This is old, but don't think we covered it:

Former Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi Funds Cancer Hospital

And goodnight all, I gots to sleep.

aspro said:

This is old, but don't think we covered it:

Former Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi Funds Cancer Hospital

And goodnight all, I gots to sleep.

Yeah we did, a couple of weeks back. Very generous. This guy is absolutely loaded.

And I think it's time for another argument....

This feature is good.

Gamesradar

Game developers that lost their brightest stars and suffered So, who else has pulled an Infinity Ward over the years?

We’re always moaning that things aren’t as good as they used to be. Because it's true. Even if that earlier iteration of that thing we liked only happened five minutes ago, we were younger then, and even 300 seconds of nostalgia is a powerful thing. Yeah, it’s just perception, but what the hell else is reality, at the end of the day?

It’s not always just a vain flailing for times gone by though. With game devs, it’s often because talent moves on. Company names remain the same of course, but sometimes it just isn’t the same company any more. We’re seeing it happen with Infinity Ward right now, so we thought we’d check out a few other cases and see how badly those studios suffered the loss of their best and brightest.  

Rare

Above: Even before HD, Rare were great. Actually, make that especially before HD...

In the glory days made: Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, every other amazing non-Nintendo N64 game you can think of.

But recently: Has made a few disappointing 360 games before disappearing into the background at Microsoft, presumably to work on Natal stuff.

Who’s missing? Remember when everyone moaned that 360 launch title Perfect Dark Zero wasn't as good as the original Perfect Dark and Goldeneye? There’s a reason for that. It might have had the Rare badge on the box, but a barrage of the guys who made those pioneering skull perforation simulators had left the company years before its development started.

Above: Forget Bond. Last-gen it was all about gangsters and monkeys

Head of Software Martin Hollis went to Nintendo of America in 1998. A large chunk of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark’s designers left to form Free Radical Design in 1999 – explaining why Timesplitters 2 was more fitting follow-up to the two Rare FPS than Perfect Dark Zero ever was. Seven designers had already jumped ship for Eighth Wonder in 1997, and signed a deal with Sony. Throw in the departure of company founders Chris and Tim Stamper in 2007, and you’ve now got a Rare very rarely reminiscent of its 64-bit self.

How badly has Rare suffered? In traditional black and white terms, pretty heavily. Rare’s game output hasn’t been anything like as frequent or consistent this generation. Though to be fair, it has now been refocused on design and development projects within Microsoft (Xbox Avatars, say hello), and it could be argued that the loss of the Goldeneye boys wasn’t that big a deal, given how Timesplitters 3 and Haze turned out.

Sonic Team

Above: The XBLA version. Justin could tell this by the naked eye

In the glory days made: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, NiGHTS, Samba De Amigo

But recently: Has made a load of old shit

Who’s missing? Sonic Team’s structure has been melting for a very long time, to the point that these days it's more a brand name that a coherent and regular set of developers. None of the original Sonic the Hedgehog creators remain. Naoto Oshima left in the mid-‘90s to form Artoon. Original game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara left for Naughty Dog in 2002. And most recently, Yuji Naka, the most widely-recognised godfather of Sonic, scooted off to create his own studio, Probe. Oh, and he took ten other people with him.

How badly has Sonic Team suffered? See below.

Above: Yeah. Yeah that is what it looks like. Rather mortifyingly

Capcom

Above: Bright, brash, and cleverly designed. That was the Capcom of old

In the glory days made: Street Fighter II, Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, Mega Man, Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Godhand

But recently: Has made Street Fighter IV, Mega Man download games, and a load of not-as-good versions of its last-gen games. Oh, and Lost Planet 1 & 2, for some reason.

Who’s missing? Platinum Games, essentially. Those last five games on the glory days list? All headed up by people who left Capcom to create the Japanese indie dream team. Remember Clover Studio, the now religiously-revered Capcom team responsible for Viewtiful Joe and bastion of all that is right and pure, Okami? Remember how Capcom shut it down after its fantastic games failed to sell as well as expected?

Above: The face of progress

Well at the time, it contained Resi 4 Director Shinji Mikami, DMC creator Hideki Kamiya and Phoenix Wright, Godhand and Okami man Atsushi Inaba. Capcom, say goodbye to your greatest design talents. Along with a whole bunch of other ex-Clover devs, those three set up Platinum. So far they’ve given us the disappointing Madworld, the incandescently fantastic Bayonetta, and are currently lining up Mikami’s batshit third-person shooter Vanquish.

How badly has Capcom suffered? Significantly. Without Mikami, Resident Evil 5 didn’t have half the ideas or flair of its predecessor. Without Kamiya, Devil May Cry 4 was a sluggish and increasingly-anachronistic retread of previous entries (embarrassingly so when compared to Kamiya’s evolution of the genre with Bayonetta), and most of Capcom’s other big releases have been farmed out to western third-party devs. And have usually been a bit crap. Only the Street Fighter series remains as good as ever.

Square-Enix

Above: Not even time travel can find you a better JRPG period than 16-bit

In the glory days it made: Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana

But more recently: Has made the massively divisive, massively linear Final Fantasy XIII, has bought Eidos, and has been making increased efforts to westernise.

Who’s missing? The biggest names would be Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu. Sakaguchi commited the small act of creating the Final Fantasy series in 1986, and produced or directed every game in the series up to and including Final Fantasy X. In 1991 he became Executive Vice President of Square, and steered the company and its multiple series until he stepped down and left in 2004.

Uematsu was Square’s best-known composer, creating the complete scores for every Final Fantasy game until XII. Next to Sakaguchi's design, his soundtracks gave the series its very essence. He left to go freelance in 2004.

Above: Love it or hate it, it was far from a failure. Apart from Leona Lewis

How badly has Square-Enix suffered? On the whole, not too badly considering. The company's games have certainly lost some of their old charm, but while the new directions taken by the Final Fantasy series (less linear, freeform combat in XII, massively linear, stripped-down everything in XIII) have been controversial, they have been successful. And while many old-school purists aren't sure about Squenix's increasingly sloppy kissing sessions with the west, getting fingers into the Eidos pie is unlikely to do it any harm in terms of money or diversification. The company has already produced some stunning animated work for Deus Ex 3.

And those purists don't need to worry too much. Sakaguchi left to form the Microsoft-funded Mistwalker studio, and its second release, Lost Odyssey, couldn't have been more traditionally Final Fantasy if the discs had come packaged in Moogle-skin bag. And the fact that Uematsu did the soundtrack worked wonders. As for the departed music man, he's only partially departed, as his freelance status means that he still does plenty of soundtracks for the company that made his name (or vice versa, depending on your perspective).

Lucasarts

Above: This is better than Star Wars

In the glory days it made: Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a load of Star Wars games.

But more recently: It has made a load of Star Wars games. Most of them crap.

Who’s missing? A metric shedload of Lucasarts’ old adventure game talent. In 2004, Lucasarts’ final adventure felt the cold, bitter metal of the cancellation bullet hit the back of its throat, as Sam & Max sequel Freelance Police was dropped mid-production. Lucasarts then decided to ‘restructure’, rebuilding itself entirely out of Star Wars bricks held together with the mystical cement of The Force. Adventure games were out, as were its adventure games staff, and thus the likes of Tim Shafer (Day of the Tentacle) and Dave Grossman (Monkey Island) found themselves shuffling off elsewhere.

Above: This is not better than Monkey Island

How badly has Lucasarts suffered? Sweet baby Jesus. By voluntarily nuking its happy village of adventure makers, Lucasarts became more machine than man, a cold, hulking factory pumping out safe-bet Star Wars game after safe-bet Star Wars game, devoid of all the zest, originality and character it once reveled in.

Gamers however, can continue living the glory days regardless, as most of Lucas’ previous stars are still working successfully elsewhere on very similar stuff. The most obvious place is Telltale Games, an adventure studio made up of so many of them that it might as well be called Lucasarts: The Next Generation. Having got hold of the Sam & Max rights, the series continues aplomb in Telltale’s hands, and the company recently kick-started Monkey Island again with the Tales of… series, via a deal with Lucasarts. Which hopefully, is a promising sign of things to come from the House of Vader.

Above: New Sam & Max is better than The Force Unleashed

And naturally, Tim Shafer continues to carve out his niche of hilarious but commercially unsuccessful games with the likes of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, at his company Double Fine.

But what do you think? Are there any other devs you bemoan the loss of to this day? Any companies you think have fallen apart since the loss of their key members? Or are there any on this list you think are actually better nowadays? Let us know in the comments, or load your opinions into the speech cannon and take aim at our Facebook and Twitter portals

This video is cool.

Gaming press discusses most anticipated E3 games And announcements in this Video

It has John Davision, Brian Crecente, Jeff Gertsmann, Adam Sessler, Geoff Keighly and more all chatting about what they think will be at E3.

Japanese publisher Marvelous is to retreat from commissioning original games and stick to sequels.

The decision's been taken after the experimental policy that saw offbeat games like No More Heroes, Little King's Story and Deadly Premonition get made has landed Marvelous in financial trouble. It seems these games just don't sell.

Marvelous will now undergo a financial restructuring and focus on sequels to its successful franchises, notably Harvest Moon. It will experiment with development for Nintendo's 3DS, however.

Early this year, Marvelous executives took pay cuts after selling the company's stake in European distribution arm Rising Star Games - although Rising Star continues to publish Marvelous' titles over here.

robio said:

The news about Marvelous is killing me. They aren't quite as good as they used to be, but they're still a good developer with more hits than misses.  I hope they can hold on for another year or so. I figure by then Power Level can come in and save them

So sad.

Little Kings Story and No More Heroes are great new IPs and NMH2 and LKS are actually awesome games too.

Can't people people don't buy stuff like LKS.

Hobo Gourmet Kitchen

Palm Beach Gardens
421 Northlake Blvd Ste K
North Palm Beach, FL 33408

Who lives in Florida? Dvader, Robio? Get us pics now and a review write up on the delicious hobo food they serve.

gamingeek said:

Upon further research it seems there is an actual Hobo Gourmet restaurent.

Hobo Gourmet Kitchen

(561) 841-8305

Palm Beach Gardens
421 Northlake Blvd Ste K
North Palm Beach, FL 33408

Who lives in Florida? Dvader, Robio? Get us pics now and a review write up on the delicious hobo food they serve.

I know where this place is located. Not real close to me though. That's about 150 miles or so. Little bit further than I'd be willing to go, though I am in that area once or twice a year. Maybe I'll check it out then.

gamingeek said:

robio said:

gamingeek said:

I can believe it. It was a tough sell from the beginning.

Shut your filthy whore mouth and get to the Hobo Gourmet Kitchen nao.

Well if you're going to be like that the game sucked!!  And if Marvelous said "help us promote this" I'd say "piss off and bring me a game worth a rat's ass like one of those fishing gamings that you like so much!"

Here's a thought.

I think/thought that if 3DS was as powerful as the PS3/360 no one would invest in making games for it.

But if it were on that level of power and if the storage medium allowed it. Do you think 3rd parties would port their 360/PS3 games to 3DS?

I can't even believe I'm asking this question, no way can this thing be that powerful right?