Late Night Consoling

Activision today announced GUN Showdown for PSP, a portable version of Neversoft's GUN (PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360, PC), released last year. It will add some side missions and multiplayer modes that are new for the PSP version of the game. GUN Showdown is being developed by Neversoft along with UK-based Sniper Elite and Rogue Trooper developer Rebellion. The game is expected to ship this fall.

Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing 3 (X360) will be getting some additional content on April 17 in the form of a downloadable "Speed Pack" via Xbox Live Marketplace. Some of the content will be free: access to tournaments, a free car, and a few unspecified fixes. The paid portion will consist of twelve new cars, including an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Nissan Skyline GT-R, Saleen S7 Twin Turbo, Ferrari 612, and more. That content will be available for 400 Marketplace points, ie. US$5.

Indie Built's snowboarding game Amped 3, an Xbox 360 launch title, now has a downloadable demo available over Xbox Live. The demo weighs in at 767MB.

Rather coincidentally close to the release of the surprisingly highly anticipated Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider: Legend (PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360, PSP, PC), series protagonist Lara Croft has achieved a Guinness World Record for being the "Most Successful Human Videogame Heroine." Presumably, that "Human" bit is necessary because of other successful female video game characters such as the decidedly not-human Ms. Pac-Man. According to publisher Eidos, the franchise (including its seven games, two films, and "lunchboxes and soft drinks [and] motor vehicles") is now worth over $1 billion.

Tomb Raider: Legend ships tomorrow for PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, and PC, this May for PSP, and this fall for GameCube.

Variety reports that Ubisoft has sold the film rights to last year's poorly selling Cold Fear (PS2, Xbox, PC). The game was developed by French studio Darkworks, also responsible for 2001's Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (PS1, DC, PC). Avatar Films and Sekretagent Productions, members of which have written scripts for past Ubisoft games, are currently looking for a director. Cold Fear seems like an odd property to license, since it has little existing value as a brand in terms of either critical reception or sales figures, but the producers are confident that the horror-and-aliens-at-sea storyline will stand on its own merits in a film.

Annoyed at some of the annoying quirks of newer iterations of Tetris (like Tetris DS), such as infinite spin? Check out this interview with Henk Rogers, the man who originally negotiated the rights to Tetris in the 1980s and who is still inolved in the game's future by way of The Tetris Company, which licenses Tetris to developers and publishers.