Playing Monster Hunter on 3DS may present some touchy issues

Without dual analog control
what will we do?

You may or may not have heard the rumor that Monster Hunter could be making its way onto the 3DS sometime in the future. Between Capcom's CEO Haruhiro Tsujimoto statement and the current slew of games Capcom is releasing on the handheld, I'm guessing it's highly likely we'll be seeing Monsters and Felynes in 3D as soon as Capcom pulls it together.

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Monster Hunter is godly huge in Japan and the Nintendo DS brand is no slouch either. Now with Nintendo poised to make a splash with a technically capable piece of hardware and its market brand popularity, It would seem that branching out the series beyond the PSP will bring in not only more money but more players to Capcom's monster franchise. Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii even managed to sell over 1 millions copies in the land where PSP is the preferred monster hunting ground.

With that said I may be putting the cart before the horse on this one, but playing Monster Hunter on the 3DS is going to require some changes to the way the game plays. If your a fan of Monster Hunter you know full well that playing on a handheld like the PSP is a tricky beast of its own. The game has a rather unique and often cumbersome play style. Many of you have submitted yourself to the claw technique in order to work with the games integral camera control just so you can keep the rest of your fingers on the analog nub and face buttons. The game ideally requires a second analog/D-pad for the camera in order to make it easy for you to focus on all the other things you need to do to survive a round with a giant thirty story monster. With the 3DS were not getting a second analog stick and with the current position of the D-pad, the claw technique is out the window. It may look dire for the hardcore fans, but what the 3DS does offer is a touch screen and motion sensors that may prove to be a more simplified user experience.

Show us how you would like to play Monster Hunter on 3DS
I have some ideas on how we could be playing Monster Hunter on the 3DS, but I've gone a step farther. I want to give you all a chance to show us what you think the best way to play the game on a 3DS. I've created a PDF template for everyone to download and give it their best shot. When your done, send it back to us via email at whoburnedmytoast@gmail.com and we'll post them on the blog and Facebook. Since Monster Hunter has a complicated control scheme you can limit your template to only show buttons options for when your hunter has their weapon unsheathed as I did or if your ambitious you can go nuts.

I've completed my play control template for Monster Hunter for 3DS after the page break if you want to see what I think would work and my reasoning behind my choices.

PS3 sleeps with the fishes... or does it?

You’ve probably already heard the PS3’s been hacked. Hacked how? Well I’ll spare you all the technical details (also because I don’t really know it all myself), but basically whenever a piece of software is approved for the PS3 it’s given a certain code. This code tells the PS3 that it has been approved by Sony itself, and should consider this software ‘legit’. This code has been deciphered and is in the hands of everyone now.

What does this mean?

Mainly a few big things; Lets go into them.

Video games Live is Live Video Games & Music Live... with music... live

Tommy Tallarico. Sounds like a name you'd hear on Beverly Hills 90210 doesn't it? Ok so maybe that's just me. This guy has become on of the biggest names in video game industry, here's a little about him:


Co-Founder of Video Games Live,  music writer for many video games including Unreal, Pacman World, Maximo, Earth Worm Jim and many many others. Co-Produced Electric Playground, Reviews on the Run (also known as Judgement Day on the G4 network). Advisory board member for the Games Developer Conference, and a Governor for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and... ah well you get the picture.

Anyway I just wanted to bring this guy to your attention and make you watch this video!




I think this about guarantees GDC is going to be a cool place to hang out at.

Rare Mario and Luigi Wii Shop Channel download screen reveals itself

I may be one of the few people who still accesses the Wii Shop Channel on a regular basis in order to buy games and get downloads. On Monday I was doing my usual routine of downloading the weeks offered demo and taking whatever game Nintendo is peddling at the moment for a test drive. But this time something different happened that I've never seen before and caught me by surprise. As you may know when downloading from the Wii Shop channel your treated with an animation of Fireball Mario running across the screen collecting coins as a representation of a progress meter. Instead of the usual annoying coin ringing sounds, I was treated to Mario and Luigi swimming and collecting annoyingly loud coins.

Normally this wouldn't be much to note, but apparently this animation is very rare. So rare in fact that it's the first time I've ever seen it since I bought my Wii back in 2006. I promptly busted out my laptop to scan the internet to see if maybe Nintendo had made an attempt to update the horribly broken Wii Shop Channel. Instead I found this Nintendo developer round table discussing about how rare these swimming Mario Bros. really are. I've posted the video for anyone curious to see it for yourself or you can keep your fingers crossed that one day you'll see it in the wild.

Have you ever seen the swimming Mario Bros. before?

Thought controlled gaming may be closer than you think.

They told us there would be cookies after the experiment.

Canadian based company Interaxon is working on a interesting technology they are dubbing "Thought Control Computing". At its basic level what Interaxon is offering is an opportunity to control things with your mind by converting your brainwaves into digital signals that once fed into a computer can control whatever you program it to do. Over the last few years the company has been experimenting with fun ideas such as controlling toy race cars on tracks to levitating a chair with your mind. But what peaked my interest is their presence at this years CES.

With the recent release of the the Microsoft Kinect we've entered yet another transition in the gaming industry with controller free gaming. It only natural to assume that at some point we were going to want to control games with our minds. It may be very primitive in execution, but Interaxon teamed up with SecretExit to add their brainwave technology to their game ZenBound 2. As you can see from the video below the man is controlling some of that shit with his mind!



Granted this technology is only reading the strength of your brainwaves when your concentrating and doesn't read your thoughts or know what your thinking. But, they liken the idea to tuning into a frequency. Maybe in the future they will be able to pick up the subtle differences in what your thinking. It's an interesting premise and may not lead to any exciting Hardcore games anytime soon, but I always like to speculate and think about what technology may lead to.

What do you think? Mind blowing technology or just another crazy peripheral?

Is THIS the Droid you're looking for? (Playstation Phone)

It might be called the Xperia, and it's likely the Droid I've been looking for. Digital pad, dual analogs in the form of a touch pad, large display, online connection, Playstation app. These are a few of my favorite things.

N-Gage couldn't do it. Sony maybe can? Imagine if they'd done this instead of the PSP originally. Boom! Would have been exactly like Nintendo's console dominance with the Wii. iPhone wouldn't have taken such a big bite out of the apple, as it has.

SquareEnix dumps barrels of Radioactive waste in it's graveyard.

As you know there are certain rumors making the rounds on every blog and website about SquareEnix putting a few old interesting games into the PSN library. I just wanted to bring it up here just in case there is someone out there that really doesn't know much about these games, and might enjoy them.


Arc The Lad III - Get the first two, then decide if this one is worth it.

Arc the Lad I (available now on PSN) is great. A bit short as I hear it's supposed to be more of a prologue to Arc the Lad II. Tactics/RPG is the genre.