One of the greatest mysteries that plagued many Karateka fans, has finally been answered.

If you’ve played the 1984 classic Karateka published by Broderbund, you may not be aware of the mystery within the game.  Well, the developer, Jordan Mechner, thought of one of gaming’s original Easter egg.  Now, I never knew developers back in the 80’s bothered with Easter eggs, so I do appreciate their ‘over the limit’ effort.  Below is an excerpt from Gamasutra, explaining the Easter egg and why it was done:

“The programmer doing copy protection for the game figured out that by messing with the bit table, the whole game could be played upside down, which is really hard to do,” Mechner explained. “We thought it would be hilarious if we burned the flipped version of the game to the other side of the disk.

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written by Juan Perez \\ tags: 24 Years, Assembly Line, Blue Moon, Broderbund, Copy Game, Copy Protection, Developers, Easter, Easter Egg, Easter Eggs, Excerpt From, gamasutra, Greatest Mysteries, Jordan Mechner, Karateka, Mystery, Old-school, programmer, Sublime, Support Rep, Tech Support, truth

In an interview with Gamasutra, Simon Jeffery, CEO of Sega of America, let out that Yu Suzuki is no longer with the company. Yu Suzuki was the creator of Virtua Fighter, Outrun, and his bank-breaking project Shenmue, as well as other games.

Virtua Fighter 5 was not directed by Suzuki so that series should be safe to continue, but it adds another nail to Shenmue III’s coffin — the game fans have been clamoring for since the sequel barely made it stateside on Xbox.

This writer dug the first Shenmue on Dreamcast in 2000 which made use of a cheesy soap-opera story and quick-time events that were later used in God of War and Resident Evil 4. It also had probably the best forklift racing, if only, in a video game. What do you guys think of the series? Or is further proof of its “never being released” status meaningless to you?

Via Gamasutra

written by Carlos Macias \\ tags: America, CEO, company, Creator, Fighter, gamasutra, game, God, III, Interview, nail, Outrun, project, Sega, series, Shenmue, Simon Jeffery, Suzuki, Virtua, Yu Suzuki

In a recent interview with Microsoft product management director Aaron Greenberg, Gamasutra caught up with the spokesperson just in time to do some post-NPD talking.

Unsurprisingly, Greenberg goes on about attach rates, getting to the 10 millions system served mark, and console “with the most games, and the biggest online community.” Simply turning the cogs of that spin machine, but in what’s surely to set aflame the fanboy community, Greenberg said the following about GTA IV DLC turning up on PS3:

“It’s not possible as far as I’m aware, but that would be a good question to ask Rockstar. Rockstar and Xbox have only said there are exclusive episodes coming this fall to Xbox 360. I might put that up for a bit of wishful thinking on their end.”

Hmm…just “exclusive episodes,” huh? We might just see something along the lines of DLC for GTA IV on PS3, after all.

Via Gamasutra

written by Carlos Macias \\ tags: Aaron Greenberg, Add new tag, community, director, DLC, gamasutra, GTA, Interview, management, Microsoft, NPD, post, product, Rockstar, spokesperson, time, Xbox

What excites me about this title is its approach to their target audience. It is an experiment that could either fail, or skyrocket the PC into a reliable gaming platform again.

Reading the Gamasutra interview with DICE producer Ben Cousins made us at 1PStart think about the future of the PC. Is it all going to turn into this? Will CryEngine3 be console exclusive? Or will technology and software catch up to each other so that we may have the ultimate PC experience at a reasonable price, while switching to our browser to get nostalgic with Quake 3 and buy a new cool weapon in Battlefield: Heroes?

We do hope that we can eat our PC cake and have it at the same time. Battlefield: Heroes surely is a step in the right direction.

written by Jesper Sellerberg \\ tags: battlefield, DICE, EA, free-to-play, gamasutra, pc gaming