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Most Recent: Xbox 360
Cars 3: Driven To Win will be released for every available console on June 13
WB Games and Avalanche Software have announced that the Cars 3 video game, Cars 3: Driven To Win, will be released for the PS3, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on June 13.
Taking place after the events of Disney/Pixar’s upcoming film, Cars 3: Driven To Win will ask players to master advanced racing abilities such as “Drifting, Turbo, Two-Wheel Driving, Driving Backwards and Side-Bash” as they rise through the ranks of the Piston Cup. Naturally, the game will also feature splitscreen multiplayer for competitive and cooperative modes:
Picking up after the final big race in the film, Cars 3: Driven to Win extends the storyline of Cars 3 with all-new action packed adventures and takes players through a high-speed competition that is filled with both familiar and new faces. Players will be able to join Lightning McQueen and Cruz Ramirez as they prepare to take on rival racer Jackson Storm. The game features more than 20 customizable playable characters including popular heroes from the Cars franchise and next generation racers. Players can also select their favorite race environments from a series of iconic settings from the film, such as Radiator Springs and Florida International Speedway, with over 20 unique tracks to choose from across 13 different locations.
We also got a glance at the first trailer for Cars 3: Driven To Win, and its been embedded above.
4/1: AMC and the creators of Breaking Bad are NOT working on a Grand Theft Auto TV show
It’s April 1st, which means you shouldn’t believe everything anything you read on the Internet today. For example… AMC did not hire the creators of Breaking Bad to develop a television adaptation of Grand Theft Auto V.
The trailer making the rounds today was actually created by IGN, but the narration from Steven Ogg (he played Trevor Phillips in GTA5) gives it that extra jolt of authenticity and might help fool a few people.
While this trailer is just an April Fool’s Day prank, Take-Two Interactive might actually be working on a film adaptation of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Earlier this year, CEO Strauss Zelnick told MCV that his company has “licensed a couple of titles for motion picture production.” The executive didn’t name Grand Theft Auto as one of the titles, but prolific film director Roger Corman has repeatedly claimed that a settlement he signed with Take-Two more than a decade ago prevents the publisher from adapting Grand Theft Auto for the silver screen.
Corman produced Ron Howard’s directorial debut, 1977’s Grand Theft Auto, and he’s been trying to remake it for years. But instead of a gangland drama like The Godfather or Scarface, Howard’s film is a road comedy more closely related to something like The Blues Brothers. But if Corman is holding up the creation of a Grand Theft Auto film, it’s never been publicly acknowledged by Take-Two.
The Video Game Canon: Pac-Man
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look back at the true stories behind some of gaming’s greatest urban legends, most of which seem to revolve around Pac-Man. Here’s a teaser…
With more than 40 years of history behind it, it’s not surprising the video game community has developed its own catalog of urban legends that have been passed from player to player over the years. Everyone who played it desperately tried to resurrect Aerith after her tragic demise in Final Fantasy VII, and we all heard stories about the “nude codes” that supposedly existed in games like Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat II, and The Sims.
Unfortunately, every one of those rumors has more in common with the hook man at lover’s lane than they do with the unvarnished truth. But some of the legends are true. And nearly all of them revolve around Pac-Man in some way.
Pac-Man is a simple creature. Just a yellow circle with a triangular wedge removed to represent his mouth. Some will say his design was simplistic because the designers at Namco were working within the hardware limitations of the day. Those people would be wrong. The inspiration for Pac-Man overcame Namco’s Toru Iwatani after he snatched the first slice at a company pizza party and noticed that it looked like a circle with a mouth.
But it gets weirder from there.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Video Game Canon: The Secret of Monkey Island
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at The Secret of Monkey Island and the many inspirations developers plundered from to make it. Here’s a teaser…
Game publishers have been concerned with digital pirates illegally copying their games since the very beginning of the medium. Some have even gone so far as to include booby traps in their code for these would-be thieves. But when it comes to depicting actual pirates, gamemakers (along with major Hollywood players and one of the most celebrated fantasy authors of the last few decades) are content to pillage, plunder, and steal all the best ideas from each other.
It all began in 1967 when Walt Disney himself oversaw the construction of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland. Over the years, the ride would go on to be recreated at Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Park in Paris. Borrowing a bit from Treasure Island, the ride’s exciting ship-to-ship battle, raid on a coastal outpost, group of prisoners trying to bribe a dog for a key, and the frothy ditty “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life For Me)” created the quintessential image of a pirate that was shared by kids the world over.
Tim Powers was not one of these kids. Already a teenager by the late 60s, Powers rose to prominence as one of the earliest authors of steampunk (and he, along with K.W. Jeter and James Blaylock, helped coin the phrase). In 1987, he published one of his most famous novels, On Stranger Tides. The novel tells the tale of John Chandagnac, an inexperienced youth who becomes the debonair pirate “Jack Shandy” and rescues the girl after he has a run-in with several undead buccaneers.
A few years later, Lucasfilms Games’s Ron Gilbert took his experiences with the ride and mixed them with the magical seascapes of On Stranger Tides to create The Secret of Monkey Island, a point-and-click adventure game first published in 1990. The Secret of Monkey Island starred Guybrush Threepwood, an inexperienced youth with floppy hair who battled his own pirate nemesis, the undead LeChuck, in an attempt to rescue the girl. Most people would chalk these coincidences up to happenstance or cliche, but not Ron Gilbert. He’s the first to tell to you that what he did was out-and-out piracy. Or, in his words, “We in the business call it ‘stealing’.”
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in Features, PC, PS3, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Xbox 360
Tagged The Secret of Monkey Island
The Video Game Canon: Tomb Raider (1996)
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon by checking in with Tomb Raider (1996), the debut adventure of one of gaming’s most famous female characters. Here’s a teaser…
For better or worse, Lara Croft is the most famous woman in all of gaming. But all her fame might be a fluke, because the developers behind her creation claim it was all an accident.
Formed in the late 80s, Core Design was an unlikely candidate to be creating a wide open 3D title like Tomb Raider. The developer’s biggest claim to fame at the time was Rick Dangerous, a game that could charitably be called an “homage” to Indiana Jones. Other gamers might remember Chuck Rock, a platformer created by Core that starred a dimwitted caveman. But like many British developers of the time, they didn’t think about their limitations and just went for it. This definitely applied to Toby Gard, the artist behind Lara Croft’s original look.
Like Rick Dangerous, Lara began life as a man with no name that bore a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. Fearing a lawsuit, Gard redrew the character as a woman and began tinkering with a number of different personalities. The artist told IGN in 2008 that the proto-Tomb Raider began life as a “sociopathic blonde” before morphing into a muscle woman, a “flat topped hip hopster,” and a “Nazi-like militant in a baseball cap.” None of these looks fit the game that Core envisioned, but Gard’s final pass at it proved to be the winner. Laura Cruz, “a tough South American woman in a long braid and hot pants,” was born.
We’ll never know if Laura Cruz would have received the same reception, but Gard continued to tinker, and eventually, the character became a descendant of British royalty when the developers plucked the name Lara Croft out of a City of Derby phone book. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Gard was playing with a slider that controlled the size of Lara’s breasts and accidentally inflated them to 150% their original size. The Core Design team gathered around Gard’s computer and hooted their approval, even if the artist himself was skeptical of the character’s inflated curves.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
For Honor rises to the occasion as the best-selling game of February 2017
Ubisoft’s For Honor conquered all comers during its first month of availability, as The NPD Group declared it the best-selling game during February 2017. The multiplayer brawler faced some tough competition, but it emerged victorious on the retail battlefield, besting both Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (#2) and Grand Theft Auto V (#3).
The only other new release to crack last month’s top ten was Nioh, an action RPG developed by Team Ninja and published by Koei Tecmo.
But the overall retail health of the industry was on a downward swing in February. According to GamesIndustry.biz, hardware and software sales were down: “Total hardware sales amounted to $204 million, down 30% from last year. Console and portable software dropped 14% to $344.2 million, PC software fell 26% to just $25 million, while accessories fell 21% to $150.8 million. All told, industry sales took a 21% hit, declining from $918.7 million to $724 million.”
However, it seems likely that the successful launch of the Nintendo Switch (and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) will change that trajectory in March.
The complete list of best-selling games from February 2017 can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, For Honor, Grand Theft Auto V, Madden NFL 17, NBA 2K17, Nioh, NPD, Overwatch, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege
The Video Game Canon: Ms. Pac-Man
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at the accidental creation of Ms. Pac-Man. Here’s a teaser…
It’s easy to forget nowadays, but Ms. Pac-Man was actually created by accident. Like Doc Brown’s invention of time travel after a tumble from the toilet, Ms. Pac-Man was created when a group of game developers from MIT attempted to release an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man known as “Crazy Otto.”
Before turning their sights on the biggest arcade game of the day, the development team, General Computer, first used their programming skills to create an “enhancement kit” for Atari’s Missile Command. Instead of creating their own game from scratch, the enhancement kit hooked into Atari’s code and altered it to provide a new gameplay experience. Essentially, General Computer created the first expansion pack.
Even though the enhancement kit required an original Missile Command cabinet, Atari later attempted to sue General Computer for copyright infringement. But rather than become mired in a protracted court case, the arcade giant and the enterprising college students reached a settlement. Atari would hire General Computer to design original arcade games so long as they agreed not to create any additional enhancement kits without the permission of the original game publisher. The developers quickly signed on, but first they took a nearly complete version of “Crazy Otto” to Midway, the North American distributor of Pac-Man.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Uncharted 4 leads all games at the 2017 BAFTA Games Awards with 8 nominations
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the nominees for the 2017 Games Awards, which will be handed out in a special ceremony in London on April 6. Viewers at home will be able to watch a livestream of ceremony through BAFTA’s Twitch channel.
This year’s top nominee is Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which scored eight nominations including “Game of the Year.” Nathan Drake’s final adventure will also compete in the “Artistic Achievement,” “Audio Achievement,” “Music,” and “Narrative” categories, as well as with three separate nominations in the “Performer” category (Troy Baker, Nolan North, and Emily Rose).
Uncharted 4 will fight for BAFTA’s “Game of the Year” honor against five other critically-acclaimed games from 2016 including Campo Santo’s Firewatch, Playdead’s Inside, Blizzard’s Overwatch, Concerned Ape’s Stardew Valley, and Respawn’s Titanfall 2.
The complete list of nominees in all categories can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Firewatch, Inside, Overwatch, Pokemon Go, Rocket League, Stardew Valley, The Last Guardian, TitanFall 2, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End