Hey Got Gamers,

Can you believe that 40 years ago Pong was released? In 1972 it was among the 1st arcade games ever made. It laid the foundation for the current videogame industry we have now, and witnessed the birth of Atari at the same time. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Atari, and also the upcoming launch of Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft is unveiling an HTML5 powerered, multi-touch and multi-player platform called Atari Arcade. To be honest, at the moment it’s more like the Atari break-room. The platform currently only consists of modern takes on 8 popular Atari classics:

Pong

Asteroids

Centipede

Combat

Lunar Lander

Missile Command

Super Breakout

Yars Revenge

However, that won’t be the way of things forever. There are current plans to add more games based on the 100 plus titles in the Atari line up.

I also wouldn’t live up to my title of cynic if I didn’t point out that there is a “but” in this situation. In reality, these are all new games, with new graphics, gameplay features and coded with Internet Explorer 10 in mind. The important part about that last sentence is that the games are made to be played on Internet Explore 10, and to a lesser extent other newer internet browsers.

I attempted to access the Atari Arcade on a work computer that runs Internet Explorer 7 on a business edition of Microsoft XP, and the Atari Arcade website said that both my Internet Explorer program and my operating system were out of date. At least to out of date to play the Atari Arcade games, and thus I was refused access to that website. However, on a laptop that runs Windows Vista and Firefox I could play these games.

On a side note, if you ever find yourself running Internet Explorer 10 you can play these game without ads.

Hey Got Gamers,

Madden NFL Football 13 is out today!

You never know what to expect from a Madden game when you first pick it up, so wanted to make sure you knew what was new. That’s why we called our friends at EA Sports today and got Mike Young on the phone. Mike is Madden NFL 13′s creative director and in the audio file below this paragraph he’ll help us break down what’s new with this year’s edition of Madden NFL Football.

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The FAN EXPO has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you have to go without that sort of atmosphere for a whole year. Mark your calendars because Gamercamp is just around the corner.

Regular listeners will have heard of Gamercamp before because we’ve talked about each Gamercamp, with the team behind it, since the  first Gamercamp. New listeners should know that Gamercamp is a large gaming festival that happens each year in our fair city. Our friends on the Gamercamp staff tell us that over 1,000 people attend their festival annually, and that they are expecting this year to be no exception.

Image Credited to Gavin Hay – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinhay/

Now you may be asking yourself, “why should I care about Gamercamp?” Well on Tuesday of this week, Gamercamp festival director Jaime Woo announced Ken Yeung, lead programmer of the award-winning Super T.I.M.E. Force, and Pat Redding, lead game designer of the highly-anticipated Splinter Cell: Black List, and artists from NYU’s No Quarter exhibition as the latest talent to join the 2012 roster.

If that doesn’t get your mind racing, you should know that those Yeung, Redding, and the No Quarter exhibition are just the tip of the iceberg. They join already announced industry professionals like Deus Ex: Human Revolution lead writer Mary DeMarle, Papo & Yo creative director Vander Caballero, and Dyad creator Shawn McGrath.

Image Credited to Gavin Hay – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinhay/

You can go to the Gamercamp website for more information, but we can tell you right now that attendees will have over 25 presentations to choose from at Gamercamp. There will also be roughly 30 new or in-progress games to play. This will include the NYU’s No Quarter Exhibition that is curated by Charles Pratt. No Quarter will be set up at the Gamercamp Social, and will consist of:

• A) BaraBariBall, an Indiecade-nominated Super Smash Brothers-inspired sports game by Noah Sasso
• B) Guts of Glory, a post-apocalyptic card game created by Zach Gage (SpellTower)
• C) Drunk Dungeon, a large social board game by Margaret Robertson
• D) Hokra, an Indiecade-nominated abstract sports game by Ramiro Corbetta
• E) At a Distance, a critically-praised art game by Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV)
• F) Deep Sea, a unique and immersive game involving a gas mask by Robin Arnott
• G) Recurse, a motion-sensor game by Matt Parker
• H) Nidhogg, an award-winning fighting game by Mark Essen

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For those interested in speaking or showing at Gamercamp, workshop and videogame submissions are still open until September 5th. Tickets are also being offered at discounted prices for a limited time. You can find detailed information on everything at the Gamercamp website.

Hey Got Gamers,

By the time you read this the FAN EXPO will have come and gone. We hope that everyone had a great time, but don’t forget the world of gaming stops for no man. Heck, Namco Bandai released the 3rd person shooter Inversion on day 1 of E3 2012. A day when the whole videogame industry paused and turned their collective eyes towards Los Angeles.

While the FAN EXPO was happening this year, the videogame world kept going. We can tell you exactly what you missed, and you can find that information in the audio file below this paragraph. However, we’re just calling it the August 26th 2012 post-broadcast podcast edition of Got Game.

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This week on Got Game the crew discusses:

• A) The videogame made by an MLB All-Star who is not named Curt Schilling
• B) The demo for NHL 13 being released
• C) News that Nintendo Power will close shop in December of 2012
• D) David Rutter, a FIFA 13 producer, saying that women will be in the FIFA game someday
• E) Microsoft dropping the price of the Kinect sensor by $40
• F) NBA BALLER BEATS

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PLUS, WE TALK TO FORMER NFL TACKLE TURNED EA SPORTS PRODUCER, CLINT OLDENBURG, ABOUT NEXT WEEK’S RELEASE OF MADDEN NFL FOOTBALL 13.

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IN OUR REVIEW SECTION, WE LOOK AT THE CANADIAN MADE INDIE GAME PAPO & YO.



It appears that this will be the cover for FIFA 13 copies sold in North America.

However, each FIFA cover usually has 1 international star, and at least 1 local star. Last year for example, Wayne Rooney appeared for the first time on the North American cover when FIFA 12 came out. He was flanked by Los Angeles Galaxy forward Landon Donovan and Rafael Márquez of New York Red Bulls.

This year EA Sports told us, “Lionel Messi will be joined by stars Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Joe Hart in the United Kingdom, Karim Benzema in France, Roberto Soldado in Spain, Claudio Marchisio in Italy, and others all over the world to launch FIFA Soccer 13 on September 25 in North America and September 28 worldwide.”

We were also given this list of everyone who will be on a cover in some market around the world. Those players are:

Player                                          Nationality                                           Club
Lionel Messi                               Argentina                                              FC Barcelona
Joe Hart                                       England                                                 Manchester City
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain       England                                                 Arsenal
Karim Benzema                         France                                                   Real Madrid
Claudio Marchisio                     Italy                                                       Juventus
Roberto Soldado                       Spain                                                    Valencia
David Alaba                                Austria                                                   Bayern Munich
Tim Cahill                                   Australia                                               New York Red Bulls
Jakub Błaszczykowski              Poland                                                  Borussia Dortmund
Balázs Dzsudzsák                    Hungary                                                Moscow Dynamo

Now, it’s possible that Tim Cahill could also be on the cover in North America. He is afterall the only player on the list who plays in the local MLS league.

However, is a Austrialian midfielder who has played 3 games and scored 1 goal the star power the will move copies in North America? Probably not, and clearly not the player who resonates the most with fans of Major League Soccer. He could easily create a buzz over national pride in his homeland of Austrialia though.

Nope, sadly it appears that in North America the cover we will get will simply consist of Lionel Messi  running through St James’ Park alone.

Hey Got Gamers,

The FAN EXPO will be happening in Toronto next week, and Christine Chubb, Momin Qureshi, and Bryan Calhoun will be down there at different points throughout the weekend to cover the awesome things that are going on.

The Got Game crew does the weekly radio show to entertain, inform, and interact with you , so we always love to talk with you when we get the chance.  Therefore, if you’re coming down to the FAN EXPO please take a second to stop us and say hello. Don’t worry, we will be very easy to spot. Just look for these somewhat attractive people around the gaming exhibits on the show floor… ok, ok… so look for these… ummm… people on the show floor.

From Left to Right: Momin, Bryan, and Christine.

However, one thing you should always be able to recognize is the location of each week’s post-broadcast podcast. It’s easy to find because it will always be in the same place, and that place is the audio file below this sentence. This one we are calling the August 19th 2012 edition of Got Game.

Download

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This week on Got Game the crew discusses:

• A) A group of people who are trying to convince the I.O.C. that videogames should be an Olympic event
• B) What games THQ told us that they’re planning to bring with them to this year’s FANEXPO
• C) A whole bunch of news that PlayStation is making at GamesCom in Germany

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Plus, we talked to Matt Tieger, the Game Director at Highmoon Studios, about their latest release: Transformers Fall of Cybertron.

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IN OUR REVIEW SECTION, WE LOOK AT DARKSIDERS 2 FOR THE CONSOLES…

AND NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 2 FOR THE NINTENDO 3DS.

Imagine what it would be like to live in a place were copycat first person shooters where the exception and not the rule. A place where games had to go through some form of QA testing to ensure that they somehow pushed the industry forward.

It’s a nice dream isn’t it? Sadly, the huge success of franchises like Call of Duty and unstable financial markets mean that this dream is a hard one to take seriously at the moment.

Canada’s indie development scene, and the international indie scence as well, are doing what they can to destroy that black and white way of thinking by constantly providing their colourful creative efforts. One of the most creative of those efforts was released this week, and it comes to us from the Montreal based indie studio Minority. Their game, Papo & Yo, is actually inspired by the childhood memories of the game’s Creative Director, Vander Caballero. It’s based on his experiences growing up in South America with an abusive, alcoholic father. Caballero, formerly a Design Director at EA Montreal, is attempting to show off his design chops while trying to tell a personal story through Papo & Yo. 

Obviously, it is not a story that we can all identify with, but it appears to be a story leaving few people on the fence.

Like all games that could be considered for the highly coveted title of Art, it has confused the industry. It currently sits with a score of 66 on Metacritic. A break down of that score shows 2 reviews of 40 out of 100 evening out the the 6 critics who gave the game 80 out of 100 or higher, and then there is a whole bunch of critics in between those two extremes. The major criticism constantly raised against Papo & Yo is a lack of polish with the title’s gameplay mechanics. However, it’s also not uncommon to go on social media sites and see experienced industry people describe Papo & Yo as a game with, “more emotional resonance in 1 hour of this game than the last 5 AAA games I’ve played.”

Like all games that could be described as art, it appears that you will either love or hate Papo & Yo.

However, what is Papo & Yo specifically? To answer that question Christine and I called up Minority and talked to Charles-William Bibaud. Together, the 3 of us discussed the world, story and personalities that make up Papo & Yo.

Download  Here is our discussion.

If you’re interested, you’ll be able to trade $14.99 over the PlayStation Network for roughly 4 to 5 hours of Papo & Yo gameplay, and it is currently avaliable for purchase right now.

I know for a fact that Christine and I are both excited to play this game, but we’ve already had a chance to get our hands on it. We both know what to expect. If you have yet to see the game in action, you may wish to consult the video that I’ve post at the bottom of this page. It will give you an idea of the gameplay mechanics that you can expect if you choose to buy Papo & Yo.

Hey Got Gamers,

The Southern Ontario based game development studio Digital Extremes is currently working on a Star Trek game that is based on the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film.

We talked about it during our daily E3 shows, but (if you don’t remember that discussion word for word) basically Kirk and Spock learn that the Gorn are back and that they’re trying to take over the universe. I could go into detail, but this video show does a pretty good job of explaining things.

Now, if you remember our conversation from the E3 shows about this game, you may also be interested to know that these are the visuals we saw then. The demo we experienced was about 15 minutes long, but the visuals in the above trailer are all clips from that E3 demo we saw that day.

Hey Got Gamers,

I just want to start off this week by correcting a screw up that we made on the show.  A listener wrote a very nice review of our show on iTunes, and we forgot to mention that he identifies himself as Fuzzhead23 on that service. Therefore, thank you F.H.23 for the kind review, and we’re glad to hear that you enjoy the show enough to give us 5 stars out of 5.

If you also like the show , and like F.H.23 would like to let the world know, we would love to hear your thoughts in a review on iTunes too. Don’t forget that you can also interact with us directly by sending us emails to GotGame@sportsnet590.ca, or send tweets to us at @GotGame590.

In the meantime, why not enjoy an episode of Got Game while you are here? Luckily, the latest edition our show can be found in the audio file below this sentence, but we’re just calling it the August 12, 2012 edition of Got Game.

Download

This week on Got Game the crew discusses:

• A) The latest news regarding Curt Shilling’s 38 studios
• B) The crazy amount of money that the Ouya development team received for their Kickstarter project
• C) What Games you can expect to see at FAN EXPO this year
• D) The drop in videogame sales for the 8th straight month
• E) The end of the annual summer videogame drought

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We’ll also talk about the August 14th release of Darksiders 2 with Mathew Everett, the game’s Community Manager.