Late Night Consoling

More Sega craziness...there were some reports yesterday that the company was considering purchasing Mortal Kombat publisher Midway and/or Acclaim. Both of these have been denied by Sega's Hiroyuki Sega, who also says they have no definitive plans for acquisitions at the moment. In all honesty, Midway would be a really lousy choice for Sega. The Mortal Kombat franchise and possibly their sports titles are the only worthwhile things left there, and Sega's already got a thriving sports series and Virtua Fighter. As for Acclaim, I can't see Sega really wanting to publish Turok, and again, they already have their own sports series without picking up Acclaim's. So who would make a good fit? As I've suggested before, THQ. THQ has their wildly successful wrestling titles, plus others like the ones from subsidiary Volition. Plus the two companies already have a relationship, as they are co-publishing Sega's GBA lineup.

	Super Mario Sunshine Preview An excellent, hands-on preview of Super Mario Sunshine is up at Gamers.com. I highly recommend this to anyone curious about the game at all, as the author has clearly spent time with the Japanese version, which recently went on sale.
	Final Fantasy Remakes Revealed Here they are, the first screenshots from Square's Final Fantasy I & II remakes for the PSOne. What I want to know is if Square has ditched their plans to re-release FFVII, VIII and IX on the PS2.
	Microsoft Makes Estimates Good news for Microsoft: they've met their estimates for the quarter, by selling nearly 4 million Xbox systems worldwide. That number is the reduced estimate, of course, as they dropped it down from their original 6 million number shortly before dropping the price of the system by $100.
	Sony Ditches the PocketStation Sony of Japan has stopped manufacturing the PocketStation, the PSOne equivalent of Sega's VMU. This was never officially released in America, although the North American version of Final Fantasy VIII actually supports it.
	Xbox 2? According to The Register, NVIDIA and Microsoft have settled their differences, and begun R&D on a successor to the Xbox, currently given the oh-so-original name of Xbox 2. Nothing too surprising here.
	Robotech Madness GameForms has gone Robo-crazy, with new previews of Robotech: Battlecry and Robotech: The Macross Saga. I spoke with someone last night who told me message boards are on fire from fans of the original Japanese Macross anime, who are upset that this is geared towards Robotech fans. Which is understandable, of course...but me, I'm perfectly happy with the Americanized version.
	New GBA 3D Footage Pocket.IGN has posted new footage from AGB Games' 3D engine for the Game Boy Advance, which is now known as the C2 Engine. This footage shows a racing game, with 2D sprites being used for the cars.
	The Two Towers Shots Also at Pocket.IGN is a brief preview with screenshots from the Gauntlet-esque The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.