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SEGA has announced the third title in the Nintendo Exclusivity deal. The title is “Sonic Boom”, a Wii U and 3DS game set to tie in with the upcoming Sonic Boom CGI television series.
While this puts to bed questions any rumors about the nature of the third Nintendo exclusive, it’s also causing a bit of a stir. The main issue seems to be the design of the characters which is…unique. Thats if you are being charitable. Personally, I think they are terrible, particularly Knuckles. As one of my own station colleagues pointed out, it was always nice to have Knuckles be the strongman character without being BUFF. Yet now, he’s an overblown block of muscle perched atop tiny toothpick legs.
And lets not even get started on how trashy Amy looks. REALLY SEGA?
Furthermore, this is yet another example of SEGA continually sticking their foot in their mouth. After categorically denying rumors that the sign at the Nuremberg toy fair showing a new Sonic title were incorrect, they turn around and unveil a brand new title. Its literally like the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.
I’m a long time SEGA fan, but even my patience is beginning to wear thin. First they deny that something exists. Then they tell us it does. To top it all off, they don’t confirm or deny that it will be on PS4 or XBOX ONE. They CLAIM it’s a Nintendo exclusive. But we all know exclusivity in the console world lasts about as long as a stack of twenty dollar bills in Vegas. Bottom line, SEGA is making themselves look almost as dumb as Microsoft did at E3 last year with the XBOX ONE. We all know they are making a new Sonic game. We all know its going to be coming out soon. So when information gets slipped, don’t deny it and then turn around and confirm it. We aren’t stupid! Just say “Yep. You caught us! New Sonic Game! Free plushies for everyone! Oh, and we’re sorry about Sonic 2006. The developers responsible have been fed to Shigeru Miyamoto as a sacrifice so they would keep Sonic in the new Smash Bros!”
After some very disappointing games (looking at you Sonic 2006) and the blatant cash cow milking of the Mario & Sonic Olympic game’s series, I’m beginning to wonder if it might not be time to put the Blue Blur out to pasture for a bit. or forcibly wrest control of the character from SEGA. If the past few days have been any indication, they sure don’t know what they are doing with the franchise!
Imagine if you could simultaneously play a game on your smartphone while also doing something beneficial to the world as a whole – like helping scientists in the quest to beat cancer in real life? Thanks to a new app by Cancer Research, described as “the world’s first app designed to unravel genetic data”, anyone with an Android or iOS device can stop dreaming and do just that.
In Play To Cure: Genes In Space, players pilot a ship through a hazard-strewn course across space, blasting asteroids on their way, in an apparent mission to collect a valuable material called Element Alpha. As they play, their movements through the game actively aid research into identifying genetic markers that could help scientists identify cancer-causing genes in actual patients in real life.
Cancer Research scientists recently created graphs representing genetic data from 2,000 anonymous breast tumour patients. These graphs often have abnormalities where some part of the genetic make-up suddenly peaks or drops significantly at isolated points, which Scientists believe could identify potentially cancer-creating genes that could help further research into curing and preventing cancer. The problem is, while computers can pick out some likely problem areas themselves, sometimes the peaks are so subtle they can only be picked up by human eyes; and identifying the specific responsible genes also requires precision – so Scientists still need to look at the graphs themselves as well. The more eyes available, the quicker this process will be; but Scientists know that for most people, looking at graphs all day is plain boring.
So game developers at the company Guerilla Tea worked with scientists on an approach that involves regular people in the research while allowing them to have fun as well. The game developers have transformed the readouts into an intergalactic landscape, where your path and the hazards you face are based on a randomly-decided genetic sample. As your ship moves through the game, you map a path across the graph it was based on; and these movements are tracked by the game.
To ensure accuracy, each section of gene data will be tracked by several different players. The information is fed back to the scientists and as more players highlight the peaks and troughs, scientists identify those areas for further research. The anonymity of the cancer patients used for the study will be preserved, the developers promised.
Every single second gamers spend playing our smartphone game directly helps our work to beat cancer sooner. As you steer your spaceship through Element Alpha you are mapping a path behind you. That path is really useful to the scientists because it will help them to identify where the peaks and the troughs are in the data […] by understanding exactly where those peaks and troughs are, we can understand where to go and look for faults in genes that might be linked to cancer […] With [just a few minutes play per player,] we could have an absolutely mind-blowing impact in terms of accelerating research.
-Hannah Keartland, Citizen Science Project Lead, Cancer Research UK
The app is the second “citizen science” project by Cancer Research UK, after the success of Cell Slider, which was also used to aid Breast Cancer research. More than 200,000 people classified almost two million cancer images, reducing the time taken for researchers to analyse a subset of breast cancer samples from 18 months to just three.
Shovel Knight is a platform game in development by independent developer Yacht Club Games for the Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and personal computer platforms.
The game is expected to be released on March 31, 2014.
If you have been following the new MMO The Elder Scrolls Online’s progress recently and actually opted into the Beta, I suggest you check the e-mail you gave them. A whole bunch of codes have been sent out in the last day inviting even more players to come enter the massive online world of Tamriel, at least for a few days.
This weekend the gates will open for a beta weekend event, in which many will race into the world to desperately level their characters to the point of unlocking the PvP at Level 10 before the event is over on Monday. And it will be a race because access to the game will last from Friday, Feb 7th 12pm EST/5pm GMT until Monday, Feb 10 11:59pm EST/4:59pm GMT.
Those of you who are Curse members and haven’t had a code e-mailed to you do have another option though. Curse.com has been given a further 500,000 codes to distribute among their members, although it is worth noting that Premium members get dibs on the codes until tomorrow so it might be an idea to get in there fast when they are opened to other members to take.
Just a reminder though, if you do get a key remember that there is still an NDA in place. No screenshots, details, videos etc. can be passed around or spoken about until that is lifted so be careful what you say, as access to the game can be removed if you break it and if you’ve been anxiously waiting for your chance to get into Tamriel it would be a shame to lose your chance.
Bethesda has said that the launch for PC and Mac is on the horizon and the Beta is growing all the time. This means more keys will likely be sent out soon so if you aren’t lucky this time, don’t lose hope of getting into the closed Beta tests of the game.
That said, I hope to see some of you in Tamriel soon. 😀
