http://www.realpoor.com/ Where Internet drama can cost you your job! 2009-11-20 17:28:46 -0500 Ever since Mario first graced the silver screen, the movie industry has had a fascination with turning video game into movies. Some of these creations has earned fan praise and financial success, while others are nearly unwatchable. With the line between video games, and movies blurring as games become more cinematic, many gamers are now driven to see their favorite games given the silver screen treatment. Armed with video cameras, some gamers have taken the extra step. To go beyond the dream of their favorite games turned into a summer blockbuster but, to make the movies and trailers themselves. While most of these trailers will never be realized as a full movie, it does make you wonder what it would be like. The following are ten of the best the Internet has to offer in fan made video game movie trailers. Half-Life: In 2001, Valve released the first of the Half-Life series to rave reviews, and earning game of the year awards across the industry. Now eight years later, with the sequel, and spin offs all earning high marks across the board. It is amazing that there has not been talk of a major motion picture staring the theoretical physicist, Gordon Freeman. The trailer sets the movie to follow the events of the first game, from the resonance cascade that launched the conflict, to the battle to the surface, and back. This sci-fi thriller would surely not disappoint. Mario Paint: Mario was the subject of the first major video game movie release, and also the first video game movie flop. Mario paint may seem like a strange choice of subject matter for a movie for one of the world's most famous plumbers. The trailer changes Mario from a happy, cheerful plumber that has an artistic side, to that of a twisted, tortured soul. This suspenseful movie adaptation of the world's most famous plumber shows that everyone has a dark side. I'm impressed with the trailer and would love to see a full length movie in this style. If this movie ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Best_Fan_Made_Video_Game_Movie_Trailers_a284.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Best_Fan_Made_Video_Game_Movie_Trailers_a284.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Best_Fan_Made_Video_Game_Movie_Trailers_a284.html James McKinley 2009-11-20 06:13:45 -0500 Video game developers are a funny bunch. They love to hide little gems within their creations; many games have dozens of Easter Eggs and pop culture references throughout. So when a developer get the chance to drop in a cameo by some famous celebrity (real or digital) they usually don t hesitate unless there s legal issues involved. Some are funny, some are quirky, and some are just downright misplaced but I ve compiled what I consider a solid list of the 10 Best Video Game Cameos. 10) Aerosmith in Revolution X It s not enough the Stephen Tyler and his crew pretty much rule the modern rock world; they felt they needed to take over the gaming industry as well. Fortunately for gamers, their misguided attempt, a little game called Revolution X that released in arcades an on the SNES (as well as a couple other home systems) in 1996, never really took off. The game was a side scrolling shooter designed for used with a light gun in which players had to save the members of Aerosmith from the uptight NON soldiers who had kidnapped them. The game featured Aerosmith songs looped continuously and the ability to shoot CDs instead of grenades! No wonder it tanked. 9) Dan 'Toasty' Forden in Mortal Kombat It s not unusual for game developers to develop swelled heads. They often forget that 90% of gamers don t really care who they are and usually only gain notoriety if they a) create an awesome game or b) create something that s garbage through and through (John Romero s Daikatana anyone?) Dan Forden, one of the developers of Mortal Kombat, figured he was going to take his future into his own hands and inserted his likeness into the arcade fighting game. Forden popped up on the screen and exclaimed Toasty! after particularly nasty uppercuts and cemented himself a place in pop culture. Not too bad for a half-second sound bite. 8) ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Video_Game_Cameos_a282.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Video_Game_Cameos_a282.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Video_Game_Cameos_a282.html Robert Palmer 2009-11-16 06:28:20 -0500 It s not hard to see wasted potential in the gaming industry. Everywhere you look there are games, peripherals, and even entire console system that could have been so much more than that actually are if developers had just pushed the envelope a little bit and tried to take things to the next level instead of giving up and settling for good enough. Because there s so much ground to cover (and because I didn t want to focus purely on games themselves) I ve decided to chop this article into chunks for easier digestion and hopefully a livelier dialog. The categories include: Games, Consoles/Systems, and finally Companies. So without further ado, here are the 7 Biggest Wasted Potentials in the Gaming Industry! Games 1) E.T. (Atari 2600) This game marked the first attempt by game developers to merge Hollywood with at home game systems. While the attempts have generally gotten better over the years, we re still occasionally graced with stinkers (Fantastic Four, Spawn, Transformers). Developers should really take a lesson from gaming history and understand that a flashy Hollywood title isn t enough to sell a game. If it s crap, we won t buy it. Case in Point: E.T. Atari tried to cash in on the monumental success of Stephen Spielberg s quirky little extra-terrestrial dramedy by rushing a game through production and flood the market with tons of copies. When gamers got their hands on the thing, and realized the crappy graphics and mind-numbingly repetitive gameplay was not fun at all, they revolted and pushed the already shaky gaming industry over the brink and into the great gaming bust of 1983. Atari scrapped its grand plan and buried it along with thousands of its game cartridges in a landfill in New Mexico hoping to restore the natural balance between supply and demand. Thankfully the industry rev ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/7_Biggest_Wasted_Potentials_in_Gaming_Industry_a280.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/7_Biggest_Wasted_Potentials_in_Gaming_Industry_a280.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/7_Biggest_Wasted_Potentials_in_Gaming_Industry_a280.html Robert Palmer 2009-11-12 07:27:47 -0500 Each year, countless games are made across the wide expanse of the video game industry. While some are remembered for their greatness, there are a few, that will be forever remembered for the disappointment they gave, the wasted poetical, or just how broken the game was. The only sure way to be able to enjoy these games is to pair them with a Mystery Science Theater style commentary track. Even then, you may need an iron stomach to handle some of the worst very PC games. 10. Spore Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is good. I'm sure Spore fanatics are foaming at the mouth to see their beloved game on this list. However, beautiful and versatile the in game creation tools are, they do not make a game. What they do make is a 3D modeling program posing as a video game. In Spore you are the designer of life from the single celled organism crawling around the primordial ooze, to the space faring race of the distant future. The creator of Spore, Will Wright, promoted it for years as a revolution in video game design, that it would change how we view video games. Sadly, when it was finally released in 2008 it fell far short of the mark Will Wright set for it. Most of the features that was shown in preview videos for years was either simplified, or removed entirely. It is clear that most of the work went into getting the creation tools working. On that front, the game is simply amazing with the ability to mold not only your creatures, but their vehicles, and buildings as well. Once you leave the creation tools, the game is about as deep as the primordial pool you originally crawled out of. With the ability to get to the repetitive space stage in under six hours, if you're looking for something more than a 3D modeling program to play with, Spore is not a game to you. 9. American Idol Rhythm games are a corner stone of the industry. With games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero selling millions, it isn't hard to see why other companies ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Worst_PC_Games_Ever_a278.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Worst_PC_Games_Ever_a278.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Worst_PC_Games_Ever_a278.html James McKinley 2009-11-09 06:18:17 -0500 Video games are a controversial medium to say the least. It seems somebody is always trying to get the whole industry shut down for one reason or another. Let s take a look at some of the fodder these rabid anti-digitarians have fed on in the past. SecuRom The Anti-Pirating Software The video game industry makes a boatload of cash every year when greedy gamers drop the green for those gotta have titles but some unscrupulous little Pwnrs are either too lazy to get the cash in the first place or too cheap to part with after the fact. As a result, the video game industry also loses a boatload of cash every year when games are pirated via torrent sites and the like. So it makes sense that game developers would try to create some sort of secret code that would prevent people from being able to do so. That s what SecuRom is . . . sort of. The software has come under some serious criticism in the past because it fails to uninstall from your target machine even after the game it was installed with is removed from the system. That sounds a bit like malware to me and it s tricky at the least but they fixed the problem (albeit after they were caught ) so why grumble? Because the software is still being used to limit the number of machines any given game can be installed upon. Bioshock got 2 Activations Mass Effect got 3 and Spore (incidentally the most illegally downloaded game in 2008) received only 2. Gamers revolted saying that their purchase price should allow them free reign to install as they wish (which it should) and game developers conceded by allowing gamers to contact them to receive more activations. The whole thing s a clunky system that really needs an overhaul. I understand the reasoning but the implementation is far too awkward to ever work in the real world. Eve Online: The Real Life Emulator? One of the mos ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Darkest_Secrets_of_Video_Gaming_Industry_a277.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Darkest_Secrets_of_Video_Gaming_Industry_a277.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Darkest_Secrets_of_Video_Gaming_Industry_a277.html Robert Palmer 2009-11-07 08:36:35 -0500 Uppity game critiques often give gamers a lot of guff for putting too much emphasis on a game s graphics. They say that concentrating on how pretty the game is detracts from the underlying factors that make such a game so good including the physics, the script, and the acting (if there is any to speak of). Problem is, when you take the graphics away from a game you ve basically got a choose your own adventure book. So, when you realize that graphical design is really the biggest component of any successful video game, the single most important aspect of a game s design comes down to how cool the main characters look. Whether short and dumpy like Mario, big and brutish like Kratos, or just plain bizarre like any number of characters from just about any Japanese RPG, the look of the main character drives the feel of the entire game and can even give developers a little (or a lot) of freedom to cover up weak points in mechanics and plot. Let s take a ride down memory lane and examine the 10 Best Dressed Video Game heroes of All Time. 10) Gordon Freeman (Half Life) Gordon s a scientist by day who gets thrown into alternate realities willy nilly with the fate of the world and the entire human race sitting on his shoulders so you wouldn t expect him to be a flashy dresser. However, when Gordon trades his lab coat for his orange and black HEV hazard suit he gains +30 to his coolness factor. There s nothing his suit can t handle from hazardous waste to ballistic threat the HEV is what every sharp dressed man should be wearing when reality tears and alternate universes start leaking in. Props to Gordon for making Emo glasses cool as well. 9) James Bond (From Russia With Love) Nothing says cool like James Bond and there s never been a better one than Sean Connery so in 2005 when EA resurrected the classic flick from 1963 with the likeness and voice ta ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Dressed_Video_Game_Heroes_a276.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Dressed_Video_Game_Heroes_a276.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/10_Best_Dressed_Video_Game_Heroes_a276.html Robert Palmer 2009-11-05 06:49:32 -0500 Once a staple of the local arcades, restaurants, and convenience stores, the fighting game was the king of the quarter gobblers. Now, with the arcades dying a slow death, the genre has been in a decline for years. Looking for a new home, they turned to the home market. While they cannot match the feel of an arcade, it forces the major players to look for new ways to draw players. 20. Toribash Toribash is the only turn based fighter to make the list. What makes Toribash so great? It is how different it is from all the others. Taking a new spin on things, you move the individual limbs and muscles of the fighter instead of the fighter as a whole unit. While most players will end up flopping on the ground for the first few rounds, once understood the game is remarkably deep. 19. Virtua Fighter Virtua Fighter changed how the world saw fighters. While the graphics look crude by today's standards, it was on the bleeding edge in 1993. While its controls were far simpler than other fighters of its day, it allowed a greater range of players to enjoy this game. 18. Def Jam: Fight for NY The squeal to Def Jam: Vendetta, Fight for NY took what made its predecessor great and improved upon it by revamping the fighting engine, allowing for environmental weapons. It not only fought well, but had a deep storyline with many twists and turns before the thrilling conclusion, bolstered by an all-star cast of rap and hip hop stars, all of whom gave outstanding performances. 17. M.U.G.E.N. Mugen is a bit strange to try to explain. It isn't exactly a full fletched fighter, but is the framework for a fighter. Allowing users of this free program to create characters, stages, and entire rule sets Mugen holds a world record for containing the most customizable roster for a fighting game, with characters from Homer Simpson, to Sub-Zero available for download. The only thing that detracts from it is some of the work isn't as high quality as you may be used to ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/20_Badass_Fighting_Games_a272.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/20_Badass_Fighting_Games_a272.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/20_Badass_Fighting_Games_a272.html James McKinley 2009-10-29 09:02:19 -0400 There are lots of legitimate reasons to ban a video game. Honestly! I reserve the right to protect my freedom of speech as much as any red-blooded American but when someone s freedom of speech is actually hurtful to another person then a line has been crossed. For example, when The Guy Game was pulled off the shelf in the States, the action was totally justified (one of the women who appeared naked/partially naked in the game s footage was under age) I just wished that developers had done their homework so they could have produced a piece of digital media I could have actually consumed without a guilty conscience. However, there are tons of reasons to ban games that make absolutely no sense. So here we go around the world to take a look at the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Video Game Bans of all time . . . 10: 50 Cent: Bulletproof (Banned 2005, Australia) The Australian equivalent of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (Office of Film and Literature Classification) banned Fitty s epically bad third-person shooter because of its use of gratuitous violence. The raters refused to give the game a rating equivalent to the ESRBs own M (17+ only) citing the game s slow motion kills and blood spray on the screen as being too violent for consumption. I can see their point but really, who was playing that game anyway? Two minutes after popping the ass-backward thing in my Xbox I had had enough of the unintuitive controls and constant thug whining: where all my G-Unit soldiers at? Fitty, they left you to die. 9: Narc (Banned 2005, Australia) Are you beginning to sense a pattern here? Our friends from down under are either a whole lot more uptight than we think they are or their on the right track and we re the lost sheep. Either way, the OFLC was having none of Midways naughty narcotics and they declined to rate the game (effectively ba ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Most_Ridiculous_Video_Game_Bans_a270.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Most_Ridiculous_Video_Game_Bans_a270.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_10_Most_Ridiculous_Video_Game_Bans_a270.html Robert Palmer 2009-10-27 09:51:22 -0400 Urban legends. Everybody knows them. Everybody loves them and gamers are no exception to the rule. While many of the urban legends that surround gaming are more outright lies concerning cheats that a friend of a friend found in some vague article tucked in the back of a gaming magazine that none of us had ever heard of (the Mortal Kombat blood code for the NES and the Lara Croft nudity code come to mind) many of the more reputable urban legends actually have a hint of truth to them. Let us dive into the wild, whacky, and sometimes paranoid world of urban legends and see some of the best in regards to gaming. Here they are whether you want to believe them or not. 1) Michael Jackson Composed the Music for the Sonic Games Sonic the Hedgehog has been in more video games than just about any character ever created (only Mario has been in more) which is kind of funny because Sonic is truly a commercial construction if ever there was one. Nintendo had pretty much taken the reigns dropped by Atari and conquered the world in the 80s and with an iconic character like Mario leading the charge, no other gaming company really stood a chance. Sonic was specifically designed by Sega s marketing department (or at least with close supervision by that department) to compete with the cantankerous little Italian and as such, a significant amount of market research took place. What did all that mean for Sonic? Well, that he had to be blue (Sega s logo at the time was blue and it s the antithesis of Mario s trademark red.) But something more interesting and perhaps a trifle bizarre was the fact that Sonic got a pair of Michael Jackson shoes. That s right; the little marsupial is wearing a digital version of the shoes Jackson wore. Why? Because MJ was huge in 91 when Sonic hit the scene. However, Jackson did not compose any music for the fast and furryous l ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_Most_Popular_Video_Game_Urban_Legends____Myths_a265.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_Most_Popular_Video_Game_Urban_Legends____Myths_a265.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/The_Most_Popular_Video_Game_Urban_Legends____Myths_a265.html Robert Palmer 2009-10-06 05:48:14 -0400 So your mom won t stop pestering you about shutting down your system, taking a shower, and getting a real job but you don t want to slave for peanuts at the local sweatshop doing something you hate while dreaming about your poor abandoned box back home. Don t worry, we ve all been there heck, I m still there, and I m 30 years old and married! You need cash but can t bear the thought of losing your gamer cred so what can you possibly do? Never fear! I ve compiled a list of the six best jobs for gamers and if you can t find something that works for you on this list . . . keep looking. 1) Flip Burgers Don t knock it! Fast food service equipment has come a long way since the seventies. Nowadays, if you work at McD s you get to wear a cool headset all day and shout into the microphone just like you do on Xbox live. To top it off, some of the drink machines are automated and all you have to do is push buttons and watch the cups roll around on a mechanized track! Wow, and your mom said all those hours of dropping tangos with your buddies in Rainbow Six was a waste of time! Who knows, maybe the president will roll up to the drive through and ask you to suit up if the country goes to Def Con 2. He knows you ve got the skills because big brother s been watching your gamertag. 2) Valet Yeah those are the dorky dudes in the nasty red jackets that park people s cars at fancy restaurants and the like. Sounds boring right? Dude, somebody just hands you the keys to their car, their expensive car, and leaves you alone with their pride and joy. Tony had to break out the can of whoopass and kick people in the teeth to get their cars! Sure you re only driving from the entrance to the parking garage/lot but that should be okay those years of gaming should have eaten away your long t ... http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Ideal_Jobs_for_Video_Gamers_a258.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Ideal_Jobs_for_Video_Gamers_a258.html http://www.realpoor.com/articles/Ideal_Jobs_for_Video_Gamers_a258.html Robert Palmer 2009-09-17 04:13:29 -0400