To: Ash & Maggie From: Flynn Subject: Action packed
Hello folks! Just wanted to leave you a quick reminder that I won’t be around tomorrow as it is my birthday and I plan on getting drunk enough to forget I’m turning forty. I have to say though, for a fortieth birthday, it’s going to be pretty kickass. Tonight kicks things off with an East Village bar crawl and then tomorrow I have a relaxing day of recovering from tonight and then dinner with friends. Monday I take off for Boston for the BioShock launch party which I am anticipating will be a blast. Tuesday morning I return to NYC, BioShock in hand, to play all day until three when I have an appointment to do an in person interview with Doc Hammer of Venture Bros. fame. All in all I’d say that’s pretty much going to make a perfect four days in my book. And as if that weren’t enough, I leave Thursday morning for the excitement of PAX. Whew!
Some things you may have missed today:
Heat game overheats, stalls out BioShock faceplates are the hot ticket! Everyone’s speculating about the Call of Duty 4 Beta.
Alrighty then, I’m off to celebrate with what I hope will be grace, style and a killer hangover in the morning. Have a great rest of your weekend! More »
The Championship Gaming Series has announced that Seoul is the newest franchise city for their world-wide league – not a huge surprise when you consider Korea is one of the few countries where video game competitions are a viable spectator sport. The gamers for the new franchise (save one female DOA player) were selected after “an exciting showdown” at the eStars Seoul game festival. More »
The Securities and Exchange Commission is thinking of filing charges against Take-Two Interactive in connection to the company’s stock option practices. The former CEO and chairman of Take-Two pled guilty in February to “first-degree falsification of business records” for backdating stock options in an illegal manner and was ordered to pay a restitution of $US7.2 million; in July, two more senior executives pleaded guilty in connection with the same stock options shenanigans. Take-Two received a “Wells” call from the SEC’s enforcement division, notifying them the division will be asking the Commission to file charges. Whoops: More »
Kotakuite Zhao snapped these pics at his local Fry’s Electronics of some spiffy Mario Kart remote control cars. Pretty cheap at $US14.99 but I would probably keep it on the shelf after it’s maiden voyage around my kitchen floor rather than run the risk of it getting bashed, scuffed or otherwise ruined. I did a little snooping about the web and a few specialty sites carry these as well as Yoshi and Donkey Kong versions. More »
Just because a lot of Chinese companies don’t respect intellectual property rights doesn’t mean they don’t want you respecting theirs – Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co. is suing Blizzard for copyright infringement. Claiming that “it lost more than one billion yuan (132 million dollars) through the unauthorised use of five of its fonts” in World of Warcraft, Founder is bringing suit in Beijing Municipal Higher People’s Court against Blizzard, Chinese company The9 (who runs the game in China), and Qingwentuwen, the company who distributes WoW in Beijing.
Teddy Liu, Greater China communications director of Blizzard, told Xinhua on Thursday that he had not received any official information on the suit, and had only read media reports.
If you dawdled on pre-ordering that BioShock LE for the 360 from GameStop, it’s too late now. The game retailer has recently halted taking pre-orders for the game everyone wants to get their hands on. There is speculation on why this has happened ranging from not having enough copies to meet demand to GameStop finding broken Big Daddy figures in some of the boxes. Regardless of the reason, if you waited, you’re S.O.L and you’ll have to make do with the plain old version of the game, wait until the limited edition makes a second run or buy it an an inflated price on eBay. I guess that’s why it’s called the “limited” edition.
[via Evil Avatar Forums] More »
Having listened to the howls of disappointment from my boyfriend every time some news is released about Jeff Minter’s psychedelic shooter Space Giraffe (usually that the release isn’t here yet. And still isn’t here. And still isn’t here …), I’m glad that those will soon be coming to an end. Or we hope, at least – the Llamasoft website has a blog up about the release and assorted game details which means launch should be imminent. Welcome to the Space Giraffe Launch Blog! We’re now very close to Llamasoft’s latest emission through the auspices of XBOX Live Arcade. So if you’ve an XBOX 360 and you’re all hooked up to that there internet you’re in a for a real treat for a mere 400 XBLA points! Over the next few days you can expect this blog to be chock full of all manner of Space Giraffe info.
Beijing Perfect World, the developer and publisher of several big-name Chinese games, and China Film Group Corporation have reached an agreement that Perfect World will develop a MMORPG based on John Woo’s latest film (due out next year) titled èµ¤å£ (The Battle of Red Cliff). Based on historical events (and included in the classic Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms), the movie focuses on a decisive battle in 3rd century BCE China, and the MMORPG will follow the same path – while differentiating itself from all the other Romance of the Three Kingdoms-based games that came before it. More »
Foundation 9 Entertainment, the developer that has studios scattered all over North America, has added the UK-based Sumo Digital (of Virtua Tennis, etc. fame) to their stable. Terms of the acquisition were not released and the transition should be complete by the end of the year. Full press release after the jump. More »
I think this might win the world record for multiple videos included in one single post. The clip makers over at Insomniac must be working overtime as they have uploaded no less than fourteen video clips from Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction to Gametrailers in the last five or six hours. How there will be anything left to actually surprise anyone by the time they play the game is beyond me, but hey, a little preview is always fun. I have posted the remaining thirteen videos after the jump and they are all labelled so you can decide which ones you want to see. The one title that really caught my eye was “Ice Pirate Dance Off.” It reminds me of that incident at E3 with Crecente and the ice machine at the hotel. But that’s another story for another day.
