We turned on the Nintendo PlayStation: It’s real and it works
When a mysterious “Nintendo PlayStation” prototype with both an SNES cartridge slot and a CD drive made the rounds back in July, many remained skeptical. Not even Sony PlayStation’s head of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, wanted to confirm its authenticity. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to bring up the bad blood between his company and Nintendo over this failed collaboration.
Back in 1988, Sony inked a deal with the legendary gaming giant to add its then new CD-ROM technology to the upcoming SNES console. But when it came to money, they couldn’t reach an agreement: Sony allegedly wanted to keep all the money from CD licenses and then figure out royalties with Nintendo later. As you’d imagine, Nintendo didn’t take to this arrangement too kindly. Eventually, just a day after Sony unveiled this “Play Station” at the Chicago CES in 1991, Nintendo retaliated with a surprise move by publicly breaking up with Sony in favor of Philips. Well, that partnership didn’t work out for Nintendo, either. But this infamous rupture did lead to the birth of Sony’s very own PlayStation, which went on to become one of the company’s most profitable assets today.
The “Nintendo PlayStation” is now the stuff of gaming legend, with reportedly only about 200 prototypes ever produced. But, as luck would have it, one of those systems fell into the hands of a father and son: Terry and Dan Diebold. We met up with the Diebolds in Hong Kong, where they were in town for a retro gaming expo, to hear how it ended up in their possession. Most importantly, we got to turn the “Nintendo PlayStation” on, play a couple of SNES games on it, and even take it apart to see if we could fix the dormant CD drive. Slideshow-338987
Activision starts a studio for ‘Skylanders,’ ‘Call of Duty’ TV and film
Activision Blizzard today launched a studio in charge of taking its franchises from the console to the silver screen, starting with a film franchise based on Call of Duty and an animated television series all about Skylanders. Under Activision Blizzard Studios, Skylanders Academy is in production now with showrunner Eric Rogers, who is best known as a writer for Futurama. It features the voices of Justin Long as Spryo, Ashley Tisdale as Stealth Elf, Jonathan Banks as Eruptor and Norm Macdonald as Glumshanks. Details are scarce for the Call of Duty film project, but in a press release Activision calls out Advanced Warfare and Black Ops 3 as examples of the series’ potential. Plus, it notes a possibility of television adaptations for the franchise.
Playdate: Clambering around London in ‘Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’
It’s autumn, so that means it’s time for a new Assassin’s Creed game. This time out the franchise has gone back to London’s industrial age with Syndicate. A period when kids worked in factories and hooded folks jumped off of tall buildings to kill members of the Knights Templar. That last part might not be historically accurate. Maybe. There are a lot of variables at play here. Regardless, the last few AC releases haven’t been great, but I’m determined to give Syndicate the old college try to see if it can recapture the franchise’s highpoint, 2009’s Assassin’s Creed 2. This time you can come along for the ride with Sean and myself as we explore London’s seedy underbelly starting at 6PM Eastern / 3PM Pacific. As always, we’ll be playing for two hours and you can tune in either on this post, the Engadget Gaming homepage or Twitch.tv/Joystiq if you’d like to join us in chat.
‘The Witcher’ will be a movie in 2017
The Witcher is perhaps best known as a video game series, but its roots travel deeper than the digital realm. The Witcher games are based on a long-running series of novels and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, and these tales are being turned into a film, due to premiere in 2017. The movie will pull from themes in The Witcher and Lesser Evil, two stories in Sapkowski’s collection The Last Wish, which was originally published in 1993; an English version hit the market in 2007. The Sean Daniel Company (the studio that produced The Mummy franchise) is teaming up with Platige Films on the project, alongside Oscar-nominated director of The Cathedral, Tomasz Bagiński. It’s planned to be a series, assuming audiences are appropriately charmed by the leading, supernaturally powered man, Geralt. He’s fairly bewitching, or so we’ve heard.
Source: Platige
SNK ditches slot machines to focus more on video games
Call SNK the anti-Konami. Rather than back away from video games, the legendary Japanese studio has announced that it’s dropping its pachinko slot machine business to concentrate its efforts on both conventional video games (like the upcoming King of Fighters XIV, above) and mobile titles. There just isn’t as much money in those machines as there is consoles and smartphones, SNK says. To that end, it’s hiring more staff and planning more titles.
Via: Anime News Network
Source: SNK (PDF, translated)
‘Overwatch Origins Edition’ will be on PC, PS4 and XB1 next year
Until now only a PC version had been announced for Blizzard’s first all-new game in years, but today a splash page on its Battle.net website promises it will come to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Overwatch Origins Edition is expected to arrive “on or before” June 21st, 2016, although the link to BuyOverwatch.com isn’t working yet. The listing itself has very little information other than promising “all digital content included with Origins Edition will be available by launch,” but an eagle-eyed Reddit poster spotted what may be a full listing of items on a videogame retailer’s website. The shooter has generated hype with a public beta and many Twitch streaming sessions, but for now it’s just one more reason (besides that Warcraft movie trailer) to keep an eye on BlizzCon over the next few days.
Via: Wario64 (Twitter)
Source: Battle.net
Developers can now sell in-game items through Steam
The folks at Valve have introduced a new Steam feature called “Item Store” which, as its name implies, makes it easier for game developers to manage and sell microtransactions. Facepunch Studios has already jumped on board, creating a marketplace for its DayZ-inspired survival title Rust. It sits inside the Steam client and any items you buy are added to your inventory automatically. So what’s the point? Well, this feature means indie developers no longer have to build in-game stores from scratch. They can also be used to manage user-made items — as Eurogamer reports, developers can integrate their stores with Steam Workshops and set their own item prices. Steam handles the checkout process and promises to split the payments between Workshop authors “as appropriate.” What’s not clear, however, is whether the developer takes a cut on community-made items. Earlier this year Valve faced enormous backlash when it tried to introduce paid Skyrim mods — hopefully it’s learned from that mistake and really thought this initiative through.
Source: Steam
The ‘Fallout 4’ Pip-Boy app is available right now
Attention future Commonwealth explorers: The Fallout 4 Pip-Boy app is available for you to download. Unlike the gap between the release of Fallout Shelter on Android and iOS, both versions are available right this very moment. More than just acting as a mobile menu setup, you can play any holotape games you find in Fallout 4 within the app (with what sounds like a version of Missile Command built in). Sounds cool, right? Well, now you’ve got another something to keep you busy until November 10th — even if you have an oversized phone.
Source: iTunes, Google Play
You can drive cars from ‘Fallout 4’ in ‘Forza Motorsport 6’
Can’t wait until November 10th to wander through a desolate nuclear wasteland? That’s a little weird, dude — but if you need something to tide you over until Fallout 4 hits stores, Forza Motorsport 6 may have the ticket: starting today, players will be able to download a Fallout-themed 1956 Ford F100 for free.
Source: Xbox News Wire
‘SOMA’ nearly wasn’t a horror game and other secrets from Ian Thomas
The developers at Frictional Games have a lot to live up to. This is the independent studio responsible for Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a terrifying first-person game fraught with monsters, mysterious shadows, haunting candlelight and devious puzzles. Amnesia won a handful of awards after its launch in 2010, including two at the Independent Games Festival, and it’s widely considered a modern horror classic. SOMA is Frictional’s first game since that success (the studio didn’t even develop Amnesia‘s 2013 sequel), and it’s an underwater, sci-fi adventure. And, of course, it’s a horror game. This means the pressure is on for programmer Ian Thomas. He joined Frictional a few years into SOMA‘s development and he’s been “bowled over” by the response to his studio’s latest project. For Thomas, it’s good to know that Frictional’s instincts were spot-on, especially considering SOMA was almost a very different game.
AIVAnet 