Imagine that all of the myths and legends you've heard over the years were all true. Imagine that everything you thought was impossible is now a part of your reality. In Funcom's upcoming massive multiplayer online game, there are certainly more secrets to be uncovered. At the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, the creators revealed a few tantalizing details about The Secret World, which is set in modern times with real-life locations. We met with director and producer Ragnar Tornquist and lead designer Martin Bruusgaard...

Who Was There: Former Square Enix employees Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder share the process of game localization with the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo audience on the final day of the show.

What Did They Talk About: Smith and Reeder's presentation went over a laundry list of points they keep in mind as they tackle a localization project. Using Final Fantasy XII in most of their examples, they discussed what they do to create the best experience possible for English-speaking gamers.

One of their...

Ubisoft is bringing these heroes in a half-shell back in full force to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary, with games such as TMNT: Smash-Up, TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, and the recently announced TMNT: Arcade Attack for the Nintendo DS. Arcade Attack was being shown for the first time at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, and we got a chance to play through this side-scrolling beat-'em-up and face the menacing Hun.

Who's Making This Game: Ubisoft is in charge of developing and publishing TMNT: Arcade Attack.

What The Game Looks Like: Fans of the original TMNT comics will appreciate the direction that this game is going, because this original story is told through lightly animated black and white comic-book-style panels. Once you're in the game, the visuals will remind you of the new cartoon series, so there's a little something for everyone.

What There Is To Do: Like in the coin-op classics from the past, you play as any one of the four brothers--each with unique stats--and beat up members of the Purple Dragons stage by stage. There's two-player local wireless so you can play through the levels cooperatively with a friend. We were told that after playing through the story mode, you can unlock a survival mode. Continue Reading »

Who Was There: On the third and final day of the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, Andrew Mayer delivered a talk titled "The Future of Gaming: You Don't Know What You're Going to Get." A game-industry vet in the more casual and social-gaming spaces, Mayer currently serves as a user experience consultant for MediaShifter.

What He Talked About: Mayer's forward-looking session began with a look at the past and present, namely as it pertained to hardware. According to Mayer, hardware has traditionally driven innovation and evolution in the game industry, but it has reached a point where technical capabilities are no longer driving the market. Continue Reading »

SEATTLE--Yesterday at PAX 2009, a few folks from Harmonix got onstage and held a panel about the recently announced Rock Band Network, a service designed for up-and-coming bands to take their own music and turn it into playable songs in Rock Band 2. We've recently covered Rock Band Network in fairly thorough detail, first after taking a trip out to New York for a press event Harmonix held for journalists to get their first look at the service, and then later when we followed that up with an interview with Harmonix's vice president of product development, Greg LoPiccolo.

Most of what was covered in the panel was thus old news to us, but it still wound up being a pretty entertaining show. Much of that was thanks to the presence of the officially endorsed singer-songwriter of geeks everywhere, Jonathan Coulton. You may know Coulton as the artist behind "Still Alive," the song that closed out Portal and was later released as a free download in the original Rock Band. Coulton seemed like an odd addition to what was a mostly technically oriented discussion of the ins and outs of the service, especially when he took to the stage to play an acoustic rendition of his song "The Future Soon" roughly halfway into the panel for reasons unknown to the audience other than, hey, it's Jonathan Coulton. Continue Reading »