Last week, Square Enix launched a new teaser site. The original page only had a sketch of a village and a very conspicuous number “4″, but right now, a visit to the page will reveal three people — a boy wielding a sword and two girls riding atop a dragon. Quite intriguing, isn’t it?

But Square Enix’s attempt at creating mystery might be all for naught. Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump may have actually jumped the gun on the company. Scans of the magazine showed Square Enix’s new game Four Warriors of Light: Final Fantasy Gaiden for the DS. The game will be a turn based RPG that will arrive this fall in Japan. The game will revolve around a 14 year old boy who has been tasked by a king to rescue a princess from a witch.

The gameplay will involve controlling a four-man squad of various roleplay types. The magazine also revealed that as characters gain and equip various weapons and armor, their appearance will also change.

There are no reports yet of whether the game will be released outside Japan.

Without a doubt, Blizzard’s upcoming sequel Starcraft II is one of the most anticipated games in recent memory. The first Starcraft created such hardcore fan appreciation that up to this day — 11 years after it was released — thousands of people still play the game. That is unprecendented and anyone would be hardpressed to think of any game that gains this level of longevity.

One of the reasons for the fans’ continued support for Starcraft, aside from the deep, strategic gameplay is the fact that you can play it with your friends and mount frenetic multiplayer battles during LAN parties. Nothing beats having a heated game in a room with all the trash talking going on between two competitors.

But if Blizzard’s plan for Starcraft II does push through we won’t see those cool Starcraft LAN parties anymore. Blizzard confirmed what many are speculating about Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. The game will be launched for the PC at about the same time the newly revamped Battle.net online network service, which is at the last part of 2009. Unfortunately, the game will be releaed without any LAN multiplayer option.

Blizzard said that the decision to remove this popular option is a type piracy prevention mechanism and also a way to maintain quality assurance. Blizzard wants to direct players to Battle.net as the best, and now the only, option for multiplayer gaming for Starcraft II.

I’m not too sold on the whole anti-piracy thing idea. Why would long-time fans of the game suffer for what pirates are doing? By removing the LAN multiplayer option, Blizzard is effectively alienating a large majority of Starcraft fans who plan on playing the game through their local networks. LAN multiplayer will obviously not need an internet connection — why would Blizzard expect players to connect to the internet to play with people who are all in the same room? And what about the lag, which is obviously not going to be a problem with LAN multiplayer? I think Blizzard is making a big mistake with this move.

Here’s a pretty cool app for anyone designing pixel art while on the move.

The title gives a clue: this is a 32×32 pixel editor with a pretty intuitive interface that lets you map out thoughts in grayscale pretty quickly.

The idea is that you sketch out ideas on the move, then sync up and use more advanced software on your laptop or PC to do stuff such as color, animation and so on.

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Andy just posted something about the Walkman’s 30th anniversary and guess what that got me doing? I had to dig up some old boxes in an effort to find my old Walkman! Yes, I still have it! After spending a good part of an hour trying to locate it, I was more than ready to use it again after so many years. Ironically, I was not able to satisfy my urge – for the life of me, I could not find any cassette tapes! I guess they have been left behind at my parents’ house.

Anyhow, it got me reading up on more Walkman stories, and one of the most interesting that I ran across is Scott Campbell’s little experiment. Scott is a 13-year-old kid who has used an mp3 player most of his life. When challenged to swap his iPod for a Walkman for one week, he didn’t realize just how much of an adventure he was in for. Read the rest of this entry »

So which is it? How do you pluralize “mouse,” the peripheral that you attach to your computer? I cannot count the number of times that this argument has come up at the office. In a room full of English teachers, you can just imagine the kind of debate that happens. Anyhow, either form is acceptable – mouses or mice, whatever you wish to use. I prefer mice for no particular reason. Read the rest of this entry »

This one doesn’t need much of commentary. It made me laugh though. $25.

Happy 30th birthday Sony Walkman. You might’ve lost out a lot to the iPod but I’ll never forget your chunky cassette playing ’80s magic or your “can’t play the last track on a really full CD” Discman.

So, by way of small celebration here are ten images inspired by your greatness.

1. Hard-wired SonyEricsson Walkman phone. Neatness doesn’t come as standard

2. Great, let’s stick a huge replica of a Walkman phone on top of a metal stand because… well, because we can, OK?

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Post-it and video meet again. This time in a rather cool romantic video.

One of the games that I am eagerly looking forward to is Square Enix’s Blood of Bahamut, a multiplayer action RPG. This RPG actually has its roots in the Final Fantasy series. FF gamers know of the powerful summoned creatures in the game, with Bahamut being one of the toughest. In this game we will also see Gilgamesh, Shive and Ifrit. I’m betting that all of the FF summons will be here too.

To whet your appetite here’s a picture of Gilgamesh in all his awesome glory.

When I heard that Sony was going to remove PS2 backwards compatibility on future Playstation 3 units, I decided that I was going to track down a unit that still had the Emotion Engine installed on it. I still have some PS2 games that I want to play and I wanted the option to play it on the PS3. Even though software emulated backwards compatibility was also made available on PS3 units released a year ago, I felt that having the actual hardware on my PS3 was the way to go.

Sony’s decision to remove this feature may have been borne out of the desire to save a few more dollars on production costs but I always felt that the company actually lost more because backwards compatibility is a major come-on for established PS2 gamers with an extensive games library to jump on the PS3 bandwagon. But based on a recent patent that Sony Computer Entertainment filed in the US patent Office, Sony may have a way to put backwards compatibility on PS3s once again.

Sony has apparently found a way to translate the instructions from the Emotion Engine into data that can be referenced by the PS3. The figures above are schematics on how the technology will actually work.

So the question is, will we see this new technology in play as a firmware upgrade in the near future?

We’ve seen the origami desk lamp and Starcraft origami, now here’s something for your computer desktop.

Here we have origami-styled logos for Firefox, Twitter, Apple, Digg, Basecamp, Flickr, GMail, IE (broken, love it), iTunes, Mint, RSS, Opera and Skype, designed by Paddy Donnelly.

They can be downloaded in a variety of formats. Jump on to see them all:

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Many anime are set in real places with scenes drawn straight from photographs of actual streets, giving a more realistic feel to the anime. This practice, however, seems to have put the prefecture of Saitama in the spotlight. Riding on the success of the anime series “Lucky Star”, Saitama has drawn many tourists wanting to see the town where the characters of Lucky Star reside. Of course, with the airing of Lucky Star long over, one would expect tourism in the area to fall back down, but the residents of Saitama have found a way to draw anime fans (and their wallets) back into the area.

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Springfield Punx had a ‘Ghostbusters week’ last week. What is Sprinfield Punx?

The idea of doing fan art parodying some of my favorite characters and stars in such a fun and simple style got me hooked immediately. Some of these guys and gals have appeared on the Simpsons and I could just work from that, but most I had to do from scratch.

The results often are amazing and last week’s Ghostbusters week was very cool.

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From this Friday, 3rd July until 1st September, one of Central London’s art galleries is being transformed into a massive Monster Hunter gaming venue.

The Gathering Hall will be constructed at he former site of the prestigious Lazarides gallery in central London.

There’ll be three floors dedicated to the PSP game which launched in Britain last week, with comfy seating, free soft drinks, graffiti art, and space for the hundreds of gamers expected to turn up over the next two months.

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Following on from Martin Wilson’s 35mm sequential film art and the incredible Rubik’s Cube stop frame animation, here’s Louise Naunton Morgan’s amazingly painstaking work that makes my brain boggle.

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Take a look at the amazing diagram below. It’s a 333-strong selection of the world’s top web sites portrayed on the Tokyo subway map layout.

Apparently this is the fourth version of the map though I hadn’t seen it before – wish I had.

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