ultrarobotninja.com

Street Fighter Beat Boxer will make you wish you were as cool as him

2010-08-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

Mega Man bosses that aren't but should be

2010-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.duelinganalogs.com 's take on rejected Mega Man villains made me laugh / consider buying their poster.

BREAKING: MY DREAM JOB EXISTS AFTER ALL

2010-07-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Not only is AMC responsible for Breaking Bad, one of the most incredible shows on TV AND also for bringing the awesome comic The Walking Dead to TV, but they are also responsible for bringing into reality my dream job!! Yes , you heard me internets! I WANT TO BE A ZOMBIE CHOREOGRAPHER!!

Tesla owner mocks your lack of environmental friendliness

2010-07-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

i saw this on digg earlier. This is not a photoshoped picture, and yes I also wish I could afford a Tesla :(

(click the pic for a larger version)

Mario and Luigi made out of paper = win

2010-07-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

Just saw this on destructoid.com . A deviantart.com user called TouchFuzzyGetDizzy built a mario and luigi statue out of paper and and then photographed it out doors. When I first saw the picture it took me a few seconds to realize it wasn't a video game screen shot! Congrats on you 15 minutes of fame TouchFuzzyGetDizzy, and great job on your artwork.

Badass Resident Evil 5 ad

2010-07-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

I saw this clever RE5 advertisement / poster thing at the capcom unity site, it looks pretty damn awesome.

AT-AT DAY AFTERNOON

2010-06-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

If you havent heard/watched a video by Patrick Boivin on youtube then you are missing out. The man is a a genius and does most of his work (script, filming, editing, effects) himself.
Have a look at my two favorite pieces by him:

Feel free to click away on this second one:

HA! Punny human warns against robots

2010-06-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

HUMAN RACE REACHES NEW LOW

2010-06-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

UPGRADE

2010-06-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm giving this blog thing another shot. I haven't had time to work on it in months but I'm going to try to change the format a bit. I'll try to put in less text and more photo/video content.

I'll start with posting a video of a "Plant vs Zombies" dance off, I witnessed/recorded at this year's E3. I used an HTC EVO to record this, it came out pretty decent.

Please note the video is a bit loud

At war with myself

2009-07-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Never have I been so confused about a game. Infinity Ward's new Modern Warfare ( call of duty 6 ) "prestige edition" really blurs the line between ridiculous and awesome, offering a game bundled with fully functional night vision goggles and a disembodied head to display it on. The existence of this collectors edition of this game does nothing but present me with a massive dilemma: Do I get it and hate myself for spending what will most likely cost upwards of 150 bucks and promotes the shameless exploitation of games bundled with ridiculous/awesome man toys... or not get it and hate myself for wasting the chance to combine my love of games, disembodied heads with Mohawks and my childhood dream of owning night vision goggles...
please help...

End of an era

2009-06-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

rest in peace :(

User generated content: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2007-07-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

Forza 2 is one of the latest games to capitalize on the concept of user generated content. It gives users a powerful custom paint tool that allows creative gamers to let their imagination run wild and to get all the weird, and sometimes scary, things inside their brain and slap it right onto the hood of their fake car.
While it all might sound good so far and while many other games are starting to promise even more freedom then custom paint jobs, some people have started to show what a scary concept that might be.

This week some jerk decided to use this new mean of expression and his twisted imagination (or lack thereof) for something completely moronic/appalling, by making a nazi car that promoted racism and praised hitler. While I'm sure the ban hammer came promptly and swiftly after this news hit the web, it really makes me wonder if the gaming industry is prepared to police all the crap that similar minded idiots might make...

I for one used my powers for good and sought out to make a car that not only would shamelessly promote my blog but also would instigate the 360 fanboys to consider other videogame console options and potentially kick me off their match.

Bring the fake Rock!

2007-07-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Blog Joystiq pointed me in the direction of this youtube video that shows some people rocking out with the game "Rock band" for what looks like the 360. This game has an awesome potential but its looking like only true rock devotees (like the construction workers and Batman pictured above) will : 1. be willing to put down 300 dollars for it (the version with all the instruments) 2. be willing to sacrifice most of their living room/basement space to efficiently bring the rock with their friends.

UPDATE:
The joystiq video got pulled down but I found an alternate video on youtube

Top 10 MMO list

2007-06-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

The blog GigaOM has compiled a list of the 10 most popular MMOs based on active users. While they dont actually mention their source of information , they say that World of Warcraft (no surprise there) is number 1 with 8 million active users. The interesting part is the rest of the list with a bunch of unknown MMOs (at least to me) including the number 2 being an MMO called Habbo hotel boasting 7.5 million users. According to its website: "Habbo Hotel is a virtual five star Hotel, where you can: walk and dance; eat, drink and chat in the cafes and restaurants; check out the cinema; or take a dip in the swimming pool."

Left speechless by that description? join the club

Other worthy mentions are Guild wars at number 7 (2 million users), Lineage at number 9 (1 million) and Second life at number 10(500,000)

[via gamelife]

There is a fraction of a small possibility that maybe Monkey Island 5 could (perhaps) be in the works (please be true)

2007-06-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

According to Kotaku, there is a small rumor floating around that a new monkey island could be in consideration by Lucasarts. Having dug a little bit further on the interwebs it seems that this rumor is full of holes,and in all likelyhood its JUST a rumor... here's hoping.

Mac Gaming Not Dead (anymore)

2007-06-11T15:54:00.001-07:00

Today on Apple's keynote Steve Jobs announced that infamous videogame makers EA (publisher and developer of Madden games) and id software (creators of the Doom and Quake games) will be releasing games for mac. While no promises where made the presentation seemed to imply that the releases of the mac versions would be at the same time as the pc counterparts. EA has already announced command and conquer 3 , Battlefield 2142 and Need for Speed carbon on the apple platform and id showed a whole new game engine running smooth as butter on the mac.

While this piece of news doesn't seem major, I think it could pan out into a major shift in pc gaming. Windows vista recently introduced the concept of paying to play game online (à la xbox live) when pc gamers where used to having the experience for free. Add that to the bug filled vista performance and this announcement and you could very well be witnessing the beginning of the end of the tyrannical rule of gaming on windows.

On a serious note: Gold farming documentary preview

2007-06-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

this is a preview of a documentary in the making about gold farming in online games. For those that don't know, online games have their own currency and to cash in on this new trend new types of sweatshops called "gold farms" were born. Gold farmers play the online games to earn in-game money and then sell it for real world money. Most of the profit goes to the gold farm owner and the farmers only get a small fraction.

Gold farming is a weird subject, the guys on the video seemed to enjoy it at least to some extent and they certainly rather be doing that job then any other type of sweatshop job... but at the same time they are basically human gold gathering machines who probably work insane hours for almost no money in a job with no future...

Videogames + Onion = Hilarity

2007-06-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

The onion has made a few videogame related gems lately, in case you guys missed follow the links to the following articles:

Ex-Girlfriend Playing Virtua Fighter With Some Other Guy Now: This news piece details the tragic story of a guy who got lost his two loves in his life. His girlfriend and Virtua Fighter 4. (there is also a shorter audio version at this link)

Wii, Water, Death: This one makes me feel a little guilty. A women really died trying from water intoxication after she joined a radio challenge to see who could hold their pee the longest for a Nintendo wii.

Second Life Makes Dream Of Owning Fictitious Coffee Shop Come True: And for the mandatory weekly second life mention, here is a story of a woman who fulfilled her dream of owning a fake coffee shop.

Game vocabulary word of the week

2007-06-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Griefing:
The act of purposefully causing grief on fellow players, either verbally or through actions (and some cases even inaction). There are various known types of griefing, griefers execute them to amuse themselves or friends yet its not seldom that they take their jokes too far,causing real word detriment. A very extreme example of which was when a group in Second Life constructed a virtual bomb and "nuked" an Island which an Australian TV broadcaster payed tens of thousands of dollars to build.

A more common example of griefing in bad nature is when players verbally assault others or display offensive imagery either Via Xbox Live's web cam or through custom "spray painting" that is allowed in certain games.

Other forms of griefing include (but are not limited to): Team killing, stalking (following a player around), blocking other player's pass, spawn camping (finding the place in a game map where player respawns, and keep killing him as he spawns), hacking ( using tools to modify game to allow the griefer to brake game rules, like walking through walls), exploiting (using flaws in the game to grief), and (the most common type of griefing) tea bagging (I will let the following video do the explaining)

The horror! "The Sims: the movie" in production

2007-06-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

You read it right... according to gamesindustry.biz 20th century fox has aquired the rights to make a live action sims movie...

the mind reels at what that really entails... (no pun intended, I promise) I mean come on, all that I can think of is them coming up with an even crapier version of the brady bunch movie...

Gamers meet your nemesis: ARPU (no, not Apu)

2007-05-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the gdc radio podcast the other day and they had a fantastic guest: N'Gai Croal. Croal is a writer and the general editor for Newsweek magazine, who also happens to have a deep passion for games. N'gai as a Newsweek editor gets alot more access to the corporate side of the video game industry compared to video game magazine editors. In this particular podcast N'gai brings up very interesting points concerning the pricing of the new console games.

According to Croal the cell phone industry uses a term called ARPU which stands for Avarage Revenue Per User, to refer to their goal of making a bigger profit out of their already existing costumers. Croal stated in the podcast that he has been able to observe this same business model in the video game industry, because big video game companies like EA and microsoft dont expect the number of gamers to rise dramatically. Since these companies aren't getting many new customers they seek instead to increase the ARPU in order to increase profits, in other words they seek to extract more money out of the already existing gamers. This has been manifested very clearly in such happenings as developers charging more and more for progressively less substantial downloadable content (which were once free) and the price increase of the latest video games from 50 dollars to 60. Furthermore, N'gai states that Microsoft and EA probed their customers when they released 60 dollars "special editions" of madden and halo 2 for the xbox 1, and when they saw that gamers offered no resistance in buying them they decided to increase their prices permanently.

I don't know about you guys but I find all that stuff extremely alarming, specially considered that 70 dollars special edition games are quite common these days. Worst of all are the extra ridiculous special editions, Halo 3 has a collectors edition (includes a small master chief helmet and some making of dvds) priced at 130 dollars and the new grand theft auto was just announced have ready a 90 dollar collectors edition (includes a storage locker, key chain and soundtrack). I mean, the last thing I want to see are 70-90 dollar games next generation, the prices need to lower not rise!

I too am guilty of having been lured into 60 dollar collectors/special editions but I think there has to be a place and time where gamers (myself included) have to stop being naive and stop buying all the useless junk that just encourage companies like Microsoft and the like to drive the price of games ,and their content, up!

Cheetah wearing shorts goes to church ... in second life...

2007-05-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Second life is basically an online game but without the gaming part... its actually more like a glorified chat room or a "virtual" version of myspace except creepier. Its a free download in which people build their own representation of themselves and then go around chatting with people and doing basically what most people do in real life. Well...except in second life you can fly ...and be a panda with a pink Mohawk...who owns a strip club...

In second life you can basically do anything you can think of as long as you have the programing skills or money to make it happen. Many go to second life, buy virtual land then build houses then sell it or start a business there. According to wired.com on January 2006 alone 5 million dollars total where exchanged between second life users.

But that's just the beginning of it...Second life, which is a strange idea on itself, seems to get stranger by the day. Every once in a while I hear of politicians having speeches in second life or bands having virtual concerts... just the other day my wife called me into the living room to show me what was on NBC news. Apparently a church has opened its virtual doors in second life and stream actual services into it on Sundays. My wife was kind enough to track down the you tube video of the news for you guys, have a look. Oh, the ~~weirdos~~ good people of Second life never cease to amaze...

Introducing: Game vocabulary of the week!

2007-05-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

In an effort to inform those who spend less time submerged in gaming culture then me I have decided to try to once a week post a word commonly used within the gaming community and try my very best to explain (yes, sometimes it might be impossible) and comment on it.

Ok so lets get started, this week's word is:

DLC:
noun

1. Downloadable Content, addition to a game usually* not included with the retail version of a game that can either be purchased OR ~~rarely~~ downloaded for free . Downloadable content may vary from new clothes or weapons for characters to new maps or game modes.

It is a common fear among game players that one day a pay-to-download content will be available in a competitive game that will give an advantage to those who purchase it over those who don't.

A large quantity of Game Players often get upset (for good reason!) when downloadable content is priced as opposed to being free, yet history has proven that despite all the whining they eventually buy them anyways. One of the most infamous downloadable content is the "Oblivion Horse armor".The oblivion horse armor was $2.50 dlc that allowed you to place horse armor in your horse in the game Oblivion for the xbox 360, this armor however, did not benefit the game's horses at all. The download was simply a cosmetic face lift to the horse. Furthermore this same kind of content was available to the PC version of the game FOR FREE. [it is rumored that despite the media scandal the horse armor dlc sold surprisingly well]

* some of the so called downloadable content available for certain games have later been found to have been included in said games all along, yet only became accessible after it was paid for.

2. Downloadable Content is also the name of the podcast put together by the good folks over at www.penny-arcade.com . It consists of a candid recording of the two artists responsible for the creation of the site, brainstorming one of their daily comics about video games.

World of warcraft dance sources

2007-05-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

I saw this video on Kotaku monday and its both hilarious and informative. It shows a few of the different character dances from World of warcraft and where did they get copied from.

Starcraft 2: a nation collectively craps its pants

2007-05-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks Dave for the reminder to blog about this.

Friday, Blizzard (also known as the filthy-rich-creators of world of warcraft) held a major event in Korea to anounce their latest game Starcraft 2. For those of you who don't know, Starcraft 1 is HUGE in Korea. Over there starcraft became embedded with their culture, when startcraft came out in Korea not only did it became an instant hit but also it is said that starcraft eventually even boosted the Korean economy. After the game got popular, Internet cafes opened in every corner to cash in on those who didn't own a computer (or a good enough one) to play starcraft. Then starcraft got its own branded sodas, snacks and animated series on TV, Starcraft tournaments became popular and today there are professional starcraft players that get sponsored and treated like celebrities. There is even now a 24/7 starcraft tournament channel on TV there...

so, its no surprise Blizzard decided to announce their new game there in Korea in a huge auditorium filled with all the different starcraft gaming leagues and fans. From the reaction they got of the fans there and all the Internet buzz , I think blizzard better buy an island to keep all that money they will make...

below is a video of the Starcraft 2 announcement in Korea, I really hope those fans had some extra pants in the car...

Saturday Video Highlights

2007-05-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

I saw these videos on kotaku on saturday, both of them are eightieslicious!
One is an old tv commercial for the original gameboy complete with a futuristic gameboy-playing robot and fiery backgrounds:

and the other is a tv commercial for The Wizzard movie, which for those of you dont know is a movie that came out on theaters during the 80's basically advertising the original NES and some of its games all the way through.

Thank you Kotaku for bringing these gems to my attention

Ikea cashing in on the 8-bit Nostalgia?

2007-05-19T21:01:00.001-07:00

I was at Ikea today and on this section where you can buy things to make your own craft there were examples of things you could put together yourself. Those examples happened to be a 1-up mushroom, an 8-bit Mario and a Mario-in-shoe from Mario 3 ! At first I thought they came pre-made and I leaped with joy, but then I realized I'd have to buy different parts to put the damned things together myself... the slacker in me made it put it off getting it then, but ikea's evil scheme seems to have had a long term effect because I'm considering going back and picking it up...

Here are some pics :

Halo 2.5 ? does it matter?

2007-05-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

So everyone seems to be talking halo 3 lately and for good reason.
The "public" beta of halo 3 finaly hit xbox live. If you find yourself wanting to join the party, you should know you need a copy of the game crackdown, with a halo 3 beta sticker on it, to gain acess.

I downloaded the beta yesterday and got a few rounds in and I have to say I exepected more graphically. Dont get me wrong, the game is incredibly fun, but I some how expected a huge graphic leap. I think the world of video games has been spoiled by gears of war... that game looks so good and so detailed that its hard to top off, halo or any game i've played before and after it just cant compare. I also have to say that the video that was showed on tv adverstising halo 3 looked too good, master chief had kinks and scratches in his armor, you could tell his gloves where made out of some sort of rubber, etc. there was so much detail in that cg trailer that it made me think I could expect something similar from the final game...

The graphics in halo 3 DO look better then halo 2, the textures are more detailed, the picture is sharper. there are alot of little details that pop out, the animations are solid, but it feels it hasnt made the step to fully commit to next gen graphics. Possibly the problem is that the multiplayer aspect of the game needs to be toned down graphically to keep up with all the online havock going on without creating lag... but still I think they could have done something to up the ante more. Lost planet pulls of delicious visuals online with about the same level of crazyness going on. I mean just the sheer number of people arguing online of wheather this graphical bump was enough or not is enough to show that maybe its not where most people expected it to be.

Having said all that its worth noting that the game IS still a BETA. Therefore there is plenty of time for things to get improved specially after all this noise people are making. I've heard time and again that the graphical improvements are one of the last things applied to a game before it ships. I really hope they improve the graphics on the final game because this game really deserves all the elements to make it the legendary game people are expecting it to be, after all this IS supposed to be the last halo.

Ok, so far this halo does indeed feel a bit Halo 2.5 to me... But now my second point:
Does it matter??

Well, no it doesnt. this could be graphically halo 2.1 yet judging from my beta experiences Id have to say id still buy it. I mean its so much freaking fun!
for one, of all the matches i've played (not that many but enough) I did not see/feel a hint of lag. And there is that little something that halo has, something about the right combination of weapons and tatics...Being able to climb a rock just to jump over a guy so you can blow him away with a shotgun as you land, Punching fools in the back of the head when they least expect it... the controls and gameplay come together so well! I just cant wait to see what the retail version has in store!

want more halo 3 + a few laughs? check the video bellow

My ship has finaly landed on the internets!

2007-05-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

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*INITIALIZING DECODER*
this is my first post EVER and I've been staring at this compose window for 20 mins!!! so there the first post is out of the way! Now right to business!!!