By Anonymous on Jul 13, 2015 11:49 pm
Piss Off the Mimes
Mimes are littered throughout Grand Theft Auto V. But these supposedly mute NPCs will break character if you get them angry enough. If you do decide to attack mimes (why wouldn't you?) their health is astonishingly high, so bring a weapon ... or five. (Photo: Rockstar)
Transform Into an Animal
Grand Theft Auto has expanded the use of drugs throughout the series. In GTA V, players can find and consume peyote plants. After an intricate cut scene, players instantly take control of a mammal. Get this: NPCs still interact with you as if you're a human. (Photo: Rockstar)
Search for Bigfoot
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, rumors swirled that Bigfoot could be found in the forests. Players searching for the mythical creature are rewarded in GTA V with two missions involving the cryptid. (Photo: Rockstar)
Punch Sharks and Find Treasure
Since Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar has emphasized the aquatic side of the open-world game. GTA V takes it to a new level with random shark fights and buried treasure. (Photo: Rockstar)
Take All The #Selfies
With the rising popularity of selfies in today's world, it's no shock that the fun feature was added to Grand Theft Auto. The GTA selfie phenomenon has spawned its own website, where fans can post their favorite selfies from the game. (Photo: Rockstar)
Wreak Havoc!
Who would've thought the first Grand Theft Auto, with its original title of "Race 'n' Chase," would spawn one of the best gaming franchises of all time? The inaugural GTA game let players cause catastrophic damage while stealing cars. The novelty of that first game earns it a place on this list. (Photo: Rockstar)
Get Sucked Into a Side Mission For No Reason
Grand Theft Auto 2 instituted a wide-ranging gameplay option that's been adopted by nearly every open-world game: side missions. Those missions may not directly impact the main story, but they do often give birth to some of the most ridiculous characters in any series. (Photo: Rockstar)
Play Games Within Games
Staying in shape is a major factor in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but Rockstar takes it to a whole new level in GTA V. If you're tired of running over pedestrians and high-tailing it from the cops, why not let loose on the golf course or find your inner chi doing yoga? (Photo: Rockstar)
Rid the City of Pigeons
Story mode and side missions can only entertain for so long. GTA IV mixed things up with an interesting achievement: kill 200 pigeons in Liberty City. Players could get all kinds of creative when it came to the disposal of the rats of the sky. (Photo: Rockstar)
Play Fetch ... With a Grenade
Chop from Grand Theft Auto V isn't the first pet to be introduced in the series. But this dog can be tricked into playing with a grenade. We won't tell you any spoilers about what happens next. (Photo: Rockstar)
Flip the Bird to the Police
Police are just so cumbersome in Grand Theft Auto. If you don't want to instigate a high-speed chase, Rockstar has incorporated another outlet for your digital road rage. While unarmed in a car, players can press the left trigger to give the one-finger salute. (Photo: Rockstar)
Fly Over Area 69
Area 69, the Grand Theft Auto version of Area 51, is an off-limits no-fly zone that first came to the screen in San Andreas. If you happen to fly over Area 69, you'll automatically receive a four-star wanted level. To survive such a harrowing adventure, steal a jet to defend yourself from the government (and aliens). (Photo: Rockstar)
Skydive Onto a Yacht
Skydiving in Grand Theft Auto is a ton of fun. But try skydiving out of a plane onto a boat. Now that's fancy. (Photo: Rockstar)
Remake the Classics
When it comes to customizable, open-world games like Grand Theft Auto, players can take the creativity into their own hands. One fan of the franchise re-created the opening of Will Smith's old sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Grand Theft Auto's Franklin as The Fresh Prince of Rockford Hills. (Photo: YouTube)
By Tamoor Hussain on Jul 13, 2015 09:05 pm
With the passing of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the video game industry has lost one of its most bold and inspiring luminaries. To honour Nintendo's fourth CEO, GameSpot has put together a short gallery chronicling Iwata's career, starting from aspiring developer to iconic president. Images for this gallery were found on the official GDC Flickr (http://bit.ly/1O0S20D)
Satoru Iwata was born on December 6, 1959 and raised in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectures. Iwata's love of gaming began at a very early age, as did his ambition to develop them. According to Iwata, the first game he ever played was Pong, which he "loved." This spurred him to buy a Hewlitt Packard Pocket Calculator, which he used to program a baseball video game.
Iwata joined the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1978 and enrolled to study engineering and computer science. At the time, game programming was not commonly taught. Despite being unable to study game programming, Iwata's innate desire to create games pushed him to independently seek out avenues through which he could realise his dream. Instead of studying, he travelled to a Tokyo department store--the first in the city dedicated to PCs--and met like-minded people with dreams of game design and development.
With the friends he made hanging out at the PC retailer, Iwata moved into an apartment in Akihabara, where he spent nights designing and programming games. The group would eventually form a company called HAL. Though Iwata didn't know it at the time, this studio would deliver some of Nintendo's most cherished video games including Mother, Kirby, Smash Bros., and more. HAL was named after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Following the completion of his studies, Iwata became the fifth full-time employee of HAL. By his own account, he joined "the smallest company of any graduate in [his] class." At HAL, he was a programmer, an engineer, designer, and also marketed the team's games, "ordered food, and helped clean up."
The small team at HAL eventually began hearing whispers about a project at Nintendo which involved the development of a machine "capable of incredible new graphics." Convinced the hardware would be the platform for HAL's breakout success, the team arranged a meeting with Nintendo. Its first task, however, was a rescue mission. Iwata and his colleagues were put to work with helping bring a game that had fallen behind schedule to completion. That game would eventually be released as NES Pinball.
HAL's consistency earned it a close relationship with Nintendo and, over time, it was given the opportunity to develop franchises that would go on to become Nintendo icons, such as Kirby. However, its early days were spent doing work-for-hire arcade ports. In between it released numerous entries in the Eggerman series (known in the West as the Adventures of Lolo). As well as this, members of the HAL team took on consultancy work to keep the company afloat.
HAL would go on to work with Shigesato Itoi, a renowned Japanese writer, on his first game: Mother. Much, much later (E3 2015, in fact), the role-playing game would be released in the West as Earthbound Beginnings. Thanks to its unique visual style and mature themes, the Earthbound series as a whole has amassed a passionate cult following.
In 2000, Iwata became head of Nintendo's corporate planning division. Two years later, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had served as company president since 1949, retired and Iwata succeeded him as the fourth Nintendo president. He was the first Nintendo president who not part of the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage since it was established in 1889 as a Hanafuda card company.
Iwata's appointment as the head of Nintendo came in the heat of a crisis. At the time, the Nintendo GameCube's performance was being eclipsed by its main competitor, the PlayStation 2, and faced stiff competition from Microsoft's first ever console, the Xbox. It was around then that Iwata began to think about distinguishing Nintendo's consoles from its rivals, and also appealing to a wider audience by creating approachable, creative experiences.
Iwata's vision for a successful new Nintendo was defined by "lateral thinking with seasoned technology," a principle developed by Gunpei Yokoi, father of the Game Boy, Game & Watch, the modern day directional pad, and creator of iconic franchises such as Metroid. It posited that a creative person could take mature technology and find radical new ways of using it to create transformative experiences. The first fruit of this ideology was the Nintendo DS which, in the face of adversity from Sony's slicker, more powerful PSP, went on to sell over 150 million units, making it the second-best selling console of all time.
At E3 2005 Satoru Iwata took the stage and proudly held a diminutive black box aloft, proclaiming it a gaming revolution. That same year, at Tokyo Game Show, Iwata reiterated the company's ambition to expand the gaming audience and speak to a wider market and revealed a new controller that "attracts those who aren't playing games and offers new sensations to veteran" would be the key. The Wii outsold the competition from Sony and Microsoft by a considerable margin and became a bona fide sensation. Importantly, it achieved Iwata's ambition of placing video games firmly in the mainstream eye and attracting a wider audience. At the height of its popularity, Nintendo's stock became the second most valuable in Japan.
Iwata's most recent years were spent trying to maintain the momentum achieved by the Nintendo DS and Wii. Given the magnitude of the success, many would argue this was an impossible task. The follow-ups to both of those devices, the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, marked a downturn in the company's performance. At the heart of these missteps was marketing that failed to distinguish new hardware from old, and a slowness to properly capitalise on the move towards mobile and tablet gaming. Despite this, Iwata remained a shining beacon of Nintendo's ambition and an unwavering leader, famously refusing to lay off staff.
Satoru Iwata 1959-2015
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