Late Night Consoling
| GameCube Tunneling Underway Thanks to Slashdot Games for pointing out the Warp Pipe Project, an open-source project that is already working to bring online support for LAN-enabled GameCube games. While their ultimate goal is to facilitate online gameplay for Mario Kart: Double Dash, the release of Kirby's Air Ride in Japan has let them get a head start on things, and they have already documented the GameCube's LAN protocol. |
| Mitsuda Not Scoring Xenosaga II Well...darn. Industry maestro Yasunori Mitsuda will not be scoring the second Xenosaga, despite his exemplary (if underutilized) work on the first game. No reason has been stated as of yet (one can only hope it's because he's hard at work on another project) but taking his place is Yuki Kajiura, a capable composer whose work should be well known by anime enthusiasts. On a more positive note, higher-res versions of those screenshots from earlier in the week are up at IGN. |
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| Baten Kaitos Revealed In other Monolith Soft RPG news, the developer's other RPG, details from the GameCube-only Baten Kaitos can be found at GamePro.com tonight, and sadly this looks like yet another game that uses cards as its battle system. Sigh. I can't be the only person who finds this sort of thing really annoying in games...am I? I don't mind card games when they're an optional part of the game (like the mini-games in Xenosaga and Final Fantasy VIII) but as a battle system, I just find it pointless. Meanwhile, the first screenshot and concept art from the game are up at IGN. |
| Xbox Sales Update As part of their fourth-quarter sales report, Microsoft revealed the latest Xbox sales figures, and they're looking pretty good these days, with nearly 9.5 million units sold worldwide since launch. Regarding Xbox Live, there are now 500,000 subscribers, with more than 1 million multiplayer sessions hosted per week. |
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| New Space Invaders Announced GamerFeed reports that a pretty crazy new Space Invaders game has been announced. Titled Space Invaders: Invasion Day, the game features what looks like basically the same style of gameplay, only with a third person shot of a character instead of that simple ship, and a story mode that features three playable characters. Check out the screenshots and be amazed. The game will be released in the UK in September and will be budget-priced. |
| Samurai Shodown returns: Victoly!!! A story at GamePro.com has the news that the newly titled SNK Playmore has unveiled a Japanese teaser site for Samurai Spirits Zero, which marks the return of the fan-favorite Samurai Shodown series, and will be in glorious 2D. Beyond that nothing is known, but if you're a fan that should be pretty much all that needs to be said. |
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| Game Boy Player for Q For those who splurged on the Q, Panasonic's combination DVD player and GameCube (which was never formally released here, but was imported quite heavily), you'll be pleased to know that Panasonic is releasing a special Game Boy Player for the device. The catch is that you'll have to order it from their online store, which is of course only in Japanese. |
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| More NES Nostalgia GameSpy has been running a week-long look at the Famicom, Nintendo's first console which was released in this country as the NES, and which turned 20 on Tuesday. There's lots of good stuff here, including a history of the platform and some looks at its most beloved games. |
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| More Killzone Tidbits Computer and Video Games (which really must be dreading the official announcement of this game, since it means they'll have a lot less to report on) has posted still more leaked tidbits regarding Sony's ultra-secret Killzone, said to be an online-enabled FPS to rival Halo. |
| A Glimpse at the PSP? Gamers.com is one of several places to make the suggestion that Sony's newest PDA that was unveiled this week may offer some hints as to what we can expect from their upcoming PSP handheld system. While nobody really thinks this is what the system's going to look like, you gotta admit this is one cool PDA (and puts my existing Clie to shame). |
| Gran Turismo 4 This Year? The latest rumors column at PS2.IGN suggests that despite Sony's winter 2004 release date for Gran Turismo 4, the game may be out this year. But regardless of when it's actually going to ship, they have a new preview of the game. | |
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| Misc. Media/Previews |
Console Game of the Evening: The Legend of Zelda for the NES. "Holding down the reset button while powering off was more than outweighed by the amount of fun this game had. An obvious pioneer of adventure games in general, it was also the start of one of the larger franchises in gaming history." (submitted by jaga).
