Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land 
Why Robin Makes Batman Better 
Resistance: Burning Skies: The Kotaku Review 
Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending As it stands, watching movies or shows on your TV with your PSP is…well, it’s not elegant. You hook the cables in, you press play, and…what the hell do you do with your PSP? Hold it? Sit it on the coffee table? It’s messy. Enter Sony, with the just-announced PSP Cradle, which will not only power your handheld while it’s outputting video, but also comes bundled with a remote control, meaning those days of you having to get up to press play are well and truly over. The cradle – due for release in Japan on April 24 – will come bundled with AV cables for ¥6500 ($US 62), while the cradle alone will cost ¥4800 ($US 46). No Western dates or prices, obviously, so don’t bother asking. Further pics and press release dutifully follows.
New PSP color incoming! “Matte Bronze.” Going on sale April 24th, the ¥23,800 ($US 230) Value Pack features a pouch, strap, cloth, memory stick (32MB) and a cable you can plug into televisions. But “Matte Bronze”? That’s like third place, but not as glossy. New Color [Famitsu]
Zelda music renditions are a dime a dozen. Zelda YouTube music renditions ON A CARROT ain’t. Here, YouTuber heita3 plays the tune “Song of Time” from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on a carrot, which he’s dubbed his “Carrot Ocarina”. Hey, cut him some slack, he’s playing music on vegetables! Hit the jump for him playing non-game songs on broccoli, a pumpkin, a cucumber, a radish, a cabbage and a bunch of carrots. This guy is all kinds of awesome.
Last October, THQ decided to block Oz and NZ users from purchasing it games via Valve’s Steam. Although the publisher was unwilling to provide a reason for the block, the working theory was that local users could purchase the company’s games via the service for significantly less than their price at brick and mortar stores, thanks to the weak US dollar.
Rather than increase the price and face our collective wrath, THQ decided to remove its catalogue instead. But like I said, it’s just a theory.
It looks like the recently released Frontlines: Fuel of War slipped through the block – at least for a while. It was briefly available for $US 50 on Steam for Australian and New Zealand users, but it looks like it’s been taken down as of today. THQ’s local presence couldn’t really comment as this sort of thing is out of its hands.
If I had to guess, I’d say that Frontlines was never meant to be available to us from Steam. THQ/Valve has just corrected the error… much to our chagrin. Good news is that if you did purchase it while it was up, it’s still playable.
Uhh..I live in Australia, where did Frontlines go? [Steam Powered forums, thanks Lev Arris]
Numbers fans ahoy! The latest issue of Famitsu contains a neat, handy chart, listing the top ten publishers in Japan for 2007 by sales. These only include Japanese publishers, and doesn’t include games sold outside of Japan, so don’t go crying me a river over Koei’s high placement or the absence of, oh, I don’t know, Bungie or 2K Boston.
1. Nintendo: 23,520,000 2. Square Enix: 7,580,000 3. Bandai Namco: 7,500,000 4. Capcom: 5,560,000 5. Konami: 4,910,000 6. Sega: 2,930,000 7. Pokemon: 2,870,000 8. Sony: 2,230,000 9. Koei: 1,940,000 10. Banpresto: 1,790,000
Lucky I didn’t put a tenner down on Marvellous making the list, otherwise I’d be down $US 10.
Die Top 10 Publisher in Japan 2007 [Famitsu, via Gamefront.de]
And here you all were thinking you’d be getting the Wii version of Okami on March 25. You’re not. The game’s been delayed a smidge, and instead of being ready in march now has an American release date of April 15. No reason was given for the delay, so feel free to come up with your own hair-brained plots involving aspect ratios and brushwork calibration below. Wii Okami bumped to April 15 [GameSpot]
Ah, yes. Punch Out! When I played it, the game was Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! — which was later changed to simply Punch Out! when Tyson’s contract was up and when he got into legal trouble. Video Game Comedy site The -Minus World has a look at the game’s stereotypes, tongue planted firmly in cheek: Hey, have you ever had one of those friends that says something really racist against black people but stupidly tries to placate everyone by assuring, “Dude it’s ok…I have friends who are black.” ….or maybe you have a friend that hits woman but eases your fears because you know his mom is a woman so it’s all good? Well along those same lines, Nintendo throws in Piston Honda as a red herring to allay any suspicions that Punch Out is racist. I recommend that you intentionally go two rounds with Piston just so you can read him nonsensically utter “Sushi, Kamikaze, Fujiyama, Nipponichi.” Yeah. Japan basically kicks itself in the nuts here.
The -Minus World suggests new characters like “Sleepy Gonzales”, “Rabbi Uppercuttawitz” and “Pope-a-Dope”. The Most Racist Video Game [The -Minus World via Go Nintendo]
Poor Nathaniel, who had his artwork-adorned 360 scrubbed clean by over-zealous Xbox repair staff, is to be compensated for his loss. By Bungie. Because the kid was such a Halo nut, the series creators will be trying to make up for his loss with something of their own doing: Our team and the community as a whole is rallying to help fix this unfortunate situation. It’s been awesome to see such an outpouring of sympathy and support from our community. We can’t replace the exact item that was lost but, but we should come very close.
Close? I’d think something from the actual creators of Halo, rather than the creators of a machinima series based on Halo, should come closer than close. Bungie to Rectify Fan’s Wiped 360 [Next-Gen]
It’s not so tough being a PS3 owner waiting for ports of PC and/or 360 games. Sure, you’ve gotta wait, but when a game does make the jump, it normally brings with it some free extras. Like Oblivion did. And now Crysis, if the latest issue of PSW is to be believed: …it won’t be a straight conversion of the PC game. We understand PS3 Crysis will be an almost 50% new game, with many of the original games staff taken off PC Crysis months before release to begin to work on Crysis 2 and a port to PS3 that will include aspects of the sequel – but a new structure, environments, weapons and enemies will feature on PS3.
Sounds great for PS3 owners…I guess…but really, that sounds messy. Staff being pulled off the PC version so half a sequel can be put on a console port? Urgh. Its No Secret(crysis Coming To Ps3) [GameTrailers Forums, via PS3F]
