Can't be THAT hard to find this guy.

To promote the sleeper hit for the Nintendo DS, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, a Professor Layton look-alike will be visiting Boston and Seattle in the next two days. If you can find him and answer his riddle, you can win a copy of the game.

From the press release:

The cleverly disguised visitor will be making surprise appearances around each city with a stockpile of games and Nintendo DS systems. When he shows up, he’ll be challenging passersby – young and old, gamers and non-gamers – to one of his more than 150 puzzles and brainteasers. If they can solve it, they’ll have a chance to win their very own copy of the game.

For more hints on where to find the Professor, you can visit the special event website they have set up for it.

If you live in Boston or Seattle and can drop in on one of these, send us pics!

Even in Bookworm I pull bad tiles...

Today PopCap announced that two of their popular casual titles, Bookworm and Bejeweled Twist, will soon be available for the DSiWare service. In addition, cartridge versions for the DS will launch shortly thereafter.

• Late September brings Bookworm via DSiWare
• Mid October for Bejeweled Twist via DSiWare
• December 1 for Bookworm DS
• Q1 2010 for Bejeweled Twist DS

This marks PopCap’s first foray into the DSiWare service. Does that mean WiiWare is far behind? While something like Plants vs. Zombies wouldn’t work well on the Xbox 360 or PS3, playing it on the Wii would be a dream.

In Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, players will find themselves in a classic RPG setting and plot that hearkens back to days of 8-bit yore.

Guide your hero from city to dungeon to city, picking up new characters, and assembling a three-person team of skilled fighters while locating cool new items, and slowly revealing a dreadful plot that must be foiled. Along the way, find a ship that can travel the sea, then find a ship that can travel the air. This should all be familiar to players of classic RPGs from the 80’s and early 90’s. This game’s main goal seems to be a modernization of the 8-bit RPG, taking the classic RPG formula, and adapting it for the DS audience in a way that remakes of the actual classic RPGs cannot ever do.

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Seamless transition on Wasabi skins

During our visit to E3, we saw a variety of exhibitors whose sole business is to help you customize your portable devices.

With so many people buying handheld systems, the urge to customize and stand out from the crowd is trending upward. People want to skin their devices as a mark of pride, personal expression, or to make a statement.

We saw three standout customization exhibitors on the showfloor, and I’ll highlight all three here. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that we have affiliate programs for both GelaSkins and MusicSkins; if you purchase through our affiliate links, you will be helping support Icrontic. We don’t engage in affiliate programs for products we don’t personally recommend, and we believe that these products are pretty damned cool.

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Fresh out of the Nintendo Press event here at E3, I feel good about the things that Nintendo is working on, but I don’t feel like it’s as new a direction as they seemed to think it was. Their slogan this year is “Everyone’s Game,” which is apt for their new programs. What they want to do is create experiences which appeal to both the casual and experienced gamers. They are focusing on creating games that require skill, but with controls and objectives that are easy enough to understand that even the most novice gamer can jump right in.

One of their best examples of this Everyone’s Game model is the Archery segment of the new Wii Sports game, Wii Sports Resort. With the new Wii Motion Plus, players will need “real skill” in archery to be able to accurately hit the target, instead of skill in learning the controls. This, I think, is the right direction. Simplifying the controls and bringing the play of the games into the “real space” will make the games more skill-intensive and more accessible at the same time.

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With E3 just beginning to unfold, every gamer wonders what the future will bring. I would classify 2009 as a fairly slow year thus far. The three major consoles and two major handhelds are starting to age and, despite some renewed interest in PC gaming, we have yet to see a truly groundbreaking exclusive PC title. I fear that video gaming may have reached its peak popularity in the past couple of years.

The two major gaming stories in 2009 have been the industry’s resilience in a bad economy, and iPhone’s growth in the gaming sector. These are nice stories, but with the exception of the iPhone, all major gaming platforms seem to have reached their peak, and are starting to head slowly downhill. I think this trend all started with a disappointing E3 2008. We saw some interesting titles, but it was not exactly a year that gamers will look back on with wild fondness.
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You too, can make stock image-quality food!

I remember vividly when the Nintendo Game Boy came out. I was 12 years old, and the kids down the street got one. I was so jealous. Dreams of Tetris and Super Mario Land haunted me. I schemed ways to buy my own Game Boy or at least get down to my friends’ house at every opportunity to beg them to let me play it. I remember thinking: One day there’s going to be a handheld system in color that does everything.

Turns out, my prescient twelve year old self wasn’t far off the mark. Full color, amazing handheld gaming is now a reality. Between the Nintendo DS, PSP, and iPod Touch / iPhone, the market is covered.

So how do you make something truly unique and memorable in a saturated market? You start to think outside the box. (more…)