"Margaritaville" Trademarked for Video Game Use
[Ruh Roh]

Another cull of patent and trademark filings turns up this gem: Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville," the soundtrack for public drunkenness and amphitheater-humping for more than two decades, has been trademarked for use in a video game.

You can see the filing here, but my bet is that this is for some mobile game. I can't imagine the song's appeal is strong enough in consoles' core demographic to justify a title there. But stranger things have been published.

Margaritaville Trademarked for Games [Superannuation via Joystiq]

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The Daily Hotness: Sin Damacy

The new Once Upon a Pixel went up and this one focused on Katamari Damacy. Don't f**k with the Prince of all Cosmos.

Are the Left 4 Dead survivors secretly infected, the new Monthly Musing topic is up, Jim reviewed Dragon Age: Origins, wear Bill's hat in Team Fortress 2, Jaroo streams classic cartoons and more happened on 11/03/09.

Destructoid Originals:
Why the Left 4 Dead survivors may secretly be infected
Podtoid 123 is tonight, ideally the last movie commentary
Monthly Musings: do the wrong thing
Once Upon a Pixel: Katamari Damacy
HAWPcast: A bunch of stories you can't relate to
Game SERIES Debate to the Death! MGS VS Half-Life
Ten Minute Taste: FIFA 10
Ten Minute Taste: Need for Speed: NITRO

Community:
Community blogs of 11/03/09
Forum of the day: Forza 3

Reviews:
Dragon Age: Origins

Contests:
The fearful winners of the FEARnet contest!
Contest: We're giving away six copies of Magnacarta 2!
Boycott Modern Warfare 2, play The Strike instead!

Events:
Rock Band happy hour in Los Angeles tomorrow night
Japanese Final Fantasy Tactics concert will have 61 songs

News:
Pre-order L4D2, wear Bill's hat in Team Fortress 2
Check out the tiers of the Xbox LIVE Rewards program
You can tip over Brahmin in Fallout 3 and other facts
Scamco strikes again: Ludicrous Vesperia DLC hits PSN
Get your Flo on: Diner Dash hits Xbox LIVE on November 18
Britain gets its first game addiction clinic
Rumor: Duke Nukem sidescroller to hit XBLA
Microsoft man mocks the idea of Facebook on a game system
Games on Demand update: BF 2 and FC 2
Modern Warfare 2 has a premium strategy guide, seriously
Rumortoid: Walmart to sell Xbox 360 w/ $100 card for $200
Marvel trademarks 'Iron Fist,' game, film could be in the works
Splinter Cell: Conviction getting a fancy pants CE
An avalanche of indie: 2010 IGF entries revealed
Persona 3 Portable: Swag spread is superb
Iwata: Wii situation cannot be defined as healthy
Golgoth working on Data East IP after Toki remake
Encleverment Experiment coming to XBLA 'soon'
Nintendo sort of interested in WiiWare demos ... maybe
Toro gets evicted, new app to replace Mainichi Issho
Jaroo.com is like Hulu for cartoons
Modern Warfare 2 is GameStop's most preordered game ever
Pre-order LittleBigPlanet PSP and dress up like a tank

Offbeat:
The Sims: The movie
Namco Zippos: Dig Dug, Xevious, Galaxian, and Pac-Man

Media:
Jurassic: The Hunted Wii footage delivers ... and how!
Tim Schafer walks us through the Brutal Legend DLC
Left 4 Dead 2 demo on Xbox Live for all Gold members
Dragon spotted in Magic: Tactics teaser trailer
Tomena Sanner is still crazy, even in English
A closer look at Scratch: The Ultimate DJ's turntable
Unused Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix intro
Ezio has friends in latest Assassin's Creed II trailer
Underworld dude talks Mirkwood in latest LOTRO trailer
No really, 'Mr Roboto' is playable in Band Hero, guys
30 Seconds to Mars declares 'war' on Dragon Age
Keyboard Cat lives on...kinda

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Sony's Mystery Science Theater-Like Interactive
TV Patent Puts You In The Movies [Sony]

Your PlayStation 3 may become a reasonably priced, earthbound Satellite of Love, if Sony Computer Entertainment America's patent application for a Mystery Science Theater 3000-like interactive television becomes a real-life product.

Sony's patent for a "Method and Apparatus For Real-Time Viewer Interaction With A Media Presentation" was filed back in April, but eagle-eyed patent watcher Siliconera spied it today. The patent essentially describes a system that would show viewers in avatar form, overlaying a "media presentation" such as a movie or TV show, letting them interact with on screen action.

That interaction as described in the patent includes behavior like throwing tomatoes at an actor's face—complete with face and target tracking—and shooting games, specifically shooting a spider off an actor's back. A third example shows on-screen avatars kicking an actor "in the behind."

Kind of like Microsoft's Xbox 360 game You're In The Movies, only appealing.

Those avatars are shown seated in the foreground of the screen, on top of existing media, not unlike the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. (The patent actually makes mention of MST3K in the background of the invention.)

If we're reading the patent right, it looks like it may apply to pre-existing media, like DVDs or streamed Netflix content, as well as video content that could be meta-tagged to identify interactive areas. In other words, facial recognition from video content could be targets, but specific games could also be designed around the system.

Furthermore, the patent data has advertising already in mind, with Nike logos and Coca-Cola cans offered as possible overlays on top of existing media.

The diagrams showcasing the invention show off an interface that fits with Sony's motion controller set up, which uses the PlayStation Eye and its built-in microphones in tandem with handheld controllers.

Of course, all this avatar ass-kicking and spider shootin' misses a key component of the MST3K experience—the laughs.

Method and Apparatus For Real-Time Viewer Interaction With A Media Presentation [USPTO via Siliconera]

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Gameloft sales up a dramatic 18% this year

Gameloft's mobile focus is keeping the company flush with cash in these tough times. The prolific publisher announced today that quarterly sales are up 15 percent over the third quarter last year and up 18 percent in year-to-date figures compared to the same period last year. Gameloft achieved $132 million in sales, with mobile devices accounting for 95 percent of revenue; the measly remainder was earned through consoles.

Gameloft tips its hat to the Apple App Store for the "huge success," as well as the company's Java and Brew games, with the expectation that sales and profitability will be up, up and away in 2009. Looking to the future, the company believes it will benefit from Apple, Nokia and Google's mobile devices. Gameloft comes from the proud tradition of releasing sales and profit reports separately, but the expectation is that profits will be positive, as well.

Gameloft sales up a dramatic 18% this year originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pumpkin Chop Makes Top 10 Indie Games List [Indie
Games]

Major Nelson's got the Xbox Live numbers up for the week of October 26th and who should be in third place on the Indie list but Pumpkin Chop.

I took a look at the virtual pumpkin carving sim not too long before Halloween and liked what I saw. So I'm glad to see its done well enough for itself to make the top 10 purchased Indie Games on Xbox Live.

In total, three Halloween-themed games made top slots on the Indie list. Besides Pumpkin Chop, Halloween HD made the cut at number eight and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 held the number two spot. With a name like that, I can understand how it did so well — I don't even need to play it.

Sadly, though, Halloween is over. So I won't expect to see Pumpkin Chop on anyone's top 10 'til next year at least. But if you've got a copy, I guess you could practice your design skills for next year's Kotaku Pumpkin Patch.

LIVE Activity for week of Oct. 26th [Major Nelson]

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Spector tried to obtain Deus Ex, planned a
successor

Famed designer Warren Spector wasn’t done with Deus Ex after he and his studio finished the follow-up Invisible War. In a recent interview with Variety, Spector said that he tried to acquire the rights to the IP from Eidos, but before that, he had plans for a game in the vein of Deus Ex ready to go and needing a publisher.

“There were and still are Deus Ex stories I would like to tell,” said Spector. “That story is not done for me. [For the sci-fi game] I sort of filed the serial numbers off.

“Deus Ex was very much a game of the millennium,” he continued.

It makes you feel fuzzy, right? Alas, it doesn’t seem likely that Spector will snatch Deus Ex 3 from Eidos, We’re also willing to guess -- just to throw it out there -- that Spector is too busy now to mess with whatever he had cooking at Junction Point a few years prior. Epic Mickey is happening.

[via The Escapist]

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KFC Madden NFL Box Unboxing and Review [Blorf]

On the heels of 2008's Guitar Hero: World Tour KFC Fully Loaded Box Meal, this year the purveyor of alleged poultry allegedly from the Bluegrass State has teamed up with EA Sports for the KFC Madden NFL Box.

The meal comes in four configurations, offers four "collector's cups" featuring NFLers rendered, interestingly, in their cartoony Madden-for-the-Wii forms. McWhertor, still nauseous from last year's unboxing of the Guitar Hero meal, assigned this to me on the pretense that as the sports writer, it was my responsibility.

I selected the five hot wings version over the two-piece grilled chicken (white or dark meat), the three chicken strips or the Twister (a wrap with lettuce). I went with the hot wings because I figured five pieces would allow me to burn 66 percent more calories reaching into the box than I would with three crispy strips, and that would be healthier than whatever I got from the Twister's vegetable matter.

The KFC Madden Box also comes in a standard $5 version and a $7 special edition that, while it doesn't include night vision goggles, is packed with enough pupil-dilating sodium you'll see in the dark on your own. I went with the $7 configuration, which is supposed to deliver an extra side item and a dessert.

But as you can see in the above unboxing, this product shipped in such an incomplete state I'm not sure any patch or update can fix it. Opening the box reveals just the five wings and the mashed potatoes and gravy - which I had declared as my extra side item. No crumbly biscuit doused in butter pheromones. No chitinous coleslaw in mayonnaise the color and consistency of watery ejaculate. In fact, since the hockey-puck brownie bites come in plastic and I poured the Diet Pepsi (oh hell yeah, I went with the diet), there are a grand total of two items here actually prepared by KFC employees, even though the loading time for this was an unacceptably slow seven minutes.

KFC #D705027, Springfield, Ore., you fail. Well, maybe you were thinking of my health by subtracting 360 needless calories. Either way, my review of this meal's components follows:

Hated (Secretly Loved):
Hot wings: These babies start slow, not really hitting you with the spice until midway through the third piece. Then it was like Cayenne Frankenstein farted in my face. Even after the meal my mouth had this residue on it that reminded me of the time I drunkenly kissed this chick who had that bee-sting toxin lip gloss to give her the Angelina Jolie pouty look. Both encounters were degrading, but this one diminished my self-esteem. Also, these are not boneless wings; I thought "wings" was an allegorical reference in lieu of "nuggets," a competitor's term, because these things were fried up to the point they no longer resembled the limbs of any known terrestrial animal. So I took a big mouthful of bone on the first attempt, and believe me, that's not a sentence I ever wanted to write. I didn't expect the amount of meat in this item to be nourishing; I did expect it to at least be filling. Rating: Anorexy.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy: The pudding-like body of potato flour and pureed notebook was at least free of lumps or standing water. It was thoroughly mixed with the viscous tailings of cooked chicken, whose bouquet hit artful notes of obesity, unemployment, and parole. If the chicken didn't fill me, this sure did, as not soon after polishing off the MP&G it felt like my large intestine was mixing up Redi-Crete, certain to turn my commode into a birdbath. Rating: Lunchlady.

Brownie Bites: These pucklike treats came packaged in a cellophane sleeve upside down on a piece of waxed cardboard, evocative of the conveyor belt that shat them out. In March. But ultimately, they were chocolatey and thus the highlight, comparatively speaking, of this dining experience. Rating: Hockey.

Despite the grandiose packaging and $7 pricetag, even if this order had been completely filled it would still be engineered for a 15 minute experience, tops. I expected that this calorie bomb would have left me doing the old Dad thing of unbuttoning my pants and laying on the couch to watch Jeopardy and blame my farts on the dog. But all it took was one tuberculose belch-cough and I was back to full strength.

If there was $1.95 worth of actual food in this meal I'd be astonished. That, coupled with the EA Sports sponsorship, must make this cross promotion an insanely profitable no-brainer for Yum! Brands, and all but guarantees a sequel in the coming year.

KFC Madden NFL Box was developed in a conference room by marketing geniuses and produced by KFC, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. Retails for $5, $7 if you want the extra side-item and brownie bites, assuming they remember to pack all the base items. Eaten until regretted.

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Deal watch: Game discounts at Amazon

Amazon is tempting us to dip into our holiday savings by discounting many new games. Numerous titles, like those seen in the image above, have been marked down by $10, while others -- including many Wii games -- have smaller discounts applied to them.

Listed after the break, you'll find the most significant deals, but you should also try perusing Amazon to find others. If you do, be sure to post them in the comments!

[Via GamerDeals.net]

Continue reading Deal watch: Game discounts at Amazon

Deal watch: Game discounts at Amazon originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumored Kameo 2 Killed To Make Room For Natal
Projects [Rare]

Microsoft owned developer Rare won't be returning to the world of Kameo any time soon, thanks to the studio's shift toward multiple Project Natal titles, according to unnamed sources cited by CVG. Microsoft is reported to have canceled a sequel.

CVG's source "close to the platform holder" says that sales of action-adventure eyesore Kameo: Elements of Power are largely to blame for the decision to stop development on a follow-up. According to NPD data, sales of the original Xbox 360 launch title totaled a little more than 300,000, less than half the sales of launch peer Perfect Dark Zero, so that decision may have been a wise one.

(On the bright side, Kameo: Elements of Power sales over the course of four years outperformed two other Rare titles, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.)

But it appears that Microsoft's first-party needs for Project Natal software is taking precedent. Rare is said to be hard at work on a handful of unannounced games for the controller, now under the watchful eye of Microsoft Game Studios creative director Peter Molyneux.

Kameo 2 canned by Microsoft [CVG]

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Why not to expect Capcom vs. SNK 2 on PSN, XBLA

In the words of Lord Cutler Beckett, it's just good business. Or, as Capcom's Seth Killian explained on the Capcom-Unity forums, releasing a downloadable version of Capcom vs. SNK 2 could be bad business. In a lengthy response to a call for the game on PSN, Killian gave several reasons for not re-releasing Capcom vs. SNK 2; all of them centered squarely on business. Among other things, the audience for the game is less sizable than that of Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, meaning a Capcom vs. SNK 2 port probably wouldn't be worth the money and resources Capcom would need to spend.

Killian noted that even if sales covered cost, placing developers on the project would mean removing them from others, like Super Street Fighter IV. Killian put it simply, saying, "When fan service becomes a black hole for time and money, that party gets ended pretty quick."

Another explanation, according to Killian, is that Capcom doesn't want to flood the market with fighting games. He suggested that most gamers only buy one or two fighting games a year -- thanks mainly to the amount of time it takes to master them. In other words, releasing too many games could dilute the sales of all of them. Besides, we all know that what Capcom should be working on is a new Darkstalkers.

[Via EventHubs]

Why not to expect Capcom vs. SNK 2 on PSN, XBLA originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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