Many thanks to Enrico who gave me a great link about Post-It art and game sprites. You can find the article here. Here’s a little preview. I actually wanted to hug the building when i saw this.

Speaking of “real” gaming, I’m still pissed for brawl. I’ll play it this evening with Catman, AoA and Ganon hoping that they’ll make me change my mind about it. Or else, I’ll stick with Super Metroid, waiting for this.

N00bs please read here: It’s a fan-game. You don’t have to cry “Nintendo didn’t tell us” and “I didn’t save money for it. I spent it for Mario Party 8″. It’ll be free.

Oh, and I have to play TF2! I haven’t played it in a week. I wonder if the amount of Pyros per server is decreasing. Speaking of which, how many jokes can you think about TF2? For me, the answer is “a lot”. Expect a few more TF2-only comics in the next month.

The last but not the least: E3 is scheduled for July 14-18, starting with Microsoft’s press conference starting at 10:30 am pacific. Can you say “Halo 4″? I can’t. My mouth is filled with drool for Gears of War 2.

E3 2008 has passed and now we have plenty of games to discuss about! I’ll just recap here what were the conferences about and linking some videos, for the full coverage i recommend you the official site.

Microsoft

Microsoft did exactly what everyone would expect from a videogame expo: showing off games. Not many new games announcements with Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 but everyone of these titles had a great gameplay video and most of them are coming out this year.

The shock came with Square-Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox360 with a glorious HD trailer way better than the one they showed last year. Armors, swords, chicks, badass bullies and ships in the sky like it’s always have been. Poor sony fanboys. I think they feel like Nintendo fanboys when the new Banjo & Kazooie was announced as well.

For their system, Microsoft though of a new dashboard, a bit complicated at first but really enjoyable, and a new (really?) network community, based on full-body avatars like Miis or the PSN that will allow users to share every media they have on their Xbox HDDs. FacebookLiveBunchofcommunities FTW!

Nintendo

From the Industry-leader since 1986 you’d expect tons of new games for their fans but it wasn’t quite what they prepared. I’m sure they have got big hits for the next year but for now we know they’re still targeting the family with their games (you can’t say the Famicom was a bad idea). First, they showed a snowboard game for the Wii Balance Board.

Following the guitar hero stream and aiming to the whole musical audience Miyamoto presented WiiMusic, a game that allows you to “create” your music, instead of just following the notes on coloured bars (a drummer performed solo with incredible precision. I can’t guess how he managed to use the nunchuck like that).

The next news was a WiiSports follow-up: WiiSports Resort. It’ll feature wiimote-based sports like his precursor but set on a tropic isle. What really changes the approach to the game is a new peripheral for the Wiimote that increases his accuracy in detecting rotation and target position. Many of us though that a “slice-for-real” Zelda is on the way because of this.

Another peripheral was announced: a microphone to be placed on top of the sensor bar to communicate worldwide while playing the new Animal Crossing: city folk. yes, voice chat is finally coming to the Wii but I don’t think it’s a good thing to let anybody hear your mother screaming “Dear, dinner’s ready! Your soup’s chilling!”. I want a headset. Period.

Sony

Sony just presented his lineup. Sony fanboys are the most certain about their future at the moment and at least they know what to save money for. A big bunch of games is coming for the three Sony platforms at the moment. Here’s a quick list with video links:

God of War 3, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, LocoRoco 2, Patapon 2, Resistance: Retribution, Super Stardust Portable, Fl0wer and Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty.

We don’t own systems but we know our business

Square

Square conference was unusual. Yoshinori Kitase and Shinji Hashimoto sat at a table and listened to the answers from the attendants about Final Fantasy XIII. I think this is also what a press conference is for

Final Fantasy XIII will be still developed for the PS3 first and then it’ll be ported to Xbox360. The game will require just one disk thanks to the blue-ray technology but we’re uncertain about Xbox360’s support at the moment. Currently there’s no footage but it’ll be available soon and the battle system will be and evolution of the classic ATB system.

Capcom

Lost Planet’s movie is on the way, featuring the producer of the first two Spiderman movies and the voice of Solid Snake. Capcom wants to continue its movie ports successes after the big hits Resident Evil and…. Street Fighter (yes, they actually said that).

Megaman 9 (with pixelated graphics) is going to be released for the XboxLive, WiiWare and PSN. Am I the only one excited about this? Well… I like pixels…

Konami

Konami did the same as Sony, it showed its lineup for the year and let the images speak for themselves. In 2008 you’ll get Silent Hill: Homecoming, many DanceDance games and a couple of Castlevania for the Wii: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Castlevania: Judgment.

Sega

Another lineup list: Empire: Total War, Golden Axe: Beast Rider, Madworld, Samba de Amigo, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Sonic Unleashed, Space Siege and Stormrise.

EA

New teasers, new demos and new games announced for EA: SimAnimals, Sims 3, Mirror’s Edge, Dragon Age: Origin and Left 4 Dead.

Out of time

Not mentioned during the E3 conferences or just before or after it we still have a couple of trailers that will make you wonder. Enjoy Wario Land: Shake It! and Mirror’s Edge animated story trailer. Sonic & the Black Knight and Pikmin 3 are also under development but we don’t have media at the moment.

Actually, mine is an elephant bank but it serves its purpose well.

After the E3 i browsed www.VGreleases.com and took notes about the release dates of some games. I’m going to spend 400€ or more within December 2009.

If you expected me to list all that I’ve seen at E3 (e.g. on other websites) You’ve come to the wrong place. That would be just a copy paste. Now, here are my impression:

Left 4 Dead 2: I hope the promised updates for L4D aren’t going into this one. I’d be greatly disappointed. The look is ok. I just can’t stand the daylight for a zombie game and the new characters. I love the L4D foursome because everyone has character but seeing the new survivors didn’t excite me at all, except for the white-dressed Nick the gambler.

Project Natal: Incredible! A device that can’t work if you change your pants while you play. Jokes aside, it’s a very interesting project. I’m just a little disappointed about the lack of buttons and physical feedback. This way it looks just like the power glove for 4 limbs.

Halo ODST and Halo Reach: Cool, more info and another chapter in the Halo saga. Too bad Bungie is stuck to dual stick controls in his FPSs.

Milo: Enough tamagotchi, thanks.

XBOX communities: Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm are coming to X360. Good, but often who spends time on these communities likes keyboards to write.

Assassin’s creed 2: Awesome job on the visuals. Though I don’t like the game and I’m never going to play it from what I’ve seen Ubisoft is doing an amazing job on the dubbing (side note: I’m Italian and Venice is in north-eastern Italy).

New Super Mario Bros Wii: a 4-player, 10-years old, dream that comes to life for me. I’ll play it alone from start to finish. Maybe it’s just me, but Instead of the yellow toad I’d like to see princess Peach as in Super Mario Bros 2.

WiiFit+: no comment. Why don’t you release WiiWeightLifting? I’d need that.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: The best title in videogame history is getting a sequel? I’ll need to borrow some drool from my friends.

Wii Vitality Sensor: Don’t ever think about WiiRelax. Release something like… WiiZombie that detects your heart beat and places the zombie horde accordingly. Oh, and with rumble support it could be great for WiiMasturbate too.

Metroid: Other M: I’d have to spend several rows on this. Let’s just say that I’m very afraid of the development team and the possible outcome. But since Itagaki isn’t around any more maybe Team Ninja will use their breast jiggle engine to animate some monster’s gelatinous tentacles (I’m not thinking about hentai).

PSP Go: Smooth move! Really worth the price in my opinion but they’re still missing a point: protect that damn screen!

The Last Guardian: Expect some more poetic puzzles from this one.

Sony’s motion controller: Good thing they used already-on-market hardware like the PS3 Camera. Bad thing they copied. Again. Apparently people likes to throw away dignity in the effort of making money.

Final Fantasy XIV: I haven’t been into MMORPGs for 4 years now and this won’t change my mind but I hope that it’ll be far more playable than FFXI.

Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil for PSP: Sometimes more of the same is good. Oh, and the 4-player co-op in MGS will have some granted hilarious implications.

New Castlevania and MGS arcade: Sometimes more of the same is good. Oh, and the 4-player co-op in MGS will have some granted hilarious implications. Yes, it’s a copy-paste of the above comment.

New Legend of Zelda in  the works: We’ve got only a pic of that but it’s enough to make us wonder why Link doesn’t have a sword and he’s accompanied by a queen-of-the-fairies-like blue creature.

Little Big Planet PSP: I don’t know how they’re going to coordinate graphic and physics processing but this is another interesting title for sure.

For my private life, after quitting my job I’m going to do the entrance examination to the academy of fine arts in October. I’ve got plenty of time to study and practice new stiles until then (as you can see it from the new cinematic shots in the latest story).

Also, after years of honoured duty, my SNES is going to have a long vacation. There’s no more space for him under my TVs (damn DTTs!). I’ll have to put him in a box an save it for the future generations. I think games like Super Mario Kart and Yoshi’s Island will be highly enjoyable even for my sons.

Within a few days from the E3, Mario Galaxy in Europe, my exams and the 300th comic things are getting pretty tense. I’ll probably write down the usual E3 recap article in the next month but not much else until I pass my exams. Still, we can already talk a little about the E3 we’re going to attend on liveblogs.

A couple of days ago Valve announced that Portal 2 and his “surprise” wouldn’t be shown at E3 this year, for unknown reasons, and almost accidentally this picture of a folder in black leather gets leaked from somewhere on the internet. You judge by yourself.

We all know that Valve took almost 3 years now working on Episode 3, it will probably be the last game in the Half Life saga and the development team is taking his time to make sure everything’s perfect. I can’t recall perfectly but I once read on a “behind the scenes” book about HL2 Nemesix lent me that one of the developers (probably Gabe Newell himself) didn’t like how Half Life 2’s ending turned out. In fact Episode 1 and 2 both have better endings with proper bosses. Anyway, this looks the right time to me to reveal Episode 3 at last, after the Aperture Science reference in Episode 2 and the announced Portal 2, with no need for Left 4 Dead 3 or Team Fortress 3.

One last pic for the new piece of furniture I bought yesterday, along with the old Yoshi I had.

OMG, I have to turn that penguin into a reaction image for 4chan.

Time flies. It’s been almost a month after the last post already. I know I should have written this earlier but I had some exams to pass. I passed every one of them by the way and only three remain in October but I have the whole summer to work on those, between some Mario Galaxy and Metroid.

You may have read the latest news on game announcements at E3 but let’s recap, just to make sure what we’re going to buy and why.

Microsoft

Probably the most embarrassing conference I’ve seen, even worse than that Nintendo conference from 2009. Let’s face it, Kinect (Natal’s new name) is just an improved Eye toy and what they showed was a more multimedia box than a gaming console. Movies, Facebook integration and sport events aren’t that interactive when it comes to actually play. And about Skittles, I’m sure that the little girl enjoyed that part as much as we didn’t. You’ll see my comic on this later. There’s at least a really good news in the release of a new 360 model, with built-in wi-fi and larger HDD.

EA

Nice stuff, really. I’ve got a couple of friends overly excited about Battlefield Vietnam just for the lack of Carl Gustav and seeing Dead Space 2 in action with more quick time events was really a bang. I’ve been re-playing Dead Space lately after EA’s big sale on steam and I perfectly recall the adrenaline i felt the first time a drag tentacle grabbed me.

Crysis 2 is nearing completion and it has been optimized for slower machines while faster machines will star in Need for Speed: Hot pursuit featuring multiplayer police car chase.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft presented a handful of very interesting games, starting with Child of Eden, from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and ending with Rayman Origins, passing by Assassin’s creed brotherhood. They also showed a new non-video-game with plastic guns and laser sensors that allows you to battle in your living room or set up checkpoint runs. I don’t know if you have ever seen this but in the 90’s there was a game called “Laser combat” sold with 2 guns and 2 chest sensors. It’s pretty much the same, even in the look.

The most interesting product is probably the UBIart Framework: a new in-house development engine. I hope they release it as free someday, like the Unreal Engine or Quake Engine.

Nintendo

Everyone that wasn’t expecting anything big after the leaks in the months before E3 got terribly shocked. Nintendo threw on screen a huge number of games for both DS, Wii and the new 3DS, finally unveiled. Goldeneye, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kid Icarus Uprising, Zelda Skyward Sword, Kirby Epic Yarn, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and many more. I really can’t figure out precisely how much I’m going to spend within the next year.

My bad, I couldn’t see the Nintendo 3DS in action as you don’t get the 3d effect from videos but from what I’ve read it works like a window on another world. The black border around the screen helps to isolate the 3d image from the rest and your brain reads it independently. It sounds awkward but it’s possible if your eyes aren’t too close or too far from the screen and not tilted. With the amount of games revealed and awaiting us within the end of Nintendo’s financial year (March 2011) there’s no doubt they owned the show this year.

Sony

Sony’s motion control, named Move, is finally priced at $49.99 and supported by good games and not only tech demos, like Sorcery and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Media molecule’s Alex Evans unveiled a little more of Little Big Planet 2 and how it will be a platform for games and not just a platform game. I admire their intents but I feel that the LBP franchise would work way better on PC with external applications and a supportive community. Just look at how far Garry’s Mod made it.

The big bomb came with Gabe Newell, announcing that portal 2 will be released on PS3 too. I wonder what made him change his mind considering that coding forPS3 is actually time-consuming, despite his previous statements were jokes or not. Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 went on the screens again with Dead Space Extraction as bonus playable with the PlayStation Move. The conference ended with a disturbing clown in an ambulance promoting a new Twisted Metal game.

The worst part was Kevin Butler, charging up the crowd  and mocking the products of other companies like Sony invented everything in gaming since the creation of PlayStation. That’s not something you do in front of people who probably owns every console on the market.