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EL

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY

Jr М SUPER SMASH | BROS. BRAWL

Everything you need to prepare for the Wii's biggest game yet!

Games

In our 18-page 2008 Preview Special!

Report

Inside look at Call of Duty 4, Rock Band, and more

Dissecting Master Chief with Bungie

Fantasy Violence Mild Suggestive Themes e of Alcohol

ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esth.org

, jarry and blast your fille а with trademark .

Anti Tanke"

“FEATURES LIKE WI-FI PLAY WITH VOICE CHAT, AND MAP CREATION AND SHARING REMAKE THE TITLE WHILE KEEPING ITS ADDICTIVE STRATEGY GAMEPLAY.”

- JOYSTIQ.COM

“ADVANCE WARS: DAYS OF RUIN LOOKS TO BE THE MOST EXCITING ENTRY IN THE SERIES SINCE ITS INTRODUCTION. ANY FANS OF PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS SHOULD FIND AN INCREDIBLE NEW DEPTH WITH THE TITLE, AS WELL AS THE MATURITY THAT A GAME ABOUT WAR SHOULD HAVE.”

- UGO.COM

“IT MAY BE A BIG CHANGE, BUT ADVANCE WARS: DAYS OF RUIN IS A WELCOME ADDITION TO THE SERIES AND ONE THAT SHOULD BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO THE GAME.”

- KOTAKU.COM

The battle begins anew in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Set amid a world in chaos and featuring a grittier look, new characters, online Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection battles and map trading, the latest installment in the Advance Wars series provides intense strategy battles anywhere you go. The days of ruin are upon us!

AdvanceWars.com

геме УС

Compatible wireless router or Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector and broadband access required for online play. Е З For more info, go to NintendoWiFi.com. Mild Violence rj

© 2008 Nintendo/INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS. TM, ® and the Nintendo DS logo are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2008 Nintendo.

Blood and Gore

Intense Violence Language

© 2007 Touchstone. ТИВОК TM & © Classic Media, Inc», an Entertainment Rights group company. АН rights reserved Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION® and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, Online access requires broadband Internet service and a wireless access point or LAN. Certain limitations apply to Wi-Fi connectivity. User is responsible for Internet service fees. Release dates, product names, and/or visuals shown are of product currently in-development and may be subject to change.

SZ

Sec 20S PROPAGAI

PAGANDA. “Touchstone

CONTENTS

* issue 225 г february 2008

" LETTERS 28 Shawnimals 76 NFL Tour A cute-and-cuddly clan of ninjas are

78 Hi Bi : Ai preparing to invade your Nintendo DS latvey Birdman: Attorney, at Law.

12 Love actually is all around you—see why 79 Samurai Warriors: Katana 32 Take this job = MORES МЕН This month: garage game developer 80 Unreal Tournament 3 16 Afterthoughts Special: Postgame Report Super Mario Galaxy, Rock Band, and Call of

Duty 4: Modern Warfare

34 Rumor Mill 82 Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom The Q-Mann drops a bomb on the fate of Xbox Live’s GoldenEye: 007

24 Foreign Object 84 Nanostray 2

83 Culdcept Saga

28 Master Chief’s Exoskeleton > REVIEWS 84 Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice We ask the tough questions, such as: How

does he take a leak? 72 Reviews Intro 86 Reviews Wrap-Up

74 Burnout: Paradise

n B ZIFF DAVIS M

ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY

News/Features Editor е : Production M.

ior Account Executive,

ident,

Art Director.

Senior Editor ріп Boyer Founder Previews Editor Bryan Intihar ауен Reviews Editor y Copy Editor, Ал Copy Editor,

8 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.C(

(ШЕШ ТЇЇ БШ roi ҮЙ

реч ae MM IS oro E E o

Кала а

Blood and Gore Ре ew En MIDWAY Intense Violence Бити „Јо ==

Strong Language ото CA NVIDIA. LAS

PLATS TATIONS

intel.com/go/id

CONTENTS

CONT.

Collectable covers, anyone? You're holding one of 12 different character covers for this month's Super Smash Bros. Brawl story

Seanbaby’s Rest of the Crap Our resident funnyman gazes upon tl craptastic titles of 2008 with dread

Retro: WTFiction!?

Metal Gear concludes our five-part Series on gaming's most convoluted plots with a mind-numbing bang

Grudge Match Next Month Hsu & Chan

ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP

California Advertising Director,

Vice President of Marketing, Research and Events,

сте, ог of Ad Operations,

ising Campaign Manager,

ent Manager,

ign Coordinator,

У THIS MONTH'S EGM EXTRAS

EGM.1UP.COM

From EGM editor to gamemaker Check out a special ЕСМ Live* interview with Shawnimals creator Shawn Smith.

Burnout: Paradise tips Who needs Google maps? We've got you covered.

Halo WTFiction!? We make sense of Halo’s massive plot.

And check out our podcast on EGMLive.1UP.com and our message boards at boards.1UP.com.

ctor of Vice President of. Chairman,

‘and Promotions, Audience Development, Robert F. Callahan Steve Sutt Chiot Executive Oficer,

Consumer Marketing Director, Jason Youn

Todd K Chief Financial Officer

н Partnership Director, Promotions Coordinator, jamie Olver

п Development Manager,

tion Manager,

10 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

ті, General Counsel,

would pull advertising if they wanted

to punish a magazine for unfavorable coverage. In more recent times, they're pulling the coverage as well. It's an interesting setup: Don't let us see the games, and we can't write anything bad about them. But don't let us see the games, and we can't write anything good about them, either.

Gamemakers have been taking issue with our reviews for as long as EGM's been around (almost 19 years now). It goes with the territory: Be honest and tough with your critiques, and you're going to piss just about everybody off at some point. But when | took over as editor-in-chief in 2001, | also wanted us to get more real with our previews. | was tired of the press-release rehashes our industry had become accustomed to, so 1 asked for more sincerity and opinions from our writers and editors. Naturally, you have to be fair—the products aren't finished yet, after all—but judging from reader feedback, our opinionated previews have been a hit.

Except with some game publishers, of course. Less-than-totally-positive previews don't sit well with those who are used to those press-release rehashes. Combine that with our candid reviews, and you can imagine the consequences that we have to face constantly.

For the time being, you'll get little, late, or no coverage of the following products: anything Mortal Kombat (they didn't like our reviews), anything from Sony's sports department (ditto), and now, anything from Ubisoft (it seems our coverage of Assassin's Creed was the last straw). So in case you're wondering why you're seeing so little of these games in our magazines and on our websites, now you know.

What do we do now? Nothing. We won't treat these products or companies any differently, and we'll just cover them to the best of our own abilities, with or without their support. Because, after all, we're writing for you, the reader—not them.

—Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Editor-in-Chief

‘SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE

Senior Technical Analyst Desktop Administrator,

sinamo lastname All content copyright 2008 Ziff Davis Media Inc. Reproduction, modification, or transmission, in whole or in part, by any means, without written permission from Ziff Davis Media

ne is strictly — эта prohibited. Al Г] rights reserved.

UP

=D NETWORK

It can be really tough out there. People try to trip you up. Others

want you to smoke weed or do stu things that aren't you. Be real. You' not made of metal, but you're stron | enough to make your own decision

So, what are you going to do?

abovetheinfluence.com Ө,

* TRIVIAL TISSUE

This month's

EGM question: What are the names of the two Eskimos in Ice Climber?

E-mail the answer to EGMaziffdavis.com (subject head:

Trivia: EGM $225)

for a chance to win something potentially awesome.

ҮШІ

For writing this month's LOTM, Joel gets a 360 game, like maybe Dead Rising.

Letter of the Month

The kindness of strangers Late one mid-October night, our apartment was robbed. The thief took, among other things, almost every last bit of my videogame collection. The empty shelves where my games used to reside hurt my heart.

After the police left, my wife and son went to bed. | stayed up, unable to sleep. | decided to hop on my old PC and go to my favorite place on the Internet: the EGM NGR [non-game related] board on 1UP's forums. 1 posted about our robbery situation and started to receive immediate replies of support. Soon, NGR regu- lars started to offer some of their old Systems and games to help replace what I lost. | had not expected this at all and was amazed at the generosity.

The next morning, there was a thread stuck at the top of the page for the purpose of collecting items and money to donate to help replace my Stolen stuff. | thanked the board mem- bers and told them that while appreci- ated, this was not necessary, that the thought alone was enough. But that didn't stop these guys. Stuff started to pour in. | started to get PayPal dona- tions and games in the mail. | even received an Xbox 360, which | never even owned before the robbery! | was truly blown away by all of this.

The support and generosity of my fellow members of EGM NGR has greatly helped my family get through a tough situation. Thinking about what they have done for us still brings a tear to my eye. They could have react- ed to my post like 98 percent of the rest of the Internet and been a bunch of jerks, made fun of my situation, and done absolutely nothing. Instead, they opened their hearts and made some- thing completely amazing happen.

--Јое! Capwill

That's a beautiful ending to a tragic tale. Well done, people.

Better late than awful

1 just read the "Unfinished Business" article in ЕСМ #223, and | wanted to throw my support behind those devel- opers who are willing to forgo the holi- day boost in sales in order to make sure that they're putting out a quality product. Sure, seeing that Super

12 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

Е Rock Band: the next generation.

of Rock Band. African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and any other people who don't like heavy metal and rock are purposely overlooked.

Smash Bros. Brawl is delayed again is kind of a bummer, but if the game came out tomorrow and felt rough or unfinished, all the waiting we've

already done would be in vain. | think Shigeru Miyamoto said it best: *A bad game is bad forever." A delay is only

temporary, and I’ve never been disap-

Gamers come in all races and colors, and Rock Band's songs should reflect that. They left out many of the great- est artists of all time. Disco, jazz, R&B,

pointed by a game that was delayed for a significant amount of time. Hip, hip, delay!

hip-hop, Latin, rap, and pop—where are they? My daughter asked me if the makers of this game were racist. Maybe you can answer her?

—Jon Harris

—John Cogburn

While we agree with the sentiment, don’t assume a game’s going to

be good just because it was sent back into the shop. Have we learned nothing from John Romero’s famous PC flop Daikatana?

You’re right—it must be a racist conspiracy. How else to explain the fact that a game called Rock Band is full of rock songs?

Reel change | was reading your BioShock article in EGM #222 [“Not Like the Others”] >

Coming 2009: Tejano Band | don’t agree with the target audience

* HOW HARI

1 have been collecting NES games since І was about 10. | have been called everything from geek to fanatic to obsessed. But that doesn't stop my friends from coming over to play these games for hours at a time! My collection

consists of 789 NES games, although some are different versions or labels of the same ^ games. | also have an extensive role-playing- game collection: about 130 for every other

Guys have NES-

instincts, too.

system. | love my RPGs! —David Hassemer

Want to see your own story in this space? All you have to do is tell us how hard-eff- ing-core you are. Dish up the goods on what makes you more into games than anyone else, and send it to EGM@zitfdavis.com, subject head: "I Am Hardcore.” Remember, it doesn't count if you can't prove it, so send photos, too!

5777)

ы | CN 5 4; ј /

PIVeTAL eidos, 2. 5»

B 15 it wrong for a man to love а pan- sexual, tentacle-headed blue humanoid?

about whether the game will spark change or just cheap imitations. Well, the history of film translates very well to videogames, and it could mean that good things are about to happen. When film was first created, no one thought of telling stories with it. They simply filmed stuff, capturing reality. Eventually they realized that they could tell stories, so they copied plays. (Some of the first films would even drop a cloth in front of the lens to replicate a curtain closing.) When filmmakers realized that they could use techniques that truly were “filmic,” film became its own true medium. What did games do when they first started telling stories? They copied the closest form of media: films. And they're still trying to replicate mov- ies. So what is the next step? Well, BioShock includes things that are "video game-ic," placing the most dramatic events of the story into the gameplay to let the player act it out as he chooses. This is what games need to do: get rid of the movielike plot Structures and create their own. —Asher Refailov

You'd think the success of innova- tive games would drive designers to evolve the medium, but tell that to the designers of movie tie-in titles who get truckloads of dollars dumped into their swimming pools.

Secret handshake Why are [hardcore gamers] obsessed with demonizing mainstream games? | think it’s because they're popular with casual gamers, whom hardcore gamers see as "the enemy." They like the feeling of being part of an elite clique, so they constantly dump on everything the mainstream likes. But automatically hating everything that's popular is another way of letting pop- ular opinion do your thinking for you. —Taylor Bilica

14% ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM

Well, of course you would think that, because you're clearly not hardcore enough.

Enemy mine Just wanted to point out an error in your recent holiday gift guide (“Present Dense,” EGM #223]. In the section about BioShock, you said that my "enemy" could slip Pipe Dream into his DS. But sadly, the DS cannot play Pipe Dream, nor any other pre- GBA games.

--Јак Der

Er, yeah! That was the point! It would make your enemy extra- special sad! Because, uh, the game won't play! At all! You're not buying any of this, are you? All right—we'll admit that we screwed that one up.

Bait and switch

Remember the trailer for Killzone 2

we all drooled over back when the E3 trade show was a huge deal and Pluto was still a planet? We began to expect incredibly fast, real-time, high-def visuals. But did developers deliver?

Take a look at Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. No one can deny the jaw- dropping effects and textures. Hell, they're both advertised to be 1080p! Says so right on the box!

So what's with all the fuzzy-look- ing crap everywhere? It turns out the “1080р” is simply upscaled from Halo 3'5 native 620p and COD4's 600p. 620 and 600! That's barely a notch up from the standard 480 lines of resolution for standard-definition TV. Granted, that's why we have the fluid animation and credible effects, but come on. 600?

Will we have to wait for the next generation to see sharp, true-to-life models and textures, and effects at a smooth 60 frames per second?

—Fei Li

Patience is a virtue...it always takes a few years for designers

to really learn how to exploit the power of a new game console. We're pretty sure that Killzone 2 will, in fact, sport some impres- sive 1080p graphics when it finally hits later this year, even though many recent Р53 titles have topped out at 720p. It's also important to consider the fact that 1080p is still a relatively recent addition to the Xbox 360. And it's still not for every- one: Only gamers who've hooked their consoles up via HDMI or VGA cables can take advantage of the snazzy new resolution. Plus, most 360 games don't output a “native” 1080p signal, but rather a lower

resolution that is then upscaled through by doubling each "line" of graphical data. Confused yet?

1/0 error Why doesn't BioWare allow homosex- ual relationships of the male kind in Mass Effect while lesbian sex is allowed? The setting of the game is in the far future, where human relation- ships have changed to allow more room for other species. | should have an option to play as a character very similar to Capt. Jack Harkness from Doctor Who, kicking ass while snog- ging anything with a pulse.

—Dan Cora

We asked BioWare for the straight story on this gay issue, but their PR people told us the developer was unavailable for comment.

One step ahead

Why do you send out issues say-

ing they're for December when it's

October or November? It makes no

sense to me. Why can't you just label

them the month you send them? Is it

some conspiracy or something? —Rylan Doyle

We wish we could tell you it was some cool conspiracy, but the reason’s pretty simple: The cover month is the month in which the magazine stops being sold at news- stands. If you came to a news- stand at the beginning of January and saw an issue of EGM labeled “December,” you’d think it was old. So we call it the January issue to make sure.

Casting shadows

Has Fumito Ueda [/со, Shadow of the

Colossus] started working on a project

for the current generation yet? —Stacie Gress

We've been hearing some juicy rumors about his upcoming PlayStation 3 projects (that's right, plural), but nothing solid has materi- alized yet. Odds are good that you'll see something soon, though... д

HTACT кан EGM@ziffdavis.com

EGM Letters 101 2nd Street, 8th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105

Web: Phone: (800) 779-1174

ww.zdmcirc.com

Blood Mild Language Mild Suggestive Themes

Violence СОГ لے‎

ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrb.org 4 тауысады www.crisisc

© 2007, 2008 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. CHARACTER DESIGN: TETSUYA NOMURA. CRISIS CORE, FINAL FANTASY, SQUARE ENIX, and the SQUARE ENIX logo are registered trademarks of their respective owners. "PlayStation", "PS" Family logo and "PSP" are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately).

m SQUARE ENIX.

rks of Square Enix Co., Ltd. All other trademarks are the property

> features, previews, spartan commodes, and other stuff

ers for the rest of the holidays' hottest games

е back—last issue, we hunted down the developers of four of our favorite games from last year. ‘Even though we squeezed out a ton of secrets, we still have questions for the other blockbusters we couldn't fit into our last feature. So we're finishing things up by wrangling together the makers of three other hits from yesteryear to yap about their creations (that means spoilers—read with caution).

16 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM. 1UP.COM

PAGE

Feature: "Chief's suit secrets

Preview: Taming the Shawnimals

> SUFER HARIO GALAXY

Behind the scenes with Nintendo’s shining star

Nintendo's ubiquitous plumber may have shown up unfash- ionably late to the still-raging Wii party, but his innovative new platformer was well worth the wait. We recently sat down with Director Yoshiaki Koizumi to discuss the gravity of the

Koizumi began his career at Nintendo by penning the manual for Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES), but he went on to oversee games such as Super Mario Sunshine and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (both GC).

EGM: Many gamers have noted that Super Mario Galaxy reminds them of NES classic Super Mario Bros. 3. Was that game an inspiration?

Yoshiaki Koizumi: It's funny; | didn't begin to hear all the comparisons to SMBS until after Galaxy was out. | didn't feel a deliberate influence while making it, but the game was definitely a team effort; many of the younger members are big fans of SMB3. Reviving the airships and music from that game must have been more prevalent in their minds. The different suits for Mario to wear weren't a deliberate nod to SMB3, either; that was more motivated by wanting to give Mario very specific abilities.

EGM: Aww, we were hoping you were the big SMB3 fan. We'd love to see the Koopa Kids return...

ҮК: Well, as for the Koopa Кісі... didn't really see a place to put them into the story this time around. We did bring Bowser Jr. back, though—but that was in order to parallel his appearance in New Super Mario Bros.

EGM: Speaking about those power- up suits for Mario.... Sure, they’re cute, but we feel like Mario’s more fun to control without them.

YK: We deliberately made many of the power-ups so that they’d limit Mario’s abilities, because we wanted the player to have to balance the loss of some powers while gaining others, to put a very real risk/reward decision in the hands of the player. For example, you see the spring power-up, and if you take it, you will not be able to perform all of your moves—but you may see a high platform that was previously unreachable.

EGM: The Red Star flying suit is totally fun, but why not allow users to play with it in a real level?

ҮК: Рт sad that you're not able to use that ability more, because I’m

personally a big fan of that style of flying in Mario games. | felt that | had to get that in the game no matter what, even if | had to shoehorn it in a bit. | was afraid of breaking the game balance by letting you use it all over, though, because many levels wouldn’t work if you could fly straight to the end of them.

EGM: Mario’s life bar is much smaller than it was in Mario 64 or Sunshine, yet 1UP mushrooms seem far more plentiful. Why did you mess with this balance?

YK: | was trying to consider the different kinds of players we would have. If you think about the old Mario games, they were quite difficult, and you would die all the time. But the game would reset very quickly, so you were always back in the game with a good tempo. But by the time of SM64 and Sunshine, it took quite a bit more time to restart a level when you died, so you needed more hit points because it would be redundant to have to constantly restart these large levels. | found that people would spend time just running around, getting lost, not doing the things that | intended for them to do! So, this was an opportunity to return to the tempo of the old Mario games. We're trying to bring hardcore and casual players back down to the same level 50 that they have the same feeling while playing the game. We have so many 1UP mushrooms so that casual gamers are not discouraged.

EGM: Players who snag all 120 stars get a sweet prize—playable Luigi. What can we expect from him?

YK: We included Luigi precisely because he possesses different abilities than his brother— we wanted

PAGE

Feature: Everyday developer

to give players a new feel for the controls. A lot of people have said that Luigi feels “dancy,” since he has a slippery feel to his jump and he’s very floaty. But this gives hardcore players a great challenge, because suddenly everything that they’ve gotten used to has been completely turned around.

| like to think that Luigi handles like a very high-end Italian sports car.

EGM: In your opinion, what’s the hardest star to get in Galaxy? Those Purple Coin stars are rough...

YK: Yeah, it probably is a Purple Coin star. [Laughs] If | had to guess, а say the Toy Time Purple Coin star, played as Luigi. It's incredibly hard!

EGM: We dug the two-player Co-Star mode, but did you ever consider actually having two players running around onscreen?

YK: So this idea of having two characters onscreen for cooperative Simultaneous play has a really long history, dating all the way back to the original Mario Bros. But having two characters means that they have to Stick close together, and that presents a lot of limitations. We know that it's something that people want to do, but we've spent 20 years researching without finding a solid implementation that we're happy with. It wasn't until we hit upon the idea of having one player control a pointer that it really worked. But I’m still giving thought

to the idea of having both players

on the same screen.... For example, network co-op could be a good way to accomplish this.

EGM: In a recent interview on Wii.com, Galaxy Producer Takao Shimizu revealed that he considered closing your development office in

> | like to think that Luigi handles like a very high-end Italian sports car.

ELEC

—Super Mario Galaxy Director Yoshiaki Koizumi

ТВОМС GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 17

SUPER MARIO а

Tokyo had the game been poorly received. Was he serious?

YK: | want people to know that | absolutely made Galaxy with that level of dedication—that there may not be any going back. As a result, the game contains so many of my own personal feelings. Nintendo has a commitment to keeping 3D action games going, and I'm focused on bringing more people into the world of gaming.

EGM: Galaxy is a huge success in Europe and America, but it's not selling as quickly in Japan. Why?

ҮК: | feel that it's really too early to start thinking about sales figures, and I'm not someone who follows game sales that closely. Plus, looking at a moment-to-moment sales snapshot doesn't feel very accurate to me. And in terms of action games, they tend to have a long sales life. But I’m much more interested in the impressions

of players. After enough time has passed, I'd love to hear the opinions of players from all over the world.

EGM: Are there aspects of Galaxy that you designed specifically with the Western audience in mind?

ҮК: That's hard, because I’m not really sure what Western gamers would want. | wouldn't even know where to begin to try to cater to them

18 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY г EGM.1UP.COM

ЁЗ [ Fi х a (cont.)

with a specific feature. | will admit that | did consider some specific issues facing Japanese gamers, though. Japanese gamers tend to be more sensitive to motion sickness caused by fast 3D motion, so we had to carefully adjust the camera to take that into consideration. The thing about action games in general is that they tend to have a very broad appeal across various markets because there's not much of a language barrier and everyone likes the feel of action games. | ultimately just wanted to make a game that would make everyone happy.

EGM: Galaxy's ending seems surprisingly apocalyptic and crazy; it's more in line with anime like Evangelion and Akria than the Mario fare we're used to. What's exactly going on during that nonsense?

ҮК: | feel that | shouldn't reveal my canonical version of what's happening in the ending, as | really want to leave it open to interpretation. But | will say that if you get all 120 stars, you'll get a better understanding of what's really happening by seeing that second ending. Even if you see both of them, you'll still have some details to sort out, though.

EGM: Looking back at your work on Super Mario Sunshine, can you point to elements that affected the development of Galaxy?

YK: Of course, we had tons of discoveries while making Sunshine that helped us while developing Galaxy, but that's not to say that

Е In Galaxy’s co-op Co-Star mode, а friend can easily stop this Chain Chomp.

Sunshine was a bad game. They

were just very different games, and Galaxy has a very unique feel and pace. Looking back, | wonder if the eight-piece life meter in Sunshine

was a good idea, but for the type of nonlinear exploration you did in that game, it felt appropriate. With every new project, you always feel that there were things left undone in the last game, things that could have used more attention. | always carry those memories forward; it's valuable to keep the ever-evolving DNA of a game concept intact.

EGM: Nintendo is an incredibly secretive company. What's one thing about Nintendo that people don't realize?

YK: A lot of people don't understand what it's like to work at Nintendo on a regular day. We're actually very normal and funny! For example, back when we were making this game, it was late one night around 2 A.M. when [Mario creator Shigeru] Miyamoto and | were discussing how to implement a specific swimming motion. Discussing the animation simply wasn't working, 50 he decided that the best way for him to convey it to me would be to get up and "swim" on his chair. There are plenty of fun little moments like that when we don't have our serious outside "game faces" on.

As for the big secrets that have to remain secret, though...well, | can't say anything about any of those.

EGM Extras: Want to read more? Sure you do—hop on over to EGM.1UP.com for the full interview.

Meet Vann.

eMusic Vann digs the West Coast sound. But when

he wants something completely different, he’s all about eMusic. Because with over 2 million indie songs — and the ability to download them over his phone —

he’s always got the perfect track.

оссе MySpace Mobile Vann's got a lot of friends. So he's always getting

texts when one of his friends posts something

on MySpace. Or he's posting a ріс from his

. phone. It's ‘nonstop.

Sports oe es РЕР S CENE WE If he's not texting, Vann is checking

his MEdia™ Net page for scores and

updates - he’s a full-on fanatic

who's always up to date with 3 : what's going down in uc. e UE (ис мај“ М анада

the league. Sometimes Vann shares a live rendition of his / Ат So Great dance with his boy Jimmy while they catch up

over the phone

This is Vann's digital world.

You've never met him but now you know what he's like.

What can AT&T do for your digital world?" `. attcom/digitalworld

Guitar Hero is great, sure, but developer Harmonix's multi- instrument rock simulator is keeping us jamming a helluva lot longer. We passed the mic to Greg LoPiccolo, VP of product development for Harmonix, to talk about the future of Rock Band.

Unlike most of us, Greg LoPiccolo isn't frontin’ his music chops. Before һе joined the videogame industry, LoPiccolo was in the Boston band Tribe with fellow Harmonix peeps.

EGM: We love how the crowds sing along to songs. But we have to wonder: Do fans really know the words to all the songs? Seems a little bit unlikely.

Greg LoPiccolo: It's funny, because we had a whole internal debate about this as it was going down. So we actually asked Wave Group, the studio that's been doing covers for us, to

do it for us. The instruction that they were given was to sing along to the Songs, so they did it and we put it into the game. Then we realized, “Nobody knows the words to Blitzkrieg Bop. They know, ‘Hey, ho! Let's до!) but they don't know the [rest of the] words." Then we debated whether we should edit them or take them out, but we said, "Screw it, let's leave them in."

EGM: Playing the drums is definitely awesome. How come you didn't add a practice mode where you can just mess around for fun?

GL: The simple answer: We ran out of time. We had something planned, but there was not enough time to get it to a good enough polished level

to include in the game. If we were hypothetically going to do a sequel,

| think it'd be a safe bet to look for something like that in it.

EGM: Will you be able to play all the downloadable content you purchase now in the inevitable sequel?

GL: Our conception [of the DLC program] is as a platform. And the conception of a platform that makes sense is that you don't buy all your new CDs every year. We totally hear you on that.

EGM: We'd love to play a ton of songs from the first two Guitar Heros. Can we expect to see some of our favorites from those games appear as DLC?

GL: We don't have a real policy one way or the other on that, but | wouldn't rule it out.

EGM: How come we didn't see any full downloadable albums at launch?

GL: We're balancing a lot of different factors in how we roll that stuff out. All that stuff needs to be licensed and

fte ".

A special encore with Harmonix's rockin' game

authored pretty far in advance. So there is a secret plan that extends far into the future —the details of which І cannot divulge to you. But suffice to say, if you look at the six-month horizon, | think it all makes sense.

EGM: Why can't you switch the band leader during World Tour mode? No multitalented musicians?

GL: We've heard those complaints and we're looking at that hard. One of the most challenging design aspects of the game was trying to figure out how to connect characters to instruments to slots. It was just a really difficult problem, where if you did it one way, you'd have a bunch of problems in one area, and if you did it another way, you'd have a completely different set of problems. Certainly in the future we'll look hard at whether or not there's a different approach to that. But for this game, that's what we came up with.

EGM: Speaking of the World Tour Mode, one of our major complaints is that it doesn't work online. Can this be fixed with a future update?

GL: It is certainly something that is getting a lot of attention from us. We would have liked to include it, but it's incredibly technically difficult. It's not impossible. It certainly has our attention for an agenda we'd like to pursue in the future.

EGM: It seems Guitar Hero 3 tried to increase its difficulty over the previous games, while you guys apparently opted to make the guitar parts in Rock Band easier. Was this intentional on your part?

GL: We thought a lot about difficulty. So that was absolutely a priority for Rock Band to make it accessible to nongamers. Specifically, with respect to the guitar parts, a lot of the song choices were really made to be balanced. We weren't going to do super guitarcentric songs because we wanted great drum parts and great singable vocal parts. So I think, in the case of the guitar parts, they trend a little easier just because a lot of guitar in a lot of rock songs is just holding the song together. But we think it's fine if you're playing as a part of a band—you don't expect to have the spotlight every moment. >

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