The ongoing and extremely uber DOOM case mod over on [H]ardOCP got me thinking about the supposedly somewhat moddable Xbox 2 (or Xenon or 360 or Next). One rumour (and I certainly don’t place much stock in them, but speculation is fun) claims it will be moddable, with replacable face plates or somesuch and even a customisable front end. I for one really hope this sees the light of day.

Yet again it would be MS taking a fairly commonplace PC phenomenon, and making it easier for masses, just like they did with online gaming and, well, hard drives. Imagine the after-market extras that will pop up if MS makes it easy - sure, some of them will be tacky but I’m sure some bright sparks will create some genuinely cool customisations that don’t require glue or a dremel. Not to mention how nice GUI skins are to tinker with.

Of course, I’m biased since my Xbox has green glowing dongles, controller ports, gem and fan. Oh dear indeed. Certainly the greatest depths my geekery has yet plumbed, but it was an interesting way to spend a weekend.
 

Every now and again it’s a joy to discover an excellent, old game you never knew existed. Even better is when a game you thought was total rubbish turns out to have a redeeming feature. Most recently this has been the case with Star Trek: Bridge Commander.

Quit sniggering. I recall the single player was a fairly naff series of warp jumps between planets with the odd bit of combat and storyline thrown in. Reasonably well done but nonetheless I couldn’t be arsed finishing it. Multiplayer, on the other hand, is rather good as it turns out. One of the chaps at work borrowed a few copies from the games library and so far it’s been far more fun that it has any right to be.

Granted, there aren’t too many ships or maps in the default game, however after a little bit of poking around BC Files you can have Borg Cubes, the Defiant, Space Stations, bots and even that future Star Ship from Voyager with the 4 warp nacelles. Fancy recreating Wolf 359? You can certainly take a stab, albeit with not quite as many ships. Even as a casual Trek fan this stuff is a lot of fun to play with. Multiplayer itself is also reasonably tactical despite the limited array of weapons. Throw in four or more players and you’re golden. It has quickly become a regular feature of lunch time gaming at work rather than the fad I expected. It’s a miracle for anything to last more than a couple of play sessions at lunch, C&C Generals Zero Hour being the last to do so.

Copies must go for a pittance on Ebay, track some down and make it the novelty game of your next LAN Party. Every LAN Party should have a "Guest Star" game that isn’t Halo, CS or Battlefield. Giants also comes highly recommended for surprisingly excellent multiplayer shenanigans. I once spent a whole LAN anihilating people as the gargantuan Citizen Kabuto, then switched to a Sea Reaper and butchered whoever played Kabuto instead of me, thus silencing critics who claimed "whoever plays Kabuto gets it easy". Mwuhaha.

That would be me then. Sonic versus Mario? The blue hedgehog would shred the fat plumber any day. At least that’s the answer you’d get from me back during the 16-bit wars. I now realise that Mario, under the wise guidance of Shigeru Miyamoto, made the transition to 3D successfully while Sonic Team faffed with the isometric tosh that was Sonic 3D. Miyamoto created a new genre in the process, one which Sonic Team could only roughly shoehorn Sonic into on the Dreamcast once they saw the light.

It feels like the Sega we knew died with the Dreamcast. That console saw Virtua Tennis, Sonic Adventure 2 (admitedly the closest they ever got to recapturing the thrill of the originals), the wonderous Shenmue series, Jet Set radio and of course Rez. Now? Only Virtua Fighter 4 and Super Monkey Ball spring to mind as recent truly great games from Sega dev teams. Was the Sega-made hardware really such an inspiration to their internal developers? Or has the Sammy buyout just screwed things over as much as we featured?

Anyhow, the point of this jaded ramble? It would seem the ever-readable Tycho agrees with me. Which is nice.

A massive adventure spanning an entire galaxy with player-driven
gameplay and design shared seamlessly online among the entire Spore
community.

Further proof, as if any were needed, that Will Wright is in fact a genius.  I was lucky enough to speak to him once and he seemed really keen on encouraging creativity in those who play his games, seeing games as a powerful tool to do far more than just entertain. Gaming needs more designers willing to think this far outside  the box.

Update: A view of Spore from a Shacker.

Why Pixel Kill? Originally it was a short-lived games review site I created years ago after being laid off as Games Editor for a major US website. Yes, I was a dot bomber.  I chose the name for a bunch of reasons, but mainly it sounds fairly cool and is a reference to what us gamers often do - kill pixels. I decided to name my first entry into the Blogosphere after the old site mainly because I still like the name and I own the domain. And why not?

I start this little blog having just closed a fairly massive website that I’ve run for seven years.  17 million impressions and 100,000 users a month, millions of forum posts and, just before we closed, we hit 1000 forum users online at once - I’m sure those numbers will mean something to someone, but just trust me it was a monster. It’s a pretty insane thing to let go of but the end of an era is often the start of a new one. Hence, my Pixel Kill blog.

It’s nice to get back to doing a website on a shoe string and having a good reason to start writing more again. As the saying goes, writing is a muscle and I feel like mine has atrophied far too much. Expect posts about games, occasionally technology, and very infrequently real life. I’ll try and keep it interesting, promise.