The strange story of a collector buying a very rare Neo Geo game at an airport for $30,000 just got a whole lot stranger: there are now accusations that the cartridge is a fake. A forgery. A hoax.

Members of the Neo Geo collector's community have been picking at the story for a while now, and a wall of supposed evidence has been presented claiming to show the game, of which there are meant to be only three US copies in the world, isn't the real deal.

This "evidence" comes in the form of a close examination of the game's packaging, revealing a number of inconsistencies in areas like fonts, text spacing and the format of images used.

That, however, is just the start. Members of the forum, which is very tight-knit, have been tracking back and looking at the history of the seller, and in addition of accusing him of faking this game, say that other members of the community have colluded with him to trick buyers into thinking he's offloading legitimate games, when he's doing nothing of the sort.

We've contacted the original buyer of the cart for his thoughts on the matter, and will update if we hear back.

The Final Chapter of the Fake Aerofighters 3 : I Need your help ( NGDEV TEAM, 161-in1,ETC) [Neo Geo.com]

$30,000 Aero Fighters 3 Video Game a Forgery? [Substance]

Let's be candid. As a licensed sports video game, when your series hasn't been on shelves in three years—a gap not seen since the days games were played on cartridges—you really face just one expectation and it's a pretty low bar: Just come out. Launch. Release on time. Somehow, over the past week, NBA Live has left the dreadful message it could suffer the same embarassing fate as its NBA Elite ancestor, canceled in 2010 a week before it was due in stores.

Maybe NBA Live is put under a different lens by gamers because of what happened two years ago, or because it's published by Electronic Arts. But considering the legacy left by Elite, letting any doubt about the game's viability go unanswered, even in the enthusiast press, would seem to be the one pile of dog doo this game's handlers should have avoided at all costs. And now, they've stepped in it.

Two weeks ago, Operation Sports—the Sporting News of sports video gaming—noted the total silence from EA Sports about its NBA product since a disastrous E3 appearance. Tuesday, in a conference call with investors, no mention was made of NBA Live releasing in the final three months of 2012. Wednesday, word spread this game might have a fully digital release suggesting a lower price point, and feature set, than a traditional $59.99 retail sports video game. The response from NBA Live spokespersons was that the game "continues to drive toward beta."

EA Sports has aggressively pushed the talking point that NBA Live 13 isn't coming off a three-year development cycle, and that's reasonable. Elite represented an entire year of wasted development. The project was reassigned to a different studio, and the new team had to tear it down and understand what it was working with. That accounted for a lot of 2011.

But this isn't Duke Nukem Forever or Half-Life 3. The release date of a simulation sports video game is predictable years in advance. If NBA Live 13 misses that date, for any reason, the reaction will be swift and merciless. It'll be as good as failing to launch.

When I inquired about Live's omission from the publishing calendar, I was told it was a technical decision made by the company's investor relations division. There's still no formal release date assigned to this product, even though the NBA usually sets it for the first Tuesday of October. Following up, I asked if "at this stage," could EA Sports say whether its NBA simulation game would release on that date, or on any date before the season tipped off Oct. 30.

"At this stage, yes," was the reply.

EA Sports was plenty happy to announce the return of NBA Live back in February, and through a pre-alpha phase when hard questions really weren't being asked of it. But the honeymoon ended at E3, and so did EA Sports' communication.

What I saw in a guided, hands-on preview in Portland, Ore. at the end of May isn't what people saw in a closed-door demonstration at Los Angeles, or what a handpicked group of NBA Live community members played at a private event that week, either. The game at E3 showed startling deficiencies. Some had an excuse—a bug in the rebounding logic required them to turn off some collisions in that build. OK, but other gaffes had no explanation. For example, I saw an AI-controlled Dwyane Wade running back-and-forth, repeatedly, from the perimeter to the high post while the opposing guard held the ball.

It was enough to make me ask if I was looking at a different build. I was, EA Sports said, but it was a later build than the one shown to me at Portland. Whether that spawned new glitches, who knows. They chalked it up to bad demonstrations—spontaneous manifestations of bugs when the spotlight was on. Demos with celebrities in the room went much better, I was told. At the time, there was talk of showing a build of this game to press-myself included—in late July.

"You guys need to show this to your community before you show it to me again," I said.

Give credit where it's due. Roundly disparaged as a PR stunt and a rubber stamp, NBA Live's advisory council, a group of gamers convened in multiple expenses-paid trips, has honestly held this game's feet to the fire. After the hands-on in June, they flatly told EA Sports they shouldn't even have brought it to L.A. It's my understanding they're no happier with it today. Rumor, reported by ESPN, is that NBA Live was pulled back from EA's Summer Showcase this past week; the Advisory Council's disapproval likely figured in, though I can't say for sure. A no-show in British Columbia two weeks before may also be because the council wasn't giving a thumbs-up.

Granted, the council isn't made up of ordinary video gamers, or even ordinary sports video gamers. They understand both sport and game on an extremely technical level. One of them played overseas professionally. I heard him counsel an animator on the differences between Derrick Rose's and Kendrick Perkins' jab-step. In my preview, I might have been looking just for signs of life, or examples that the game could deliver on conceptual promises. They were looking for something that behaves like the league they watch every day. They didn't see that, and the fact this was a pre-alpha work in progress was no excuse.

Regular sports video gamers may not care so deeply but their suspicion that NBA Live is in trouble is just as founded, given the silence from EA Sports once things started going badly. These are the paying customers who really need a definitive statement that the game is on schedule—if that statement can be made.

I was told back in early June that NBA Live had major announcements coming—yes, plural. But considering it has not named any cover star, nor formally declared a release date, nor shot down rumors it won't have a retail version, I'd be surprised what kind of reveal could take precedence over the basic messaging expected of a sports video game two months before its presumed release.

The upcoming PC re-release of Final Fantasy VII was accidentally made available for sale on Square Enix's online store over the weekend, then very quickly pulled.

Not before some people managed to buy the game, though, which led to some disappointed customers, as Square Enix's DRM protection wouldn't let them actually play it, since their servers wouldn't activate a game that wasn't technically out. Even if the customers had purchased the game legitimately.

FINAL FANTASY VII PC DRM IS BORKED [Square Enix]

Final Fantasy VII PC re-release secretly comes out, then gets yanked [Pixelitis]

Persona 4 Arena arrives in the west this week, accompanied by the funky rhythm game Sound Shapes. On Xbox Live Arcade, the third-person multiplayer shooter Hybrid continues the Summer of Arcade.

Tuesday

• Sound Shapes (PS3, PS Vita)
• Persona 4 Arena (PS3, 360)
• Deponia (PC)

Wednesday

• Hybrid (XBLA)

Friday

• The Amazing Spider-Man (PC)

This image is reportedly our first look at a brand new Prince of Persia game. It was posted by a user on Ubisoft's official forums, and down the bottom you can see the term POP_ZERO_2.

Is it real? Who knows, we're asking. Is it interesting? You bet. If it is real, that's not just a black Prince, it looks to have at least part of the game set somewhere closer to Egypt than the series' traditional Persian stomping grounds, going by the clothing on that crowd.

Prince of Persia Zero was the codename for an aborted attempt by Ubisoft a few years back to do something radical with the franchise, like taking it into the present day.

While there are signs this really could be from an in-development build of the game - the crowd is "floating", the visuals are pretty rough and they all appear to be looking straight ahead...at his junk - I also shouldn't need to tell you how easy it is to fake something like this.

Still, because it's so interesting, here it is. We'll update if we hear back from Ubisoft.

UPDATE - Check out these pics posted on NeoGAF back in May. From what can be made out of the silhouetted man's outfit and the those of the crowd behind him, it certainly looks similar to the image up top.

---

Sequel to Prince of Persia 2008 (v-4) [Ubisoft]

Activision may have dusted its hands of Guitar Hero, Band Hero and everything else from that played-out lead mine, but lawsuits from upset pop stars continue. No Doubt, featured in Band Hero, still plans on taking Activision to trial, saying the publisher has illegitimately delayed the lawsuit and made insulting settlement offers.

No Doubt, an act comprising Gwen Stefani and some dudes no one can name, sued Activision because Band Hero turned them into "a virtual karaoke circus act," performing other artists' songs and even—gasp—"secretly" hiring actors to perform dance moves no one in the band had ever done before. The complaint mimics that of renowned widow Courtney Love, upset that Kurt Cobain and Nirvana performed non-Kurt Cobain and Nirvana songs in Guitar Hero 5.

"We don't license the use of our songs and our appearances for free," No Doubt's lawyer-mans told GameSpot. "Here, we licensed No Doubt's appearance for three songs, but Activision instead used it in 63 unpermitted songs." Activision claims the use was allowable under the terms of the contract signed back in 2009.

Asked what the band seeks from the lawsuit, he said, "Ideally they would like Activision to apologize and promise to never mistreat artists in the manner they have mistreated No Doubt and countless others." Given the death of the Hero music franchise more than 18 months ago, I think that statement really translates to: "a shitload of money."

No Doubt attorney speaks out against Activision in Band Hero suit [GameSpot]

EA Sports' "Season Ticket" subscription will offer free downloadable content that otherwise would be paid, modestly sweetening the sales pitch for a service that hasn't generated much buzz since its debut a year ago.

According to EA Sports' updated Season Ticket page, first noticed by Operation Sports, subscribers will now get free packs of cards in the Madden, FIFA and NHL Ultimate Team modes, worth $30 each, plus free content for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 and NCAA Football 14 when those two titles release next year.

The freebies seem to address the biggest problem with Season Ticket: It just didn't put out enough. The real value it offered—the 20 percent discount on premium DLC—couldn't pay for itself unless you were a heavy Ultimate Team player, or buying up golf courses, sponsorships or premium items in Tiger Woods PGA Tour, which easily has the biggest DLC catalog of any EA Sports game. The 20 percent discount had a conceivably infinite benefit if you were someone who consistently bought lots of "coins," for real money, to spend on building out a card collection in the hockey, football or American football games.

In its first year, the $25 Season Ticket provided early access to full titles (but deleted them from your hard drive on the day of release) and a 20 percent discount on premium downloadable content for five titles. When it launched in August 2011 with Madden NFL 12, about 6,000 people were online playing the game in the preview weekend given to subscribers.

Though the value of the free DLC stands at $90, pending whatever is coming with Tiger 14 and NCAA 14, this still isn't much of a bargain unless, again, you're a committed Ultimate Team player. Otherwise, it's nice to get Madden, FIFA and the like the Friday before they release, but it's still more of a rental service than anything else.

EA Sports Season Ticket [Official site via Operation Sports]

Hurry! There are only two days left until this auction for "Le Stick" closes. You can have this hunk of junk for $29.99, but I warn you, it's practically useless. Except for one video game, that is.

Rewind: It's 1983. My brother and I live next door to a guy who is an electronics buyer, and routinely drops off video game freebies for us to play-test and tell him what we think, so he'll have an idea of how many he should buy. One day, "Le Stick" arrives, and the verdict is swift: This piece of crap is stupid as hell, don't buy it.

Some have called "Le Stick" video gaming's first motion controller, but I think that's stretching the definition. It was a baseless joystick that had a mercury switch inside, so you moved it by angling your hand right or left or forward or back. There was very little precision to your movements. I tried playing Star Raiders and that awful Coleco Donkey Kong port with it and got nowhere. Le Stick was wrapped in black rubber and had a big red button on the top, making it look like a Sith dildo. We called it Le Shit for its functionality and Le Dick for its form, threw it in a toy chest and forgot about it.

Later that year, Activision released The Activision Decathlon, by all-star programmer David Crane. It was noteworthy for several reasons. It may have been the first sports video game to use music associated with a real TV broadcast; Decathlon opened to a chiptune version of Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream," which ABC (and later NBC) used in its telecasts. Decathlon featured all 10 events in the real-world decathlon, in their real order. And as I recall, all of the running events were real-time authentic. This list of Crane's personal bests in each event combine for a world record, by far, in decathlon scoring, but the individual distances and times were not in and of themselves superhuman. His 1,500 meters time was 20 seconds slower than the world record at the time.

The 1,500 was the real bastard of this game. In Decathlon you ran by jiggling the joystick back and forth. For sprint events this wasn't so bad, but in the metric mile, you were committed to at least four-minutes of waggling that stick back and forth. What's more, at the end, the event would exhort you to "sprint!!!!" which required even harder stick waggling.

An ordinary Atari joystick was too stiff. We had a Wico Command Control that had a lot of play in it. After we ran with it in Decathlon you could pick it up by its base and wiggle the stick back and forth the way dudes do the helicopter with their morning wood. You know what, forget I said that.

Anyway, the ordinary sticks were not getting the job done. Activision in those days would send you a patch if you earned a certain score, took a picture of the TV and sent it in. You needed at least 8,600 points (Bruce Jenner's then world-record performance at Montreal in 1976) just to get a goddamn bronze. My brother and I were coming up short every time because of the 1,500 and its infernal "Sprint!!!!" demands. My forearms hurt thinking about it.

Then we remembered "Le Stick." That damn thing wouldn't recognize input unless you shook it violently. My brother dove into the toy chest, retrieved it, and plugged it in. The runner plowed through the 100 meters in under 10 seconds. His eyes widened.

Nearly every event involves some form of wiggling the stick, but for those that added a button press (high jump, discus, javelin, and especially the hurdles) Le Stick was too slow on the draw. As little brother, I was assigned to hot swap the Wico and Le Stick for the 100 meters, the 400, and the 1,500. I forget what his final score was, but naturally, he got over 9,000 points. And true to its word, Activision sent the silver medal patch.

You could plug the Atari paddles in and run by alternating button presses, but it was nowhere near as effective as shaking the shit out of Le Stick. Decathlon is today available in the Xbox Live Game Room, but if anything, the 360 controller is even more poorly suited to high performance than the old Atari joystick. For the shot put, I had to turn the gamepad upside down, grasp the left stick in my right fingertips, and wiggle like crazy until hitting the A button with my left thumb. Halfway into the 400 meters I began groaning, the muscle memory returning, my fingertips begging for the return of Le Stick.

We made fun of it, called it names and exiled it to a bin of unwanted toys, but damn if Le Stick wasn't the perfect video game controller—if only for one video game.

We've been doing a lot of cosplay in the 'Shop Contest lately, but Gary, King of Nintendo 64, is too obvious a royal subject to pass up this week.

I really shouldn't have to make any suggestions when you're dealing with a guy who has a suit of armor made from at least three Nintendo 64s, plus at least a couple dozen cartridges. And I'm sure you're already scheming something up, so let's just get right to it.

Source Image: Gary, King of Nintendo 64.

Reminder: There's a new forum for 'Shop Contest submissions that will display them in the chronological order familiar to the contest under our old comments format. I've gone ahead and set up the forum with one of our patented Kotaku block arrows showing you where this week's submissions begin. When I judge the entries for the roundup I'll close it out with another arrow later in the week.

Because of this, comments are disabled in this post to avoid confusion. You must visit the 'Shop Contest Forum to participate After you create your 'Shop, you'll need to post it there. Here are the rest of the guidelines for doing so.

1. Go to the 'Shop Contest Forum
2. Click "Add Image" in the upper right above the comment window.
3. Click "Upload an Image Instead." Then click the "Choose File" button. Browse your desktop, find the image, and click "open."
4. If you prefer, you can upload the 'Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then click "Add image" in the upper right above the comment window. Paste the image URL into the field that says "Image URL."
5. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, paste the image URL as a comment.
6. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. If you're still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels.

All set? Great. Now, Gentlemen, start your 'shopping!

On Friday, Madden NFL 13 revealed the ratings for every quarterback in the league, inviting the usual pointless discussion about who should be ranked ahead of whom and why.

It's easy to laugh at meathead sports fans who take a great interest in Jay Cutler's virtual throwing power compared to, say, Eli Manning's virtual deep ball accuracy, as if these really do involve strategic choices. (They don't. People play as their favorite teams except in multiplayer, where everyone's the Patriots.) But sports video games are no more rating-obsessed than any other video game genre, role-playing games especially.

Think about it for a second. I don't know what my armor class is in real life, other than probably 9 at the moment. Putting on a kevlar vest wouldn't infuse me with some specific knowledge of its protection, except I had a reasonable expectation it'd stop a slug from, say, a .38 at medium range, whatever that distance is. The Louisville Slugger in my closet isn't stamped with a figure noting its critical hit damage should I manage to sneak up on a robber in the basement.

Those kinds of things are fully knowable in most video games, however. Acquire loot in DC Universe Online and it'll tell you precisely how much it'll improve your might, your strength, and your damage while reducing your rate of attack. It's always struck me as a big fourth-wall breach in a game at least nominally predicated on acting out a role within an immersive world.

It's peevish of me to suggest this, but if a role-playing game involves making decisions in character, one of the most common choices is made practically on auto-pilot thanks to knowing the ratings: does this thing cause or prevent more damage? Yes. Equip it. Never mind that I, or my character, would prefer to fight with a sword instead of a mace, or looks better in chain mail than plate. (This kind of meta-game choice isn't completely unsupported. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I have steadfastly refused to give my mage any armor, even though he's fully entitled to wear it, and it hasn't thrown my progression out of balance. In DCUO, I can lock my styles so I can get the benefit of an item while maintaining my character's look.)

Still, should these kinds of ratings be exposed to us? What if we were aware of our characters' abilities and equipment in a more generic way? Things like damage bars over enemies are fine; you have to have some sense of your foe's health or reaction to your attack. Borderlands would divulge an enemy's exact level (somewhat redundant, given a naming system that had clear ranks like "BadAss" and "BadMutha") and pop a damage number up when you shot him. But the game's color-coding of items gave me a broad sense of their scarcity or quality that would often override a decision to equip a gun that maybe did incrementally more damage or had a faster rate of fire.

These sorts of clues could also be used to give you a sense of your own attributes. I don't know how many hit points I have in real life, but I feel fully healthy right now. I'm not sure what my endurance is, but I can run a mile—slowly. Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system is numbers-based, but the 1-to-10 nature of it gives you an idea of your qualities without exposing their effect on the dice roll too much.

Growing up, we had a hardass dungeon master who wouldn't tell you anything. Many DMs our age would introduce NPCs like, "You meet Thag, a level 16 chaotic neutral barbarian who carries a club +2, +6 against undead." Not this guy. In combat, he'd say stuff like, "You strike the bugbear. Doesn't look like that hurt him much." He'd make you spend turns counting treasure, too (which was really pointless, actually). If you wanted to know a magic weapon's qualities, prepare to do research later on, or discover it through trial-and-error in combat.

We bitched about it, but looking back, it enriched the role-playing experience. My fighter used a short sword because I had come to trust its effectiveness in combat (under this DM anyway), not because I knew it caused d8+3 in damage or whatever. But in an ambush, when things really got desperate, I whipped out a hand axe that I had been told gave off a faint green glow. Turned out it was a vorpal weapon. I think the DM may have goosed the roll just to reveal that, at that time, but it was a thrilling end to something that would have been a lot more strategic and rote if we knew everything.

There is a ratings-based game, recently released, that conceals players' attributes. NCAA Football 13, in its Heisman Challenge, doesn't itemize your player's abilities. I don't know what Jim Plunkett's throw power is, I don't know what Herschel Walker's speed or "trucking" is. I just know that, reputationally anyway, those guys were known for those qualities. I don't try to bull over a defender with Barry Sanders, not because I know he's poorly rated for that, but because I know Barry Sanders was at his best when he was eluding tacklers, not breaking tackles. In the end, through actual gameplay, I've learned something about my "character" in a more meaningful way than reading his ratings and comparing them to someone else's.

There's nothing inherently wrong with knowing the precise numbers assigned to your character's qualities. There's nothing wrong with not knowing your own strength, either. Discovering it can be just as rewarding as finding a huge chest of loot. So long as I don't have to spend turns counting it.