To: Crecente
From: Bash

I spent exactly one hour and thirty minutes at McDonalds today. Since Mrs. Bashcraft was out watching some TV show being filmed with her friend, I took the kid out for lunch. On the show she saw, Takashi Fuji was the guest. She really thinks he's annoying. He is, but he amuses me. Here's a clip of one of his songs. He was in Lost in Translation as "Matthew," a Paul Smith suit wearing, blonde-haired character he created. Quite like Matthew! And watch him a lot on TV when I first came to Japan. Think he's in a scene with Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. I've never seen Lost in Translation. Have you? Is it any good?

What you missed last night
Bandai "Not Aware" of PS3 Eternal Sonata
More Tomb Raider
DQ Swords all naughty
Lots of Sigmas

Gonna go fishing this weekend. Friggin hot and looking forward to sunstroke.

Courtesy of SCEE mouthpiece Three Speech comes news of a buncha release dates for upcoming PS3 games in Europe. Warhawk SHOULD (though this isn't confirmed) be up on the PS Store on August 28. Heavenly Sword is due on September 14. Folklore again, they can't confirm, but should be October 12, while Lair, again unconfirmed (got to maintain appearances that they're not being fed the information directly, you see) "should" be October 26. Finally, they "reckon" SingStar should be out in October.
RELEASE DATES [Three Speech]

EA's Wiki "tidying"? Not cool! Just as uncool is their "response" to the issue, which is less of a response as it is a...load of old hogswallop. An EA rep contacted Gamesindustry, and told them:

EA sometimes updates websites with info about the company, games and employees. For example, EA has sent a correction to Yahoo Finance when they had misspelled the name of an EA executive.

Many companies routinely post updates on websites like Wikipedia to ensure accuracy of their own corporate information.

Remember, kids, corporate information is only accurate if the corporation likes what it's reading.

EA responds to Wikipedia revision controversy [Gamesindustry.biz]

Maybe Canadians have funny taste in movies. Maybe Postal is actually a decent flick. Here's Uwe Boll chatting it up in a Batman shirt after the Postal premiere in Canada. The clip sheds some light into why the director went fucking batshit insane on Wired's Chris Kohler. The reason? He says that there isn't a huge ad campaign backing the Postal film and that everything hinges on good reviews and good of mouth. Apparently, there's a conspiracy out to shut the movie down and not get it shown in theatres! In the above clip, Actor Zack Ward ask the crowd if they liked the flick, and the audience really seems to dig it. They even clapped and make "wooooooo" noises. No, really.

Thanks, Trencher!

As we've before, Akihabara is a hotspot for crime. And not just any crime, but a very specific crime called "otaku gari" ("otaku hunting"). Japanese news are reporting yet another case of nerd crime. This time around, the otaku hunters weren't a gang, but a twenty-year-old brother and sister pair. Here's how it would work: She'd bump into the target, and her brother would demand that the dork hand over "apology money." When the duo were finally nabbed, they confessed that "otaku are weak, and they've got big money so we went after them." Tokyo-based game localiser and author Matt Alt points out:

Akiba has been losing some of its nerd-luster lately. Which isn't particularly surprising given how much attention it's received from visitors, press, and the industry in recent years. In fact, the word going around Wonderfest last weekend was that Akiba has become "a wasteland" (in the words of one longtime visitor) due to hordes of foreign toy-dealers scouring the shops for booty to take back to their homelands and sell at a profit. Say it ain't so!

Afraid so, afraid it's really so.
Otaku Gari [AltJapan]

GamePro just got one of the new Black/Red DS Lites Nintendo are offering in a bundle with Brain Training 2. They took it out of the box, took pictures, and now I really feel like a Cherry Ripe. Or a Turkish Delight. Either or.

Unboxed: the new Crimson/Black DS Lite bundle...[GamePro]

Following hot on the heals of the Mexican X-Game 360, comes this: an LED football game on what looks like a Wii-mote. (How the hell do you play that?) Found over at game site 4CR, they say its the first Wii-mote knock off thingy they've seen. I gotta agree! Don't remember seeing any faux Wii-mote doohickeys until this. And I'm thinking this won't be the last one, either.
Wii Fake [4CR]

There's serious adult content, and there's silly adult content. There's funny violence, and there's silly comic violence. It can often be a fine line between the two, in both cases, and it's one Bethesda are well aware of during development of Fallout 3. Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo:

There are some people who say that making an 18-rated game, and especially making a Fallout one, should be about sleeping with the hooker, then waking up with the venereal disease. A lot of that stuff personally, to me, veers into being a 12-year old dungeon master.

Some of it feels right and some of it feels wrong. We're appealing to an adult audience and it's a tough call. I mean, once you have groin shots you're approaching a level of silliness that, if you're not careful, can pervade the whole game.

Hope it's not too serious. Those post-apocalyptic wastelands can be bleak. It's going to need something to lighten the mood.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Kotakuite Trencher has done us and humanity a huge favour. He met "filmmaker" Uwe Boll, so we don't have to. After getting free tickets from his local comic book shop, Trencher attended the Canadian Postal premiere. What did he think of the flick? "I definitely wouldn't put this on my 'must see' list," Trencher writes, "but it's a good movie to see with a bunch of buddies or a large 'geek' crowd." More, importantly, how was Boll? He tell you to go fuck your mum? Punch you in the chopper? Trencher writes:

...as i walked in the door Uwe Boll was standing right there. So i had to go over and say hi, i grabbed the attached pic of myself and him and made sure to thank him for pissing off videogame fans everywhere. He mubbled something in German and i heard a few shit and fucks coming out his mouth. ...he is quite a nice guy. I picked up his autograph and walked into the theatre.

There you go. Posing for pics and signing autographs, Boll is beautiful human. See, it's just that he's misunderstood by the gaming public. That, and he makes shit films.

New Folklore trailer. I could have sworn I heard them say at the start, "Here, put this RIDICULOUS outfit on and you can talk to the dead".

Nothing says new Michael Crichton book like, err, a DS Lite? In a truly bizarre contest, Harper Collins is giving away a DS Lite and a copy of his new book Next to one lucky individual and just copies of the novel to two other folks as well. And what does the Nintendo DS have to do with the Michael Crichton book? Absolutely nothing, apparently! Like I said, bizarre.
Enter the Contest [Bucks Free Press via DS Fanboy]

Print is dead. Lot of people say it, or maybe substitute "death" for "dying", but I don't necessarily agree. I enjoy reading on the can, for example, and I'm not taking my laptop in there with me. Not even if I was going to be a while. Seems the latest Audited Bureau of Circulation figures from the UK agree with my optimism. Yes, some mags are/are still on the decline, but others are up, and some really up.

Those on the decline include the PC mags, Sony mags and, sadly, Edge:

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Tri-Crescendo, the Japanese developer behind Eternal Sonata, wanted to make the game an Xbox 360 title from the get-go. While the studio had previously worked on GameCube title Baten Kaitos, the Wii was not the platform of choice. According to game site Siliconera, the controller and the graphics made bringing Eternal Sonata to the Xbox 360 a no-brainer. What about a PS3 version? Publisher Bandai Namco told Siliconera that it was "not aware" of a PS3 version at the moment. How could it not be aware of that? It's friggin' Bandai Namco! The Japanese box for Eternal Sonata (AKA Trusty Bell) doesn't have an "ONLY ON XBOX 360" stamp on it. Thus, the game should be treated as such.
Eternal Localiser Talks [Siliconera]

Heard it sorta-once, sadly nothing came of it. Then. Now we're hearing it again, courtesy of two GAF kids who pulled the info off their "coming soon" schedules, one from an EB Games, one from a...well, Gamestop. They say Samba De Amigo is listed, it's listed for the Wii, and that it's listed as coming in February 2008. Whether you believe this or not, I leave up to you, with a warning to exercise caution: Sega break hearts, it's what they do.
Samba De Amigo for Wii? [robut & ImNotLikeThem @ NeoGAF]

You know all is well with the world when the sun rises, sets, and you hear that the Tomb Raider series is still kickin' around. Tomb Raiders Legend & Anniversary have given the once-flagging series a major kick in the ass, and now we have news that the next game in the series is well underway. No thanks to Core, though, they were stinking up the place, it's all down to Crystal Dynamics. Eidos' Ian Livingstone:

The next Tomb Raider is well in development now. It was a very bold move for us to move the development from [developer] Core over to Crystal Dynamics in the US. It was a difficult decision, but we had to do it, because of Angel of Darkness not meeting our expectations.

Poor Core. They didn't do it on purpose!
Eidos' Ian Livingstone On The Future of Tomb Raider [SPOnG]

Dragon Quest Swords did alright. The game sold something like 300,000 units in its first week in Japan, making it the fastest selling Wii game. The game's art direction was a departure from the game's typical Akira Toriyama look. Was all gothy. There was even a gothic lolita character named Setia. DQ Swords' fan service includes in-game up-skirts. Perfect fodder real life ones! Here's costume player Ushijima doing her not-Square-Enix-approved take on Setia, upskirt homage and everything.

Full box art after the jump.

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Quebec? Never really understood it, myself. A little French part of a British Commonwealth nation? How odd. Odder still is the fact the Quebec government want more videogames in the region to be in French. Turns out only around 40% of games available in the region are in French, and seeing as they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the triumph of the English language over their own flowery speech, they've "struck a deal" that will see every game in the region available in French. Somehow, they're getting publishers to pick up the tab for this. First, I can't see this working (how many publishers are going to translate US versions of games like big RPGs into French for such a tiny audience?), and second, you want delays like PAL users have to put up with as games are translated, go right ahead. Be my guest.
Quebec strikes deal to translate new video games into French [Yahoo! Canada, via Game|Life]

Crane games are old. In Japan, where they dish the future out like candy, crane games are controlled by robots. Well, this one is at least. The concept is currently being tested, but differs from traditional crane games in that it's timed. So, instead of being given X number of moves to use the crane to snag loot, players must use the robot in a race-against-the-clock to bag their prize. Delightfully nerdy and TOTALLY AWESOME!
Robot Crane Game [Gizmodo]

Talk about scraping in by the skin of their sack. Microsoft announced waaaaay back in March that Australia would be getting the Elite during our southern "winter". March went by, then April, then May, and we heard nothing. June and July went by and we still hadn't even had the announcement, let alone seen the console. But it's OK! That announcement came through today, and the Elite will launch on August 30. Second-last day of winter. CLOSE. It'll retail for AUD$729.95 (USD$572), which is only AUD$50 more than the 20GB Halo model.

OK, time to kick off the final discussion for Mr. Robot. Hit up the link below to join in the campfire. Remember this time around we are discussing the game up to the end of the cryo room. Joining us today is Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost, the author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames and a recent guest on the Cobert Report. So get your questions ready and hop on the link. If the room is full please follow along here, I'll be keeping an eye on the discussion and trying to post questions from here into the room.

Campfire

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Tecmo announced that Ninga Gaiden Sigma (aka Ninja Gaiden Shiguma) has shipped 500,000 copies worldwide. Not bad for a remake of Xbox game Ninja Gaiden Black — especially considering the game has been out for a mere two months in Japan and about a month elsewhere. Thank Rachel and her big Blades of the Ouroborus.
Ninja Gaiden Ships Half A Million [Siliconera]

The Castlevania: Dracula's Curse production blog has been silent for the past month as animated film scribe Warren Ellis has been busying himself with Comic Con 07 appearances and, y'know, actual script writing.

Today, however, Ellis finally gives us a look at a portion of the screenplay's first draft. While Trevor Belmont, the featured vampire hunter, is present but remains tight-lipped you'll want to stick around for the goat fucking.

You read that right. Goat fucking. Looks like Warren isn't looking to Captain N for his animated Belmont cues.

First Draft Excerpt [Castlevania: Dracula's Curse Blog]

With no plans for a European X07, why not hit up the next best thing? Say, the Europe of the north, Canada, for example. That's exactly what Microsoft is planning to do, as invites for the exclusive event have already been delivered to an unknown number of attendees. On August 28th, Toronto will host the Canadian X07 event, open to the public the previous year, but now strictly invite-only.

Microsoft promises plenty of Xbox 360 and Games For Windows titles on hand from itself and third party publishers Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Activision. Going down just a few days after the end of the Leipzig Games Convention, I have to wonder if MS will hold off anything of importance for the Canadian game show but maybe they'll provide delicious maple whiskey to make it feel more exciting.

Microsoft still holding X07 in Canada [Canada.com via Gamespot]

The PlayStation Store has finally been updated for this Thursday's refresh, bringing a slew of new content to PLAYSTATION 3 owners. Demos for EA's NCAA Football 08 (728 MB) and Codemasters DiRT (553 MB) are up now and ready to download. New game videos include the new animated episode and a second "making of" clip for Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword, as well as new trailers for Folklore and Timeshift.

New movie trailers for Pixar's WALL-E, The Brothers of Solomon and The Lives of Others join new PS3 wallpapers for Blast Factor: Advanced Research and, again, Heavenly Sword. This update is so solid it makes me want to do our secret, multi-step handshake—you know, the one that ends with us doing a little hip bump and double finger gun snap-point at eachother?

One of the winners of Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play competition, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai will be making its way to an Xbox Live Arcade near you in the coming months. This XNA Game Studio Express hallmark was the fruit of James Silva's labour, a stylish, two dimensional action shooter with all the right shoot 'em up standards.

Thanks for the heads, up Epsilon!

SOE is a big name in the MMO business. Perhaps too big a name. Perpetual Entertainment has clarified Sony Online Entertainment's role in their upcoming MMO Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, assuming full publishing duties while SOE will continue to handle marketing and retail distribution of the title. Previously listed as co-publishers, Warcry explains that the move is to make sure credit for the development of the game goes solely to Perpetual as this is their fledgling project, with the power to define them as a company. I am wondering if similar steps will be taken for Pirates of the Burning Sea, which SOE is publishing for Flying Lab. With both games being presented at major gaming events by SOE the confusion over roles is sure to come up in Pirate's case as well.

Perpetual Reassumes Publishing Duties From SOE [Warcry Network]

Bret Michaels, frontman for the hair-rock outfit Poison and star of some VH1 show that's too embarrassing to admit that I know the title of, has been granted "legendary" status by Activision. Similar to ex-Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash, the singer will make a virtual appearance in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. In addition to the Poison track "Talk Dirty To Me", one of Michaels' solo efforts, "Go That Far", will be included in the final setlist. Crap. It sucks.

Mr. Michaels' "signature moves" were actually mo-capped from the former Poison rocker as he did his "thing." If you want to read how genuinely excited Bret was to be asked to be in the game, hit the press release after the gallery. It's precious.

Gallery: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

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The publisher of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows Magazine, Ziff-Davis Media, failed to make an interest payment yesterday and announced that it was negotiating with its lenders to restructure a rather sizable debt. The company, which also owns the web sites 1UP, FileFront, GameVideos, MyCheats and GameTab, owes some $US390 million, a figure which CEO Josh Young says "was put on the company when it was a very different scale." The group now employs less than 300, down from 1200 at one point.

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Tony Hawk's Proving Ground introduces the concept of character classes to the Tony Hawk universe, allowing you to follow the path of a career, hardcore, or a rigger, all of which I went into some detail on in my E3 eyes on last month. Activision just released this video profiling the abilities of the career skater, who strives for fortune, fame, and sponsorship. Assuming this means will be getting two more of these before the game hit stores in October, which is good because out of the three classes the career skater seems the most boring.

Our cups runneth over with new screens and artwork from Namco-Bandai's Soulcalibur IV, giving us a clear look at the unrestrained breasts of returning fighters Sophitia and Cassandra. In a cruel twist that will interfere with your enjoyment of studying Soulcalibur IV's top-heavier than ever female fighters, new screens of fighting freak Voldo are also interspersed.

He, too, looks to be sporting a more voluminous codpiece. We're really concerned about the unchecked growth of to the unspeakable bits of our favourite fighters, but as long as they gyrate well, we'll keep our mouths shut. Enjoy!