Capcom has revealed that the company might shift development of existing franchises and IP overseas, outsourcing it to other countries, while the Japanese studios focus solely on creating new IP. The news came ruing a Q & A session with the company, where they said that development of Bionic Commando — an new IP — was given to Swedish studio GRIN, which made development a lot harder.
We can certainly understand the difficulty of developing something new, where a lot of decisions have to be made, with someone across the globe. It’s a bit easier with current franchises, as characters, themes and the like have already been established.
If you’re into jewelry or accessories or anything like that (we’re not, but hey…), you might be interested in the adorable, hand-made Pac Man bracelet. The bracelet has, which you might expect, Pac Man eating and ghosts chasing him in a never-ending circle. If you’re into these kinds of things, you can get the bracelet here for $25.
The last review of 2009 here on DigitalBattle will focus on a little, but anticipated game called PixelJunk Shooter, a downloadable title for the PS3. Developed by Q-Games, who are known for making simple games that are just fun and work well, have made exactly that with PixelJunk Shooter, which is incredibly simple, fun and addictive.
PixelJunk Shooter is a 2D game where you control a tiny space ship that must navigate through a maze of caves, complete mission tasks and, of course, fight enemies. However, the missions aren’t structured as you might expect, and the environments in the game play a big role. The maps all have an element of lava and water level, where a volcano spits out lava which burns though and blocks access to certain parts, but if you blow up a hole for the water to escape, it’ll trickle down onto the lave and create… rock! This adds a number of creative puzzles which haven’t been seen before in this kind of games. Read the rest of the review
NASA has revealed that their anticipated MMO about space exploration will have a demo out early January. The MMO uses actual NASA simulation technology used to simulate the return to the moon in 2020, where players will have the ability to explore the moon, and in the future, Mars as well. The game, officially titled “Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond”, is expected to be released in Q1 of 2010. Check out the first gameplay video of the title at NASA.
The Steam Holiday Sale continues with more great offers, this time, probably a game you shouldn’t miss out on, and definitely not for $2.50, which is the price Day of Defeat Source retails for today. Get it while you can, you won’t regret it. The other deals include:
Nintendo director Eiji Aonuma, the man behind the last few Zelda games, including Twilight Princess, has stated that he wished Nintendo would’ve made Link’s Crossbow Training 2 — a successor to the minigame which was originally introduced to “train” folks to use the new Wii Zapper, which the game shipped with. He said,
“To tell you the truth, I actually wanted to create Link’s Crossbow Training 2. I thought that we should do something more and better in the field of the first person shooter, based on our experience of the first game. For example, I was thinking that maybe we could intensify the multiplayer mode. The original game was really just a solo game but I thought that we could add a true multiplayer mode with multiple users playing together, from remote areas, over the Wi-Fi Connection.”
But as usual, when it comes to multiplayer and trying new stuff, Nintendo isn’t exactly at the forefront. Nintendo bosses told Aonuma to work on the next Zelda game instead of another minigame.
Sure, 2009 may only be known for blockbusters like Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands, but there were many more games released this year. In fact, 1099 games were released on the major and minor platforms this year, which is a tiny bit higher than 2008, which saw a release of 1092 games.
However, overall sales saw a decrease, so the news isn’t that good. Besides, how many games have your heard of this year? A dozen? Two dozen? Definitely not 1,099.
Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the greatest Zelda game and arguably the greatest game ever made, featured a rather low quality soundtrack, good enough back in the day, but now, it should rather be something orchestrated, and Nintendo didn’t even go that way for Twilight Princes.
Luckily, a few musicians and Zelda fans have orchestrated the entire soundtrack from Ocarina of Time and made it free for download. The music is amazing, and so popular that it brought the website of the project down.
We got a few mirrors for you though, you can nab the OST here:
3D Realms, which earlier this year fired its entire development team and began focusing on Duke Nukem IP only, has stated that numerous Duke Nukem games will be released over the next few years, non by 3D Realms though. The company said that most of the games are for the casual sector, and are developed by several developers who licensed the Duke Nukem IP.
However, the prospect of a fully fledged 3D Duke Nukem game is a long one, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it happen.
Capcom has revealed that the company might shift development of existing franchises and IP overseas, outsourcing it to other countries, while the Japanese studios focus solely on creating new IP. The news came ruing a Q & A session with the company, where they said that development of Bionic Commando — an new IP — was given to Swedish studio GRIN, which made development a lot harder.
The last review of 2009 here on DigitalBattle will focus on a little, but anticipated game called PixelJunk Shooter, a downloadable title for the PS3. Developed by Q-Games, who are known for making simple games that are just fun and work well, have made exactly that with PixelJunk Shooter, which is incredibly simple, fun and addictive. 
Sure, 2009 may only be known for blockbusters like Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands, but there were many more games released this year. In fact, 1099 games were 
Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the greatest Zelda game and arguably the greatest game ever made, featured a rather low quality soundtrack, good enough back in the day, but now, it should rather be something orchestrated, and Nintendo didn’t even go that way for Twilight Princes. 
3D Realms, which earlier this year fired its entire development team and began focusing on Duke Nukem IP only, has