arne360

Apparently made just for the super-nerdy, Joystiq reports that you can now live your (satirical) game development dreams with a new card game called Pink Godzilla Dev Kit — which now available at eminent Seattle import store Pink Godzilla. I haven’t been down to Pink Godzilla yet, not that it’s really out of the way, but I might have to go check it out now just to pick up a deck. Pink Godzilla Dev Kit is a 106-card, 2-4 player game that, as the their site puts it, “magically transforms you, Joe (or Joella) Gamer, into Miyamoto or Kojima by presenting you with the opportunity to develop your own videogame. Everyone’s making videogames. Why not you?” Read the FAQ to get an idea of how the card game plays out. It looks like creator Christopher Rao put a lot of thought into making the game pretty strategic.

There is even a solitaire option if you’re so nerdy that your only friends are online.

…

Yup, that’s me alright.

Ever wanted to see what a game design document looks like?

David Jaffe did us all a favor and posted his design document for his upcoming title Calling All Cars over on his blog — it was originally titled Criminal Crackdown for those of you with short memories. It was pretty interesting to see him remark that “over the years, I’ve seen my game design docs drop from 200 pages to 5-10 page pamphlets.” That’s a big difference and I’m sure is a bit easier for him to manage.

It it’s pretty cool to see this type of thing, which I’m sure rarely gets seen outside of the walls of most studios and development houses. Jaffe says the final game is only 20% - 50% original to the design document, so this could turn into a great informal case study on what had or was changed during the process by the time Calling All Cars is released on the PLAYSTATION Store in March.

Capcom seems to be doing a whole lot of things right recently — enough that they warranted a Forbes article which talked about the recent success Capcom has had after hiring Mark Beaumont and the changes he made to how Capcom approached marketing towards Western markets. It has definitely paid off, since both of Capcom’s next-gen debuts — both brand new IPs as well — have now shipped over a million copies each and gamers are still looking forward to sequels of the tried and true Resident Evil and Devil May Cry franchises. The love doesn’t stop there since Capcom’s Clover Studio (which is now defunct) released a few critically acclaimed titles while there’s no doubt Phoenix Wright is selling well for them too.

So, hot on the heels of all this success, Capcom is doing something else I think is significant and totally the right thing for a publisher or platform holder to do in the current market — which is to reach out and be involved with the community in different ways. After starting dedicated community blogs or community sites for Capcom in general, Lost Planet and Phoenix Wright, Capcom announced that their new community portal, Capcom-Unity.com, went live yesterday.

I think this is a great site and an even better idea since, beyond the obvious play on words, it serves as a starting point for anything Capcom community-wise, but because it allows them to aggregate all the official blogs, community sites, community news and forums in one place while remaining well organized and with a nice, clean design. That way you don’t have to go looking for them with Google or something and, if you’re like me, you might go read the blog for a game that you might not have done beforehand.

Let’s hope they continue building on this great start and have plans for a Resident Evil and Devil May Cry blog as those releases get closer.

A couple of weeks ago, new add-on packs to Lumines Live! were released on Xbox Live Arcade. And I bought them. They were cheap, so it doesn’t matter. I bought the Xbox 360 version of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s critically acclaimed (yes, I used those words) puzzler when it came out and everybody was crying foul over microtransactions — specifically the full cost of the game and the way the game was broken up into different downloads. Anyhow, I was drawn back into trying out Lumines Live! with these new packs, especially since I had failed horribly to even be passable at it when the game originally released.

I still don’t get it. I can’t do well in this game to save my life. I can’t seem to grasp the logic behind thinking ahead to make the blocks disappear correctly. I can’t seem to think ahead like I could in, say, Tetris or Dr. Mario — two other puzzlers where you knew what the next or next few blocks would be shaped like. I downloaded several of the top time attack replays and I’m totally astounded. I want to understand (and like) this game, but I just don’t get it. Someone show me the path. Please.