Sunday, October 10, 2010

Gaming Today

Gaming Today

NYCC: More Capcom Arcade Classics Coming to Wii

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 03:39 PM PDT

More of Capcom’s older titles will find their way to the Wii’s Virtual Console in 2011.

Destructoid reports that the Capcom booth at New York Comic Con includes a sign detailing new games joining Capcom Arcade Classics. At least one, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, was released previously for the Playstation 2 and Xbox in Capcom Classics Collection Volume 1.

Capcom also just announced the addition of  Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise protagonist Sir Arthur to Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. Nice cross-promotion there.

There’s no official announcement of a North American price for any of the new Arcade Classics, but they’re going up in Japan for 800 Wii Points, so expect something similar.

The new titles are:

  • 1942
  • Ghosts ‘n Goblins
  • Exed Exes
  • SonSon
  • Black Dragon
  • Wolf of the Battlefield: COMMANDO

NYCC: DC Universe Online Trailer Care of Sony

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 02:18 PM PDT

Sony is talking DC Universe Online and its recent delay to 2011 at New York Comic Con. To make us all feel a little better about it, there’s a new trailer to check out care of Playstation Blog. Check it out below.

The delay of the PS3/PC MMO, which is set in the DC Comics Universe (duh) and seems to include lots of fighting, is meant to make sure the servers can handle it, according to Sony.

Meantime, the DC Universe Online Facebook page will stream tonight’s panel, which starts at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. Until then, here’s your trailer.

NYCC: New Halo Trilogies, Film Could Roll Out Starting in 2012

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 12:53 PM PDT

Whoa, what?

So apparently, transmedia company Starlight Runner Entertainment mentioned that its media plan for the future of the Halo series includes two additional trilogies in the 2012-2013 area, and a film by 2014.

During a panel at New York Comic Con, Starlight CEO Jeff Gomez talked about what his company, which specializes in cross-media promotion and is hired by other companies to amp up their properties, is working on. One slide during the presentation showed off Halo.

Now, I’m not on the ground at NYCC, but Joystiq.com is, and they’re the ones who reported this story. There’s no comment from Microsoft or Starlight about whether these plans are going through or if they’re just a preliminary best-case scenario, and I dropped by Starlight’s website — no concrete mention of future Halo plans.

Starlight has been working on the Halo property since 2008, so it’s probably fair to say that if the company is talking about plans for the series, it ought to know what’s happening. Even so, we’ve been hearing about a possible Halo film for, what, almost a decade?

Then again, rumors dropped last week that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks were looking at the property. Maybe 2014 isn’t that harsh an estimate.

And we knew more games in the franchise were coming. It’s just feels like, “wow, that’s a lot of stuff.”

Check out M.O.D.O.K., Magneto in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (VIDEO) (GALLERY)

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 11:58 AM PDT

It’s a good day to be an X-Men fan, huh.

Capcom came out at New York Comic Con and officially announced that it has added Magneto and M.O.D.O.K. to the Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds roster.

They also dropped about a million images and some trailers on us. Check them out below.

That’s hot on the heels of the announcement yesterday that Sir Arthur from Ghouls ‘n Ghosts and Nathan “Rad” Spencer of Bionic Commando would be joining the Capcom half of the fighting game’s lineup.

And if that doesn’t satisfy your X-Men-beating-on-things bloodlust, you should know: Marvel plans to port its 1990s arcade classic X-Men game to Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network.

Enough talk. Go click images and watch videos.

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Marvel: X-Men Arcade to Hit PSN, XBLA

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 10:22 AM PDT

Start partying like it’s 1992: Marvel announced it is porting its six-player X-Men arcade cabinet title for download on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

T.Q. Jefferson of Marvel Games wouldn’t say exactly when the port would happen at a panel at New York Comic Con, but he did say the game would be ported by its original developer, retain the six-player cap, and feature drop-in online co-op.

X-Men featured six playable characters: Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Storm and Dazzler.

File that with “X-Men Game Info Released in the Last Two Days,” along with the X-Men: Destiny trailer that dropped yesterday.

So as long as we’re making ports out of every single arcade game that could be found in my local roller skating rink during elementary school — what about Alien vs. Predator? You know, the side-scroller where the marines were fighting alongside the predators? I beat that game probably five times between being eight and 10 years old and it was glorious.

Anyway…who do I put that request in to?

Via Joystiq.

How to Improve Game Performance

Posted: 09 Oct 2010 08:33 AM PDT

How to Improve Game Performance

Fragging buddies in Team Fortress 2 is a taxing operation, not just for you but also for your PC over time. While Windows and Mac OS both have built-in features to optimize and defragment if you want the competitive advantage you should work to improve game performance on your system. Luckily, tweaking and optimizing game performance is a simple maintenance task that can be done on a semi-regular basis and here’s how.

Difficulty: Basic

Tools:

  • Steam (Mac or PC)
  • Installed Steam Game
  • System Optimization Tools (DiskSpaceFan, CCleaner)

Time to Install: 15-30 minutes

Table of Contents

Official Disclaimer:
Not all the steps listed below will improve game performance on all systems. It’s important to understand that there are often other factors that impact game performance other than fragmentation like running processes or lack of disk space.

Following these steps will lead to possible questions of deleting files on your system or disabling startup processes that your system may actually need so proceed with caution. Remember, computing and gaming are not always compatible uses for a computer and the key, unless you have a dedicated gaming system, is to find a balance.

Step 1: Preparations
Before you can begin enhancing game performance you need to acquire some free tools from the Internet. Download and install these recommended tools:
DiskSpaceFan – This program shows you where all your hard drive space has gone in a nice visual way.
CCleaner – A nice utility for Windows that scans for unneeded files, allows modification of startup programs and even lets you uninstall old software.

Step 2: Steam Optimization
Valve’s Steam has a nice built-in ability to defragment the extremely large game files it uses to run your purchased games. While Windows 7 handles defragmentation far better than Windows XP or Windows Vista, using Steam to verify that your Left 4 Dead lag is not because the game is copied all over your hard drive is a good first step.

To optimize the Steam game files:

  1. Launch Steam and log in.
  2. Go to your game library and click on “Details”.
  3. Right Click and choose “Properties”.
  4. Click on the “Local Files” Tab.
  5. If the game shows any fragmentation, click on “Defragment Cache Files”

Repeat this process for all your installed Steam games to improve game performance.

Step 3: Hard Drive Optimization
Over time our gaming systems get pretty cluttered. Constant installs of patches, new games, add-on content and mods along with just daily Internet use can cause a system to get pretty messy pretty quickly. Windows and Mac OS both feature automated tools to help with this problem that we’ll discuss a little later. One of the big areas that gamers overlook when it comes to system performance however is lack of disk space.

It seems you never have enough space and if you’re a gamer who also likes music and movies on your hard drive, and thanks to Internet Explorer and other web browsers every email attachment or file we download gets squirreled away and often forgotten in our download folders. You could spend time searching around looking for these forgotten files or you could use a few tools that make this whole process easier like Disk Space Fan or CCleaner.

Disk Space Fan is a nice tool for rooting out large hidden files and it lets you “drill down” and “up” the hard drive by showing the size of your directories. Finding large directories then lets you dig deeper to find large or forgotten files.

CCleaner is a bit of a Windows multi-tool. Built to find and remove old system, internet browser and application files it also has some extra tricks that will help you free up space and optimize your system by removing startup programs.

Step 4: Video Driver Optimization
Game performance is particularly vulnerable to out of date or bad video drivers. Those of us who are constantly installing the latest games need to be especially wary of video driver issues on our systems. Nvidia and AMD both offer tools on their website to help detect the version of the driver you’re running.

Having the most recent video card driver is a good first step to improving game performance but it doesn’t come without some risk. First, not all universal driver updates work equally well, incompatibility and performance problems often appear in new drivers. If you are not patching or adding new games and your system is running very well already consider not updating your video drivers.

The second reason video drivers cause problems for gamers is improper installation. Both major video chipset makers recommends cleaning out old drivers when you plan to upgrade to a new version. Because off how integrated the video driver is into the basic operation of your system it is possible old files and support libraries may not be replaced during a complete driver upgrade and this will likely cause problems while playing games.

I recommend using a tool called Guru 3D – Driver Sweeper to clean out old video drivers before you install the new ones.

To use Guru 3D – Driver Sweeper:

  1. Download the latest official video driver for your video card ( Nvidia or AMD)
  2. Download Driver Sweeper and install it.
  3. Uninstall your current video drivers using the manufacturer supplied uninstaller
  4. Boot into Windows Safe mode.
  5. Run Guru3D – Driver Sweeper and select your video drivers

One that clean out is done, reboot into Windows normally and install the new official driver you downloaded earlier.

Step 5: Set Up Automated Maintenance

Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and 7 all offer users the ability to automate routine system tasks that will help with game performance.

The recommended maintenance schedule is as follows:
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