Nolan North seems like a super nice guy! And does a cracking job as the voice of Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series. Problem is, he also does the voice for around a million other characters, and it can sometimes get very distracting.

Not helping matters is the fact he often (though not always!) uses almost the exact same voice across roles. His Prince in 2008's Prince of Persia, for example, is identical to Nathan Drake from the two (well, three!) Uncharted games. Leading many, myself included, to wonder whether Nolan North is in too many damn video games.

So it was a pleasant...experience (I won't say a surprise) to see that when I finally finished Portal 2 over the weekend, Nolan North was listed in the game's vocal credits. Alongside what I'm pretty sure was only five other names.

Six voices in the entire game, then, and one of them had to be Nolan North, the man who has been a million voices already.

Thankfully, it seems almost an in-joke, as North's role goes almost completely unnoticed, playing the part of the "cores" that were done so masterfully by Mike Patton and Ellen McLain in the first Portal, as well as this game's "defective" turrets.

Proof, maybe, that as sick of North's voice as one can get, there's hope for us all when he's working with characters that don't have faces. Especially since he did such a great job in Portal 2.

If you've finished the game, you can check out some great highlight reels of his work in clips like this one, and this one.

[Pic: Getty]

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron wasn't always called that. It was once called Angelic: Ascension of the Metatron, with "once" being a few years ago.

Compare the above 2007 trailer with the E3 gaming expo 2010 trailer.

The voice acting is certainly better! And gone is the Jude Law-inspired face modeling. Not sure which title is better—Angelic or El Shaddai. They're both pretty bad!

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron was released late last month in Japan.

『エルシャダイ』の4年前のプロトタイプ映像が公開、アイラビューってなんだよｗｗｗ [はちま起稿]

Custom toy creator Christian Hooton, whose work we've featured previously, has sent us some pictures of these Portal 2 figures he's made. Warning: they are amazing.

Remember, these are entirely custom figures. Hooton has built them from scratch, from the bodies to the cables, and they took two solid weeks to finish.

If Valve ever gets around to releasing official Portal 2 figures, they're going to have a hell of a time competing with these.

portal 2 robots Atlas and P-body action figure toys [Sabretooth]

This Sunday, as the Golden Week holidays began in Japan, Sony execs Kazuo Hirai, Shinji Hasejima and Shiro Kambe answered reporters' questions about the PSN breach that put the private details of over 70 million gamers at risk. The execs didn't just apologize for the breach, but bowed for seven seconds.

In the world of Japanese corporate fuck ups, the bow (ojigi in Japanese) is a regular at press conferences. Whether it's Snow Brand Milk's food poisoning scandal or Toyota's recall, bows are a requisite for a public apology. Execs put their hands by their side and bow at a 45 degree angle, with their face looking directly at the floor. It must be 45 degrees—35 degrees is a greeting. Dogeza is a more extreme style of bowing; the person gets on their hands and knees to apologize. Execs typically do not use this style of bowing when apologizing.

The bow isn't only a contrite gesture, but a greeting. Japanese people use bows for a variety of purposes, from saying "hello" to "goodbye" and, of course, saying "sorry". In the years following World War II, a simple wave has become more acceptable for a greeting, but the traditional greeting is a bow. It's also a gesture of respect. Even today, school kids stand and bow when their teacher enters the room. Even at many supermarkets, cashiers will give a slight bow when handing over the change. And at many shops, clerks will bow after customers make a purchase.

It doesn't even matter if the customer can see the bow or not—yesterday, I saw a car salesman at a Lexus dealership bow for a good minute or so as a customer picked up his car after having it serviced and drove it down the road. The driver couldn't see that Lexus salesman kept his head down; everyone else, however, could. It's a visual manifestation.

There are a variety of bows, and how deep you lower your head correlates to the gesture's formality. In Japan, which still has an emperor (albeit, in figurehead form), the idea of showing that you are lower than someone as a sign of respect is important. When apologizing, bowing is to show that you are physically lower; this notion is instilled on young children who are told to bow (or are forced by their parents) if they do something really bad to someone else.

In Japan, bowing is equated with apologizing, so seeing a trio of Sony exces on television bowing over a clusterfuck isn't a big deal in Japan. These types of press conferences always start (and end) with bows. A few years back, one American politician called for Wall Street execs to bow for their mismanagement, but in Japan, these spectacles are not a big deal. It's a visual representation of people saying they're sorry. Whether they really mean their apology, that's besides the point. Like the seventh inning stretch in baseball, it's not just expected, it's a photo op.

Corporate bows are usually held for around ten or fifteen seconds. When the former Mitsubishi Motors Corp. apologized for two-decades of product defects, he bowed for a full minute. Sony's bow was seven seconds. Cynics will read into that what they will.

During some occasions, saying "sorry" and bowing isn't enough. When Japan Airlines flight 123 crashed in 1985, killing 520 passengers, JAL's president personally visited all 520 families. And when he finished that, he resigned. JAL's maintenance manager and the engineer who oversaw the plane's improper repairs made the ultimate sacrifices with their apologies: both committed suicide.

For more about bowing and apologizing in Japan, read this post on NBC's World Blog.

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It's a good thing Sony warned people to be vigilant about their credit cards, because as part of the company's Tokyo press conference yesterday PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai said that up to ten million customer's account details could have been compromised.

That's not the personal details on their PSN account - all 77 million of those were up for grabs - that's ten million customer's credit card details. We've known for some time that credit card details have been at risk as part of the attack on the network, but this is the first time Sony has been able to put a figure on the number of card holders potentially affected.

It's important to note that these cards are still potentially at risk: there is still no confirmation that any of these ten million cards' data have been compromised.

While it's been confirmed that CVV2 details - which are requested as part of PSN transactions, but not stored on Sony's servers - were not obtained, it's possible for hackers to obtain the three-digit codes (found on the back of cards) via simple brute force, especially when they have their hands on the rest of the card's details.

Read more coverage from Sony's Tokyo PSN conference.

From the blanket media coverage it received, you'd have thought the entire planet sat down to watch the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton last week. Some people, though, had better things to do. By Margaret Albaugh, via Tiny Cartridge.

Microsoft and video games are a bit of a running joke in Japan these days. After a decade of trying (and failing) with the Xbox, the company just can't seem to win the Japanese public over.

It wasn't always that way, however. Indeed, in the 1980's, Microsoft produced a surprisingly successful games platform, one that would be the birthplace of one of video gaming's great franchises. That platform was the MSX.

The MSX was not a games console. Instead, like similar machines such as the Commodore 64, it was an early home computer which could perform a variety of tasks (though later a cartridge add-on was released, blurring the lines between computer and console). The one we're interested in, though, is the one it also became most popular for: its games.

The machine, which is apparently a rough abbreviation of Machines with Software eXchangeability (though there remains conjecture over this), was the brainchild of Microsoft Japan's Kazuhiko Nishi, who was seeking to "unify" the home computer market like the VHS tape standard had managed to home entertainment.

He envisaged a computer platform that could be manufactured by different companies and yet retain software compatibility: a game purchased for a Sony MSX system, for example, could be played on a Philips MSX system. Microsoft's contribution would be the packaging of MSX BASIC with every unit sold. While this is normal for the PC market now, it wasn't in the early 1980s, especially in Japan, and Nishi's idea proved a popular one.

First unveiled in 1983, the MSX soon became a popular home computer platform in Japan, and would also find international success in Korea, continental Europe and South America. Over the 1980s a number of successors would be released (MSX2, MSX2+, etc), each boasting slightly higher specs than the last.

Its failure to crack the American and British markets (already dominated by machines like the Commodore 64) is perhaps the main reason the system is largely unheralded in the English-speaking West, but its contribution to our gaming history is still a great one.

Why? Because the MSX's popularity in Japan meant a number of original games were developed for it, including some key franchises that still live on to this day. Most famous of these is Hideo Kojima's stealth series Metal Gear, which first appeared on the MSX2 in 1987. Yet it's not the only one you may recognise.

Hudson's Bomberman was a launch title, released first on the MSX in Japan in 1983. Puzzle classic Puyo Puyo made its debut in 1991 on the MSX2. And Konami's well-loved shooter Parodius is another MSX exclusive, first appearing on the MSX in 1988.

The MSX began to slide in popularity by the time the 1990s rolled around, the success of 16-bit consoles, its ageing specifications and the rise of the PC all contributing to kill it off in both Japan and its other international markets. A planned MSX3 machine was never released, and by the end of its lifespan the MSX had sold around 5 million units.

While its games are what we'll remember the MSX for, the manufacturers involved also mark the machine as something worth remembering, as it's the first and perhaps last time we'll see companies like Pioneer, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Philips, Canon, Yamaha, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi and Casio all put their names on the same machine, one which quickly became known as a gaming specialist.

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Twitter is freaking out right now over news that Osama bin Laden is dead. Jill Jackson, a producer for CBS News, seems to have broken the story on her feed. President Obama has called a news conference...Developing.… [Gawker]

Ready for His Close-Up | Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis, selected after a five-week fan-voted playoff, takes his cover shot for Madden NFL 12 in Times Square on Thursday. (Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

Sony: PlayStation Network Will Return This Week

PlayStation Network, down since April 20, will return this week, said Kazuo Hirai, the second-in-command for Sony Corp., at a news conference today in Tokyo. More »

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Sony Considers Reimbursing Credit Card Replacement Costs in Light of Data Breach

In this morning's news conference, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kazuo Hirai said the company would consider covering costs associated with reissuing credit cards to PlayStation Network subscribers who feel their accounts have been compromised by the massive data breach of April 20. More »

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Fatalities are OK in Mortal Kombat. Finger Banging, No.

Someone hacked apart the config file data for Mortal Kombat on the PS3 and in addition to discovering about 17 on-disc DLC character skins - and, weirdly, a dummy support-string for Kinect, they found hundreds of wirdy-dirds banned from text communication in MK's online play. More »

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A Study Returns Easy Answers to Questions Not Yet Asked

A team of MIT researchers is, as we speak, cataloging the species known as the sports gamer. The data is, so far, unsurprising. Many answers to the survey place respondents in supermajorities. "Do you worry," I ask one of the researchers, "that your results are, more or less, ‘No shit?'" More »

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Claire Redfield Put Guns N' Roses in Mega Man X5

The transparent naming of Mega Man X5's Maverick bosses for the members of Guns N' Roses stood as an unexplained oddity since the game's 2001 release here in North America. (That's Axle the Red. See? Not subtle.) Now we have an explanation, and it's just as strange. More »

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PSN Outage Leaves One in Five PS3 Customers Considering Xbox Live

Lots of people vow all kinds of extreme things when they're pissed off, especially at giant corporations. Many come back for reasons of convenience or simply calming down. But a survey taken this week, reacting to the PlayStation Network outage, suggests that 21 percent of PS3 owners are considering selling their consoles and fleeing for Xbox Live. More »

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The zombie fad shows no signs of dying - hah, get it? - as Treyarch delivers the Escalation Map Pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops. The week's biggest retail drop is Motorstorm: Apocalypse for PS3, but all your racing will be offline if the PSN Apocalypse hasn't abated by Tuesday.

Monday

• Fate: The Cursed King (PC)

Tuesday

• Call of Duty: Black Ops - Escalation (360) - The latest map pack offers a "Call of the Dead" zombie mode, with homages to horror-flick stars Danny Trejo, Robert Englund, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Michael Rooker and George Romero.
• MotorStorm: Apocalypse (PS3) - Sony's PS3-exclusive racing franchise shifts its courses to the aftermath of a disaster. Real-life ones repeatedly delayed its release in the west.
• Thor: God of Thunder (DS, PS3, Wii, 360) - Cross the rainbow bridge with the summer's first official movie tie-in.

Also: Assassin's Creed: Ultimate Collection (PC); Back to the Future: The Game - Episode III: Citizen Brown (PSN?); Brothers in Arms: Complete Collection (PC); The History Channel: Great Battles - Medieval (360)

Wednesday

• Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury (XBLA)
• Moon Diver (XBLA)

Looking Ahead

May 10: Brink; LEGO Pirates of the Carribean; MX vs. ATV Alive; Virtua Tennis 4. May 17: L.A. Noire. May 24: DiRT 3. June 7: Red Faction: Armageddon, Infamous 2, Supremacy MMA. June 14: Alice: Madness Returns, Child of Eden, Duke Nukem Forever.

What are you getting? What do you want? What are you looking forward to? Sound it off below, and at #twig.

Sources: Video Game Release Calendar; GameSpot; GameStop