Category: Gaming

The PSP is leaving the Japanese train station

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Ewan Spence

As Sony retire the PSP in Japan, I look back at one of my favourite PSP franchises. To me, Densha De Go was the PSP. I’ve moved on to the PS Vita now — that was a Day Zero purchase on the strength of the PSP system, and again the long-lasting games are the ones that attract me (notably another Need for Speed, in this case Most Wanted, and Little Big Planet). But if there was one game (indeed franchise) that I think of when the PSP is mentioned, it’s Densha De Go. Read on at Medium.com.

The economics of more new games, but no new gamers

Posted on May 25, 2014May 26, 2014 by Ewan Spence

Jeff Vogel boils down the indie gaming debate (on PC) to a simple equation: X dollars, Y developers. That’s all that matters. And if X stays constant, the only way to solve the problem is for Y to go down. I’ll give you a second to work out the consequences of that for yourself. He’s done a wonderful piece on the whole ecosystem, but it does come down to more new games, no new gamers.

Music and Video Games, Emotion and Culture, all in one gig

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Ewan Spence

Video Games Live is back in the UK, and Metro has a fabulous interview with their leader, Tommy Tallarico: When I was 10-years-old it was 1977 and Star Wars came out. And when I heard that music and heard that orchestra that’s what got me interested in orchestral music. We didn’t have the Internet back then so I went down to the library and started reading these interviews and articles about this John Williams guy and he would talk about Beethoven and Mozart and then I’d go and rent a record from the library about who’s this Beethoven guy? And

I feel a great freemium disturbance in The Force

Posted on April 1, 2014April 2, 2014 by Ewan Spence

What the world needs is another poorly implemented collectible card game on a mobile phone, with far too many freemium elements grafted on top of it. But it’s okay, because this one has a Star Wars theme… Er, no. See my review of Star Wars: Assault Team on All About Windows Phone for the reasons against.

Flappy Bird on the ZX81

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Ewan Spence

Bob’s Stuff has a rather interesting release: Everybody seems to be going crazy over Flappy Bird at the moment, and a lot of clones have instantly appeared on the market – so why not one for the ZX81? Written in an afternoon to captialise on the media frenzy, it’s got all the gameplay of the original, but none of the in-app adverts which have been making the author so much money recently – but you can always use the Donate button on the home and download pages to make me rich! Looking at the screenshots, I suspect that only really

Now King have trademarked ‘Candy’ in respect to gaming titles, can we expect freemium licensing?

Posted on January 20, 2014January 21, 2014 by Ewan Spence

The good news is that they will likely licence it out, but you can only use it to compile five games every six hours, and if you want to distribute it in the app stores around the mobile world you’ll need to purchase a one-time ‘upload’ super candy.