Normally my music always lives in the Music page, but this is special, so it’s front page-worthy.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll notice I’ve been in a very Sega mood recently – Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, Shining Soul, Sonic and the Secret Rings and more have all been covered in some depth, and there’s still more to come. The simple fact is they’ve made the greatest games of all time and I love them.

I also love the music, so I arranged and performed a very special medley of some of the best music to have come out of Sega in the past twenty years or so. You’re getting five minutes of quality piano Sega music here, too – Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, NiGHTS and OutRun all make appearances.

You can download the medley here.

With so much great Sega music to mine I fully intend to perform more medleys in the future, hopefully including tunes from Shining Force, Panzer Dragoon and maybe that one with the blue hedgehog in it!

Diaries are back!

Yep, I did a backup of my diaries before the site went down so now you can enjoy Landgraff United’s cup run, James’s adventures in Eville and the dusty diaries of Farmer James in Forget-Me-Not Valley. Just head over to the Diaries page and enjoy!

Bringing you the very best of intelligent gaming articles, the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers unites game writers from all over the world in a rampant celebration of those who play games. Last month’s first edition was a huge success, and this month’s is even bigger. Well, let’s get on with the show!

I’ve also chosen today to launch the first episode of my podcast, which today looks at the Carnival and the European PlayStation 3 launch on Friday. Click to download here!

JC Barnett posted one of my favourite articles this month, an intelligent and insightful look into how video games are developed, and whether we can learn from other media. Do as the Hollywodians also contains my favourite kind of chart: flow chart. Top marks!

On similarly smart grounds, TherapyDoc writes on a topic we probably all think about: addiction. Parts of “Paying attention while under the influence: Internet & Spider Solitaire Addictions” sound very familiar to me – when playing games I can only communicate with eyeblinks.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed!

With World of Warcraft still claiming the time of so many around the world, Praveen from My Simple Trading System alerts us to a shocking unseen aspect of WoW: Video Game Sweat Shops.

Kristoffer Belau looks back on some hard times in his life, and specifically the 5 most difficult games ever, including a few surprises – no Ikaruga? Perhaps he’s just got awesome reactions.

Next up is that warmongering Akusai with a call to arms to all responsible game players out there: Our World is in Peril. There is a very real evil out there, and Akusai is joining the charge against it.

Our next entrant is Gazz from My Opinion on Stuff – at the time of writing the website seems to be down for me, but I’ll post the link and hopefully it’ll work a little later.

I thought I’d take a leaf out of our next two bloggers’ books and submit multiple articles myself this month. The first is Truly Underrated Games: Shining Soul II, examining one of my favourite action RPGs. The second is Sega’s DS Surprise: Best-Case Scenario, outlining my hopes for Sega’s “totally surprising” announcement for Nintendo DS this year.

Make a blogger’s day – leave a nice comment on their article!

Last month I wrote this in the style of an awards show, and by far the most popular award was the Inaugural Jordan Bieber Award for Most Articles Submitted, won by Jordan Bieber. He was a worthy winner, and this time around sought to retain his crown by submitting this crop of articles:

Nintendo Finds Archives From Mid-90’s, Announces Surprise VC Lineup

The Real Purpose of the New Everyone Votes Wii Channel Revealed!

Gamecube Still the Champ for Zelda Nuts

Nintendo Nitpicker: Wii’s 3 incompatible controllers

Wii Wiish List: The Super Mario Channel

El Legendo de Smelda: Macarena of Time

It was a great effort with six very varied Nintendo articles looking at fangames, “Wiishes” and hidden agendas. However, sadly his crown has slipped from its perch and onto the head of a new champion!

Save $5 a Month on GameFly.com – BrightSpot.tv Review

Three Reasons I Hate Crackdown

Contest: Win Uno, Robotron, and a Month Subscription to GameznFlix

GRAW 2 Demos Reviewed

Gears of War Multiplayer Map Pack Mini Review

My Full Xbox Live Friends List Dilemma

Tetris Evolved Coming

Heavy Weapon Review

With a mighty and unbeaten eight articles submitted, it gives me great pleasure to hand over the second Jordan Bieber Award for Most Articles Submitted to Jigsaw HC! I even made you a special image you can use on your site to indicate you won the most prestigious award in the world. Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone who submitted articles – we’ve got a whopping twenty-two posts here, easily beating last month’s pretty impressive total. For a fledgling carnival I think things are really taking off!

Next month’s carnival will be hosted by my brother Phil Newton over at Sodaware:: Adventures in Shareware. It’s another open-mic session so keep on sending all your articles and thoughts in from the Carnival homepage.

Just a quick note – if your comments or trackbacks aren’t appearing that’s because my spam intake has gone through the roof. I checked in on the carnival this morning to find almost 600 spam comments waiting for moderation! There could have been a few genuine comments in there, so I apologise if it doesn’t show.

I hope you enjoy this month’s carnival, and be sure to leave a comment on someone’s work – they’re sure to appreciate it!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed to be kept in touch with regular updates!

Place a trackback or make a post about this carnival to share your readers with other bloggers, and receive traffic in return!

Edit: 3rd April 2007

Oops! I guess I was wrong this time – now I see why I don’t try to keep up with video game news on here! I’ve closed comments because there’s nowt more that can be said, really – I got it wrong, but the upshot is that there is a brand new NiGHTS game coming out and it’s coming soon. Rejoice!

Even if this is your first time on the Internet and you arrived here after typing random words into Google, it’s certain you will have found a rumour or some form of “evidence” relating to a NiGHTS sequel on Wii.

I don’t normally comment on rumour but when it applies to my favourite game of all time I feel I should say something. That something is this: NiGHTS 2 is not coming out. Not on Wii, not on DS, not even on the Dreamcast 2. It’s simple.

The case for the prosecution.

The biggest argument in favour of NiGHTS 2 coming to the Wii is the cancelled development of “Air NiGHTS” (sometimes “Aero NiGHTS”). Upgrades were planned for the Saturn’s analogue pad, one of which was to be a tilt sensor, and Sonic Team toyed with it for a while to control NiGHTS. Development also apparently began on a Dreamcast Air NiGHTS, but that fell through too.

When Nintendo announced the Wii controller, everyone assumed NiGHTS was a perfect fit. But why? It implies to me that a NiGHTS sequel was impractical or impossible before this pad came along, which is ridiculous – the Saturn’s analogue pad was developed for NiGHTS in mind, as was the tilt sensor for Air NiGHTS. It’s just wishful thinking on most people’s part, but the simple fact is that a NiGHTS sequel could have appeared on any console before the Wii, regardless of its controller.

The latest speculation comes from the Official Nintendo Magazine, who printed this image as their teaser for next month’s issue:

The caption reads: “World Exclusive! Step back in time as a classic game makes a long overdue return! Only in next month’s Official Nintendo Magazine!”

The case for the defence.

So instantly the NiGHTS rumour mill goes into overload because if you transpose a picture of NiGHTS onto it, it amazingly looks like NiGHTS! Wow! That’s the evidence. Let’s bear three things in mind here:

1. It doesn’t specify a sequel – it’s not necessarily NiGHTS 2.
2. It doesn’t mention a console – it’s not necessarily on Wii.
3. NiGHTS fans are among the most gullible in the world.

Yuji Naka always stated that he didn’t want to make a sequel to NiGHTS, but seeing as he left Sonic Team to form Prope last year it now has absolutely nothing to do with him. If Sega and Sonic Team want to make a NiGHTS sequel, they can just go ahead and do it. But will they?

When NiGHTS was released in 1996, it was the most revolutionary title on the Saturn, got some of the highest review scores and was critically acclaimed across the board. Unfortunately it sold quite poorly, and with Sega going for high-sales bankers these days instead of the more artistic output they released on their own machines I doubt they’d actually take that much of a risk on it.

Until I hold a legitimate, Sega-produced copy of NiGHTS 2 I’ll do my best to ignore the rumours, no matter how compelling.

Want to know more about NiGHTS? Read my in-depth article here!

I’m listening to Send One Your Love [Vocal Version] by Stevie Wonder, from Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants Disc 2.

Sonic Team’s 1998 3D firefighting game Burning Rangers often plays second-fiddle to their masterpiece NiGHTS into Dreams in terms of press coverage of the Saturn’s contribution to the world of gaming. However, it is still a game of considerable quality and innovation.

One of the great things about the Sonic Team games of the period was that their originality came right from the core; each game had a central premise which sought to do something different. I’m not going to go into whether Sonic Team still have these original concepts in them, but there can be no doubt they did in the Saturn’s time.

Strong Foundations

How refreshing – a game where you save people instead of killing them! This concept remains fresh to this day – the closest we really get now is stealth games where stunning/avoiding people is encouraged, but to have a game where the emphasis is on helping people is quite different.

For a game to have such a completely different ethos and attitude towards (admittedly virtual) life is highly refreshing – you are rewarded for saving a certain number of people in a level by increased scores, but the real rewards are emotional; characters you save send you email afterwards (via the in-game system; not real email, unfortunately) to express their thanks and update you with news on their lives. This sort of in-game communication brings an extra dimension to the game and allows character development without cutscenes or dialogue. In a way it’s more realistic this way, because they are directly addressing you, the player, not your character. Sonic Team sort of adapted the format for their Chao Daycare system in Sonic Adventure, whereby your Chao would send you real emails to tell you how they’re getting on. More games need this feature.

Depth Perceptions

There’s somewhere in the region of 100 characters to rescue, but only four levels.

“How is that possible?”

Well, it’s very simple – the levels change every time you play. Whereas NiGHTS had the amazing music-remix feature, Burning Rangers actually remixes the level designs every time, placing new corridors, rooms and survivors for each new play. It really is a very advanced system. If you complete a level and missed a number of survivors, or one of the “special” characters – Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima and artist Ami Shibata are all in there – you can write down the code displayed at the end and play again. Saving characters multiple times results in more email and, sometimes, more goodies – some characters give you extra options like the sound test, Ami Shibata gives you art and others give you codes to play as extra characters. Burning Rangers has replay value in spades. Sonic Team later reused this system for Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II.

No Sound of Music

There is no music in the levels, only sound effects and voices. This is because the game uses a voice navigation system to guide the player around levels, as well as update them about what other members of the team are doing. The other characters converse with each other over this system too, which often reveals a little about their relationships without interrupting the gameflow. Why should gameplay have to stop for character development?

The bosses are enormous. One of them is like a cross between Gulpo from NiGHTS and Chaos 4 from Sonic Adventure. The last one is very much like Phantasy Star Online’s Dark Falz. It’s interesting to see how these ideas started out on the Saturn before Sonic Team were able to refine them in their Dreamcast games.

It’s clear to me that Burning Rangers actually occupies a very important place in Sonic Team’s history. I always thought it didn’t quite fit in with the rest of their products, probably partly because it came out too close to the Saturn’s death to make any difference, and also it shows signs of having been rushed – another few months would have tightened it up still further, and a Dreamcast sequel would have been absolutely perfect.

Cooperative gaming and communication is becoming more popular and plausible all the time – wouldn’t it be great to see a Burning Rangers 2 on Xbox 360, with players able to communicate as part of a team to rescue survivors, negotiate tricky corridors and escape unharmed? Leave your thoughts in a comment!

A Word from James:

The site’s different look is totally accidental – I ran a WordPress upgrade and deleted my old pages, so I’m afraid the Virtual Tour is lost in the sands of time! I hope to find a way to resurrect it soon, and the same goes for the Game Diaries. Sorry for this temporary loss of content!

Sonic’s Wii debut was built up by some to be his last chance; after the disappointment of his first next-gen appearance, there seems to be a lot riding on Sonic and the Secret Rings to start salvaging his reputation. How does it do?

At first the automatic acceleration feels very strange indeed. You can brake with 1 and jump with 2, but Sonic’s pretty determined to keep moving, which is absolutely great. Due to the fairly strict route the game keeps you on, most of your control is steering to avoid hazards, which means there’s much less falling off levels that’s blighted him since Sonic Adventure. In fact, there’s even automatic jumping in some points to make sure you get from A to B safely.

Removing some of the game’s interactivity might seem like a step backwards, but I don’t think Sonic’s ever really been about freedom of movement; in terms of controls, there should be as few obstacles as possible between him and top speed.

It doesn’t take long to get used to though, and really starts to make sense when the levels become more complicated – it moves so quickly that there’s simply no time to play it like a traditional 3D Sonic game, so it becomes a test of reactions and skills rather than manoeuvring Sonic into place. That said, there are a few times when backtracking to hit that last enemy becomes very tiring.

Sonic and the Secret Rings also does much to prove the Wii’s graphical power: the levels are vivid and densely constructed, with detailed models and textures throughout. It also moves incredibly quickly, even when it’s throwing around smoke, lighting, blur effects and an enormous draw distance.

Structure

The game’s level progression reminds me of Billy Hatcher for some reason: within each world (or Zone, I suppose) there are numerous challenges, ranging from races to ring collecting, and your prowess in each defines your progress. When you complete a mission, another one opens up, and by repeating this you open up other worlds.

The missions are very varied. So far my favourites are the “Hands Off!” challenges, where you have to finish with no rings, and the “Rampage” missions, where you defeat a set number of enemies, ranging from a single hard-to-reach robot to 40 resurrected thieves. They’re mostly shorter than the standard levels, and benefit from some very tight and clever design. Even though “don’t kill enemies!” sounds like a rubbish idea for a Sonic level, it gives the game a puzzle kind of element that gives the gameplay some needed expansion. In a game where the running is done for you, these levels let you slow down and use some fine skills to succeed.

Each mission cleared gives you experience points, a genuine first for a Sonic game. When you’ve got enough experience your stats will increase and you learn new skills – these can be anything from increased acceleration to longer homing attacks and Soul Gauge recovery. Returning to early levels let you show off your increased skills, both as a player and with these equipped skills, making it easier to achieve higher scores and unlock more goodies.

These goodies are contained in the game’s brilliantly-named “Special Book“, and can be anything from the history of Sonic to developer artwork, music, special ranks and more. These sequential revelations help to spur you on to discover more of the game.

Final thoughts

I was really excited about Sonic and the Secret Rings; although I didn’t subscribe to the belief it was his last roll of the dice, I did know it was an important game to Sonic fans and casual gamers, and for Sega to make probably their most risky Sonic game for some time was a brave move that could easily have backfired.

Sonic and the Secret Rings injects the thrill back into Sonic with levels that flow well and sections encourage high speeds. The new skill system makes challenging cleared levels worthwhile, and the Special Book and experience points are worthy rewards. With the exception of the difficulty of backtracking, the camera and controls both work seamlessly, feeling responsive and never intrusive.

Overall this is as close to the Sonic game I wanted as I think is realistic. Although a little more in the happiness department would have gone down well – more tunes instead of rap-rock, more blue skies and more colour – this is a superb and addictive Sonic game that is a massive amount of fun to play.

For the past few days, Sega representatives have been claiming they’re on the brink  of revealing a huge secret – see one of many articles here. The actual quote is a title that will “surprise absolutely everyone.” The last time Sega made this promise everyone expected Shenmue III, and we got the Matrix Online. As a lifelong Sega fan, I keep a few pinches of salt on me at all times. However, they did say they were placing much more emphasis on DS development, which leads me onto today’s article.

DS: The Key to Sega’s Dream

So far quite a few DS games have included some form of online play, but often it’s wasted: I want a Harvest Moon with an online marketplace, not a way to compare farm scores with my friends. I want online leagues and extra content. Animal Crossing: Wild World is the only game to get close to 100%, but others are disappointing.

On Wednesday I wrote about Shining Soul II, an action RPG for the GameBoy Advance that’s given me many hours of good fun, and left a fairly crude teaser to tempt you into reading today’s update. The one thing that could propel Shining Soul, Sega and the DS into unbelievable levels of greatness is simple.

Meaningful Online Play.

A lot like the original Animal Crossing, Shining Soul II feels like an online game with the online bits stripped out. Bubbles let you tell your teammates when your batteries are dying, or if you’re going back to town, but surely you could just tell them yourself. If your communication skills stretch to “let’s play Shining Soul II together” I’m sure you can manage “oh dear, a red light”.

The vast amount of items and weapons is one of the game’s strengths, but you’d need a pretty large and committed pool of friends to make the trading worthwhile for everyone. It’s a shame that some aspects of the game are limited by the number of friends you have.

Pokémon games have been like this for a long time of course, and they seem to work fine. I think that’s partly down to the parent-annoying dual cartridge situation – rather than have loads of stupidly rare Pokémon on one cartridge, they’re split across two, increasing your chances of finding them (as long as you have a kind friend, of course). The simple online functions of the new Pokémon Diamond and Pearl – especially the potentially life-saving Trading Board, which lets you specify trades and wait for others to get back to you – lend an extra dimension to gameplay that never really felt restricted anyway.

Make My Online Roleplaying Game

I was originally going to petition for Shining Soul 3 to be a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, but that’s at odds with the whole point of the DS: handhelds’ greatest strengths are their friendliness and that “dip-in” quality. It’s not really possible to dip into a two-hour dungeon siege, and besides, I think WiFi Connection is set up differently, meaning the whole “persistent world” idea is out of the window.

What I propose is a handheld action RPG featuring three identifiable online elements:

1. Competitive play

So far my experience with online RPGs on DS stretches to a single match on Lost Magic: my opponent was chosen randomly and, by the looks of his cohort and magic-drawing skills, was much better than me. I think I lasted about thirty seconds.

Not all games involving character development are suited to player versus player action, but there’s a lot of potential. A tiered structure that matches players against similarly-skilled opponents would cater nicely for the quick play crowd, and you could even introduce bets or prizes and rewards for winning streaks.

2. Co-operative play

Handling this on a handheld would be very tricky. Up until now most WFC games have picked your opponents for you, unless you have added a friend’s code, but this kind of behind-the-scenes grouping defeats the whole spirit of co-operative play.

I think players would log into a centralised lobby – without communication of course – which would display which characters were present, their stats and perhaps a notice about what kind of play they were interested in. Tapping their name would send them an invitation, and after they responded you could group together and choose a level. As long as the process is as streamlined as other WFC games, I think it would actually be very helpful, and could certainly be done without any exchange of personal information, which Nintendo would dictate, of course.

In terms of gameplay it would be much more problematic to organise a party without being able to talk to each other. A QWERTY onscreen keyboard is too intrusive to work, but perhaps a combination of short-text communication as in Sega’s Phantasy Star Online and drawn signals would work. You could even use gestures to indicate your plans – a square for “going back to the castle”, a zig-zag for “I have to leave now” or something similar.

The actual gameplay itself would obviously be very similar to Shining Soul II, but the online levels would take the form of short quests, probably twenty to thirty minutes in length and graded in terms of difficulty. Unfortunately I guess it wouldn’t be possible to add new quests for download, but then most of my PSO play was on the same four levels on four different difficulty levels, so perhaps it’s not so bad.

3. Community play

This is the real crux of online play, and why I wrote my earlier post “How Nintendo got online wrong“. The whole idea of playing a game with other people is to interact with them – give them items, watch their back, share a joke and so on. Without any communication, online gaming is simply offline gaming with better intelligence.

The DS setup would naturally be much more conducive to online play with friends or clan members – set up a website or email list where you can share friend codes and when you’ll be online and it’s as easy as that. Sega could even add voice chat with friends whilst in the lobby, or more in-depth communication options when questing with friends.

The Game Waiting

Of course, the worst part of all this speculation is that it doesn’t have anything to do with the production of Shining Soul III, be it an online DS game or not!  However, I wanted to write about a game I’d love that would be a genuine surprise, and also not get too worked up about how NiGHTS 2 might work on Wii or how amazing Shenmue III would look on Xbox 360.

There’s no word yet on when Sega will announce this surprising game, but apparently it’ll be released this year. It must already be pretty far into development in that case.

Until it’s announced, I think I’ll work my archer up to level 100. Let’s not forget PSO too… in fact, wouldn’t a PSO: DS be great too? No, that’s enough for one day!

 I’m listening to Never Die, from Patmore Demo by Christian Bell-Young.

Shining Soul on GBA didn’t do too well. The most hardcore Shining fans disliked its real-time gameplay when compared to its turns-based roots, and the general games-buying public tended to stay away from it too. However, my experience with Shining Soul II has been nothing but positive.

Streamlined controls

As a fast-paced action RPG on a handheld, the control system has to be absolutely clear, yet versatile enough to support different situations, and SSII gets it just right.

Fast food menus

The L menu holds weapons; the R menu items. Tapping the shoulder button opens the menu and scrolls through, and B uses the item (weapons are equipped automatically). In multiplayer, holding B throws the selected item, letting you heal your teammates.

Pressing A unleashes a standard attack, and holding it charges up a more powerful attack. With higher levels and better weapons come stronger attacks, but they take longer to charge. It’s actually very well-balanced.

Huge selection of items

I was expecting there to be a shortage of useful weapons, items and armour with this being a handheld RPG, but the range is absolutely vast.

• Multiple weapons. The brawler has the claw and knife – and these increase in grade as you go through the game. Some have effects such as defence up, HP recovery or attack properties.
• Armour boosts. Wearing all the armour pieces of a particular set gives you an extra boost in certain statistics. This makes it even more desirable to collect the highest-level armour possible, as adding the final piece of the puzzle can put your stats up enormously!
• Item oddities. Antidotes and healing herbs are present, but most interesting are the stranger items: old Sega consoles, speech bubbles, cats and more. Some of these come in sets that lead to even rarer items.

Gratifying gameplay

I’ve left this for last even though I suppose it should be more important. The best thing about Shining Soul II is that it’s fun to play. For some reason I want to describe it as “scrappy”, not because it’s put together badly but because most of the combat takes place at close range (apart for rangers, who are boring and overpowered, as is traditional!) – I’ve shouted “run away, run away!” to my character many times!

When you level up you get free choice of where to add your four stat points, giving you a great sense of being able to develop however you like instead of boosting or adjusting statistics to compensate for the pre-determined level-up.

You also get another kind of point which you use to level up your character’s skills. These could be the ability to equip stronger weapons, increase their healing power or gain attack power when in danger. Each character has different abilities, so they’re all truly different.

Sometimes the bash-bash-flee gameplay gets a bit tiring, but a great item or weapon always seems to come along at just the right time. Even if it doesn’t, with eight very different character classes you can always explore another aspect – I loved my brawler Groudon until I got a ranger, and loved him until I got a magician and a swordsman!

(P)SO similar

I’m a big fan of Phantasy Star Online (with two level 100+ characters – eek!) and SSII shares some of its best and worst bits.

• Got soul! You can equip items that unleash devastating attacks if you take a lot of damage, rather like Photon Blasts.
• Hit, run, hit. The whole “run in, hit them, run away” style of play was perfected by PSO, but with SP recovery as standard in SSII it makes even more sense.
• Stupidly rare items. I know I’m never, ever going to get a Psycho Wand, and I also know I’m probably never going to get a full set of SEGA letters to make a beautiful Sega speech bubble.
• Co-operative focus. Sometimes I like to compete, but I’d rather work together to solve puzzles and progress through the game, using everyone’s skills together.

In short

Shining Soul II is a simple game with plenty of depth to explore. Sidequests, unique items and other titbits are plentiful, and with the multiple character types you never feel resigned to grinding out levels, as in many similar RPGs for the PC.

I often think that the measure of a good game is whether writing or thinking about it makes you want to play it. I get reminded of their charms and some of the good times I had with them, and I know that if I picked them up again I’d discover so much more. Shining Soul II passes this test with flying colours.

However, there is one thing Shining Soul is missing. Something important and potentially amazing that a Shining Soul III on DS could rectify.

Something I’ll write about on Friday!

Good evening and welcome to the very first edition of the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers! Tonight we pay tribute to the brightest stars in the world of game blogging and honour their achievements in categories such as Best Soapbox Post, Most Thought-Provoking Post and Best Post by a Sibling or Blood Relative.

Now, on with the night of a thousand stars!

Tonight’s first award is the prestigious Best Blog URL award. This award goes to the website address that most amused and entertained me, and continues to do so. The content has to be good too, and on that basis, the winner is… Gameslol.com, and Marek Bronstring‘s “A MySpace for games“, predicting success for indie developers through the Great Games Experiment!

Our second award tonight is for Best Objective Review of Addiction. The winner of this award did well to avoid being sucked in by the allure of his chosen game, and provided an in-depth review of the game and its new features. The winner is… Jaimie from Just Online Games, for Burning Crusade – World of Warcraft!

Next up we have the award for Best Article by a Sibling or Blood Relative. This was a hotly-contested category, but in the end there was only one real winner. And the winner is… Phil Newton, with his article “Computer Love“. Family ties aside, it’s also a tremendous article that poses a very interesting question for developers.

Thanks Phil, and might I say, that’s a lovely dress you’re wearing!

Coming up after the break, the award for Best Anti-Microsoft Post and a look at what this year’s nominees wore on the red carpet! Don’t go away!

Don’t forget to link to or trackback this post, comment on some of the articles featured and spread the word about the carnival!

Hey, welcome back! You know, a funny thought occured to me during that break.

The next award is one of my favourites: Best Writer of Rants and/or Reviews. In order to win this award, the writer has to be adept at balancing the fiery and articulate sides of blogging, and nobody did this better than the winner of this award: Jigsaw hc of Jigsaw hc’s Rants and Reviews! His posts “Top 3 Problems with Xbox Live Arcade” and “GameFly.com vs GameznFlix.com” both juggle constructive advice with a little healthy ranting. Watch that blood pressure, though!

Every once in a while, a blog article comes along that really makes you think, and think hard. I can’t think of a more suitable way to introduce our next award, Most Thought-Provoking Article. The winner did a great job of tackling a serious subject in a positive way, and had a top-notch interview and research too. It gives me great pleasure to award Most Thought-Provoking Article to… Alvaro Fernandez from SharpBrains.com! His article “ADD/ ADHD and working memory training: interview with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson” examines how “Serious Games” might actually be good for hyperactive children.

I teased you with this before the break, but now it’s time for that most controversial of awards, Best Anti-Microsoft Post. It’s a good job this carnival is opt-in, otherwise we’d have no chance deciding this one! Seriously though, this article takes a good dive inside Windows Vista and emerges, gasping for air but triumphantly clutching this award. That winner is… Akusai at VGMusings.com! His article “Microsoft Hates Gamers” details how Microsoft’s new anti-piracy measures might be counter-productive.

Another commercial break now, but the best is yet to come – top-quality mouthing off in Best Soapbox Post and the chilling Worst Attempt at Modesty in a Blog Carnival. Don’t go changing!

Submit your blog article to the next carnival of video game bloggers on March 19th using our carnival submission form!

The next award goes to the blogger who created the Most Frightening Alternate Reality. Frankly, if the winner’s prediction came true I think we’d all be imitating lemmings and running for the nearest cliff. The winner is… Gianfranco Berardi, for his article “If Old Games Were Made Today?“

Next on the agenda is Best Soapbox Post. The nominees for this category were all intensely opinionated and worthy, but in the end there could be only one winner. And that winner is… A Struggling Student, for “I Hate Ebay Sellers Selling Nintendo Wiis: Let’s Screw Them Over“!

Now our first special guest of the evening. To present the award for Worst Attempt at Modesty in a Blog Carnival… Me!

I’d like to give this award to myself, for my article “Five Games To Change Your Life In 2007“, featuring five games that will define your gaming year: Spore, Bioshock and more!

Thanks, James!

And now we come to our final award of this glorious evening, the Inaugural Jordan Bieber Award for Most Articles Submitted. The very first winner of this award has surprised us with his dedication to submitting blog articles, and entertained us with the results. Opening up my email every day to see his name in the inbox cheered me no end, and with his whopping eight articles submitted (at the time of writing) put him way ahead of his nearest competitors. They’re all on very varied subjects too, showing his capability and versatility.

No award could do the winner justice, but the Inaugural Jordan Bieber Award for Most Articles Submitted goes to… Jordan Bieber!

The Jesse Ventura Campaign Video Game – create a game about a wrestling governor!
How to sell your games – fund your addictions with recycling!
How I lost 90 pounds playing computer games – get the celeb look with Physicam!
Wii Play – Worth it – play about!
Tetris + Web Cam = TetroDance – make a move!
Why I am not buying Super Mario World on VC – make a stand!
Building a custom Arcade Machine on a budget – make a cabinet!
Zelda TP Ending – Not Epic Enough? – may contain spoilers. I haven’t read it as I haven’t completed Twilight Princess yet. You’ve been warned.

Yes, richly-deserved applause. Sadly that brings this wonderful evening to a close. I’m sure you’ll agree that they were all worthy winners, but I’d like to pay special tribute to them all – this was my first blog carnival but I was very pleased to see how many bloggers submitted high-quality articles. Eighteen for a first carnival is superb, so thanks to everyone who entered! Please add a link to this post on your sites and tell other bloggers about it, and everyone will reap the benefits.

The next Carnival of Video Game Bloggers is back here on March 19th, with the deadline of Friday March 16th. It’s another open mic free-for-all, so be creative and I’ll see you back here in a month!

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

Today I published an article on my brother’s shareware website, Sodaware.net, entitled “Creating Emotions With Music“. As the title suggests, it’s about how music enhances the atmosphere in games and makes players feel involved. It’s intended for shareware developers, but it’s still a good read for anyone else. Whilst you’re there, be sure to download one of the very enjoyable demos – I recommend Outpost Kaloki!

This also nicely brings me onto a little site news I didn’t want to post separately. I completely overhauled the Music page, separating my musical identities using some form of beam and placing them in two different ionic containment fields: Prosody and James Newton.

For the first time ever I’ve also typed up my lyrics, so you can finally work out I’m saying in the middle eight of Sky Lights. There’s a lot of instrumental music on the James Newton page, including samples from the soundtracks to “Tanner“, “Dad’s Army and Beyond“, “Shining Online” and “Diversification: The Future of Farming?“, and I’ll be updating it often.

Thanks also to everyone who’s submitted an article to the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers. If you haven’t joined in yet you’ve still got plenty of time – as long as I receive your entry before Friday it’s up. Click here to submit your article and join in!

 I’m listening to The Love We Make, from Emancipation Disc 3 by Prince

It’s not often I make predictions, but I fully expect these five games will blow your mind this year. Set aside a game budget of £250 and put everything else into an ISA – you won’t need to buy any other games this year.

Spore

The main appeal of Spore to me is that it’s a game you can have a mess around with. There are levels and phases and so on, but its appeal as a sandbox – should be sandpit, really – is that you can create your own creatures, evolve and mutate them, and see how they get on. This concept’s been around as long as I can remember – Eco on the Atari ST and E.V.O. on the SNES, for example – but for once the PR cliché is probably true: it’s only possible with today’s technology.

Your freaky characters will live alongside other players’ creations – content you create in the game migrates across to others’ machines automatically, creating a feeling of communal play direct interaction. It reminds me of the migratory content in Animal Crossing: Wild World actually; I hope we’ll see more games trading content automatically, without players trawling the web, and I’m all for it.

It was recently confirmed that Spore will be coming to Wii, which will hopefully be the first title to use WiiConnect24 as it was intended. The DS version is promising too, although I’m willing to bet it will be quite seriously cut down compared to the high-powered PC version.

In short: Control life from gene pool to galactic pillaging.

See more: www.spore.com

Virtua Fighter 5

It’s a shame that it took until Virtua Fighter 4 came to the PlayStation 2 for Sega’s flagship fighting game to gain recognition, but with the upcoming sequel out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it’s finally hit the big time, and looks to be getting better all the time.

This time introducing two new characters – Rey Mysterio Jr. clone El Blaze and monkey-style Eileen – VF5 features amazing graphics and one of the most finely-tuned fighting experiences anywhere. I believe it’s the most skilful 3D fighter ever: top players go into incredible detail, even memorising how many frames of animation each move lasts.

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution was probably the best fighting game ever, and if there’s any justice in the world this will hurtle Virtua Fighter way past all pretenders.

In short: Beautiful, addictive, thrilling. 

See more: http://www.sega-europe.com/virtuafighter5

Halo 3

Let’s face it – no matter how good it is, Gears of War is no more than a stopgap before Halo 3. While the cinema is flooded with big money trilogy-closers this year – Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the Bourne Ultimatum, Shrek 3, Spider-man 3 – there’s no such competition for Halo 3, which I fully expect to be the year’s highest-grossing game.

Was that a prediction?!

Why yes, yes it was, and with good reason: Halo 2 reputedly made $125m on its first day in the States, and sold over a quarter of a million copies here in one week. Crikey, it even made the news, an honour usually reserved for games that:

• Kill people;
• Break TVs;
• Can be grossly misrepresented.

Unfortunately Halo 3 has no strong release date yet, but I’m predicting an October/November release. Even if it is released that late I still think it’s a very strong contender for best-selling game this year, and a force the PS3 will have great difficulty surpassing or equalling.

In short: A sales juggernaut; buy or die.

See more: www.bungie.net/games/halo3

Bioshock

It was a toss-up between this and the equally impressive Crysis, but Bioshock won out in the “games with brains” stakes.

One of Bioshock’s most promising features is its emphasis on emergent gameplay – AI characters have roles and desires, and will make different decisions based on the options presented to them. Similarly, you can mutate your character to suit your own playing style, something we’re more used to seeing in roleplaying games and MMORPGs.

Another thing I like about Bioshock is its combination of gameplay styles. Although a stylish-looking first-person shooter, there’s more to it than that: you can photograph enemies to identify their weak points, a feature reminiscent of Metroid Prime’s very useful scan visor. Resources like camera film are scarce though, so you have to be more tactical when deciding what to use and when.

A lot of FPS promise AI that will be aware of you and react accordingly, but it’s refreshing to see characters whose options are broader than “shoot, hide, run, surrender”.

In short: Intelligent ambitions evolve the genre.

See more: http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl

Okay, perhaps it’s a bit strong to say the new Pokémon games (due this summer, hopefully) will change your life, but I reckon they’ll certainly improve it immeasurably.

Despite the shift from GBA to DS you can transfer your precious Pokémon from previous play, allowing you to use potentially any Pokémon from the series’ ten-year history.

The big news, of course, is that for the first time ever you’ll be able to trade and battle across the Internet using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, as well as seek out others’ Secret Bases and play a game of Capture the Flag. I reckon FireRed and LeafGreen’s wireless adaptor was a test run for the Wi-Fi side of Diamond and Pearl, but with the coolest bits from Ruby and Sapphire too it looks like being the complete package.

In short: Pokégasm.

See more: www.pokemon.com

You reached level five!

There we go – my top five games to play this year. There were more I wanted to post, but these won out in a battle of the death. One thing about my choices I found interesting was that none of them were designed for Wii, despite my hopes that Wii will change my life. If Animal Crossing for Wii was confirmed for this year, the other games wouldn’t stand a chance.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m listening to Gateway To Your Dreams, from NiGHTS Into Dreams [Sega Saturn] by Sonic Team.