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After A Long Day, I Just Wanna...
Posted by Brian Ashcraft at 11:40 PM on May 16, 2008
To: Crecente
From: Bashcraft
...play some GTAIV. Found it at the game store near my house with a buncha signs saying it's ONLY IN ENGLISH. Ah, the perils of importing! I'm probably late to the party, I know, but it's pretty amazing when a game with all that hype lives up or it or gets damn close.
What you missed last night
New Phil Harrison
Sony announces 2008 and early 2009 line-up
One Postal, four screens
Microsoft on PS3 not getting GTAIV DLC
Gun Metal Grey on for Konami.com
Remember the 
As Crecente 
Swimsuit model and space alien Yuko Ogura is no longer the face of SEGA. The current "image character" is TK, and Ogura's moved onto better things! Like being a "Live Face" mask model or being on TV sometimes and saying things. Look! Ogura now has a chain or Korean BBQ restaurants. I spotted one earlier today. Not sure if this is the kinda place I'd buy raw meat from to cook. And literally fifteen paces from the Ogura meat house?
Yeah, you love Sonic, OK? We all do. But there's a point where you can love Sonic too much. Enjoying Sonic making out with human chicks, for example, is enjoying Sonic too much. As is walking into a tattoo parlour, sitting down, saying "cover the arm with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and a Sega logo, will you?" and thinking it's a good idea.
Here they are! Game site GamesRadar has a list of the worst celebrity game renders. And man, there are some doozies. Just check out what Jessica Alba is supposed to look like. Other sad, sad efforts include Bruce Willis, Will Smith and Mark Hamill. Though, not all the renders are bad. Some of them are pretty good! Hit the jump for our favourite.
Uwe Boll's Postal is getting a limited release. A very, very limited release. Make that very, very, very limited. Four theatres, actually. Says Boll via press release:
Terminal Reality are actually making the "main" Ghostbusters game. Sierra got them the rights to it. Bill Murray's involved, Harold Ramis is involved, and so is a lot of money, hope and expectations. That's a lot of stuff. So who's the glue holding the whole project together? Why, Dan Ackroyd, of course. Seems Ray Stanz has done more than just help write the game: he was "a really big facilitator" in getting guys like Murray and Ramis onboard in the first place, and is - get this - even helping the design team come up with the names for the Ghostbuster's new equipment, characters, etc. Say what you will of Ackroyd's recent career (or lack thereof), it's still nice to see a Hollywood name do more for his appearance in a game than just record a few hours of dialogue, take the cheque and run.
I know. That 
Hello, this is Platinum Games' MADWORLD trailer. It's here to kick your teeth in. The monochrome and crimson Wii game flips its nose at every pre-concieved notion most people have about the Nintendo console. Casual, this ain't.
So EA Sports rule the sporting roost unopposed, do they? Not quite. They might dominate football, thanks to their exclusivity deal with the NFL, but they don't rule baseball. In fact, this year they won't be putting out a baseball game at all. After Take-Two signed a deal with the MLB in 2005, whereby only they could release third-party MLB titles, EA were relegated to the college ranks and their MVP NCAA series, which they've now abandoned having turned down the offer to renew their contract with the college league. No reason was given, but it's most likely got something/everything to do with the recent 
Here's a shocker: Konami Castlevania dude Koji Igarashi wears a cowboy hat, carries a whip and *here it comes* likes Indiana Jones. Bet you didn't see that one coming! When asked if he was excited about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, IGA replied:
The Xbox 360 is getting exclusive Grand Theft Auto IV DLC. Sony's been playing coy, and there are rumours that the PS3 will see GTAIV DLC as well. How would that work with that US $50 million deal Microsoft and Rockstar struck? Is that even possible? Says Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg:
Look, I'm so on the fence about posting this my arse cheeks are dotted with splinters. But hey, it's Shenmue, and there's precendent for this kind of business on the Wii, so who knows. Scandinavian games mag Gamereactor have heard that Sega plan to release Shenmue on the Wii. Not a new Shenmue, however, just Shenmue 1 & 2 bundled together, with added (no doubt waggle-intensive) minigames thrown in. Would it sell? Of course not. Would it get certain areas of the internet all giddy with excitement regardless? Of course it would.
Bethesda have cracked open Fallout 3's hermetically-sealed, underground pre-production bunker and slipped out a few pieces of gorgeous concept art for the game. No screenshots amongst them, but then, as with the very first art we saw for the game, screenshots have never been quite as fun as checking out the art team's take on a retrpo, post-apocalyptic American society.
Yes, yes, Steven Spielberg likes games, blah, blah, blah. A GQ Magazine feature on Spielberg's Indy Jones star Shia LaBeouf sheds some light on the way the filmmaker plays games. From the article:
Phil Harrison was boss of SCE Worldwide Studios. We all loved Phil. But then Phil went and became Directeur Général Délégué at Infogrames, and nobody was boss of SCE Worldwide Studios. So Sony needed a replacement. That replacement is...Shuhei Yoshida! Come on down! Yoshida's current (well...former) job was as senior vice president of product development at SCEA, so this presumably won't be too big a stretch for the man. So, welcome to the big leagues, Shuhei. You may not be a strapping, bald giant with a taste for business casual, but I'm sure we'll find different reasons to love you soon enough.
Slowly but surely, the 
The new Prince 
Hold onto your bowler hats/berets/lederhosen/akubras, PAL PS3 owners, because this week, the PlayStation Store update brings content. And not just any content, but games. Sure, one of them's Dark Mist, but the other one is the original Red Alert! Which now that I say it out loud is probably quite terrible, but nostalgia should get you through at least 10-15 minutes with it. As for the rest of the updates, there's an Overlord demo and themes. So, so many themes.
I remember the Dreamcast version of the original Soul Calibur blowing my baby blue socks clean off when I first saw it. Then again, that was on a 4:3, standard definition TV. This update, on a 16:9 screen and in HD? With those Windows 3.1 desktop-lookin borders? I...look, it still looks great, and I maintain the first is the best game in the series, it's just going to take a while to get used to seeing it look so different, that's all.
We first posted the news of a 
Super Sales Chart Thursday comes to a close with the weekly tally of Japanese hardware sales, courtesy of 
If you've been trawling the recesses of the internets for the past week or so, you may have come across a story about a pair of 13 year-old kids who lied about winning a WoW tournament, booked a swish hotel room then paid for two $US 1000-a-night hookers to come upstairs and play Halo with them. For their troubles, the pair have allegedly been "convicted of fraud". It'd be a pretty funny story if it was true. Thing is, it's not. Kiwi site Stuff actually bothered to check with the police in Newark, Texas, where the events supposedly took place, and were told:
The PlayStation 3 may have finished (well) behind the Wii and (a smidge) lower than the Xbox 360 for the month of April, but that doesn't mean that we'll bat an eyelash when Sony sends us a statement that kicks off with "PS3 Continues Blockbuster Year." Fortunately for SCEA, it has triple the hardware representation, letting it flex carefully chosen figures like "total PlayStation hardware sales" topping 505,363 units sold in April.
Despite just narrowly beating out its higher priced, current gen high definition console competition, Microsoft sounds like it's pretty pleased with its April performance, at least on paper. And despite being outsold near four to one by the standard definition competition, the Xbox 360 manufacturer sounded almost ecstatic about its Grand Theft Auto IV numbers.
With such stellar Wii and Nintendo DS sales, Nintendo has a right to gloat. Even the almighty God would look the other way if Messrs. Fils-Aime and Iwata exhibited a bit of pride today. Nintendo was so pleased with its U.S. sales performance for April—in which it sold over 700,000 Wiis and 400,000 Nintendo DSs—that it distributed its statement before NPD figures were released. That's either confidence or a desire to leave the office by 5 PM at the latest.
Konami announced today that the "gun metal gray" special edition PlayStation 3—described as being "
My hands on with Hellboy: Science of Evil was a surprising experience. I wasn't expecting to like it much but it ended up being a pretty fun little action game experience. You play Hellboy, the demon with the sawed off horns and stone fist of fury. After discovering a Nazi plot to take over the world, Hellboy must hit the streets to keep them from fulfilling their evil plans. Co-op play is available through two additional characters, Liz and Abe who you might remember from the movie and comic books. It should be noted that the game is mainly based on the comics but there are elements room the movie such as character voices from stars Ron Perlman,David Hyde Pierce and Selma Blair. As an added bonus, the script for the game was penned by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and movie director Guillermo del Toro.
According to the latest NPD Group sales data, April 2008 was pretty darn good for the video game industry, with $US 1.23 billion dollars in sales in the United States. Yes, cigars are being lit with hundreds, champagne corks are being sabered and who knows what's being snorted off what based on the news. Oh, a refreshing Coors Light may even be knocked back. That billion-plus April is a big improvement—47% to be exact—over the previous April, which saw a paltry $US 839 million sum from American consumers. April's billion and change take contributes to a year-to-date $US 5.47 billion for the industry so far. In case you're wondering that's a lot of money.
A comprehensive article at SeekingAlpha by Bruce Everiss, who was part of both Imagine and Codemasters in their start-up days, calls the video game industry "one of the most attractive areas to invest," a worthy commendation given the arguably challenging state of the U.S. market. Everiss says that even in tough times, the game industry is set to keep growing:
It comes as little surprise to see Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV sitting atop the NPD Group's April software sales chart, with the Xbox 360 version scoring 1.8 million-plus sales alone. Mario Kart Wii, however, keeps GTA IV from total chart domination, as it outsold the PlayStation 3 version by an estimated 120,000 copies. Combined, however, both GTA IV's had a stronger debut month than March's chart topper, Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Nintendo had an amazing April, pushing over 700,000 Wiis in the United States. That's a massive difference from its "current gen high definition console" competition, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were neck and neck, only a thousand units difference between the two. If you were expecting a big boost from Grand Theft Auto IV's release, you're going to leave disappointed. Maybe next month. Nintendo's other platform, the DS continued to impress, more than doubling sales of the PSP.
For those of you desperately anxious to know who will be the cover athlete for 2K Sports' upcoming NHL 2K9, your long winter of angst has come to an end. It'll be Columbus Blue Jackets captain and three-time NHL All-Star Rick Nash, the company announced today, and apparently Mr. Nash is a big hockey game fan. Shocking, right?
Anime fans? This one's for you! The PlayStation Store update kicks off with the PlayStation 3 version of Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit, giving fans of convoluted cheeseball fighting dramas something to kill the time before the full game is released in June. The cel shading doesn't stop there, as a trailer for Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm keeps the anime-inspired fighting fun going. A pair of demos for the PS3 and PSP round out the playables, with new content for Rock Band, Hot Shots Golf Out of Bounds and Rocketmen keeping those titles fresh. There's new echochrome content, too, but that will be delivered in-game. The full list, and potential Dragon Ball Z discussion, is after the jump! Yay!
Dance Dance Revolution is celebrating ten years of people making dancing fools of themselves in public with the launch of three new DDR titles, each for a different console. Dance Dance Revolution X for the PS2, Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3 for the Xbox 360 and Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2 for Wii are all expected to launch in fall of this year and will provide DDR aficionados with even more songs to with which to get funky fresh on the dance pad.
Rockstar Games and Future Green Entertainment announced a new album from The Evil Genius DJ Green Lantern, titled "Liberty City Invasion: Music from and Inspired by Grand Theft Auto IV".