Want to know exactly how the new Prince of Persia will play? This is exactly how the new Prince of Persia will play.

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You bought Rock Band 1, you love playing Rock Band 1 then, oh no, they go and release Rock Band 2. What are you going to do with two Rock Bands? You can't possibly change discs during play - that's just silly - so Harmonix have had to come up with a workaround. That workaround allows you to transfer all your RB1 songs onto your HDD, and works a little something like this...

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Don't like WoW? Not up to date on the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King? Doesn't really matter. Blizzard's cinematic sequences are normally great viewing whether you like the game or not, and this, their latest, is no different. It's really great.

While the Japanese version of The Last Guy was an all-Japan affair, the Western release will be a little more varied with its city selection. We already know that San Francisco will be there for the saving, as well as London, but new screenshots released by Sony today show that Berlin and Washington DC will also be playable, as well as...Newcastle, England. And if you don't believe us, there's a St. James Park screenshot to prove it.

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It's from the Leipzig showroom floor, so don't expect fancy camera angles. Plus, it's two Average Joes playing it, so don't expect to see any kind of fancy goalmouth action. In fact, if you were hoping to see the game's "radical aesthetic upgrade" don't expect to see much of anything at all, because if it weren't for the new font on the bottom of the screen we'd have had a hard time telling you this wasn't Pro Evo 2008. Or Pro Evo 6, even.

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About ten years ago my mother ran a dancing school summer camp with themes based on Disney movies, and each year around Aladdin time I would get the dreaded call..".Michael? We need a genie". I would then be dressed up by my mother and sister, painted blue, and sat down in a room full of little girls who were convinced I was an otherworldly spirit. Perhaps this is why the blue girl in this team of booth babes representing NCSoft's Aion: The Tower of Eternity wouldn't stop looking at me. There's a special sort of bond that forms between people that have been blue in public for entertainment's sake.

That didn't come out right.

Brazilian SEGA licencee Tectoy has released another 8-bit console. Dubbed the Master System 3, the new system looks like the old Mega Drive (Genesis) with Sonic painted on it and is packed with 131 built-in G-rated games. That's right, no cartridge slot. The system is bundled with two six-button Genesis-style controllers. Its priced at the equivalent of $US 133.

Master System 3 (131 jogos) [Tectoy via Insert Credit]

Announced yesterday, the PSP-3000 will be the third major iteration of Sony's PlayStation Portable line. So let's take a good look at it! Below are galleries showing the two colours that'll be available in North America: Piano Black and Mystic Silver. As you can see in the pic above, there's a third colour - Pearl White - but that one's only for Europe and Japan. For now, anyways.

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Yep, seems we'll be getting another arcade shooter from Cave — and boy, do we love them Cave shmups. While the developer's last completely new shooter IP was the horizontal side-scroller, Golthic Lolita-infused Death Smiles, it's next bullet hell title is more moe. Otaku artist POP was wrangled in to provide the character illustration. Maybe in the vein of Cave's Muchi Muchi Pork, minus the buxom fat girls? Anyway, that's a sample right up there. Take a look. Cute!

ケイブ祭りで新作シューティング [Sazanami via Canned Dogs via Siliconera via Game|Life]

First impressions are very important. My first impression of Capcom's Dark Void at E3 last month basically amounted to "meh". I wandered by the demo machine, saw what looked like a standard third-person shooter, and then moved on. Had I stayed, I might have discovered that there is a lot more to Dark Void than initially meets the eye. Developed by Airtight Games, a company formed from the core Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge dev team, Dark Void takes standard TPS duck and cover mechanics to a new plateau, located atop a sheer cliff side that you'll have to climb in order to get there, but the game really excels when you aren't touching the ground at all.

Dark Void is the story of a cargo pilot who crashes into the Bermuda Triangle, discovering the secret of the mysterious disappearances that famously define the area - trans-dimensional aliens. They've been using humans as slave labour, and it's up to your character to join up with the renegade Survivors to overthrow their alien overlords and get everyone back home.

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I really thought everyone was kidding about the whole sausage and beer thing. I thought it was a negative stereotype or something...you know, "Oh those sausage and sauerkraut eating Germans". Rounding the corner and finding myself at the back of the grub line this afternoon I was mildly bemused to discover what was being served. It's sausage...and sauerkraut. To be fair, there was a host of other items - a lovely tomato-based pasta salad, some delicious fruit with red goo, tiny rolls that turned out to be mini pizza-type things, but at the forefront, sauerkraut and sausage in both link and ball form.

I'm certainly not complaining though. It's a far-cry from the horrid box lunches you get at American trade shows, and quite honestly sausage and sauerkraut has always been one of my favourite meals. It's the German in me. I may not know what they're saying, but they're definitely speaking my language.

Wired has a nice feature up on Ultima Richard Garriott and his cosmonaut training in Russia's Star City. Written by Masters of Doom author David Krushner, here's a sample:

It's one thing to adjust to life in Star City--but quite another to endure the confounding, confining, and sometimes just plain goofy training regimen. The first challenge is the language. Garriott is an autodidact wunderkind who persuaded his high school teachers that learning Basic code counted as fulfiling his foreign-language requirement. He won't be as fortunate at Star City. All of the instructions, instrumentation, and communications in space will be in Russian. So, for four hours a day, Garriott and Halik slave over fat, dusty language books in class, then tote them back to the Prophy to study more at night.

Great stuff. Click below to check out the full piece.

Going to Space? [Wired]

Sony's PS3 SingStore hasn't exactly set our great balls on fire (yet!). It functions superbly, but the majority of updates are old songs we've already seen on PS2, and even then, are usually the crummy PS2 songs. But anyway. Maybe we're just mean, bitter old cynics, because Sony announced yesterday that for all its flaws, the PS3's SingStore has still sold 2.2 million tracks since it launched late last year. Which is nothing but money in the bank for SCEE.

Over 2.2m songs downloaded via SingStore [GI.biz]

Fat Princess wowed us! Then it pissed some internet people off! Then it went back to wowing us! And now it's back to wow us some more, with these new screenshots. Of interest will be the shot of the Skinny Princess, seen surrounded by yummy, delicious cakes, who knows she shouldn't eat them but is today feeling a little weak, a little vulnerable, a little susceptible to moments of weakness (and angry men with axes insisting she EAT THE CAKE).

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CyberConnect2 president Hiroshi Matsuyama is now the number one reason I want to learn to speak Japanese. He has this quick-talking, sly sort of accent that reminds me a bit of a stereotypical used car salesman that is completely compelling to listen to. I almost wish that his translator would stop interrupting at the Atari press conference at the Games Convention today, though that would have meant me missing him announcing that Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm will be hitting the PlayStation 3 with downloadable content available from day one. What kind of downloadable content? Unfortunately he couldn't say, but either way, it's good to see an anime fighting game - traditionally fire and forget deals - with post-release support already in the works.

And yes, Matsuyama, who considers himself the ultimate Naruto fan, ended his presentation with a joyful shout - "Believe it!" Sounds so much better coming from a Japanese used car salesman.

Last week, I went to the stronghold of George Lucas LucasArts in the posh Presidio of San Francisco for some hands-on with the multiplayer mode of Fracture. Too bad I can't tell you about it, because the embargo expires tomorrow.

But! I can tell you about the single player mode that I snuck back in to see today...

After being plied with sushi and diet coke, I sat down with Fracture big wigs Chris Norris and Paul Armatta to play through a few levels of the campaign. I won't lie - I suck at shooters, so I was anxious about embarrassing myself, even on the lowest difficulty setting.

When I told this to Chris, he replied: "[Former LucasArts president] Jim Ward always said easy needs to be easy."

And so it was. It was so easy, I was able to run up and punch three guys in a row, unlocking the "pugilist" Achievement.

Still, melee is melee for any shooter - much like a shotgun to the face never gets old. The big question, then, is: How is this different than Halo? Pretty much everyone asks this question whenever a shooter comes out; and you can bet your arse developers ask themselves the same question whenever they make a shooter in this post-Halo world.

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When I saw the trailers for Speed Racer, I thought "hey, that looks kind of neat". Then, the reviews came out. A rating of 37? That's got to hurt. NZ dev Sidhe Interactive, which was responsible for the game tie-in, thinks the movie took a giant dump on its chances of success. Here's what Jos Ruffel, the company's business development manager, had to say at this year's GC Developers Conference:

"When we were first asked to do Speed Racer the property it was incredible, it was very exciting. It was a film by the Wachowski brothers and it was about car racing - awesome that's going to make a great game".

It can't be easy balancing demands and expectations from a studio with the desire to make a solid game. To be honest, I don't think the sort of people who buy games based on a movie like Speed Racer are expecting the next Gran Turismo. Stick to the basics and add a bit of jazz, that's what I say.

Poor Speed Racer movie hindered our game, says Sidhe Interactive
[GamesIndustry.biz, via Tsumea]

Hey, remember that rumour about coloured Wii straps a few weeks back? Not even close to being a rumour. It's total fact. Nintendo Japan will be releasing the straps in September for ¥300 ($US 2.75) each, or you could get the whole set of four for ¥1,000 ($US 9.15). They'll be available in blue, green, pink and white. So, yeah. Coloured Wii straps. Excited?

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Not to be confused with the newly-edited cinematic clip, this trailer is all gameplay, and shows naught but the new Tyranid units doing unspeakable things to those poor, innocent Space Marines.

Oh dear. You've gone and done it, Sega. You've gone and done the one thing you needed to do to get us interested in Samba Di Amigo again. You brought in a Space Channel Stage, with an Ulala cameo. Ulala and monkeys and (simulated) maracas? It's like a Dreamcast reunion party. You know how to get a man mildly excited, Sega. Oh, along with the Space Channel news, they also released the final tracklist for the game, which you can find after the jump.

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Fun fact: GTA IV was the first GTA I ever completed on a console. All the others (at least, the 3D ones), I played on PC. Figured the wait was worth the better graphics and better gunplay. And so it is again with GTA IV, as the PC version of Rockstar's latest murder simulator will boast a number of improvements over those found on 360 and PS3. Firstly, and most obviously, the graphics will be better, with a max resultion of 2560 x 1600, higher-quality textures and increased draw distances. Secondly, the multiplayer will be better, as Rockstar are promising that the PC version will allow for more than the 16 players the console editions permit. Finally, the replay mode will be better, because...the console versions didn't have that feature. GTA IV on PC will constantly be recording your last 30 seconds of gameplay, which you can access and tinker with in an editing program to throw together some moody, sexy montages.
GC 2008: GTA IV PC Details and Screens [1UP]

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Hey, a new Mad World trailer. With buses that have giant spikes attached to them. And corpses hanging of those spikes. And a giant jet engine to punch ninjas into. And a motorbike that rides down the side of a building. We couldn't be more excited for this game if we tried.

Isn't he dreamy? This, ladies and gentlemen, is Thomas Godaj, winner of the fifth season of Deutschland sucht den Superstar, which is essentially the German version of American Idol. I'm told that, unlike the American contestants, Godaj here actually has musical talent. I would have come to our country's defence but come on - Taylor Hicks? Really? I bet he couldn't belt out Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" near as well as Thomas did, which is exactly how Activision's Games Convention 2008 press conference came to an end...but how did it begin?

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Promise, this is real. Sony have announced that, as of this Thursday, you'll be able to download Kratos as a playable character in Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds. There he is above, rendered all cartoon-like, taking his one-under-par very, very seriously. Kratos' voice actor from the "proper" GoW games - T.C. Carson - provided the voice work for the cameo, and this cutesy God of War will even use the chain blades as a club. There's another pic after the jump, but no, this one won't make him look any less out of place.

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This info comes in via tipster Raze35, who reports that the Video Ezy in Tuart Hill, WA, is not only taking preorders for new games, but doing so competitively. For example, it's doing Fable 2 for $99.95 and Too Human and Force Unleashed for $89. Apparently, you can even pick up preowned copies of GTA IV for $39.95. There's also mention that some preorders include posters and other tidbits.

Apparently the store will be importing titles such as Rock Band for sale and rental.

This improved focus on games may be unique to the Tuart Hill VE, as it recently changed owners. So let us know if your local VE is doing something similar!

Even though Mirror's edge made Ashcraft a little ill at E3, the game looks like it's going to be one hell of a ride. This quick paced gameplay trailer gives us a little taste of what we can expect this upcoming September when the game is released.

Dunno if we've mentioned it specifically, but the new Bionic Commando's controls are meant to be hard. Which is a design decision: they'll be hard to master, but once you have, they'll ultimately be more flexible and more rewarding than if they'd been really easy. Still. Some folks are concerned that it all might be a bit much. So Capcom have released these tutorial pics (which look very Nicholas Gurewitch), that show it's not hard at all. It's easy! Even a child could do it. Actually, a child probably couldn't do it, but these are adorable nonetheless.

Time for a history lesson! The Australian Centre for the Moving Image has a pair of PDFs up detailing the past and present of the Oz gaming industry. One document contains a hefty write-up on local achievements, while the other has a timeline of specific events.

While the PDFs are hosted at the ACMI website, it appears the research was done by Bond University. They account for the good times (Bioshock, Puzzle Quest) and the bad (Fury), and provide a great overview of how far our industry has come. If you think there's nothing new to learn, think again. I for one didn't realise Halloween Harry was developed in Oz. I loved that game. I'm sure you'll make a few interesting discoveries of your own.

History of game development in Australia [ACMI, via Tsumea]

As expected, a proper trailer for Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain was shown at Sony's Leipzig press conference earlier today. It's since been uploaded, so why not take a look. It's nice to see the cinematic flair of Indigo Prophecy has been kicked up a notch, but seeing as that game was almost ruined by their over-use, all those QTE flashes during the kitchen table tussle are a little worrying. We'll see how worrying they are when The Two Mikes check it out tomorrow.

No sooner have we hated on the 360 pad's useless d-pad for the 1,165th time than we hear that a new 360 control pad is on the showroom floor at Leipzig. Microsoft, your sense of timing is impeccable. While the pad looks identical to the existing one, the d-pad is apparently much-improved, as it can now register movement in 32 directions, as opposed to the existing one's...4. That's the good news. The bad news? Well, the bad news is comical. Microsoft told Eurogamer the improved controller will only be available for a limited time, as it's a tie-in with Pro Evo 2009. And not just that, they say it'll only be available in Europe, Asia and Latin America. It'll be out on October 24, so if you want (or want to import one) one, get in early.

Microsoft confirms revised 360 d-pad [Eurogamer]

For those of you who don't know, Multiwinia is the fourth game developed by Introversion Software. I was a huge fan of Defcon and Darwinia. Multiwinia looks like it's shaping up very nicely. In this video we take a look at the "King of the Hill" mode where players try to control zones.

Get ready for some fatalities and brutalities. Amidst all of the Sony news today McWhertor attended the Midway press conference this morning. Along with the announcement of four new Kombatants in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe they also released this teaser for the game.

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Lionhead Patches Fable Pub Games Glitch, Community Offers Advice For Earning Big
It was fun while it lasted. At least you've got help to get phat gold legitimately.

Nintendo Gets Sued Over Wii
If it's not motion-sensing controllers, it's the whole damn console.

Fallout 3 Hits October 28
Great! We have a much better idea of when our imported orders will arrive.

PlayStation 3 160GB Model Coming To Europe
Does that include Australia? Knowing our luck, probably not.

PS3 Wireless Keypad Ships This Holiday Worldwide
Hope it doesn't make the controller too heavy. Otherwise, it looks like an excellent optional extra.

Pictured: A scene from Sega's business centre booth, far from where consumer eyes survey, where only check-signin' shot-callers (and lowly press) have access. That means that even an innocent title like Samba de Amigo for the Nintendo Wii has to be sexed up for those who might not "get it", an attempt to lure in buyers (and creepy press) with means other than good gameplay.

These spotted ladies aren't just loitering in the business area, they're attracting the regular Joes at Sega's on-floor display booth. The outfits are demure by E3 or TGS standards — as are the majority of Games Convention's "booth babes" — but certainly designed to get the job done.

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