Final Fantasy Football: Running back - Zidane Tribal

Summer is ending and gridiron madness has taken hold of much of the nation as the National Football League's preseason completes its third week.

Many college pigskin seasons begin this week and the NFL will kickoff on Sept. 9 forcing many football fans to make their official fantasy football selections.

Although many gamers have championed their third national championship in NCAA 11 or fourth super bowl ring in Madden 11, what about the rest of the video game community?

The time is now for football fanatics and gaming gurus to collide. Behold: Final Fantasy Football.

The more than 20-year-old video game franchise provides more than enough characters and attributes to warrant an official fantasy football selection. There is even a couple Wiki "Uncyclopedia" entries on the topic, so you know it's legit.

Over the next week VGF will showcase the best picks for the ultimate Final Fantasy Football team taken primarily from the franchise's most recent endeavors. Who's your pick?


Running back
Zidane Tribal
Final Fantasy IX

This former bandit leader is known for his speed and agility. The pint-sized hero of Final Fantasy IX would make an ideal running back easily slipping through defenders. Although he may be the savior of Gaia, Zidane's quirky tale may prove an inconvenient trait and an easy target for defenders to make a quick tackle. Nevertheless, expect a wide variety of touchdown celebrations from the master of theatrics and member of the Tantalus Theater Troupe.

A web-based gaming diversion: Record Tripping

The state of web-based gaming seems to fluctuate from the creative to the overly monotonous.

Surprisingly enough, a majority of web-based games are played by middle-aged women likely because many resemble classic puzzle titles with approachable controls.

I stumbled on a unique web-based game and 2010 Webby award-winner for best game called Record Tripping by independent game designers and brothers John and Dan Bell.

Like all good web-based games, Record Tripping isn't hard to understand and doesn't take up much of your time. All you need is your mouse with a scroll wheel.

The basic premise circles around manipulating different objects around the principle of reversing, speeding-up and slowing down a "record." A brief tutorial shows players how easily each task is done. Holding down the left-button on the mouse will slow the record, scrolling up speeds-up in the record and scrolling down slows it down. That's it!

The audio for our record is a narration of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's 1895 children's tale "Alice in Wonderland." However, the player's manipulation of the audio is coupled with a different songs in a contemporary music selection for of the game's five levels. The sound of record scratches gives the player a sense of manipulating your own mixed person of songs by the Gorillaz, Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie while in the process of playing the game.

Each level presents a new challenge using the same principle and controls described in the tutorial, but in different ways. You'll manipulate the wind, a clock or a safe combination in the same way you scratch the game's tutorial vinyl record. The game's creative scenarios are reminiscent of game such as the time-altering and award-winning Braid for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The game's presentation is well polished to makes for an enjoyable (and free) experience.

Video game world record holder Billy Mitchell reclaims Donkey Kong crown

Last night I finally got a chance to view the 2007 documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" and I highly recommend the strangely compelling look at competitive realm of arcade gaming.

The film focuses on newcomer Steve Weibe and his attempt to break a world record in the arcade classic Donkey Kong set by the crafty arcade gaming expert Billy Mitchell, whom is portrayed as a bit of a villain in the film, in 1982.

Nevertheless, the film is fantastic and well-crafted.

However, earlier this year, Mitchell's 1,050,200-point world record was broken by New York resident and 35 year old Hank Chein.

Since most of the film surrounds the official ranking on gaming scorekeeper Twin Galaxies, I decided to check it out and I found that a new world champion was very recently crowned. Billy Mitchell again reclaimed the thrown as the world record holder for Donkey Kong with 1,062,800 points breaking Chein's record by a mere 1,100 points.

The record was set a matter of weeks ago on July 31.

It seems as though Billy Mitchell refuses to let his Kong crown go.

NPD Report spells a bad omen for the Sony PSP

Word is spanning across the web that recent findings from market research agency, The NPD Group, show the Xbox 360 has overtaken the Nintendo Wii in the number of units sold last month for the first time since 2007.

The Microsoft console outsold the Wii 443,500 units to 398,400 units and many are claiming the new slimline Xbox 360 may be the cause.

However, what's more alarming is how terribly the PlayStation Portable is selling.

The PSP ranked fifth in the hardware list with only 84,000 units sold. Next on the list is the hand held's younger, albeit beefier, brother the PlayStation 3 with 214,500 consoles sold in July.

The 130,500 unit difference is bad enough, but what's worse is Sony's hand held competitor, Nintendo DS, outsold the PSP by 314,400 units and was the second most sold console with 398,400 finding their way to gamer hands last month.

A pitiful display by the five-year-old hand held is awful news for Sony and is likely the result of its overpriced move with the PSP Go and continued popularity and success of the Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL.

The PSPGo's $250 price tag and wifi dependence has likely turned off gamers who are less accustomed to consoles without physical media - although the Apple iPad may be changing that philosophy. Older versions of the PSP retail cheaper, at $169.99, but that price point is near the Nintendo DSiXL for an older model of the console.

Nevertheless, it all comes down to games. Despite the success of "Metal Gear Sold: Peace Walker," the PSP game library is dwindling almost as quickly as the Nintendo Wii's. Like Nintendo, Sony has been forced to rely on first party titles to keep it afloat such as games from the "God of War" and "Little Big Planet" franchises.

It's time for the Sony PSP to reinvent itself in a different way than the overpriced PSP Go otherwise it will soon be PSP Gone.

Would you buy a $250 Nintendo 3DS? Details coming Sept. 29

The Nintendo announced and showcased the Nintendo 3DS, the gaming giant's next iteration into the hand held foray, at Nintendo's E3 2010 press conference (although it was more or less announced earlier this year) to a bonanza of hype.

Could the hype and excitement for the world's first non-glasses 3D entertainment device warrant a $250 price tag? One analyst thinks so.

Industry analyst Michael Pachter of financial and investment firm Wedbush Securities told CVG any price below $300 will allow Nintendo to quickly sell 10 million consoles. He said Nintendo may also be in a position to sell the 3D console's software for a higher price, from an average of $25 per title to $29, placing it more inline with Sony's PlayStation Portable.

Nintendo will make a formal announcement on Sept. 29 concerning a new product announcement, likely the launch date and price of the Nintendo 3DS according to Computerworld.

The question is, would you pay that much for the Nintendo 3DS?

I felt foolish when I forked out about $500 for my PS3, but we're looking at a price that is nearly equivalent to the $299 PS3 slim models. Granted, the overpriced PSP Go currently retails for $250 so Nintendo isn't that far off, but it seems like the $100 jump from the Nintendo DS's original price point and at least $60 more than the Nintendo DSi XL is a little too far.

What do you think?

Renaming the "working title" in video games

Every project needs a title even though creators often don't commit to an official title.

However, in the video game industry, often times the "working title" of a console or game often becomes the only title that sticks in the minds of gamers...or the largest retail chain in the world.

A Walmart advertisement in my local Sunday newspaper listed the new Microsoft "Project Natal" as an "revolutionary new way to play" this fall. I'm not sure when the advertisement was pieced together, but the world has known the new motion-controlled camera peripheral for the Xbox 360 as the Kinect for nearly a month now.

Luckily the retailer's website is aware of Microsoft's Kinect and it's $149.54 price tag.

Who could forget that the Nintendo Wii was first called the "Revolution" for several years before it receive its laughable name. Previously there was the Nintendo Ultra 64 (Nintendo 64) and the Nintendo 64DD ("DD" standing for disk drive) which never came to fruition.

Of course every "The Legend of Zelda" game always has a working title of "The Legend of Zelda."

At least Sony conveniently unnamed it's "motion controller" before dubbing it the "PlayStation Move" earlier this year.

Every game has some sort of working title during development since game producers are so eager to show off their software that they don't bother to take the time to name it. A simple google search for working titles in video games gives us "Heroes on the Move," "Silent Hill 8," "Vectorman," "The Shoot," and of course Sony's blockbuster holiday hit "Motion Fighter."

I'm waiting for game to have the "working title" of "working title," that's something that's easy to remember.

A lot of times we are caught using the "working title" of a game or console for so long we have it ingrained in our minds. Project Natal is a clear example of this which is why I still have a hard time calling it the Konact...Conict...Connect...Kinect.

Roger Ebert Admits He May Have Been Wrong About Video Games as Art

After an onslaught of 4,547 comments, film critic Roger Ebert conceded that he may have spoken too soon after he posted an entry on his blog video games can never be art.

Today, Ebert ate a few of his words in a new blog post where he sites the "don't knock it 'till you try it" defense as the error of his ways:

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.

Ebert said he has not played many video games aside from "Cosmology of Kyoto" (which I'm not aware of) and the 1993 classic "Myst."

I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games.

However, he does mention that Sony Computer Entertainment's "Shadow of the Colossus" does come close to art and even admits that video games do have the potential to become art amongst some fumbling of words:

What I was saying is that video games could not in principle be Art. That was a foolish position to take, particularly as it seemed to apply to the entire unseen future of games. This was pointed out to me maybe hundreds of times. How could I disagree? It is quite possible a game could someday be great Art.

Ebert does give a clear definition of art and notes that video games could not be considered art by technicality because video games are not created primarily for their beauty or emotional power: neither are many films, nor are many Academy Award winning films.


Nevertheless, it was very nice of Mr. Ebert to concede that he could not be an accurate judge of video games since he has not played many himself. It was a stupid comment to make in the first place with a world littered with opinionated and die-hard video game fans.

The fact still remains that video games can and should be considered an art form.