Bandai Namco Studios Vancouver and Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale are working on a new Pac-Man mobile game called Pac-Man 256, the companies have announced.
The game is named after the infamous 256 glitch. When players reached that level in the original Pac-Man arcade machine, half the screen turned into a garbled mess of random characters. Hipster Whale and Bandai Namco say that in Pac-Man 256, the player will be chased by the glitch through an endless maze.
In short, the game sounds and looks like a mix between Crossy Road and Pac-Man.
"Playing PAC-MAN in a seaside arcade in 1980 is one of my earliest memories," Hipster Whale Director Matthew Hall said. "It is an incredible honor to be able to contribute to one of the most iconic video game franchises in history. Our game, PAC-MAN 256, takes the infamous ‘glitch’ level of PAC-MAN and builds upon this to become a unique game that retains the retro spirit of the original."
Crossy Road, in case you haven't played it, is an incredibly successful "endless hopper" mobile game inspired by Frogger. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's interview with Hipster Whale's Andy Sum and Matthew Hall.
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, has joined Twitter. This comes after six years in office. By comparison, Michelle Obama has had a Twitter account since 2013. What's on Obama's mind? Follow him here to find out:
Having played Puzzle & Dragons Z and Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition for quite some time now, I get the feeling that these games really weren’t made for me.
Let me elaborate on that statement a bit: I adore the mobile version of Puzzle & Dragons, and have made it a part of my daily gaming routine for a very long time. The prospect of a version devoid of free-to-play trappings such as limited stamina for adventuring, or the premium-monster Rare Egg Machine is naturally exciting. Developers often make substantial changes in game design when making a free-to-play version of a popular game, often to the game’s detriment; features once seen as a given are now treated as pricey premiums. On the 3DS, P&D Z and P&D Mario represent quite the opposite: they remove some of the features of the free-to-play game, leaving experiences that, while still quite fun, don’t quite live up to the ever-changing and growing mobile version.
Puzzle & Dragons, for the unfamiliar, is an exceptionally clever mix of match-three puzzling, a collectible card game, and role-playing. You assemble a team of five monsters, complete with a “leader,” from the horde of dragons, demons, gods, and superhumans you’ve collected, and then venture into dungeons consisting of sets of enemy encounters. You engage in combat on a 6X5 puzzle board: match three orbs of a particular color, and your monsters of that color attack foes. Unlike in a lot of similar games, you can move a single orb around the whole board for a short time, using it to shift many other orbs and create multiple matches, and thus yield more attacks and attack boosts for your team. Enemies, naturally, hit back when their turns arrive, which is when you focus on matching the healing orbs on the board. With practice, you’re launching multiple combos and healing each turn with ease.
But perhaps the biggest issue, an unavoidable part of being a prepackaged product, is that the games are woefully static. There are no fun little surprises when you boot the game up, like daily giveaways, new monster and dungeon additions, and limited-time bonuses and areas like in the mobile game. While it’s easy to cynically see these mobile P&D features as a means to get more money from players as they spend it on extra stamina and Rare Egg Machine rolls, the fact of the matter is that they make the game teresting and exciting from one day to the next. When you’re done with P&D Z and Mario, when you’ve cleared all the current levels and collected every last type of Paragoomba and Cheep-Cheep, that’s all there is to it. But perhaps that’s intentional--have no doubt that developer GungHo hopes some players move on to the ever-evolving mobile game when they feel they’ve seen everything these two games have to offer.
That’s what I mean when I say that this game wasn’t made for me. It’s a watered-down stepping stone, intended to introduce players to Puzzle & Dragons with a familiar face and none of those intimidating in-app purchases. It’s clear, however, that P&D’s design was built on a free-to-play base, and taking those elements out actually makes the game feel less substantial as a result. (Yes, much as we loathe to admit it, it’s exciting to spend some premium-currency magic stones for a random rare monster from time to time, just as it’s fun to open a pack of trading cards or a blind-boxed figure.) While you can still have a good deal of fun with this two-in-one package, the mobile game is the better option. P&D Z and P&D Mario make nice little appetizers, but ultimately, it’s up to you whether you want to feast on the main course afterwards.
Oculus VR, the Facebook-owned company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, is facing another lawsuit. As . Pricing, however, is still under wraps.
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. "Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages—you name it—so there's a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn't exist before."
Unfortunately, 1337, n00b, and shrekt have yet to make it into the dictionary. Maybe next time.
Iconic gaming console the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America thirty years ago in 1985. To mark the milestone, video game museum.
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