Tight-pants, swords and guns went down a treat in Britain last week, as Devil May Cry 4 went straight to the top spot. The irony of it being the 360 version that attained the feat will be, I'm sure, lost on nobody. Further down the chart? Both the peculiar and predictable. Peculiar: Turok charts not once, but twice. Predictable: A darts game for the Wii comes in at #5.

1) Devil May Cry 4 (360)
2) Mario & Sonic At The Olympics (DS)
3) Wii Play
4) Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
5) PDC World Championship Darts (Wii)
6) Turok (360)
7) Brain Training
8) Turok (PS3)
9) Burnout Paradise (PS3)
10) More Brain Training

[charts courtesy of ChartTrack] [Image]

Thanks, Torokun!

Perhaps as a tip of the hat to our convict roots, Flying Lab's parrot-and-grapeshot MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea will be released to the Australian public for free. Aussie telecommunications provider Telstra are sponsoring the deal, where all interested persons have to do to nab themselves either a download key or a DVD of the full game is visit Telstra's website and register their email address. And before you ask, no, you don't need to be a Telstra customer to get the deal, it's open to anyone and everyone (though BigPond customers will get 20% off the $US 15.95 per month subscription rate, which you'll still need to pay - you're "only" getting the game for free). My swash is well and truly buckled.
GameArena - PotBS [via PALGN]

This is Vegas? I always thought Vegas was about bright lights, good times, regrettable unions. Not punching and gyrating floosies. Well, punching and floosies do feature, I guess, I just never figured they'd be the only things shown in a trailer for a game based in the city. Then again, seeing as this is a Midway GTA clone, maybe I should have.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a super smash hit in Japan. When it went on sale, the game sold out at loads of Tokyo game shops, and in the last two weeks, the title has shifted a million copies. It took Wii Fit seven weeks to hit a million copies sold, and it took Wii Sports eleven weeks to hit that milestone. That makes Super Smash Bros. Brawl the fastest selling Wii game, which should make Nintendo very, very happy.
SSBB Hits a Million [Famitsu]

Sure, it attracted 18,000 people last year, but with a planned move to August 28-30 - ie the same time as PAX - this year's show was always going to struggle. Which is probably why the show's organizers have announced that the 2008 E for All will instead be taking place between October 3-5. They're trying to spin this as "a decision that reflects the great success of the last year's event -- also held in October -- as well as the positive feedback from exhibitors and attendees about the Fall timing", and if that's what helps them get to sleep at night, then that's what counts.
E For All 2008 No Longer Competing With PAX [Game|Life]

So, I've been getting my Wii Fit on everyday for the past two or three weeks. Worst part? The board's totally white, and remember how the Pearl White DS Lites ended up? They ended up grimey and gross! My solution has been to wash my feet before getting on the Balance Board. Then there's the issue of slippage — which, if you are a sweaty bastard, could be a problem. Hey, you could slip right off into the TV. Who knows? This ¥2,480 ($US 23) Wii Fit cover seems to address both issues and hopefully will prevent accidents and protect the peripheral. Wish there was first party cover, though.
Wii Fit Cover [JTT Online Shop via IT Media]

Japan's had Professor Layton DLC for a while now, so it's only fair that with the game's US release, Americans get a bag of those sweet, free crisps as well. As of now, the first of what should be weekly puzzle updates has been made available for download. I'm not sure how exactly it'll work as far as keeping your downloads, but it'll probably work out like Picross and allow you to save a certain number of puzzles to your cart.
First Professor Layton WFC puzzle up for download [Go Nintendo]

If this blurry image is to be believed, Xbox 360 "exclusive" Ace Combat 6 will be ending up on the PS3 apparently sometime this year. Why shouldn't it be? We've known Ace Combat 6 is apparently a "timed exclusive" for almost a year now. The above scan from magazine PSM3 states:

Japan's favorite dogfighting series returns with a new made-up war, a brace of superweapons (best is the asteroid cannon), online co-op and a custom controller for superfans.

Mahjong's OK. Little boring, though. Seasons and colours? A bit naff. What the game really needs is a bunch of scantily-dressed girlies under the board, whose naughty poses are revealed only when you clear the table. And that's exactly what D3's THE Sexy Szechuan Province, a Japanese mobile game, delivers. And yes. Stop. Don't bother asking. That is its real name.
女の子たちの秘密のヴェールを剥がせ！ 『THE セクシー四川省』が配信[Famitsu]

What we know about Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto: He plays the banjo, has a pet dog, likes gardening. Those are the typical insights we usually get about the Super Mario Bros.

What we know about pachinko: It's a form of gambling that's just barely legal in Japan. Instead of winning cash, players win metal balls. (If players won cash, pachinko would actually be gambling.) The players then "sell" these metal balls to a separate shop typically next to the pachinko parlor. Thus, players can actually "win" money in a round about, yet legal way. Do realise that while those noisy pachinko parlors aren't exactly the most reputable places, a cross section of society does spin those metal balls.

In an interview with Nintendo honcho Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto divulges:

Quick, you're an opinion columnist and you have nothing to write about. What should you do? That's right, drone on about how grown man-children playing video games is infantilising them. On the Times Online, the opinionated Kate Muir does just that! She writes:

I assumed that, after adolescence, young men put away childish things and played amateur football, got amusingly drunk, instigated punch-ups, watched Big Brother or ineffectually pursued women. Yet here were men holding down serious careers by day, but infantalised by night in a virtual world.

Companion cube jokes: totally overplayed. WoW: totally overdone. Yet somehow, throwing the two together under the umbrella of Valentines Day (or, to be more precise, the "Love Is In The Air") celebrations warms the very cockles of my heart. Don't ask me why. It just does. And don't ask about my cockles, either.
The companion cube cannot remain through the testing [WoW Insider]

Late last week, we introduced the "MAXIMUM RISKY" tag. Questions appeared: Where did the "Hot Tears of Shame" one go? Why did it leave us? Does it hate us now? Don't get us wrong, we love the "Hot Tears of Shame" tag, but we had to retire it. While we popularised the phrase, it was originally coined by writer Patrick Macias for his podcast. We're gianormous fans of Macias and have featured him and his books several times on Kotaku: here, here, here and here. Heck, I even write for his magazine Otaku USA and just finished up a piece for him last month. Macias doesn't cover games at all, but "Hot Tears of Shame" was our homage to him and the quirky Japan reporting he's done.

Spare a thought for the videogame bad guy. Sure, he's a badass on-screen, but what happens when the final boss grows tired of all the killing and fancies a career change? Something more relaxing, something more befitting someone of his gentle nature, something more rewarding? This is what happens.
Mauvais Rôle: a videogame villain reinvents himself [Boing-Boing]

Figurine maker Kotobukiya has done a fine job with Master Chief. Its badass Master Chief from last summer was pretty great as were its blue and red Spartans. And it's latest Master Chief? Ditto on pretty great. The Halo 3 statue features changeable hands and weapons. It lists for around $US 90 and goes on sale this June. And the one is, well, pretty great, too.
Master Chief Field of Battle [Hobby Search Thanks, Markus!]

This weekend, the AOU 2008 expo goes down in Tokyo. Seeing as this is only the world's #1 arcade gaming show, you can bet some big-name games will be paraded around. Like King of Fighters XII, which will be shown publicly for the first time, albeit in video form (it sadly won't be playable). Little is known about this latest installment in the series, though it should be coming to the US in 2009 on both PS3 and 360. We've also heard that the game will be neither 2D nor 3D.

EA's purchase of BioWare was great for EA, less great for Microsoft. Why? Because it leaves their flagship RPG series, Mass Effect, in potential platform limbo. Sure, the first game will always be a 360 exclusive, but couldn't the rest of the series easily go multiplatform? Not if Microsoft can help it. Shane Kim told MTV's Stephen Totilo:

SK: ...We really care about our relationship with EA. BioWare's been a good partner for us. We're very happy with the success of "Mass Effect" and we want that to continue. From a platform perspective, is it the most important that Microsoft Games Studios publishes it or [rather] that it's exclusive to the platform? That's the way we have to think about it."

MTV: And it's still a trilogy, all three parts slated for the 360?

SK: As far as we're concerned, absolutely

Thanks, rhoddi!

Finally, a decent look at the returning original eight from Street Fighter II. We saw Famitsu's pics the other day, but now we have crystal clear shots of the latest from Street Fighter IV, in glorious 720p resolution. The details look fantastic—certainly liking what we're seeing here and here—but we're wondering exactly what Chun-Li seems to have stashed away in those bloomers. Is it Poison in disguise?

The arcade game now appears to have a Summer 2008 date attached to it. That's much more comforting than the TBA we've heard up until now.

In between trying to convince IGN that the only people who found Lair's controls to be woeful were "hardcore" gamers, Factor 5 boss Julian Eggebrecht raises the possibility that those same controls might be tweaked in a future update for the title:

If we find a chance in the future that would bring Lair to the audience which didn't get any access, that would be fantastic. I can't say anything quite yet, but there might be something in the works there. We might have a chance yet to bring those back to the table and hopefully, if that should happen, they would give the game a second chance.

To: Ash and Luke
From: Crecente
Re: Seven, Lucky Seven

I hear they do lottery for births there too. ;) Hey, actually my dad is visiting Australia right now, you should say "Hi".

Tristan had a pretty fabulous run at school over the past month, he's a grade to a grade-and-a-half above in math and reading and has stopped getting in trouble during recess. To celebrate we decided to buy him a hamster. Initially he was going to name him Hamtaro, but he settled on Robo instead. We went the weekend picking out his pet, buying a house and lots of tubes to connect to it. Have you ever seen those things? They're pretty neat, you can pretty much do whatever you want with them and the hamsters love exploring. I can totally see letting things get out of hand and running tubes all over the house, it's just fun. Now if I could figure out a way to get Robo to deliver coffee to me via tube we'd be set.

What you missed:

Why Microsoft Murdered The Marvel MMO
Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational Moves To Paris
GTA IV: Reinventing a World
Indiana Jones And The Screenshots Of Lego
Ubisoft Helps You Lose Weight
Rockstar Experimenting with Episodic Content
PSP Redesign Concept Longs For Reality
Notes On The Castlevania Screenplay
Halo 2 Finally Going Platinum Hits?

We had a few inquiries regarding the possibility of Ninja Gaiden Black making its way to us as an Xbox Original after it was spotted coupled with a "Coming Soon" banner on Xbox Live. According to Microsoft Oz, this was a mistake. The company has assured us that there are still no plans to bring Ninja Gaiden Black to our shores as an Xbox Original.

The local 2K Games branch has heard back from the mothership about the mysterious disappearance of the publisher's titles from Valve's Steam service.

Apparently the dropped catalogue is a temporary issue, and users can expect the games to return soon. No exact date or precise explanation, but it's good to know we won't be going without. The update was also shared on 2K's official forums (thanks Glen).

It should be noted that the publisher has yet to provide a reason for the Civilization IV price hike. I'm hoping the increase doesn't magically appear on 2K's other offerings when they return.

Fingers crossed.

Update: 2K Games officially has no comment on the price rise... which can be roughly translated as "Suck it, Australia".

The only new addition to the Street Fighter IV cast is the mysterious Crimson Viper. Capcom hasn't released much in the way of story details surrounding the fighter, but she does have a bit of an updated look, according to new marketing materials released today. See if you can spot the differences between old Crimson Viper on the left and new on the right. The publisher definitely wants you to know that her belt buckle and the buttons on her sleeve are now green. Consider me in for one full priced Street Fighter IV arcade cabinet as of right now, Capcom! I'm a slave to green belt buckles!

Harmonix has announced the week in Rock Band downloadables, bringing a trio of classic tracks to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 via each platform's service. The trio of tracks, which contain "Complete Control" by the Clash, "Truth Hits Everybody" by the Police and "Teenage Lobotomy" by the Ramones, can be snapped up individually for $US 1.99 each (or 160 Microsoft Points) or bought bundled for $US 5.49 (440 Microsoft Points). Not a bad deal, considering they're all master tracks.

Expect the tunes to hit Xbox Live on Wednesday, then a day later on the PlayStation Store. Do want!

Ah Peter Moore, how we've missed you. No one has really stepped into the "public face" void filled by Moore's sudden departure over at Microsoft, but fortunately, Moore himself is still going to be very much a public face in gaming.

Today the EA Sports president launched his very own blog over on EA Sports. Moore says he hopes to update it weekly with thoughts on sports, sports gaming and the gaming industry. He also told me in a recent interview that he might post some picture of fancy new digs (complete with sports bar I'm told) on the site down the line.

If his first blog post, which touches on everything from Facebreaker, the Super Bowl and why he thinks Larry Hryb is the Perez Hilton of blogging, is any indication, Inside the Game with Peter Moore is going to be a must read for sports gamers. Oh, and the best part? His posting name is EACrazyLegs. Wow!

Inside the Game [EA Sports]

How do you know when you've made it? When the marketing staffers tasked with pitching Rambo to moviegoing audiences namechecks your game. In this case, it's Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare being honoured in a roundabout way by Rambo, which the Arizona Daily Star apparently called "a nasty, Call of Duty 4-style shoot em' up!"

Surely, that's gotta be a first and clear indication that Hollywood execs are looking to get gamers off their couches and into movie theaters. You can read how pleased the Infinity Ward guys are at the team's official blog.

Rambo = "Call of Duty 4 style Shoot em' Up!" [IAMfourzerotwo - thanks, Robert!]

Well, we all know the sad fate of Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 multiplayer functionality. Your options? Put up with the lack of support, or return your copy to its place of purchase for a refund.

But what is EA's plan to rectify the situation for potential buyers? Here's what the local office had to say:

Moving forward, MoH Heroes 2 Australian game packs will remain the same and an amended manual with the correction will be included in place of the current manual.

EA had no comment regarding how it would avoid this sort of error in the future, or indeed, if its upcoming Wii titles will have online support in Oz. I'd hate to see this become the norm.

If you're still left wanting from today's earlier announcement that EA has struck a deal with Hasbro to bring Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf N-Strike to the Wii, perhaps you'll perk up for news on a game you actually want to play. Say, G.I. Joe, for example, which Variety says is part of the EA-Hasbro alliance and should ship alongside the film adaptation of the cartoon in Summer 2009. Details are scarce, but in the EA fashion, we expect it come to every platform under the sun. We certainly hope for it to be better than EA's Catwoman.

Hopefully, it won't just be relegated to mobile phones and Pogo.com, instead featuring billions of red lasers and blue lasers generating next-gen sparks, ultimately missing every single intended target. Sure, the G.I. Joe movie may have a few head-scratching choices, but that doesn't mean our inner eight year olds aren't wicked psyched.

EA develops Hasbro properties [Variety]