While Dance Dance Revolution successfully crossed through to the casual crowd via the Wii's ultra lame Hottest Party offerings, a new DDR title may be less gimmick and more fun. DDR Disney Grooves will attempt to bridge the beloved Disney brand with the arrow crazy arcade rhythm game.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of those games that may fall victim to its own hype. Touted as Resident Evil 4 meets BioShock meets that surprisingly well done Chronicles of Riddick fiasco on Xbox, Asylum has a lot of things to live up to. And as a long time Bats fan, I'd love to see all of these aspirations come to fruition.
There are many reasons I'm looking forward to Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. Not least of which is my affinity for self-referential meta-humor, which Eat Lead seems entirely built upon. In the world of the game, Matt Hazard is a world-famous 8-bit video game character who is being revamped and 'roided up as a current-gen action/shooter star. As such, you'll control Hazard through levels that mock various gaming cliches from the past several years. Kind of like Roger Rabbit, but with video games.
We all know Alan Moore's comic book masterpieces haven't received the best film treatment imaginable. I actually liked V for Vendetta, though many despised it. But the less said about From Hell or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the better. Unless, of course, you're one of the people in charge of making those abominations. In which case, please explain yourself.
Nintendo has just released its schedule of first party games to arrive for the DS and Wii for 2009. Now, don't get your hopes up, as the list is pretty much what we knew already, with a few surprises. Release dates for some of the New Play Control! titles are given, as well as '09 confirmation of Endless Ocean 2 and a spring/summer release set for the DSi.
Finally, no more having to look at some grainy magazine scan! New screenshots of Bubble Bobble for Wii Ware have just shown up, courtesy of Famitsu.
Jason Pace, the all-powerful overseer of everything Halo, recently told Eurogamer that he sees the franchise spreading beyond its first non-shooter Halo Wars into all sorts of crazy genres and media.
I really liked the new Prince of Persia, but it's weathered its fair share of criticism. A lot of the scorn is directed at the game's ending, which I won't spoil here. Suffice it to say, I can see how some people might think it's a cop-out. So those people should be happy to know that the upcoming downloadable Prince of Persia content, Epilogue, will continue the story past the end of the game.
Hudson Entertainment has just released screenshots of its newest winter Wii Ware title, Snowboard Riot. The game is really more of a SSX mixed Diddy Kong Racing, where you actually have weapons at your disposal. Homing bullets, turbo boosts, mines and invisibility all will help guide your racer down the slopes during competitive races. You can even race online using Nintendo WFC, which allows up to 4 boarders.
Netflix recently announced that the company has seen a big increase in users due to the sluggish economy, mostly because people just don't want to leave the house and spend money. This has also helped Xbox360, because many Netflix users utilize the instant streaming function, where you can pick from thousands of titles and watch them from your console, all built in to the price of the subscription.
NINTENDO REPORTS THIRD QUARTER FINANCIALS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009Jan. 28, 2009
Despite nearly unprecedented strength of the yen against major foreign currencies, Nintendo Co., Ltd. on Thursday (Japan time) reported 9-month (April to December 2008) global sales of 1,536 billion yen, an increase of nearly 17% over the same period in 2007, along with 501 billion yen of operating profits, up 27% from a year ago. This marks the fourth consecutive year that Nintendo Co., Ltd. has exceeded the previous results for the same nine month period. At the same time, recurring and net profits for the same nine month periods each declined about 18% due to 174 billion yen of foreign currency reevaluation losses from assets held in currencies other than Japanese yen (such as bank deposits without forward exchange contracts).
For the full fiscal year ending March 31, 2009, the company revised its unit sales forecast for the portable Nintendo DS™ system upward by 3% to 31.5 million globally, while the DS software forecast was lowered by 7% to 193 million. For the Wii™ system, with softness in the Japanese consumer market, full year global unit sales estimates for both hardware and software were revised downward by 3%, to 26.5 million systems and 193 million games, respectively, in spite of the overall robust sales outside Japan.
As a result, and with the changes in the anticipated foreign currency exchange ratios, Nintendo Co., Ltd. has revised estimates for fiscal sales and profit projections for the full year ending March 31, 2009. However, the company remained on pace to set historic records for Net Sales and Operating Profit for the full 12 month period.
Other highlights announced by Nintendo today include the following cumulative shipment figures from launch through the end of December 2008:
EA and Steven Spielberg have confirmed that a sequel to the critically acclaimed Boom Blox is near release.
The Final Fantasy franchise's udders must be pretty raw by now, because Square Enix just can't milk it enough. Thirteen core games, numerous spinoffs, pseudosequels, strategy titles, action figures, and straight to DVD movies later, and the brand seems stronger than ever. Sweet Christmas, that's a lot of milk!
Although complications prevented a European release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix thus far, Capcom says they still plan on releasing the game for the PSN. Currently, the game is only available in Europe on Xbox Live, where it was release November of 2008.
Here is the full press release from Activision's new game Guitar Hero: Metallica.
Well, that elusive countdown we mentioned last week on Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XIII site has turned out to be one swanky trailer. 
What's it going to take to rejuvenate the arcade scene here in the US? I miss it badly.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, a.k.a. Master of All That is Good, will be delivering the keynote for the 2009 Game Developers Conference.
What happens when you have a first gen character, who enters a next gen video game? The result, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. This new third person action title features the return of a fictional 80's game hero, Matt Hazard. The game, being developed by Vicious Cycle, gives Matt Hazard some awesome weapons, power-ups, and a vicious right hook.
This is a new behind the scenes video for the upcoming on rails shooter, The House of the Dead: Overkill. It features a compilation of interviews with some of the game's programmers and designers. You'll get their impressions of the game, Overkill's grindhouse inspired theme, and the similarities to previous The House of the Dead titles.
In your face, PlayStationers! The Resident Evil 5 demo is exclusive to Xbox Live for a week! That's seven more days of demo fun than the competition, and I'm sure it was worth however many millions of dollars Microsoft spent for the privilege.
I downloaded the demo for the new Xbox Live Arcade game The Maw, and I can't say I was very impressed. Basically, The Maw is an homage to the old NES game A Boy and his Blob. You control a crash landed alien who uses a hungry, gape-mouthed blob of goo to traverse through the countryside. When the blob eats enough of a certain kind of creature, it adopts a new power, which works as either a weapon or a tool to get through levels.
Namco Bandai's Active Life: Outdoor Challenge has just stepped into the extraordinary league of million units sold. The game, known as Family Trainer: Athletic World in Europe, comes with a Power Pad like mat, used for your hands or feet to simulate actions instead of traditional button inputs. Some of the mini-games included are mine carting, the water trampoline and river rafting.
Ever since the advent of anything other than reading, it's been tough to get punk kids (by which I mean all kids) to read. Public libraries have tried many things to bring in the under-74 set, including allowing people to check out books free of charge for a certain period time just as long as they promise to bring them back.
Let's just get this out of the way first. No, you probably haven't heard of Golemizer. To catch up, Golemizer is a free browser-based steampunk MMORPG created by indie game developer Dave Toulouse. It's a 2D affair where you play a mad scientist who crafts his own golems--basically robotic pets that you can command. Like any MMORPG, there's plenty of customizable content, with a pretty extensive crafting system for houses, weapons, and other items. And for those of you needing a social group that doesn't include all that pesky human-to-human eye contact, there are also guilds.
These bright "carnival colors" will be available this March in Japan. "Vibrant Blue" and "Radiant Red" will be released on March 5th, for $223 US, while "Bright Yellow" and "Spirited Green" will be available March 19th.
Aside from being loved by fans and critics from around the globe, Little Big Planet is now getting some well deserved recognition from The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. The Academy just selected nominees for its 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, which will take place February 19th.
Square-Enix, in all of its info trickling glory, has a mysterious countdown timer running on one of its Final Fantasy XIII pages. The countdown is set to end on January 23rd, and could represent any number of things: playable demos, release dates, free cookies, or even another countdown.
