4w ago - Llamasoft Founder Jeff Minter announced today that Cult Studio Llamasoft is blazing onto PlayStation Vita with TxK.

Below are the details, to quote: Nearly 20 years ago, in 1994, one of the best-known Llamasoft games ever was released on the Atari Jaguar - the seminal Tempest 2000. This title came to be recognized as one of the finest games on the system.

Based upon an early '80s arcade game, T2K aimed to be more than just a port of an older game. Instead, T2K took that old classic game as an inspiration, and offered up something entirely new and modern.

The original coin-op game was based around a color vector display - a look it was impossible to replicate on raster displays and with graphics hardware of the day, so T2K defined a style all of its own.

The floating platforms in space that defined the play areas were created using Gouraud-shaded polygons, as were the enemies that populated them - in that pre-PlayStation era such polygonal graphics were considered cutting-edge.

T2K also introduced design elements that were to become Llamasoft trademarks - flowing particle systems, full-screen video feedback effects, and objects that shattered into thousands of glowing particles.

100 levels...

14w ago - Sony Producer Ariel Lawrence has posted up a video today spotlighting God of War: Ascension on PlayStation 3 in the Mocap Studio below.

To quote: Hello, fellow Spartans! My name is Ariel Lawrence, and I'm a Producer on God of War: Ascension.

No one can argue that Kratos is angry. With everything that's happened to him over the years, he has every right to be. He's killed - either accidentally or intentionally - everyone he's ever cared about.

He's been lied to, chained up, run through, tortured, and cast into the depths of Hades several times. If I was him, I'd be angry too. Our aim in this installment of Kratos' story is to try and show a bit more of his humanity. To do this, we incorporated voice over motion capture, or "vo-mocap", into our cinematic pipeline.

The really exciting part of "vo-mocap" is that it gives our voice actors an opportunity to work together in a scene. Delivery, timing, and efforts all come more naturally because the actors are able to play off of each other. They see how far apart they are from each other physically.

They can watch emotions play out on each other's faces and respond appropriately. They can whisper. The technology we have now is awesome. On the first God of War, we might have been able to show...

29w ago - CEO Hiroyuki Maruyama has shared details today for Under Defeat HD on PS3, revealing one small studio's development mission below.

To quote: As a small Japanese developer specializing in a niche genre, it is a great pleasure to be able to release one of our games internationally. Under Defeat HD: Deluxe Edition will be our first PS3 / PlayStation Network title distributed outside of Japan, and our first international package release since WarTech: Senko no Ronde in 2007.

Old-school. Retro. While we do use those terms to describe the titles we develop, fundamentally we hope to make games that are of the same cloth as the classics we played and loved in our youth.

Our studio was built on the concept of creating "game-like games" - drawing from the dynamics and style of past favorites. We have felt that the number of similar games on the market have dwindled, particularly in recent years.

Though we are a small team - and plans do not always go as we had hoped - our intentions to continue producing what we believe are "game-like games" has not changed.

The concept for the original arcade version of Under Defeat could be simplified to developing a realistic wartime shoot 'em up. At the time, the team that would become the core creators of Under Defeat was idle as...

33w ago - Ringzero Game Studio General Manager Franck Blaevoet has announced today that Burn The Rope will be sizzling onto PlayStation Vita next week.

To quote: Hi everyone, I'm Franck from Ringzero Game Studio and I'm happy to announce the release of Burn the Rope for PS Vita on 10th October.

Burn the Rope is an original game where you must burn as much rope as possible at each level. To start burning the rope you simply tap the touch screen wherever there is rope. Once the rope starts burning you can control the flame by rotating the screen.

The flame always burns up and it will burn out if it runs out of rope. The speed at which the flame travels along the rope is determined by the angle of the rope.

You can also control the flame using the touch screen as well as rotating the Vita. You can even use the rear touch panel (so your fingers won't block the view).

You can also pinch on the rear touch pad to zoom in or zoom out the view. This can help if you have really big fingers or are all thumbs J. Oh, it also helps if you want to be more precise in starting the flame.

As you progress through the levels, you will encounter bugs crawling along the rope. Different bugs react differently to the flame, but we are...

39w ago - Biart Studio CEO Konstantin Popov has announced that Deep Black officially plunges to the PlayStation 3 entertainment system today!

To quote: We are pleased to announce that Deep Black for PS3 is live now on PSN with single-player missions and five multiplayer maps.

So what is the game about? It is an arcade-style game that's a perfect fit for shooter fans. You'll fight both underwater and on land within an immersive storyline that encompasses a complex science-fiction mystery, espionage, and bioterrorism.

The year is 2047. Global mega corporations known as "keiretsu" have supplanted governments around the world. The most powerful of these is Ishiguro-Himmel Systems (IHS), headquartered in Berlin. The nations that remain have been driven to the brink of war by a struggle for dwindling natural resources.

In order to survive, these countries have banded together into two multinational organizations that pool their wealth and military might in a quest for survival - The United Federation of Gondwana, which comprises South America, Africa, southern Asia, and Australia and the Global Strategic Alliance (GSA), which includes North America, Europe, and northern Asia.

For years, Gondwana and the GSA have been the dominant powers, thwarting the growth of companies...