Late Night Consoling
Happy Chanukah! For those who celebrate it, tonight is the first night, so may you all get the games you desperately have been hoping for. My wife and I exchanged gifts, and sure enough, she got me Legacy of Kain: Defiance. After all, nothing says love like two soulless demons beating the crap out of people. I may have more games coming to me from other family members, although I won't know for sure until the day after Christmas, as that's when we're going to get together to exchange gifts. Not that I need any more games, of course. Defiance should keep me more than busy until then (to say nothing of all these other games I have). But before I can get to that I have to finish up XIII, which is really starting to drag on and on (see what I go through to review games for you guys?).
| Sony Recalls GT4: Prologue With a collective "d'oh!", Sony of Japan has recalled Gran Turismo 4: Prologue Edition, which was recently released over there. Apparently there are problems with two Logicool steering wheels. Somehow I doubt this will stop IGN from posting more media from this game. |
| Red Dead Revolver Lives Rockstar Studios has announced that as part of their deal with Capcom regarding the Japanese publishing rights to their Grand Theft Auto games, they acquired the rights to Red Dead Revolver, a well-received (if somewhat troubled) game that was canned by Capcom earlier this year. Rockstar purchased Red Dead developer Angel Studios (now known as Rockstar San Diego) some time ago, and so the original development team has resumed work on the game, with a 2004 release date targeted. |
| Miscellaneous Take Two News As part of their quarterly financial results conference call, Take Two released some other console-related tidbits, which have been written up over at IGN. The good stuff: Mafia will be released for PS2 and Xbox sometime next month, a new GTA will be released for GBA next year, Manhunt is coming to the Xbox next year, The Warriors (a game, I still have a hard time believing really exists) has been pushed back to the third financial quarter of next year, subsidiary Global Star has taken up the Army Men mantle and will release a new game next year and Capcom will release GTA: Vice City in Japan next month. |
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| Rockstar Sued In still more Rockstar/Take Two news, this story at the Beeb reports that Scottish consultant Mark Gallagher claims to have shown his game Crime, Inc. to DMA Design during a job interview in 1993 with the company, and that 1997's Grand Theft Auto was ripped off from his original work. |
| The Long Lost Mario Game? A story at Computer and Video Games talks about Super Mario Bros. Special, an odd spin off of the original NES Super Mario Bros. that in 1986 was licensed to Hudson Soft for release on the NEC PC88 computer system. The game looks nearly identical to the NES version, except all the levels are different, and the inferior hardware has a few gameplay quirks (kick a shell, and it'll bounce back off the edge of the screen regardless of whether or not there's an obstacle there). CVG also links to a site where you can download this game and an emulator to run it on, but the legality of that is a bit suspect. |
| WOW President Resigns The shakeup from the Sammy purchase of a controlling stake in Sega continues to unfold...the latest bit of news is that Rikiya Nakagawa, a 20 year veteran of Sega, has resigned from his post at subsidiary WOW. No reason is given for his abrupt departure, although gamesindustry.biz speculates that it might have to do with Sammy's recent statements about how they'd like Sega to concentrate on the low-cost Atomiswave arcade hardware, which would be a serious step down from the Chihiro (Xbox) and Triforce (GameCube) platforms they have been working on. |
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| Gaiden Gear Tecmo may not have announced anything about Dead or Alive Ultimate Collection yet, but they did unveil their new line of Ninja Gaiden merchandise. Yes, now you too can look like an insipid pseudo-intellectual hipster as you strut around in your Ninja Gaiden trucker hat, or even better: buy a bunch of Ninja Gaiden sweat bands and pretend it's 1982 all over again. You've got the beat! |
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| New Pay Content for Xbox Music Mixer Microsoft has announced that a handful of new karaoke packs are available for purchase for their Xbox Music Mixer. These include "Best of 80's Pop" and a special Christmas collection. |
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| Two-Toned SP Next Year Nintendo has announced that early next year they will release a two-toned version of their Game Boy Advance SP. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. This isn't a two-toned system at all, it's just the top half from an Onyx SP, and the body of a Platinum one. Now, if this were actually a newly styled one, that'd be kind of cool. This one just looks like a manufacturing goof (which it may have been). |
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| Fallout: BOS Date Confirmed Well Fallout fans, it looks like we'll know pretty soon for sure if the last game in the series is a dud or not...Interplay announced today that Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel will be released on January 13th. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
| GameInformer has a hands-on look at Pokemon Colosseum and 1UP links to a movie showing off the motion capture sessions for Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. |
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| Sure enough, IGN has still more |
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| New shots from Steel Battalion: Line of Contact can be found at GameInformer tonight, and Team Xbox has new shots and a look at the skills from Sudeki. |
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| CVG has new shots from Treasure's Astro Boy game. |
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| GameSpot has a new preview of Showdown: Legends of Wrestling (PS2, Xbox) and new media from The Suffering (PS2, Xbox), GameSpy and CVG have new previews of Sonic Heroes (GC, PS2, Xbox), Team Xbox has a new preview of All-Star Baseball 2005 (PS2, Xbox), GameInformer has a look at The Suffering, and LucasArts has launched their official Wrath Unleashed site for this PS2 and Xbox title. |
