Not every hardcore Rock Band junkie is a metal and alt rock junkie it seems, so Harmonix is releasing more country oriented tracks for fans of the steel guitar and southern drawl. The new Rock Band Country Pack adds to the existing songs from the genre, 21 new songs in fact. The retail disk is compatible with both Rock Band titles and the new tracks will be exclusive to the disk for a short time before making their way onto the Rock Band stores on the Wii, 360 and PS3.

Here is the complete Track list:

One of this weeks’ Xbox Live release hint at a coming “nerdpocalypse”.

I say this in the nicest terms of course as a fan of said instrument of destruction. The long rumored Xbox version of Wizards of the Coast’s popular trading card game is available on Micrsoft’s Online service Wednesday June 17, 2009.

Magic the Gathering: Duals of the Planeswalkers recreates the game using virtual cards for a mere 800 Microsoft Points. Purchasers also get a code to claim a free foil card – Garruk Wildspeaker. Luckily the title features eight included dueling decks and a multitude of game modes including single-player, co-op custom and campaign modes.

Duels of the Planeswalkers also allows you to play against others via the service, customize your decks and I’d imagine get on the virtual paper crack train as updates to the game are released in future DLC sealed packs. (Though technically I don’t see an official mention of DLC for the game anywhere I’d bet if it sells well Wizards will be quick to capitalize on its popularity.. and face it they have 20 years of cards they could convert and sell to old timers like me – and the Xbox site mentions Content Downloads)

Duels of the Planeswalkers might just reintroduce the addiction to lapsed or recovering Magic players worldwide. I know it would rank right up there next to Rock Band 2 DLC for me in splitting my disposable income.  Especially since it appears to handle more than 2 players in a competition.. my preferred form of Magic.

I plan to download the title soon so look for a review in an upcoming edition of The Analog Gamer.

One of the most disappointing problems with the video game industry is that we tend to churn through games so fast that a title released 6 months ago is likely to be overshadowed by newer releases. While in some cases this could be considered merciful in that really bad games fade quickly from notice, there is also a disappointing factor of forgetting our game history.

One of the premiere computer game historical archives, an abandonware website called Home of the Underdogs returned to life after going dark some time ago.

Gaming is a new hobby, it doesn’t have the legacy of other leisure activities but in many ways because of the evolving nature of technology and the cash driven nature of the industry it means that many games that could be considered foundational to the modern video game design are unavailable or obsoleted and incompatible with modern computing platforms. Consoles and computer games alike suffer from this and even though sites like Good Old Games (GOG.com) are stemming this trend with DRM free older titles like Fallout, Descent and Freespace there are still hundreds of titles that will never see the light of day because their publishers no longer exist or the rights are a mess.

I’m not a big fan of illegal activity but in some ways since the legality of older titles are in question often, I can only say I am glad to see that sites like Abandonia and it’s peer Home of the Underdogs served to preserve records and often copies of these faded titles for posterity. The Underdogs site was the victim of its own success for awhile, with the hosting fees and a lack of continued energy forcing the original founders to surrender the website to the eternal darkness of a 404 error.

If you’re a classic gamer looking to relive your halcyon days you might want to check out Underdogs.

Normally, I try not to mention “gone gold” info but since we’ve been back up and running I don’t think we’ve given much coverage to the Wii for reasons other than to moan and gripe about the weird E3 presentation but I wanted to take a chance to mention that while its my least played game console it does have titles for gamers outside the preschool and septuagenarian sects.

The Conduit, a first person shooter title developed by High Voltage studios and published by SEGA, is one of the more “core gamer” (we aren’t calling ourselves “hardcore” any longer I guess) oriented titles for Nintendo’s bizzare stress relieving, heartbeat sensing exercise console. The story surrounds Secret Service Agent Michael Ford, a member of a shadow cabinet organization called The Trust which is tasked with defending America from threats even more foreign and extraterrestrial.

Again, we get to see someone take a shot at making the Wii a console for an FPS. With the additionlack of the Wii Motion Plus it looks like the dreams planted in all Wii owners by the dynamic and far oversold Metroid Wii teasers back at the console’s launch could actually come to fruition. The Conduit looks pretty good for a Wii title and if it controls well the Earth vs. secret insect invader story could be a lot of fun as a break between running in place and flapping our arms up and down playing a Nintendo mini-game.

The Conduit is scheduled to hit stores in the US around June 23rd. just for fun I’ve embedded some videos for your viewing pleasure below.

So E3 2009 saw the return of many things. Excitement! Spectacle! Actual interesting announcements! But none was more requested by the male video gamer masses than the return of the E3 Booth Babe. A staple of trade shows worldwide, the booth babe lost its place among the marketing tool inventory the last few years as E3 tried to establish itself as a mature, grown-up event.

Well, after producing two lackluster years with no hype or excitement to drive consumer sales the wise minds behind the industry even readmitted the actors/models/waitresses to the show floor with this year.

In honor of their return, and because I figure there are at least a few folks out there who might have missed the various image roundups, I present G4TV’s Booth Babe roundup video for your viewing pleasure.

And don’t forget – when judging eye candy quality, often the most scantily dressed, revealing outfits go to support the worst designed, pointless products.

While browsing a particular gaming forum that I’m a regular of, a fellow forum goer posted a link to a pocket emulator device that caught my eye. While I’ve dabbled with classic emulation within Windows Mobile powered cell phones in the past, my experience with those setups always left me wanting. Too small, too annoying, and half the time, too slow. Basically, cell phones and classic emulators are a match made in hell. Cool to show off to your friends, but a nightmare in comfort. So what are the present alternatives?

Anyone who has done their homework will attest that a Nintendo DS Lite ($130 USD) with an M3 Perfect ($30-40 USD) is a decent choice for the money. The R4DS adapter for the DS, while a little harder to find, would shave off a few more dollars while equaling the M3 in capability. With that particular setup you get NES, SNES, GBA, and, of course, DS capabilities. Best of all, no hacking required for this setup.

The old school PSP ($150 USD), technically the more powerful alternative, can net you NES, SNES, GBA, all the old Sega consoles, and of course arcade via MAME. And it remains to be seen if the upcoming and more pricey PSP Go! will even let you run anything homebrewed on it. Thus, it seems classic emulation fans will be scrambling to buy up the old PSP stock until they stop showing up on shelves (of course there’s always E-bay). Then there’s the whole PSP hacking procedure required to even get your foot in the door for such emulation potential – by far the biggest hurdle going the PSP route, period.

So how about a no frills handheld device that plays your favorite classics without requiring organs or offspring in trade?

Read the full article »

The specter of a world with no physical games available at retail is one that is raised often, especially by executives of traditional brick & mortar stores. In an article at Reuters, author John Gaudiosi raises the question yet again. He makes an effort to simply present the facts about the growing role digital distribution plays in how we purchase games today, and the facts are there. However, I believe that entire premise of the article is flawed.

Digital distribution really offers gamers only two highly positive benefits: First, it’s easy. You can purchase a game without ever leaving your house. Heck, you don’t even have to leave your chair. Second, it’s extraordinarily simple to keep games purchased over a platform like Steam updated. Since the Steam client must be running to launch the game, you simply download the update before you start the game. What could be easier?

The Reuters piece even quotes that great bastion of gaming knowledge, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter (seriously, who died and made this guy king? Am I the only one who thinks he talks out his ass most of the time?), who says, “Downloads will become 20 percent of the market within five years, and probably peak at around 50 percent of the overall market in 10 years.”

I’m sorry, but this is not only purest speculation, it’s not even good speculation. Why? Hit the jump, and we’ll examine it.

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First things first, let’s all take a minute to wish happy birthday to the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s been a year, and Wizards of the Coast has made great progress in the promotion and expansion of 4E.

Now, as you may have noticed, your usual Analog Gamer columnist, Shawn Sines, has graciously allowed me to step in this week and provide you with your weekly tabletop gaming fix. He’s done this because I have an axe to grind, and a point I want to make.

As a fairly avid player of Dungeons & Dragons, I tend to frequent a number of message boards dedicated to the hobby. In the year that 4E has been on the market, I have seen one thing on all these boards that really gets on my nerves: fights and arguments between players over which edition of D&D is the ‘best’ edition.

Here’s a news flash, people: There are multiple editions of D&D that are ‘the best.’ How can there be more than one ‘best’ at anything? Read on and see….

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Second Life is once again proving that it’s a good training tool this time for teaching law enforcement to recognize a meth lab when they see it. This clandestine setup is secreted away on top a flying dirigible. That’s not really a challenge when players can fly.

Despite the unusual set up the goal is to prove that virtual reality can be a  good simulation tool. Teaching a cop to tell the difference between a meth lab and a home brewery can be a challenge until they’ve actually been to a few.

According to New World Notes Fred Fuchs (Gus Plisskin in SL) created the lab “to encourage use of SL for training law enforcement and social workers.” The virtual set up lets them look around at their leisure without being shot at. Second Life is already used as a virtual classroom for distance learning at San José State University. The video following the break displays several other educational and training program already on SL.
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Thank you Professor Farnsworth!

If you’re not a fan of the Matt Groening sci-fi series it might be an odd revelation that this article is actually proclaiming happily that one of the funniest, most topical animated comedy series about people in the future with a big green spaceship is coming back to Comedy Central for 26 new episodes. It also may irk you that this is not a video game news post.. but frankly Futurama has a lot of gaming connection and is a favorite of the entire Gaming Today staff so I decided to exclaim my excitement in a simple post for those who might have missed it on the entertainment and genre sites.

Apparently Fox and Comedy Central are working together to produce the new episodes for late 2010 premiere! But that doesn’t mean we have to wait that long since the 4 DVD films were always intended to air on the network in 1/2 hour segments with additional content this year sometime. So if you picked up any of the films (which were frankly uneven in quality – the lowest being the one I was most anxious about – “Bender’s Game”) on DVD then you’ve proved that Fox yet again made a mistake in canceling an animated series too soon.

So celebrate you useless meatbags! You won! ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!