Enemy TerritoryThis is the second in a series of posts about the games I played and/or finished for fun for the first time in 2007. For comparisons' sake, see my 2006 list. The previous post in the series was about my Xbox 360 games.

I love video games. There, I said it. I was never very good at hiding that, was I? I love games, and I try to play them as often as I can. I will try any video game that at least one person tells me is worth playing. I'll play anything.

And I get angry (no exaggeration) with people who won't try games I push on them.

So who am I to report that in 2007, across the spectrum of computer games, cell phone games and games on the iPod, the number of games I played for fun was… six.

Six. Only three of them were computer games.

Where did I go wrong?

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zombiemassacre_mtvmultiplayer_exclusive.jpg"Zombie Massacre" is one step closer to becoming a reality.

The upcoming Wii game by little-known developer 1988 Games turned heads when infamous video game movie director Uwe Boll quickly secured the rights to make the movie version.

A few months ago, I spoke with 1988 Games President Benjamin Krotin about "Zombie Massacre," a hybrid of an on-rails, "House of the Dead"-type shooter and a "Crazy Taxi"-style driving game for the Wii. He seemed confident that it was only a matter of time before "Zombie Massacre" would find a publisher.

Now there will actually be a game to back up the announced film (set to begin shooting in 2009). Today, the game studio announced that the Irvine, California-based developer Papaya Studio ("Medal of Honor: Airborne," "Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey") will partner with 1988 Games to develop "Zombie Massacre." In the press release, Papaya Studio President Lin Shen said, "We are extraordinarily excited to be collaborating with 1988 Games on Zombie Massacre, and we look forward to applying our game development expertise as we strive to make an unforgettable game for the Nintendo Wii."

Meanwhile, AppAbove Games ("Armadillo Gold Rush," "Jail Trail") will help produce the mobile phone version.



Ten months in the making, "I Love Lucy" and "Honeymooners" games are on the way. And we have video proof.

Now, don't tell me you don't know these shows. Sure MTV isn't for the old, but have we no sense of culture or history?

Last week I spoke to Steve Bergenholtz, CEO of newly announced game development company Beanbag Studios, about how he's managing to turn two of the most famous shows in television history into video games — casual PC and cell phone games.

So you get the license, and then what?I asked this before proposing a bus-racing "Honeymooners" bus-racing game, mind you.

Bergenholtz's answers, his comments on prospects of the game appearing on the Wii and a video of "The Honeymooners Bowling" follow...
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castlevania.jpg It’s clear that mobile phone games aren’t just for the casual gamers anymore, with publishers translating more and more franchises to your cellular phone. But rather than port over a tinier (and usually crappier) version of an existing game, Order of Shadows is a completely new title in the Castlevania series exclusively for your mobile phone -- and it doesn’t suck.

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Crackberrybaby

Big ass mobile games publisher, Gameloft announced Monday plans to dive deeper into development of games for Blackberry smartphones. Since controlling a game with a keypad mostly sucks, it'll be cool to see how they use the trackball on the Blackberry Pearl and Blackberry 8800. It'll also be cool to hear about execs getting canned for playing Centipede in board meetings.

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Behold the iBoy, a functioning Apple iPod built from twigs and used Chinese newspapers.

Actually, the iBoy is a fusion of the original Nintendo Game Boy and iPod. It's a cool music player that pays homage to video gaming's roots. It's also a neat piece of homemade engineering.

You can build your very own iBoy by following its creators instructions here.

It's been an interesting week for handheld game units. Apple's announced that fifth-generation iPods will now be able to play Bejeweled. Sony's planning to bundle its PSP system with a game, 1-gigabyte memory stick, and a UMD movie. And Nintendo's rolling out two new flavors of DS Lite this week.

To butcher Prince with much gusto, color me pink and black, and hardly taken aback. But it's nice to know that amid the opening salvos of the second phase of the next-generation console wars, the little guys are fighting for their place in the sun, even if it is by packing in a crappy movie with a console, giving folks the same old stuff in new colors, or letting them play Pac-Man -- with a click wheel.

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Oh, the places I've taken my Nintendo DS...

I've played Animal Crossing in a funeral home. I took Advance Wars into the bathroom at Yankee Stadium. When a game company trapped me and some fellow writers on Alcatraz, I sought to tunnel out not with a homemade shiv and a rat-faced con named Pimples, but rather the DS and WarioWare.

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The DS comes with me everywhere and, like The Man in Black, I've been everywhere, man.

Now if I'd only taken pictures of me playing my DS, I could enter this contest and attempt to win free money, a trip on a Zero-G plane, a DS Lite (which I've sadly yet to upgrade to), and three games.

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The Seattle Times claims Microsoft's new handheld game-playing device is code-named Argo, after the ship in Greek mythology -- the one Jason, Orpheus, and Heracles piloted on their quest to find the golden fleece.

According to columnist Brier Dudley, Microsoft is developing a handheld media player that will compete not only with Apple's iPod, but also Sony's PSP and Nintendo's Game Boy DS. Argo will have WiFi and Internet capabilities, Dudley says, and should be on sale by Christmas.

(Keep in mind, though, that Dudley's report is pieced from "some research, reporting, and information from a source close to the project." )

Jason08argo

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The big draw in West Hall this afternoon was not the Nintendo Wii, nor the many fine PlayStation 3 games. It wasn't even the Tecmo girls who threw beachballs to the crowd hawking the next Dead or Alive title. Rather, it was the promoter of a Tetris-clone cell phone game being published by Gameloft: one Paris Hilton.

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