THE RUNDOWN

• This week we talk about what we’re playing, take your calls and more!
• The Walking Dead is now available on iOS!
• Like to play games on Steam? Check out The Final Score on Steam.

THE BIG TALK

• OUYA is getting OnLive at launch!
• Gabe Newell and Rob Pardo do NOT think Windows 8 is good at all!
• Did Apple just patent a game controller?

OLD SCHOOL

• The Adventures of Batman and Robin (SNES – 1994)
• • Brief:
  • The Adventures of Batman and Robin is a 1994 and 1995 video game based on the popular DC Comics characters Batman and Robin and specifically the critically acclaimed animated cartoon Batman: The Animated Series (which had been renamed The Adventures of Batman and Robin for its second season at the time of the game’s production). There are several releases of the video game for the different consoles in the market at the time, namely the Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, and Mega-CD/Sega CD versions were published by Sega while the Super NES one was published by Konami.
  • Gameplay:
  • For the most part, it’s an action-adventure platformer in which the player only controls Batman, and follows him to the end of each stage, where a villain is set to appear. However, the style and design of the stages themselves are different between each other, which gives notable diversity to the game.
    Some of the more common features in the game is the possibility to equip with different gadgets, such as bombs, x-ray lenses and so on. Some of the gadgets are in some cases essential to complete some stages. There is also the possibility of returning to the Batcave in order to re-equip the gadgets and restart an entire stage with all the lives the players has accumulated to that point (in case the player had lost lives).
    The game features passwords, which leaves the player in the last played stage. The passwords also takes count of the numbers of lives remaining and the continues used. These cannot be obtained in the Hard difficulty, which means that the game must be completed from the beginning. Completion of the hard mode rewards the player with a special ending.
  • Trivia:
  • The Mega-CD/Sega CD version, also developed by Clockwork Tortoise and published by Sega, consists of chase screens with the Batmobile and Batplane. Between levels, the story advances through animated scenes that were created specifically for the game.

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THE RUNDOWN

• This week we talk about what we’re playing, all the stuff we bought during Steam’s summer sale, take your calls about your Steam purchases and more!
• Like to play games on Steam? Check out The Final Score on Steam.

THE BIG TALK

• The welcome sound for Ouya has been released.
• War Z looks pretty awesome, but also looks a lot like Day Z.
• Steam Summer Sale Rundown
• All heroes in Heroes of Newerth will be free as of tomorrow.
• Torchlight II still saying summer release…

OLD SCHOOL

• Space Duel (1982)
• • Brief:
  • “Space Duel is an arcade game released in 1982 by Atari Inc. It is a direct descendant of the original Asteroids, with asteroids replaced by colorful geometric shapes like cubes, diamonds, and spinning pinwheels. Shoot all objects to complete a level. Space Duel is the first and only multi-player interactive vector game by Atari. When Asteroids Deluxe did not sell well, this game was taken off the shelf and released to moderate success.
    The player has five buttons: two to rotate the ship left or right, one to shoot, one to activate the thruster, and one for force field. Space Duel, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Gravitar all used similar 5-button controlling system.”
  • Trivia:
  • A Space Duel cabinet is featured on the album cover for The Who’s It’s Hard.

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THE RUNDOWN

• This week we talk about what we’re playing, take a live call from SDCC, plus we take your calls and more!
• Like to play games on Steam? Check out The Final Score on Steam.

THE BIG TALK

• Video Game Sales Have Been Down For 7 Consecutive Months (PC Sales hurting as well; however, iPad sales are up!)
• OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console
• EA wants to publish Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning 2
• The annual Steam Summer Sale is now underway. It will last through Monday, July 23rd. Gamers will find amazing deals on thousands of games. The Summer Sale will again feature more than straight discounts, offering Daily Deals, Flash Sales, and “Community Choice” Sale. The latter allows gamers to vote for a title on a given list to be put on special price for a limited time.
• 3DS XL with some great titles coming.

OLD SCHOOL

• Spider-Man – Multiple Consoles (2000)
• • Brief:
  • Spider-Man is an action video game based upon the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is loosely based on the 1990s Spider-Man and Spider-Man Unlimited cartoon series. The game was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. Released originally for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 in 2000, the game was subsequently ported to the Sega Dreamcast and PC. An alternate was also created for the Game Boy Color.
  • Plot:
  • While attending a scientific demonstration hosted by the supposedly reformed Dr. Otto Octavius, Peter Parker (Spider-Man) witnesses the appearance of a Spider-Man impostor who steals Doctor Octavius’s experiment. Eddie Brock mistakes this for the real Spider-Man and tries to take pictures, but his camera is shattered by the Spider-Man impostor. Angry, Brock worries that J. Jonah Jameson will fire him from his new job at the Daily Bugle; all of his rage causes the Venom symbiote to surface, and he swears revenge. Everyone present at the demonstration believes that Spider-Man took the experiment, causing the police to begin a manhunt for Spider-Man.
  • Trivia:
  • Spider-Man uses the same game engine as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Spider-Man also was a hidden character in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, and during gameplay a reference is made to this. The PlayStation, Dreamcast and Windows versions have pre-rendered cutscenes whereas the Nintendo 64 version shows captioned freeze-frames done comic book style. The Lizard was meant to appear in the final cutscene but was not included in the final version of the game’s cutscene.
    Upon entering a code in the game (GBHSRSPM), a player can activate the What If? mode. What If? was a series of comics that looked at alternate takes of events in Marvel Comics history, and in much the same way the game becomes an alternate version of itself. Although the story plays the same, there are subtle differences scattered throughout the scenery and audio track. When a new game is started, Uatu the Watcher appears and explains to the player that things are no longer as they once were.

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THE RUNDOWN

• This week we talk all post-Nerdtacular 2012, Scott’s new PS Vita, Brian’s road trip to Utah and back, plus we take your calls and more!
  • Also, some people were asking about the iPad game Brian played on the way back from Utah… Plague Inc. is the name of the game (universal app).
• Like to play games on Steam? Check out The Final Score on Steam.

THE BIG TALK

• Hero Academy coming to Steam this August
• PSN Sales starts Tuesday, July 3rd
• Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Kickstarter… unbelievable how much harassment the creator has received.
• Meet the Pyro and Source Filmmaker were announced

OLD SCHOOL

• Warlords – Arcade (1980)
• “Warlords is an arcade game released by Atari in 1980. The game resembles a combination of Breakout and Quadrapong (an early Atari arcade game) in the sense that not only could up to 4 players play the game at the same time, but also the “forts” in the four corners of the screen were brick walls that could be broken with a flaming ball.
  Warlords used spinner controllers for player control, and came in both an upright 2 player version and a 4 player cocktail version. The upright version uses a black and white monitor, and reflects the game image onto a mirror, with a backdrop of castles, giving the game a 3D feel. The upright version only supports up to two simultaneous players, which move through the levels as a team. The cocktail version is in color, and supported 1-4 players. 3-4 player games are free-for-alls, and the game would end as soon as one player wins. 1-2 player games play identical to the upright version.
  According to the Atari video game production numbers, 1014 uprights were made, and 1253 cocktails were produced. The prototype version of warlords was called “Castles and Kings” and was in housed in a 4 player “Sprint 4 like” cabinet – it was huge. Only 2 versions of the prototype were made. The game was considered a success, however the large cabinet made it impossible to produce in large quantities nor was it feasible to install – hence the smaller cocktail design.
  The goal is to break through the other three players’ walls and hit the player’s (or computer’s) icon (kings or knights) contained inside the fort. The last player left without having his icon hit gets 1 point. There are four forts (one in each corner of the screen), distinguished by the four colors orange, light green, turquoise blue, and purple. Each player has a shield that deflects the fireball that bounces off all four sides of the video screen. Players can capture and catapult the fireballs at opposing castles using their shield control and “power stone” push button.”

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THE RUNDOWN

• This week we talk all about E3 2012 with special guests Liam O’Brien and Paul Swickard who were both at E3 this year!
  • Liam O’Brien is the voice of Illidan from WoW, War from Darksiders, and many more games.
  • Paul Swickard is an editor on AppSlappy and MyExtraLife. He is also the co-host for the Time-Traveling Robots in Space podcast.
• Like to play games on Steam? Check out The Final Score on Steam.

THE BIG TALK

• Microsoft at E3
  • XBox SmartGlass
  • Halo 4
  • Too much talk about Bing, TV and entertainment?
• Sony at E3
  • The Last of Us
  • Wonderbook
  • BEYOND: Two Souls
  • Not enough talk about the PS Vita?
• Nintendo at E3
  • Wii U hardware seems to be finalized.
  • Lackluster game showing for the new console?
  • Wii U to be available in time for the holidays this year… but no hard date or price information was given.
• Games we are excited about…
  • Tomb Raider
  • Star Wars: 1313
  • The Last of Us
  • Beyond: Two Souls
  • Assassins Creed III
  • Metal of Honor 2: Warfighter
  • Elder Scrolls Online
  • Sim City
  • Rayman Evolutions
  • Borderlands II
  • Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

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