Tech Olive

By now, regular readers will know that Tech Olive has a clear fondness of little, interesting indie games and one of the most recent indie game that we’ve had our eye on is Faerie Solitaire. A very interesting, fantasy-themed take on the classic card game that we’ve all spent countless hours playing. Faerie Solitaire definitely does things right. It may look cute, casual and rather simple, so much so that most dedicated gamers might not even give it a passing glance. That would be a mistake. The game just released and I strongly suggest you at least try the free demo. But be warned, the game is very addicting.

Look forward to Tech Olive’s review of Faerie Solitaire in the coming weeks!

Once upon a time (as recently as 15 years ago), online gaming was a sci-fi notion and cross-platform games were few and far between. If you were craving some social interaction to round out your gaming happy-meal or just wanted to play the newest release for the console that you didn’t get for Christmas, you went to the local arcade. I realized only recently that Craig and Tim, our lead editors, are just young enough to have missed out on the arcade experience that I took for granted growing up. It came up when we were talking about the (then) upcoming Street Fighter IV game because I waxed sentimental about standing in line at Street Fighter cabinets for a chance to risk my quarter to challenge the winner and I was the only one. We decided that an entire day spent investigating all our local arcades was warranted, to teach these boys where multiplayer gaming started. This is my tribute to the nearly extinct arcade.

We found that there where four arcades within reasonable driving distance of my apartment. I had been to two of them before, but not in a very long time. So –armed with quarters– we set off, doomed to experience some initial letdowns. At our first stop we found that the old Namco arcade at our local mall is now a “Fun Zone” where almost all the machines dispense tickets and the average age is about 8 years old. Also the second arcade stop, which flaunted “one of the biggest game rooms around” in their advert, has fewer games than most pizza parlors or theaters used to have.

We did have an awesome time at two other fine establishments though. I will share my reflections on todays arcade experience. First of all, the age of the single-quarter game is almost dead. In fact, at one arcade, we had to purchase a “playcard” that we proceeded to slide through a reader on every cabinet in order to play. Yet, Track and Field (a classic arcade staple) took the cake as the day’s best play and only at the cost of one quarter, or “credit,” if you will. We also had a great time playing Off Road. You know, three steering wheels, tiny cars viewed from an aerial perspective. Again, one credit. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the majority of games in today’s arcades. I simply miss the quarter. Ironically, at one point during our escapade, I slapped up our playcard against the glass into that magical slot that signifies life force (because that’s where the queued up credits/quarters/tokens go) and it slid right down into the cabinet. A nice woman had to climb halfway into the cabinet to get it back for us. We appreciated it. She unknowingly posed for an amusing picture (thanks again!):

Here is the biggest thing that I found to be missing though: Interaction. Tim and Craig both admit to never “entering in” or challenging someone they didn’t know to a digital dual in an arcade. Nor have they ever experienced someone doing the same to them or slapping a quarter on their machine, in essence saying “you have one more round against the AI before I beat you out of a quarter.” Where is the community of gamers? Oh right, they’re online. The other thing that seemed to be missing was the “wizards” with their entourage and audience. Sometimes I didn’t play when I spent an afternoon in an arcade. Instead, I just watched the masters at work, while ignoring signs addressing loiterers. It seems like nowadays if I wandered up to a group and stood watching, I might creep someone out. We did witness one wizard going to work on Dance Dance Revolution and in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the man had some good timing and moves when it came to stomping those beats out. However, instead of respect for his skill, I found myself wondering how he affords to practice such skill at $1.25 per play. Ouch!

Maybe it’s a good thing that the online arena allows our clever avatar names to mask us with a certain amount of anonymity, especially if we feel too old to wander around Fun Zone. It’s definitely cheaper, but I do miss playing all the way through a sidescroller with my best friends and letting the world know that we won with a victory yell, or relishing the scowl of the sore loser twice my size whose quarter I just nullified with my perfectly timed uppercut. I guess I’m old fashioned, but at least I can still uber-pwn h4krz all night, long after arcades close up shop.

To see all the images from our arcade adventure, visit our gallery!

It seems that Braid, the popular Xbox 360 2D-platformer which was set to release March 3rd to PC gamers, has been delayed for a month. It’s funny how this game is now 27 days overdue for release and now they announce the delay. At any rate, for those of you wondering when the game is set for PC release now, the date has been pushed to April 10th. As far as delays go, I’m surprised it was only pushed back a month. But there is still time for them to make up another excuse and tell us (on April 20th, of course) that Braid has been delayed again. Sometimes I think I’m too negative.

This comes at no surprise since Western Digital is, in fact, a storage-based company. It’s about time these types of manufacturers join the SSD market, since most of the current SSD makers don’t centralize on storage solutions.

Western Digital acquired SiliconSystems, a SSD supplier, by spending $65 million USD to join the growing SSD market.

“We are delighted to have the SiliconSystems team join WD. The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems’ existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established $400 million market for embedded solid-state drives. SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD’s solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements.” – John Coyne, president and CEO of WD

Hot on the heels of the Max Payne 3 announcement comes news of the original Max Payne and its sequel. The games have just been rated for release on Xbox 360, most likely headed to XBLA for purchase soon. No doubt this is an attempt to wet everyone’s appetites for the upcoming Max Payne 3. No matter the reason, they are fantastic and any fan of the film noir art style or the third-person genre should play the original Max Payne games.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Twitter contest!

Congratulations to Ashley H. of Indiana! She has won 2GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 RAM from Tech Olive!

Stay tuned for future giveaways and don’t miss out on your chance to win cool stuff!

According to Microsoft’s website, the company will issue a public release candidate of Windows 7 in May. The RC release will be available at least through June 2009 and Microsoft is not limiting the number of product keys, so you have plenty of time to grab a copy.

Microsoft decided to lift the download limit altogether after their servers crashed from the January rush of the Windows 7 Beta. Microsoft thinks that this unlimited factor will hopefully prevent server crashes from happening again.

Windows 7 RC1 will also have an extended expiration date compared to the beta. The release candidate will not expire until June 1, 2010.

Last month we told you about the announcement of Dead Rising 2. Well, we’re back again with more news. Although it is not much, DR2 has been confirmed for multiplayer. No details as to what type(s) of multiplayer, but I think it’s safe to assume that at the very least,  co-op will be included.

On top of that, Blue Castle (developer) is claiming that thanks to software by the name of Mental Mill, the zombies will not only be visually unique from each other, with a minimum of 800 different outfits for the zombies, but it will also allow for up to 6,000 zombies on screen at one time, without any performance drop. This is quite a large claim, but if it turns out as good as it sounds, it could make for a very interesting game.

After looking for some cool fonts the other day, I came across a website where you can turn your very own handwriting into a font to use in any word processing software like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. It’s kind of useless you could say, but it’s still very cool, and that’s what it’s all about.

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Zeno Clash, a small indie game that I’ve been following for a little while, has just released an online comic to help build hype for the upcoming game. From what I can tell, the comic is a prequel to the game’s storyline, showing how some of the main characters first met. It seems to end abruptly, so it’s safe to assume that it will be a short series of comics, possibly ending shortly before the release of the game itself. It’s a pretty good comic with fantastic art. Hopefully the game will live up to the same quality. Click here to check out the comic.