Nintendo of America bigwig Denise Kaigler has cheekily admitted she doesn't want hardcore gamers' appetites to ever be satisfied on Wii, because then she would have nothing to do.

"I will give you that hardcore gamers have an insatiable appetite for everything Nintendo, and we love that! We love that," she told Bitmob. "When we get to a point where core gamers say, 'OK, Nintendo, enough! We don't need any more games from you guys...' None of us wants to be put in that position, right?

"We don't want your appetite to ever be satisfied, because when we satisfy you, it's time for us to go, 'OK! Let's go on home now!' And none of us wants to go home.

"So there's this sort of fun relationship, I think, that's happening between Nintendo and the hardcore gamer, which we enjoy and hope that the core gamer enjoys it," she added.

Kaigler said the unveiling of Zelda: Spirit Tracks at GDC was Satoru Iwata's way of saying, "Yes, Nintendo wants you to know that we are absolutely still committed to providing game experience that you care about."

She also challenged the "hardcore" and "core" labels, and asked if we liked being told what told enjoy.

"Or do you want to be part of a broader community that wants to have fun, that wants to be surprised, that wants to have this immersive experience in games that you can't find any place else?" she said.

Feed us, Denise, we're hungry.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ni...ardcore-hunger ...

Japanese developer GameArts is remaking Lunar: The Silver Star on PSP for release this autumn in Japan.

The subtitle will change to Harmony of Silver Star, according to IGN's translation of Famitsu, to reflect a raft of improvements over the Mega-CD original from 1992.

Visuals have been completely redone, as has the art, music and user interface. GameArts even appears to be bolstering the original story.

That untouched story follows Alex, a boy whose journey to become a great Dragonmaster eventually has him save the fantasy world. It's a tale that's been retold before in enhanced ports for SEGA Saturn, PSone and PC, but we've heard nothing for around 10 years now.

It's also not the only oldie that GameArts is bringing back to life - the company is expected to unveil Grandia Online next week.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ga...-lunar-for-psp ...

Time Machine by Sheludkov is a freeware stopwatch application for S60 5th Edition touchscreen smartphones. It provides "Count up" and "Count down" functions and an alert function to notify you when the counter reaches zero. Small arrows above the counter let you set the time for the "Count down" function.

http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software...uto=698&faq=10 ...

Free personal finance program JabpLite by FreEPOC has now been updated for S60 5th Edition touch-screen devices. JabpLite has the following features:

* Accounts in any currency
* Categories - track where your money goes
* Investments
* Standing orders/Scheduled transactions
* Net Worth calculations
* Future Balance prediction
* Top Expenses calculation
* Import QIF, OFX files
* Export QIF, CSV, TAB files
* Password protection

JabpLite comes with a desktop program Jabp which runs on Windows, Macs, Linux. The two programs can be synchronised when you connect your phone to your desktop. Jabp & JabpLite are 100% freeware.

http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software...dAuto=75&faq=6 ...

CrazySoft have released a S60 5th Edition (touch screen enabled) version of Paintball II. Make groups of 3 or more balls of the same color. These groups must be made next to a pipe. Paint balls by tapping on them. When you click on the ball you wish to paint, the ball changes color and the group gets sucked into the pipe.

http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software...Auto=697&faq=9 ...

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has said "blood and gore and gruesomeness" are key to Red Dead Redemption and its portrayal of the Wild West.

"We didn't want it to feel like those old Saturday afternoon TV shows, matinee movie Westerns where people kind of get shot and crumble and die very quickly, very carefully off-camera," Houser told IGN. "We didn't want it to feel like Little House on the Prairie.

"I think there was a certain amount of blood and gore and gruesomeness [that] was vital for the game to have the weight that we wanted it to have. It's not generally something where we didn't think it was being gratuitous at all. We thought it was vital for it to properly depict these kind of characters and this kind of world, the violence had to feel slightly raw and unpleasant.

"You don't feel these are just people being shot and dying with dignity," he added. "They're not. They're being shot and they're dying scared and miserable like everyone else would die. And I think that's what we wanted to try and capture."

It's not just the violence of the late 1800s in the southern United States and northern Mexico that Houser wants to capture, but also the racial discrimination, although this will be handled tactfully

"We didn't fully represent era-appropriate racial attitudes because it's too unpleasant to deal with, but we touch on those issues," he said.

"Not tensions, just attitudes. Tensions we did want to include. Within our research, the language - not that we shy away from too much, and we didn't really shy away from it - people use to describe other races is insanely offensive to modern ears, and we hint at that but we maybe don't do it with quite the vibrancy that people use in some of our research.

"I mean some of the stuff you find is unbelievably simplistic and offensive," he added, "and we can hint at that and hint at these people's attitudes but we're not going to have them screaming these words at each other or displaying such complete ignorance. We have some characters like that but we tend to make them look somewhat ridiculous."

Similarly, there will be a "little bit of swearing" but also in a "period-appropriate way".

Red Dead Redemption, announced in February, follows the life of John Marston, a reformed bank robber and outlaw who tried to turn his life around but is coming to see that that is impossible, a bit like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

Action will take place across three zones, and stories and missions will be handed out much like in GTA, although there will be less of them. "Our main goal with a game like this, or with any game, is giving the player freedom over what they do next," said Houser.

Some missions will feature "long rides" that Houser is trying to make as fun as possible, but which can be skipped via a mission checkpoint system if things go wrong and need redoing.

And like GTA, there will also be miscellaneous tasks to occupy explorers of the world, such as hunting around 40 types of animals to earn money and eventually an outfit.

"You get various rewards to your appearance once you reach the various tiers of achieving the various sets of things you can do one of which is hunting," said Houser, varying his choice of words.

Rockstar will be implementing a Wanted-like system in Red Dead Redemption where NPC characters will call out posses to hunt you down if you stand around discharging your six-shooter in public. Your fame goes up in tandem with your wanted level, apparently, and the world reacts to this.

Mini-games and side activities will be a central part of Red Dead Redemption, and include activities such as Five Finger Filet, drinking, card playing, fighting and running in a posse. Duels are in, too, but girlfriends and friends are out.

Character interaction and dialogue will be as important as ever, however.

"We love doing dialogue at Rockstar. We tend to put many, many multiples of tens of thousands of lines of dialogue into these games, and this one will be no exception," said Houser, who is aiming for a similar level or production value to GTA IV.

"A vast amount of pleasure in any game is just sitting and watching the world go by, and that's something that we've really tried to push in this world. In parts of the map where appropriate you'll see soldiers grab hold of people, just line them up along a wall and shoot them. So there'll be hopefully tons of that kind of stuff and you can sit and passively observe the world without you having to cause all the trouble."

Houser revealed that Red Dead Redemption will have "an interesting twist with the [endgame] compared to what we've done in the past" that will keep us playing after the story is finished and the 100 per cent completion status earned.

There's also going to be multiplayer, where players will be "charging around on horses and stagecoaches and trains". "It's pretty epic, but it's not finalised to talk about in any more detail than that," concluded Houser.

Red ...

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has said "blood and gore and gruesomeness" are key to Red Dead Redemption and its portrayal of the Wild West.

"We didn't want it to feel like those old Saturday afternoon TV shows, matinee movie Westerns where people kind of get shot and crumble and die very quickly, very carefully off-camera," Houser told IGN. "We didn't want it to feel like Little House on the Prairie.

"I think there was a certain amount of blood and gore and gruesomeness [that] was vital for the game to have the weight that we wanted it to have. It's not generally something where we didn't think it was being gratuitous at all. We thought it was vital for it to properly depict these kind of characters and this kind of world, the violence had to feel slightly raw and unpleasant.

"You don't feel these are just people being shot and dying with dignity," he added. "They're not. They're being shot and they're dying scared and miserable like everyone else would die. And I think that's what we wanted to try and capture."

It's not just the violence of the late 1800s in the southern United States and northern Mexico that Houser wants to capture, but also the racial discrimination, although this will be handled tactfully

"We didn't fully represent era-appropriate racial attitudes because it's too unpleasant to deal with, but we touch on those issues," he said.

"Not tensions, just attitudes. Tensions we did want to include. Within our research, the language - not that we shy away from too much, and we didn't really shy away from it - people use to describe other races is insanely offensive to modern ears, and we hint at that but we maybe don't do it with quite the vibrancy that people use in some of our research.

"I mean some of the stuff you find is unbelievably simplistic and offensive," he added, "and we can hint at that and hint at these people's attitudes but we're not going to have them screaming these words at each other or displaying such complete ignorance. We have some characters like that but we tend to make them look somewhat ridiculous."

Similarly, there will be a "little bit of swearing" but also in a "period-appropriate way".

Red Dead Redemption, announced in February, follows the life of John Marston, a reformed bank robber and outlaw who tried to turn his life around but is coming to see that that is impossible, a bit like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

Action will take place across three zones, and stories and missions will be handed out much like in GTA, although there will be less of them. "Our main goal with a game like this, or with any game, is giving the player freedom over what they do next," said Houser.

Some missions will feature "long rides" that Houser is trying to make as fun as possible, but which can be skipped via a mission checkpoint system if things go wrong and need redoing.

And like GTA, there will also be miscellaneous tasks to occupy explorers of the world, such as hunting around 40 types of animals to earn money and eventually an outfit.

"You get various rewards to your appearance once you reach the various tiers of achieving the various sets of things you can do one of which is hunting," said Houser, varying his choice of words.

Rockstar will be implementing a Wanted-like system in Red Dead Redemption where NPC characters will call out posses to hunt you down if you stand around discharging your six-shooter in public. Your fame goes up in tandem with your wanted level, apparently, and the world reacts to this.

Mini-games and side activities will be a central part of Red Dead Redemption, and include activities such as Five Finger Filet, drinking, card playing, fighting and running in a posse. Duels are in, too, but girlfriends and friends are out.

Character interaction and dialogue will be as important as ever, however.

"We love doing dialogue at Rockstar. We tend to put many, many multiples of tens of thousands of lines of dialogue into these games, and this one will be no exception," said Houser, who is aiming for a similar level or production value to GTA IV.

"A vast amount of pleasure in any game is just sitting and watching the world go by, and that's something that we've really tried to push in this world. In parts of the map where appropriate you'll see soldiers grab hold of people, just line them up along a wall and shoot them. So there'll be hopefully tons of that kind of stuff and you can sit and passively observe the world without you having to cause all the trouble."

Houser revealed that Red Dead Redemption will have "an interesting twist with the [endgame] compared to what we've done in the past" that will keep us playing after the story is finished and the 100 per cent completion status earned.

There's also going to be multiplayer, where players will be "charging around on horses and stagecoaches and trains". "It's pretty epic, but it's not finalised to talk about in any more detail than that," concluded Houser.

Red ...

Mommy's Best Games has announced its latest game, Grapple Buggy, which mixes 2D driving and swinging around with a grappling hook on an uncharted planet.

Grapple Buggy is due out this holiday season - i.e. in time for Christmas - and developer Nathan Fouts told Eurogamer to expect "an unusual yet satisfying blend of exploratory driving, chest dropping swings, and mega-monster fighting action!"

Fouts, who used to work at Insomniac, is best known for his debut Xbox 360 Community Game, Weapon of Choice, and the follow-up shares that game's 2D perspective and colourful take on alien flora and fauna, as you can see in the screenshot gallery.

Players take control of Nova commander Javeya and her alien co-pilot Drozo, exploring the newly discovered planet VALD-END 317 in search of faster-than-light travel fuel called Vald, and one of several, story-driven game endings.

Judging by the first gameplay trailer, there's a fair amount of combat and platforming along the way, and we're told to expect collectable upgrades including new wheels, jumping abilities and additional grapple arms.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/we...opers-new-game ...

Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren't significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting:
"'Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.' ... 'I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn't work perfectly,' says Wardell, 'it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That's when a lot of the sales take place and that's when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without "warez" copies circulating on the Web.'"

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl...9/05/13/168230 ...