The Blog for the Sports Gamer

My brief (900 words or so) preview for GalCiv II Dark Avartar is online. I’ll be shocked if this isn’t a great, great game.

The Warhammer Online piece got a bit out of hand…at 4,000 words. The game just looks so damn cool. I’m turning it in tomorrow for MASSIVE magazine. I hope they use half of it…

The New York Times has a nice article on the Wii eclipsing the PS3. (Thanks Kotaku, Dubious Quality, anyone else who posted the article).

What I like about the article is the olde tyme writing. They interview Jeff G from a place called “Game-Spot”. I wonder if they used a type-writer to put up the inter-view.

Linky here.

Just got an email from GameTap saying that currently it’s incompatible with Vista. They do hope to be compatible by 2/15. Just another reason not to upgrade. Heh.

I had originally worded the title for this post as “Eastside Hockey Manager series cancelled,” but that’s not completely true. According to this post over at Sigames.com the series has been put on hold due to lack of sales, which they believe has been caused by piracy.

The series did receive a great deal of critical acclaim but apparently that wasn’t enough to make it a success in the marketplace.

I always wanted to take a look at the newer versions of this game, but I’ve just not been able to get myself excited about text sims in the past few years.

Hopefully they’ll be able to get things straightened out and put the game back on the market again in the future.

First up, grab the info for the new OOTP at the new website. Tons of info here.

Also, Gary Gorksi has released his new hoops sim. Good stuff for text simmers. Nice pics, Gary.

Greg Thomas does the Q&A thing with GameSpot. Not a whole lot of anything in here, but it is APF2K8 related.

Q&A quote on exclusive licenses: “We think that everybody should be allowed to make a game… and we think that ultimately is going to make better games. I think that [the NBA's multiple license approach] has really shown that’s the way to go. And I think that what happened with the NFL and MLB is unfortunate.“

Yeah, if only someone didn’t do that MLB license…..Yes I know, if they didn’t, EA would have, and it makes sense business wise. But business wise it also is the equivalent of getting the exclusive to PGA Bowling: no one buys the baseball game. They buy the football game.

Anyway, without screens or details but a release date of summer 2007, something smells. We are 5-6 months away from release so they better know what the game has for features…

Now I’m nervous…anyway click linky here.

First, as Glen noted, is anyone else as excited for a VC football game. I hope they sell it for $19.99 and it kicks EA’s ass. Either that or maybe EA wakes up from its coma and actually does something great with Madden or whatever they’ll call it this year.

In financial news, Burger King announced their profit jumped a mere 42 percent for the quarter…why is this on a gaming blog… keep reading…

“Our brand and our great food continue to resonate with our restaurant guests. Specifically, our BK(TM) Value Menu, as well as our innovative Xbox® game collection–which was the best-selling video game of the holiday season, with more than 3.2 million copies sold–increased both sales and restaurant traffic”

Yes, 3.2 million games sold. I’m not sure if that means that 1 million people bought all 3 games or what there, but hey, I was the first in line. I also bought Mario Kart 64 for Virtual Console. Did I mention my credit card bills? Anyway, I digress.

Either way, apparently selling Xbox 360 games for $4.99, is a good way to do business. Hey, can someone design an Xbox 360 game for my business?

Thanks to Bill Harris for the link.

I can’t tell you how excited I am that they’re getting back into the football game.

Rock on!!

Ben Brinkman, former game maker for EA’s MVP series and now 2K Games Baseball expert has started a blog over at 1Up. Hopefully it will make for some interesting reading now that football season is over. Click here to check it out. And although it pains me to say it, thanks to Jonah for the link.

I have to post this just because I’m a Wisconsin hockey fan. If you saw Sportscenter on Saturday night, this was their #1 play of the day.

Bina goal.

Other than being absolutely hilarious because it happened against the Gophers, there is another great thing about the player that scored that goal. Robbie Bina broke his neck in the 2005 Frozen Four tournament when he was checked from behind into the boards by a player from Denver.

It’s great to see a player come back from an injury like that and be able to be part of a play like this.

I don’t know what it is, but I really like checking out Gametrailers site every day. It’s just nice to have a collection of game videos and reviews all right in one location without having to deal with the crapulence that are the IGN and Gamespot sites.

Yesterday they added a few interview videos with some of the developers on their page for
MLB2K7.

The game looks amazingly good, but I have one question…. Is the wind always blowing over 100 mile per hour at Fenway? The jerseys on the players look like they could blow off at any moment. I just didn’t realize that Manny Ramirez’ uniform could be used as a substitute for a wind sock in a pinch.

Also, after hearing the interview segments I have to ask all of you if you like the direction that games are going where they are spending time working on thing like having hats and helmets get dirtier as the game goes on? I know that this is the art team and that they, more than likely, aren’t taking time away from in game engine development, but it always bothers me to hear about all these graphical enhancements but you never hear about working on the physics at play in the game. You have fantastic CPU power in your hands and we get multiple camera angles in the bullpen instead of a realistic flight path on a fly ball.

Sigh… maybe next year.

Well I plunked down $10 for Mario Kart 64. Damn, either my download speed is bad or Nintendo’s bandwidth is cramped or both becuase it took a damn long time to get it.

The game is a lot more fun than I remember and well worth the $10. I was very familiar with Double Dash, but I thought it was more Double Suck than anything else. I actually prefer the 64 version to it.

Microsoft just released the release schedule for the next 10 Xbox Live arcade games, and those of you dying for Paperboy or Root Beer Tapper will be thrilled. 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures is a lot of fun, and if you had GameTap, you’d already be playing it (I can’t stop shilling GameTap, sorry). They are releasing the first board game called Catan but I have no idea what that is. Bill, any comments?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was planning on playing World of Warcraft during the weekend and while I did manage to put in a few hours each night, I was upset to find out this morning that I could have turned my weekend into a, 15 minutes of fame, television opportunity. All I would have needed to do was to work harder.

After scanning through some of the gaming blogs this morning I happened across a link to a video in which Tyra Banks attempts some sort of intervention because a boyfriend is neglecting his fiancé and baby due to the massive amount of time he puts in on World of Warcraft.

I love the look on her face when she looks into the camera when the child is crying, but the father is just too busy with the game… it’s just priceless.

My personal favorite part of the show is where he destroys his CD’s for the game… but of course not mentioning that you don’t need the disks once you install the game. Ooops. I guess it would have been too much production to show him deleting his characters and removing his subscription information.

All I can say is that I’m just pissed that I didn’t wait until my child was asleep to play the game over the weekend. I just can’t believe that I passed up all of those prime neglecting opportunities when I was helping take care of my 2 year old this weekend. There were at least 3 or 4 hours that I could have easily propped my child in front of a TV and ignored her while I attempted to collect herbs in Eversong Woods.

Sometimes, I guess that I just don’t know what parenting truly is.

Nintendo announced the following new games on the Wii VC channel:
Comix Zone , Mario Kart 64, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Bonanza Bros.

Hmm, if I bought all those games, that would be like 6 months of GameTap, which they are all on except for Mario Kart….

Sad news today as it was announced that Barbaro has been put down. From day one it was a long shot and the fact that he survived so long before the inevitable was just amazing.