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Most of this week has been taken up with news emerging from the event that likes to call itself E3. A lot of games have been announced and new footage and details have emerged about ones we already knew about, but what do we really think?
Tune into our Twitch channel tonight for a special livestream where Lonesamurai, Poultergeist, Digmbot and PredictedCyborg discuss their highlights and lowlights from the event, sprinkled in between random conversations and some topic deviation. The show starts at 7:30pm GMT/ 2:30 EST and we hope to see you all there!
NASA Scientists have released 3D renderings for a concept design for a warp drive spaceship currently being prototyped.
Dr Harold “Sonny” White is working on the warp drive program at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre, and along with 3D artist Mark Rademaker, has created a concept for what a future ship capable of allowing us to explore the galaxy might look like, though the project is still at such an early stage that nothing is concrete. The proposed design involves “a sleek ship nestled at the centre of two enormous rings, which create the warp bubble”, with some elements seeing to resemble parts of the famous USS Enterprise from Star Trek.
White has spent his career working on ways to propel spacecrafts to faster than the speed of light, and this model would do so by bending the space around it, making the distance shorter. This means, Diaz writes, that the Enterprise wouldn’t break Einstein’s theory of relativity, as within its little bubble it wouldn’t be moving faster than light.
If that confuses you, think of space as like a train. You, the passenger, are the spaceship in its bubble. Let’s say you walk from carriage to carriage as the train is moving at 300mph. As you walk through the train you never break from your standard walking pace; but imagine someone watching your train go by from outside. To you, you’re moving forward at 3mph; but to the outsider, you’re moving at the same speed as the train. That’s how a warp bubble would work.
NASA are already experimenting with the concept of warp bubbles in small-scale; and it turns out, White and his team are closer to this goal than you might think. White believes that if his work is successful, it will create an engine that could get us to Alpha Centauri in two weeks.
Just in case you were bored of E3, news has recently been confirmed that the 2014 Steam Summer Sale is coming. Thats right. Forget the college fund, stop eating fast food for a week and hurry to the bank to deposit all that couch change: the Steam Summer Sale is coming on June 19th. The sale will run through June 28th, with an encore that will push until the 30th. While games included in the sale have yet to be announced, you all know the deal. Pretty much anything is fair game in a Steam Sale. So, get ready to waste all your money. We’ll see you after the sale.
If we can stop Lonesamurai from spending our entire budget on the Civ series….
Part of Nintendo’s presentation yesterday was a new trailer for the announced Gen 3 Pokemon remakes, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. As with X and Y, part of the trailer was devoted to new ‘Mega Evolution’ forms for certain Gen 3 Pokemon.
One of the fully evolved starters of these games, Blaziken, obviously has already gotten a Mega Evolution with X and Y that will be returning in these games. Similarly both Swampert and Sceptile will have their own Mega Evolution forms to use. Sceptile gains many new fern or palm leaf-like spikes, longer ‘ears’ as well as new red tipping to its arm leaves. Swampert on the other hand bulks up tremendously, it gains an extra head fin and its orange whiskers lengthen greatly. Mega Swampert retains its Water/Ground typing and has a new ability of ‘Swift Swim’, while Mega Sceptile gains the ability ‘Lightning Rod’ and becomes a dual-type Grass/Dragon.
As well it debuts a new form for each of the two Legendaries that appear on the box art, Kyogre and Groudon. Both forms bear resemblance to the ‘Primal’ form Dialga took in the second Mystery Dungeon series and appear on the front of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. They have been called Primal Kyogre and Primal Groudon.
One further Mega Evolution has been revealed, thanks to a scan from CoroCoro. Mega Diancie mega evolves from the Diancie pokemon and will be a Rock/Fairy type but as of right now, no information on Ability is known. The Mega Evolution gives Diancie more ‘dress-like’ frills, lengthens the ‘ribbons’ and changes the shape of the lace-like patch on its forehead slightly.
And today hot on the heels of the new information about the games, a video has gone up on the Official Pokemon Youtube channel that shows off the mega evolution sequence for Sableye – a Ghost-type introduced in the Ruby and Sapphire generation, the new form having been announced at the Nintendo’s Kid Conference at E3.
The mega evolution is very subtle compared to other Mega Evolutions, the only changes seem to be red eyes, an extra head spike and a large jewel that Sableye uses as a shield. The large jewel shield is apparently the gem that used to be on the Pokemon’s stomach area, and has absorbed most of the evolution’s energy to swell and detach as a shield for the small imp-like Ghost Pokemon to hide behind. It doesn’t seem as of this moment that the Mega Evolution changes Sableye’s typing from its standard Ghost/Dark dual-type, nor is it known if it will gain a new ability.
These are the confirmed Mega Evolutions coming in the two new remake games. Nintendo have confirmed more are to come though, so we’ll keep you updated when new Mega Evolutions appear!
Four years ago, Nintendo discontinued making physical appearances at E3 in favour of digital presentations – deciding that, as trailers and video make up a large part of what gets shown off for a video game, it’s cheaper to just put the whole event on-screen than actually send people to turn up at the event and talk. This year was no different, but Nintendo DID see fit to make a joke of on-screen presentations with the intro to this year’s Digital Event, with clips of a CGI audience who would heckle Reggie Fils-Aime twice during the course of the event – and subsequently get laser-eyed or beaten up before moving on to the next presentation. It’s a charming Nintendo-isation of the realities of E3 and a perfect demonstration of what Nintendo’s about – making you smile.
Yes, Day 1 of E3 kicked off today and to kick off proceedings, Nintendo took the “stage” for its annual Digital Event. In an hour of non-stop reveals, trailers and on-screen appearances and interviews both real and digitized, over a dozen games were revealed or had further information shown off about them; and we even heard of a new Nintendo toy line coming out and how it’ll tie in with Mario Kart 8 and future Nintendo titles, plus a new character reveal for Smash Bros.!
Over the coming hours I’ll be writing articles on each game and what was revealed. But here’s a quick run-down:
Super Smash Bros.: Mii characters become playable fighters for the first time and can be customised for three specific types of fighting.
Amiibo: New line of NFC-enabled toys from Nintendo that will be compatible with Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros Wii/3DS and many future titles.
Yoshi’s Wooly World: Gameplay footage, discussion of the concept, 2-player co-op revealed.
Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker: Puzzle game featuring Toad as main character, release Winter 2014.
Open-World plans for a future Zelda title discussed.
Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire: New Trailer launched with some game-play footage and first look at Groudon and Kyogre’s new formes.
Bayonetta 2: will include original Bayonetta; and Zelda and Samus costumes.
First look at Hyrule Warriors, launching September 19, 2014.
Digmbot gets angry on Twitter following last announcement.
First look at plans for a new, as-yet untitled Kirby game coming 2015.
Xenoblade Chronicles: New footage.
Mario Maker: Create-your-own-Mario-level Wii U game revealed.
First look at Splatoon, “a 4-on-4 game about controlling territory” – by dressing as squids and shooting ink. Seriously.
“One more thing”: Lady Palutena joins the fight in Smash Bros; two S.FM staff members go crazy at the news.
There was a lot of exciting news to be seen in the hour-long presentation; and Nintendo even ended by saying that they still have much more to reveal that they just didn’t have time for. Personally, I think the titles they focused on this time around were carefully selected and made a lot of sense – mostly big titles, a few First looks in the middle, new first-party titles being announced that aren’t anything like what you may have expected, an interesting third-party effort to round off and Smash Bros. buffering both ends. I was personally surprised to see Mario Maker announced – the ability to make your own Mario levels had been a common fan request for Mario titles from almost the beginning; but while fans have often made their own self-developed game engines to do the job themselves, or have ROM-hacked the official games to introduce their own levels (we at Sanitarium.FM do NOT condone this practice!), over the years the idea of a Nintendo-authored, official tool or feature to do this just began to felt like a pipe dream. Now it’s finally happening, my question is – what took you so long, Nintendo?!? (Admittedly, the Wii U may well be the best platform for the tool what with it’s controller with built-in touch-screen offering an excellent interface for level creation; and the large TV screen offering tons of space to work with – a DS screen may not have offered anywhere near the real estate for the game or its interface.)
However, my pick of the crop has to be the announcement of Amiibo – the idea of NFC-enabled Nintendo figures was actually discussed in the Wii U promotional material before it even launched; and with Skylanders already showing how it can be done, it’s about time Nintendo got into the game too. The idea of the figures not just representing the characters though, but also acting as storage to keep your own character’s stats and enhancements on within compatible games seems like an interesting concept though; and seeing how the figures will be cross-compatible with multiple Nintendo titles which are likely to be very different in play – Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. aren’t even in the same genre! – it may well turn out to be something quite big indeed for Nintendo. Stay tuned!
