Gearfuse

I realize that Steve Jobs is really psyched about turning the iPhone and iPod Touch into fully-fledged gaming platforms. That’s great. There are tons of fantastic games for these devices, produced by powerhouse studios and publishers like Electronic Arts. Unfortunately, the classic NES title Mega Man II is not fantastic. Look at this retarded control scheme Capcom set up. It looks like somebody whipped those graphics up in five minutes using Macromedia Flash 4.

Of course, you’re going to play it for a few minutes and become incredibly frustrated. According to reviews ’round the ‘net, the game is nearly impossible to play, especially with so many tough jumps and enemies. Thought the original was easy? Now is the chance to really hone your skills. It’s now available on the App Store for a mere $4.99.

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Before you get your molotov cocktails out and start heaving them in the direction of the Electronic Arts offices, stop and listen. We all know what a clusterfuck DRM caused for the game Spore. People bitched quite a bit and this time around, EA is going to listen. On the official Sims 3 blog, Rod Humble from EA just posted this tidbit about how the DRM for the game will work:

The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.

We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.

Awesome. Back to basics. Power to the player. This not only a good move by EA’s development team; it’s a PR miracle.

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GameStop, with its icy grip on the retail video game industry, has a new competitor coming up the pipelines. No, Funcoland isn’t making a comeback but rather Best Buy is trying out a trial program that lets customers trade in used video games for store credit. As Brian Crecente of Kotaku points out, this is a fantastic time to be in the used video game industry. No kid or adult has $60 to plop down on a next-gen game nowadays, save for Killzone 2.

I think this is a great move for Best Buy. It’ll force GameStop to become more competitive and will lower prices on used titles even further. Let’s see how Best Buy plays this out…

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Outer space is filled with things we’ll never know about. Beautiful objects swirling around in the fiery cosmos. How poetic.

Luckily, we have half-decent scientists here in America (and some OK ones from Britain) who used the Gemini North and Keck telescopes at the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii to explore outside our solar system. After a little digging, they found a planet orbiting the star known as Formalhaut. With the discovery of more planets in an entirely different solar system, the possibility to find another Earth totally exists. One day, we’ll be able use intergalactic travel to emulate our Spore fantasies.

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Fallout 3 is about to hit Japan’s store shelves and news has emerged claiming that the developers, Bethesda Softworks, have made changes to the game to more comfortably appeal to the Japanese market. You can probably guess from here what changes have been made, but just in case your a little rusty on your history, I’ll tell you.
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Shame on you, Pete Hines. Claiming that your latest game, Fallout 3, contains only the mildest form of DRM was a lie. A big fat lie. Not only does the PC version of Fallout 3 contain DRM, it contains the most infamous of all DRMs: SecuROM.

Remember what happened to EA for releasing Spore with SecuROM? It got hit with a class action lawsuit. It’s no mystery that SecuROM permanently stays on your computer, even after an uninstall, leeching precious resources from your PC. The only solution is reformatting your hard drive. So far, the only problems caused by the Fallout 3 DRM has been conflicts during installation for a small group of users. Just wait, much like the Master Control Program in Tron, SecuROM will take over.

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Just a few days after going gold, Fallout 3 has leaked on to the Internet. While it may seem to be one of the worst console piracy cases of the year, so far it has yet to reach the controversial level that Spore has had and Bethesda has yet to make an official statement regarding the leak.

So far, only the Xbox 360 version has been leaked. Meaning, you’ll have to heavily mod your console after downloading the 6.52 GB file. While the game ships on the 28th of October, many pirates can’t wait that long. And why should they? We’ve all been waiting ten years for this game, it’s about time it got in to the hands of the public. I can’t wait to play it.

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This plant is no ordinary house plant. It’s called Spore 1.1 and it’s a reflection of how Home Depot is faring in the current economy. It’s rigged so that if Home Depot’s stock falls, the plant isn’t watered and it dies. Should stock soar, the plant gets a healthy dose of water. Cruel? A bit, but we’re guessing that given the current state of the economy, this plant was dead a long time ago.

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Tonight, MySpace kicked off its new commercial free music service which doesn’t include any of that bullshit DRM business.  Using its ever popular Flash player, users can purchase songs or add them to a playlist. It’s now possible to create a streaming playlist of as many as 100 songs each that can be shared and ranked.  MySpace music will also offer on-demand, ad-subsidized playback of full tracks in addition to allowing users to purchase unprotected MP3s of songs through Amazon.

Could MySpace music be another competitor for iTunes? It’s certainly looking that way. Just wait until Facebook joins with iTunes commercially. The “Great Social Networking” war is upon us.

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This made me chuckle quite a bit. Ah, the good times. DRM just plain sucks now.

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