I apologize for the lack of LNC last night...I got home a bit too late and
had to get up a bit too early. Because of the holiday weekend there probably
won't be another LNC until Monday, but don't be too surprised if I do some single-story
console news posts between now and then.
- GameSpot's massive article The Final Hours
of Metal Gear Solid 2 goes live tomorrow, but in the meantime they have posted
yet
another preview, which contains a confirmation that the Metal Gear
franchise will continue after MGS2. This isn't surprising at all,
actually...Kojima has said as much before, but what is news is that he may
not be intimately involved with any future Metal Gear titles.
- SquareSoft has launched their
official Final Fantasy XI site. The page is entirely in Japanese,
but it does contain some new images from the game.
- Thanks to The GIA for that last story, and
in addition to that they
are also reporting that Final Fantasy X will now officially be
released on December 26th in the US, just a day after Christmas (and about
a month earlier than expected).
- While there seems to be a definite shortage
of Xbox consoles, Nintendo has managed to keep a good supply of GameCubes
in stores around the country, and they
have now actually increased the total number they expect to ship this
year to 1.3 million units.
- New shots from the Xbox port of Max Payne
can be found at Xbox.IGN
tonight.
- If you haven't seen every possible aspect
of Super Smash Bros. Melee yet, more
movies and screens are up at Cube.IGN, some, but not all of which can
only be viewed by paid subscribers.
- The GIA has posted new
information from Kingdom Hearts, SquareSoft's oddball Disney RPG.
- According
to GameSpot, the PS2 port of Tekken 4 will be released in Japan
in March 2002.
- For those interested, Team Xbox has posted
details on a hidden Easter
Egg in the Xbox console.
- Some reviews: Pocket.IGN has a
review of Wario Land 4 (9.0), The GIA has reviews of Super
Monkey Ball (4 out of 5), Metal
Gear Solid 2 (5 out of 5) and Golden
Sun (4 out of 5), Team
Xbox has a review of Fuzion Frenzy (3.9 out of 5) and GameSpot
has posted a
review of Crazy Taxi for the GameCube (4.9 out of 10...yikes!).
- And finally, just a heads-up:the English-language
Dreamcast version of Shenmue II is shipping in Europe. Import away.
Console Game of the Evening:
Alex Kidd in Miracle World for the Sega
Master System. Okay, so this wasn't exactly the best
Super Mario Bros. competitor,
but it was a decent game for those of us who were Sega kids. Who knows, maybe
Sega will revisit this franchise again someday.