Late Night Consoling

July 22, 2003 8:00 PM

Yep, we're in total summer slowdown mode here at LNC...I haven't seen updates this light in ages...oh well. Gives me more time for KOTOR I suppose. Since there's really not a whole lot for me to talk about tonight, I guess I'll just list my Final Fantasy I party for those who asked: I did something very stupid and didn't put a White Mage in my party the beginning, so my party was made up of a Knight, a Red Mage, a Black Belt and a Black Mage. Not having a White Mage made things much harder as the game went on, and I really wouldn't recommend it. The only reason I did it is because I really didn't think about it when I was creating my party. This is the only FF game where you have to decide at the outset what your party for the entire game will like, and I had no idea how important that would be.

	Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles in 2004 Yeah, you read that right, Nintendo announced today that Square's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has been pushed back until 2004 (at least in this country, anyway). As a consolation (pun not intended), Mario Golf, Mario Party 5, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Pokemon Channel and 1080: Avalanche will all be out this year.
	Policenauts E-mail Campaign If you're one of the many people who's always wanted to see a North American release of Hideo Kojima's Policenauts, pay attention...IGN has posted a passionate letter from Marc Laidlaw (which I'm guessing is not the same Marc Laidlaw who worked on Half-Life, but hey, you never know) in an attempt to spark an e-mail campaign to get Konami to bring their PSOne port of the game stateside.
	Red Dead Revolver Lives According to a report on Games Are Fun, Capcom's Red Dead Revolver is indeed still alive, only its development team has been replaced by an American one. RDR is a "survival western" title for PS2, which some thought held a great deal of promise.
	ESPN Football's "Crib" The first details and screenshots from the "The Crib" in Sega's upcoming ESPN Football 2004 are up at IGN tonight. What exactly is "The Crib"? It's a new feature in the game where you'll build up a home base with extra stuff accumulated throughout the game.
	Price Drops Soon? According to one analyst quoted on GamePro.com, we might see a price drop across the board in the near future to counteract slipping software sales. Sales of game titles are indeed down a whopping nine percent from their numbers a year ago, which is being blamed on the lack of hardware discounts (one could also blame this on the fact that we're reaching the "hump" for this generation, and that it's only going to go down from here until the next round).
	Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil PS2 Exclusive (in Europe, anyway) Ubi Soft announced today that both Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good & Evil will be PS2 exclusives in Europe for this year. Note that both will still be released for all three platforms in North America, and this only affects European territories for 2003 (presumably after which they will be released there).
	New Releases This Week There's not a whole lot new this week, but here's what's new: Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (GC, Xbox), Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey (GC, Xbox), Downhill Domination (PS2), RoboCop and Syberia for Xbox and The Great Escape (PS2, Xbox).
	Misc. Media/Previews GameSpot has a new preview of Lethal Skies II (PS2), impressions of Group S Challenge (Xbox), new shots from the PS2 and Xbox versions of Colin McRae Rally '04, the Xbox and PS2 versions of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Butt Ugly Martians: Zoom or Doom (PS2), a new trailer from SpyHunter 2 (GC, PS2, Xbox), a new trailer from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (GC, PS2), new shots from Spawn (GC, PS2, Xbox) the GC, PS2 and Xbox versions of Soul Calibur II. Over at IGN they have new shots from SSX 3 (GC, PS2, Xbox), Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GC) and Jak II (PS2). Elsewhere online, The Magic Box has shots from the very odd pinball game Flipnic and SquareEnix's Drag-on Dragoon (both PS2) and Gamers.com links to a new Japanese advertisement for Boktai (GBA).

Console Game of the Evening: Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64. "Take four friends, give them four controllers and this game with easy to learn controls and deceptively simple gameplay and watch the hours of fun fly by! A true N64 classic!" (submitted by Gary the Llama).

jason bergman

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