XboxSold.com BLOG

Our "Indie Nation" series highlights worthwhile, independently-produced games.

Oh hello I did not see you come in! You have played with the Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden game and enjoyed, yes? Good news! GZ Storm, a group that was having been worked on the first game, now has another game that they did call 78641 – A Targ Adventure (translated from the original Esperanto with all permissions and rectitude). 

78641 is a game for people who enjoy! Is it to be an adventure game? Yes. Is it with an humor dosage? Absolutely. Is it unlike to be like any game you have ever had to play? Without a question. How unlike to be any game you have ever had to play is this game, should you choose to ask? Consider this: you are playing a character who is a frying pan who goes back through into the past time to pay off his car insuranced. 

This is the game for you!

Alternately, you could always have hit the small button below and inform yourself by read many of my further thoughts of mine on this game.

I’ve never so much enjoyed something whilst having no fucking clue what is going on. Why is my roomate a large, floating human head? I don’t know. How many items do I need to complete the game? Can the game even be completed? Did I just blow up the fucking moon with a fucking toaster?

I don’t know. I don’t care. It feels right. 

The whole weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird humor style is the comedic equivalent of a Gila Monster: it looks incredibly simple and easy to handle, but even the slightest misstep around it will probably result in a great deal of biting and poison and heart failure. One need only read, oh, pretty much any bad web comic in the history of the Internet to understand how easy it is to slip from "weird enough to be confusingly funny" to "too weird in an obviously self-conscious and pathetically pandering manner."

That 78641 – A Targ Adventure manages to stay in the former category throughout its entire running time is a testament to its creators. The graphics will suddenly change style with no explanation, and you’ll have to accept it. You’ll meet David Lynch in a bathroom stall while he films a toilet, and it will be the most normal thing you’ve seen or done in the entire game. Visit the Napkin Museum. Don’t talk to the homeless  toothpaste salesman.

As you can no doubt tell, it is borderline impossible to describe 78641’s game world without sounding like a schizophrenic.

There’s some actual gameplay here amongst all the weird characters and situations, but it takes a backseat to the general atmosphere of pleasant confusion. There are a couple of neat puzzles here and there, and a few that actually make some sort of sense, but the game’s structure as a whole is equally as confusing as the world and narrative wrapped around it. You’ll do something, but not know why you did it. Then you’ll find out that maybe you shouldn’t have done that and you probably just prevented yourself from getting an item you would have needed, except maybe you don’t actually need that item, but you don’t know because the game doesn’t tell you. 

If this were a game at all focused on telling a logical story or accomplishing anything other than putting the player into a sense of persistent bewilderment, this sort of opaque game design would irritate me. As it stands, the confusing puzzle design functions as just another extension of that "oh Jesus Christ this is so weird but in a good way wait did he just say that Frying Pans are segregated from the rest of society oh Jesus what am I doing and why is this so enjoyable" sort of vibe.

I mean, you can get a walkthrough if you’re really worried about "winning" the game, but it’s equally fun to just run around 78641, examining things and getting into trouble to no real point or purpose. It’s about the journey, not the destination. 

That this particular journey includes a protagonist whose day job requires him to sell dicks to people is a bonus.

If you’re really hardcore about Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and are always on the go, you might like the NEXiLUX (Meximelt?) Mini Guitar. This is a retractable, packable stick guitar that works on the PS2, PS3, and Wii for both of the above listed guitar games.

The Mini Guitar should be available in the next two weeks. No price or exact release date was given, though we do know that it is offered in both black and white. The video shows how the whoel thing is put together. You can cram a Wii Remote in the back of the unit, and the wireless adapter/dongle is also shown off. 

This looks to be quite a bit more handy than toting a full-sized Rock Band or Guitar Hero guitar on-the-go. Of course, those serious about the game would have to see how well the controls function. Is this something you’d consider using?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up shouldn’t be confused with the dull and downloadable brawler Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. Smash-Up — a proper Wii and PlayStation 2 title as of now — is a Super Smash Bros.-inspired fighting game with an emphasis on environment and style. Studio Game Arts wants people to know that capable hands are developing the title, putting in cute additions like online functionality as well as a host of game types.

Below the fold is the second developer diary for Smash-Up. In it, the Game Arts crew discuss the importance of doing online multiplayer right, as well as address how in-depth the fighting mechanics are. Call us dreamers, but we’re thinking this TMNT title might turn out, at the least, decent, judging by Game Arts words and game footage alone.

Smash-Up is being published by Ubisoft and will hit North American retail shelves on September 22nd this year.

Bobby "Slightly Worse Than Satan" Kotick, CEO of evil publisher Actvision, believes that videogames have the potential to eclipse movies and television to become the ultimate form of entertainment, and he won’t even have to sacrifice a hundred babies to the Blackened Grimwizards in order to make it happen. He’ll still sacrifice them though, for fun.

"I view the medium as having the potential to eclipse film and television," states The Dark One. He thinks that games will make their big breakthrough push within the next five years, when the next generation of hardware rolls around. Kotick suggests that once developers have mastered the art of believable facial animation, there will be enough of an emotional connection to allow for real, engaging stories. 

Kotick also talked about hardware prices and why price cuts are important: "It’s not a trivial investment for people. Part of my concern over the next couple of years is when you look at an economy that’s not growing and you look at all the economic challenges we face, not just for videogames but for all businesses."

Of course, that last statement is coming from a man who is using the economy to justify hiking the price of Modern Warfare 2 to £54.99 in the United Kingdom, so he’s not really in the best position to criticize the pricing strategies of other companies.

Sometimes I feel like all I do is hand out free stuff. I guess this is good in that people probably want to be my friend because I have lots of free gaming swag to give them. On the other hand, maybe people only want to be my friend because I’ve got gaming swag to give them. Uh … I hope that isn’t it.

For our Resident Evil: Degeneration contest, we asked you to do your best zombie impression in the comments. Our absolute favorite was from KrazyKraut, who depicted Dtoid going zombie and eating his face off. We also loved ElectroLemon’s Nick Chester zombie, RudyChan’s pirate zombie, Lamorte13’s bloody closeup and shinigamiDude’s Plants vs. Zombies attack. Congrats guys! We’ll send you an email today for your mailing addresses and ship you swag this week.

Make sure to check out our other running contests to see what else you can get for free. We’re also about to launch a new one today for tons of Cursed Mountain swag, including t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, lanyards and copies of the game, so stay tuned for that later!

Ever since it revealed the PS3 Slim, Sony has been rolling out a new marketing focus, repositioning the system as a "total entertainment device." Sony’s Pete Dille has been speaking to the LA Times, and he believes that the PlayStation 3 will "own" entertainment while still keeping a focus on games. I’m getting some real deja vu here.

"We have been a game company for years and we would never walk away from that, but research confirmed there is a larger proposition under our nose," says the senior marketing VP. "We wanted to reposition as a total entertainment solution. We felt like we can really own entertainment.

"A year or two ago, the idea of an all-in-one media hub was kind of a foreign idea among the mass market. Today thanks to new technologies like the iPhone, we’ve warmed up to the idea of products that meet all our multimedia needs."

Oh! That feeling of deja vu has just kicked in again, and I’ve magically remembered why this seems so familiar. This is the exact same marketing strategy Sony tried to pull when the PS3 first launched. You remember, the marketing strategy that failed? The marketing strategy Sony itself said had confused developers and consumers so much that Sony had to come out and explicitly state it was a game platform? Yeah, that one! The one that made people wonder what, exactly, the PS3 was supposed to be. This really isn’t repositioning the PS3 at all, it’s falling back on a failed marketing method and hoping it works better a second time around. 

Well … best of luck to them!

We’ve been blasted with Muramasa: The Demon Blade for months, which is a good thing as I probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in the game otherwise. It looks like a blast and the kind of game the Wii needs more of.

Other than that, I look forward to giving Section 8 a run through. Oh, and Guitar Hero 5 is a biggie this week. RED BLUE GREEN YELLOW ORANGE YEAH!

What’s looking sw33t to you all this week, Dtoiders? The jump contains the full list of releases and trailers for most of the games. 

XBLA: Defense Grid: The Awakening

X360: Pinball Hall of Fame – The Williams Collection, Mini Ninjas, Guitar Hero 5, Section 8, Gears of War 2 Game Of The Year Edition

PS3: Pinball Hall of Fame – The Williams Collection, Mini Ninjas, Guitar Hero 5, NBA 2K10: Draft Combine

DS: Emergency Room: Real Life Rescues, Mini Ninjas

Wii: Cruise Ship Vacation Games, Mini Ninjas, Guitar Hero 5, Muramasa: The Demon Blade

PS2: Guitar Hero 5

PC: Mini Ninjas, Section 8, Champions Online

PSP: SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny 

Releasing 08/31:

Pinball Hall of Fame – The Williams Collection (X360, PS3)

Releasing 09/01:

Mini Ninjas (Wii, PS3, DS, PC, X360)

Guitar Hero 5 (X360, PS3, Wii, PS2)

Section 8 (X360, PC)

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny (PSP)

Gears of War 2 Game Of The Year Edition (X360)

Releasing 09/02:

Defense Grid: The Awakening (XBLA)

Releasing 09/03:

Fate/Unlimited Codes (PSP)

NBA 2K10: Draft Combine (PS3)

Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)

Releasing 09/04:

Champions Online (PC)

A while ago, McDonalds in Japan teamed up with Square Enix to create a downloadable game called McDonalds Travelers. It’s an ingenius marketing scheme that exploits Japan’s love of Dragon Quest and could well see use in the West some time soon. The way it works is simple, but quite clever indeed.

Players take their DS systems to a local McDonalds, where they can download and play a Dragon Quest-themed battle game. The only way to play it is to go to the "restaurant," and players are also limited to just one play session per day. However, if customers rack up five play sessions (which means five trips to McDonalds), they get a free burger for their efforts. It’s a brilliant scheme. 

The good news for the companies behind the plan is that McDonalds Travelers has so far had over a million downloads. The promotion was scheduled to end on September 3, but has proven so popular that it will run through the month until October 1. 

McDonalds is also offering exclusive Dragon Quest IX items, the first of which is a red afro for characters. Players can soon expect nine "wedding themed" items in the near future too. 

I have to doff my cap at whoever came up with this marketing stunt. You can more than likely expect similar things to happen in North America. Any company with Wi-Fi would be an idiot not try and emulate this, and I’m not just saying this because I’m fat and want free burgers.