NVC: Remebering Satoru Iwata’s Legacy
Download Nintendo Voice Chat Here
A tribute to the great accomplishments of Nintendo's Iwata. Art by Pandamusk.
This week, the crew dedicates the first half of this episode to remembering Satoru Iwata, the late CEO of Nintendo who passed away this weekend. Join Jose Otero, Peer Schneider, and Brian Altano as they share their favorites stories about him. Iwata leaves a huge legacy behind, and a tremendous role to fill at Nintendo. NVC sends condolences out to his family and friends, and we try our best to honor his amazing contributions to video games.
App Store Update: July 17
Every day hundreds of new apps make their debut on the App Store, and hundreds more are updated or reduced in price. We have sifted through the noise and highlighted those select few that might be worth your attention.
Note: The prices and deals compiled below are accurate at the time we published this story, but all are subject to change.
Impulse GP: Super Bike Racing – ($2.99)
Take the high-speed futuristic racing concept of games like F-Zero or Wipeout and swap in motorcycle riders instead – you've got Impulse GP: Super Bike Racing. Take a look!
Hitchhiking Robot Attempts to Travel Across the United States
A hitchhiking robot is actively checking off the boxes on its personal bucket list.
Appropriately named hitchBOT, this immobile, child-sized robot relies on the help of strangers to get around. Created by a team in Canada, hitchBOT's purpose is to examine how humans interact with robots, particularly when it is the robot that needs the human's help.
hitchBOT has traveled across Canada and Europe, seeing the sights and crossing thousands of miles with the help of enthusiastic strangers willing to give it a ride. It is equipped with a GPS device to allow its creators to track hitchBOT's journey, as well as a camera it uses to take pictures every 20 minutes to help document.
Suicide Squad’s Enchantress on How She Kills
Suicide Squad’s Enchantress, model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne, has opened up about her character’s killer moves in the film, and recalls her disappointment over losing the title role in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie.
Speaking to Time, Delevingne hyped the upcoming David Ayer-directed supervillain flick, saying, “
is going to be freakin’ awesome,” and went on to tease, “I kill people with my bare hands.”
The actress-model revealed that for her Suicide Squad audition director David Ayer asked her to perform the character of Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a role that she had played in a school production. But Ayer told her to forget everything she knew about the character and try reading it enough different ways that Delevingne wanted to "beat people up" by the end of the audition.
This Multiplayer Game Will Be Taken Off the Market Once Everyone Dies
Upcoming horror game The Flock will feature a depleting population based on player deaths - and once that population has run out, the game will no longer be playable.
Dutch indie developer Vogelsap puts The Flock's lifespan in players' hands. Players will play as one of the creatures that make up the titular Flock - but with each player death in-game, one life will be taken from the Flock's population. When the population reaches zero it's game over, and The Flock will never be available to purchase or play again.
The Flock's population countdown will be available to view in menus, on the Steam store page, at Vogelsap's website, and on The Flock's subreddit so that players can monitor the number of lives left.
Fallout 4 Actors Recorded Over 13,000 Lines of Dialogue
Since Fallout 4 will have a voiced player character and the option to play as either a man or a woman, every line and piece of dialogue from the protagonist must be recorded with two actors. In a game as vast as Fallout, that's a lot of talk to cover.
In an interview with Telegraph, director Todd Howard revealed that voice actors Courtenay Taylor and Brian T. Delaney have spent two years recording over 13,000 lines of dialogue each for the upcoming Fallout 4.
Female Characters Coming to Rust
A partial implementation of female character models is currently under way in Rust, with a full rollout coming in the future.
According to the latest Rust dev blog, server admins will be switched to the female model, presumably to help with testing. A full rollout hasn't happened yet because Facepunch Studios still has "some stuff to work out, like making alternate clothing models for her."
However, once fully implemented, sex will be assigned at random upon character creation based on your Steam ID - just like attributes such as skin colour.
"To clear up some confusion, when we it does go live you won’t get a choice of whether you’re female or male," says developer Garry Newman. "We’re not 'taking the choice away' from you. You never had a choice."
Google’s Self-Driving Cars Have Been in 14 Accidentsd
As Google's driverless cars continue to travel across the country, they're experiencing one of the hazards of being on the road: fender benders.
Google cars have been the victims of fourteen small accidents since they initially deployed in 2009. 11 of them have been rear-enders, the most recent of which being the one that took place on July 1. According to data, the car was struck from behind by a human driver going 17 miles per hour. No major damage was done to the Google car, although the other car did lose a bumper. This is the first time in the self-driving car's lifespan that anyone reported any injuries, resulting in four people suffering minor whiplash.
Google's Chris Urmson spoke about these accidents, claiming they were caused by human error and not a malfunction of the car's computing or system mechanics.
This Week in the Nintendo eShop
In this somber week following Satoru Iwata's passing, the Wii U and 3DS eShops are light. The biggest releases are Blaster Master on the Wii U Virtual Console and Tiny Galaxy on the Wii U eShop. The other notable release is the demo for Etrian Odyssey Untold 2, where your playtime in the demo can be transferred to the final release in early August.
Blaster Master ($4.99)
The 1988 NES game shows it ages, but it still presents a variety of interesting ideas. It's almost Metroid-like in that you're presented with an expansive world that you have to explore to find different weapons and levels. In this world, you explore in the vehicle SOPHIA in a side-scrolling manner. Once you find levels, then gameplay shifts to a top-down perspective as you control the intrepid Jason through action-focused stages. If you bought this game on Wii, you can upgrade for $1.
Justice League: Gods and Monsters #9 Preview
We have an exclusive preview of the ninth and final chapter of DC's digital comic Justice League: Gods and Monsters. The series serves as a prologue to the upcoming direct-to-DVD animated film and further fleshes out these unusual versions of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Fittingly, this final chapter sees the trio coming together for the first time and struggling to work together as a team.
Justice League: Gods and Monsters #9 features a story by Bruce Timm and J.M. DeMatteis. It's scripted by DeMatteis and drawn by Thony Silas. Check out our exclusive first look below:
Justice League: Gods and Monsters #9 is priced at 99 cents and will be released on Saturday, July 18 on various digital comics services like Comixology, iVerse, the Kindle Store, iBooks and the DC Comics app.