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Konami Play – right idea, poor implementation

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August 28, 2009 |

Konami shows that it is forward thinking, but makes a hash of implementation

Track and Field screenshot

Japanese publisher Konami has recently launched Konami Play, bringing classic games like Track and Field and Frogger as well as modern titles like Metal Gear Solid to the browser.

It’s a solid start, and I’ll post more comments as I use the site more, but my initial view is not favourable.

I immediately tried to log in using Facebook Connect, because I absolutely hate creating yet more user name/password combinations, and I thought these games might be more fun if my real-world friends were also playing them.

#fail.

Konami connected me to Facebook, but it gave me the user name of my 9 digit Facebook user id, preceeded by the letters FB. It never told me this, which meant that logging in was really difficult.

It then asked me pointless questions (like what my mobile number is – as if I’ve I’m going to give that to a brand I’ve only just started to interact with) and prefilled my birthdate as mid August 2002 (how on earth did they come up with that date?).

My initial experience is enough to make me distrust what they are doing with my Facebook stream and not to want to continue.

But in the interests of research (and playing Track and Field), I’ll persevere. I’ll let you know if it turns out to be fun.

Have you used Konami Play? Would you want to? I’m really keen to hear about your experiences in the comments.

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  • http://www.screendigest.com/ Ed

    I didn't have a problem with the facebook connect bit but Dance Dance Revolution would not load for me after multiple attempts! Given I don't have a huge amount of time to try these things I went back to work.

    We'll leave to one side my soft spot for DDR games for the time being…

    [Reply]

  • dakerman

    Track and Field worked great in my Facebook and is a lot of fun to play – it brought back lots of memories and wasted arcade quarters. No problems with the connect. I added the game within Facebook, not sure if this helps anyone.

    [Reply]

  • http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Nicholas-Lovell/739651170 Nicholas Lovell

    I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I have got it to work finally, and retro-memories were fantastic. I don't think that their social gaming implementation is great though.

    [Reply]

  • http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Nicholas-Lovell/739651170 Nicholas Lovell

    I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I have got it to work finally, and retro-memories were fantastic. I don't think that their social gaming implementation is great though.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.adodis.com/ECommerce-Solution.php ECommerce Solution

    The images are not very clear, it should be neat and clean like glass, I think this also may be one of the reason for poor implementation.

    [Reply]

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