Hasta La Gadget!

Gamers familiar with the Ultima video game series have likely heard of its award-winning designer and creator, Richard “Lord British” Garriott. Garriott has launched his latest project, a new fantasy role-playing game called Shroud of the Avatar, and is seeking to fund development via Kickstarter. The game designer and his team want to reinvent the classic role-playing fantasy experience using state-of-the-art tools and technology.

Garriott promises that the game will focus on what made the Ultima series so popular by creating a world which allows the adventurer to explore and discover new places, and focusing on role-playing elements. Players will be able to choose the life of a homesteader within the safety of established villages and cities or on the wild frontier. Interestingly, the developers promise that players won’t be limited to the class of player they selected the beginning of the game.

Players will venture into a persistent shared world where real estate has real value. You’ll even have to pay taxes regularly on the homes you purchase. While you can get in on the digital download of the game for $30(USD), fans that spend enough money will be able to go tax-free, assuming they pledge enough money. The minimum cost for tax-free housing in the game is $500. Insanely, nine people have pledged $10,000 or more to the game already landing themselves Lord of the Manor status.

There are hundreds of tabletop games, board games and card games, and with them come even more tokens and other game pieces, some of which you’ll almost surely lose over the years. This neat little invention by Rodney Benesh lets you replace your lost game tokens and personalize your gaming experience as well.

There’s nothing fancy about the Doppelganger. It’s just two one inch LCD screens positioned back to back and resting on a one sq.in. base. Connect the Doppelganger to a computer via USB to transfer up to 30 images; a button on the Doppelganger’s base lets you flip through the pictures. The current prototype’s battery lasts up to 4 hours, but Rodney hope to increase that to 8 hours in later models.

Pledge at least $20 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve your own Doppelganger. The Doppelganger may be a simple device, but as the video above shows, its functionality is limited only by your imagination. I’m guessing people who love playing role-playing games won’t have a problem with that.

Love it or hate it, LOST had a good run while it was still on air. While the show’s finale answered several burning questions, it left even more unanswered, which led to extremely polarized reviews on ‘The End.’

And even though the show wrapped up in 2010, it’s still got a pretty strong fanbase which eventually led to the creation of this hilarious and unexpectedly accurate parody…

If you’ve ever wondered what LOST would be like if it were a 16-bit RPG video game, then wonder no more because College Humor did all the thinking – and Doctor Octoroc did all the animating – for those those of us who want to know.

Check out the video below and see for yourself. Personally, I think they did a really good job summing up the show and its often frustrating plot devices.

Maybe with this video out, gamemakers and the show’s producers would consider making an actual LOST RPG for us to play and enjoy? That part where you have to enter the numbers into the old computer could be a whole minigame unto itself.

[via Buzz Patrol]

You might recall musician Diwa de Leon from his entertaining and amusing performances of the Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Galaxy music. Well, Diwa is back, and this time he’s formed a new musical group – the Mini Mario Orchestra.

And the first performance of the Mini Mario Orchestra? Well, you’d think he’d play a bunch of music from platformers, but to keep us on our toes, Diwa has decided to do an awesome medley of RPG themes instead – all while dressed up as Mario, and playing each and every instrument himself:

Now wasn’t that special? Mario playing the Dragonborn theme from Skyrim and the Main theme from Mass Effect seems a little out of place, but it’s still pretty great. I only wish he would have played some more tracks from the Paper Mario series. I’d think that would be more appropriate.

If you liked what you saw (and heard,) be sure to swing by and comment on the video’s YouTube page, and let Diwa know what other tunes you’d like to hear from the Mini Mario Orchestra. Personally, I’d like to hear the Casino Night theme from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Amazon must have a lot of free time for gaming during its summer vacation: just a day after unveiling GameCircle as a cloud infrastructure, it’s trotting out Game Connect to make buying game content that much easier. Once it’s integrated into a title, the new platform will let customers buy content in free-to-play games, or subscribe to massively multiplayer online games, directly from their Amazon accounts — no copy-and-paste juggling involved, even if the game account has to be made on the spot. A handful of game developers have already lined up, including Super Monday Night Combat creator Uber Entertainment and World of Tanks‘ Wargaming.net. If you’re engrossed in gaming enough that you’ll need 1-Click to buy virtual goods and MMO renewals that much faster, Amazon has you covered… although you may also want to slow down and relax.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet

Amazon Game Connect links free-to-play, MMO games to store accounts, turns 1-Click into way too many originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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