Go! Puzzle on PlayStation 3 Videos

Solve Rubik's Cube

This video series will show how to solve a Rubik's cube. Bob Burton, Rubik's cube puzzle expert, will go through a beginner solver's method and include tips on how to prepare an ordinary cube for solving. The More »

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 08/26/2008

Rating:

Views: 25

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Rubiks World DS 'Classic' trailer

Take on the classic puzzle game on the go.

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 08/07/2008

Rating:

Views: 1

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Braid - There & Back Gameplay

You must go back... to the future.

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 08/06/2008

Rating:

Views: 13

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Tsuushin Taikyoku: Igo Dojo 2700-Mon - Japanese Trailer

Play Go against the computer or online against your friends!

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 08/06/2008

Rating:

Views: 12

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Neopets - E3 2008: Trailer

Go on a quest to solve puzzles with your Neopets.

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 07/18/2008

Rating:

Views: 4

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Boom Blox - Review

Director Steven Spielberg plus games industry mega-publisher EA equals a Wii game about blocks that go boom?

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 05/14/2008

Rating:

Views: 41

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Rise of Nintendo

Nintendo's long trek from playing cards to gaming monopoly. Play Value Episode “The Rise of Nintendo” Jeff: The year is 1985 and video games kind of look like they were a fad. It looks like it was just a thing it came and went and now we are all ready to move onto our lives. Kind of like disco, it was there it was big, now it’s gone. Josh: Recently Atari basically single handedly created the home video market and destroyed it. There really was no appetite on both the part of people actually buying video games or retail stores to even carry video games. Shandi: Because Atari you know, they made tons and tons of money and then they were just gone. TJ: Its all about the home computer now, people are looking to the commodore, the Amiga, IBM, Apple, they are looking to buy these computers that offer more than just gaming. Libe: The funny part if you think about that it’s just really only in America. And so while American companies didn’t want, you know to touch video games with a ten foot pole. Video games were still going strong in Japan and Europe. Dan: So from the land of the rising sun Nintendo looks over and sees 250 million Americans with nothing to waste their homework time on. And they say we can conquer America and bring video games back. Jeff: So over in Japan, Nintendo has this thing called the Famicom, the family computer. And its got very advanced graphics, and even more than that it’s got a controller that is a little more complex than what we are used to. Nintendo looks at America and they are trying to figure a way in. and they think lets partner with Atari. TJ: Now Atari, yes Atari is dead in terms of consoles, but it has a name. Atari is a household name in America at this point, Nintendo isn’t. Libe: Atari asked Nintendo; well you know what do you got for us. And they say well we have Donkey Kong, you can have Donkey Kong. Which is a huge arcade hit; it would definitely be a win for Atari. And so there like, ok cool. TJ: We could have very easily been playing the Atari entertainment system instead of the Nintendo entertainment system, if it wasn’t for one mistake. Josh: What had happened is Coleco, who had this home computer called the Adam, published their own version of Donkey Kong, even without Nintendo’s knowledge of that. Atari found out about this in the middle of their distribution talks and just got so pissed off. Libe: Nintendo was like, no, no, no not us, its Coleco’s fault, they don’t have rights to that game they just made the game! You know innocently or not. Eventually it all got kind of ironed out, that there was so much bad blood that it never happened. Jeff: So Nintendo they don’t have any options there just like, alright lets just get this thing out there, it’s put it in front of people and get them excited about it. They take it to the consumer electronics show, the biggest electronics trade show in the country. Dan: Which is a big trade show for TVs electronics all sorts of entertainment things. And they setup a booth and everybody comes by and says a video game console? Nobody does those anymore you guys are crazy get the hell out of here. Shandi: They are just like, video games, nobody plays video games anymore. What do you think you are doing, that’s not going to work? You are not going to make any money off of that. You can’t even use the word video games without people getting skeptical. So Nintendo calls it the advanced video system. And even still with their little shenanigans, they didn’t attract any attention. They didn’t sell a single unit. Josh: Undaunted Nintendo returned to the second CES later that year. They actually realized if we can’t live in the video game market, everyone’s telling us it’s dead. Let’s just reposition it as a toy. So they rebranded this advanced video system, the Nintendo Entertainment System. Dan: It is an entertainment system because we are going to add this little robot he is called Rob he is your robotic operating buddy, you can shoot stuff. So it’s like a toy really, it’s not a video game system, it’s a toy. Jeff: Keep in mind at this point it’s hard to imagine a time when Nintendo didn’t come with Mario, but this point its duck hunt, and Robby the Robot with Gyromite that’s what it comes with. There is still a piece of the puzzle missing. Dan: And this time there perception is a little bit better. They are going oh ok, I can kind of see where you’re going, I still don’t want to buy any. But your not totally crazy and maybe eventually have something here and we can talk about it later. Jeff: The challenge for Nintendo at this point isn’t selling kids on it. It was obvious that it was the greatest thing of all time. It still is the problem was getting stores to sell it. TJ: So what end up happening is Nintendo, the head honchos of Nintendo say here is what you are going to do, you are going to New York City in Christmas of 85 and you’re going to sell door to door. Jeff: They go to toy stores, they go to Macys, and where that might sell a Nintendo, and just put some good old fashioned shoe leather into it and try to sell people it face to face. Shandi: They went to the stores and setup everything, like they brought the merchandise and they brought the displays. That’s some dedication there, that’s like you really believe in your product that you’re selling. TJ: Nintendo said, put this on your shelves and you’re not going to be stuck with it like all your other Atari stuff. If you put our stuff out and it’s not going to sell, we are going to buy it back. That’s impossible, nobody does that, and Nintendo did. Dan: So this strategy starts working. Nintendo sells a few consoles they are starting to feel a bit better. But they are saying we have to get into more stores, we got to move more units, what do we do? TJ: In 1986 the two biggest toys were Teddy Ruxpin, and laser tag. Both made by Worlds of Wonder. So they contact worlds of wonder and they say, to Worlds of Wonder, if you can get us in all the department stores that your toys are in, we will give you a percentage of your sales, worlds of wonder does this. Josh: By partnering with a sales force Nintendo was actually able to get into sales channels with leads of toy chains and department stores that they wouldn’t have had access to other wise. TJ: How did they do this? Well when a department store like Sears or JC penny, Calls up Worlds of Wonder to place a order. Worlds of wonder says, hmm, ok yes we will give you 1000 Teddy Ruxpin's, which happens to be the hottest toy in America right now, but in order to do that you have to take five hundred Nintendo’s. Dan: And everybody gores aww, c’mon. But they do it and it turns out to be a fantastic strategy. Because that gets Nintendo’s in front of the public and the public starts buying them up. Jeff: So now it’s starting to build a little bit of momentum. But then Mario comes out. And now it’s got a lot of momentum. That’s probably one of the greatest games ever and it gave them the huge push. Shandi: When I had the Nintendo I also had the Teddy Ruxpin bear. Of course I got the Teddy Ruxpin first, and I had it for a little while, but once I got the Nintendo, that thing was in the yard sale. TJ: The next year rolls around, 87. Teddy Ruxpin’s over, laser tag is over. But guess what, Nintendo is just taking off. Jeff: They didn’t need World of Wonder anymore, they severed the agreement, and here is where Nintendo really enters just a golden age. Stuff like Metroid, Zelda, Punch out, Excite bike, just all the Nintendo first generation classics start coming out. And at this point it’s built up so much steam that you can’t stop it. It is clear that it is more than a fad, it is a phenomenon. Dan: Now the golden age of Atari only lasted a few years, Nintendo they had been around as not only the top dogs for more than twenty years and now with the Wii ,they are back on top again. TJ: Could you imagine if there was no Teddy Ruxpin, we wouldn’t know Nintendo like we do right now. Jeff: World of Wonder would later file for bankruptcy and Nintendo would keep making boat loads of money everyday. Libe: You know the Japanese brought video gaming back to life so really that represented the shift of the American control of the video game market to Japanese control of the video game market and you know they have been on top ever since. Jeff: In 1990 Nintendo was 1/10th of the trade deficit between America and Japan, just Nintendo products. That is how big they were. Shandi: They knew that once kids played it and once they had it, it was going to catch on, and they were right, they were totally right. And then everyone made money and everyone was happy.

Console: PlayStation 3
Released: 04/22/2008

Rating:

Views: 95

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Tetris: Splitting the Iron Curtain

You won't believe the drama behind one of the best loved games of all-time. Play Value Episode “Tetris: Splitting the iron curtain” Dan: It is the summer of 1985 which in Moscow is still actually kind of cold, Alexey Pajitnov, a low level programmer is sitting around, and he puts together Tetris. The most simple puzzle game you can think of, stacking blocks, but there is something magical about it. Libe: So you know you can’t sell the game. This is communist Russia after all. So instead he gives it away to his friends. And then you know it spread all through Moscow. Jeff: You copied it from your friend. You copied it for his friend. You copied it for his friend, and soon it had spread al the way to the outer states. That’s what communism is, it means free Tetris. Dan: Now the game finally ends up in Hungary, in Budapest, in Croatia. Some Hungarian guys have made an Apple version of it. And this guy Robert Stein comes in and he is almost like an opportunist who travels around trying to by up stuff cheap and sell it more expensively some where else. And he see’s the game. And he says this game is great. I am not even going to buy this game. I am just going to steal it. Jeff: In Steins defense. What do you do? How do you break down that red curtain? You don’t get the rights to this game. Russia is a society, and they don’t even have private property, much less an abstract concept like intellectual property. How do you deal with that, you know? And it was probably easier to just steal it. Dan: So this guy takes the game back to the west and starts selling the rights to all these other companies, because they don’t know any better. They think that he has actually, legitimately gotten the rights from the guy who created the game back in Russia. Now people don’t really remember Robert Maxell these days, but back in the eighties he was a huge media mogul. He was like Rupert Murdoch. So then Stein sells it to Robert Maxwell’s video game company called Mirrorsoft. Josh: They are basically just creating fake contracts, fake deals with all sorts of companies from Mirrorsoft to Atari in the states, to Spectrum Holobyte. Basically he just went around selling it, trying to make as much cash as he could. Before the Soviets figured out he was selling their property. Jeff: It was just this whole mess, because Robert Stein is selling rights. The people he is selling rights to are selling there rights. And they are not real, but there is just this whole web of deceit and just laziness that no ones checking up on it. And it is all just going to come crashing down on it. Josh: Before anyone figured out who owned the rights. Tetris had already become the best selling PC game in the UK and America. Jeff: Robert Stein never thought it was going to be a big deal, you know? He just thought he would sell a few hundred thousand copies at best, make a quick buck. No one in communist Russia is going to find out about this. But the thing is Tetris is really good. It is really good, and it just becomes almost this world wide phenomenon. TJ: So the game gets so big that the Russian government takes notice. Now mind you, Russia at this time is Communist, so there is no owner in particular, other than mother Russia. Jeff: The Russians are Communist, but there not stupid. They see what’s going on. And they create Elorg, this company to manage the rights for Tetris. Before there was never anybody to officially organize the rights. Now that this organization exists there is just rampant land grab. Dan: You have got Maxwell, you have got Stein, and you have got Nintendo who are about to launch there Game Boy, all coming into Moscow at the same time, trying to snap up as many of the rights as they can for different platforms for this game. Jeff: And there are a lot of sticky issues here. This is just a society that works in a completely different way so it wasn’t exactly clear how it was going to shake out. Dan: Now Nintendo, they took the red eye and they got there first. When they got there they met with Russian officials, ad they say hey, we would love to get the rights for this kind of hand held version we are going to do. And we will show you how good job we did; we made a Nintendo cartridge, here check it out. Josh: They pull out a cartridge and the Russians freaked. We haven’t been paid for this; we didn’t even know this existed. Dan: And the Russians go, where did that come from, we didn’t give you the rights to that? Oh we bought the rights. No you didn’t. So the Nintendo guy says, I will tell you what, I will just right you a check for these rights too. We sold a bunch of these cartridges, just take this. Josh: The Russians, who hadn’t been paid at all for any of the versions that were best seller in the west, took that check and said, finally someone is actually taking care of us, and immediately granted the rights to Nintendo. Dan: Now the Stein guy, he has been selling this game left and right, it is the number one best selling computer game out there, and of course he has not paid the Russians a cent. So the Russia government is furious. But instead of giving Stein the old poison tipped umbrella in the middle of Trafalgar square, they say hey lets at least get some of this money. So they sign a contract with him to sell the computer version of the game. Jeff: Now Stein thinks he is buying the rights for computers, and he is thinking bout the broad definition of computers. He thinks he is going to sell it on calculators, on Game Boy, on watches, on Nintendo’s, I mean things will come in the future, everything. Shandi: So he figures nobody can say what is and what isn’t a computer. So I pretty much have everything I need to make money off of this. And the Russians realize this, so in the 11th hour they snuck something in to the contract, where they defined a computer as something with a keyboard and a monitor. TJ: That one little sentence basically blocked Stein from making money on any other distribution of Tetris. Which means he collets nothing from the Game Boy, he collects nothing from any arcade rights. He collects nothing from any home console rights. He got the rights to anything has a monitor, which is basically at this point a PC, and you know what Tetris was already a he success on the PC, so its over. So now Stein is stuck with nothing. Dan: Now Maxwell shows up later in the day, by the time he gets there all the good stuff is already gone, its like he was on the Russian bread line, you get to the front, and there is no bread left. TJ: And so we all know what happens, Russia sells the rights to handhelds and consoles to none other than Nintendo, and we know how that story ends. Dan: After all the dust settles, Nintendo releases the Game Boy with Tetris. And Tetris helps the Game Boy to go on to become a best seller. And the game boy helps Tetris to become the best selling game of all time. I think like 30 million Game Boy versions of that alone out on the marketplace. Josh: If someone got screwed and maybe didn’t deserve it. Under there other banner Tengen, I think Atari got unfairly screwed in the whole Tetris debacle. Atari had bought the imaginary rights to the game and they thought they were buying something real, but they weren’t. And they produced and advertised there version of Tetris. Which a lot of people think is superior. Dan: I mean Atari had actually made so many of these cartridges they couldn’t just throw them away. They actually had to put them out in the marketplace first, just to try and roll the dice. And then when they lost the case they had to recall them all. And that ended up costing them even more in the long run. Jeff: And at this point there is a lot of bad blood between Atari and Nintendo. So Nintendo is only two happy to stop Atari from selling what they thought was going to be a hit game. Dan: And of course back in Russia the Russian government made millions off of this, but Alexey Pajitnov, the programmer didn’t make any money at all, because of course the communist party system, you can’t make a lot of money. Shandi: If Pajitnov would have been born in a different country the whole twisted crazy stories about all these companies fighting for all the rights. Yeah, it wouldn’t even exist. Josh: It is kind of interesting actually; Tetris has probably appeared on more operating systems, consoles, handheld videogames, graphing calculators than probably any other game in history. The reason why Tetris is the number one selling game of all time is because it is not technology dependent. TJ: You could put that game anywhere and it plays just as good as anywhere else. You can put that game on a cell phone and it is going to play just as good as it is going to play on the Xbox 360. Basically it is the solitaire of the next millennium. Shandi: That is why it got so popular. And why Tetris spread so fast. Wherever you play it it’s the same feeling. TJ: And a hundred years from now, Tetris will still be here. Just like solitaire just like chess, and all these new games they will be no where to be found. Shandi: Yeah, Tetris is going to be around forever. It is going to outlive us all.