Video Game Halloween Costume Ideas October 30, 2013

Tomorrow is Halloween in my neck of the woods, and while many people have already decided what costumes they plan to wear tomorrow, it can be hard for some to pick out just the right costume to wear.  There may also be some gamers out there who want to show off their love for video games as well, and want to recreate the costume of a video game character to show their love.  I understand that there are tons of video game costumes available to purchase online (some of them are even officially licensed), but there are plenty more that are not.  With that in mind, I’ve decided to post up a list of some popular video game characters who have outfits that can be replicated with just a little bit of money, and a long look through a closet.  Now get to it!

Pokémon Trainer (Pokémon) – While they deal with fantastical technology and creatures, Nintendo’s Pokémon games have always tried to make their game world and fashion as close to real life as possible.  Most of the clothes that the various Pokémon trainers have worn over the years can be readily found in most people’s closets.  Their costumes can usually be made up of black shirts, blue vests, fingerless gloves, hoodies, jeans and a backpack.  The only problem I’ve seen is trainer hats are custom for the most part, and may be more difficult to obtain.  While most of Ash’s hats from the various Pokémon animated series can be found cheaply on sites like Amazon, if you’re a female interested in the hat worn by the Black and White female trainer, you may have to make that yourself.  If you’re going for a more recent Pokémon Trainer look, just remember to keep your sunglasses in your hat.  If you have any Poke Balls or plush Pokémon around, bring them with you in case someone challenges you to a battle.

Mario and Luigi (Super Mario Bros) – Their costumes can be incredibly simple.  Both Mario and Luigi wear jean overalls, which can be found pretty much anywhere.  If you’re going to play as Mario, you’ll need a red sweatshirt, and Luigi wears a green sweatshirt.  If you have white gloves, they could enhance the look, but they’re not needed.  You’re going to need a mustache, so if you’re unable to grow one yourself, make sure to pick one up at a costume shop.  While you could always accessorize your costume further, like build a ghost vacuum for Luigi, don’t bother bringing a plunger with you.  While the boys are plumbers, we have never seen them carry a plunger in a single one of their video games.  What you will need to top it off though is a custom Mario or Luigi hat, and you can find those pretty cheaply online, or at any costume shop.  Heck, Nintendo has been giving away custom Luigi hats all year long at most of their major events.  You probably have one in a swag bag somewhere you forgot about.

JC Denton  (Deus Ex) – Very simple costume for the bionic agent.  Black leather trench coat.  Blue or gray zip up fleece shirt or vest.  Sunglasses.  That’s it.

Jackie Estacato (The Darkness) – Take the JC Denton costume (listed above), lose the sunglasses and add a long black wig.

Duke Nukem – Red tank top, blue jeans, black suspenders, and dark sunglasses.  The hard part is going to be in replicating his classic flat top blond haircut, or his huge muscles.  You may be able to find a wig to match the hair, or just happen to normally sport his classic hairstyle, but the muscles may be harder to replicate.  As Duke would say, “Be sure to take your um…vitamins.”

Frank West (Dead Rising) – Frank is a bit more difficult to recreate as he’s got a nearly infinite amount of different costumes that he can wear in the games that he’s appeared in, and many of his outfits can be confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the game series.  Here’s an interesting story.  I once saw a guy walking around PAX East last year in nothing more than a pair of briefs and suspenders to hold them up.  The producer next to me had no idea what he just saw, but was relieved when I told him that it looked like he was cosplaying as Frank West.  While It may be a little cold to do an outfit like that outside, you can always go for his default outfit of a white button up shirt and leather jacket.  Just don’t forget the camera.

Psychic Camper from Psychonauts – Double Fine actually sells shirts that are an exact replica of the ones that the campers wear while staying at the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and they have them in both mens and womens style.  If you want to show off your psychic skills, you can pick one up here.

Nathan Drake (Uncharted) – Well, anyone who happened to pick up a copy of the Uncharted 3 Collector’s Edition should be able to recreate his costume.  While he has changed his clothing on many different occasions depending on the environment he was in, he’s never far away from Sir Francis Drake’s ring.  A replica of that ring, plus Drake’s horseshoe belt buckle are included in that collector’s edition, and they should work well enough that you could wear them as part of a costume.  While you can’t go wrong with wearing a simple black suit with a white button up shirt and no tie, as he does in the beginning of Uncharted 3, Drake is usually known for his long sleeve beige shirts, blue jeans, and boots.  That should be easy enough to obtain.  Just keep the ring around your neck to complete to look.

Max Payne – I actually went dressed as him once one Halloween.  While the more recent Max Payne game depicted him as a bald, bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt, the original version of him was clean shaven with a full head of hair.  Depending on what version you are going for, you may need a leather jacket with an open Hawaiian shirt under it.

So that’s just a small list of how do make some quick video game costumes this Halloween.  No matter who you choose to go as I wish you all a very fun and safe time!

Pokémon Trainers Need Pokémon Bank Now October 22, 2013

One of the biggest developments after the announcement of Pokémon X and Y was the announcement of Pokémon Bank.  For a small yearly fee, gamers could upload all the Pokémon they’ve captured in the various Pokémon games to the internet.  It offered gamers a larger storage capacity than the sixth generation games could, and ensured that a player’s Pokémon would not be lost if they sold or traded in their games.  Nintendo also announced that they would release a small companion app for the 3DS to help gamers transfer any Pokémon captured in Pokémon Black, Pokémon White, Pokémon Black 2, and Pokémon White 2 called Poké Transporter.   Because the fifth generation games allowed you to trade Pokémon from earlier games to it (and those earlier games allowed trading with even earlier ones), with the help of the Poké Transporter a player could theoretically transfer nearly every Pokémon they’ve ever captured over six generations of games to Pokémon Bank!  Once stored in Pokémon Bank, the Pokémon can be used in X, Y, and any future generation Pokémon games.  This is of course provided the player still had their games and the hardware to play them, but it is a very strong incentive to get long-time Pokémon players to sign up for the service.

I spoke to a Pokémon Trainer today who had been collecting Pokémon since the release of Pokémon Emerald on the Game Boy Advance, and he was frustrated that there currently was no way to bring any of the Pokémon he already captured in the earlier games to his new game.  Nintendo has made it clear that players are not allowed to trade Pokémon from earlier Pokémon games directly to X or Y, so the only way you will be able to bring your Pokémon to the games is with Pokémon Bank and the Poké Transporter app, even though earlier games allowed it.  Nintendo says this is the case because they can’t allow sixth generation exclusive Pokémon to end up in earlier Pokémon games, it could break something.

With the ability to trade your Pokémon from earlier games missing from X and Y, the only way to get your Pokémon into the new game is through Pokémon Bank.  The problem is Pokémon Bank won’t get its official release until December, and Pokémon X and Pokémon Y are out now.  I’m sure there are many Pokémon X and Y players who are also frustrated about this.  Pokémon X and Pokémon Y are designed around the ability to use the Pokémon Bank to collect and store Pokémon, but since the service is currently not active, it cannot be used.    It would have been nice if Pokémon Bank launched on the same day as the sixth generation games, but alas it was not to be.  Hopefully Nintendo is taking the time to work out all the bugs before launching the service to ensure a smooth rollout.

Pokémon Bank launches in December 2013 to the Nintendo 3DS.  The fee to join is $4.99 US per year, but there will be a free 30-day trial period for Pokémon Trainers interested in testing the system out first before signing up for it.

Why Doesn’t Sony Remove HDCP For Playstation 3 Gameplay? October 20, 2013

I know I waited a bit longer that I should have to start doing direct gameplay capturing on this site, but that was because I was waiting for capture devices to come to the market that could capture 1080p gameplay through HDMI and that has only been possible in the past year.  Earlier in the summer, I picked up an AverMedia Live Gamer Portable capture device for the site and I love the thing.  It can capture HD video game streams to either a PC or Class 10 SDHC memory device through either an analog or digital connection.  It works well on my Xbox 360 and Wii U, as all I need to do is plug a HDMI cable directly into it from my console, and I can capture all the game footage I want in crystal clear 1080p at thirty frames.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my Playstation 3, and it’s because of a decision that Sony made at the beginning of the PS3’s development and sadly still has not rectified.

My one issue with my capture device is it cannot capture PS3 footage through HDMI.  In fact, no game capture device currently on the market can capture PS3 footage through HDMI.  That is because the Playstation 3 uses HDCP encryption on all content coming out of its HDMI connection.  Because of that encryption, no footage at all can legally be captured through HDMI on the Playstation 3, forcing me to capture gameplay footage through a lower quality analog connection.  And yes, an analog feed, even if it is in HD, is lower quality than a digital one.  Just take a look at my comparison video to see for yourself.

AverMedia pleads innocent to this and has made it clear that this issue is completely Sony’s doing.  I don’t blame them, they are simply complying with the law.  It is highly likely that Sony chose to completely encrypt all of the PS3’s HDMI content to prevent PS3 owners from copying High-Definition video streams from Netflix or Blu-Ray movies, but if you ask me Sony took it a step further by HDCP encrypting PS3 gameplay as well.  The downside of Sony’s decision to encrypt gameplay with HDCP is that any review sites who do side by side comparison videos taken between multiplatform games will not have the best possible video source on the Playstation 3 as they would on Xbox 360 or Wii U, throwing off the reliability of comparison videos.  Granted, most video game review sites have captured all of their HD content through analog connections up to this point, so this hasn’t been much of an issue until recently.  Because an analog signal doesn’t have as high a picture quality as a digital one, gamers will see artifacting from the capture device that they wouldn’t normally see if they had used a digital connection even if both consoles were captured at the exact same resolution.

I have talked about my issues with HDCP in my HDCP History article, but I understand the need to have it active while watching a Blu-Ray Disc or Netflix.  I don’t understand why Sony enables HDCP during gameplay.  The Xbox 360 and Wii U do not HDCP encrypt their HDMI game streams.  On top of that, if HDCP is such an essential feature of the Playstation 3, why aren’t the Playstation 4 or Xbox One going to encrypt their gameplay footage?  In fact, the PS4 and Xbox One will ship with built-in live game streaming and game DVR features right out of the box, all of which can be made more useful for users that have separate capture devices.

I think the plan was that the PS4 would encrypt their HDMI stream and force players to use only the PS4’s supplied features to stream or record gameplay.  Sony bowed down from that decision after a lot of media pressure, and the fact that the Xbox One would not be doing it.  We don’t know yet if HDCP encryption will be removed from the PS4 at launch, or will be removed with a Day One firmware update, but Sony has confirmed that it will be removed.  The press was very happy about this development and gave Sony props for changing their minds.  My question is if it was so unpopular on consoles that aren’t even out yet, and it can be removed with a patch or system update, why doesn’t Sony go one step further and do the same thing on the PS3?

We live in a time when everyone wants to be able to have the opportunity to record their gameplay sessions and share it with others.  There are tons of popular Let’s Plays across the internet, and more are being uploaded every day.  The Playstation 4 and Xbox One will ship with internal DVRs so gameplay can be recorded and streamed without the need of a separate capture device, but an external capture device offers a lot more flexibility on game captures, particularly for longer gaming sessions.  There is no reason to encrypt PS3 gameplay, Sony, and tons of reasons why you shouldn’t.  You’re not going to have it on the Playstation 4, remove it from the Playstation 3.  All you’re doing is forcing players to use a lower quality connection to capture footage from your games, making them look in a lower quality than they otherwise would have.

UPDATE:  Since writing this article, the PS4 has been released and Sony has not removed the HDCP encryption from the console’s HDMI game stream, even though they had promised they would before launching the console.  While Sony has not changed their intent to remove this stupid hindrance to recording gameplay, as of the time of this writing the PS4 is still HDCP locked, and it was not removed with the PS4’s Day One 1.5 firmware update.  Meanwhile the Wii U and Xbox One are also out and have no HDCP encryption on their HDMI outputs, permitting their users to record their gameplay digitally to their heart’s content.

I really am struggling to understand Sony’s decision to launch the PS4 with HDCP encryption and not remove it with the Day One firmware update when all of their direct competitors have no such hindrance in place since the day their products hit shelves.