E3 2011 Impressions: Microsoft

The stage is brightly lit, almost as if it were extracting all light within the conference center, and leaving the audience with anticipation that's dense as the dark surrounding them. A voice then welcomes the crowd, as the theater above suddenly illuminates with the Xbox logo. The presentation immediately transitions to business, with one of the most anticipated sequels of the year being demonstrated to the conference attendees, and kicking off the forum of upcoming releases for Microsoft’s catalog of 2011.

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Bullet Heaven HD, Episode 32 - The S.D.F. Macross: Do You Remember Love?

Last year in Episode 18 of Bullet Heaven, we took a look at the excellent Macross Scrambled Valkyrie for the Super Famicom, a side-story of sorts to the original Macross anime series. With its super tight, fun gameplay and great presentation, it nabbed a pretty decent score.

In 1997, another Macross shooter made it to home console: The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?, for the Sega Saturn (and Sony Playstation). Based directly on the 1984 anime classic, can the legendary mech-based story strike gold yet again?

Did you like what you saw here today? Comments, questions and suggestions are not only welcome but encouraged!

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E3 2011 Impressions: Nintendo

Tuesday morning was quite a treat for audiences everywhere, as Nintendo's 2011 E3 conference kicked off with an orchestrated montage celebrating The Legend of Zelda and its 25th anniversary. With a bold and cheerful smile, Shigeru Miyamoto set foot on the stage, expressing how wonderful it was to share over 25 years of these memories with the entire world. With the assistance of his translator, he then discussed the significance and impact of music in the Zelda franchise, followed by claims that Skyward Sword -- Link's latest appearance on the Wii -- would be available during the holidays.

This was an exceptionally strong way for Nintendo to lead off, but how solid was their overall conference? Did the big N offer us everything we expected them to this year, or did they unfortunately fall short?

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E3 2011 Impressions: Sony

 

Going into this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony had everything to lose. With the recent Playstation Network outage still very fresh in many people’s minds, as well as a lack of information and excitement for their next handheld device, Jack Tretton took the stage to excite the audience for the next wave of Playstation exclusives and products. From my point of view, I believe they did just that and even more.

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Bullet Heaven HD, Episode 31 - Darius Twin

The Super NES, as it was, didn't have a tremendous amount of shooters for it compared to the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16. For the most part though, the shooters that did appear were polished and fun to play. Well, usually. As the first ever console exclusive game in the series, Darius Twin offered solid, 1 or 2 Player Co-Op play in 1991, albeit with few bells and whistles. How does it hold up?

Did you like what you saw here today? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are not only welcome, but encouraged!

PPR Games Club: Little Nemo: The Dream Master

We welcome you to our fourth installment of the Press Pause Radio Games Club. In this episode, we will discuss the fanciful childhood adventure Little Nemo: The Dream Master for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And when you're talking about imaginative and sometimes arduous games from the past, there's only one person to call: Ray Barnholt. The 1UP/EGM writer and founder of Scroll Magazine joins us once again to discuss fiendish dandelions and candy-induced comas in great detail. We also take time at the beginning of the show to catch up with our Select Feedback segment, where you, the listeners, have an active part in the show's discussion. Come and join us as we adventure through Slumberland, with our gnarly beards and shoeless co-hosts.

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PPR Two Year Anniversary Special

This is the moment you've all been waiting for: The Press Pause Radio Two-Year Anniversary Extrazaganza™! (Not really trademarked, sorry).  For this episode, we pull out all the stops for you, our faithful listeners. We have a full room of PPR contributors, along with Ignition Entertainment's Shane Bettenhausen to discuss the importance and evolution of video game podcasts. Having Shane on the show was a great experience for all of us, since he pioneered the video game podcast during his time with 1UP, and we greatly appreciate him taking time out of his busy El Shaddai schedule to be on the show. 

Stay tuned after our normal show for a retrospective on all of our best moments during our two years in existence. Listeners past and present will really enjoy this trip down memory lane, full of singing, cursing, and Hadoukens! Thanks for two great years, and we hope for many more in the future. The amazing artwork for this episode is courtesy of Wil Brendel, who is an amazing artist you should be checking out. Enjoy!

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Download Purgatory

During the E3 2006 press conference, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata talked about the WiiConnect24 feature, saying that "The Wii console can be constantly connected to the internet. For you hardcore gamers, this means developers can push a new weapon or vehicle or level to you even while you sleep.”

Later on, during an interview with Nikkei Business Publications, Iwata floats the idea again with the statement that “This would allow Nintendo to send monthly promotional demos for the DS, during the night, to the Wii consoles in each household.”

However, only fifteen disc based titles and six WiiWare games have taken advantage of WiiConnect24. The last game to use the service was Metroid Prime Trilogy released back in August of 2009; that’s not to account for the message board and a few channels that still employ WiiConnect24 for the up to the minute data. As a game content delivery service, it has been forgotten.

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