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Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

February 20, 2012 – 12:39 pm | 3 Comments

Tiny Diggers has just been released on the iPad and soon the Mac computer. Here’s the details on this fun, educational game from TouchTilt Games.
Tiny Diggers Delivers Learning With Construction Trucks For Kids on the …

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Beautiful Katamari DLC Causes Angst

Submitted by on October 21, 2007 – 3:01 am6 Comments

beautiful-katamari-boxart.jpg

The downloadable content for Beautiful Katamari (which is only available in Asia, at the moment) includes four new levels, each worth 200 Microsoft points. The kicker, according to Destructoid, is that each download is only 384 kB. Much like the maligned Reelmaker’s 108 kB “download” for NHL 2k8, these 200 point purchases amount to merely unlocking content that was included on the disk at the factory.

Besides the fact that this is a travesty of a Katamari game, plagued by awful collision detection, chaotic level design (compared to the nicely flowing, well-conceived levels of the previous games), and rampant camera angle problems, Beautiful Katamari should probably be avoided anyway. So, these downloadable content shenanigans conveniently provide another reason not to buy this game.

  • http://www.farbot.com Paul (Aeropause)

    Hah! Another unlocking DLC feature! We last saw this particular patch type here:

    http://www.aeropause.com/archives/2007/09/2k_games_is_a_coding_and_compression_genius/

    To be fair camera problems were pretty frequent in the PS2 Katamari games. Getting hung up on scenery wasn’t though.

  • Joe (Aeropause)

    Could this be similar to Halo 3 uploading matches and video. It only takes a small amount of data, because all it is doing is giving the game points of data and then the game renders it. Maybe that is why it is so small. I don’t know that for a fact, but it is a possibility.

  • http://www.farbot.com Paul (Aeropause)

    A whole level of geometry and items in 384k? Highly unlikely.

  • http://www.aeropause.com George

    Actually, Joe has a good point. A quick rundown of all the saved Forge maps I have on my 360 shows that a typical Forge map takes up about 55 kB.

    So, yes, this DLC could be analogous to a Forge variant in Halo 3.

    Doesn’t relieve my outrage though. Why should I pay 200 points for a Forge variant (that I can’t edit), when they obviously included most of the content on the disk, anyway.

  • http://eklipse.net Mike

    Just more of the Microsoft ridiculous-ness revolving around XBox Live. They’re just milking more money out of consumer because people will pay for it. (“If they pay for it, we will build it.”).

  • http://www.aeropause.com George

    Huh? You do realize that Microsoft doesn’t control the price of DLC from third parties, right?