UPDATE: Due to a technical error, the Impact Mode DLC was not included in this Super Stardust HD DLC sale bundle. Any users who purchased the sale bundle will be receiving a message within the next week or so with a voucher code for the Impact Mode DLC. We will also correct the error for next Tuesday’s Store publish. We apologize for the inconvenience!

It’s amazing that we’ve come this far since Super Stardust HD first came on the scene. Five years ago, the top-selling and award-winning PS3 game blasted you on a breathtaking tour through the galaxy full of epic sights and scenes. Everyone here at Housemarque has been honored to be a part of the journey in creating five years of action-packed entertainment on PSN. From Super Stardust HD to Super Stardust Portable to Super Stardust Delta on PS Vita, we’ve always pushed ourselves to deliver the best possible arcade experience.

To celebrate the game’s fifth anniversary, and to thank you all for your support, we’ve launched a spectacular offer – Super Stardust HD + all three DLC add-ons, including last year’s stellar new “Impact” game mode, in one cosmic bundle for only $7.99. This deal won’t last forever though – the offer will only be valid from August 8th to September 5th.

With each new DLC pack, we’ve aimed to dazzle by adding even more fun and innovative features to the core Super Stardust HD experience. Here are four features that we are most proud of implementing since the game’s launch in 2007:

1. Super Stardust HD is one of the first and only games to provide a 60 fps 1080p 3D experience, creating 120 unique frames per second in order to do so
2. The DLC expansions add numerous game modes and co-op play for up to four players.
3. Better yet, you can experience the co-op modes in true 3D SimulView where each player sees their own view of the action, provided you own the 3D Display
4. Last but not least, Super Stardust HD was the first ever game to feature Trophies!

We here at Housemarque hope that you take advantage of the special anniversary offer and join the thousands of people who have enjoyed our games over these last five years.

Super Stardust Delta should feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s experienced Super Stardust HD on PS3. But it’s important to note – Delta is not a port of that 2007 classic. It’s an entirely new game.

We sampled the traditional Arcade Mode, and got a feel for two new weapons, the Laser Melter and Ice Laser (names not final). Unlike SSHD’s singular, screen-clearing smart bomb, each primary weapon comes with its own secondary attack that you activate with a touch of the screen. The Laser Melter drops a black hole that sucks everything in – including your ship, if you’re not careful. The Ice Laser shoots out a huge swarm of missiles that home in on targets.

The only thing that’s really needed to make a good portable Super Stardust are two analogs (check) and a pretty display (check), Delta features an intuitively implemented use of the six axis gyros; you tilt the NGP to see what blast-able fodder is lurking just over the planet’s horizon. There’s also a devastating Shockwave attack that you activate with a quick, light shake of the device.

However, if all you wanna do is shoot like you’re used to, developer Housemarque is working on a “purist mode,” which will more closely mirror the controls in the PS3 version.

Super Stardust Delta looks awesome at this pre-alpha stage – possibly even better than Super Stardust HD. That 5” OLED screen certainly doesn’t hurt. The hardware handles the debris-filled landscape with ease, even when you start shattering asteroids into ever-smaller particles. Delta also features a vibrant color palette; this is especially obvious with the Laser Melter weapon, which pulses with an eye-searing glow.

The team promises online play (details TBD) as well as some new special play modes that make heavier use of the touch controls. But ultimately, that’s icing on the cake. This is the Super Stardust you know and love, and finally playable as it’s meant to be played on the go.

We want to thank all the fans around the world for your continued support – it has made Super Stardust HD a top selling PSN exclusive and enabled us to keep creating new content for the game even now over three years after its release.

2008 saw the release of the “Solo Pack,” offering new game modes such as Endless, Survival, Bomber and Time Attack. That was followed by the multiplayer “Team Pack” featuring split-screen co-op and deathmatch modes for up to four players.

Additionally, the game then broke new ground by becoming the first ever PlayStation 3 game to feature Trophies.

In 2010 we gave players the exciting option to experience the game in real 3D, one of the few of its kind as it creates 120 unique frames per second.

Now in 2011 with the new Impact mode add-on, Super Stardust HD continues to be the most comprehensive shooter experience available.

The Impact mode plays on and twists the game rules – in place of the weapon system your ship is now fitted with an experimental new matter-to-energy boost engine technology, which means once you activate the boost, you can stay in boost as long as you can hit meteors and enemies with it!

This mode also features much higher score multipliers – as long as you boost the multiplier keeps growing and growing! This is the most fast-paced and adrenaline inducing add-on to the game yet.

Look out for the Impact mode on the PlayStation Store this Spring and, if you’ve never tried Super Stardust HD before, there has never been a better time to join the action!

Stardust pilots, start boosting your way to the top of the worldwide leaderboards!

Today, our sister company Sony Electronics announced its 3D capable BRAVIA HDTVs are now available for pre-sale and will ship to retailers later this month. There are a broad range of models available in different screen sizes, some packaged with active glasses and others without, giving consumers the option to choose which 3D entertainment solution works for them. For more information, click here.

We’re extremely excited to be at the helm of a whole new gaming experience unlike anything offered before. Starting tomorrow, the following games and demos will be available in stereoscopic 3D for anyone who owns a PS3 system and 3D television:

• WipEout HD (full game): Experience the adrenalin rush of navigating the twists and turns of futuristic racetracks at breathtaking speeds like never before.
• Super Stardust HD (full game): Experience asteroids fly past you as you navigate the deadly battleground — only a battle on a cosmic level will save the indigenous life below from destruction.
• PAIN: The stereoscopic 3D content will include the Downtown area and tutorial along with three modes, including two new modes created specifically with stereoscopic 3D in mind, Alien Toss and Ice Breaker.
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift (demo): MotorStorm Pacific Rift in stereoscopic 3D puts you in the driver’s seat of a buggy for a one track, single player race around the deadly Kanaloa Bay for a dangerously real battle against ruthless opponents.

To give PS3 and new 3D capable BRAVIA owners a sample of 3D entertainment at its best, 3D capable BRAVIA HDTVs will come with PlayStation Network vouchers to download these four stereoscopic 3D game experiences, which total more than 100 hours of gameplay.

We’re also announcing that The Fight: Lights Out will be available in stereoscopic 3D, combining PlayStation Move with 3D to deliver an immersive and realistic gaming experience unlike anything you’ve played before. This is only a small taste of the 3D experiences you can expect with the new 3D capable BRAVIA HDTVs and PS3. With new gaming experiences coming this year in the form of stereoscopic 3D gaming and PlayStation Move, as well as an expansive software line-up, the PS3 system truly does everything and continues to be at the forefront of innovation. In addition, 3D Blu-ray movie playback is coming to the PS3 this year via firmware update. Stay tuned for even more 3D news and announcements coming in the near future!

Hello, all PS.blog readers. I’m fortunate to get to work on a lot of PSN titles, such as Wipeout HD, Crash Commando, and Savage Moon. But I’m back on the blog today to talk about one of my titles from way back, Super Stardust HD. It’s one of the most popular games on PSN, and the big news today is that it’s celebrating its 2 year anniversary this week. It was developed by the fine gents and gals at Housemarque, located in Finland. As you may have noticed, my name isn’t too typical for an American name — yes, I’m from England, so it’s great to be working on all of these strong titles coming from great developers across the pond.

To commemorate the 2nd anniversary this week, here’s a message from one of the developers at Housemarque, Petteri Putkonen.

Hello everybody, my name is Petteri Putkonen and I am part of the Housemarque team.

Super Stardust HD was launched in June 2007, and we continue to be surprised by how many people around the world keep coming back for more to fight in an ongoing interstellar battle against massive planet killing meteors and evil alien forces. How did we do it?

The pre-history of Super Stardust HD adds its flavour even if the game mechanics, controls and design might not appear to have that much in common with the earlier shoot-‘em-up titles we’ve done in the past. The game has its origins deeply rooted in the very early history of Housemarque, as the company’s co-founder and original mastermind behind the game, Harri Tikkanen, led a small team of young game developers that created the very first Stardust game for the Amiga 500 computer way back in 1993.

Simply titled Stardust, the game had an evil mutant penguin Professor Schaumund trying to conquer the whole galaxy with his fleet of agents disguised as meteors, alien creatures and spaceships, but his nearly perfect plan was unlikely but ultimately foiled by a lone rebel pilot in a measly little spaceship. A few years later the most evil and twisted mutant penguin genius in the universe returned and wreaked havoc across the galaxy again in Super Stardust for the PC, the first game Housemarque got published in 1996. Throughout the years, several interpretations of Stardust saw the light of day on platforms like Atari ST, Amiga 1200 and Amiga CD32.

Jump to the present, and Professor Schaumund’s forces are back and we can’t help but be amazed when we see the kind of high scores players from all around the world have contributed to the global high score ranking lists on PSN. Just as an example, we originally estimated that the all time top high score in Arcade mode might reach a 500 million point mark, but as time has shown, players keep exceeding your expectations. Today, the top Arcade mode high score is over 1.7 BILLION points! We can only wonder whether it can be pushed any further, is it possible to go beyond 2 BILLION?? We’ll just have to wait and see…

Looking back, throughout the whole experience of developing Super Stardust HD, even with its success and critical acclaim the most important thing for us has been the personal feedback we’ve received from fans of the game from all corners of this planet. We’d like to thank you for all your kind words, emails and support. Although we’ve recently been busy with our current PlayStation 3 project, we still keep thinking of doing some updates for Super Stardust HD in the future. There is at least one specific idea that would certainly add a new dimension to the game… If you have any thoughts, you can let us know what you’d like to see added to the Super Stardust HD experience; just leave a comment on this blog or email ssd@housemarque.com

Right from the beginning, working on Super Stardust HD felt special for us. It was one of those rare projects where everything just clicked into place, where every design and technical decision felt like it was the right thing to do. We started working on the game in August 2006, and it was subsequently released as the first globally launched PSN game on 28th of June, 2007. We believe strongly that what we came up with is our best game yet, and if you haven’t tried it for yourself yet there’s never been a better time to do so.

As we rapidly approach 300,000 pilots listed in the global Arcade mode high score list, more and more players keep enlisting every week. A third of these have also played their way onto the Solo Game Pack’s high score lists, with an increasing amount of gamers also playing the game with friends in either the included split screen co-op mode or the Team Game Pack’s multiplayer party mode.
We’re currently busy trying to outdo ourselves with our next PSN exclusive game that’s in development at the moment. We’d love to tell you more about it but will have to wait a little bit longer before we can reveal any details. At the moment, all we can say is we’re confident it’ll be worth your wait.
Keep blastin!

-Housemarque Team

If you haven’t played Super Stardust HD, where have you been the last two years? Seriously, though, it’s a blast to play and can be had for only $9.99 on the PSN store. We have two add-on packs for it, adding various single-player and multiplayer/co-op modes, and there’s even a demo so you can try it out before you buy it. And if you have a PSP, definitely check out Super Stardust Portable, which lets you take the experience with you on your PSP. We’ve done plenty of posts on the blog about the game, including a video with tips for racking up major points from one of the top players in the world. If you haven’t tried the game yet, now’s the perfect time. And if you already have, now’s the time to fire it up again try for a new high score.

Check out these videos and get some hints and tips for this hyper-exciting arcade shooter, gather up some trophies and then start a little trash talking of your own. These tips come straight from one of the world’s top SSHD players, and all of the footage is from one of his phenomenal play sessions.

Video 1: Arcade Tips
These 10 tips will get you on your way to absurd scores and, of course, those coveted Trophies.

Video 2: Solo Mode Tips
If you’re playing the Super Stardust HD expansion pack, Solo Mode, these tips will help you rack up the points on the way to the Trophies.

Hope those vids got your trigger finger itching to play. If you haven’t played Super Stardust HD in a while, now’s your chance to give it another try and work on beefing up that Trophy collection. If you haven’t tried it at all, well, what are you waiting for? The game’s a blast to play (pun intended), and it’s a great way to add to your trophy collection. The game is available for $9.99, and the two great add-on packs, Solo and Team, are available for $4.99 each.

Be sure to check out these videos in all their High Definition glory later today on the PLAYSTATION Store. See you on the Leaderboards!

You may have read about some interesting enhancements to European versions of Super Stardust HD on various game sites. Today, the new and improved version of SSHD hits North America.

The ability to build custom soundtracks is perhaps the most noticable new feature. Now you can blast away to whatever music you’ve got stored on your PLAYSTATION 3 hard disk drive.

The scoreboard has also gotten a facelift, and now tracks stats such as how long the hi-score session took, and highest difficulty level reached with this score.

Best of all, these new enhancements won’t cost you a dime. If you’ve already got SSHD on your PS3, simply navigate to the PS Storefront and download the free patch from there. This will upgrade your existing version of Super Stardust HD. If you haven’t already tried the game out, this is the time! PS3 owners can download the new demo from the PLAYSTATION Store free of charge this Thursday and then purchase the full version from right within the game.