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Some people might say we here at MTV Multiplayer are bananas for continuing our silly, year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games.
And you know what? They’re right.
This month, we march on by listing some of our favorite primates in video games. As always, our judges will later decide their top three picks. And readers, we ask you to weigh in with your favorites as well as ones we’ve missed. Here we go…
When I heard about the politically-themed party game “Hail To The Chimp” last year, I was told it was for fans of “The Colbert Report.”
In other words, “Hail to the Chimp” is for me. By hiring writers from political comedy mainstays “The Daily Show” and The Onion to pen the game, Mike Wilson, CEO of the game’s publisher Gamecock Media, said, “We’re specifically going after people who follow politics and find it funny… Only ours is funnier.”
But is “Hail To The Chimp” funnier than the “The Colbert Report”? The satirical, late-night talk show features charismatic host Stephen Colbert and his deadpan comedy, wry wit and astute political observations. I watch it every night it’s on. And I laugh. A lot.
I took Wilson’s words as a challenge. So I conducted an experiment where I measured the laughs I had during the game and the popular TV show. And the “truthiness” may surprise you…
It’s time to let the cat out of the bag.
After our judges and readers have helped us choose the greatest horse, canine, bird, aquatic creature, and reptile/amphibian, this month they helped us decide which virtual feline is the best one of all video games.
Our regular animal judges — Capcom senior producer Morgan Gray, I Can Has Cheezburger co-founder Tofuburger and Kotaku news editor Leigh Alexander — are joined by Evan Narcisse, freelance game journalist for Crispy Gamer, Entertainment Weekly and the Washington Post.
And the winner is… Read more…
Even though Multiplayer editor Stephen Totilo tried to torture his own cat with “Wii Fit,” we here at MTV really do love our feline friends.
That’s why we’re continuing our year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games with the nominees for the greatest video game cat. The feline champion, decided at the end of the month by our panel of judges and readers, will go on to the final round among the other categories later this year.
And as always, we ask readers to write in their votes for their favorites as well as ones we’ve missed for consideration. First up…
Continuing our ridiculous super-serious year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games, we had our panel of judges decide the best of this month’s species — reptile and amphibians.
This time, our regular round of virtual animal lovers — Kotaku news editor Leigh Alexander, Capcom Senior Producer Morgan Gray and I Can Has Cheezburger co-founder Tofuburger — were joined by Joystiq writer Justin McElroy.
With bated breath, we give you the best reptile/amphibian in video games, according to our panel of judges… Read more…
This year, we here at MTV Multiplayer decided to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games.
First, we had readers and judges help us name the best horse, canine, aquatic creature and bird.
Now we’re moving on to our scalier, slimier friends — reptiles and amphibians… and we threw in dinosaurs for good measure.
From unforgettable frogs (Frogger) to turtle-like creatures (Bowser) and skateboarding dinosaurs (Radical Rex), we thought of a list of our favorite reptiles and amphibians.
Please write it your favorites (and any ones we missed), and later this month, our excellent panel of judges will choose the animal to represent the species at the end of the year. First up…
The Frogs in “Frogger”
The classic arcade game had the player guiding a frog from one end of the screen to the other while avoiding dangerous hazards across roads and rivers.
My cat and I can’t play “Wii Fit” together.
I learned this on Sunday while trying to take advantage of what I thought was the first-ever intentional human-pet co-operative mode programmed into a video game.
And I bled for my folly.
Video games are for the birds.
At least this month they are.
In our year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games, we listed every bird we could think of (and yes, we know we forgot the “Zelda” chickens, and we’re still not sure if Birdo is a bird).
Thankfully, our readers and judges helped us by picking their favorites.
Here’s our all-star panel of judges for this round:
Unlike last time where Ecco the Dolphin won almost unanimously, this time the votes got tangled up in a few ties. Read on to see which bird(s) ultimately won, which ones readers liked best and which judge actually chose the chickens from “Chicken Run” as their top choice… Read more…
I’m not sure what the animal cruelty laws are in Norway, but I guess they don’t include covering a horse in ping pong balls.
A few weeks ago, I saw a demo of “Age of Conan,” the new MMORPG from Funcom.
With the game due out next month, we’ve heard lots of things about it already: how difficult it is to adapt the controls for the Xbox 360 controller, and whether or not the game features nipples.
But there was one fact during the demo that caught my attention: in order to capture realistic movement for the in-game horse mounts, they motion-captured real horses.
I had to see it to believe it.
So I asked for proof, and Funcom gladly sent it to me. From Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen:
“In order to make [the horse movement] believable, we looked for someone who could help us to make it look as you would expect in a real-life situation, and we found this in a team of crazy British guys who lined up an entire stable and even a stadium for motion capture. As a thank you to the Brits, we naturally had to put the jolly old lance in the game when fighting mounted! I’m not sure if we are the first or only ones to do this, and it really doesn’t matter. What I do know is that riding a horse in ‘Conan’ looks mighty cool, and even realistic, so as far as we are concerned we reached our goals.”
Click onward to see more photos of the horse and rider in action, as well as the screenshots of the final results.
Some might think our year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games is for the birds.
You know what? We think so, too.
Since we’ve already chosen the best horse, canine and aquatic creature, this month we’re highlighting the animals of the air — birds.
From actual birds (Kazooie) to humanoid races of birds (think any MMO) to people birds (Larry) to licensed birds (think any penguin movie), we here at Multiplayer pulled together and named every bird we could think of to put in our nominees list.
At the end of the month, our brilliant panel of judges will decide which bird should represent the whole lot of avians at the end of the year against other species.
In the meantime, take a look at our list, pick your favorites and make suggestions. Here goes…
Avis Praeda (the 5th Colossus) in “Shadow of the Colossus”
This giant bird of prey goes after hero Wander by swooping down to attack him. The only way to kill the beast is for Wander to climb atop him and avoid getting thrown off (bird’ll do barrel rolls — fun).
There’s plenty of fish in the sea…
But of all the aquatic life in the virtual video game waters, we wondered which one of them was the absolute best. In our year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games, we nominated a list of animals and had judges decide on the top aquatic animal who would represent its species at the end of the year.
And who, pray tell, would be able to choose the best of best in the virtual undersea universe? Why, these fine folks of course:
We asked the judges to choose their top three picks and rank them. After tallying their votes, the winner came out to be… Ecco the Dolphin! There were no overlaps in choices save for Ecco, so second place went to Gyarados of the “Pokemon” universe and third was a ridiculous four-way tie between Wind Fish, Del Lago, Seaman and the 7th Colossus.
As for the Readers’ Choice… you guys chose Ecco the Dolphin — hands down. There were an overwhelming number of reader votes for Ecco, who evidently made an indelible impression on many a gamer (including Denis Dyack).
See what other choices made the judges’ list and which judge was the only one who didn’t choose Ecco as their number one pick…
Forget the landlubbers.
After our panel of judges and readers chose their favorite horse and canine, we decided to take our year-long search for the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games under the sea.
To qualify to be on the list of nominees for the Greatest Aquatic Animal in Video Games, we decided on any creatures that dwell in the water — whether it be dolphins, sharks, fish, whales and any other type of monster or boss we’ve run into during our gaming experiences (and note — turtles will come later on with reptiles).
However, we know we’ve forgotten some, and we encourage readers to tell us their favorites for consideration. At the end of the month, our judges panel will choose the winner, and we’ll also name readers’ top choice.
From protagonists (Ecco) to bosses (Del Lago) to common foes (Cheep-Cheeps), here are the nominees. Without further ado…
Bloopers in the “Mario Universe”
Bloopers are squid-like enemies who follow Mario around relentlessly in order to kill him. They’re typically found in underwater levels, but have been known to also fly through the air and even appear on dry land in some games.