From the moment players guide Ratchet into the museum, it's apparent that something special is going on here.  While the area sports a minimalistic design, the real stars are the deleted and unfinished materials.  Wander around the place and it's not long before you'll stumble on a guided missile weapon that uses flaming birds as ammo.  Then there's a set of crates that pay out special bonuses depending on how Ratchet whacks them with his Omniwrench.  Want to have a look at a flying space monster that involved animation too complex to work into the environment in which he was meant to patrol?  The museum can offer that.  Everything on display comes with a paragraph of text or a video clip that explains just what the object or enemy in question was supposed to do and why it was left out of the adventure.  It's fascinating to read and refreshingly honest.

The best surprise inside the museum is that several of the cut level elements are playable.  There's a hoverboot race that was originally planned for the Agorian Battleplex, and checking out its exhibit space leads to being able to race through the semi-completed environment.  There's also an additional Great Clock platforming puzzle originally meant for Clank and another dropped Battleplex element that involved a procedurally generated obstacle course.  Game archaeologists can relax.  There's no need to dig through data files in search of the Ratchet version of the Hidden Palace Zone.  It's all right here on display in a unique open peek behind the curtain.  I can't get enough of exploring what could have been, but its the honest explanations that accompany each item on display that intrigue me the most.  Some items were cut because they did not thematically fit into A Crack in Time, while others were technical impossibilities or just too confusing for the play test group to figure out (e.g. the Great Clock puzzle).

Ultimately, I wish that every major game featured its own take on the Insomniac Moon.  Imagine the possibility of Super Mario Galaxy featuring the original E3 2006 "Welcome to the Star World" level or Ghostbusters: The Video Game offering the chance to explore the lost "Parade" sequence.  The Insomniac Moon presents an amazing and deeply appreciated look at interesting material that goes far beyond a few screens of concept art.  Other developers can consider the bar raised when it comes to providing behind-the-scenes unlockable material.

Here's a little taste of what the museum on the moon has to offer courtesy of YouTube user DarkVizardBerryTan:

For more on the Insomniac Moon, be sure to listen to Episode 50 of the Kombo Breaker podcast in which we dig deep into the museum and other elements from Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time with Insomniac's James Stevenson.

So, what will Nintendo's new Wii be like? Chances are it will be very similar to the Wii in basic functionality. Motion controls are here to stay, and will probably get even better and more responsive. A graphical upgrade is certainly called for, and HD compatibility is an absolute must. I think we'll be seeing some pretty stuff from Nintendo. The list goes on, better online structure, more internal storage, etc. All that is pretty much a given, but never underestimate Nintendo's ability to throw us a curve ball. They're going to do something different, something to once again stand out from the crowd. I think that the controllers, while still motion based, are going to be pretty different, with more features and possibly fewer buttons.

Nintendo has proven that comparatively underwhelming technology can be wildly profitable, but what we need to consider is if the expanded market that has come to gaming this generation can be persuaded to continue onward.  In the end, I think that is Nintendo's big challenge for the next generation of hardware.  How does the company convince everyone who loves Wii Sports and Wii Fit to take another $250 step forward for Wii Super Sports and Wii Mega Fit that requires a new console when the current Wii — the one connected to that 27" Zenith — still works just fine, is still fun. and is long since paid off?  We can spin ideas for massive hard drives, advanced visual processors, and a ridiculously improved Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection from now until the end of time, but if the newly expanded market decides that it's perfectly happy playing the existing Wii Sports Resort and its kin for a few years more, where does Nintendo turn then?

Here's the trick: Nintendo has smart people at the helm.  Not only will the company wring every last bit of potential out of the existing Wii (both in terms of sales and technical capability), but I bet that we won't see the next Nintendo console until the company feels that the market is ready for an upgrade.  Forcing an updated Wii on a market that is not hungry for it would be a major misstep, and I believe that Nintendo would see such a thing coming and not deliberately make that error.  The Wii's successor will come, but not because the core crowd wants to play a large online multiplayer DLC campaign for Super Mario Galaxy 2 on a visually striking 3D 1080p television.

Back in the Nintendo Entertainment System era, pitiful game publisher LJN put out Back to the Future II and III, a single NES game pak that contained a single game loosely based on the events of the second and third films in the trilogy.  It's an abysmal game, but I keep coming back to it year after year even though I never make any progress in it.  Here's a look back at why it's such a compellingly terrible game.  Not all Back to the Future games are lost opportunities though.  The trilogy was big in Japan back in the day, giving rise to Super Back to the Future II for the Super Famicom, a decent entry in the gaming part of the franchise that was covered here in an installment of The Forgotten.  Meanwhile, back in North America, Mr. Eastwood had another piece of pie.

Surprisingly enough, the absolute best Back to the Future video games aren't actually officially licensed Back to the Future products.  The fans that love this franchise are growing impatient waiting for an absolute definitive game starring Marty McFly and Doc Brown, and they're doing something about it.  The best recent example has to be the inclusion of the iconic DeLorean DMC-12 under the guise of the Jansen 88 Special in Burnout Paradise as part of the Legendary Cars add-on pack (just be sure to listen to the appropriate music when cruising through Paradise City).  On the modding side of things, there's an addition to the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City that changes the game's locale to the setting of the films, Hill Valley, and adds a time traveling hover-converted DeLorean to boot.

Up next, November 12 marks the fifty-fourth anniversary of the great Hill Valley lightning storm, but you're on your own to commemorate that.

"Like a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter's night!" - Game Explorer

"I just wanna keep on playin' you!" - Next Iteration

"Ooh, it's such a good find!" - Pro Gamer

"Time for you to buy!" - NGI.com

"Take it on the fun!" - Akimbo.com

"You can take this game to bed with you and hold onto it at night!" - Digital Gaming Quarterly

This proposed program puts an overlay on top of a “media presentation” like a TV show or movie and allows players to interact with it while the presentation is playing. How? Here’s an example from the patent:

“For example, avatars displayed to a user, in response to user gestures in the real world, e.g. in response to manipulation of a game controller or other such expedient, may toss tomatoes that stick to the actor’s face or bounce off the actor’s face and roll along a table that appears in the movie or television show.”

Tomato tossing could be a scored mini-game. The patent explains players could get more points if you hit a star, for example. Overlays will act like virtual worlds with their own physics not related to the movie and tomato throwing avatars controlled by players.

While some of that idea is heavily inspired by MST3K, the level of physical interaction involved between movie and viewer/player goes beyond what Mike or Joel at the 'bots usually do during their movie-watching experiments.  If anything, I'm reminded more of one of MST creator Joel Hodgson's post-MST projects, Jollyfilter, in which wacky CGI-created elements were superimposed over and into an existing film.  Check out this sample clip of Jollyfilter in action (minus the soundtrack which the copyright police silenced a while back):

Whatever Sony has in mind with their patent, it seems to fall in between the level of interaction of MST spoken barbs and Jollyfilter antics.  Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, but I know I'll be watching to see how the company can make this work with existing media content, technical limitations, and other science facts.

(via Kotaku)

Basically, it’s a Windows screensaver that can display various battle animations from EarthBound. You can choose which animations to display in its configuration options, along with a few other tweaks like framerate and aspect ratio. Currently it only displays one animation at a time, but I might add a “cycle between animations” option if enough people are interested.

You can't go wrong with an EarthBound screensaver.  I've been enjoying it for about a week now, although the few people that I've shown it too all say that the motion of the warped colors makes them nauseous.  None of these people have ever played EarthBound though, so I really think that this is one of those things that only the right people will get.  So, in the end, I suppose you either get nauseous or you get Kraken. 

* Another show that could do it?  The Big Bang Theory. 

As if the Castlevania name needs introduction, this album is a tribute to the incredible music it has produced throughout its life. In fact, I find the music to be so incredible, that this is my 2nd effort in putting together an album dedicated to the series--the first was dedicated to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. From Kinuyo Yamashita to Michiru Yamane, the composers of this series have done a spectacular job in conveying the demonic atmosphere that Dracula and his minions convey, and I can only hope that I've done their work justice with my own.

The classic background music is reinterpreted as a mixture of funk, Latin and jazz styles, meaning that you've never heard Castlevania quite like this.  Set aside thirty minutes and hear what "Sonata" has to offer.  The collection even includes my own personal favorite franchise tune, "The Silence of the Daylight".  Here, take a listen to Morse's similarly titled "The Solace of the Daylight" for yourself.