The Casual Gamers News Report 07.21.04

The Casual Gamers News Report 07.20.04

Burned out on gaming a bit so welcome to the even more mailed in edition of the Wednesday News Report.

NEWS

Pure Pinball FINALLY gets a distributor

Take Two becomes my personal saviors since they’ve decided to distribute a game that has seen nothing but monthly delays, Pure Pinball. If you’re not familiar with the game go back a month or two in these reports and I did a whole (now defunct) Hype Machine section on it. I started getting worried after every game I was covering saw delays.

To summarize, it’s a pinball game, for the Xbox, for $20. Live scoreboards, four tables and 30 objectives. $20! Get it when it comes out just because I said to. I want more pinball games.

Women Play Games Too?

The Gaming Initiative recently announced that the first Women’s Game Conference will be held in September in Austin, Texas. The conference will have industry leaders, developers, hardware manufacturers, and publishers speaking on their perspective of women in the gaming industry.

Hey, I’m all for women being into video games, as long as it’s after they’ve gotten into the kitchen and made me some food. I’m glad that they’re recognizing that women play video games to and ripping down the Boyz Only sign as long as it doesn’t lean towards more Barbie games. I remember playing a game in SOCOM where a woman got reamed for her gender then kicked ass. Even though I was on the receiving end off that ass whoopin, it was good to see her shut them up, christ you think that these guys would welcome a woman into the game, it’s likely as close as some of them are going to get to one.

More Smackdown vs Raw Details

I can’t remember if it’s been reported yet, but another bit of info in the likely very long and slow release of information on the next Smackdown games has come out. There will be another match type, Parking Lot Brawl which is exactly as it sounds, a match in the parking lot. Now you may ask yourself what’s the difference between this and a Hardcore match set in the parking lot? As far as I can tell right now”¦nothing. If they were going to have any match type from out of ECW: Anarchy Rules (which also had a parking lot brawl) than they should’ve chose the lava match and had the ring surrounded by lava. Toss your opponent out and he dies, nothing better.

Cheap Cheap Sweep

Psi-Ops (PS2) for $30 with free Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance at EBgames.com

THUG and Max Payne 2 $19.99 at Best Buy. Like with any game at Best Buy, you can also get $5 off any $19.99 game buy getting one of their gamer gift cards. So you could get these games for 14.99 using that. Just to keep in mind.

Since I can’t remember if I said it last week, but congrats to CheapyD from Cheapassgamer.com on his marriage.

Christian’s Crazy Game Releases
Disclaimer: Some of these dates might not be right. Or something. Yo’ momma.

July 21
Sudeki (XB)
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Madden’s huge. So Game Crazy is having a Madden tournament to match it’s size! A week long Madden tournament. Monday to Thursday is qualifying tournaments, with the finals on Friday. Then on Saturday, play for the honor of your favorite Game Crazy and maybe win a copy of Madden 2005 for the Xbox! Stop into your local Game Crazy for details, or to size up! Starting August 2nd!
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Christian: The big games are starting to roll in after the drought that follows E3. Last week it was NCAA, this week, ESPN tries to make a touchdown in the football market. People are going to buy it for that $20 price point. I’m planning on getting ESPN NHL Hockey 2K5 simply to have a hockey game. I used to play them back on the Genesis, but I never wanted to pay $50 for a new game. By the time they dropped, the new ones were out and I would have preferred them. So $20 is going to make me buy a game that I normally wouldn’t. It’s going to do that for ESPN NFL and NBA as well. I know what some of the other columnists are saying, but I think this is a good idea from Sega. They’re saying, “Look, we know we have the best sports games this year. But we know some are EA diehards to the end. That’s why we’re pricing at $20. Buy us both and see which one you like best. If you buy both Madden and ESPN it’s basically $35/game and that’s affordable for any gamer. Try us out. You may like us.” Quick wrap up: Sudeki will do pretty well based on the fact that’s it’s an RPG on the Xbox. You can count those on one hand that’s come into contact with a band saw. CatWoman I’m expecting to tank. When the gaming media doesn’t have high hopes for a movie tie-in like this, you know it’s probably going to suck.
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Matt: Catwoman is going to suck, both the movie and the game, don’t convince yourself otherwise. Crimson Tears is the sequel to an Xbox only game which is weird for a sequel to cross platforms like that, but it looks like it might be good. Sudeki is where my rental money is likely to be at this next week as there aren’t enough Xbox RPG’s. The big news is with ESPN dropping to $20 and how it will fare against Madden. Since I’m not a big football fan (get back to me when NHL 2K5 is out for $20) check Cory or Bryan Berg’s previous coverage for some good info on the price drop and it’s ramifications.

Pimps Up, Plugs Down

A friend came back into town and now I’m writing this at 1am. Wish I had time to put some more detail to this but Just read all of them.

I’ll try to make it up next week.