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.

Fans of classic gaming systems will be happy to hear that HyperKin is working on their latest retro console, and this one has a couple of new tricks up its nonexistent sleeves.

The latest system, dubbed the RetroN 4, leverages today’s technologies to bring improvements to retro gaming. Like the RetroN 3 before it, the new console can play NES, SNES and Genesis cartridges, but can also play Game Boy Advance carts too. It can also handle both NTSC and PAL formats. But the big upgrades come in the form of Bluetooth wireless controllers, and an HDMI output for use on today’s HDTVs.

In addition, the new console will sport an interface called “Perdana,” which is expected to provide capabilities like button reassignment and “other features” to be announced. Personally, I’m hoping for some sort of ability to save game states or run cheat modes, but those aren’t confirmed.

The RetroN 4 is expected to be revealed at the Midwest Gaming Classic in Brookfield, Wisconsin on Saturday, March 23 at 11:00am Central.

[Midwest Gaming Classic via Wired]

EA’s SimCity launched with disastrous results. EA wanted to prevent piracy of the game, so they added the Always-On DRM feature that would require players to login to its online servers in order to play their game. While the Always-On DRM feature is good for protecting against piracy, it resulted in an unmitigated login disaster for SimCity. Many gamers were unable to login, downloads were severely slow, people weren’t able to unlock their games, and many were unable to enjoy a game they’ve anticipated for so long.

Lucy Bradshaw, the General Manager of the EA Maxis Label, released an update to players about the stability issues with the game. So what was the issue? There were a lot more people logging in and playing the game than they had expected. She stated, “A lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in beta.” In order to remedy this problem, EA is increasing their server capacities. So far they have increased their servers’ capacity by 120% in the past 48 hours.

In order to ease the outrage from the SimCity community, Bradshaw has informed all SimCity gamers (who have activated their game) that on March 18th, they will receive an e-mail that will allow them to redeem a free game from the EA store. She didn’t release any more details about the “free game”, but we’re hoping it’s not just some $5 piece of junk that no one would want in the first place.

EA will be working to improve SimCity’s stability all throughout the weekend. This game had similar (albeit worse) launch issues like Diablo 3, a game that also requires you to login to an online server to play. Diablo 3 was down for hours while Blizzard was working on its servers. Hopefully EA’s free game will be able to win back the hearts of all of the gamers it angered. Now it just has to work on those 1700 1-Star Amazon reviews.

[via EA Games]

EA offers all SimCity owners a free game is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Angry Birds Trilogy for the PlayStation 3 Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS has received its second DLC pack titled “Fowl Tempered.” It features a whopping 135 new levels that are based on the game’s episodes Back to School, Bad Piggies, and Haunted Hogs. The DLC pack also features a new bird named Stella, who can trap enemies in pink bubbles and carry them away.

This is the second DLC pack for Angry Birds Trilogy, the first of which was the “Anger Management” DLC pack, which added 130 levels to the console game back in December. It also added new cutscenes and new orange bird that inflates. Angry Birds Trilogy was released in September for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo 3DS, with versions for the Wii and Wii U coming later this year.

The new DLC pack is available now for the Xbox 360 and PS3 at a price of 400 Microsoft Points or $4.99 on the PlayStation Network. No word on whether or not the DLC will come to the 3DS, but seeing as how Activsion only released “Anger Management” for PS3 when it initially launched, we doubt that 3DS users will get this second pack.

While the console version of the game is still a paid game, Rovio recently made the iOS version of Angry Birds free. You can download the game now on iOS and save yourself a dollar (or a few dollars if you’re getting the iPad version). Rovio also launched Angry Birds Space on Steam today for $3.99.

[via One of Swords]

Angry Birds Trilogy “Fowl Tempered” DLC out now with 135 new levels is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The SimCity launch earlier this week didn’t quite go as planned, as Electronic Arts experienced problems across the board, mostly due to servers crashing. Many gamers experienced download failures and weren’t able to play the game on launch day. Because of the outcry, a team of game developers is looking to make a SimCity clone, called Civitas, but they need your help to fund the project.

The developers are looking to create a DRM-free version of SimCity, with the ability to play the game completely while offline, something that SimCity doesn’t offer, and it’s the one feature that’s currently causing all of the problems. Plus, the game will only cost $15, at least if you back the project on Kickstarter right now.

Of course, the folks behind the project weren’t afraid to call out EA on their Kickstarter page, claiming that EA is “forcing the worst form of draconian DRM on its players.” Those are certainly some fightin’ words, but it seems the developers are confident that Civitas will be an excellent alternative to EA’s city-building offering.

Of course, the game will go into beta first for a few months, and you can join in on the beta fun by pledging $10 more on top of the $15 price of the game, which still isn’t a bad price at all, even if you didn’t get access to the beta. However, we’ll have to wait and see if the game can live up to its own expectations. So far, the project has raised almost $37,000 at the time of this writing, and they’re looking to raise $250,000 total, but there’s 24 days to go, so it can be easily achieved.

[via Kotaku]

Civitas is the DRM-free SimCity game you’ve always wanted is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.