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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review Nintendo has announced that Mexican authorities have snatched up 15,000 counterfeit Nintendo products from a Guadalajara market, including 4,500 counterfeit Wii games. Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America’s senior director of anti-piracy, calls the Mexican market’s piracy problem “widespread” and puts the number of seized unauthorised games at 100,000 for this calendar year.
The company made headlines recently for its recent civil suit win against a Uruguayan counterfeiter and for its support of the U.S. government’s stance on Chinese piracy.
We have absolutely no confirmation that the video game pirates looked anything like the Mexican bandits from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but it’s the most insensitive image we could generate on short notice. Full PR after the jump.
Mac gaming may be the punchline of many PC gamers jokes, but it’s kept alive by a handful of Mac OSX publisher holdouts. Only the biggest games make their way to the Apple OS, like World of Warcraft, The Sims, Doom III, Halo and Civilization. But, EA’s pledge to bring more of its games to the platform have become reality today with the release of surefire hits Madden NFL 08, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars and Need For Speed Carbon. All four games will be available at retail within the next two weeks.
Apple stock was up 5.01 (4.28%) on news that probably had nothing to do with this at all. Full press release after the jump.
The kids from Valve just let us know that at the Leipzig Games Convention, they plan to show a new video short from Team Fortress 2, this time profiling the Soldier class, the rocket jumping, bazooka wielding character shown in multiple trailers. Hopefully, it will be as hilarious and successful at the previous preview clip for TF2′s Heavy Weapons Guy. One also might hope that all nine character classes will get their own preview. Cross your fingers!
Full of copyright infringing cutscenes, passable platforming and propaganda about KFC’s chicken raising standards, PETA’s Super Chick Sisters is the kind of Flash-based edutainment that only the animal rights group could provide. Tasked with rescuing a kidnapped Pamela Anderson, decked out in royally tasteful clothing, lead chickens Nugget and Chickette embark on a lesson filled adventure.
With Leipzig just around the corner, the Tokyo Game Show seems a while off. It’s not! On the first day, Kaz Hirai will be giving the TGS keynote — In Japanese! (I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak Japanese.) He’ll be talking about business plans to expand the “PlayStation World.” Exciting. A partial list of titles on exhibit has been confirmed. This is NOT by any means a final list, but so far there will be the same number of GameCube titles as PLAYSTATION 3 games on display. That number is one. So much for expanding! After the jump, the partial list of what’s been confirmed so far:
The official Leipzig Games Convention blog has uploaded a new batch of shots from the showroom floor, giving us another early look at the publisher booths we’ll be hoofing around next week. There’s nothing in the way of major revelations that I can see, but maybe some of our more eagle-eyed youthful readers will be able to pick up on something I missed.
Besides, it will give you a chance to say aloud “Uncharted: Drake’s Shicksal! LOL!” at least once. Thanks for the heads up, Daniel!
even more photos!!! [GC-Blog]
Forgive this week’s late and incomplete Japanese software sales chart. It’s not my fault! Japan decided to take a holiday and left us twisting in the wind. Yes, some of the weekly sales data may be slightly askew or completely UNKNOWN, but at least we know how well Mario Party 8 is doing in Japan. And that Wii Sports has passed the 2 million mark.
The rest of the top 30 is after the jump!
01. SD Gundam G Generation Cross Drive (DS) – 149,000 / NEW 02. Mario Party 8 (Wii) – 102,000 / 504,000 03. Final Fantasy XII – International Zodiac Job System (PS2) – 66,000 / NEW 04. J. League Winning Eleven 2007: Club Championship (PS2) – 54,000 / 217,000 05. Donkey Kong Jungle Climber (DS) – UNKNOWN/ NEW 06. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS) 27,000 / 734,000 07. Wii Sports (Wii) – 34,000/ 2,005,000 08. Wii Play (Wii) – UNKNOWN 09. Wild Arms XF (PS2) – UNKNOWN / NEW 10. Flash Focus: Vision Training In Minutes A Day (DS) – UNKNOWN
After asking our killing fantasy, Techland is showing off their game Warhound’s interactive environments—namely tree interaction. Bullets rattle leaves and tanks bulldoze entire trees in realistic physics that will surely raise the bar for always-disappointing computer rendered foliage.
Before watching bullets whiz through greenery in real time, I never knew trees could be so beautiful.
Namco Bandai is really going above and beyond to promote the upcoming 360 RPG Eternal Sonata, launching what is probably the most extensive community site for a single player RPG I have ever seen. At Endless Nocturne, fans of Eternal Sonata can create a profile and then participate in quizzes, submit (clean) fan art, chat on the forums or enter any number of quizzes, earning community rank and special points called Notes along the way. The Notes can then be exchanged for prizes in the site’s shop, ranging anywhere from signed posters to Japanese OST CDs to a Zune or iPod Shuffle. On top of all of that, the site is being kept updated with all the latest news on the game, so it really is your one-stop Eternal Sonata community resource site. Check it out at EndlessNocturne.com, or hit the jump for more information.
Two new notable ratings from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board reveals that Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest has been rated for a Wii release and that LucasArts is planning another Indiana Jones release for the PSP. No release dates are provided for either whip-cracking adventure, but the LucasArts game is listed as Indiana Jones 2008.
It’s presumably not the recently announced LEGO Indiana Jones, as the game carries a T rating from the ESRB, with the company’s LEGO Star Wars releases receiving E and E10+ ratings. It’s possible the PSP version of Indiana Jones will be a scaled-down version of the next-gen console Indy game revealed just before last year’s E3, which then had a working title of Indiana Jones 2007.
