As a lifelong gamer with newfound time constraints, I’ve developed quite the affinity for mobile gaming on my iPhone, and most recently, my lovely iPad. Apple fanboy here, guilty as charged.

Gaming on my iPad consists almost exclusively of Flight Control HD, which offers fast paced, path drawing insanity, perfect for amping up those little lulls in the day. If it’s not that it’s Escape which is a very simple, incredibly satisfying puzzler. My iPhone still sees a lot of Plants vs. Zombies action because who doesn’t love tower defense and zombies? Also, Doodle Jump stays in the mix as I’ll never stop chasing that elusive higher score.

A few weeks ago I decided to embark on an epic quest to break into iPhone game development armed with little more than a passion for games. I’ve partnered up with one of Philly’s ever talented developers, Jake O’Brien, combining into a Voltron-of-sorts to one day make a living in the industry we both love so much.

Our first game revolves entirely around doing something geeks love… killing zombies. Just look at games like Left 4 Dead, or Call of Duty’s popular Nazi zombies mode.

Our game is simple, and revolves entirely around killing zombies with a boomerang. I will be periodically sharing our production experiences in making the game, both good and bad, here on Geekadelphia, and hope you enjoy the journey with me.

The first annual 3D Gaming Summit went down just last week. There is a convention for just about everything these days, even this. Joystiq’s Mike Schramm hosted a panel discussing the global 3D landscape, which “quickly spun off into a debate about whether 3D is really what we need as gamers.”

With Sony jumping the gun on 3D gaming tech (so much so that games can’t keep up with them), what makes the industry’s movers and shakers so sure that this is the next vista for gaming? More on this and a potentially practical application of 3D behind the cut. (more…)

Think again.

A few months ago, John Freeborn and I chatted about a possible Geekadelphia flash game. His idea? A new take on his classic Sampla flash game, this time using video game music. Check it out here. Sampla: The Video Game Music Quiz.

The premise is simple. Sampla plays tracks from popular (and some incredibly obscure) video games. You have a couple seconds to guess the game by clicking on the appropriate box art. Easy enough, no?

Try it out. Let’s see what you got. And be sure to submit your high score!

Geekadelphia Sampla: The Video Game Music Quiz
www.johnfreeborn.com/games/geek_sampla

Philadelphia’s own Doctor Octoroc, who some of you might know as Levi Buffum, creator of 8-bit music and art, has officially outdone himself. His latest, and possibly greatest project, is his 8 Bit Dr. Horrible.

I could say more, but really… you need to watch it.

Check out Act II and III, and download the soundtrack. And make sure you donate a little something, because seriously, this is fantastic.

Doctor Octoroc
www.doctoroctoroc.com

Earlier this month, Filamena Young and her partner David A. Hill Jr. debuted their new pen and paper table top game, Maschine Zeit, and have been showing it off all over the Philadelphia region.

Unfamiliar with Filamena and David’s projects? Joe interviewed them back in September. Read up, here.

The first presentation of the game took place at 7th Dimension Games earlier this month, but you can still get a peak at the new project this Friday at Showcase Comics out in Bryn Mawr.

The demo kicks off at 6pm. Go check it out. The duo also started a Kickstarter to handle preorders for the game and pay for the first print run. Check it out, and donate, here.

Maschine Zeit
http://bit.ly/9oTq7N

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

More than 140,000 people bought a flying, sparkling horse for $25 last week. Now that would be an incredible steal (a flying horse made of stars for $25?! Goodbye to commercial flights!) if it weren’t digital. That’s right, what I guess now to be nearly 200,000 folks — if not more — have bought WoW’s Celestial Steed. As Massively’s Seraphina Brennan points out, that’s half the cost of an expansion pack. We’re going to let that set in and take this discussion behind the cut. (more…)

Borderlands, an awesome Diablo-esque first person shooter from Gearbox, was easily one of my favorite games released last year. Excellent multiplayer, hilarious, memorable characters, and incredibly addictive loot collecting, made it one of the best titles of 2009.

Luckily for us gamers, Gearbox has continued to release DLC packs for the title. The first (and best in my opinion) of these expansions is currently available as Xbox Live’s Deal of the Week, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, for only 400MS Points, or $5.

If you don’t have this DLC pack, do get it for this great price. You won’t regret it.

[ via Joystiq ]

Now, I know we’ve touched base on something similar to this before, but this is just too good to pass up. Joystiq recently found a new studio named Killspace Studios via Supererogatory and after some digging found they have recently purchased the domains ApocalypseNowGame.com and WarIsNotAGame.net (just sitting there, waiting). 1UP drew the conclusion that the new studio comprised of former developers from studios such as Obsidian and Pandemic as well as a few others might be creating a game surrounding the award winning film, Apocalypse Now.

You know, that award winning Francis Coppola directed film that starred Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall. The same flick that many believe set the standard for cinematography as one of the greatest films of all time. Yeah, that one. Not to mention the studios founding statement by talent agency, Digital Development Management, says the 40-strong team’s specialty is “action” games for the “[Xbox] 360, PS3, Wii, PC, iPhone [and] Facebook”. Oh boy, this ought to be good.  (more…)

Like this, only a little smaller.

It’s been a long time since I went to a good ol’ fashioned LAN party. You know, the sort where you devour giant bags of Doritos for breakfast, lunch, and possibly dinner, while gaming until your eyes are dried up. Well, the IST Club at Penn State Brandywine are bringing the LAN party back, and want you to come join on April 17th.

Called the “80 Man Lan”, this annual event takes place every year at Penn State Brandywine in Media, PA. This year, the event will take place in the new Tomezsko Building (Room 203), from 10am to 11:30pm. It’s an open event, so you don’t have to be a Penn State student to participate.

The first 50 guests to show up will receive a complimentary 2GB flash drive, with that day’s games preloaded, and all attendees can enjoy free food, including pizza, soda, and other misc (Doritos!) snacks.

So bring your desktop, laptop, gaming system, television, monitor… whatever it is you’ll need to play. Expect epic games of Soldat, Counter Strike, Track Mania, Armagetron, Quake, Tribes, Savage, and Stronghold, as well as console games on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

There are prizes, but those prizes are a secret. Come out and find out.

80 Man Lan @ Penn State Brandywine
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
10am to 11:30pm (OMG)

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

We apologize (sort of) for the completely unrelated image, but that reference has been ignored for far too long. Anyway, Nintendo will be releasing an eReader game for the Nintendo DS called 100 Classic Books this summer, says Kotaku. Wait, that’s our inspiring piece of news for this week?

Here’s the catch: the game appears to have no ESRB rating and simply states, “This product does not require age verification.” That’s a bit odd. And here I thought all games required an ESRB rating to be released for retail sale.

Now, it’s easy to argue that this is barely a video game and more of an application, which may not need any sort of rating. While it does still provide influential content, writing 500+ words on a petty argument would be wasting our time. So, let’s keep it light(ish) this week and give a brief history of the ESRB and poke some fun at it, shall we? (more…)

Everyone needs to let out a bit of that pent up aggravation every once in a while. I get that. However, after finally getting around to watching the most recent Medal of Honor trailer, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy on a few levels. Now, before we get assaulted with hate mail and rabid comments: these words and opinions are 100 percent mine and not representative of Geekadelphia as a whole.

In recent years I’ve been turned off to just about every first-person shooter (FPS) out there aside from Team Fortress 2, the Left 4 Dead series and the recent free-to-play offerings Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes for essentially one reason: the attempts at extreme realism. More on why exactly this is bothersome behind the cut. (more…)

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

A strange question that inspires visions of our favorite cyberpunk novels and The Matrix, but in all honesty it might be one that we should be considering more sincerely. Our friends at Technabob recently posted the video of Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell’s presentation at DICE 2010. Let’s just say it was strange (just watch the video), but poignant in the sense that while you may not agree with his ideas, this may not be far off the mark of where we are headed in the next twenty years.

What Schell is talking about here is a future where instead of folks with marketing and advertising degrees telling us how to act, what to like and, most importantly, what to buy we’ll be directed by those with degrees in game design. His supporting evidence is largely the goal and reward based games of Facebook like Zynga’s Farmville and Mafia Wars and the achievement driven meta games that many consoles and PC games host today. Consider what motivates you Farmville addicts and achievement junkies as we take a look beyond the jump. (more…)