Forget EA’s simulation of the upcoming Super Bowl using Madden 08. The real question is, what does an old 8-bit game from the NES days say is going to be the outcome? Well, that’s one college student decided to find out. Using a Tecmo Super Bowl ROM with an updated roster and stats, he ran his own simulation to determine the victor in this Sunday’s New York Giants versus New England Patriots match up. And the winner? Er…the New England Patriots with final score of 24-21. Which is…the..same…winner…that…EA…predicted… Excuse me, but I have a few bets to make.

Via ArmchairGM

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In the U.S., the Super Bowl is practically a national holiday…that takes place on Sunday so no one actually gets an extra day off. But if you still haven’t placed your bets on who will win this year, you may want to consider a recent test EA decided to run. Using their game, Madden 08, EA ran a simulation pitting the New England Patriots against the the New York Giants using their current rosters and stats. And the winner? *Drumroll sound* The Patriots by a narrow margin of 38-30. Granted this is all a simulation being run just for fun, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the outcome were different if it were run again. Personally, I’ll still be rooting for my favorite Super Bowl team: the commercials (Woo! Go, beer ads!).

Highlights from the simulation can be seen below.

Via Press Release

Recently I had the opportunity to preview Akella’s latest RTS naval simulator game PT Boats: Knights of the Sea, and if WWII games are your thing and you are tired of playing aerial or ground war titles; then this game was made especially for you. With the video game market overly saturated with WWII games, Akella wanted to produce something different starring one of the most under-appreciated heroes of that era, the Patrol Torpedo Boat. Faster and easier to maneuver than a large battleship, PT Boats were used when accuracy and speed were of the utmost importance and they got the job done. Being smaller did not mean that they could not cause serious damage to a larger vessel though, because they could take a tanker down with their torpedoes - and while they were indeed more vulnerable than their larger counterparts, they were essential to any maritime battle.

As the title of the game states, these unsung heroes are the boats you will be manning and your mission is to get the job done without getting yourself blown to bits. While that is the basic premise of any video game where you are in battle, PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a bit different than your standard war game. Your job is to not only join the battleships and carriers during battles, but you will also be called upon to escort convoys, do a bit of reconnaissance and protect strategic coastal points.

During the demo of the game, players can choose one of three sides, Allied, Germany, or the USSR in six different mission episodes and experience battles twice via either defensive or offensive mode. Now, please note that this was just a preview demo, so some of the graphics features were not running at 100%, so be rest assured that the graphics within the full game will be less banal. The map is very easy to navigate and can be viewed in 2D or 3D mode and the wonderful thing about it is that you can click on anywhere in the map grid and be taken directly to that point without having to get to your destination in real-time mode. While in map mode you can also pause the game and change your speed for up to 4x the norm.

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Over the past few years, we’ve been treated to some fairly sub-par Need for Speed games. Carbon, for instance, just wasn’t all that exciting, and the same could be argued about Most Wanted and Underground 2. But EA seems to have gotten the message that they really need to kick it up a notch, and that’s exactly why you should be excited about ProStreet. The game deviates from its more arcade-style roots and moves closer to sim racers while still not being a sim.

Plus, if you hate illegal street racing/The Fast and the Furious scene, ProStreet no longer is obsessed with that concept. Races take place on closed tracks, which will be nice but that also means there won’t be any cops, sadly.

There’s a demo up on the Xbox Live Marketplace now that’ll give you a taste of the game before it releases on November 14.

Electronic Arts and BP have collaborated to include climate change education within SimCity Societies, the next iteration in the city-building franchise that has sold more than 18 million games to date. The collaboration brings together game building skills and industry expertise on energy, electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions to highlight the impact of electricity generation on the emissions of carbon dioxide that are linked to climate change. The low-carbon electricity choices and monitoring of SimCity’s carbon emissions provide a integrated and supposedly accurate look at some of the causes and some of the major solutions available to combat rising levels of carbon and to help address the threat of global warming. SimCity Societies will be available at retailers across North America and Europe November 15.

“Since their inception in 1989, SimCity games have served as excellent creative and educational tools to convey complex subjects. With SimCity Societies, we have the opportunity not only to demonstrate some of the causes and effects of global warming, but also to educate players how seemingly small choices can have a big global impact,” said Steve Seabolt, Vice President of Global Brand Development for The Sims Label at EA. “BP was one of the first major energy companies to publicly acknowledge the need to reduce carbon emissions and begin taking precautionary measures. As such, they are the perfect partner to help educate people on this important social issue in SimCity Societies.”

The game does not force players to power their cities any specific way, but allows them to make choices, each of which come with advantages and disadvantages. Similar to real-life, the least expensive and most readily-available buildings in SimCity Societies are also the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, an invisible gas that contributes to global warming. Should players choose to build cities dependent on these types of sources for power to conserve their in-game money, their carbon ratings will rise and, at reaching critical levels, the game will issue alerts about the threat of the various natural disasters like droughts, heat waves and others that may strike their cities.

TRAILER AND MORE AFTER THE BREAK

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For those unfamiliar with Stronghold 2, it is the sequel to the castle-sim and siege-warfare RTS game Stronghold with new 3D graphics, “castle-life” campaigns, enhanced multiplayer capability and a new single player campaign.

Today, 2KGames released a patch updating Stronghold 2 to v1.4. It fixes various bugs, crashes, and tweaks the ballistae, while adding real-time shadows, bloom, anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing.

Patch v1.4 Notes:

• Various multiplayer gameplay optimizations
• Real-Time Shadows, Bloom, Anisotropic Filtering and Anti-aliasing implemented.
• Map transfer in multiplayer lobby implemented.
• Game Balancing - Fire ballistae no longer auto fire, and targets must be selected manually (does not apply to tower mounted ballistae)

Bug Fixes

1. -Fixed multiple troops pushing ladders off walls repeatedly.
2. -Fixed bug which allowed tower mounted siege equipment to be built whilst an enemy was in close proximity.
3. -Auto-scrolling chat in multiplayer game lobby now fixed.
4. -Fixed exploit where food could be sold repeatedly during periods of latency in multiplayer games.
5. Various other bug and crash fixes

For more information on Stronghold 2, check out our FileFront page and the official website. You can also get the patch by clicking here or on the badge below.