Late Night Consoling
| Rare and THQ Announce GBA Lineup As was rumored last week, Rare, THQ and Microsoft announced today that they have entered into a joint GBA publishing arrangement, and revealed their first four titles for the platform. As expected Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge will be the first out of the gate (on September 15th, no less), but also announced were Sabre Wulf, It's Mr. Pants (the only totally new title to be revealed, and apparently features the oddball character from Rare's website), and Banjo Pilot, which is the renamed and rebranded title formerly known as Diddy Kong Pilot. IGN has some new screenshots and the box art from Grunty's Revenge and over at GameSpot you can find new shots from Sabre Wulf. |
| New Metal Gear Solid 3 Trailer at ECTS According to Gamers.com, Konami will unveil a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater at Sony's PlayStation Experience outside ECTS later this month. Hopefully this one will leave out the corny jokes and show us more actual gameplay. |
| No VF Quest at TGS? More show news from Gamers.com...according to a news item they posted yesterday, Sega has asked people to remove any mentions of Virtua Fighter Quest from the list of games they'll be showing at next month's Tokyo Game Show. Instead, they're being asked to put "unannounced GameCube title" which could mean that the game will be formally announced under a different name. |
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| UK GameCube Sales Bleak Yikes...according to gamesindustry.biz, GameCube sales dropped below the 1000 unit mark for last week in the UK. While there are many explanations for the slump in sales over there, one likely reason pointed out in this item is the dearth of major titles of late, which won't be cured for another month, as Soul Calibur II isn't due out there until the end of September, and F-Zero GX until October. |
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| GameCube Mace Griffin Canceled Although we reported earlier today that the North American PC release of Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter had been canceled, there's one other facet to this story: the GameCube version has been canceled outright for all territories. |
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| Red Dead Revolver Canceled On top of last night's news that Dead Phoenix has been canceled, GameSpot revealed today that Red Dead Revolver has been axed as well. Rumors had previously suggested that development had continued on the title, but apparently not. No word as to whether or not those rumors from last week that Dead Phoenix will be reborn as a Kid Icarus title have any truth to them. |
| NeoGeo Pocket Returns If you're looking for a handheld bargain, you might want to head over to your local Electronics Boutique, as they are now selling two new Neo Geo Pocket bundles, one that includes the system and six games for $79.95 and a second that has four games (including the never-released localized version of Last Blade) for $39.95. |
| New Releases This Week This week, the big release is Madden NFL 2004 for every conceivable platform (GC, PS2, Xbox and GBA), but there are a few other notables as well: Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution and Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII for PS2 and Futurama for PS2 and Xbox. Also note that as of this week Final Fantasy X joins Sony's Greatest Hits line, and as a result has dropped down to $20. |
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| Misc. Media/Previews |
Console Game of the Evening: Venture for the Colecovision. "Because collecting fifty treasures as a big orange circular head could never be more enjoyable." (submitted by galewind).
