The Hollywood Reporter said Thursday that after a four-studio bidding war, Universal has won the rights to produce a film based on Atari’s 1979 videogame Asteroids.

The script will be written by Matthew Lopez (Race to Witch Mountain) and the film produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra).

At great personal risk, the staff of Game|Life infiltrated Universal Studios (we accidentally broke into the theme park, first, which was embarrassing) to smuggle out bits of the first draft of the screenplay. We think you’ll agree that this has some serious blockbuster potential.

INT. OVAL OFFICE - DUSK

WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF

Mr. President, I’m sorry to interrupt this meeting.

The PRESIDENT puts down his copy of “Maxim.”

PRESIDENT

This had better be good, Johnson.

WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF

Your eminence, the planet is in grave danger. From… asteroids.

PRESIDENT

Are they hurtling towards the earth? What if they only took out France? Would that really be a big deal?

WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF

Actually, sir, they’re floating around aimlessly. Very, very slowly.

PRESIDENT

Enough is enough! I want these motherf—-g asteroids out of their motherf—-g geosynchronous orbit!

INT. FARMHOUSE IN INDIANA - NIGHT

WIFE
(shrewishly)

I just don’t see why you’ve gotta go off and shoot them there space rocks. Your life is here. In this farmhouse. In Indiana.

JOE BOB

Dammit, Maggie, that’s exactly what it’s about. Making a better life for you and me. And Joe Bob Jr. A life free of… of asteroids.

WIFE

Those asteroids never hurt anybody! All they do is sit there peaceful-like and float around very slowly!

JOE BOB

Dammit, Maggie, if our President says we have to shoot the rocks, that means we have to shoot the rocks. You don’t want our neighbors reporting us as Communists.

WIFE

We’d never work in Hollywood again.

EXT. OUTER SPACE - NIGHT? DAY? NOT SURE

PEW PEW PEW of lasers firing. Loud BANGS as rocks break apart.

JOE BOB

Dammit, Tully, what did I tell you? Don’t shoot them danged big asteroids until I’ve finished shooting all of the smaller ones that came out of the first big asteroid!

TULLY

Hey, if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen, old man!

PEET

White Squad, we’ve got unidentified bogey in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

JOE BOB

Sweet mother of God. What is that thing?

TULLY

That ain’t no rock.

PEET

Looks like a… flying saucer.

PEW PEW PEW.

TULLY

Incoming fire! Oh my God, it’s right on me! Backup!

PEET

We can’t help you! You’re all the way on the other side of the screen!

JOE BOB turns his ship backwards, and fires a bullet in the opposite direction. PEET and TULLY watch their viewscreens to see the bullet leave one side of the screen, then wrap around and destroy the saucer on the other.

JOE BOB

Looks like this old dog still knows some new tricks.

PEET

Behind you!

A large ASTEROID, played by William H. Macy, bears down on JOE BOB. Eyes widening, he frantically presses the Hyperspace button and disappears.

TULLY

Joe Bob? JOE BOB!

A single tear drips down his cheek.

See Also:

• Pitch Meeting: 5 New Ideas for Tony Hawk Board Controller
  
• How to Defend Earth Against an Asteroid Strike
• Nov. 13, 1982: Teen Sets Asteroids Record in 3-Day Marathon
• Play Asteroids Clone as David Lee Roth

Discovered by Tumblr blog superannuation, the trademark registrations for “Cataclysm” include computer games, online entertainment services and paper-based products.

Blizzard is notorious for its secrecy, so it could be anything. Many have speculated that it could be the name of a new intellectual property, or the company’s upcoming massively multiplayer online game. Perhaps it will never be used (see Starcraft: Ghost).

But most likely, “Cataclysm” could be a name of an expansion for one of its existing franchises, particularly Warcraft.

In you follow Warcraft lore, Cataclysm refers to an historical occurrence called the Great Sundering, which basically split up the game world of Azeroth into several continents. In other words, Cataclysm is a really huge event in Warcraft history and might make for a cool game.

It’s also possible that Cataclysm is referring to another event of that nature, which could be the start of another chapter in Warcraft lore — like Warcraft IV or World of Warcraft II.

So did Blizzard slip up, or are they placing a red herring to throw off fans? What do you think it could be? Do you like “Cataclysm”? And when should we start a petition against the name?

Either way, perhaps we’ll find out more at BlizzCon next month.

[via WoW.com]

See Also:

• Trademark Points To Mobile Phone Integration For Blizzard Games …
• Sony Trademark Stirs Warhawk Sequel Rumors
• Trademark Hints At Metal Gear Solid Sequel

Promotional artwork from Four Warriors of Light: Final Fantasy Gaiden.
Image: Square Enix

Sick of angsty amnesiac twentysomethings with lots of giant zippers on their clothes and haunted pasts getting in the way of your medieval fantasy role-playing games? Then you are the target audience for Square Enix’s latest Final Fantasy.

Another Final Fantasy, you say? On the Nintendo DS, you say? Impossible! And yet it is true: Square Enix has announced Four Warriors of Light: Final Fantasy Gaiden via a teaser website and the Japanese comic magazine Shonen Jump. We’re not going to reprint the magazine scans (possible NSFW pop-ups), but there’s a good deal we can glean from Jump’s coverage.

Four Warriors of Light takes Final Fantasy back to the old school. As a 14-year-old boy, you’re tasked by the king of your tiny hamlet to go off and rescue the princess, a classic videogame story if ever there was one. You’ll eventually form a party of two boys and two girls, who will go off and save the world.

The gameplay system is also in the classic turn-based style. The menus seem to have been designed around the DS’ touch screen — each character’s list of possible actions looks like a tabbed browser window, which should make flipping between them quite easy.

The Jump article, stingy with details as it is, notes that there is no “Magic” command in the menu, but there is a “Charge” command. In the status screen, we can see that characters seem to have “AP” instead of magic points, which is represented by a row of yellow dots. Since each action in the menu, including “Fight,” has a yellow dot next to it, the system seems to be that you spend AP whenever you do anything, and you can spend a round charging it up if you need more.

You can equip swords, shields, armor, and accessories, and just like in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, your 3-D character’s outward appearance will change to reflect what you’re packin’.

Speaking of which, while the game seems to use the same 3-D engine that’s already taken Square Enix safely through numerous Final Fantasy adventures on the Nintendo DS, the colors seem a bit more painting-like, maybe a little softer and muted. I think it’s a more pleasing look, a nice contrast to the sharper colors and characters of the other games.

Four Warriors of Light, from what we can see today, is as close as Square Enix has ever gotten to creating a new Final Fantasy in the classic tradition, completely from scratch. I’m quite interested to see how this plays out, since I’m more of a fan of the DS remakes now than I am of the brand new games in the series.

It’s slated for release this fall in Japan. I’m sure the bankable brand name alone is enough to secure it an American release in 2010.

See Also:

• Final Fantasy XIV Online Q&A Sheds Light on New MMORPG
• Review: Echoes of Time Links Wii, DS for Unique Final Fantasy
• Review: Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings Puts You in Command
• Final Fantasy IV DS Impressions: Sexy Dancing Time
• Hands On: Crystal Bearers, the Action-Packed Final Fantasy

Starcraft II fans are petitioning Blizzard to add local network play, but the developer is resistant to the idea.
Image courtesy Blizzard

When Blizzard revealed earlier this week that it would no longer support local area network play in Starcraft II, gamers got upset. And then they did what they usually do when they’re upset with something — they sign a petition.

The petition currently has over 20,000 signatures and asks, rather politely, that Blizzard consider adding LAN to the sequel of the popular real-time strategy franchise.

“We would still like to be able to play in a traditional network where no internet connection is needed. For an internet connection might not always be available,” the petition said.

Instead of going with outright, combative condemnation — like the community of Left 4 Dead fans threatening to boycott the game’s sequel — Starcraft players are trying a more diplomatic, brown-nosing approach:

The new Battle.net sounds absolutely awesome from the sneak peeks you have given us, and people will most likely be using it exclusively, even if they only play single player. However, there is no harm in allowing LAN play as well, and it does bring further depth and life to what will probably become the top RTS of the next decade.

It’s been over a decade since the first Starcraft title was released, so things were bound to change in its sequel. But fans didn’t expect to lose LAN support, a major element of the original game.

When asked by Joystiq about the lack of LAN support, Blizzard rep Bob Colayco responded, “While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.”

Colayco also mentioned that new Battle.net features, such as advanced communication options, achievements and stat-tracking, require players to be connected to the service.

Besides, how often do game petitions work? Last time I checked, Diablo III still had rainbows in it.

[via 1UP]

See Also:

• Diablo III Devs Resist Fan-sourcing
• Gamers Speak Out: The Manhunt 2 Petition

Feeling really good about your gamer skills? Next week’s WiiWare release, Bit.Trip Core, will beat those confident feelings right out of you.

The second in a six-game series of retro-styled challenges that recall the focused gameplay and abstract graphics of the Atari 2600, Core follows directly in the wake of Bit.Trip Beat, which added rhythm-based timing elements to the iconic Pong/Breakout-style paddle-and-balls structure. The idea is to bounce balls with your paddle, but they come in so fast and so furious that you can only succeed with pattern memorization and perfect timing, to the beat of the catchy chiptunes that score each level.

Core is just as difficult, although the game has changed somewhat: Now, instead of bouncing the balls, you have to shoot them, meaning that you’ve got to press the buttons with accurate timing to destroy them as they pass by. Your character is the plus-shaped cursor in the middle of the screen, and all you can do is shoot in the four cardinal directions by holding the D-pad and pressing the 2 button.

Things get hairy almost immediately, progressing from a few small dots that you have to shoot away when they come in alignment with your beam’s line of fire, to a screen full of dots that are, in the beginning, almost impossible to “read” — you know they’re coming in with some kind of timing, but since they’re spiraling in from the outer part of the screen to one of four different directions, your first reaction — certainly my first reaction — is likely to be one of utter confusion.

Pattern memorization is important to success, said the game’s designer Alex Neuse (NOY-see), who was guiding me through the demo Tuesday at Nintendo’s office. Your skills at reading the screen will improve as you play through the levels, yes, but ultimately just remembering how to hit each successive wave of shots seems to be the best strategy. So you’ll need to play levels over and over again, making incremental progress towards the goal. (There are three levels in total.)

Core’s saving grace for players who aren’t up to the challenge could be its two-player mode, which is exactly like the single-player mode except each player has a beam. They can divide up the challenges — you take left and up, I’ll take right and down — or just try to hit all the dots in tandem.

Bit.Trip Core will be available on Monday, as the 100th WiiWare game.

Sometimes it pays to be subnormal.

Half an hour into Red Faction: Guerrilla, I was wondering what kind of crack my fellow gamers were smoking. I’d seen loads of praise for Guerrilla, a game in which you play a freedom fighter (terrorist?) bringing down a repressive military government on Mars by bombing buildings, assassinating generals and using a gigantic sledgehammer to unleash all kinds of mayhem.

Provocative political messages aside, the videogame, released earlier this month for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, had been hyped as a sleeper hit, a surprisingly fun sandbox game about creative devastation.

But I wasn’t seeing it. To my eyes, the Mature-rated Guerrilla bore all the hallmarks of an unpolished game: Walking and driving around felt stiff and janky. The gunplay wasn’t much fun. And the tight, awkward camera was making me claustrophobic. Not to mention the fact that I was dying a lot, and every time I met some grisly fate, the game flipped back to a loading screen, whirring and wheezing as it chugged to reload the entire level.

Meanwhile, all I could think about was my friends’ universal praise of the sledgehammer. The heroes of most shooter games have melee weapons, but they’re usually weak, ineffective and only used in desperate situations. Guerrilla’s hero carries his massive iron hammer at all times. It’s a hallmark weapon with great potential, but when I tried using it, my enemies mowed me down mercilessly with their machine guns as I charged them.

Shooting them from afar worked better than slamming them with the sledge, but this approach seemed as rote as the hammer was unique. Finally, after dying one too many times on a mission that was becoming pure drudgery, I thought perhaps I should take the in-game instruction manual’s advice and turn down the difficulty level from “Normal” to “Casual.”

What a difference. I could absorb far more of the enemies’ bullets, meaning that instead of having to hang back and pick them off from afar, I could run up to the soldiers swinging my sledgehammer, taking all of them out with brutal bashes to the head. I could destroy enemy buildings with impunity, not having to worry that I’d be sniped as I was gleefully reducing a communications tower to splinters.

I’d never have been able to do these incredibly fun things on “Normal” mode. When I dialed down Guerrilla’s difficulty, the game became an entirely new experience.

My elation at this great revelation was short-lived. Immediately after putting the game down, I went to my PC and saw an article that had just been posted to MTV’s game blog: “Why I Played Red Faction: Guerrilla on Casual.”

“Crap,” I thought, in the manner of someone who’d just been scooped. Writer Russ Frushtick had experienced the same thing I had.

“Knocking buildings down … never once got old,” he wrote. “What did get old was getting shot and dying … when all I want to do is rush forward and bash the world in the face with my large hammer.”

“If the difficulty impedes access to the greatest part of a game, just toss the difficulty,” he concluded.

Frushtick’s point is well taken. But when nothing more than a simple tweak to the difficulty level can completely change a game, is it smart for developers to let players choose a difficulty level for themselves, before they’ve even played it? How many gamers would unknowingly trade in the joy of Guerrilla’s wanton, sledgehammer-powered destruction for the frustration of generic firefights out of a misplaced sense of machismo?

Actually, a poster on the GameFAQs message board had already scooped us both with regards to this quirk of Guerrilla’s playability.

“I bought this game to use the hammer,” wrote Twilight_Titan. “The simple fact is that only on Casual mode can you charge up to seven (enemies) with a hammer and take them out…. On any other mode, it becomes yet another (third-person shooter).”

After discovering the simple secret to unlocking Guerrilla’s hammer-time mayhem, I got on Twitter and asked fans of the game what level they were playing. Turns out, many of them started on Normal (because who doesn’t consider themselves normal?), but ratcheted down the difficulty to Casual after dying (and reloading) one too many times.

“I spent more time shooting soldiers and running away than I did blowing up buildings” on Normal mode, wrote one respondent. “Ultimately, it just got too frustrating with everything standing in my way, keeping me from doing what I wanted to.”

Developer Volition’s canny use of the word “casual” — which sounds a lot less wimpy than “easy” — for the least-difficult level probably swayed some folks into the easier setting from the beginning.

“Casual lets you do 10 times the experimentation,” said a friend who raved about the game and the Casual setting. “Last night I jet-packed over a mountain into the back of a facility, used the nano-rifle to make my own entrance, set a ton of charges in the building … then jet-packed out and set off the charges.”

While I haven’t gotten my guerrilla to jet-pack status just yet, I’ve been driving around in massive trucks and slamming them into buildings, then jumping out and methodically taking out every support beam with my sledgehammer while gunfire blazes around me. It’s a truly unique experience, and one I would have missed if I hadn’t tried the Casual setting.

The truth is, I wouldn’t have given Red Faction: Guerrilla a second look on Normal; on Casual, it sets itself apart from other games.

I’ve got no problem being labeled “casual” as long as I’ve got my sledgehammer.

See Also:

• Podcast: Red Faction, Natal, Awards
• Top 10 Raw Deals for Gamers
• Volition Makes April Fools’ ‘Ostrich Hammer’ Gag a Reality
• Red Faction: Guerrilla Coming in June
• Top 11 Most Anticipated Games of 2009

Fable II. Image courtesy Lionhead Studios

In the Times’ Weddings & Celebrations section, which isn’t typically subject to errors, the wedding announcement of Lionhead Studios employee Joshua Atkins stated that he was the “lead designer of Fable III.” The sequel to the last year’s Xbox 360 action-RPG has not yet been officially confirmed.

However, it’s not the first time the game has been confirmed by a non-official source. British TV personality Johnathan Ross mentioned being asked to lend his voice to the game in his Twitter feed earlier this year, and even responded to questions about the title.

It should be no surprise that Lionhead would be planning a sequel to the multimillion-selling videogame. The British studio’s creative director Peter Molyneux had also hinted at the new game when talking about Fable II’s last round of DLC “See the Future.”

But the guessing game isn’t if there will be a Fable III but when, considering how long we had to wait for Fable II.

We’ve checked in with Microsoft and will update you when we hear back. (Update, as promised: Microsoft says it has “nothing to announce regarding future Lionhead Studios projects.”)

[via Examiner.com]

See Also:

• British TV Star Confirms Fable III Via Twitter
• Lionhead Unveils Fable II’s ‘See The Future’ DLC
• More DLC Planned for Fable II
• Molyneux Already Talking Up Fable V

Image courtesy Sony

The program will allow peripheral and accessory manufacturers to gain access to technical documentations needed to create licensed products for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP and eventually the PSP Go.

Peripheral makers will also be provided with the “Official Licensed Product logo” for use on packages if it meets the “qualifying SCE standards and requirements,” according to the press release.

The requirements to obtain the logo aren’t specified on the official site, so we can only guess what kind of products will come out of this. If it’s anything like the now-meaningless Nintendo Seal of Quality, then we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

The current generation of game consoles could constitute the last “console cycle” as we know it, says Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter.

In a massive 210-page report entitled “Money for Nothing: How Ancillary Revenues Can Extend the Console Cycle,” the widely-read industry pundit and financial guru pontificates on most every facet of the videogame industry in 2009. It’s a ponderous read, especially compared to Pachter’s brief investor notes, but it represents the analyst’s broad view of the business as it stands today.

The big takeaway is that for a variety of reasons, the console cycle that we’ve become accustomed to — three game machines fight it out for supremacy, and everybody drops back to the starting line in five years when the next round of powered-up machines hits stores — may be a relic of the past. Instead, each hardware maker will be looking to upgrade their machines incrementally over the next five years, not introduce brand new pieces of hardware.

Pachter disagrees with the “commonly held misperception that consoles can only support software sales growth for a five-year period, and that current generation console software sales will drop dramatically in 2010.”

Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 still have massive room for growth over the next few years, he says. Pachter points out that 90 percent of all consoles sold in the last generation were at prices under $200, which only the Xbox 360 has reached thus far — and even then, the “core” 360 SKU, the one that comes equipped with a hard drive, has not yet reached that magic price point. (To say nothing of the PlayStation 3.)

Moreover, Wedbush Morgan estimates that “over half of Wii households are nontraditional, meaning that they would not have bought a console but for the novelty of Wii.” While Pachter points out that this is a good thing for the industry because it widens the market, it means that Nintendo may not have crowded Sony and Microsoft out of the market — there might still be room for many more sales of traditional consoles.

Pachter says he expects the Wii to dominate in sales for the next two years. By the time that Wii’s juice finally runs out and a more powerful piece of hardware becomes necessary, he sees Nintendo releasing what he calls “Wii Plus” — a Wii with graphics more on par with 360 and PS3, to make it easier for game publishers to port games between all three consoles.

“In our view, if Nintendo can offer such a device by year-end 2010, it will be in a position to seriously damage Sony’s chances of a comeback this cycle. We would expect publishers to support such a move, given that the cost of porting an Xbox 360 game to the new Wii Plus HD format would likely be lower than the cost of building a ground up Wii game,” Pachter said in the report.

“Of course, the timing of such a launch will depend upon several factors, including the cost of production, the price points of its competitors’ consoles, and the willingness of publishers to support a launch. We believe that each of these factors will shift in Nintendo’s favor eventually, and are targeting fall 2010 for a Wii Plus announcement,” he said.

Pachter also “would not be surprised” to see a “slim PS3″ redesign at the end of this year, and the rumored upgraded Xbox 360 in 2010 with a terabyte of storage.

Although he is engaging in predictions about the far-off future, Pachter’s analysis seems sound. No hardware maker wants to pull the trigger on a brand new piece of hardware right now, and Pachter is correct that all three could be considered the “winners” of the console war if they can all maintain (or find) profitability.

That said, there seems to be one crucial piece missing from this analysis: Disruption. Any analysis of the current console cycle that was written in 2004 would have been completely wrong, since it would likely have concentrated heavily on Sony and Microsoft, counting Nintendo out of the equation.

Indeed, Pachter even points this out in the report, noting that the DS kicked off the current hardware generation “without fanfare” in 2004 and that “few observers appreciated that the Nintendo DS signaled a change in game play” that foretold the Wii’s innovations.

To simply look at Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo and assume that their current strategies, extrapolated outward, will tell the future of the game business is to court disaster. Should a disruptive idea come from an outside company, it could change the ways that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do business, perhaps forcing them to introduce new hardware to respond to a clear shift in consumers’ wants.

Otherwise known as a new console cycle.

Original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soundmaybe/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

See Also:

• Pachter: PSP Won’t Catch Up To DS, But It Doesn’t Need To
• Michael Pachter on Kutaragi: Sony Needs Execution, Not Visionaries
• Q&A: Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto on Mario, Zelda, Project Natal
• Activision: We May Stop Supporting Sony
• Top 10 Raw Deals for Gamers

Sony is considering development of a gaming and cell phone hybrid to compete with Apple’s iPhone.

According to Reuters, Japanese business daily Nikkei said that the company aims to form a development team as early as next month to create a product that combines the PSP handheld gaming device and the Sony Ericsson mobile phone.

This would not be the first time that Sony has created such a hybrid. The company that created the Walkman has released phones with that branding, but has still fallen well behind Apple in the music-player market.

With the popularity of iPhone games and the growing support of traditional console game developers, it’s been suggested that Apple’s portable devices are a significant threat to the PSP and the Nintendo DS.

Sony declined to comment, but we’ve heard these rumors before. With the creation of the PSP Go, a smaller version of the PSP that has no disc drive, it makes a bit more sense now to go whole hog and add mobile phone functionality.

However, it seems as though it’s not a question if Sony can do it, but whether Sony should this late in the game. If the company does create a phone/gaming hybrid, the most important factor might be its price. Regarding the $250 PSP Go and the PS3, many have said that Sony must lower its price points to remain competitive.

Over the last two years, Apple has dropped the price of the iPhone significantly. At its 2007 launch, the 8-GB phone was a whopping $600; the new model is just $100.

Sony, take note.

Chris says: Speaking of the Walkman, did you read this BBC piece about a kid who gives up his iPhone for a Walkman for one week?

See Also:

• Top 10 Raw Deals for Gamers
• ‘PSP Go’ Video: Sony Leaks Own E3 News
• Sony Dispels PSP Phone Rumor
• Sony Ericsson Patents Swivel-Screen, PSP-Like Phone