so is the temptation to run up the purchase price for the Limited Edition detailed by Gamestop here.  Preordering at Gamestop will also net you the Harlequin multiplayer skin.

That Jack-in-the-Box accessory looks really cool.  Maybe I'll be able to afford it with a combination of traded review titles and my new paying gig at GR.

Modern Game Marketing: You got Halo: Reach in my controller!

One of the less-noticeable marketing ploys is the special edition controller.  No better way to play Halo than with a Halo T-Shirt, Halo boxer shorts, Halo cereal, and OH!  Don't forget the Halo controller.

This little piece of selling-out will run you $60.

That's the price of a game.

A whole game.  Never mind if you're buying the ultra-special-edition of Halo: Reach.  Shelling out for the controller will probably make your hands feel dirtier than usual, despite the fact that you had to carry the box with the die-cast figures out of Gamestop because they didn't have a bag big enough for you.

Xbox.com revealed this little number before quickly pulling it back.  God forbid we spend money on more software this fall.  Instead, we'll need this lightly reskinned controller to make guests feel inferior while we enjoy multiplayer.

Modern Game Marketing is a series on how new games, and the corporations behind them, get you to want them.
To read more in PLAY READ WRITE's Modern Game Marketing series, check out the tag!

Metacritic Gets it Wrong

While I've been thrilled to see my review scores on Metacritic, I can't say the same for their guesswork on my Resonance of Fate review score. I gave the game a D-, but I hardly think that my review actually translated to a numerical score of 25. What do you think?

New Game Rituals

While I'll have some things to say about the game in the post I wrote over at Game Revolution, instead, I'll simply say, that I wrote a little bit about what I do when I open up a brand new game. For now, I'll simply post a link over to the Daily Manifesto post I wrote for GR. Check it out and leave a comment here or there.

That new game smell!

And yes, that is Split/Second! Previously written about here for PLAY READ WRITE.

Wouldn't those ads be on Craigslist these days?

The Top 10 Games of All Time(?): Objectivity Out the Window

[This is kind of an old story, but I still thought I'd publish my write up. From time to time, I'll write on my phone and some stories won't be published right away. This is one of them.]

Kotaku's panel on the top 10 games of all time, as covered by Kotaku's Mike Fahey at PAX East this year got me thinking about what I would deem the top 10 games of all time. Of course, thinking about such a task also had me thinking about the limitations video games place on these kind of hard criticisms. Leaving out any single game might completely demerit the list, but it would be hard to play every single game ever created. Coming up with a list has a lot to do with opening your mind to a wide range of heresay and second hand opinion.

For example, did you know that I've never played and completed a Metal Gear game? Sure I've spent time playing Metal Gear Solid and the next two of its sequels, but I've never beaten any of the games in that series. Does that glaring hole in my game-playing experience disqualify me from creating a Top 10 list? I suppose I would have to argue that it does not especially when I consider the large swath of games I've dedicated long hours to. Even in the case of Metal Gear, I may not have played an entire game through to the end, but I have played a selective handful of hours and taken in the gist of the experience.

What about games people play and don't like? There are great games in genres that some people have absolutely no taste in, right? For me, that detested genre of gaming would have to be the simulation, whether it is sports, racing, or flight. Having the consequences of the real world also means having the limitations, so when I try to throw a bomb downfield in any Madden game, and I fail, I feel as though something fantastic has just been wretched from my hands.

Obviously, what I mean to point out to any readers is that any Top 10 list is going to be imperfect, and will inevitably inspire debate. Kotaku's panel shows this, in front of a live audience. In a way I have to admit the excusatory nature of this post. If you couldn't already guess, I'm starting to put together a Top 10 list for PLAY READ WRITE in my head. Expect further details over the next week and a half.

If you're reading this, leave a comment suggesting a game I should definitely play before finishing my list, or maybe even suggest a format for the list, on this post.