Studio update and Twitch Hacking!

The blogs have been inconsistent lately as I've been studying for some exams, decorating, setting up the studio and all the usual day to day stuff; so when I get home all I want to do is sleep. There's been a couple of moments where I've almost caved under the pressure and went to buy a PS4 to cheer myself up, but that would mean no PC and no YouTube videos for a long time (even longer than it's already been).

With that in mind, I thought it would be best to blog about the progress I'm making towards the studio to see how far I've travelled, and look back when it's finally done and say "thank God that's over with."

Last weekend I've arranged for a two huge pieces of furniture to be removed which will free up an enormous amount of space, the huge box of games from ages ago has at last been sorted through and the local charity shop now has enough stock to keep them going until Christmas 2020.

Now for some gaming related chit-chat. Yesterday I received an email from Twitch, as I'm sure many others did, stating my account may have been hacked and the following information may have been compromised.

Username

Password (which was cryptographically protected...whatever that means)

The last IP address you logged in from

The information below may have also been compromised if you have given it to Twitch.

Real name 

Phone number

Address

DOB

As a precaution Twitch are making you change your password, and your stream keys will have been expired (I don't use Twitch very often so I have no idea what this means). And if you're account was linked up to Twitter or YouTube you'll need to link them up again. Happy days.

Games on Club Nintendo Europe???

Club Nintendo Europe's Stars Catalog has been expanded with downloadable Wii U, 3DS, Virtual Console titles.

While downloadable games have been a staple on Club Nintendo US for some time, Europe has never been able to exchange stars for games. Here's some of the titles available at the time of writing...

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the. Past

Advance Wars

Chibi Robo Let's Go Photo

Pullblox World
Super Mario World

While it's great to finally see these games added to the Stars Catalog, hopefully there will still be more exclusive items on the way such as soundtracks and other merchandise.

Are you going spend the last of your stars on some games, or hold out for something else?  

Outrun in 3D!!!

I was always hopeless at Outrun...and I still am. Nevertheless I was looking forward to this 3DS remake of Sega's classic arcade racer and it finally rode in last week, so what does Outrun 3D have to offer under the hood?

Outrun 3D has two control options; the conventional buttons/joystick combo or ... a touch screen option? The touch screen is very weird and I'm not certain of how to change the gears when using it, but if touch screen is your thing then it's there (I'm just old fashioned as I like my buttons). Browsing through the options you'll find the controls are entirely customisable, which is great as accelerate has been defaulted to Y and I find it really unnatural (I prefer B).

For those who struggle at Outrun (like me), Outrun 3D has you covered with 5 difficulty levels and an option to extend the time limit between checkpoints. You can also start the game from any checkpoint if you want to master a particular track.

There's also an option for Old and New versions of Outrun? I don't understand this fully but they seem to offer different tracks, perhaps an Outrun aficionado might be able to explain this better (if there's any around please comment and let us know), but either way you're getting a huge variety of tracks with Outrun 3D. ^_^

There's 6 fantastic audio tracks available to cruise along to, plus a 5-band equaliser in the options menu with 5 programmable presets which is a nice touch. You can also tweak the environmental sound effects as well as the volume of your engine.

Any races you happen to be proud of can be recorded and saved however, you can only save one at a time and there's no option to upload them to a community site to perhaps show off your high-scores and best times, a missed opportunity.

And of course it wouldn't be Outrun 3D if it didn't have any 3D, right? While the 3D effect in Outrun looks great it can make you feel incredibly sick when there's more objects on the screen, especially as the game runs at 60fps which is twice the speed of the original game. I had to shut off the effect when driving through a level made up rows of pillars as I started to feel really dizzy.

Despite the dizzying 3D effects Outrun 3D is a great addition your 3DS collection. Thanks to its wide variety tracks, customisable options and its appeal to both the casual gamer, and the players competing for the highest score, it's certainly worth the £4.49 asking price.

Noggins Week Off

After an unexpected absence I'm back and I'm looking forward to writing many more blogs, starting with this one! So what's been happening?

We've been clearing space to make way for an office/studio, and progress has been going really well, in about 2-3 months I'm hoping to have the space and the kit to start recording videos for YouTube. It's all going to be gaming related but I'm wanting to do something really different as YouTube's gaming scene is really over-saturated, I have some ideas in mind but you'll have to wait to find out. ^_^

We also looked into picking up some microphones last week with the view to starting a podcast however, the local music shop changed it's name to PMT (seriously) and won't be open again for some time. Unfortunately this was the only local shop that offers an extensive range of microphones, so we went off and bought ukulele's instead!

I'm really enjoying playing the uke; as it feels much more relaxing than the guitar. I'm currently learning to play the Last of Us theme, the theme from the Cat Returns and of course, the FUN song from Spongebob Squarepants.

There's also been some decorating going on; my wife has taken some of the Club Nintendo Hanafuda Cards and made this amazing display!

Check back tomorrow for a quick look at Sega's Outrun for Nintendo 3DS!

It's Finally Here!

After nearly 3 months of waiting the Super Smash Bros. Soundtrack has finally arrived!

This double CD set contains a selection of 72 songs from the 3DS and Wii U versions of Super Smash Bros. In order to get the soundtrack you had to register both versions of the game on Club Nintendo by 31st January 2015.

Best track? In my opinion... Gerudo Valley from the Legend of Zelda. I'm going to play that on loop until the disk wears out. :P

Happy 15th Birthday PS2

It's hard to believe that it's been FIFTEEN years to the day since the PS2 arrived. The PS2 would end up being the biggest selling console of all time with a whopping 155 million units worldwide, and it was home to some of the most groundbreaking games of its generation.

I was a late adopter of the PS2 (I opted for Microsoft's Xbox), but I eventually picked up a bundle with an additional controller, Canis Canem Edit (also known as Bully), and Rampage World Tour. I think I got the whole lot for £90, bargain!

With that being said; here's some of my favourite PS2 games and memories.

Grand Theft Auto 3 ... D??? - When it was revealed GTA would be making the transition to 3D there was a lot of excitement. The controversial crime-a-thon's third game offered a huge city to roam around, a ton of vehicles, stacks of weapons and an engrossing story filled with action, betrayal and profanity. When the story was over you could attempt to seek out all of the hidden packages scattered throughout the city, or just take turns with a mate going on a rampage.

Half Life on Console!!!- Originally slated for Sega's Dreamcast, Half Life made the jump to PS2 when Sega bowed out of the console race. Half Life on console isn't anywhere near as good as the PC version (the loading times are terrible), but it did have some console exclusive features like a terrific split-screen multiplayer mode (Snarks FTW), and a co-op campaign called Decay.

Decay followed the story of two scientists that prepared the test sample for Gordon Freeman and thus triggered the Black Mesa incident. It didn't last very long but as it was exclusive to PS2 it made the game a must-have for Half Life fans, although it was just fun activating invincibility and shooting each other during cutscenes.

We Love Katamari- One of my all time favourite games; We Love Katamari is a wonderfully insane, yet simple, puzzle game where you have to roll up objects. You start off small by rolling up things like pencils and sweets, but towards the end of the game you're rolling up cities, countries and even the entire solar system! All of this was wrapped up in a brilliant J-Pop soundtrack and even included co-op multiplayer, which my wife and I played non-stop for months.

If you do somehow manage to collect everything in the game, you unlock one more quest to roll up 1 million roses. Unfortunately you can only roll up the roses in bunches of ten, so we may have to take a year off work in order to accomplish this.

Let me know your favourite PS2 moments in the comments. :P

Looks like a Zora, Swims like a Goron

What on earth is going on with the swimming mechanics in Majora's Mask 3D? I heard some stories that they weren't as good as the Nintendo 64 version, but I can barely control the bloody thing on 3DS.

The camera seems to wander wherever it likes when swimming underwater, if it was directly fixed behind Link there wouldn't be a problem, but it's like the cameraman forgot his flippers and is struggling to keep up. 

The extra joystick on the New 3DS doesn't even help. I'm already holding my thumb down on the A button to make Link swim; so I have to do some impressive thumb/finger gymnastics just to reach the joystick to have minor control over the camera. I have no idea if it's any better on the previous 3DS.

When I thought things couldn't get any worse, along came a mini game where you have to swim through numerous rings in a certain order. Oh joy. And just to make sure you're having the most hideously agonising time imaginable; all the rings have been rendered as solid objects rather than markers to simply pass through. So unless you pass through the ring's centre with reasonable accuracy Link glitches into it, until he's spat out, leaving you to slowly maneuver your way back for another go.

And another thing; why are the vertical controls for swimming inverted?! Link's meant to have transformed into some kind of fish/man hybrid, not an aeroplane!

Maybe I'm being too negative but I'm nowhere near finishing this segment of the game, so I have at least another 1-2 hours of this to go. Best get the coffee on. 

Game On 2.0

From 23rd May until 1st November 2015, the Life Centre in Newcastle are going to have the world's biggest collection of playable computer games from the last 60 years!

There's going to be consoles from the 70's, arcades, popular retro consoles/games, alongside a look at the design process for some of gaming's popular franchises like Pokemon and WoW.

There'll be exhibits looking at VR and thought interface technology (funky stuff), and how other media like movies and music have influenced gaming (and vice versa, of course).

I don't know about you guys but I'm really excited for this! Here's a link the exhibition page, see you on opening day. :P