One of the only sports I absolutely love to watch is tennis. This year’s Wimbledon final between Federer and Nadal was one for ages and probably the best match I’ve ever seen. This week I’ve been playing the ever loving hell out of Top Spin 3 since I have a review going up this afternoon. Luckily though it’s a game I would have played anyway since I spent a bunch of time with the first two in the series. No need to go on with my opinion of the game here.

There’s been some WoW sprinkled in there too, of course. Mainly I’ve been focusing on PvP and upping my Jewelcrafting skill. There’s some sweet equipment I’ve got my eye on and there’s a lot of honor to be had in order to get it.

That’s about the size of it for me, What’cha Been Playing?

As I mentioned Monday in my preview of Multiwinia there’s going to be online co-op included in the title that launches “this fall”. I contacted Introversion to clear up the details and here’s what they had to say:

We’re due to launch on September 19th. There will be a vast choice of competitive maps available to play across the 6 modes and co-op maps are available on three of the game modes. Maps will range from 2, 3 to 4-player – all the co-op maps will be 4 player.

That date is confirmed for the PC launch on Steam, UK retail and their own store. Darwinia+ will be hitting XBLA later this year and they’re still trying to nail down retail releases outside of the UK. We’ll check back in when we find out more.

The same legendary rock magazine who featured the fucking Jonas Brothers on their latest cover have a nice article about the battle between Rock Band and Guitar Hero to nail down the big prize bands for their respective games. While most of the article is filled with stuff you probably already know there are a few interesting business-y bits like the following:

• Guitar Hero: Aerosmith outsold their last album in the first week by over 400,000 copies.
• Led Zeppelin have no plans to be licensed because of concerns about turning over their masters to outsiders
• Hendrix might not be exclusive to Guitar Hero for long, Janie Hendrix is working on a similar deal with Rock Band
• “Bands and labels each earn about 50 cents per [dlc] track, more than they get from iTunes and other standard download sites.”
• “[VH1] Rock Honors [The Who] was originally floated as an idea to help sell Rock Band,” Who guitarist Pete Townshend wrote in an e-mail to Rolling Stone.

Read the full story here.

If the following rumored list is true, they’ve nailed down Pink Floyd.

Oh, and Chuck Berry.

That puts me in a bad predicament because I have to admit, the latter two thirds of the list make it REALLY attractive. If only I felt like I could trust that it would be fun to play. We haven’t said a lot about Guitar Hero: World Tour but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s sounding pretty decent.

Hit the jump for the full list. Continue Reading »

Hope you’ve got a comfortable pair of pants on because this one is epic. But hey, it’s our 50th episode, we’re allowed to celebrate a little.

This week we talk about:

• What We’ve Been Playing
• E3…Ewha?
• BitCast Byte Back Response

This Week’s BitCast Music:
Song: No Surprises
Artist: Radiohead featuring a special guest.
Album: OK Computer

Download Episode 50

As Jimmy pointed out in the comments this piece is called “NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY SEGA WITH HARRISON FORD.” and it’s from artist Brandon Bird. Here’s his description of the picture:

I made this for the 2006 I am 8-Bit show. We didn’t have Nintendo, so I had to go with what I knew.

Thanks to my wife (and Joe!) for the tip!

Introduced in 2005 by Introversion Software the world of Darwinia caught the attention PC gamers who were looking for something a little different. With its hypnotic blend of action and RTS in a distinct and unique virtual world the game became an instant critical hit but the game never really seemed to garner the mass attention of gamers it so strongly deserved. Multiwinia, the upcoming multiplayer version of Darwinia, seems set to change all that soon when it launches for PC, Mac, Linux and Xbox Live Arcade as part of Darwinia+. Continue Reading »