As part of their latest financial report, Ubisoft announced that four of their upcoming games are being delayed until the next financial year, which doesn’t start until April 2008. Which games, then? Oh, wouldn’t you like to know. That’s where the mystery comes in! See, they’re keeping them a secret, only saying that one is an existing franchise and the other three are from “new brands”. Why the secrecy? None of the games have even been announced yet. I know big-game delays are getting more and more common, but delays on unannounced games? Things are getting out of control. Ubisoft beats sales targets, delays four games [GameSpot]
Geddit? Look closer, it’s there. That’s Daniel’s entry. If you still don’t see it, let’s have Daniel explain:
Title: Aces combat Sixes
Here’s what is happening: We’re doing a paper airplane contest for Ace Combat 6. We’ve got a bundle of goodies that includes Ace Combat 6, glossy, photo-quality screenshots autographed by the game’s producer and director, Ace Combat 6 Xbox 360 faceplates and the AC6 Flightstick set. To win this bundle you’ve gotta fold, cut, glue bits of paper together in hopes of creating a truly gnarly paper jet plane. They don’t have to actually fly, but hey, if they do, that’s a major plus. Be sure to snap a pic of your creation with something that says “Kotaku” and send it to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom. Add “Ace Combat 6 Contest” to your subject line. Deadline is October 25th.
Lucasarts may not hear your cries, DS-owning adventure game lovers, but Focus Home Interactive do. They’re bringing classy-looking adventure game Runaway, The Dream of the Turtle to North America sometime early next year. Never played it myself, but it promises to be a standard point-n-click affair (it’s a port of a PC game), and the cel-shaded graphics come up looking pretty OK on the DS.
The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification, formerly the British Board of Film Censors) nixed Manhunt 2 and would not certify the game’s PS2 and Wii versions. This happened not once, but twice. The re-cut version got approved in the U.S., but not in the U.K. What kind of organisation is the BBFC? Clive Barker offers Newsweek‘s N’Gai Croal this non-gaming example about how the BBFC thinks:
Well, the BBFC is a British organization; and therefore, prone to inconsistencies. One of my first lady friends was a Liverpool lass who became a member of the BBFC, and she would tell me the kind of things that they would debate at their meetings. At what point was a penis actually erect? If it flopped around still in a sort of half-dead fish kind of way, could it possibly be removable?
Yes, the BBFC talks about boners. While it does not ban showing male genitalia, it does not classify anything with tent that has been pitched, so to speak. Apparently, the board has an actual degree measure so that it can differentiate between wet noodles and stiffies. If you are keeping score that means flaccid weenies are kosher for movies, hard-ons ain’t and don’t expect this type of bureaucratic organisation to give a friendlier Manhunt 2 U.K. classification anytime soon. Clive Interview Part II [Level Up]
Shinning Wind fans, respected figure maker Kotobukiya is giving you two very special reasons to pick up this Clalaclan Philias figurine. From the SEGA published PS2 games, Clalaclan’s the Tower of the Sun Priestess! The figurine is 8 inches tall and comes with a removable shield. You can see up her skirt, too, and she has huge jubblies. That’s about it, people! Hit “more” to see the full figurine.
More Pics [AkibaOS]
These clips come from reader Matthew. Hate him. They show him playing through Super Mario Galaxy two weeks before the game is released in North America. Matthew writes:
This is me playing the full game of super mario galaxy on wii 2 weeks of it’s release date, I’m playing it at my local gamecrazy and they got a shipment of just the game, nothing else but the game in a zip lock bag. I plan on beating the game before the game actually releases.
As another tipster, VideoGamerJ, pointed out, Nintendo sent the full game to GameStop and GameCrazy retailers like the company did with Metroid. So we take that back: Don’t hate reader Matthew. Rather, thank him for the heads up, because you too can play the full version of Super Mario Galaxy weeks before it goes on sale. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest game retailer and start hogging that Wii kiosk. You’ve got a game to beat, dammit!
More clips after the jump.
There’s twelve months in a year. Count em if you want! One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleeeeven twee-eelve. We’re all capable of playing games during any of them, and we’re all capable of buying games during any of them, but publishers don’t know that. They think we only buy games between October and December, and boy does it make life hard. Nintendo are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to crapping on our end-of-year free time, but if you can believe Perrin Kaplan (and hey, she’s already checked out, so you may not) they might be coming around: Sunday is actually a really good launch day of the week for products. And I think we’re actually starting to look at the annual calendar differently. The first two quarters of the year tend to be more quiet. But now we’ve seen some evidence of sales in that period. Other than the holiday quarter, I think the traditional way of viewing it is not necessarily a slam dunk. I think a really good product can be a slam dunk any time of the year.
What a wonderful world that would be. A world where I’d get a new Zelda game on the DS and actually have the time to enjoy it would be swell. Nintendo’s Perrin Kaplan [MTV]
Looks fun enough, in a Wii Sports 2 kind of way, but that music will drive people to murder.
More non-games for your DS! Swell. That’s a Shibuya billboard for DS Bungaku Zenshuu, a title crammed with a hundred books for folks to read. The game is made by Dragon Quest Swords dev Genius Sonority and even lets readers download abridged versions of modern literature via Nintendo WiFi. Game site Siliconera points out that Nintendo is devoting more effort in promoting this game than, say, ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat. And we all know what happened to that game… DS Book Reader [Siliconera]
We know, it’s October, there are a ton of games vying for your time and money right now. But this goes beyond just you. See, Zack & Wiki is pretty awesome. But because it looks a little childish, because the concept’s a little hard to explain concisely and because it’s coming out at this time of year (tomorrow), there’s a good chance it may be forgotten. Totally overlooked. Don’t you dare let that happen. If you’ve got a Wii and will be up tomorrow, get off your arse and go buy a copy. We don’t want to be writing about this game in 2-3 years time, listening to you all bitch about how much sealed copies cost and how bad you want to play it. Now’s your chance.
