Eric Sheline

Apple has announced their SDK (and shown it running Spore), making the iPhone and iPod Touch the biggest competitors to the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. I should have posted this back when I thought of it instead of just now, but just wait and see, the iPhone/iPod Touch will be huge devices for gaming. Yes, they’ll never be great devices for games like Super Mario, but for games like Picross and Advance Wars, they’re perfect. [gizmodo]

It happens every holiday season: the game release floodgates are now fully open. Top-tier titles are being released way too fast for one gamer to buy and play them all! I’ll quickly run through the games I’m playing now, and my upcoming ranking of which games I’m playing first.

I’m enjoying these now:
- Halo 3 [360]
- Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance [PC]
- Resident Evil 4 [Wii] – must.. unlock… handcannon!

I want to play these ASAP:
- Call of Duty 4 [360]
- Crysis [PC]
- Super Mario Galaxy [Wii]
- Mass Effect [360]
- Zelda: Phantom Hourglass [DS]
- Bioshock [360]

All of those titles are among the best of their kind! I wish some were released last summer, I do not have time to play them all right now. It also seems like too many of those listed are shooter-type games, and the primary developer left making great non-shooter games is Nintendo.

The Xbox 360 in particular has been overrun by shooters. Of course there are non-shooter games I want to play like Beautiful Katamari and Ace Combat 6, but one of those is a 3-year old game idea and the other is a sequel in a long running series. I’d love to see some fresh, original, non-shooter development for the console to give it more variety!

[images courtesy metacritic]

Well, 3 days after I reported the Xbox 360 hardware error – otherwise known as a Red Ring of Death (“RROD”), I received Microsoft’s pre-paid return packaging (also known as the “coffin” – look at the picture). I sent it off the next day, and since I’m in the same state as the repair facility, it arrived the following day.

In all honesty, it doesn’t bother me too much to have it gone. I like the 360, but I mostly just use it to play single player, with the occasional online match. My 360 held out just long enough for me to finish Halo 3, which is just fine with me! (Microsoft better have a replacement to me by the time Mass Effect comes out though…)

Or in other words, an Xbox 360 “Red Ring of Death” (hence, RRoD) . This particular 360 is very close to a launch model, with the production date in December 2005, so I guess I should have been expecting a problem, but it’s worked great so far!

Just yesterday, I was playing Halo 3 and finishing up a blog post about the game and it was working fine. The console was shut down after playing Halo for a couple hours, then I turned it back on to watch a DVD – and got the RRoD. Microsoft has been kind enough to extend the warranty for RRoD’s to three years, so hopefully I’ll be able to use that to get a working Xbox. I’ll log everything I do to get a replacement, and you can track it all through this blog.

UPDATE 5PM: Talked to “Mark” on the phone, I should receive the return mailer within the week, and then it will take weeks (!!) to get a replacement/repaired Xbox. Mark claims “it usually takes less time than that” – which I hope is true because 4+ weeks is a long time for a replacement!

My MAME Ultra-Bartop cabinet is complete! I still have not decided on a final name for it, but “ultra bartop” is definitely descriptive – it has a nice big 19-inch LCD and full 2-player controls with a trackball!

Well, maybe not fully complete as I do still need a marquee, but all the computer guts are inside and it’s set up on the table! I have a feeling playing games may delay the marquee…