Justin McElroy

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Justin is Joystiq’s Managing Editor and has been writing about video games since he started reviewing them for The Herald-Dispatch when he was 12 years old. Besides Joystiq, his work has appeared in Computer Games Magazine, GamePro, Official Xbox Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, PC Gamer, The Escapist, Gamezebo, Gamers With Jobs. He is one of the co-hosts of beloved advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me.

Articles by Justin McElroy

Doodle Jump dev and Apple warn other 'doodle' apps
In what's sure to be the killing blow for Joystiq Publishing's upcoming Doodle Doodle: The Doodlin' Doodle Game, Doodle Jump dev Lima Sky and Apple have begun providing trademark warnings to developers of iOS with "doodle" in the title. As Pocket Gamer reports, the teams behind Doodle Monster and Doodle Hockey have received the missives, but there are almost certainly others on the way. Lima Sky, it should be noted, does not have the rights to the word "doodle," but rather just trademarks for the full title "Doodle Jump" and its central character's design. Bryan Duke of Acceleroto (Doodle Hockey) is attempting to rally other doodlin' devs not to kowtow to Apple and Lima Sky, saying "If we all stand together on this, the little guy won't be so little. I'm fighting this. You should too." You'd have to be pretty naive to think many of these devs aren't trying to piggyback off of Doodle Jump's success, but it's a tricky legal area with such a common word as "doodle." Our advice? Next time, stick a "Q" in there somewhere.
Capcom Mobile rips off 'Splosion Man for MaXplosion
"Holy crap, 'Splosion Man got released for iPhone? How did I miss that?" We can forgive your confusion as you check out the above screen and the video below the jump, but no, it's not 'Splosion Man, no matter how much every single one of your senses may attest to that fact. No, this is MaXplosion, an iPhone game dumped on iTunes late last week. Ready for the craziest bit? This isn't some fly-by-night Korean developer operating out of some dude's basement as you might have assumed. No, this is all Capcom Mobile, which is ... disappointing, to say the least. Speaking on his personal Twitter account, Twisted Pixel programmer Mike Henry said "MaXplosion gameplay video makes me sad. If you're going to outright steal a game, you should at least understand what makes it fun." Listen Capcom, we know copycatting is rampant on the App Store, but ... you're Capcom for crying out loud! Shouldn't you be better than that?
Select Activision content on sale on XBLM until Jan 17
It's rare you can do something nice at the same time as you get a little something for yourself, but today presents just such an opportunity. Until January 17, you can get tons of discounted DLC, including some XBLA games, from an upstart indie called "Activision" through Xbox Live Marketplace. All the Call of Duty: World at War map packs are just 400 points, for example, and you can find the Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock "Linkin Park Pack" for just 480 plus our terrible, eye-rolling judgment. We know it can be daunting to spend your hard-earned dough on a no-name publisher, but trust us: We've been following these scrappy kids, and we feel pretty confident that they're going places. Peruse the full list of discounts after the break.
Hank Chien reclaims King of Kong title
This is one of those stories we scarcely need to report, as we're sure you felt it somewhere deep in your bones, but there's a new (old) King of Kong. As the unmistakable feeling of the tectonic plates shifting below your feet will attest, the honor was taken by plastic surgeon Hank Chien with a Donkey Kong score of 1,068,000 in two hours and 45 minutes. Chien takes the title from Steve Wiebe (1,064,500) who took it from Billy Mitchell in September (1,062,800) who took it from Chien (1,061,700) who won the title in March of 2010, besting Mitchell's 1,050,200, which had stood for three years. In related news, Joystiq has recently broken its own record for "Most Stories About the Donkey Kong High Score in One Year" and you don't see anybody writing a frigging blog post about that.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch - Totally Tiny Arcade
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Joe Lesko of Flea Circus Games about his new scaled-down arcade game collection, Totally Tiny Arcade. How did you get started? I grew up in the era of the Commodore 64, with favorites like M.U.L.E., Archon and Modem Wars. While I spent most of that time playing games, I dabbled with programming text games in BASIC, and learned how to do pixel art using Garry Kitchen's GameMaker. I didn't really learn proper game development until many years later, when I started making games in BlitzBasic as a hobby. After completing about a dozen small freeware games, I saw that a few developers were having some financial success with downloadable titles, so I thought I'd give that a try. This was around 2006, right before the current indie and casual game movements gained traction, so it was a bit riskier than it might seem nowadays.
Wahlberg apparently still playing Uncharted's Drake
You guys have got to stop playing with our emotions. First we hear Mark Wahlberg is definitely playing Nathan Drake in an Uncharted movie being created by The Fighter director David O. Russell. Then, Uncharted 3 director Justin Richmond told us that Russell had denied the whole story. Now, Wahlberg tells Moviehole "David O'Russell [sic] is writing right now and hopes to direct. It's myself, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro." Listen guys, we know we want to write a maelstrom of angry tweets about this project, but we need to know precisely what unseen force we'll be railing against. Can you please just help us out and tell us specifically who will be to blame for ruining Uncharted for us forever? [Thanks Andrew T.]
Funcom's 'The Secret World' to be co-published by EA
As the corpses of Asheron's Call 2, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa and others will attest, it's tough to get an MMO up and running. Now, it seems that Funcom's upcoming challenger, The Secret World, will have a little more muscle behind it as EA revealed today it will co-publish the game. EA's involvement is no doubt encouraging for those following the project, though it's not necessarily a guarantee of success. Over the past decade, the publisher has had a hand in plenty of MMO projects that quickly withered and died, including The Sims Online, Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond and Hellgate: London -- if you want to count that. one (We do.) That said, we're rooting for The Secret World, if only so we never have to go through this sort of heartbreak again.
Eve Hypo sales sure to shoot up after fan-made commercial
One of the most puzzling moments of BioShock was when our new-to-Rapture hero jams a Plasmid into his arm with little-to-no prompting. Now, had adorable Vampy (Linda Le) been urging him to inject the power goo as she does in the fan-made ad after the break, we might almost have bought it. Almost.
Joystiq Podcast 164 - CES 2011 edition
The year's biggest electronics show (CES 2011!) is happening as we speak, and your buddy Chris Grant is there to bring you all the latest, along with the gang's musings on Kinect sales, the PSP phone and tablets. Oh ... so many tablets. Thanks to Alan Black for this gritty photoshop. Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes [Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace [RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Hosts: Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk) and Chris Grant (@chrisgrant) Music: "Bassoforte" by Diego Stocco For fans: Joystiq Podcast Facebook group New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ See all of this week's links after the break.
Hey kid: pitch a perfect game in MLB 2K11, win $1 million
We've never been more excited about Take-Two's annual MLB 2K challenge, which offers a million bucks to the first person to pitch a perfect game in the newest iteration of the series (MLB 2K11 in today's announcement). It's not just the money -- though that's obviously interesting for Xbox 360 and PS3 players vying for the prize -- it's that the official rules have lowered the minimum age of contestants to thirteen. ...You're still not getting it. It's okay, we didn't at first either. Maybe the company didn't realize it, and we certainly don't want to jinx anything, but Take-Two has put our planet just 27 virtual outs away from a real life Blank Check scenario, this time with no meddlesome gangsters or Feds to spoil everything. We call dibs on the first go-kart race.
WGA nominates Singularity, New Vegas, more for writing award
You may look forward to Christmas with the family or that first magical snow, but our favorite winter tradition is seeing what befuddling games the Writer's Guild of America has chosen to nominate for the year's best writing. Some notable previous nominees include Wet, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and (no joke) Crash of the Titans. But it's really let us down with the 2010 lineup: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Fallout: New Vegas God of War III Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Singularity Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Sure, we could have picked better games (Mafia II, Enslaved, Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption, just for starters) but none of the selections have the puzzling punch of previous picks like The Simpsons Game or Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. Congratulations, it would seem, are in order for whichever WGA member's nephew got to pick these this year. So way to go, kid. You don't have good taste in games, but at least you aren't a nutjob. Update: As some of our readers have been kind enough to point out, WGA awards are limited to members of the organization, which may explain some of the more notable omissions. So now you know.
The Flying Hamster soars onto iOS
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell posits that great ideas spread virally. It makes sense then that a game about a flying, beer-chasing rodent, too brilliant to be contained by PSP, has now migrated to iOS. Find Flying Hamster in the App Store for $5.99, and find a launch trailer after the break.
Morrowind 2011 mod pack pulled after modders raise concerns
Just a few short days after its public release, Tyler Smith's Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind graphical update, the "Morrowind 2011" mod, is under attack, its torrent link blocked after Smith received threats of legal action from modders whose work was appropriated for the pack. Though Smith admits there were issues with how content was credited in the initial release, he insists the credits were being updated. Modders claimed on the Bethesda forums (in a thread that has since been removed) that their work was being used illegally and without their permission. "The real problem here, however, was that when the package came out, a few modders (myself included) contacted the compiler and simply asked for [him] to a) ask permission to use the mods and b) remove ones that he couldn't get permission for," one modder, who preferred not to be named, told Joystiq. "Just a bit of respect for the modders who put their time and effort in, and most of us would've given permission if asked." Smith, who has chronicled the ordeal on his blog, seemed to have little hope that a resolution between he and the miffed modders would be reached. Though he has blocked the original torrent link, he admits it's possible that Morrowind 2011 could be redistributed by others. "In the end I'm just very disappointed that I wasn't given a chance to correct the issues with the package, as I knew there were issues that were [in the process of being] fixed/updated," Smith told us. "But the file is out on the internet, and it will be very hard for anyone to remove it from all the sites."
Nyko's 2011 CES lineup includes 360 S Intercooler
As many times as we've tried to write about Nyko's lineup for CES 2011, we're having a hard time shaking the feeling that someone is watching us while we work. We keep writing these hilarious jokes about how we're glad there are two different plastic gun peripherals for the Move (larger Power Shot and pistol-shaped Perfect Shot, also available in Wii flavor), just so we can [punchline, punchline, punchline]. But when we go to fill in the brackets with chuckle cream, a chill shoots down our spine and we know that somewhere someone, or something, is glowering silently. Wait, is it ... could it be? Could it be that the Xbox 360 Slim-shaped Intercooler STS is the unthinking, unfeeling cyclops making our delicate work so difficult? ... What's that? What do you mean you don't see it? Here, let us help:
You Don't Know Jack pushed to Feb. 8
You've waited eight years for a proper You Don't Know Jack, so can you wait an additional two weeks for the return of Cookie Masterson, without feeling like you're being screwed? THQ sure hopes so: The publisher has delayed the game's new iteration (appearing on 360, PS3, Wii, DS and PC) from January 25 to February 8. In a fit of generosity that seems ... out of step with the series' rib-tickling misanthropy, Jellyvision has provided a web sample of the game to tide you over. Enjoy. [Thanks, NordicOten]
Kinect hack turns you into a superhero
Here's a prime example of the importance of knowing your audience. Plenty of fully-formed games for Microsoft's Kinect hardware have been market researched and lovingly crafted, but peering into our souls with his Ultra Eye, YouTube user "hogehoge335" has tapped into our most heart-felt desires. In seconds, his new hack transforms the user into an Emerium Beam-blasting, Eye Slugger-tossing super hero -- tokusatsu icon Ultraseven, specifically. We've been trying to think of a mature way to describe the video after the break, but our inner five-year-old has immobilized that part of our brains. So, in closing: He transforms! He can shoot lasers! He tosses his head thing! We want it! We want it!
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Wispin
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Chris Graham of Grumpy Face Studios about his iPhone action puzzler Wispin. What's your game called, and what's it about? It's a quirky little affair for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Wispin. We describe it as an arcade experience with a unique twist: The addition of "color-matching" gameplay elements. Players can change our spunky hero's color on the fly by utilizing the on-screen "Color Wheel," which can be tapped or swiped much like a joystick. Gameplay involves a constant balancing of offensive and evasive maneuvers, as changing your color determines which enemies you can dispatch (those that match your color) and which will do you harm (those that don't match). A number of additional features and mechanisms are also present to keep things interesting, such as "color streak combos", performance-based point multiplying, online leaderboards, and an overall game progression that advances from calm to deliciously chaotic. We also tried to inject a healthy dose of wackiness (such as a usable cheese powerup), because we're weird like that.
Lost in Shadow review: Succumbing to the dark side
Lost in Shadow isn't a bad game. At times, it soars. But it doesn't know when to quit. It begins as a cerebral platformer with an inspired gimmick, then keeps adding ill-advised play mechanics and new story beats when the main narrative thread has frayed. Like a stand-up comedian who lingers onstage long after the audience has stopped laughing, Lost in Shadow's greatest achievement turns out to be how thoroughly it squanders its goodwill. It's a shame, because things start so well. A brief introductory sequence shows a boy's shadow severed from his body, and dumped from the top of a high tower. When the game begins, you find yourself controlling not the boy, but the shadow. This takes a bigger mental adjustment than you'd expect. Robust, three-dimensional objects float uselessly by in the foreground, while the real action is projected in two dimensions against the rear walls, deep in your field of vision. A simple enough idea, but powerful. You find yourself leaning forward in your seat, almost feeling your brain rewiring itself as you try to make sense of this dangerous world.%Gallery-105078%
'Morrowind 2011' mod done, gorgeous, now available [update]
It's funny, no matter how hard you try, there always seems to be a "new year" adjustment period. Just today, we were buying groceries and we put "The Year Before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Came Out" as the date! Can you imagine? The clerk looked at us like we were crazy, and who can blame her? Though it is, in fact, the year that Skyrim is set to arrive, we've still got a touch over 10 months of waiting ahead of us. In the interim, we're going to be biding our time with modder Warwon's "Morrowind 2011" mod compendium (which you can see in action just after the break). That is, we would be, if Warwon weren't still in the process of looking for a host for the 4GB pack, which overhauls the environments in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind with beautifully modern graphics. Great, so now we're waiting for both of them. Double waiting. Could The Year that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Comes Out Barring Any Delays possibly be off to a worse start? Update: You can follow along with the project at the official site here. And it's live there right now!
Joystiq Podcast 163 - Game of the Year 2010 edition
Well, you made it. You survived to the end of 2010. Let's celebrate our collective fortunes together by analyzing the Joystiq Top 10! What's that, you say? Not enough? How about an impromptu iPhone buyers guide? Perhaps a free Spoiled Rotten on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow? (Sorry about Chris' robot voice, by the way.) No? Well, forgive us. It's the end of 2010, and we have nothing left to give. Also, thanks to Conor O'Byrne for his humble photoshop. Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes [Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace [RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Hosts: Justin McElroy (@justinmcelroy), Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk) and Chris Grant (@chrisgrant) Music: "Bassoforte" by Diego Stocco For fans: Joystiq Podcast Facebook group New to the show?: Listen to Episode Zero The Do It Line!: 1-(877)-JOYSTIQ See all of this week's links after the break.

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