While we still haven’t received the definitive Jedi lightsaber battling game for the Nintendo Wii, Power A brings us what could be the next best thing. The original dark lord of the Sith extends his weapon in a challenge to all that would have their motion tracked. The fully-licensed Vader bust has a slot that fits your standard, first-party Wii sensor bar, filling a hole in your entertainment centre that you never knew existed.

The Darth Vader Wii Sensor Bar holder should be available at Amazon.com and Toys R Us locations across the US. There is, unfortunately, much fear in the price. $US39.99 is a bit steep for a thing that holds another, more important thing, even if it does look rather cool.

For many Star Wars fans, this is the end-all and be-all of character classes. The Jedi Knights are the warrior monks of the Republic, transforming combat into an art form and using their powers to impress their sisters the ladies. A serene, highly-skilled and extremely powerful force striving for peace in the universe, I’ve always found them a bit boring. Give me a charming smuggler any day.

Find out more about the Jedi Knights at BioWare’s official Star Wars: The Old Republic web page. May the force be…you know.

“If you recall, Empire Strikes Back was the darker chapter and that is how we designed the ME2 story and experience: to try and make the player reflect on the challenges of the character.” Continuing, he tells IGN, “If you put ME2 next to the original it is definitely a darker, harder game.” Zeschuk is reiterating what he told Kotaku back in September.

The second Empire Strikes Back took the Star Wars characters and put them in the worst situation imaginable — well, not as bad as putting them in the newer Star Wars movies, but still pretty bad.

Mass Effect 2 picks up “soon after” the first game as Commander Shepherd is crewing up “a dozen of the galaxy’s most dangerous operatives” just as a new menace threatens to wipe out the humans.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Mass Effect 2: New Details Revealed [IGN via VG247]

According to DarthHater, the terms (above) state

:• You acknowledge and agree that all points acquired during the Game Program are non-refundable and have no monetary value.

• You acknowledge and agree that all items acquired for points during the Game Program are non-refundable and non-tradable.

• You acknowledge and agree that [BioWare] reserves the right to add or remove points to your account at any time and without warning.

• You acknowledge and agree that [BioWare[ reserves the right to change/add/remove points rewarded in the Game store at any time and without warning.

Sounds pretty definite that some sort of Old Republic game store is at least being pondered for The Old Republic. This is language for a testing program of course, and DarthHater points out BioWare could be testing out how the system works by deliberately glitching it, thus requiring this kind of protection in the TOS.

But, DarthHater points out, nothing confirms that the currency used in this store is pegged to anything of real world value. They point out the TOS' statement that Bioware retains the right to "add or remove points from your account without warning", whereas Microsoft's Xbox Live TOS only reserves the right to "cancel suspend or ... limit access" if fraud is suspected. "This would suggest that these [Bioware] points are connected to purely in-game actions, more similar to “gold”, “isk” or “Credits” then something purchased with real money.”

Either way, it’s an interesting find. It’s still worth reminding that this is not final code at all, just a testing program.

Could Star Wars: The Old Republic have BioWare Bucks? [Darth Hater via MMORPG.com]

Tight timeframes ended up in a rushed development cycle, in turn resulting in a game that had huge chunks missing from the final, playable product. Chunks that coders later found out were included on the disc, albeit in a rough, unfinished form.

So some modders took it upon themselves to yank out that code, polish it up, drop it into the final game and give us all the version of KOTOR 2 that developers Obsidian originally intended.

Last week, the team at Deadly Stream announced that their work was done, and that if you own a copy of KOTOR 2, you can download a playable version of the restored content.

I haven’t done so myself because, well, I banished all memory of KOTOR 2 some time ago. Anyone that does have a copy lying around, grab a copy from the link below, let us know how it all goes.

TSL_Restored_Content_mod ver1.4 “READY” [Deadly Stream, via Eurogamer]

Looks awful. Though, with that GIANT LIGHTSABER, we’re sure a few will be scooped up by the Old Republic art team.

Vader Wii Sensor Bar Impedes Our Quest for Social Normalcy [Gizmodo]

The shell of the droid is a modified, improved version of one of those R2-D2 coolers. But the inside consists of a projector (with video coming out of the correct “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi” hole), along with eight video game consoles. Eight. The pic is a blurry, but we can make out Dreamcast, N64, SNES, PlayStation, Genesis, NES and… yeah, maybe an Xbox and an old Atari as well.

Custom R2-D2 Video Game Console [TheForce & Popular Science, via Gizmodo AU]

For a tie-in with Joe Schreiber’s upcoming book of the same name, Star Wars Galaxies will in October drop an update called Death Troopers, which sounds like an excuse to drop you and your friends in a room and have them kill a bunch of “horrific new enemies with a frightening affliction”.

So, yeah, zombies.

Still won’t make Galaxies fun, but it’ll at least make it good for a laugh.

This might be a reskin of the game, but going back to Hoth, one of the trilogy’s most iconic settings, even in that quasi-Isaac from Dead Space getup has me intrigued. At least intrigued enough to fire up my old copy and toss around some palette-swap Wampas, I mean, Wookiees as practice.

Exclusive Ultimate Sith Gameplay [Gametrailers]

Dark Forces & Battlefront fans, you may want to watch this clip from Galactic Warfare, an upcoming Star Wars mod for Call of Duty 4.

Oh, sorry, I just called it a “mod”. It’s not just a “mod”, it’s a total conversion, meaning the entire game – from handling to graphics to the menus – is being overhauled and given a Star Wars theme.

Galactic Warfare is the work of German modding powerhouse the blackMonkeys, and you can also check out some screens below.

[Galactic Warfare @ blackMonkeys]