The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Two more things to add.

- Blizzard has added a high resolution 20 minute gameplay video to their site and it’s quite impressive. It contains 20 minutes of Protoss gameplay and some of the new units are pretty damn cool looking.

- Homer doesn’t like the Liberal Media.

Looks like a few got this one — it is indeed Gamestar Championship Football on a multitude of platforms. The game made passing a chore — as leery mentioned, a pass play was whittled down to up,up,up,up,up,up,left,left, down for a post pattern. Not really fun.

Gamestar did make some other sports games for the c64, including a fun 2-on-2 basketball game. Good times!

Today’s trivia question is going to be a challenge. The subject is baseball. Name the first hand held baseball game which had a detachable wired remote control in order for player 2 to pitch. You don’t need the full name of the baseball game, but you do need the brand name. Good luck.

Dan’s 2nd installment of This Week in Downloads is up today. Also, former blogger and friend of the show Todd Brakke’s review of Halo 2 PC (Vista only) is live. Our Gamer’s Day coverage continues with a PS3 look at Folklore. This game sounds totally weird.

As for me, I’ve been editing more than writing (nice change of pace) as well as playing the hell out of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. It’s nice going back to games you wanted to play but never got a chance to…

Wolverine is a terror in this thing…

1. I thought this Onion article was pretty entertaining. Even I’m tired of hearing about Brett Favre at this point.

2. Since Dan commented to the user that was asking about the version of PYS for the Xbox 360, I decided to try and track down the sales stats for that game in Japan. It’s funny, but I couldn’t even find sales info for it on the week that it was released. Judging by that, I would guess that the game sold less than 5,000 copies total as it did not appear on any of the weekly sales charts that followed either. From what I’ve read, the 360 version was no great shakes. I’ve read about some graphical issues that appeared in that version, but it’s all a moot point as you would need a Japanese 360 to play it anyway.

The PS3 version of PYS4, on the other hand, has sold 50,000 copies, which is pretty respectable considering that the PS2 version has sold a little over 150,000 copies. It just appears that there isn’t a huge sports gamer base in Japan

3. I received my copy of The Show for the PS3 last night, but didn’t get a chance to look at it as I was attempting to tame the incredibly fast growing grass in our yard. I’ll probably give it a look tonight and see if I can download the sliders that Dan mentioned. If it’s so easy that even I can do it, I should be able to do it. I’m a person like me.

I forgot to mention this: as you know I bought my first XM radio in June 2002, almost 5 years ago. This latest Opie & Anthony thing really pissed me off and I was already contemplating going to Sirius. I had bought the XACT back in March and really enjoyed the programming, although the radio display was a little lame and I had wires out the wazoo in my car.

So I got an email saying 50% off a second receiver, so I jumped on that and bought a Stiletto 10. It was only after I purchased it that I realized the Stiletto 10 does not have the MP3 feature and could only record Sirius. Yuck. So for $100 more I went to Circuit City and got the Stiletto 100 which has Wi-Fi access — so if I’m indoors I can still listen to satellite radio. Cool, huh? CC installed it for me…it only took 3 hours (yikes) but it looks great. I also bought the boombox, but I think that’s going back because office reception sucks and there’s no wifi in the office for security reasons. I can listen to almost 1gb of MP3 and recorded shows….so I would have plenty of time to listen if I so desire.

Anyway, when I called to activate the radio, they let me drop the old one off and add the Stiletto for no additional activation charge and credit me my one year membership (pro rated) off the cost of lifetime, which was going for $399 instead of $499. So I only paid like $250 today for lifetime service. Not a bad deal. Yes I paid $139 before for one year of service but still…if you’re going to have that receiver for a while, it’s definitely worth it.

So far I’m impressed. I never used the XM Inno so I can’t compare the two, but wifi internet streaming is wonderful to have (it’s great at my house if I’m away from the home kit for example)….now I just hope the Sirius store takes back the Stiletto 10 and the vehicle kit I bought.

1. The only user created stuff that you can download which I’m aware of on the PS3 version of the show are only sliders. Sorry.

2. Hearing that online is laggy and actually doing it are of course two different things. playing PYS 4 online with a server in Japan, now that’s laggy, but still a lot of fun :).

3. Grabbing the sliders is pretty simple — so simple even Glen can do it, but here’s a refresher course (yes being a wise ass because Glen hasn’t played the game): 1. Select “sports connect home” 2. Press yes to save roster. 3. Press back. 4. Read all about what the roster update has. 5. Select “MLB Community”. 6. Select “MLB Sliders” 7. Select “Browse/Download” 8. Download the Sliders that you prefer. At first, I thougth to myself , wow a lot of people favor Baltimore, but in fact that’s short for “balanced”. Cool huh. Their online baseball has pretty good functionality, I must say.

4. One of the audio clips that is played (instead of music) is the Dodgers hitting 4 back to back home runs. So the Red Sox aren’t that unique in doing it against the Yankees. LOL..

5. Thanks for all your trivia answers. The answer will get posted tomorrow morning. I will tell you that someone does have the correct answer.

6. Trade Logic on the PS3 version of the game — it doesn’t seem much different at this point than the PS2 version…but I haven’t played enough to make a formal opinion.

7. We received an email asking if Professional Baseball Spirits was available for the 360. My understanding is that it is available; however the 360 is region locked, meaning you can’t play Japanese games on a US 360. (You can play PS3 games from Japan on a US PS3 without any sort of software or hardware update).

8. Phew. I think that’s it…

As I mentioned on Friday I have had difficultly all weekend logging into the game. I received the official word that I wasn’t the only one:

“We apologize for any inconvenience, but we may have been experiencing problems with our Game Server(s) during the timeframe in which you were attempting to log into them. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention and if we have not already resolved the problem, we hope to do so as soon as possible. “

I can confirm that this morning before work I logged in with no problem and download the Operation Sports sliders. The slider download thing is a great idea. Now I just have to create a league…any PS3 owners wanna play?

Link

Ok, I think I’m going to be eating a lot of Ramen noodles this summer.

Mario Strikers Charged and Picross DS in July. Metroid Prime 3 (Drool) and Brain Age 2 in August. Battalion Wars 2 in September. Good grief.

Add that to the PS3 and 360 releases due in that same time and I’ll never be leaving the house.

Alrighty, let’s start the week off with a new question (Drumroll please)….

2K Sports NFL 2K series had a feature in it called first person football. They weren’t the first to have this feature. Name the game and the platform that originally had first person football. Hint: The game didn’t have it as an option — that was the way you had to play the game.

In other news, although it’s Monday, the sun is finally out here, making the start of the work week a little less gloomy. I didn’t get a whole lot of game playing in. I did my download column for the week and I did play some more MLB 07 The Show. I still think RTTS mode is a lot of fun — but not a whole lot seems different than the PS2 version — trade logic, and so forth. The gameplay is still great, the SIXAXIS sliding control seems gimmicky but it works and that Leo Mazzone bug happens no matter which team I play (you see a guy rocking on the bench, the commentator says if he’s rocking that must be Leo Mazzone pitching coach for the Orioles)..but he’s ALWAYS in the other team’s uniform. Bizarre.

On a side note, I rented Shrek for the 360. I was thinking it would be an easy 1000 points, but the game isn’t bad itself. Sounds like it’s better than the movie. My kids love the minigames. The castle game is pretty fun.

Alright, time to go to work.

After a weekend out of town, it’s nice to get back to your normal routine.

1. The Brewers have gone 3-7 in their last 10 games, but still hold a 5.5 game lead in the Central. Thank goodness the rest of the teams are struggling when they are.

2. My copy of The Show for the PS3 is en route from Gamefly. I’m interested to see what a next-gen American Baseball game looks and plays like after spending so much time with PYS.

3. I’m glad to report that the PYS translation work will begin again tomorrow night. I’m going to work on the Exhibition and Online modes next. The online mode fits in well with Exhibition play, so it seems like a natural to add next.

I’ve received some really helpful documentation from another PYS fan named Jesse who has helped us out with a translation of some in game items that would have been nearly impossible for me to translate on my own in any short period of time. His work will be integrated into the Exhibition mode translation guide.

I’ve gotten some really nice emails from people through the blog because of my work with the game, so I’ll keep working on it until it’s done.

4. Selling your home in this market sucks. It’s waiting, waiting, and more waiting…. then you have to jump from waiting mode straight to buying another home in a very short period of time. Hopefully we’ll get some action on our place soon because my wife is starting to get jumpy… and I’m not thrilled with the whole process either.

So, SC2.

Is anyone pumped about this? I know all of South Korea cannot contain their love for all things StarCraft, but I was hoping for a new property from Blizzard. Ah well. The screenshots look good and this game is going to make Blizzard a ton of cash. Still, I was hoping for a ‘new’ game. Even StarCraft Online.

Vanilla Ice was in my head this morning…go figure.

Anyway, the answer to the trivia question from yesterday stumped everyone. Lots of PC or Mac related answers…but the real answer is…Blitz! for the Vectrex. At the end of the game you would get a full page of stats. It was very impressive for it’s time, even if when you played against the computer the only thing they would do on defense is punt.

Real trivia will resume Monday. Today’s question is a hypothetical: Will Bill learn not to go see any movie with the number “3″ in it? I guess that will allow him to see Live Free or Die Hard…..

In other news, yesterday was everyone goes to bed early night, which means put on Fred Schnieder on Sirius and play games for the evening. I started Road To The Show mode and so far I’ve enjoyed it just as much as the PS2. As usual some goals are insane and some goals are easy…”get ahead in the count”, but I’m enjoying it.

There are two gripes I’ve had with the game so far: 1)Every game I’ve played I’ve seen “rocking Leo Mazzone” for the Orioles — except he’s always in the other team’s uniform!!! This is pretty bad, although it doesn’t really affect gameplay. 2) The online mode seems to be broken — I select “sports connect” and get a “roster timeout” error and then the game just sits there, making me reboot.

These two items sure do give it the impression of the game being rushed. We can hope that an update is in the cards……not having online really sucks.

Ugh.

Sony lost a lot of money in the games division last year.

I was going to post this in the comments, but I figured that I should create a new post about it so people could post their thoughts here.

I think everyone will agree that Sony’s game division numbers aren’t very good for them. They’re really quite bad and there isn’t a positive way to spin that.

But the way I’m looking things… why should I even care who sells the most consoles? The whole thing seems to have become a yearly pissing contest between Sony and Microsoft of who can lose the least money and get the most hardware in the home, so they can fuel their own marketplace plans.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to care about failure rates for the hardware that they’ve put out (based on Peter Moore’s comment, “Y’know, things break.”)

Sony doesn’t seem to care about pricing their device too high for mass market appeal.

Nintendo…well, they’ve always been an entity unto themselves….

Sony has good games coming out this year.
Microsoft has good games coming out this year.
Nintendo has good games coming out this year.

Do I care that Sony sold 80,000 PS3’s last month? Nope. Not one bit.

Other than the demand for them surprising the hell out of me, do I really care how many Wii systems sold last month? Nope.

I’ve got my systems.
I’ve got my games.
I’ve got plenty of great looking/sounding games on the way for all three systems.

That’s enough for me.

1. Playing another game of MLB 07 for the PS3. Orioles vs Red Sox at Fenway…first I am very impressed with the stadium. They did a great job recreating the feel of Fenway from the ads on the monster to the electronic scoreboards. This morning I said, wow this looks good, which is a different feeling than I had before.

When Ortiz came up I was scared. The video version is that imposing. He then took a first pitch fastball and crushed it. Crushed…the only concern I have is that he crused it to left — don’t most defenses play on the right side for him to pull? Either way it was a monster shot and ‘felt’ like Ortiz hit it, so nice job.

The pitcher/batter guess pitch/guess location is the best system out there. So I’m having fun right now.

Moving along to trivia — there has been some internal and external discussion about the correct answer. When I wrote the question, I thought the answer was Pele’s Championship Soccer for the Atari 2600. Glen told me that Mattel’s Major League Baseball has a copyright date of 1979, so I had to do some research. It turns out that although Intellivision did work on the game in the late 70’s the game was not released nationally until 1980…after Pele was published. So I’m still going with my answer and I will declare Chris D the winner. So there you go.

Today’s question is one I definitely know with no disputing. Football games have been around for a very long time. Madden just celebrated their 20th anniversary…so in honor of the Patriots getting the #1 power ranking — tell me which arcade/graphic (ie not text) football game was the first one to compile stats such as first downs, rushing and pass yardage…and tell me the platform.