Hey,

As you can tell, I’ve been pretty busy with Xbox 360 Fanboy. I’ve been doing upwards of six posts a day, which saps a lot of the time I used to use for posting here. Sorry ’bout that. I promised myself I’d never apologize for not having content on this site, but I feel I finally have a legitimate excuse.

I know it’s annoying to read “sorry for not posting” posts, but there you go. Check out my work over there and let me know what you think. Also, if you’ve got any great news regarding non-360 consoles, let me know.

-Sense

Remember my good news? Well, there it is. Right up there. I’m officially blogging for Xbox 360 Fanboy now. As a result, 8bN will likely see a few changes. One, I won’t be covering the 360 here anymore, unless it’s editorial. For that, you can head over to Xbox 360 Fanboy. Two, I probably won’t be posting here as often.

Overall, I couldn’t be more excited about this. Please, check out my first professional blog post and tell me what you think. Thanks, everyone!

Okay, we’ve all seen the various Nintendo music videos floating around the net. I choose to display this one—I found it on Kotaku—for one reason: This particular acappella features a song from Zelda II: Link’s Adventure, decidedly the most underrated game in the series. It’s refreshing to see people singing songs other than Mario and Zelda standards. There’s also some other fine tunes in there, though I don’t recognize them all.

[gv data="by5pamLourk"][/gv]

I’m not feeling too hot today, so I skipped work. Well, I went in to work but left quickly anyway. As such, I’m not thrilled about doing updates today. But I thought I should give you all something, so I give you…a movie of Chromehounds! I’ve been looking forward to this game for some time now. If you don’t know, it’s a mech game with heavy customization and team dynamics. Graphically, the game doesn’t look quite as good as the shots that came out earlier this year. Still, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. This is a movie of one of the night missions. Enjoy it after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Bungie has a weird interesting article up today.  Through calculations and prognostications I won’t pretend to understand, the folks at Bungie have discovered the “Average Gamertag”. That is to say, they have come up with the one Gamertag that most accurately represents all Gamertags (at least, all the Gamertags that play Halo 2). So, what is the magic ‘tag?

xArKKAAaEX

Roger from Bungie explains it thusly:

“How do I figure? First of all, these are “modal” averages, making use of the most-common values rather than in-between values, since seeing an A and a C doesn’t mean that B is most expected. The most common gamertag length is 10, so that’s what I used here. In each letter position, I found the frequency distribution of letters at that position, blended it halfway against the expected letter distribution in English to call out the statistically significant differences, and took the most heavily weighted resulting letter for that position. The average gamertag starts and ends with X — no surprise there — and after that starts with “Ark”. Coincidence? I don’t know.”

Sounds like someone had a little too much free time today.

Hey, internet, guess what? I have some good news, but I can’t tell you what it is. Not just yet. It’s still “in process” as they say in the disgusting world of business. But you’ll hear about it as soon as I do.

Anywho, I played a little Halo 2 last night. Let me tell you, I am rusty as hell. I did manage to have one good Team Slayer experience which was nice. Turf is by far my favorite map. Nice and tight. Of course, Midship is nice for the same reason. I will say one thing though: I suck at Team SWAT. Maybe I could get better, but probably not. I’d suggest you get a good solid team together if you’re going to play SWAT.

I just thought I’d chime in, as I’ve had no time for real news today. And don’t forget to stay tuned for my good news.

Not too much time to post just now, on account of “real” work, so I’ll make this quick. I got a new computer recently. It’s not great, but it’s lightyears ahead of my six-year-old laptop. As such I’ve been downloading plenty of games that my old hunk-O-junk could never run. To my great dissatisfaction, the F.E.A.R. demo does not run well, even on the lowest possible setting. Oh, well.

Which led me to the only other benchmark I could think of: “Well, can it play World of Warcraft?” Now, mind you, I don’t particularly want to play WoW, but it serves as a valid test of my computer’s ability to play a game that is fun. I am somewhat suspect of my ability to stop playing once I’ve started. However, I think that base is covered by my limited trial period. It’s my hope that I won’t be addicted enough to start paying for it.

Which reminds me, anybody know any decent—and free—MMOs I could try?

I saw a story on Joystiq about some blurry next gen Golden Axe screen shots and decided to do a little sleuthing. Turns out SEGA released two screens during E3, rendering these blurry shots somewhat moot. I guess it’s not gameplay but they look very nice. See one more after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I just typed a very long and beautifully written impression of Rockstar’s Table Tennis. And then it got zapped. So it’s gone for good and I’m pretty damned pissed.

Suffice it to say that Table Tennis represents a pure form of gaming. It’s delicious and delectable and whatever other food related adjective you’d like to throw at it. I’d suggest you go rent it as soon as possible.

In a bit of damage control during Major Nelson’s latest podcast blogcast, Peter Moore stated that his previous comments on backwards compatibility were taken out of context. Apparently the comments came in answer to a question about Microsoft’s original—and admittedly vague—back compat plans. I.e. Microsoft went from having nebulous plans at E3 ‘05 to having quite a few back compat titles. See? Sounds better that way, doesn’t it? At any rate, more than twenty new titles are being added to the back compat list, including Doom III and the lovable Lego Star Wars.

According to Xboxic, the podcast…er…blogcast also has some of the Moore-man’s thoughts on E3 and Wii. I’d listen to it myself, but it is forbidden by the evil office web filter. Man, I’ve got to get an iPod so I can listen to all these podcasts. Wait, blogcasts. Damn it.