The revival of Dreamcast favorite Crazy Taxi on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network won't transform the game significantly.

I recently got the quickest of looks at a build of Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast Returns) at a Sega showcase event in Manhattan for upcoming games. It is a port of both the original 1999 arcade game and its 2000 Dreamcast successor. Both games had the player driving a taxi as fast as they could from one part of a city to another, trying to haul passengers swiftly and skillfully for maximum fares.

The old versions of the games will be released as a single downloadable game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this fall. They run in 720p now and, unlike the recent downloadable release of Sonic Adventure, the ported Crazy Taxi will run in widescreen. A spokesperson for the game said this is true widescreen, with a wider viewing area, not chopped graphics.

The arcade version of the game will be presented as its own map to supplement the Dreamcast content. The new release will also include Crazy Box, a series of challenges that were part of the home game.

The game sure looked like Crazy Taxi while I watched it being played, but I was short on time and could not test whether it in my own hands. Look for it later this fall.

To: Ash
From: Crecente
Re: When You're 7 And Have Pocket Change...

I was up until 3 a.m. or so this morning working through the copious amounts of video I had captured for use in my Medal of Honor review. But you know that, we were chatting! Sometime early in the morning Tristan stumbled out of his room to use the bathroom, stopping a second bleary-eyed to stare at me before returning to his bed.

This morning I was back at my desk looking over reaction to the review about 7:30 a.m. when Tristan came out of his room, the sleep still in his eyes. He stopped in his tracks to stare at me.

"Still!"

And then he came over and gave me a big hug.

What you missed:
The Argument For Marvel Vs. Capcom 3's Super-Simple Controls
How Would you Like This Left 4 Dead 2 Themed Zune HD?
EA Dismisses Fears That Action-Packed Dead Space 2 Won't Be Scary
You Deserve 200 Points For Looking In The Right Direction
Jumping Not Mandatory In Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2
There Is A Game Inside The Game Of Fable III, And Other Details
Review: Medal of Honor

A trio of Rocky Horror Picture Show tracks are coming to Guitar Hero later this month, giving us an excellent opportunity to post a picture of Tim Curry in lingerie.

Not that we need an excuse to post a picture of Tim Curry.

Three songs from the cult-classic film will be making their Guitar Hero debut on October 26, just in time for Halloween. Fans will enjoy doing the "Time Warp" for the 100,000th time; might actually launder their sweaty costumes for "Sweet Transvestite;" and "Hot Patootie" will have them shouting "Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll!" all night long.

I've seen this movie far too many times. Just writing about it makes me queasy.

But hey, Tim Curry in lingerie!

They can swap out Bonds and update the plot as much as they want, as long as Jaws, Oddjob, and Dr. No are available in GoldenEye: 007's multiplayer I'm a happy camper.

Daniel Craig is my favorite James Bond, but GoldenEye was always about Pierce Brosnan, so I'm a little uneasy about the swap. The movies didn't just feature different actors in the same role; they were different Bonds appearing in movies tailored to their particular talents.

Only the inclusion of classic Bond villains assuages my unease. Especially Jaws. Back when I was a teenager, people used to tell me I looked like Jaws from Moonraker. That probably wasn't a compliment, but I took it as one anyway.

A mere two weeks before the release of its second game, Tony Hawk: Shred developer Robomodo is hit by layoffs, with sources reporting 30 to 60 jobs being cut due to the loss of the Tony Hawk franchise.

Formed in 2008, Robomodo is the Chicago-based development studio that Activision put in charge of the Tony Hawk franchise, starting with last year's ill-received Tony Hawk: Ride, which introduced a plastic skateboard peripheral to the series. The second Robomodo-developer Tony Hawk game, Shred, is due out at the end of this month.

It might also be the developer's last.

Kotaku has received multiple tips today regarding layoffs at Robomodo. Two separate sources have told us that 30 employees have lost their jobs as of this morning, and another suggested the number would grow to 60 by the end of the day.

Sources tell Kotaku that the layoffs were affected in some way by news that Tony Hawk publisher Activision had taken the franchise away from the developer. One source told us that a wrap party planned for Tony Hawk: Shred with the star attending was pushed back to November without notice prior to today's layoffs.

The Robomodo website is currently down, and no one is answering phones at the developer's office.

We've reached out to both Activision and Robomodo's public relations teams for comment, and will update this post once we hear back.

Does this mean that Tony Hawk will be losing the silly plastic board?

Update: Activision is not commenting on the situation at this time.

Update 2: Robomodo has delivered the following statement from president Josh Tsui:

"It is always difficult to let hard-working and valued employees go. Robomodo has retained all of the company's directors and leads, along with other staff members. All are busy working on future projects and ideas, which will become the innovative games of tomorrow. We hope to bring back some of our team as we ramp up on our next projects."

Marvel's Super Hero Squad Online is an upcoming MMO for kids, featuring cutesy versions of Marvel characters. At New York Comic-Con, the people behind the game wanted to surprise us, but showing us some of Marvel's nastiest.

Any and every Marvel character can be in this game, one of the game's developers told an audience attending a panel about games based on the comic company's icons. Bullseye, Deadpool, Blade.... those guys in the slide above will be in there. So will the guys and gals in the slides below.

Super Hero Squad Online is one of multiple MMOs being prepared for Marvel characters. This one uses a card-based battling mechanic that a developer behind the game told Comic-Con attendees has had design input from people associated with Magic the Gathering. (Correction: The card battle system is only "one quarter of the total game," according to Stephen Reid, community director for Gazillion. I apologize for the misunderstanding.)

We haven't seen much of the game in action yet, but the character designs here are neat. You can see the official roster for the game at the game's site (you can also sign up for the beta there), but expect an expanding line-up. Even Squirrel Girl might make it in, one of the developers said at Comic-Con, addressing shouted requests from a panel audience. Looks like they'll put anyone in this game!

Capcom has completed testing its Fight Club events in the western and northern U.S. and is ready to bring Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 to where the real fighters live - Atlanta, Georgia.

After getting a taste of what Chicago had to offer last month, Capcom takes the Fight Club show down south to my own stomping grounds of Atlanta. The location is still a secret, but we've got a date and time: Thursday, October 28 from 8 to 11PM.

According to Capcom's post about the event, there will be more security, organization, and ventilation than the Chicago event.

And 100% more Michael Fahey.

Lagging in my awareness of Fable III, I've missed a few details. I caught up yesterday and learned new things about Fable III.

For those coming to this even later than I am, let me toss in some basics. Fable III. It's a big Xbox 360 medieval adventure that mixes the feel of Arthurian legend with Monty Python silliness. Occurs 50 years after Fable II. You're playing the son or daughter of the last game's hero, going on quests and making promises to the people of the land about what you would do if you should one day be king, while your miserable brother (aka the kingdom's ruler) is up to no good. The little-seen latter portion of the game puts you in control of the kingdom and liable to deliver or deny the promises you made in the game's first portion.

It's an action-adventure with numbers removed from the character-attribute-leveling process but with some sort of measure of followers (think Twitter) associated with your advance through the game. It has a swifter combat system that supports brisk weapon-switching, and it has a blink-fast inventory system that appears as a set of interactive closets staffed by a butler voiced by John Cleese.

OK? Back to the things I learned at a Manhattan showcase yesterday for Microsoft's next big things, Fable III among them:

1) There's a game in this game. One of the elaborate side-quests in Fable III sucks your hero into a tabletop role-playing game. Shrunken into a new fantasy world your hero gets new, silly perks and upgrades. I earned my hero "+30% self-importance" as I ran around trying to rescue a damsel in distress. As you play "The Game" the Fable characters who invited you into it can be heard talking about the whole affair. They are the game masters, joking about the rules they've created, debating each other's design decisions, declaring at one moment that this is "the worst game ever," and, most ridiculous of all, doing the voice-acting for all of their characters. A Microsoft Fable representative who showed me the game said the quest lasts a good 20 minutes. It is an example of some of the more imaginative excursions available in the game.

2) You can enjoy some of the benefits of marriage without getting married. I'm referring to money, of course. Fable players who don't wish to marry other characters in the game can still engage in "business partnerships" that will produce some financial advantages.

3) Magic is mixable. Your hero's magical powers in Fable III are associated with magical gauntlets. Because your hero has two hands, he or she can wield two gauntlets which emit a combined, mixed spell. I was shown the results of a spell fired by a hero wearing a fire gauntlet and an electricity one. The emitted blast of fire and lightning, fried its targets in two appropriate ways. Any two magics can be mixed, I was told.

I was also reminded yesterday of some other fun Fable III details that I had heard before: characters in the Fable III world will remark on the Fable II exploits of gamers who played the previous Fable game; the romance system will be a little more complex than last time, requiring the player to sometimes do something other than flex repeatedly to get someone to fall in love with them; the dog, a hero's best friend, is back.

There are plenty more details to be learned. We'll be learning them together soon. Fable III launches on the Xbox 360 in North America on October 26.

If Red Dead Redemption had been released on the Super Nintendo, and hadn't looked like Sunset Riders, it might have looked like this instead.

This is Sombreros, a top-down shooter where you shoot Mexicans and collect their hats. It's even got a "dead-eye" aiming system!

You can download it here, if you feel like you should accomplish nothing other today than to amass a vast pile of tattered, bullet-riddled sombreros.

If you like what you see/play, it's part of a larger project called Action 52, compiling a ton of other retro-inspired remakes and reimaginings of a notorious old "52-games-in-one" cart that is an amazing read in its own right.

Quick Sombreros Update [sniper diplomat, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

First we told you the new Bionic Commando side-scroller adds jumping. Then we praised the jumping. Today, we add: But you don't have to jump.

While showing Kotaku a build of 2011's Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 last week, a Capcom spokesperson let me know that you don't need to jump in the new game. You can. The little hop makes it a little easier to get through Rearmed 2's tricky stages. You may play the game in "retro mode," however, which turns off the jumping.

Either way, you've got a gun and, of course, the series' signature swinging grappling hook. You can swing toward enemies, pull barrels toward you and toss them away, and all the other basic stuff a Bionic Commando hero should do.

You gain other abilities in the game, including optional passive attributes such as automatic health regeneration or an item-attracting tractor beam.

Jumping? You can skip it. This concept of adding a fundamental new move to a character who didn't have it for years — and then not making it essential — would seem odd, but only if this game wasn't coming from Capcom, a publisher that still can't gracefully address the conundrum of whether characters in Resident Evil should be able to run and shoot at the same time.

Movement changes are a confusing thing in the games of Capcom. So jump in the next Bionic Commando, or don't. Confused? At least Bionic Commando: Rearmed was a good game. Hopefully any confusion about this aspect of the sequel won't be a drawback.

Rearmed 2 is set for an early 2011 release as a downloadable game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.