Augmented reality device lets you suck and receive virtual sensations, oh yeah

Chalk this one up into the "Is this for real?" category. TagCandy is a device built by Yasuaki Kakehi of Keio University. The device consists of a handheld base with a speaker and a senor built into the top of it. Then you place a ordinary lollipop into the top of the device and whalla your living in the future baby. Once you place the delectible candy in your mouth and begin to er... you know, suck the candy. The sensor will pick up your movements and the device with play one of many different sounds, such as firework or biting an apple for instance. The speaker vibrates and through that you can either feel the sound on your tongue and through bone-conduction technology, you will hear the sound by touching the candy to your teeth. There are plans in the future to add more functionality to its repertoire such as biting recognition and the ability to share sensations over the internet. We all know what happens when we get the internet involved into such things don't we ;- ). There is a nice video clip here that highlights this wonderful technology.

Take a good hard look fellow gamers. Could this vision of augmented reality be the next leap in video games? Nintendo needs to step up its game in order to take us to the next level and I don't think the Vitality Sensor is going to do it. I can see it now, Wii2 comes packed with Nintendo themed lollipops. Can you imagine the combination of Wiimote technology and mouth sensations! Satoru Iwata I'm talking to you. I've always wondered what if felt like to stomp on goombas in my mouth. God, that sounds oh so wrong.

What do you think of this new augmented reality technology? The future or another WTF device?

Battlefield Bad Company 2 offers Vietnam thrills at a better price

Screw Blackops and heck, screw Activision. The Battlefield Bad Comapany 2 Vietnam DLC Map pack can be yours for $15 dollars (ack its a little pricey) and you can skip the $60 dollar investment for another Call of Duty yearly rehash. Also if you have the VIP access code from when you purchased the game you will get it all for free. As you can see from the video below your getting the same Battlefield with a nice 60's vibe makeover. Your going to get 5 maps: Hill 137, Vantage Point, Phu Bai Valley, Cao Son Temple, and the Battle of Hastings along with some new vehicles. I'm not advocating that the Vietnam war was a fantastic time in history, but throw some good multiplayer antics and I'm sold.



I've come late to the party when it comes to being a fan of Battlefield Bad Company 2, but overall I've think its offers something I don't see in a lot of first person shooters nowadays, teamwork. The game has a good balance of gameplay elements that work really well in a multiplayer arena. If you've haven't tried a match online, do yourself a service and give it a go, I'll take you on. My PSN name is IanAugust.

What do you think of the Battlefield series? 
Do you think the DLC is too expensive?

Ericson Playstation phone video WTF!

Destructoid just posted up video footage of what seems to be the long rumored Sony Playstation Ericson phone. Here check this shit out.



If you listen to the podcast regularly you would know that my poor phone is mostly broken, and have been waiting for something new to encourage me to buy a new phone. This may be it guys... seriously, but I don't know how they could do this right.

I'm on the fence about it because logic tells me that if they are going to be using the Android OS, I don't think they'll be able to just release a bunch of Playstation brand exclusive games onto it because then it would become available to all Android phones. Unless somehow they can make their own game store that only works on this particular phone.

Anyway discuss if you care, and shit even if you don't care I'd like to hear what anyone thinks!

Lord of Arcana (Square's Monster Hunter)

Monster Hunter has become very dear to me as you all must know. It's probably very annoying by now I'm sure. But apparently I'm not the only one - Streets were lined with people in Japan looking to buy Monster Hunter Portable 3rd yesterday.

There is however a new game coming out by none other than SquareEnix. It's their version of a Monster Hunter type game, which is why I'm very interested in playing this game. Another interesting thing about it is all the artists they have contracted for character design:

• Tetsuya Nomura (best known for his work on Final Fantasy, Parasite Eve, Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends with You, and Brave Fencer Musashi)
• Yoshitaka Amano (also well known, Final Fantasy, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Vampire Hunter D, Gatchaman, Tatsunoko Productions, many many more)
• Tod McFarlane (Whaa? Yeah Spawn*, Spider Man, Ghost Rider, many more you know)*Creator

If that's not impressive enough they also got music from:

• Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy fame, Front Mission, Ah My Goddess Anime, SaGa series)
• Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Shin Megami Tensei, and more)

This Line up proves impressive! I'm excited to see what SquareEnix will do with this game. It also boasts one feature that most people have been wanting out of the Monster Hunter games - a lock on button.

We'll see though!

P.S. It's a PSP game so I expect nobody but myself to really care.

Goldeneye multiplayer action with CoffeewithGames.com

I recently picked up Goldeneye for Wii and have been having a pretty good time with it. Our friend Coffee has enticed me to play some online matches with him and has provided some footage of the multiplayer mayhem so you can get an idea of what its like to play the game online.



Now as you can see from the footage that this Goldeneye plays much differently from what you may remember from your prepubescent years and that's just one of many of the changes you will see in the new version of Goldeneye. It plays very much like a modern console shooter and has taken cues from some of the best FPS out there. So all of you looking for a direct port of the N64 version may be sad pandas, but rest assured this version of the game is a good one and worth your time if your a starving FPS Wii owner. Just don't expect it to be exactly how you remembered it and enjoy it.

If you want to take me on and play some online matches post your Goldeneye friend code. Yes friends codes! I hate you Nintendo.

Here is mine - 5087 9517 7822

For England!

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (jp)

Yes. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd now please!

None of this is actual gameplay but it's nice to see some of the stuff that will be implemented in this version such as: new monsters, new types of armors for your felynes, and new environments.

Seriously I can't wait for this, and now that I have my PSP GO I can actually use my sixaxis PS3 controller, and hook it up to my plasma! Alas still no online functionality though.

I'm still hoping for a 3DS release of this, but at this point I don't know if they'll do that. If this one in particular doesn't come out for it, I'm sure they'll have one for it eventually.

Nintendo offering Wiiware game demos yet again

I swear I know nothing about game demos!

Starting today Nintendo is offering game demos on the Wii Shop Channel for all to enjoy. Now you may remember that last year Nintendo tried this idea before and gave us one round of demos. Then silence and it seemed that the lumbering online doofus giant went into hibernation mode. Now, If you open up the Wii Shop Channel you can try out 4 different games courtesy of someone at Nintendo getting off their duff and actually using the channel to sell us games for once.

The four demos made available are Bit.Trip.Fate, And Yet It Moves, Jett Rocket, and Thru-Space. Not at all a bad offering and if you care what I think, then I would recommend giving Bit.Trip.Fate and And Yet It Moves some of your time. I tried them both out this morning and had a good time, Oh yeah!

The current stated plan is that every Monday we'll be seeing new demos offered up for download. So after 4 years Nintendo is really starting to get more serious about its online store and push sales for games that have gotten lost in the Wii Shop Channels crappy design. Who knows why the abrupt change of course, but one can speculate that over the last year the Wiiware and Virtual console have been lacking in the awesome games department. It may be a last ditch effort to drum up some extra sales and hopefully keep developers interested in the service or a dry run to figure out how to fix their online setup for the new 3DS shop channel. Whatever the reason, its about damn time Nintendo.

Pixels by Patrick Jean

This is so interesting that I had to actually post this up on the blog :O!

I recently posted this up on facebook, but just in case there is anyone out there that doesn't "like" us on facebook I really want to share this with you all.

Geeksofdoom.com state that "Happy Madison" is going to make a movie of this... "Ghostbusters-like action comedy" is the way it's worded for now. Anyway check this out:



I'm very interested in this movie. VERY! Are you?

My top 5 NES game intros

This is my first attempt at creating a top 5 list of any sort. Normally I wouldn't bother creating one in the first place since everyone else on the internet is riding the top five things your mom likes to do on a Saturday night bandwagon. You know what? I don't care, I'm going to do it anyways.

Watching game intros was my number one priority as a kid gamer. I would never in a million years press start on that NES controller and bypass the experience. More often than not, NES games lacked any intros at all, but when they did it was often a religious experience for me. Come with me my friends and let's relive some childhood memories as I imitate the Wayne's World time warp with my hands. Here are my top 5 NES game intros.

1. Mega Man 2

Mega Man 2 is probably my favorite NES game of all time and arguably has the best NES soundtrack ever composed. I think this intro just might have been cemented into every gamers mind the first time they saw it. The cleverly timed music lead in with the camera panning up a sky scraper just melded perfectly into something that felt exciting and made you want to kick butt as a kid. Still to this day, I watch this intro every time I boot up the game.

There's 4 more to go. So click the link below, I know you want to.

Call of Duty: Black Ops sets another sales record all thanks to you!

It feels so good against its skin

Hot of the presses and Bobby Kotick's cocaine pinky nail is the earth shattering news that you all knew was coming. Call of Duty Black Ops sold big, real big. According to the press release by Activision it has "Shattered" last years Call of Duty Mondern Warfare 2 sales record by a cool 50 million. 

Its estimated grand total is 360 million dollars in North America and the United Kingdom with a total of 5.6 million copies sold. It is now being touted once again by Activision as the biggest entertainment launch ever since the last time Kid Rock came to your town to sing "Bong da bong da bong di dang diggy diggy something bong sha da boogy" (those are the lyrics right?). So everyone needs to bow down in honor of this glorious day. I'm sure Bobby is smoking a fatty right now with his boys, shooting chickens for fun. 

"There has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening day records for two consecutive years and we are on track to outperform last year's five-day global sales record of $550 million," said Bobby Kotick, CEO, 

Good job guys you did it! See you next November when Activision does it again with Space Marines (you know its coming)... and you will love it.

Podcast: The Terminator VS Video Game Violence

We've got another podcast recorded and guess what, we have decided to go to a weekly schedule. That's right, once a week you'll get our opinions on games, news, and current events as well as featured video game music to enchant your ears with.

On this episode we're joined by our friend Coffee from Coffeewithgames.com to talk about the recent Supreme Court case, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. The state of California wants to make it a crime to sell violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. If you want to read or hear the debate here's the link.

Also, we go off on the industries current case of Sequelitis and we celebrate the release of the Super Meat Boy soundtrack by playing 3 tracks brought to you by the Danny B. of dbsoundworks. Thanks Danny for letting us blast your music into cyberspace for free! Go to dbsoundswords.com/bandcamp.com and pick up one of the best soundtracks of the year.

Download | itunes

Should the state of California have the right to ban the sale of violent video games to minors?

Do you have kids? Do you let them play violent games and have they turned into psychotic killers yet? If so get them the hell away from us!

Cursed Crusade

Hi friends.

Some of you might remember a particular game that I once reviewed called "Demon's Souls". I hated it so much, I threatened babies all over the world.

I must be a glutton to punishment because I now have that game once again and am enjoying the pain. But that's not why I'm posting this evening. The reason for this post is because the same publishers who published "Demon's Souls". A company called ATLUS is now publishing a game called "Cursed Crusade" and it looks quite promising.

Have a look:





To be fair this isn't the same developers as Demon's Souls (FROM SOFTWARE) and it's Kytlonn Entertainment that is developing this one. Anyway I've got my eye on this one. Atlus please keep 'em coming!

--Thanks to our friend John Dubay for the tip!