Exploding Barrel

La Victoire!

2006-12-12T01:23:30Z

Please ignore the nicely dressed up clothing.

BOO!

2006-11-30T00:22:54Z

So is this whole thing done then? Are we moving on with our lives?

I need YOUR help. Yes, you. Wait, no, not you. The other kid.

2006-10-16T19:59:58Z

I need YOUR help.

I have a big problem. I have already fully preordered Twilight Princess at my local GameStop. That leaves me with a measely $40.00 to use with my Wii. Does anyone know how I am going to land $210 by November 19?

I am open to suggestions. No matter how ... odd ... they may be.

Nintendo Fusion Tour!

2006-09-29T20:25:10Z

Nintendo Fusion Tour
Yes, I went to the touring of bands traveling across the US! And... I GOT TO PLAY THE WII.
I've got pictures, too.

I went to NFT, where the were bands playing, and there was an exibit where I could play the Wii! So join me as I, the photographer, show you around the Wii exibit at NFT!

Here we see a line of people wave frantically playing the variations of Wii Sports. Have you ever seen a picture of someone playing a video game, and it was blurred?

Sniff... a boy and his father. Is there anything more beautiful?

I got a picture of this piece of hardware. What a beast!

Alone and forgotten... the poor DS, they aren't the center of attention anymore.

Do you notice the heavenly glow circling the Wii logo?

Another shot of the Wii, this time from the side. Rawr!

Some anonymous people playing the Wii. If I can remember, they were playing Exite Truck, and you can tell by the position of the Wiimote in their hands that you hold it sideways, and steer with it that way. If you tilted it up while in the air, you went flying!

And finally, after hours of torturous wait (not really) I GOT TO PLAY THE WII. Here is a shot of the Wiimote in my hand. I was really actually surprised how big it was compared to my hands, but it was oh-so-comfortable! I make a good hand model, no?

Here's another shot of me holding the Wiimote, this time I'm actually playing Wii Sports- Tennis. I had to leave before I got the hang of it, so I got pwned.

So how about that, eh? So if you're in the States, get a hold of some NFT tickets! They're not very expensive, and it wasn't crowded AT ALL. I'm in Indianapolis, which was the second city they toured.

Check here to look for your nearest city! And don't worry about not ordering tickets in time, because we got ours two days before!

explodingbarrel @ 2006-09-24T19:10:00

2006-09-24T23:15:50Z

So, I was thinking about something. With ExplodingBarrel/RandomEncounter, what are we aiming for (in the end)? Some kind of 1) well-known gaming website that everyone goes to for all the latest news (IGN), 2) a kind of in-the-background witty satire gaming website, expressing our feelings toward the gaming world in overly-opinionated, long editorials (NintenDorks), or 3) some kind journal website where everyone makes poetry about their love for gaming, and yet no one comes to (MSN Groups)?

explodingbarrel @ 2006-09-18T13:00:00

2006-09-18T12:09:19Z

Here, let me explain why the price is such a big deal to me.

Wii: £180 - $337.71
Zelda: £40.00 - $75.04
Extra Wiimote: £29.00 - $56.27
Extra Nunchuck: £15 - $28.14
Classic Controller: £15 - $28.14
Total: Way much more

Of course, the European Wii will have extra features like the ability to play PAL territory games, and fit it our goofy plug sockets.

explodingbarrel @ 2006-09-17T15:33:00

2006-09-17T14:35:56Z

I'm not getting a Wii until the first price drop. I'm sure it's great, but today I fount out just how cheap PS2 titles are. I picked up Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Final Fantasy X-2, Silent Hill 2, and Alien Hominid for under $50, which is neat.

Does this mean I can shed off my fanboy image now?

explodingbarrel @ 2006-09-15T00:11:00

2006-09-15T05:11:40Z

http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=6888

Nintendo DS has EVERYTHING. I can't imagine pouring over stock reports and profit margins as being the slightest bit fun, but Nintendo obviously knows there's a market for this sort of thing. A risk-free way to learn how to trade stocks effectively. If I weren't generally disgusted at my culture's exploitation of teaching poverty stricken people about the stock market as a 'Get Rich Quick' scheme, I'd be impressed.

Overwhelming

2006-09-14T20:39:56Z

Too much Wii news at once.

Last night, the internet was abuzz. I myself had some fun joining chatrooms as "seriousgamer007" just to piss people off and use lofty language. Everyone was waiting. It said it would start at 8.

At 8:30 we realized it was at 9.

By 9:30 nothing.

In the morning, a lot of news, much if it rumored.

I go to school, come back, and I am utterly overwhelmed. There's just so much on so many websites to read that its impossible to see what's happened. We've all been waiting forever for the 14th to come around, and I guess the hype expanded into real, tangible news.

So, uh, yeah...

2006-09-13T23:14:43Z

When are we going to start thinking about the dot.com site itself? Or have we already done that? Is the site still going to happen? I just haven't heard much mews as of late, and I wanted to know if Sam had anything to say (or anyone else, of course).

Interesting...

2006-09-07T22:07:23Z

I think I see where George Lucas got his ideas.

Sorry it's small. Livejournal won't leave my pictures alone.

DETERMINATION IS IMPORTANT.

2006-09-02T13:23:25Z

FIGHT ON.

explodingbarrel @ 2006-08-28T07:09:00

2006-08-28T12:09:35Z

Yeah, I've been playing alot of horror games lately. Silent Hill: The Movie made me all waxy nostalgic and I hopped back into the games, living out twisted nightmare worlds of perpetual torment.

WHY DO SCREENSHOTS OF THE SPONGBOB WII GAME FILL ME WITH MORE TERROR THAN ANY TRUE HORROR GAME?

AHHHH!!

More Unused Sports Franchises

2006-08-21T22:28:22Z

Here are some more unused sport titles:

Croquet: What is it about this absolutely thrilling sport that makes no one want to play it?

Whoowhoo cally whoo.

Tap R and L repeatedly to put the semi up to 30 ft.!

My living room is going to be a living pile of plastic.

2006-08-19T01:42:31Z

You know, I've been thinking. When I hear Nintendo talking about how they're going to allow third-party devolopers to create their own 'models' and 'attachements' to put over the Wiimote, I wonder something: just how many plastic paperweights am I going to have to buy to have a maximum quality playing time with my Wii?

Will my room be filled to the brink with plastic-looking toys that you might commonly find in a 6-year-old hyperactive kid's quarters? I hope not.

explodingbarrel @ 2006-08-18T19:51:00

2006-08-19T00:51:45Z

Shut up, I'd buy it.

Of nine hundred thousand trash license games I'd like to see one where I use comic bafoonery to evade confrontation. Followed by a epic chase over rooftops to rescue The Kid.

Save a bundle on voice acting, too.

Cutscenes in games.

2006-08-17T00:14:52Z

So, universally it seems, cutscenes are reviled as excruciating wastes of time.

Except by me. I'm a freak.

Now, video games are quite often considered bad fiction. The plots are often shallow, vapid, and most attempts at sounding insightful or philosphical come off as juvenile or asinine. Dialogue is stilted, suspension of disbelief is rare, the characters one dimensional, and most often it's all an excuse to blow stuff up.

I LIKE cutscenes in games. Assuming the plot is actually competant, a rarity for sure, I find that stories in interactive experiances really make the whole thing more compelling. If I can become emotionally invested in the events occuring, I often come away from a game with a sense of acomplishment. This is not a sensation you can get from other mediums, because here you are actually the one doing the fighting, jumping, and sometimes (but not very often any more) the talking. This does not make them the ultimate medium, especially considering how much it costs and how much time it takes to realize a short amount of game story, but I feel this makes it a worth-while way to tell a story as opposed to an artless, soulless kill-fest most critics seem to make it out to be.

Game plots often have to be short, to the point and with enough conflict to make the gameplay. Even when they are shallow and vapid, they're generally brief and unintrusive and allow you to play within the game world with a context.

Some games make a point to make you sit through agonizingly long and frequent cutscenes. This can be good or bad, depending on how well the story is executed or whether you actually have patience for that sort of thing. Originally, I was a huge fan of RPG games because the stories had more depth to them beyond 'Get to the end of the level to win.' It was very involving, but after a decade of this I've grown cold of them.

The RPG genre is changing because players aren't forced to turn to them for good story lines, the means and the budget to produce cinematic video games is now available beyond chattering text boxes. Of course, the ratio of exceptional stories produced hasn't changed a whit. Just how asthetically pleasing they are has improved, though.

The thing is, the more detail and effort one puts into the story, the smaller and more compressed the game tends to become. You aren't going to get a world spanning, do anything game with an exceptional story because the more detailed the story is, and the more intricately it is performed, the less time there is for development of these other things. Both Leniar and non-leniar stories can be good in their own right, but I digress.

The POINT of this article, as I have failed to get accross, is that I like leniar, cutscene intensive games. They have the potentional to tell a story in great depth and I feel they're under-rated in favor of sandbox gaming. Which is fair enough, it's a particular taste, but what do you guys think?

For the record, here are some examples of exceptional story telling in gaming:

Grim Fandango (PC, FREAKING BRILLIANT)
Full Throttle (PC)
Silent Hill 2 (PS2, Xbox)
ICO (PS2)
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Gamecube, PS2, X-box)
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (PC, PS2, X-box)
Starcraft (PC, N64)
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
Super Metroid, (SNES, it's amazing how much can be expressed through pantomime.)

These are the sort of cutscenes that are fantastic. They are as much a charm of the game as the gameplay itself and they are the sort of thing I don't mind sitting back and watching. I could sit through FAR too many hours of cutscenes like these and not mind at all.

Disagree? Got an opinion? Want to punch me in the kidneys? COMMENT, YOU.

explodingbarrel @ 2006-08-11T03:02:00

2006-08-11T08:02:15Z

Soo....

A Prince of Persia game and Mortal Kombat Armegeddon are scheduled for release on the Wii.

Can any of you guys speculate how those games would play on Nintendo's unconventional set up? It's beyond me how motion sensory would play into wall-walking and fatalities.

Urgent News From Sony

2006-08-05T21:52:12Z

SONY GIVES UP
In a stunning statement, Sony President Ken Kutaragi says he's "giving up, it's hopeless".
Sunday, July 32, 2006
In a public statement on Sunday, Sony President Ken Kutaragi said that Sony is "throwing in the towel", that there is "no hope for the PS3 against the gaming super powers of Microsoft and Nintendo".

He also stated that it was merely a silly, childhood dream of his to make a video game console, and admits that his two tries were rather mediocre.

"And as a little present, we're sending all of our exlusive first-, second- and thrid-party to Nintendo, for the development on their miraculous wonder-system, the Wii," Kutaragi exclaimed. "We admit we flattered Nintendo a lot with our feeble attempt at making a motion-sensor controller."

Shortly after the statement, Kutaragi disapeared and hasn't been seen since.

After the statement, the effects were showing. Bill Gates broke down crying in the middle of a press conference, stating that he knew Nintendo was going to be the winner all along. Last our sources have heard, Gates has become a devout Chirstian.

Nintendo fans of all around the world celebrated at this joyous turn of events. An enormous gathering in the middle of Oklahoma was the site for an almost cult-driven Nintendo rally, in which they showed amateur clips of Mario taking a bat onto a PS3, while an Xbox 360 shrank whimpering in the corner.

The deliverence of Nintendo being the only and dominating video game power has brought sense into many world leaders, and a huge sense of world peace is occuring.

The only comment Nintendo has released is: "I told you so."
---

How About Waiting A Year or Two...or Three?

2006-08-05T01:11:46Z

It almost makes me cry inside when I see $400 or $600 price tags plastered onto next-gen game systems. A mere 10 years ago, gaming was considered a novelty, a kid's toy, and thus the prices had to be contained.

But now we've reached the age where we have to sell our soul in order to get games in HD-TV.

Why? Why do companies insist on doing this to us?

I've been thinking, and I know of a way to fix the problem.

Wait a couple years before putting brand-new hardware into game consoles. Seriously, if Sony had waited 5 years before putting a Blu-ray player into their console, they would've seen if there was a market for Blu-ray, and it would've been considerably cheaper.

I like what Nintendo is doing. They're improving the graphics from the Gamecube, but not so much that we have to skip our mortgage to buy a Wii. They're just putting new and interesting concepts to keep it new, but cheap.

explodingbarrel @ 2006-08-03T19:45:00

2006-08-03T23:46:54Z

Terrible SSB:M Cosplay made by Yours Truly, Link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gfc_sUVED8

Loading Screens

2006-08-03T17:48:58Z

Aurel finally comes to life with his first... entry.
One of the biggest problems facing modern day gamers is the issue of loading screens. In this situation, let me take the GameCube as an example. When time is limited, and I boot up a game, every single time I have to stare at the GameCube logo being drawn while waiting in agony. Some games are excellently designed, so that after the logo appears, you press Start twice and it skips all the other loading screen jazz and goes straight to the game. Super Smash Bros: Melee, works like that.

Lately, I've been playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and my biggest complaint with it, and later released GameCube games is that the loading screen has been pushed to its limit. Now, when a game is started up, they actually make you Press any Button to continue! After that, I have to wait for the names of the developers to flash by, then after that, a story book opens with at least 4 seconds of lag time. To top it all off, it says it must locate the Save File on the memory card, then go through at least 2 seconds of wait time while it opens the curtains to show the Save Files.

Okay, so I'm being a little bit critical, but wait times are getting longer and longer. I remember I used to think Banjo-Kazooie's wait time was long, but this is excruciating. A more efficient method of loading needs to be developed. How often do I press the power button, go downstairs to get something while it loads, only to come back to find out that I need to press a button. I don't want to press a button to continue, and neither do hundreds of other gamers. Ignoring the fact that it's advertising reading the GameCube safety manual, and that not every button works (R button... I'm looking at you.) to progress the screen, it still is dreadfully aggravating.

Now, I'm not sure about X-Box (standard and 360) or PS2's loading times because I don't own either of them, but I'm assuming they too have loading times as longer or even longer than GameCube's. But the problem is, not one single consumer enjoys wait times, and I'm pretty sure the companies whose names flash before our eyes whenever we open a game never make profit because they put their names in the game loading screen. I disregard the names, usually just seeing them as a bother rather than saying "Gasp! This game is made by ______! I must buy all the other games made by _____!"

That's where the Wii comes in. Not only is it slated to be more efficient than modern day things, but loading screens have been completely removed. To start the game, you unsleep your console and continue from where you left off. Of course, I'm assuming they'll have a standard save system built in, but mixed in with Connect24 and an always-on system, Wii's load times will be completely removed!

Exploding Barrel Cancelled

2006-08-02T09:39:30Z

Following reports that the E3 convention is to undergo a new "E3 Media Festival" rennovation, downsizing to better accomodate today's needs, riots broke across the Exploding Barrel offices. Staff erupted in hate-filled slang matches, violence, and other obscenities. Mewd pounced on Sam, grabbed his neck and repeatedly smashed his head into the desk only stopping to wipe the tears from his eyes. Two days later we still haven't cleaned all the blood.

Mewd, who dreamt of attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo since he was just a small boy, was later quoted as saying: "This was my last shot! Sam assured me this time there was a project that would get me to E3. This time... we would make it." before disappearing into the night. Sam underwent surgery that night and doctors have reported he'll be out in a week. Duffy suffered a stroke after consuming an unholy amount of alcohol. His funeral is on Saturday.

Wooster, who had been working behind the scenes, grumbled something about not getting paid. Bjorn and Aurel have yet to comment.

THE NINTENDO WII WILL CHANGE OUR LIVES FOREVER.

2006-07-30T06:46:49Z

JUST WAIT! We're ALL going to have that expression planted on our faces come Christmas. Also, what is with the girl? She looks genuinely scared that her boyfriend is being pulled into a world of awesome.

Website Roundtable.

2006-07-27T23:18:14Z

Okay, I think (I don't know about Sam) that it's about time we started really discussing how the site's going to work.

When's it going to open? When do we start working on it?

Who's all involved?

What's the layout going to be like?