One of the most unfortunate cancellations of Comic-Con 08 was the Ghostbusters: The Video Game panel, planned to feature actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson as well as reps from Sierra. While we were disheartened to learn of the nixing of that particular panel, we took comfort in the limited, but very awesome, showfloor demo of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Based on our limited playtime, we're more interested than ever to get our hands on the final version, and not just for the stellar performance from the Ghostbusters booth babes.

The Comic-Con demo takes place in the New York public library, the location featured at the beginning of the first Ghostbusters film. As the four Ghostbusters enter the library — Winston Zeddemore, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz and you, the new recruit — the cheers of New Yorkers can be heard in the distance.

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This is a great video, and no matter who you are or what life you lead, you've run into your share of bullying and authoritarian bullshit. Except you aren't Gordon Freeman, and you didn't have a gravity gun. This is obviously a cheat-enabled sequence from the beginning of Half Life 2, but I'll watch it another 100 times after I get my next piece of mail from Technology Credit Union of San Jose, that's for sure. But I didn't laugh at this. Here's why.

It reminds me of a story my uncle told about his days in grade school. Someone screwed up and, as collective punishment, the teacher made everyone stay inside for recess. When she stepped out, he slipped a tack into her chair. She came back in, sat down -- "she had to shift her weight so it would penetrate the layer of girdle fabric, or whatever" -- and shot out of the chair. "No one in the class so much as cracked a smile", Bill said, "because we wanted to see her in pain".

That's sort of the reaction I have to this Combine asshole. Oh and, here's the can, pal.

Pick up the Can [WeGame.com]

At today's Gears of War panel at Comic-Con, Cliff Bleszinski from Epic Games was asked about the Len Wiseman directed movie based on the IP. Bleszinski, the executive producer on the Hollywood adaptation, says he has high hopes for the film.

"Look, we know that video game movies have been pretty bad", Cliff admitted to the crowd, attempting to assuage their fears that the Gears flick will suck. "But just think how bad comic book movies were for such a long time. We hope [the Gears of War movie] will change that".

He noted that the Hollywood shot-callers are the same age as the average gamer — 35 years old — and have grown up playing and loving video games. "Hollywood gets it... and they dig games", Cliff said.

What may depress aficionados of Gears meaty, steroid overdosed look is that the feature film may not live up to the dream casting of certain fans. In lieu of filling out Delta Squad's armour with accurately voluminous meatheads, he's hoping they'll find some actors who can, you know, act.

"I know people have ideas where they want to see some wrestler, some huge buff guy", Bleszinski "The thing we care most about is charisma, someone you'd want to watch for two hours".

What a novel idea!

Whoops! Well, just as soon as it was discovered, it came back down. But Grand Theft Auto IV briefly had a listing on the ESRB web site that showed Windows PC as a platform. The screenshot, gathered by Game-on-Game is above. If you go there now, it's back to Xbox 360 and PS3 only. So who knows what the hell is going on. Erroneous? Premature? I'm going with the latter. This simply has to come out on PC, and Rockstar hasn't definitively put the kibosh on any speculation yet.

GTA IV Rating Shown With Windows PC as Console [Game-on-Game via Blue's News

Cliff Bleszinski presented Gears of War 2 to Comic-Con attendees today, walking fans through the Sinkhole level shown last week at E3. While that gameplay session may be old news to Gears fans, Dude Huge had two new announcements for the crowd.

The first was that Steve Jablonsky, composer on films like Transformers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, was working on the score for Gears of War 2. Jablonsky was said to have been at Skywalker Studios working on the final mix of the soundtrack.

Even more interesting was the announcement that Gears of War 2 would feature "linked Achievements". In short, goals reached in the original Gears of War will carry over to the sequel, giving the player bonuses. Cliff listed three examples of how linked Achievements will work.

Keep in mind, some may be light spoilers.

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Here's an official trailer for Soulcalibur IV touting all the new stuff it has to offer. It's worth it just to see the customised character they made -- because a guy with a purple afro carrying a cricket bat is definitely some next-level shit for a fighter.

They also discuss Hilda, the armored-up female knight, and some new gameplay elements, such as the "Soul gauge" that controls when a character will have his or her block broken, leading to hits that destroy their equipment, and enabling their opponent's finishing move. Online play and the aformentioned deep customisation options are also mentioned.

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We've chewed this topic to death, but it's always interesting to know how others see you. And The New York Times' Seth Schiesel comes up with a rather solid analogy to describe the backlash to the parade of dross we saw in Nintendo's E3 presser (and, to a lesser extent, others).

Call it nerd rage. Like loyalists of a once-partisan politician who tacks toward the centre later in an election cycle, old-school gamers are coming to terms with the ramifications of their favourite's newfound popularity. Though they have long craved mainstream respectability for video games, players sometimes resent the concessions their champion must make to attract mainstream adherents.

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While at E3, I wandered down to check out the Indiecade offerings (I meant to post my impressions earlier, but they'll be up tomorrow — better late than never). I'd posted earlier about the postmortem of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and was happy to get some hands-on time with the game, plus the chance to chat with Matt Korba (lead designer) and Paul Bellezza (producer) about the game and life inside USC's Interactive Media program.

This is a nice look at the making of Winterbottom and designing in an academic setting; I enjoyed the parts of the game I got to take a look at, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. The USC program is really pretty exciting, in that their students and graduates are actually going on to do something.

[via IndieGames]

Before you trundle out your "old/not news" trolls, and in the interest of full fuckin' disclosure, yes, I know this pic went around some sites in April, but not here. And I deem it cool enough to post, so there. And it's not a cake.

Artist "Gary in Cleveland" created this stained glass representation of our favourite 8-bit superhero around the new year, documenting the process on Flickr. It's not a pixel-by-pixel glass (that would take too much time for an amateur glassworker, he says) but it's pretty right on, and it would be an awesome showpiece for a window right over your console's TV.

Mega Man Stained Glass Project [Flickr]

Oh, be still my historian heart: a new journal has been announced (first issue forthcoming this winter), entitled Historical Studies of Digital Entertainment Media. Since I've gotten surprisingly enthusiastic responses from all of my professors, even the technophobes, on my plans for an article on the history of virtual worlds in China, I'm thrilled that a dedicated space for this sort of discourse is opening up soon. No details yet on what sort of things are going to be included in the first issue, but it is setting up to be an accessible slice of academia:

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Pro Tip: Don't show up for the Resident Evil: Degeneration panel at Comic-Con less than 30 minutes prior to it happening or you won't get in. With the San Diego Con at capacity, getting into the Capcom helmed panel required serious Resident Evil dedication. We were covering Jordan Mechner's panel instead, but thanks to GameTrailers, we have the good stuff — the trailer itself. Enjoy!

A number of Chinese companies are nothing if not shrewd — in a smart business move, FerryGame has hired former EA executive producer and Heavy Iron founder Steve Grey to oversee their product lineup and future forays into the MMO/'advanced casual' market. Ranging from typical MMOs to a music/dance/'catwalk' game, FerryGame looks like they're ready to take on some of the big dogs of the domestic Chinese market, and Grey will surely be an asset:

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While the majority of Jordan Mechner's talk at Comic-Con earlier today focused on all things Prince of Persia, some fans veered slightly off-topic, picking the programmer's brain on his other titles — Karateka and The Last Express.

The former, Mechner's first commercial game, an early 2D fighter published by Brøderbund and known for its fluid animation, is planned to get an update (of sorts). Details on the Karateka project weren't provided, but Mechner teased the crowd by saying "I can safely say it's not going to be the way that you expect". He did, however, say he would be directly "involved", a claim he didn't make about Ubisoft's recent Prince of Persia releases.

Mechner also let the crowd in on the particulars of a hilarious Easter egg in the original Karateka.

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Ngamer has rolled out Scatfest 2008 -- "a celebration of all things shonky and cheap" -- with reviews of eight titles that Nintendo gamers here can all smugly and securely say, no goddamn way did we ever play, much less buy, these turds. They're all bargain-binners, and come on, who the hell shops there (/stashes copy of Driv3r).

Leading the list, unsurprisingly, is Jumper, whose own trailer made it look like a pile of self-regarding dung. So a game adaptation, that'd be like dining on the turd of a turd. Others include Cruis'n, Orbs of Doom, Kawasaki Jet Ski, Monster Trux Arenas, Action Girlz Racing, Myth Makers Super Kart GP and Kidz Sports Ice Hockey. They're all designed to fool clueless aunts and relatives into thinking that's the cool game all the kids want, and giving it to you for your birthday, a development strategy pioneered strategy by Hollywood.

"There are plenty of more worthwhile things to push your finger against. Rusty thumb tacks, for example", Ngamer writes. Quite.

Scatfest 2008 [NGamer]

The idea that crafting a compelling game involves multiple parts — narrative design, graphic elements, sound — is so obvious that it's a shame an article even needs to be written expounding upon that fact, but Sande Chen (The Witcher) has an interesting piece over at Gamasutra on just that. The real take away point is 'attention to detail,' I think — paying attention to visual intensity and how visual elements play into each other and the game; thinking hard about emotional intensity as it waxes and wanes throughout a game; really paying attention to sounds. It seems so basic, but a little attention goes a long way:

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"We kind [of] like the Blizzard business plan in that we don't release a game till it has reached a certain high level of quality", Bill Tiller, CEO of Autumn Moon Entertainment, told Kezins, "because we want to have the reputation of putting out a few games, but of high quality". Know what I like about that strategy? You're already assured of achieving half of its objectives.

That said, A Vampyre Story is showing progress toward being a good game. It's visually appealing -- a prerequisite for a point-and-click SCUMM-based game -- as this exclusive pic Bill gave Kezins certainly shows [more at the link]. And the story, another must-have for such a game, starts in the right place: An undead opera singer with dreams of performing in Paris someday. Tiller also worked for LucasArts on SCUMM classics like The Dig, The Curse of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. So he knows the capabilities of the engine and how to make it useful to a game.

Apparently, Autumn Moon is working on not only A Vampyre Story, but also A Vampyre Story 2, and an unannounced third game. They've been so busy they haven't had time to update their Web site. Tiller says that'll happen around August or so.

Exclusive: 'A Vampyre Story' Progress Report with CEO Bill Tiller [Kezins]

We mentioned Arden, the university-design MMO, a few times; a working paper has just been released that looks at economic behaviour in MMOs using the game. The interesting thing here isn't so much the fact that people replicate real-world behaviours online (in this case, they purchased less of an item when it was more expensive), but that it's yet another piece of a growing literature explaining the utility of virtual worlds in actual research:

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IGN heavily qualifies what it heard at Comic-Con '08, and it isn't confirmation. But any idiot can look at Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, especially the fact it's getting positive response, and figure that Marvel and Capcom have some kind of response.

Anyway, IGN reports that at Comic-Con, Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios President of Production (wotta title), was asked if a new Marvel vs. Capcom game was possible someday. His reply: "Yes. And maybe sooner than you think".

IGN goes on to say that a Capcom under-production title, probably for Japan release only, could provide the guts for the game, allowing it to be turned around in a relatively short time.

New Marvel vs Capcom Game On the Way? [IGN, via Scrawl]

So, we mentioned that the English-speaking world is getting its own version of Perfect World, so it can stop piggybacking on a couple of servers on the Malaysian version; along with another launch comes another closed beta, which will be starting on August 19th. The news page has more information on giveaways and the like, or you can just register on the game's site.

I've been galloping around the test servers for the past week or so, and I've been having a reasonably good time (especially considering I usually abhor actually playing MMORPGs). It's pretty, it's free, and if you haven't already, may be worth checking out.

Who says the Wii isn't for the hardcore gamer? Seems a third-party retailer has been pumping out Wii Balance Board covers that depict casual drugs and/or teh booby. Gamesindustry.biz went tattling to Nintendo about it and got a predictably corporate response.

"These are not officially licenced products, we always recommend the use of official first or third party Nintendo products to ensure 100 per cent compatibility and reliability with our hardware. We always closely monitor new products entering the market to ensure that they do not infringe on any of our IP".

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Updated: That headline means "pissing match" in Japanese, according to commenter stargateheaven. But in any language, the Itagaki-Tecmo split got beyond bad-breakup nasty this week. Itagaki wants his money back, Tecmo's heaving shit out the front door. Just bad. And like giggling gossiping schoolkids we intercepted much of the paperwork and read it aloud to you, class. So we'll lead with those highlights and give you much more on the jump.

L'affaire Tecmo
Listen To The Secret Tecmo Tape
Here's The Documented Evidence Itagaki Submitted Against Tecmo
Secret Tecmo Tapes Reveal Number of the Beast, Insulting Tecmo President
Itagaki Didn't Leave Tecmo, He Was Fired
Tecmo Withdrew Itagaki Gag-Order Weeks Ago

Other cool stories
What's All This "PlayStation Wars" Business?
Jim Lee Dishes On DC Universe Online
Things We Wish We'd Seen At E3, But Didn't
Nintendo's Patent Case: The Unanswered Questions
The Force Unleashed: Epic Moments And Mindless Slaughter

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