If the name Bo Jackson does not strike fear into your heart, then you are not a Tecmo Bowl veteran. While the popular slogans of the time were “Bo Knows Football” and “Bo Knows Baseball”, Tecmo Bowl players knew only one thing: Bo knows how to break the game. With superhuman speed, Jackson decimated every team’s defense thanks to being faster than any human person should ever be.

Thankfully (depending on who you are), Tecmo Bowl Throwback does not know Bo. What the game does know, however, is how to mix the old with the new in a way that is wholly satisfying. Well, unless you’re playing against Detroit.

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Nintendo have just announced that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will come bundled with a tutorial DVD that will help familiarize players with the Mario universe. While the game is relatively self explanatory, it will serve as a beginner’s guide for more inexperienced players (aka the casual demographic), covering a wide array of control quirks and gameplay mechanics. Oh Nintendo, please stop spoiling us.

It is also interesting to note that the Wii is incompatible with the DVD format, which begs the question: why? Not to sound ungrateful, but couldn’t they have included the tutorial in the actual game itself like in New Mario Bros. Wii? Never mind. Read more… »

The Limitcast crew returns with renewed excitement and a genuine hunger for games (among other things). This week we discuss EA’s announcement regarding “premium” demos, the industry’s effort to stymie used game sales, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and even the Starcraft 2 Beta.

Hit the jump for the full episode, and be sure to leave your comments below.

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Not much is known about The Force Unleashed 2 at this point, except that it will allow players to continue the dark adventures of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Starkiller.  We at least now know when the game will be releasing, thanks to the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 Facebook page breaking the news today.

Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Nintendo DS, and Wii owners can begin dual lightsaber wielding and force pushing themselves to glory on October 26th, 2010.  What and who they will be fighting is still unknown, but one can only imagine this series will continue to rip the fabric of the official Star Wars lore apart.  I expect that more information will be released as we get closer to E3, but until then, hit the jump to watch the first trailer for the game. Read more… »

Today several indie developers have teamed up to bring you five great games at the low price of whatever you want to pay. Why would these businesses do this? For charity, of course!

Dubbed The Humble Indie Bundle, the deal, which nabs you DRM-free versions of World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture, sees all the proceeds being split between the developers, Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, and digital rights advocate the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The cool feature of this deal is that you actually get to select where you money goes. You can choose to have it all go to the developers, all to the charity, all to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or split anyway amongst the three. Read more… »

Actually that Headline sounds a little too much “Summer Blockbuster” to be honest but I will press on none the less.  Sony Computer Entertainment America have released a blog post announcing their intent to publish an all new God of War title.  This will take the form of a portable title for the companies PSP system and will get a full reveal during Sony‘s E3 extravaganza.

What we do know, from SCEA PR Manager Eric Levine’s blog post, is:

…we are pushing the limits of what PSP can do with state-of-the-art visual technologies, higher resolution environments, and greater depths of scale. We’re also providing over 25% more gameplay, an improved weapon system, and new magical powers — all enjoyed anytime, anywhere.

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I absolutely love being right.  Just the other day I was having a discussion with Chase Cook and Josh Quinnett from the site in which we were sharing our predictions on when the retail version of Starcraft II would finally drop.  I thought it would be in July or August, but they were sure it would be later in the year.

Well it appears that I was once again right, as Blizzard has officially announced that Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty will be releasing on July 27th for most of the civilized world.  For more details about this long awaited world wide launch, hit the jump. Read more… »

Halo has come a really long way: in both the gaming realm, and my personal life. I started out as an addicted tourney winning Halo 1 player, became a hardcore Halo 2 player, then completely lost interest by Halo 3. Fast forward to the present: I’m about three days into the Halo: Reach beta, and I have a bunch of thoughts to share with the rest of the internet world: some good, some bad, all interesting.

If you’re one of the poor unfortunate souls that doesn’t own ODST, feel free to jump in for some quick thoughts on what you’re missing. Read more… »

So check this bombshell out: I didn’t really like Lost Planet 1. I thought it was fairly bland, every level felt the same, and the multiplayer component was lacking. But if the coverage of Lost Planet 2 is to be believed, the upcoming sequel will fix all of those problems, and feature ridiculous cross-overs the likes of the world has never seen before.

In other words, Lost Planet 2, over the course of a few months, has changed from a “possible price drop pickup” to a “must buy” for me. Just watch the video, and make sure to stay until the end for an epic boss battle.

The Halo: Reach beta officially launched today for ODST owners, and a number of users (myself included) are unable to play it. It looks like the server overload is a simple case of “Bungie didn’t account for 3 million people at once-itis”, which is commonplace for huge shooters like Halo and Battlefield. Hopefully the issue will be resolved by tomorrow, and more servers will be available on Bungie’s end.

As a Halo 1 and 2 fan, my impressions from the past few days in the closed beta have ranged from “delightfully surprised” to “frustrated”. On one hand, Reach’s core gameplay is a fairly potent mixture of Halo 1, and various good bits of the rest of the series. The beta’s matchmaking component itself, however, contains an odd mixture of unfun gametypes, and is limited to 4v4 combat for the time being. Until the Invasion gametype kicks off May 7th, my time in the Reach universe will be sparing: especially so if I can’t log in!

Edit – it’s working now

Welcome to the recap. As I write this I sit here in clothes I haven’t worn in ages because Andrew never reminded me to do laundry even though he said he would be my laundry alarm clock on twitter. What a jerk, right?

Anyway… it’s been an excellent week here, especially on the community side of things. Lots of blogs, some new GL members making their first big posts for the site, its all so exciting. So let’s not waste any more time with this intro… after all, I’ve gotta move my laundry from the washer to the dryer pretty soon.

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The topic of violence in any media is always best treated cautiously.  In fact it was merely a few weeks ago that a UK based chat show attempted to broach this subject and ended up landing smack on its face.  Now most criticisms for violence in games seem to be at the progressively more realistic depiction of acts.

The photo realistic game is probably not more than a generation away at most and the mathematical geniuses that slave over 3D engines to make them produce these amazing graphics push things further towards that goal every year.  What I’m proposing is that it might not be the “graphic” progression that fuels violence in games, it’s something a lot more universal than that. Read more… »