merchandise

Gears Of War 2: The Zune

3:30PM Luke Plunkett | No joke. It’s a Gears of War 2 Zune. And hey, why not, it sure worked wonders for Halo 3’s marketing campaign (didn’t it?), not to mention the Zune’s popularity (did it?). Due to start shipping on, you guessed it, November 7, the 120GB media players will sport a laser-etched Gears logo, will include “244 pieces of media” (think art, screenshots, etc) and will cost you, uh, $280. Gears of War 2 Zune Coming on Nov 7, Preorders Start in the Morning [Gizmodo] More »

More Guitar Hero Toys Coming From McFarlane

7:00PM Luke Plunkett | Those figures of your “favourite” Guitar Hero “characters”? They’re just the start of Activision and McFarlane’s push to sell you more mostly-immobile hunks of Guitar Hero-related plastic. Due for release in January 2009 will be a line of customisable guitars that let you swap out the heads, necks and bodies (no word on size or price), while later in the year, there’ll be more versions of the guitars, as well as 10″ versions of the already-seen characters, eight more of the 6″ characters (including Clive Winston and Eddie Knox) and a few lines of 2″ character figures. If you’re torn between just which Johnny Napalm 10″ figure you’ll want – the “British Flag” variant or the “Skeleton” variant – the full release (sadly, lacking any pictures) follows.

A Labelled, Bulletproof Saints Row 2 Promo

1:00PM Logan Booker | If there’s one thing I’ll miss about being a games journo, it’s the promos. They can range from truly excellent to downright WTF, but today THQ has firmly landed in the former category with this branded Saints Row 2 bulletproof vest, which arrived on my doorstep this morning. It’s not a real vest, just a decent approximation, though if I walked into a bank with this baby and a spray-painted cap gun, I’m sure I’d end up on the ground with a real weapon stuck in my back. That’s what I like to think, in the fantasy land in my head, anyway. It’s a shame – of sorts – that it has my name on it. It’d make an excellent giveaway otherwise. A less exciting photo of the other side, after the jump. Update: Okay, not only has THQ confirmed it’s for Saints Row 2, but it’s written on the back of the vest. Where did the confusion come from? Ultor is present in both games. More »

Licensing Blasts From the Past: Nintendo

2:00AM Maggie Greene | I’ve really been enjoying the posts over at the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection blog, even though it has one of the worst titles I’ve ever seen. Up recently was a look back at some of the licensed goods in the collection, including this box of the ‘Nintendo Cereal System.’ And yes, they tried some of the 20 year old cereal before gutting the box to save it for posterity. Eric Kaltman mentions some of the challenges that come along with attempting to preserve these bits of game culture: Working through the collections provides some rather weird challenges to the discipline of library science. An entire segment of the collection is devoted to items termed as realia, basically commercial products tied to video game concepts or characters. They don’t fit on shelves very well, and the exact means of how to preserve these detritus of commercial culture are fraught with an internal debate about their validity to humanity. I think everything should be remembered or recorded fastidiously, but then again I get a thrill out of looking at old Nintendo marketing crud, and I work in a library. That said, these items make my inner child awaken anew and crave some tasty morsels of the past. I hope we can expect to see more of this sort of stuff — it’s fun seeing what librarians at Stanford have decided to add to the collection. Though I would be curious to learn the acquisition backstory — was the cereal just hanging out in someone’s personal collection? Two decade old overstock at Ralston Purina? Errant Nintendo Licensing: Parties, Cereal, and School [How They Got Game] More »

Raving Rabbid Figures, Now Yours To Buy

6:30PM Luke Plunkett | Earlier this year, Crecente got hold of some delightful little Raving Rabbids figures from Ubisoft. Figures I tried to swipe, before he smacked the back of my hand and sand “no, naughty”. Well fuck you, Crecente, you and your patronising hand-slapping. I’ll just go buy my own, because Ubisoft have announced that the figures – made by NECA – will soon be made available to the public. What’s more, there’ll be five figures available: the four we’ve already seen (Sam Fisher, Prince, Altair and vanilla Rabbid) plus a new one, the screaming/plunger-wielding Rabbid, which you can see (along with the classy packaging) after the jump. More »

Space Invaders: The Inevitable Keyboard

8:30PM Luke Plunkett | We say inevitable because, really, by 2008 it’s one of the last things that hasn’t seen some kind of Space Invaders cash-in. And while we’d be well within our rights to loathe this particular tie-in, what with the fact Space Invaders isn’t really a PC “thing” and the fact you can’t see the letters on the keys, we’re going to set our blasters to stun and go easy on it. Because not only does it looks surprisingly appropriate, with all the bad guys the keys and the spacebar our lone hero, it’s modelled on the new Mac keyboards, which we wish more PC hardware types would take heed of. space invaders bendiboard keyboard [technabob] More »

New Gears Of War 2 Action Figures

7:30AM Kotaku US Edition | The National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) continue their almost single handed quest to collect all the dust in the northern hemisphere with their range of shelf-filling collectibles. Next up is a set of Gears of War 2 dolls action figures we first saw some advance shots of in June.There is a new Marcus Fenix figurine, an even ‘orribler looking Locust Theron Guard and two more of Marcus’ chums from Delta Squad. As usual, the models are absurdly detailed, not that the people who will buy them will ever take them out of the packaging to find this out. Honestly, NECA could really save on manufacturing costs by only modelling the front bits. The savings on plastic alone could treble their 3rd quarter operating costs. Gears of War Series 2 Action Figures Revealed [Team Xbox] More »

Midnight Club: LA Demo Goes On Aussie Tour

4:30PM Logan Booker | Want to give the latest game in the Midnight Club series a whirl? Rockstar has let us know that it’s taking an exclusive pre-release demo around Australia (well, Sydney and Melbourne so far) to give fans and curious gamers a look-see. It’ll feature the Saleen 302E, which I believe is a car. Here are the dates: 30th August: Shadow Wars – Manning Bar Sydney University 13th-14th September: Auto Salon – Newcastle entertainment centre 25th-28th September: Royal Melbourne Show – Royal Melbourne Showgrounds Epsom Road, Ascot Vale 4th-5th October: Auto Salon – Melbourne Exhibition Centre Southbank Limited edition merchandise will also be up for grabs. More info (such as times!) when we get it. More »