It pays to hunt for treasure at thrift stores sometimes. Here’s proof. A North Carolina woman spent $7.99 on an old Nintendo game at a Goodwill store. Nothing unusual there. The unusual part – the game was Stadium Events, one of the rarest titles ever sold, and worth a cool $15,000.
For those of you who love Animal Crossing, and are planning on grabbing Animal Crossing: New Leaf as soon as it comes out for the 3DS, here’s some great news for you. The limited edition Nintendo 3DS XL Animal Crossing Bundle will most likely be making its way to you. So far, it’s only been confirmed for the UK, however, there’s speculation that the bundle will also be making its way to the United States, and various European countries.
At first, the bundle was only limited to Japan, but then UK retailer, ShopTo, launched a pre-order for the bundle. The bundle is priced at 189.85 pounds, which is around $290. It says that if you pre-order the bundle before June 12th, you’ll get it on June 14th, the day when Animal Crossing: New Leaf will be released for the 3DS in Europe. The listing for the bundle was previously removed, but then reinstated later on, alongside a confirmation from Nintendo that it is the real deal.
The limited edition Animal Crossing 3DS XL features icons from the Animal Crossing games, including cherries, little homes, and the staple Animal Crossing leaves (which, in the game, magically transforms into your furniture). However, for those of you who prefer a physical copy of your games, you may be disappointed. The bundle only comes with the digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, pre-installed onto the device, and not the physical cartridge.
Nintendo has yet to confirm if the bundle will be making its way elsewhere, but it should mention it sometime during its Nintendo Direct conference tomorrow. Animal Crossing: New Leaf will be making its way to North America on June 9th, 5 days before it reaches Europe. This game did phenomenally well in Japan, selling over 2 million units in under 2 months, and selling 3 million copies so far.
In this game, instead of just playing a character who has just moved into town, you will be playing the mayor of said town. This game features all of the classic features we love about Animal Crossing, and then some. You are now able to customize your pants, shoes, hats, and accessories. You can hang furniture on your walls, you can swim in the Ocean, and you can customize more aspects of your town than before. You will spend hours and hours customizing your faux animal/human life.
Limited Edition Animal Crossing 3DS XL may be heading your way is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
When it’s your wife’s birthday, you don’t just give her a present you buy from the store. You make her a present that she can’t get anywhere else, because it’s her birthday and you want to make her happy and wow her with your creativity and thoughtfulness.
That’s not a generally-applied rule, of course, but it’s one that Reddit contributor XsimonbelmontX aka Brandon apparently lives by. Brandon knew that his wife’s favorite video game was Fallout. So he set out to create a customized and one-of-a-kind Fallout version of Monopoly.
He painted over a regular Monopoly board and added Fallout-inspired locations, replacing the coveted Boardwalk property with Tenpenny Tower. Instead of paper money, the official currency is a range of bottle caps, from a $1 Nuka-Cola Quartz up to a $500 Sunset Sarsaparilla Star piece.
The game pieces received a makeover, too. Brandon melted a bunch of superhero and Army men action figures to create Liberty Prime. The Pip-Boy figure, meanwhile, required over 20 different plastics to put together.
Even the ‘Chance’ and ‘Community’ cards weren’t left untouched, as Brandon created new Vault-Tec cards to add a number of twists and turns that a typical game of Monopoly wouldn’t normally have.But then again, there’s nothing typical about this game.
Obviously, Brandon’s wife loved it. She posted a comment on Reddit, saying: “This is the best present I have ever (and probably will ever) receive.”
Guys, the bar has been raised yet again.
[via C|NET]
Action-RPG Dark Souls has sold an estimated 2,367,000 copies worldwide, according to the executive director of “From Software” (Dark Soul’s publisher in Japan), Eiichi Nakajima. The sales have amazed From Software so much that it decided to launch an Xbox 360 version of the game in Japan. While the game was released for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 overseas, it was only limited to the PS3 in Japan.
According to From Software’s data, over 375,000 copies of Dark Souls was purchased for the PlayStation in Japan. Overseas, over 1.3 million copies of Dark Souls was purchased for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 combined. From Software had a separate chart for copies of Dark Souls with the “Artorias of the Abyss” expansion. The expansion was included in the PC edition of Dark Souls, and was released as a DLC for PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 users. 137,000 copies with the expansion sold in Japan for both the PC and the PlayStation 3, while 555,000 of the copies sold overseas for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
These figures come shortly after gameplay footage of the game’s sequel, Dark Souls II, was released. Dark Souls II will feature the same gameplay mechanics as Dark Souls, but will feature a world that is twice as big. The game will still keep its challenging gameplay renown in the series since Demon Souls. Yui Tanimura, co-director of Dark Souls, states,
“We do not plan on having an Easy Mode since we are creating this game with a thought that challenge and difficulty are core elements of the game.”
Dark Souls II will again be released by From Software in Japan, and like Dark Souls, will be released by Namco Bandai in North America. It will be available for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC for both countries, and will continue on the same momentum as its predecessors. While Dark Souls took place in the kingdom of Lordran, Dark Souls II will take place in a completely new setting. The game will once again revolve around a character seeking out a cure for a curse he has been afflicted with. Check out the 12-minute Dark Souls II gameplay video above.
[via NeoGaf]
Dark Souls sells over 2.3 million copies worldwide is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
PlayJam has announced that GameStick shipments will be facing a delay and that customers can expect the device to ship to them by the end of June. The main reason for the delay is due to the huge demand for the device. PlayJam only planned for the demand to be around 1,000 units, however they were extremely surprised when orders began reaching the tens of thousands of units.
In order to keep up with the demand for the product, PlayJam has to opt for much more higher-end tools. It says that the tools will take around 3 months to create, and that it has been in progress for a while. The expected completion date for these tools is the end of May. PlayJam states that it can have all the GameStick units assembled and shipped around June 10th, however they will have to use sea freight to ship them instead of air freight. The process can take two weeks.
After the shipments have arrived, it can take around 1-5 days for it to reach your homes, so PlayJam is estimating the arrival date to be within the last week of June. It is quite disappointing to the backers, but it’s inevitable for a product with such high-demand. We have also stated that 84% of Kickstarter projects miss their expected ship dates. On the bright side, PlayJam is making many modifications to the GameStick thanks to the feedback its backers have given them.
GameStick is an Android-based gaming console looking to take on the Ouya. It plugs into the HDMI slot in your HDTV, and lets you play your favorite Google Play games on your controller. There are currently over 600 developers, from both indie companies and major companies, developing games for the device. GameStick will also have XBMC integrated into it at launch. You will be able to purchase the device for $79 if you haven’t already.
[via Kickstarter]
GameStick shipments delayed until the end of June is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
InXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera has made Kickstarter history by becoming the most-funded Kickstarter game ever. It initially only had plans of raising $900,000, but gamers were so impressed with the idea of the game that 74,405 backers ended up pledging $4,188,927 to support the project. The total amount InXile received is more than 4.5x its initial goal, and it plans on taking full advantage of that funding by providing gamers with a whole bunch of new features.
InXile created a chart of financial goals it had reached. $900,000 was the initial goal, however, whenever funding reached another goal on the chart, InXile would add on more features that would please players. At $1.2m, it added gender options for your characters. At $2m it added new areas, music, deeper story lines, and more. Backers were able to fund the game and achieve 17 new goals on the chart, bringing many more features, deeper stories, more areas, more quests, and more developers to the game.
Torment is a single-player RPG whose development is based on “four pillars”. The first pillar is a “Deep, Thematically Satisfying Story”, where the “philosophical underpinnings” drive the game. The second pillar, “A World Unlike Any Other”, centers around the game’s beautiful world of Numenera, which is said to have “magic” that is surprisingly different.
The third pillar, “A Rich, Personal Narrative”, is centered around a character-driven story with even NPCs having deep-seeded storylines. The final pillar is “Reactivity, Choice, and Real Consequences”, which brings replayability to the game. Every time you make a decision, go down a different path, or make a different approach, the course of your game changes.
Torment has many aspects that promises to hook you for hours upon hours. The game is being developed on the Unity Game Engine, and will be available to download through Steam. The expected release date for this game is December 2014, but like many Kickstarter projects, we could see some delays. You can pre-order Torment: Tides of Numenera from InXile’s store right now. If you want to read up on the tons and tons of features this game will offer, check out its Kickstarter page here.
Torment: Tides of Numenera breaks record as most-funded Kickstarter game is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
When you were a child, I am quite sure that you have played this game that requires no batteries at all, which would be the Rock-Scissors-Paper game. Basically, all you need to do is use your hand, squaring off with your opponent, where rock will beat scissors but lose to paper, while paper is shredded by scissors, but is the bane of rock. The thing is, it sounds like a pretty simple game to us humans, but for robots, it is an entirely different matter altogether. Basically, an Indian scientist has come up with what could very well be the first wave of highly intelligent robots which are capable of playing rock-scissors-paper with humans.
Scientist Ram Ramamoorthy, who hails from Bangalore, claimed that the robots will do its bit to react intelligently in a bid to win the games, other than practicing responses to human gestures. These robots measure 2 feet in height, and are capable of anticipating human actions thanks to the assistance of a Microsoft Kinect, which is a motion-sensing device.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Robot Comes With Siri-like Features, Meet Pars, The Aerial Rescue Robot , 
UK retailer GAME has been hunting for ways to stay relevant during a shift to downloadable games — and now, that includes cribbing some style (just a little!) from Americans. Much like GameStop across the pond, GAME will soon sell a full range of tablets at 150 of its stores. The existing Nexus 7 offering will be joined by the seemingly obligatory 16GB iPad and iPad mini, although the rest of the lineup will be decidedly more frugal: options like the £100 Acer Iconia B1-A71 and £130 Archos GamePad will be bracketed by a raft of mostly DGM-built slates that dip as low as £60. It’s difficult to know how the expanded sales will help GAME’s bottom line, although the Nexus 7 reportedly fared well enough that it’s likely tablets are here to stay.
Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Google
Via: Eurogamer
Source: GAME
Zynga has joined together with Bwin.party Digital Entertainment in order to launch its own real-money gambling apps. Zynga is keeping true to its promised made last July, when it said that it planned on launching an online gambling service this year. Right now, it’s only launching the apps in the United Kingdom, however, it plans on spreading its online gaming apps to more European markets later on this year.
The two apps that Zynga plans on releasing are called ‘ZyngaPlusPoker” and “ZyngaPlusCasino”. ZyngaPlusPoker is self-explanatory, but ZyngaPlusCasino brings you a variety of gambling games, including BlackJack and Roulette. The games will start off as web-based games, and desktop applications at first, but Zynga plans on integrating the apps into Facebook in the future as well.
Zynga hired the former Senior Executive of 888 Holdings PLC (an online gambling poewrhouse), Maytal Olsha, to help it branch into the real-money gambling world. Zynga believes that it will soon be able to tap into its 300 million users, and generate a potential $30 billion from its online gambling services (19.85 billion pounds). After announcing the launch of its online gambling apps, Zynga’s shares rose up 5.5%.
Zynga still has many legal hurdles to jump over in order to bring its real-money gambling apps to the United States, but it still plans on releasing its app in several states where online gambling isn’t illegal. Zynga’s Chief Revenue Officer, Barry Cottle, stated, “Our long term vision is to offer our players the next generation of real money games on multiple platforms in regulated markets worldwide.” It looks like those of us in the U.S. will have to wait a while before we get to gamble away our hard-earned money, but those of you in the UK can experience the joys of gambling starting tomorrow.
[via Reuters]
Zynga brings real-money gambling to the UK is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
A little past a year after Zynga acquired OMGPOP, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter has decided to leave the company. It’s believed that Porter’s departure was a mutual decision between him and Zynga. He left just before the sequel of his popular social-game, Draw Something, is set to release. He will be replaced by Zynga’s current General Manager, Sean Uberoi Kelly.
His departure could have something to do with the comments he made a few weeks ago about Zynga copying games from other companies. He says that his statements were taking out of context, and that what he meant was that Zynga’s games are derivatives of other games, which isn’t anything new in the gaming industry. Nonetheless, his statement angered Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, who demanded that Porter apologize, or else he would be fired. While Porter did apologize, there may have been some residual bad blood between the two afterwards.
Despite Porter’s departure, Zynga is very optimistic about the launch of Draw Something 2, which was leaked last month by radio show host Ryan Seacrest. Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer, David Ko, stated that the company is proud of the work the Zynga New York Team has done and that Draw Something 2 should be more engaging than the original. He stated, “We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors.”
Zynga purchased OMGPOP last year on March 21st for around $210 million. It paid $180 million in cash and the other $30 million in retention. The company purchased OMGPOP after seeing how successful its Draw Something game was. Within six weeks after Draw Something was released by OMGPOP, it was downloaded 35 million times. Sean Uberoi Kelly has some big shoes to fill, however, considering he released CityVille, a social game that attracted over 100 million players within one month, he should be fine.
[via TechCrunch]
OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter leaves Zynga after one year is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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