I spent a long time talking with Fumihiro Kanaya, a programmer for Skip. He had just finished work on the WiiWare title “Orbient”.

Nice to know that the same company is behind the Art Style games. Maybe that’s why the first one turned out so well!

Link

Somewhere in a coffee shop in San Francisco, Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler are crunching code and cleaning art.  The two of them make up the entire staff of 2D Boy, a self proclaimed “unstoppable force on the front lines of the indie revolution!”  In true indie fashion, the pair traded steady jobs at EA to blaze new trails in game design.  What qualifies them?  Kyle Gabler happens to be one of the minds behind the Experimental Gameplay Project, an open Indie game community designed to rapidly prototype new gameplay concepts.  2D Boy’s first game, World of Goo, is based off of concepts Kyle developed with the Experimenal Gameplay project.  I was only able to spend scant minutes with the upcoming WiiWare title at Nintendo’s Media Summit, and though I liked it - I only got a taste of what’s in store.

Check out Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Exclusive Review of World of Goo and look for World of Goo on WiiWare starting Oct. 13, 2008. 

Hit the jump for Screens and Artwork from the game!

World of Goo has an Online “Leaderboard,” measured by how tall your Tower of Goo grows.

The game features and “OCD” mode, for players that want more challenge out of the game.

The white lines preview what link will be made when you place your goo.

World of Goo will be avalible for PC and Wiiware on Oct. 13th, 2008

* Nintendo claims hardcore gamers will flock to the DSi first

* “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams wants to make a “Zork”-like adventure game

* LucasArts reveals the must-do list for “Fracture”

* Blizzard revealed the latest class for “Diablo III”: wizard

* Stephen spoke with Quincy Jones III about DJ music game “Scratch”

* Find out what I like (and don’t like) about the new Xbox 360 dashboard

* Find out what the newly announced “Tomb Raider: Underworld” downloadable content means for PlayStation 3 users

* We premiered a new trailer for “Far Cry 2″

* Microsoft claims “Halo 3: Recon” will have bonuses for “Halo 3″ players. Also, check out the box art!

* We premiered the first look at the Slash figure from “Guitar Hero III”

* I share some of my favorite games that have come out of Tokyo Game Show

* Saturday Night Live mocked “Guitar Hero” during their Thursday special

* Get jealous — Stephen already has “LittleBigPlanet”

* Photo and video sharing could be applications in the new Xbox Live

* Tracey John walked through Blizzard and took tons of pictures

* Watch a professional DS cook with a DS at Nintendo’s fall summit

* We clarified whether all the “Guitar Hero: World Tour” will be a two-week Xbox 360 exclusive later this month

* Microsoft explains why silver XBL users can’t use the Netflix service

* Microsoft talked about the comparisons to Miis

* “Fracture” and this fall’s slate of NBA games are passed on this week

* The director of the original “Street Fighter” movie talked about the frustrations in making the original

* Soulja Boy revealed his gamertag, so we took a look at his playing habits

* Bethesda and Lionhead duke it out (in words) over how to handle informing gamers of good and evil

* Funcom talked about some of the problems with the launch of “Age of Conan”

* Find out what the first day was like for a new Nintendo employee

* WiiWare title “Tetris Party” will let you drop blocks with your…body?

* “Ten Pin Ally 2″ and others get their box art scrutinized

* “Age of Conan” was featured for laughs on CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”

* I believe “Fallout 3″ could change my mind about open-world games

* Tracey John discovered a company that wants to help gamers make money

* I revealed my five favorite games at the Nintendo conference — “Cave Story,” “Henry Hatsworth,” “Wii Music,” “MadWorld,” and “Tetris Party”

* Some surprising facts about the “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” downloadable content

* A personal demo helped change Stephen’s mind on the prospects of Home

launch day is coming up this monday and the 2d boys have never been so anxious and excited! world of goo will still be available for purchase on our website, and the boxed version is already available for pre-order on amazon.com. starting this monday, you’ll also be able to purchase it on wiiware, steam, and direct2drive. the game’s nintendo channel page is already up…

After IGN’s 9.5 out of 10 review, I am more excited than ever. Who plans to pick this title up, come Monday?

Link

A portion of an IGN review…

This is why digital distribution exists, and why it has such awesome potential in our industry. Whether you’re looking at the style, execution, interface, gameplay, expandability, soundtrack, or polish, World of Goo manages to easily climb its way through piles and piles of mediocre Wii titles and raise the bar not only when it comes to WiiWare, but any package on Wii.

Hoffman Estates, IL – October 10, 2008 - High Voltage Software, Inc., one of the world’s largest independent developers, today announced High Voltage Hot Rod Show, an intense new racing title scheduled for release on the WiiWare downloadable service later this Fall.

High Voltage Hot Rod Show requires players to master more than the basic racing skills to compete. A unique stunt system gives players multiple ways to build boost, which drastically increases a Hot Rod’s speed. If you get too greedy, you might crash and burn! The game utilizes the company’s proprietary Quantum 3 Game Engine technology, which provides graphical performance and game play not possible on other Wii titles.

(more…)

By now I’m sure a lot of us have played, screamed at, and ultimately enjoyed Mega Man 9. The game was first released on the Wii, followed by the PS3, and ended its run on the Xbox 360. The only question that remains is whether or not the 360 version is worth the money. The short answer is yes, while the longer answer is yes unless we want to experience Mega Man 9 in the same way we did so many years ago.

Graphically the 360 version is virtually identical to its cross platform counterparts. Some would argue the Wii version represents a more accurate depiction of old school Mega Man graphics. As strange as that sounds, considering we’re talking about 8-bit graphics on supercomputers, that argument does hold some validity. However telling the Wii port apart from the 360 build is virtually impossible unless we look ridiculously hard at both versions. Basically playing Mega Man 9 on the console that the series was originally made for gives the Mega Man 9 on the Wii a psychological edge if nothing else.

Continuing in the vain of psychological superiority is the control scheme of Mega Man 9. The PS3 and Wii directional pads are straight and pointy whereas the 360’s d-pad is rounded. This doesn’t obstruct controlling the game in any major way, but historically Mega Man games have been played on smaller controllers and un-rounded directional pads. The directional pad in relation to the buttons that are are used for jumping and shooting can feel a tad strange on the 360 — probably because they’re not symmetrical. Particularly picky gamers might see this as a deal breaker, but technically the game isn’t any more different on 360 than it is anywhere else.

Downloadable content such as Endless Attack mode and Proto Man are available from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace just as it is on WiiWare and PSN. We don’t need to worry about getting the short end of the stick just because we own a particular console. Capcom has showed no bias towards any system in particular.

All in all, Mega Man 9 on the Xbox 360 is still a must-buy for fans who have been going bananas over reliving the crushing difficulty the original Mega Man games offered. All versions of the game are largely identical. It just comes down to whether Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo will get our $10 investment.

To delve a little deeper into our minds, check out our Wii review here.

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this latest version include two physics-based puzzlers and three platformer with different themes - avoid losing all your lives, kill yourself and travel back in time repeatedly.

Game Pick: 'World of Goo' (2D Boy, commercial indie)
"The award-winning World of Goo is finally out for the Windows platform, with a WiiWare release coming next week. 2D Boy's debut release has been getting plenty of rave reviews, and with all the good reasons - fun, engaging, charming and addictive."

Game Pick: 'Tumbledrop' (dock, browser)
"A physics-based puzzler created by Hayden Scott-Baron, a character artist whose work can be seen in the recent WiiWare release LostWinds. Much like Gabriel Ochsenhofer's Totem Destroyer, the goal of the game is to get the pink star down to the island in each stage without dropping it in the sea."

Game Pick: 'Karoshi Suicide Salaryman' (Jesse Venbrux, browser)
"A Flash implementation of the popular platformer series, where players must once again find unorthodox methods to assist our suit-wearing protagonist commit suicide."

Game Pick: 'Love' (Fred Wood, freeware)
"Not to be confused with Eskil Steenberg's similarly-titled MMO, Fred Wood's twenty-level platformer is now available as a free 30 MB download - no strings attached. If you love (no pun intended) frustrating platformers in the style of messhof's Punishment series then this is the right game for you."

Game Pick: 'Temporal' (Oren Bartal, freeware)
"A time-bending platformer in the style of Braid and The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom. The game involves guiding a confused robot from one room to another, with subtle instructions on solving puzzles provided by a talking technological processing unit."