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Saturday, July 30, 2016

10) Wii Play (28 Million)

If you’re not familiar with the Wii, it is a gaming console targeted towards casual gamers. It is a seventh-generation console, meaning that its competitors are the PS3 and Xbox 360. While all three consoles sold well, the Wii sold the most units by far compared to the other two. One of the launch game for the Wii consoles was Wii Play. Wii Play is a bundle of 9 mini games created to teach the player how to use the Wii Remote (controller for the console). The 9 games were Shooting Range, Find Mii, Table Tennis, Pose Mii, Laser Hockey, Fishing, Billiards, Charge! and Tanks!. The game was released alongside the Wii console between 2006 and 2007, depending on the region. Wii Party didn’t receive good reviews from the critics. For example it holds a Metacritic score of 58/100 and GameSpot rated it 5.4 out of 10. Regardless of that, the game sold extremely well to the causal audiences. It sold 28.02 million copies worldwide according to Nintendo, and placed itself at our number 10 spot on the most popular video games list.

9) Diablo III (30 Million)

Diablo III is the third installment of one of the most popular video game franchises ever. The first two Diablo games were released in 1996 and 2000 respectively, and were one of the most popular video games of their time. In 2008, Blizzard announced that Diablo III is in the making, and the news quickly spread around the gaming magazines and websites. By its release in 2012, the game was hyped up beyond all boundaries, and in the first 24 hours fans bought 3.5 million copies of the game. Diablo III was released for several gaming platforms – Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and sold a total of 30 million copies. The game also received great ratings by critics and was more than accepted by the fans, making it one of the most popular video games ever.

8) New Super Mario Bros. (31 Million)

New Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo DS handheld console in 2006, and has since become one of the best-selling games ever. The game is similar to the other games from the Mario franchise. It is a side-scrolling platformer in which Mario has to beat 80 levels and save the princess. The game received great reviews thanks to many improvements over the prequels, but was also criticized for its simplicity. Regardless, it got very high reviews from all major reviewers, and sold close to 31 million copies world-wide. And with that amount, it is officially the best-selling DS game ever.

7) Wii Sports Resort (33 Million)

Wii Sports Resort is a sequel to Wii Sports, a game that you’ll meet later on in this list. Resort was released in 2009, and it contains 12 sports games played using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Thanks to the improvements over the original, Wii Sports Resort offered an immersive experience because the game precisely and swiftly copied all the player motions onto the screen. Thanks to that, the game got great reviews from majority of the critics, and has sold 33 million copies world-wide. Other than being one of the best-selling video games overall, it’s one of the top 3 best-selling Wii games, right after its predecessor, Wii Sports, and…

6) Mario Kart Wii (36 Million)

Another Wii exclusive reaches over 30 million sold copies world-wide. Mario Kart is one of the most recognizable franchises in the world, and its Wii release further increased its fame. Like other Mario Kart games, this game is all about kart racing using Mario characters. Using special items and your own motor skills, your goal is to beat your opponents and win the race. Mario Kart Wii also implemented a new way of controlling the game, which was obviously the Wii Remote with its motion sensor ability. The game got mostly great reviews, and was praised for the amount of tracks and characters, as well for its online multiplayer capability. Thanks to all of that, the game sold around 36 million copies since its release in 2008.

5) Super Mario Bros. (56 Million)

The second game from the Mario franchise to reach this list sold a massive amount of 56 million copies! Super Mario Bros. is the pseudo-sequel to the original Mario game. It was first released in Japan in 1985, and the rest of the world was able to play it two years later. The game played a big part in making the industry of video games what it is today. It was the best-selling game in the world for 30 years! The game got great reviews, thanks to which it sold around 56 million copies during its long existence. Super Mario Bros. is one of the pioneers of gaming and more than deserves the 5th spot on our list.

4) Grand Theft Auto V (65 Million)

The most recently released video game to claim a spot at our most popular video games list is Grand Theft Auto V. The game was first released in 2013 for 7th gen consoles – Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A year later it was also available in the current generation of consoles – Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Finally, in 2015 it was released for Microsoft Windows. Its prequel was released in 2008, and fans have been eager to play a new GTA game since then. And GTA V surely delivered. Millions of dollars were put into the production of this title, and many more into its marketing efforts. By the time of its release, everyone and their mothers talked about the new GTA. Often called the best game of all time, GTA V received great reviews, scoring a perfect grade with many reviewers. For example, it’s been rated as a 10/10 by Edge and IGN, and holds a high 97/100 on Metacritic. Within the first 24 hours of its release, the game sold over 11 million copies, almost doubling the expectations. GTA V was also the fastest selling entertainment product in the entire history, reaching one billion dollars worth of sales in just 3 days. So far the game has sold roughly 65 million copies over all the systems its been released for, and is still being purchased on a daily basis.

3) Wii Sports (83 Million)

We already mentioned Wii Sports at our no. 7 entry, and here it finally is. The game is by far the best-selling Wii title, and was one of the launch titles for the popular console. Wii Sports is a collection of 5 mini games that were designated to show off the Wii Remote’s motion sensor functions. The game got great reviews for its originality and gameplay, and was praised by fans. It’s worth nothing that this is the best-selling game that is only being sold on a single platform. As of the first quarter of this year, the game sold close to 83 million copies and had two sequels made after it.

2) Minecraft (107 Million)

Probably the best known modern video game, Minecraft, was first released in 2011, and has since then made its way to a total of 16 platforms. The game’s premise is pretty simple, but it is very complex to fully grasp. If you are one of the 4 people on Earth who haven’t played or seen it, Minecraft is a sandbox game in which you can explore the world and build pretty much everything in it. If we were to cover all of the aspects of the game, it would take this entire article only to list them, so we’ll just say that Minecraft enables you to build whatever you want within the game’s world, and much more. Thanks to its originality at the time, Minecraft quickly rose to the status of the best-selling PC game ever and the second best-selling video game of all time.

1) Tetris (495 Million)

By a large margin, Tetris is the best-selling and likely the best known video game of all time. Ask your 80-year-old grandma and your 5-year-old cousin, and everyone in-between them – it’s guaranteed that everyone will know what Tetris is. Most of us have probably played a version on Tetris on PCs, mobile phones or consoles. The very first version of Tetris was released all the way back in 1984 and since then, there have been hundreds of different versions across many platforms. Up until this day, decades after its release, Tetris is the king of video games and is holding its top position firmly.

Best Selling Games By Console

While most of the above games sold their total over multiple platforms, not many of them crush it on a single console. But these ones did. Here are the best-selling video games by single consoles.

Nintendo’s Gaming Consoles

NES – Super Mario Bros. (40 Million)
SNES – Super Mario World (21 Million)
Nintendo 64 – Super Mario 64 (12 Million)
Nintendo GameCube – Super Smash Bros. Melee (7 Million)
Nintendo Wii – Wii Sports (83 Million)
Nintendo Wii U – Mario Kart 8 (7.5 Million)
GameBoy – Tetris (35 Million)
GameBoy Advance – Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire (16 Million)
Nintendo DS – New Super Mario Bros. (31 Million)
Nintendo 3DS – Pokemon X and Y (15 Million)

Sega’s Gaming Consoles

Sega Genesis – Sonic the Hedgehog (15 Million)
Sega Saturn – Virtua Fighter 2 (2.5 Million)
Sega Dreamcast – Sonic Adventure (2.5 Million)

Sony’s Gaming Consoles

PlayStation – Gran Turismo (11 Million)
PlayStation 2 – GTA: San Andreas (28 Million)
PlayStation 3 – Grand Theft Auto V (22 Million)
PlayStation 4 – Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2.7 Million)
PlayStation Portable – Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (5 Million)
PlayStation Vita – Uncharted: Golden Abyss (1.5 Million)

Microsoft’s Gaming Console

Xbox – Halo 2 (8 Million)
Xbox 360 – Kinect Adventures (24 Million)
Xbox One – Halo 5: Guardians (5 Million)

http://gazettereview.com

Video Game Teaches Kids About Concussions

Dr. Dr. Gillian Hotz is the director of the KiDZ Neuroscience Center and the sports concussion program at the University of Miami. And now, she can add videogame developer to her resume.
This fall, Hotz is piloting an educational video game with youth football leagues across the country.

The game is called SportzSafe. And it’s designed to teach young players how to prevent, identify and address concussions.

Hotz sat down with Health News Florida’s Sammy Mack to talk about the game and concussion prevention across Florida.
How can a video game that's played on a tablet prevent injuries—real physical injuries—on the field?
There's a lot of research now being done about why do we have this fascination with these devices. It's very addictive. And it's the frontal lobes that are taking control and it's giving you freedom to explore without any penalty.
So we said, OK, in about 20-25 minutes, how do we do this? And so we thought this is how we would do it; we would put together everything from how to put on your helmet, to tackling, to really looking at the signs and symptoms of what concussion is all about.
You have talked about this program also being for parents. How does a parent playing this game help them keep their kids safe?
Well that's where the issue is. The kid really doesn't care about playing safe. They just want to get out there and have a good time and be with their friends.
It's the parents that we're finding are very worried about what they're hearing about concussion. And we're trying to say to parents, look, we can do this safer, we can do this better.
And I always say to parents, “would you drop your child off at a swimming pool without a lifeguard that's certified?” And they always say 'of course not.' So why would you drop your child off at a football field, or a hockey rink, or a soccer field without somebody there who's trained to actually teach them the right way to play the game. And also—God forbid—if there is an injury, what to do.
How did you test the effectiveness of this game?
We’ve had some focus groups with multiple coaches, parents and actually kids playing the game—and that's how we got to the final game.
We’ll be taking some teams that have had and haven't had the game, and we'll be tracking their progress through the season and actually seeing if any of this matters.
You were one of the people who pushed really hard for mandatory sideline screening for high school football in Miami-Dade County. And now there is a statewide law that is somewhat based on the Miami program that a kid has to be removed from play and they have to be cleared by a doctor before they can go back. How have you seen those policies change the concussion rates in Florida?
We’re just at the beginning of that. And one of the, I guess, concerns I have is that it's great to have legislation and every state now has legislation—but now the thing is: How do we police that and how do we start tracking? It's not mandatory for every program to collect their data on numbers of concussions, so we're still relying on hospital admissions or anybody seen in an emergency room that has a specific concussion code. But most people don't go to an ER.
Why is concussion prevention so important to you?
My whole career, the worst thing to see is a kid with a severe brain injury, and the family is devastated.
You’re always thinking to yourself—and I know every physician, nurse, all of us in there—how do we prevent some of these things from happening?
And you have to start with education.

http://health.wusf.usf.edu
By Sammy Mack

Play with words in a videogame about weird idioms

English is a curious language. It’s deceptively easy to pick up, oversimplified and left bare by our lack of gendered nouns and relatively easy cases, but as anyone with a different mother tongue will tell you, mastering it is incredibly hard. It’s a carefree language that pays little heed to convention or regulation, preferring to wander and expound and run-on and twist itself in knots, all while remaining within the bounds of “correct” grammatical structure. We constantly ignore our standard sounds while stealing words from other languages and mangling theirs, too. And if that wasn’t enough, if the transgressions made by the English language against common sense were somehow lacking, we have some wild idioms. As do many languages, of course, and once integrated into regular speech they become conventional, but for some reason we talk about cats all the time.

in celebration of the bizarre, senseless English language

In celebration of the bizarre, senseless English language, designer Tim Garbos and animator Veronica Jelinek have created It Ain’t Over Till The Fat Lady Sings, an interactive animation currently up on itch.io. With bright pinks and blues, Fat Lady translates all our little idiosyncrasies quite literally, whether it be extending an umbrella to fend away the rain of cats and dogs or rolling the credits with the titular character’s loud opera in the background.

Sound effects reinforce the chunky animation—“catch her eye” contains some disconcerting squelching—and the whole thing has a wonderfully complete feel to it. The experience is only a few minutes long, illustrating six different idioms with simple mechanics, but games are ripe for this kind of bold aesthetic: Jenny Jiao Hsia’s Wobble Yoga and Morning Makeup Madness are two such instances. You could easily see this as a longer game, or perhaps an animated film.

Fat Lady is a clever mix of wordplay with real play, and a wonderful experiment with what games can do. Many people focus so strongly on vast gameplay and narrative that the act of singular, simple interaction goes unnoticed. If “walking simulators” have to defend their game-hood than the act of clicking a cloud inside a teacup is surely also an offense; but if we expand our definition to include pieces of art with limited interactivity, games get a whole lot more interesting. Fat Lady takes a simple premise—English is weird, and that’s funny—and brings it to life. No flourishes necessary.

Play It Ain’t Over Till The Fat Lady Sings on itch.io.

https://killscreen.com

By Maddi Chilton

Life Is Strange

One of 2015's best video games is heading towards a live-action adaptation as "Life is Strange" is picked up by the online arm of "Jurassic World" and "Inception" production house Legendary Pictures.

With five episodes released over a ten-month period in 2015, "Life is Strange" invited players into the unusual world of high school student and amateur photographer Maxine Caulfield.

After preventing the murder of a fellow student, her best friend Chloe, Max begins experimenting with unusual abilities that allow her to both receive premonitions of the future and rewind time.

As such, the pair set off to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of local teenager Rachel, but meddling with the fabric of time proves more complicated than they could have first anticipated.

Sophisticated character development, inclusion of common but frequently unsurfaced social issues, and nuanced storytelling helped elevate "Life is Strange" above its peers, and the game, created by Parisian studio Dontnod, received a number of prestigious awards throughout 2015 and beyond.

The British Academy, Peabody Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, and Develop Awards were among those to recognize its achievements with accolades or multiple nominations.

In the week prior to Legendary Digital's series announcement, "Life is Strange" dropped the price of its first episode to zero on PlayStation, Xbox, Mac and PC, with the four remaining chapters available in a single package.

For the live action adaptation, Legendary Digital Studios has selected Santa Monica production company dj2 Entertainment as its partner.

Dj2 has previously been involved in a number of adaptation projects, producing an animated series based on well-rated video game "Skulls of the Shogun" for Nerdist, one of Legendary Digital's outlets.

Other projects have included "Rubicon: The Beginning," a short live-action prequel to the graphic novel series co-written by Christopher McQuarrie -- whose films include "The Usual Suspects," "The Way of the Gun," "Edge of Tomorrow" and "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" -- as well as live-action promotionals for action games "Hawken" and "Nether," and is also involved in 2018's "Sonic the Hedgehog" film.

As for the "Life is Strange" series, it's still at an early stage, with Legendary, game publisher Square Enix, and dj2 currently meeting potential writers for the adaptation.

https://www.yahoo.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Video game releases for August 2016

Below are some of the big video game releases for the month of August 2016. Be sure to check out the list we put together of our most anticipated games of 2016 and 25 games for the summer of 2016. Here are the free games you get with your Xbox Live Goldsubscription for August.

What are you looking forward to playing? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.

Note: Only games with specific dates are listed below. Some games are announced for August but have no firm release date.

AUGUST 2:

Abzu, (PlayStation 4 and Windows PC) — In our feature on the game, Matt Nava explains his and developer Giant Squid's fascination with the ocean and how it has inspired Abzu. "You go there and you have this almost religious experience, this transformative, beautiful experience. At the same time, it’s extremely frightening and adventurous. There are so many different kinds of emotions together. Serenity and adventure. That was something we wanted to capture."

Batman: The Telltale Series, (Android, iOS, Mac, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One) — "The complex life and fractured psyche of Bruce Wayne has lent itself to becoming a bold evolution of the signature 'Telltale' role-playing experience," Telltale Games co-founder Kevin Bruner said in a statement. Along with the debut trailer, Telltale has announced that voice actor Troy Baker will be donning the cowl for the Bruce Wayne/Batman role.

AUGUST 3:

Mobius Final Fantasy, (Android and iOS) — In a gameplay presentation on the game, longtime Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase shared his thoughts on bringing the series to smartphones and tablets. "A new era of gaming is here, we’re crafting a full-scale, high-quality RPG world the likes of which has never been seen on smartphones and tablets. This is the end product of longtime Final Fantasy creators bringing the series to mobile — and things will never be the same."

AUGUST 9:

No Man's Sky, (PlayStation 4 and Windows PC) — Hello Game's spiritual successor toSpore is hard to describe so we'll let the game's creator Sean Murray give it a shot. No Man's Sky's lore was developed with help from a Star Trek and Watchmen writer, Dave Gibbons. The PC version of the game will be released three days later on August 12. Cross your fingers it isn't delayed again.

AUGUST 16:

Bound, (PlayStation 4) — Michal Staniszewski, game director at Bound developer Plastic, described the project as a "notgame [...] which is also a game." It's a 3D platformer starring a ballerina, and it's designed with a focus on narrative to tell a "mature story." The art house project has a visual style to match, with environments inspired by modern art. "If you are interested in art movements such as Suprematism, Concretism, Neoplasticism, or what Bauhaus has delivered, then you are going to love the world that we have created," said Staniszewski. For more on Bound, check out the trailer and screenshots.

Grow Up (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) — Grow Up is the sequel to last year's Grow Home, Ubisoft Reflections' robot-starring platformer. The trailer marks the return of B.U.D., the tiny climbing robot who starred in Grow Home, and this time, he's heading to the moon. B.U.D. is searching for M.O.M., the spaceship that took care of him in the last game.

AUGUST 19:

Metroid Prime: Federation Force, (Nintendo 3DS) — Federation Force is the upcoming Metroid spinoff from Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon developer, Next Level Games. It is also Nintendo's reminder to fans that there hasn't been a great Metroid game in almost a decade. The game will feature both single-player and cooperative elements and have players take control of a Galactic Federation marine, rather than series protagonist Samus Aran. The demo is out now and here you can watch 15 minutes of gameplay.

AUGUST 22:

Obduction, (Mac and Windows PC) — The kickstarted spiritual successor to Mystincludes members of the Myst and Riven development teams. Here's the official description of its story, straight from Cyan:

You've been abducted from your cozy existence and added into an alien landscape with a stereotypical, Kansas farmhouse with a white picket fence. But the farmhouse is just the first building in a rather bizarre little town that borders the road — curious structures that beg questions rather than provide answers. And adding to the curiosity, you stumble upon a strange, strange kiosk that reassuredly welcomes you to "Hunrath".

Here's the teaser trailer and our interview with the developer.

AUGUST 23:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, (PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC) — The Square Enix stealth action-adventure continues the story of Adam Jensen and his role in combatting the rise of global terrorism in the aftermath of the events in the previous game, Human Revolution. In our preview, Eidos Montreal compared their Deus Ex titles to the first three Star Wars films — and, accordingly, suggested that the studio will eventually make a third entry in the series. Game designer Antoine Thisdale told Polygon that Mankind Divided is "a bit of The Empire Strikes Back" of the series. Thisdale continued with the dark-middle-chapter analogy, saying that Mankind Divided is "not meant to be a pretty, happy game." You can find out more about the game by reading our in-depth feature and watching eight minutes of gameplay.

AUGUST 30:

Attack on Titan, (PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows PC and Xbox One) — Dynasty Warriors developer Omega Force takes on the dark, post-apocalyptic manga/anime Attack on Titan with their popular beat-em-up formula. Check out 20 minutes of gameplay and our E3 2016 interview with Koei Tecmo CEO president Hisashi Koinuma.

World of Warcraft: Legion (Mac and Windows PC) — The newest World of Warcraftexpansion will see the return of an old villain who may not be on the side you might expect. Along with that, the expansion will bring a huge visual upgrade with greatly increased draw distance.

http://www.polygon.com/

By James Elliott