The PSP is not the only platform getting some Final Fantasy love this week. A hot new trailer has been released in Japan that shows off the various modes of transportation that will be available to players in Final Fantasy XXII: Revenant Wings. The game is shaping up beautifully with highly detailed character sprites and lush 3d backgrounds. We love the cool use of scaling effets and the ability to rotate the world map. Somehow the developers found a way to make this game look even better than Final Fantasy III for the DS. The other great feature of the trailer is that it reveals the release date for Japan as April 26, 2007. Wondering when it will come out in the US and Europe? Let the speculation begin…
Last week we highlighted one way that video game systems are being used as a form of personal and political expression. This week we have an example of video games as art, and really good art at that. The i am 8-bit show recently opened in LA and it highlights some of the astonishingly creative work that artists are doing around the theme of video games, such as the DigDug inspired painting by L. Cheuh featured on the right. You might recognize some of your favorite characters in the portraits below, seen through an artistic lens. We particularly like the child running in fear from bob-omb and friends, since it reminds us of our own misspent childhoods. Mad props to Fort90 for taking these great pictures of the art on display.
If you like the work these artists are doing, why not leave a comment, or better yet, create a piece of your own and submit it. If we get enough submissions of game-related art we will post them here and make you famous.
Best Buy USA is having a massive sale this monday and they plan to offer a large number of console and handheld video games for as low as two dollars! Some of the games rightfully belong in the bargain bin, but a few highlights stick out from the list: Advance Wars and Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow for the DS, and a whole schwack of games for the PSP including Virtua Tennis, Daxter, and Monster Hunter Freedom.
Check out the full list of games on sale after the jump. We will see you in line at the North Seattle Best Buy on Monday morning, coffee in hand.
Crisis Core is one of those games that was bandied around early on in the pre-release hype for the PSP, but which took ages to materialize. Its long lost brother, Gran Turismo, is still nowhere to be seen, but recent murmurings from Japan have confirmed that this portable extension of the Final Fantasy canon really does exist in playable form, and not just as a CG feature film.
Despite the massive public interest in this game, there has been precious little info on plotline, game mechanics, or release info from Square Enix, making us even more curious. To satiate our burning curiosity, we have scoured the internet to compile a list of everything that is curently known about this title, which promises to make a big splash on the PSP software library when it is finally released.
What?Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core is an action RPG set in the Final Fantasy VII universe, and will serve as a prequel to the Ps1 game. Players assume the role of Zack, a young fighter in the Shinra Corporation’s SOLDIER organization. An early trailer for the game shown at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show contained cutscenes with familiar characters: Aeris, Tseng and Sephiroth.
When? The game is set to release in Japan on September 13, 2007. This means that we could reasonably expect to see it in North America as a Winter 2007 title, perhaps as early as January or February 2008.
Who? None other than Square Enix, and the same team that has been responsible for the other “Final Fantasy Compilation” series, which includes Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII for mobile, and Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus for the Ps2.
Even though Before Crisis and Dirge of Cerberus were mediocre games, hopefully the team will do a better job with Crisis Core. The fact that Yoshinori Katase, the deirector of Final Fantasy VII is heading up develoment of the PSP game gives us reason to believe it will be a quality title.
A new trailer for Atari’s Test Drive Unlimited has just been released, and it looks promising. When the game was hit the streets last year for the Xbox 360, it boasted the world’s first MMO racing experience, allowing Xbox Live users to meet up and race each other over a virtual reproduction of Oahu (without any of the pesky pedestrians or traffic). Multiplayer match-ups worked well on paper, but players complained that they could not locate friends who had the misfortune of being located on different servers, making organized meetings a pain. Nevertheless, Test Drive Unlimited took the concept of free-roam racing to a whole new level. Incredibly, the PSP version includes all of the massively multiplayer functionality of the console version, in a tight little handeld package. Even though the PSP is saturated with quality racing titles, this game could be one of the year’s best.
The trailer shows off some of the impressive car models in the game. It looks like the developers did not cut too many corners graphically, since the trailer managed to have us salivating over the Lotus Elise. Control during races still looks a little bit “floaty” from the clips shown in the video. Perhaps someone who has played the Xbox version can comment on the car controls, since this is the most important part of any racing simulation and could make or break the game.
Infrastructure Mode NOT Included in North America?
Left out in the cold?
Well we have good news and bad news, as the saying goes. If he is to be believed, and we are hoping he is not, user sven over in the offical Capcom message boards has some sad news for Monster Hunter fans in North America and Europe:
“MH Portable 2nd, uses ad-hoc for multiplayer again (unfortunately, not infrastructure). I assure you, we (the US and European offices) pushed very hard for infrastructure based multiplayer but the team did not have time to implement such a feature.”
That’s right folks, apparently infrastructure mode will remain a Japan-only feature for the Monster Hunter Portable sequel. The good news from all of this is that at least sven confirmed (in a roundabout sort fo way) that MHP2 is indeed coming to the West “within four to six months” although this is something we knew already.
As video game journalists, we are generally skeptical of the insane ramblings of random voices from the Internet, but sven’s comment has us worried. The fact that he refers to himself as “The official I wish I could tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you (TM) guy” lends added credibility to his story.
Frankly, we think that infrastructure mode is a necessity and worth waiting for, especially since it was so sorely missed in the first game and since the Ps2 version never made it to Western shores. If you feel the way we do, make your voice heard below, and we will do our best to make sure that your comments are heard by someone at Capcom.
Dark Alex, enigmatic hacker and/or miracle worker is best known for his Open Edition or “OE” firmware hacks for the PSP. His OE firmware allows users to run homebrew applications while retaining all of the benefits of official firmware updates. After Sony’s recent release of the 3.10 patch, the homebrew community was momentarily locked out of the device, but Dark Alex has once again come through for the community and released a new, updated 3.10 OE.
The improvements in this version are fairly minor but they include:
Increased Brightness Level. The brightness now has four levels and real battery sadists can now set their screen to “god mode” which was previously reserved for outlet power only.
Change from 3.03 firmware to 3.10
We wish Dark Alex continued success in his total domination of Sony’s sleek black device, and we hope that his elite skillz have helped him score a girlfriend as hot as Angelina Jolie.
If you would like to try out Dark Alex’s Open Edition firmware it can be found HERE
Arguably one of the most common complaints among PSP gamers has been that the system lacks a second analogue stick, handicapping it for games that work better using this control scheme. Perhaps the hardest hit genre so far has been First Person Shooter (FPS) games. Early attempts at mastering fluid 3d control on the single-stick PSP proved disasterous. Perhaps what hurt the most about games like Coded Arms and Ghost in the Shell is that they looked fantastic on the PSP — proving that the hardware was more than capable of tackling the genre, even if the controls left a bad taste in our collective mouths.
Two years into the PSP library, we have finally seen some successes. Third-person shooters like Socom, Metal Gear Solid, and Syphon Filter all demonstrated that military action games could be translated to the platform with minor gameplay adjustments, while still remaining fun and easy to control. The problem with all of these games is that they flirt with FPS gameplay conventions without actually capturing the essence of the elusive purebred FPS.
Medal of Honor Heroes was released with minimal hype last fall, and went largely unnoticed in the gaming press. Now that the holiday gaming rush has died down we finally managed to snag a copy and put it to the test. We can happily report that it does an admirable job of recreating the frenzy of FPS action on the PSP and almost lives up to the experience offered by its bigger console brothers.
Sony has openly touted the PSP as a media player, games machine, web browser, and mp3 player. However, through the proliferation of self-published magazines and podcasts, the PSP is rapidly becoming the medium of choice for street-level digital broadcasting. Most magazines for the PSP focus on video gaming, film, and music reviews, but a growing number of publications deal with with issues of wider social relevance.
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 “The Raise” is a new magazine published by the Cyberjaya Multimedia University in Malaysia, which provides information and news of interest to Muslim PSP users worldwide. The first issue of the magazine, which is available in English, features a video documentary about the effects of 9/11 on the Muslim population, as well as commentary and articles about religious Islam. Whether or not you are a Muslim it is worth checking out this magazine, just to see what other people are doing with the PSP as an artistic medium. It might even insipre you to start your own PSP ‘zine…
Video game players and makers have fought vigorously to have their work taken seriously by the mainstream media and the academic community as a form of art and social commentary. Sadly, much of the current debate focuses only on the negative effects of video games on society. Examples like ”The Raise” show that video gamers are not only a diverse bunch, but also that we care about issues like religion and politics, and that we have meaningful things to say about these topics. Someday the mainstream press will take video games and gamers seriously, but until then, we have to keep finding new and creative ways to use the technologies we have and emphasize the positive aspects of gaming.Â
If you publish a PSP ‘zine and would like to see it featured in Portable Video Gamer, please let us know about it.Â
Yesterday the internet was abuzz with news that Ready At Dawn was about to unleash the megaton game God Of War on PSP. It all began when some clever internet detectives noticed the striking similaity between the style of text in the Ps2 game and the font used on RaD’s “coming soon” website. Today, however, Ready at Dawn is singing a different tune, this time favoring comic sans over the more aggressively gothic God of War lettering.
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What does this all mean? Those of us who played Daxter already know that RaD has a dark sense of humor, as well as a penchant for riffing on symbols from popular culture like The Matrix and Dance Dance Revolution. This could be an elaborate hoax to build buzz about a game that in fact has absolutely nothing to do with God of War. Or, maybe they just like messing with our collective minds. After all, comic sans is a pretty cheeky font, suggesting that Ready at Dawn might just be having a laugh at our expense.
Speaking of which, where is my cheque for promoting this hype-machine?
Best Buy USA is 
Crisis Core is one of those games that was bandied around early on in the pre-release hype for the PSP, but which took ages to materialize. Its long lost brother, Gran Turismo, is still nowhere to be seen, but recent murmurings from Japan have confirmed that this portable extension of the Final Fantasy canon really does exist in playable form, and not just as a CG feature film. 
Dark Alex, enigmatic hacker and/or miracle worker is best known for his Open Edition or “OE” firmware hacks for the PSP. His OE firmware allows users to run homebrew applications while retaining all of the benefits of official firmware updates. After Sony’s recent release of the 3.10 patch, the homebrew community was momentarily locked out of the device, but Dark Alex has once again come through for the community and released a new, updated 3.10 OE. 
Arguably one of the most common complaints among PSP gamers has been that the system lacks a second analogue stick, handicapping it for games that work better using this control scheme. Perhaps the hardest hit genre so far has been First Person Shooter (FPS) games. Early attempts at mastering fluid 3d control on the single-stick PSP 
