The Japan Expo Belgium 2011 was held in Belgium, with folks dressing up like Japanese anime and game characters. And other people beating the crap out of each other.
bpost, the postal service of Belgium, will put stamps featuring New Super Mario Bros. Wii on sale beginning Monday. Looks like it offers Mario with three different powerups, plus Yoshi. A sheet is €4,99. [via Polygonal Lawn, thanks Philip]
An eagle-eyed Belgian gamer at the N.E.X.T. games expo took a pic of what is probably the character select screen from Street Fighter IV’s console version.
In June, the Belgian Entertainment Association (representing game publishers, of course) managed to convince Belgian authorities to outlaw game rentals. On the grounds that renting games made a sizeable dent in game sales. Part of that deal was that, from June, video stores couldn’t buy any new games to rent out, but could keep on renting out the ones they had until December. Well, with December approaching, Belgian paper De Standaard has confirmed that, come December 1, Belgians won’t be able to rent video games. At all. Bet the publishers are happy with that one! Pity about the, you know. Gamers.
Piss Screen, of which we’ve spoken previously, has been shut down at a games show by Belgian police (a little while ago, yes, but news from the urinal gaming scene travels slowly). The game showed up for display at Belgium’s GamePower Expo, in Gent, but once there police believed the game to be “indecent” and had it removed. Despite the whole point of the thing being to discourage/prevent people from drink-driving. Ah well. Looks like it’s back to care-free games of “don’t cross the streams!” for the men of Belgium, then. Urinal game banned by killjoy Belgium police [Engadget, via GamePolitics]
Kotakuite Bargo sends in this little story from Belgium via De Standaard Online. Thankfully he translated because I couldn’t read a word of the original source myself. Apparently, two thieves entered a warehouse with automatic weapons and tied up the warehouse manager. They then proceeded to load a truck with three hundred Playstations which must have been grueling as it is reported that it took them two hours to haul in their purloined booty. The estimated cost of the incident rolls in around 150,000 Euros. Ouch! No leads on the robbers or their whereabouts, but fortunately the warehouse manager was unharmed. Looks like the Belgian PS3 black market is about to get very full.
Overvallers stelen 300 Playstation-consoles in Vorst [De Standaard Online]