SBK-07: Superbike World Championship

Bump tyres with the stars in PS2’s latest racer, writes Eliot Fish.

SBK-07: SUPERBIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
PC Xbox
PS2 X360
Wii PS3
NDS PSP
$49.95
G
Rating 3/5

The seemingly endless laps of a motorbike racing circuit can make for hypnotic gaming if you surrender to it. As with the gruelling challenge of F1, the hook to SBK-07 is in the intense concentration required to carve through corners at high speed without losing control and putting all that effort to waste. If you’re more interested in chucking wheelies than caressing the throttle, this may not be the game for you.

Play modes include the instant gratification of a Quick Race, the precision of Time Attack, a simulation of a Superbike Race Weekend, a full-blown Championship, bike-handling Challenges and Multiplayer.

As an officially licensed product, SBK-07’s championship has you bumping tyres with stars such as Troy Bayliss on your way to the chequered flag, as well as straddling Ducatis and Suzukis for real-world sponsors. Most importantly, the superbikes perform as you’d expect, even if the handling has a decidedly arcade flavour.

Obvious mistakes are punished – clipping other bikes or running off the track can spell disaster – but SBK-07 allows you to race with a bit more abandon than the usual simulation. Fighting to gain a position higher up the pack of 22 riders has just enough drama to get the adrenaline going without the need to battle with unforgiving physics. If you want to increase the difficulty, you can adjust settings that include tyre wear, traction control, realistic inertia and the race rules.

The incentive to stick with the long-winded qualifying races and warm-ups to gain a place on the podium hinges on whether you’re keen to unlock real superbike race videos, a gallery of umbrella girls and various cheats. The presentation is fairly dry otherwise, so don’t expect the pizazz of other PS2 racing games such as Gran Turismo or Moto GP.

ENDGAME True satisfaction with this game is probably reserved for superbike nerds as there’s little here to appeal to anyone else, but it’s nice to see the PS2 still competing.

Wii sales trounce PS3 and Xbox

Nintendo’s Wii video game console outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 six to one in June in Japan, a Japanese publishing company says.

Although the Wii has been on sale since late last year, they’re selling so briskly supply still hasn’t caught up with demand and long lines form when shipments arrive at stores.

Enterbrain Inc, the publisher, found that Wii also outsold Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 in Japan in June.

Nintendo, the maker of Pokemon and Super Mario games, sold 270,974 Will consoles in Japan in June, while Sony sold 41,628 PS3 machines, and Microsoft sold 17,616 Xbox 360 consoles, it said. Overseas sales were not available.

The Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control wand – called a Wiimote – that can be used as a sword, tennis racket or fishing rod depending on the game, has helped make the game a surprise hit around the world, widening the appeal of games to far beyond the usual niche target of young males.

The latest numbers suggest that Nintendo’s lead is widening. Wii outsold PS3 just four to one in April and five to one in May, according to Enterbrain.

“The Nintendo’s game console is catching on not only among children but also adults and singles,” said Enterbrain spokeswoman Yuko Magaribuchi.

The availability of more game software for the Wii was another factor adding to its popularity, she said.

Nintendo has said it sold 5.84 million Wii machines worldwide in the five months since its release in November, 2.37 million in the Americas, and 2.0 million in Japan. The Kyoto-based company said it expected to sell 14 million more Wii machines in the fiscal year ending in March 2008.

Sony has shipped 5.5 million PS3 machines in the fiscal year through March.

Nintendo has also marked robust sales with its Nintendo DS portable machine, while Sony has struggled with its offering, the PlayStation Portable.

Band of brothers

The Fratellis tell Helen Brown why there’s nothing simple about writing catchy songs.

FIVE Glaswegian men, far from home in a Texan bar, suddenly throw their arms over each other’s shoulders and start bawling: “Da-da-dah/ Da-da-dah/ Da-da-dah-da-da-dah!” – the beloved chorus of the Fratellis’ Chelsea Dagger, played over the PA at Celtic Park whenever Celtic score.

On stage, the Fratellis grin at the fans who have made a pilgrimage from their home town to see them. Fraggle-haired John Lawler at the mic, Barry Wallace pumping bulk-armed notes from his bass and Gordon “Mince” McRory pounding the drums with the cartoon exuberance of Animal from the Muppets. It’s a throwback to the power-punk of the 1970s, but there’s no denying its potency.

But when I meet Lawler a few hours later, I am caught off-guard by how thoughtful, funny and introspective the 28-year-old singer/songwriter turns out to be. Hunching conspiratorially over his drink, he says: “We’re a lot more intelligent than people give us credit for. We’ve had a hard time over those da-da-dah choruses. There’s a lot of anger about the idea that we’ve dumbed things down … that’s a ridiculous accusation. Rock’n'roll was always dumb: three chords and twist and shout. Plus,” he raises an eyebrow, “it translates well – it works in Japanese. It works in America. Pure melody is infectious and uplifting, so why not go with that?”

They have been criticised for not singing in their own accents. Why have they ditched the brogue? Lawler laughs. “The accent just doesn’t really transfer that well to singing rock’n'roll songs. Or not my songs. I’d sound like I was trying too hard to say, ‘Hey, I’m from Glasgow.’ I don’t have any great need to say that because people will cotton on anyway. And we’re not the Proclaimers. Not that the Proclaimers are a bad thing.”

The Fratellis (Italian for “brothers”) had a curious start. “We all worked on a fairground together. It had seven rides and they were all shit. Without telling each other, we all put adverts up in a record shop. When we met up we were surprised to recognise each other from the fairground. It was like: ‘Oh, it’s you!”‘

Everything has gone “surreally well” since then for the band, who got a Brit Award for best British breakthrough act in February and won rave reviews for their sunny set at the recent Isle of Wight Festival. “We just seem to get all the good things,” nods Lawler. “Maybe the secret is that we don’t ask for anything. We never even sent a demo out to anyone in the music industry. We just got a record deal. And then the other day Pete Townshend got up on stage with us in a black suit and shades and started playing one of our songs. He’s a hero and he jumped about, did windmills, and I just howled.”

But Lawler is aware that the public’s attention span is shorter than it was in the days when Townshend was making a splash with the Who. “If we have maybe three to four years to capture people’s attention, then I’d like to write as many songs as possible. Double albums. I see myself more as a songwriter than as a singer in a rock band. So I just want to keep writing and getting better.”

New Touch mobile is no iPhone copycat

Taiwanese smart phone maker HTC has rolled out a new touch screen mobile device which is aimed squarely at the broad consumer market coveted by Apple’s new iPhone.

The difference is that Australian consumers will be able to get their hands on an HTC Touch mobile by the end of the week. Whereas the iPhone, which is not due to arrive here until sometime next year, is still well out of reach.

HTC chief executive officer Peter Chou, who was in Sydney for the local launch, dismissed any suggestion that his company’s phone was a copycat product launched to steal theiPhone’s thunder.

“We are actually very pleased that a company like Apple agrees with our direction,” Mr Chou said.

He said HTC Touch had been in the works for over two years and would have come out sooner but for the fact that he had sent an earlier prototype back to the drawing board because he wasn’t satisfied with it.

The phone is slightly smaller than the iPhone and about 2mm thicker. It features a 2.8 inch LCD screen (versus the iPhone’s 3.5 inch version) and uses Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system.

An unlocked version of the phone that comes with a 1GB removable microSD storage card will retail for $699 – the same price in Australian dollars as the 8GB iPhone model that was launched in the US on Friday.

The phone’s user interface is – like the iPhone – based on a touch-sensitive screen that employs HTC’s home-grown TouchFLO technology. This allows the user to operate it with their fingers (and thumbs) or with a small stylus that comes with the phone.

TouchFLO enables the the phone to be operated with one hand, using the thumb to scroll though pages, lists or media – like music, videos of photos.
Although the first versions of the new phone will only operate on the slower 2G networks, the company does intend to bring out 3G models down the track.

While HTC is not a household name it has been in business for a decade, making devices for companies such as Compaq , Orange O2 and Vodafone. Last year, HTC took a majority stake in rival smart phone manufacturer Dopod.

HTC has been chosen by Microsoft as a hardware development partner and as such now enjoys close relations with the software giant.

With numerous mobile phone makers planning to bring out touch-screen devices, HTC chief marketing officer John Wang predicted that this year would be remembered as an “inflection point” in the industry.

“Mobile phones are moving from a push button experience to a touch sensory experience,” Mr Wang said. Technologies like TouchFLO mean that users no longer needed to “have to remember the right button to push or when to push the right button,” he said.

The phone will be sold through Optus, Office Works and a distributor called Brightpoint.

The boy wizard grows up

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has come a long way in the past six years. But even the crew who have filmed him for so long were apprehensive about his first on-screen kiss.

“I shouldn’t be watching this,” said producer David Heyman, describing his thoughts during the kiss scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, due out this month.

Still only 17, Daniel Alan Radcliffe has already starred in four, and soon to be five, blockbuster films, a well-received play in London’s West End, and another, non-Potter movie due out in September.

Born July 23, 1989 to Alan Radcliffe and Marcia Gresham, Radcliffe harboured ambitions of an acting career from an early age, but his parents – a literary agent and casting director respectively – were not so keen, so his initial experience in the entertainment industry was limited to school plays.

In 1999, however, he was cast to play the young David Copperfield in the BBC’s adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, and from there his film prospects began to brighten.

The following year, with auditions ongoing for the first Potter film – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – Heyman bumped into Radcliffe’s parents, who were family friends, at a play Radcliffe was acting in.

Having been impressed by Radcliffe, Heyman asked the boy’s father if young Daniel could audition for the part of Harry Potter, a part Radcliffe eventually won, with the release of the first Potter film in 2001.

That same year, he also played the role of the son of a principal character in The Tailor of Panama, a central America-based thriller by British director John Boorman.

He has acted in a total of five Potter films and has ridden the wave of Potter-mania in that time.

JK Rowling’s seven-part Harry Potter series of novels, the latest of which is to be released July 21, have sold 325 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 64 languages.

The films, meanwhile, have grossed $US3.5 billion ($A4.11 billion) worldwide.

Despite being best known for his role in the Potter films, Radcliffe has also won critical acclaim for playing Alan Strang, a disturbed teenager fixated on horses who develops an intense relationship with his psychiatrist, the lead role in the West End play Equus.

He is also set to appear in December Boys, a movie due out in September about four orphans growing up in Australia in the 1960s.

Radcliffe is under contract to appear in the final two instalments of the series – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the eagerly anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – with the final two films due out in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

His wealth is already estimated at STG17 million ($A40.15 million), according to the Sunday Times’s 2007 rich list.

He has said that playing the role of Harry Potter is an “immense privilege”, adding: “I feel a huge sense of loyalty to the character of Harry and the fans who have supported these films over the years.”

Despite the fame and fortune, though, he has continued his studies, starting by hiring a private tutor to help him through the first film. For his A-levels, he is studying Religion and Philosophy, English Literature and History.

He has admitted to being a big fan of his co-star in the Potter films, Gary Oldman, and told reporters in a press conference last month that Oldman is his role model.

Whether or not he ever manages to rival Oldman’s cinematic career, Radcliffe has become a movie superstar of his own, and is growing up before the public’s very eyes.