Late Night Consoling

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The Tokyo Game Show is a mystery to many American gamers; we know it's the E3 of Japan, but how similar is it to our expo? Browsing the sites tonight, I've picked up a couple links to help you get to know this upcoming event a little bit better. First, here's the final list of games that'll be on display, courtesy of GameSpot. Want to know what the journalists are thinking about? GameSpy has four staffers over there maintaining blogs, who will be updating throughout the event. Although I've been to five E3's, I've never been privileged enough to attend a Tokyo Game Show. I think next year I'll strong-arm Steve into paying my way.

ps2 Shining Tears Coming Stateside SEGA announced plans to bring the action-RPG Shining Tears to the United States. Developed by Amusement Vision, the game supports cooperative multiplayer action and around 50 hours of gameplay. The plot is centered around a boy who has lost his memory and is trying to find his way around a city under siege in a war. Shining Tears is set to ship in the spring of 2005 and retail for $39.99.
PSP First Facts on PSP Battery Life? 3DNewz is stating on their site tonight that the recent issues of Popular Science spills the beans on the battery life of Sony's PSP handheld. The article breaks it up into three categories: music, games, and movies. On the PSP, you can listen to music for 10 hours since it's not processor intensive nor needs much use of the screen. Games, however, drop the life to a respectable 8 hours. Movies are the main suckers of energy, lasting only 2.5 hours for a flick since it needs to consistently use the motor and laser to spin and read the UMD.
PS2 Xbox Midway Announces Fear & Respect A new game coming from Midway was revealed today. It's called Fear & Respect and it centers on gang warfare in South Central Los Angeles. Players take control of a gangster just released from prison who is thrust back into the life that put him behind bars in the first place. Midway is teaming up with John Singleton, director of Boyz N the Hood and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Gameplay will revolve around garnering either fear or respect from your peers. Expect it late 2005.
PS2 Xbox GCN EA Sports Offering 3-for-2 Deal Electronic Arts made a couple announcements regarding their EA Sports lineup. First is the offer to gamers to get a free EA Sports game when they purchase two others. "Consumers who buy two new EA Sports titles between September 27 and November 14 can get a coupon online for a third free game," said a representative. Also revealed was a price-cut for the unreleased NBA Live 2005, slashed to $39.99. The representative added that these moves "show our competitors that we're playing to win in every category."
PS2 Xbox Mercenaries Pushed to 2005 The glut of quality of titles this holiday has scared off another game from seeing a late 2004 release. According to Shacker and CNN correspondent Chris Morris, LucasArts' Mercenaries has been shoved into the new year, not wanting to go head-to-head with games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Halo 2.
Xbox Fable Breaks Xbox Sales Records The "best RPG ever" is making a case for itself with some amazing sales numbers coming in today. The game has sold over 375,000 copies in its first week, grossing over $18 million in sales. Fable has set first-week sales records for an Xbox title at EBgames and first-day sales of any title at Game Rush.
GBA ELF Game Coming Remember that movie with Will Ferrell that was okay, but kinda sucked? No no, the one where he thought he was an elf. Yea, well Crave Entertainment announced today they're releasing a game based off the movie. This quote from Vincent Bitetti, president of Crave Entertainment, says it all: "One of our key strategies at Crave is to select quality intellectual properties and then match them with the right platform and genre of gaming."
PS2 Xbox GCN Misc. Q&As/Features Planet GameCube talks with producer David Artuso who's working on Scaler. Gamesindustry.biz has a "focus-on" article on Square Enix's FFXI producer Hiromichi Tanaka. GameSpot talks with a developer working on Shining Tears.
  Misc. Media/Previews
PS2 GameSpy delivers screens of Kengo 3 and Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 and a preview of Kuon. Game Informer puts up some screens of Devil May Cry 3. GameSpot gives us impressions of Shining Tears and Under The Skin while posting shots of Sega SuperStars.
Xbox TeamXbox has new screens of Jade Empire and hosts test footage of the "sequel-that-never-was," Kung Fu Story. GameSpot shares screens of Spikeout Battle Street.
GCN A few shots of Virtua Fighter Quest can be found at GameSpot.
PSP NDS GamesAreFun has another Japanese magazine scan of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. GameSpot has impressions of some PSP titles that are looking mighty-fine: Need for Speed Underground and Tiger Woods PGA Tour. They also have footage of Sticky Balls and shots of The Urbz: Sims in the City. GameSpy slaps up shots of Chronicles of Eden and Metroid Prime Hunters.
PS2 Xbox GCN Game Informer highlights FIFA Soccer 2005 (PS2, Xbox, GCN) on their site this evening. GameSpot goes hands-on with Johnny Whatever (PS2, Xbox, GCN), posts footage of Mortal Kombat: Deception (PS2, Xbox, GCN) and screens of Sonic Mega Collection Plus (PS2, Xbox), NBA Live 2005 (PS2, Xbox, GCN), Need for Speed Underground 2 (PS2, Xbox, GCN), and The Urbz: Sims in the City (PS2, Xbox, GCN). GamerFeed goes hands-on with Crash 'n' Burn (PS2, Xbox). IGN puts up new movies of Godzilla: Save the Earth (PS2, Xbox).
Console Game of the Evening: Gunsmoke for the NES. "I wasted many hours of my childhood playing this game. I don't remember too much of it now, but I remember I could never get past a stage with ninjas..." (submitted by NERodgers).

From The Chatty
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    September 23, 2004 8:02 PM

    8 hours battery life for games on the PSP, I can handle that. I don't know that I will watch many movies on it, so I'm not really all that concerned with the 2.5 hours for movies.

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      September 23, 2004 8:10 PM

      seems kinda weak sauce
      =/
      if games could do 10+ hours i'd be fine
      when i listen to music on my ipod mini with 8 hours of battery life i have to charge it every other day so i wont get cut off listening to stuff

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        September 23, 2004 8:25 PM

        Listening to music for 8 hours is easy, I do it at work. Playing a hand-held for 8 hours would kink my neck. I can't even play XBox for more than 2 hours anymore. Maybe I'm getting old.

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          September 23, 2004 8:28 PM

          its not the playing for 8 straight hours im worried about
          its the fact that i dont want to charge it after every single use just in case it might die whenever

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            September 23, 2004 9:47 PM

            So just recharge it each night. That's what I do with most of my electronic stuff, like my PDA and cell phone. I really don't see why it's that big of a deal.

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      September 23, 2004 8:33 PM

      Nintendo DS has a battery life of "six to 10 hours of play on a four-hour charge, depending on use" for those who are curious.

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        September 23, 2004 8:35 PM

        yeah, I wonder what the charge time is like on the PSP.

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      September 23, 2004 9:19 PM

      Yeah its not as bad as I thought it'd be...now I really need one!

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      September 23, 2004 10:00 PM

      I don't buy it. W/ only 8MB of memory the games on that thing will constantly be accessing the UMD disc, like it does with the movies - unless you're playing GBA quality games. With the way things are shaping up for the system, that does not appear to be the case.

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        September 23, 2004 10:43 PM

        I'd also like to indicate that those numbers are pretty close to what Sony claimed at E3 - and without measuring it with an actual working PSP with an actual PSP game in it, I don't really think its credible.

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        September 23, 2004 11:59 PM

        [deleted]

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          September 24, 2004 11:17 AM

          Even with 32MB of main memory (I got mine from ign in their "official psp specs" deal - which I just noticed is over a year out of date) the majority of games that are coming out for it are ports of major console titles - 32MB of memory isn't going to cut for preloading - she's going to have to access the disc continually.

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            September 24, 2004 1:00 PM

            Given the small screen and thus smaller textures, 32meg is a shitload of memory. The PS2 only has 32meg of memory itself for much higher resolution graphics and most games don't constantly read off the disc.

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              September 24, 2004 6:16 PM

              Want to check on that again? The PS2 sometimes doesn't load textures into RAM at all, and just streams them off the disc - as the RAM is being used for physics/AI/geometry information.

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      September 23, 2004 10:40 PM

      I read that article in Popular Science. It also mentions the HP ZD7000 series of laptops which have a battery life of... brace yourself... ONE HOUR when playing DVDs. How rediculous is that?

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      September 23, 2004 11:52 PM

      [deleted]

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        September 24, 2004 3:02 AM

        plus the mike
        and i wonder if the Wifi is in there too

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          September 24, 2004 3:02 AM

          meant touch screen
          =/

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