According to NeoGAF's details from the latest PlayStation Magazine, the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 3 will run at 60 frames-per-second, won't feature toned down difficulty, will support up to 8 players, will emphasize Ryu's story and may feature PlayStation Move support. [NeoGAF]
When BloodRayne: Betrayal was announced so close to April 1, we met the reveal with a healthy dose of scepticism. A 3D brawler turned into a 2D platformer? Seemed a little weird, since it normally works the other way around.
But here it is, in all its 2D, cel-shaded glory. A comment on the clip's YouTube page says "looks like castalvania now i hated blood ryane so this can only be an improvement", which must surely sum up most people's thoughts on the matter.
It'll be out on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade this summer.
Over the past twelve months, Sony's PlayStation group has made a profit of USD$430 million with PS3 sales up to 14.3 million consoles, an increase over the past year. You can read more, and see graphs, at Sony. [Sony]
Back in 2009, PSP game Half-Minute Hero dazzled players with thirty-second bursts of gameplay and old school graphics.
There is a sequel, out this August in Japan on the PSP. But don't fret console gamers, Half-Minuter Hero is coming to Xbox Live.
The game is called Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax and will be available on Xbox Live Arcade on June 29 for 800 Microsoft Points.
New Half-Minute [MMV Thanks, Hector!]
With the PlayStation Portable on the brink of total irrelevance in the US, Sony is beginning the process of putting its last bundles together, which for anyone who hasn't yet got a PSP and won't be in the market for the upcoming NGP, aren't too bad a deal!
The first of these is the "Limited Edition PSP Entertainment Pack", which includes a PSP-3000, 2GB memory stick, Gran Turismo PSP and MLB 11 The Show. You get all that for $160.
Totally a non-event for current PSP owners, but at that price with those games, it's approaching an "impulse" buy for the curious gamer who has never had a PSP before.
There have been many Armored Core games, but Armored Core V's box art is a break from the rest.
『アーマードコアV』のパッケージ画像が公開、歴代パケ絵と比べてみようか [はちま起稿]
Terraria is a 2D game that has often (and somewhat unfairly) been called "Minecraft in 2D". Not that the four developers care, since they've just sold 200,000 copies in a little over a week.
Spurred on by word-of-mouth, much of it stemming from the game's supposed similarity to Minecraft, the $10 game was first released on May 16. At time of posting, it was the top-selling game on Steam, ahead of games like The Witcher 2 and Portal 2.
What's undoubtedly lured people towards the game is the fact it appears to operate much like Minecraft with a pinch of Castlevania thrown in, in that you explore a world and craft things while fighting monsters.
I'd say it's a bit closer to being a 2D Dwarf Fortress myself. Well, a different kind of 2D than it is normally, anyway.
2D Word-Of-Mouth Hit Terraria Sells 200K In Nine Days [Gamasutra]
Taro Aso was a shit prime minister, but in incidental things that count—shooting guns, collecting comics, and booze— Taro Aso excels. This week, he was named Japan's official anime envoy to China.
Cut off from Japanese pop culture for decades, China is getting into anime like Gundam in a big way. From June 8 to June 13, the Chinese and Japanese governments are hosting a festival for Japanese movies, television and anime.
The festival will hopefully strengthen cultural ties between to the two nations—cultural ties which have been traditionally strained. Taro Aso is going as the official government rep., and Japan couldn't have made a better selection. Or could it? Aso's family past is not how Japan would like to be viewed by the world.
Aso served as Japanese Prime Minister from September 2008 to September 2009; he didn't display the political prowess of, say, former Prime Minister Junichi Koizumi, and ended up being one of the recent revolving-door leaders of Japan.
What makes Aso stand out is how colorful he is. His family is in the mining industry, and as a young man, the Stanford-educated Aso lived in Sierra Leone and Brazil. While many prime ministers can barely speak English, Aso speaks fluent English and Portuguese. He even competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics as a member of Japan's shooting team.
Aso is a religious minority in Japan—a member of the Catholic church—and proof that Japan does separate state and religion (the same can't be said about other countries).
For nerds, Aso became an otaku icon of sorts. He's a life long manga reader, and was spotted at the airport leafing through Rozen Maiden.He also established a manga award for non-Japanese manga artists.
(Tony Griffith and Yukihisa Fujita)His geek cred led to his likeness being used in one erotic game. When he left office, Aso spent his time doing things like promoting sake to Japanese nerds.
While in office, Aso was a walking gaffe machine, making controversial, boneheaded and simply stupid statements like Japan was one culture and one people, which disregards the country's indigenous people— yet this was small potatoes compared to what his family did during World War II. The Aso family company forced over 300 Allied prisoners of war to work in its mines, something that Aso has denied, saying he was only four or five years old at the time. Conditions were brutal, with beatings, not food, being regularly dished out. Two Australian prisoners of war died while working in Aso's mine.
In 2009, three former Australian POWs who worked at Aso's family mines wrote to Aso, demanding an apology and paid compensation for their labor. One former POW, Joe Coombs, traveled to Japan, but Aso would not meet with him. No war crimes were brought against Aso's family. His wife is the daughter of a former prime minister, and his sister married into the Japanese royal family.
And this summer, Taro Aso will be in Beijing, talking up Japanese anime.
South Park never goes harder than when it goes after hypocrisy, and tonight, its allegorical tale involved the NCAA and the obscene profits reaped from what is essentially free labor. Yet EA Sports—and, of all people, its president, Peter Moore—ended up getting it the worst.
Breaking down tonight's show TV Guide-like, Cartman's latest scheme is "Crack Baby Basketball," an Internet video sensation that becomes America's fastest growing sport. EA Sports acquires the video game license as Kyle, the league's accountant, acquires a conscience about exploiting the helpless infants. The kids cook up a PR scheme to build an upscale orphanage with a percentage of the licensing money, but it all falls apart when EA Sports flips the script, swindling the boys out of their league and money and teaching them what it really means to be exploited.
Ironically, the show references a lawsuit against the NCAA and EA Sports, brought by former NCAA athletes, which alleges that their likenesses were used in video games and other works without their permission. One of the claims against EA Sports was tossed by a federal judge. Another was allowed to proceed but is pending an appeal of that decision.
In "Crack Baby Athletic Association," Moore is presented as "Mr. Peters," a Scotch-swilling, stogie-puffing Boss Hogg of video gaming. That is most certainly not a Liverpool accent you hear in the video. When the kids bring up that they were going to use the money to help crack babies, "Mr. Peters" uncorks the line of the night:
Oh, well ... fuck ‘em! And fuck you too! I piss in your faces. ... Now let's part with that ol' EA Sports saying: Get the fuck outta my building!
I thought it was "It's in the game."
There's a little history between the two sides here. Last year, South Park went after Tiger Woods and cooked up a version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 which descended from golf simulation into Mortal Kombat against his wronged wife, Elin Nordegren. Rumors that EA Sports considered suing South Park's creators were bullshit from the get-go, but given the tone of tonight's episode, one could assume both parties at least exchanged some unpleasantries.
Around a month ago, Xbox Live users were alerted to a phishing scam on popular online title Modern Warfare 2. You'd think this was the work of nefarious group, but no, it was a single perpetrator. Who Microsoft is now working with?
According to Microsoft's Paul Rellis, the culprit responsible has been caught, and discovered to be a...14 year-old Irish kid. What's more, instead of punishing the boy or turning him over to the law, Rellis says that Microsoft is "working with the teenager to develop his talent" in an attempt to "help him use his skills for legitimate purposes".
If the Jason Bourne of the future has an Irish accent, at least we'll know where he got his start.
Dublin teen (14) in new Xbox hack alert [Herald, via VG247]
