Late Night Consoling
Team Ninja Interview Over the weekend, GameSpy posted a new interview with Tomonobu Itagaki, the head of Tecmo's Team Ninja and one of my favorite industry personalities. As always, Itagaki-san makes for an excellent interview subject, and here he comments on his favorite game (Wizardry), why he'll never make an RPG ("for business reasons"), his thoughts on Soul Calibur II ("I personally feel sympathy toward the people who made the game") and what he thinks of those people who hacked nude skins into Dead or Alive 3 ("I think that those hackers should spend their time on something more productive") among many other topics. | |
Paper Mario Confirmed, Mario 64 on the Way? According to IGN, Nintendo of Europe has confirmed the rumor that popped up last Friday, and it looks like Paper Mario will indeed be coming out for GameCube next year in the first half of 2004. In other GameCube/N64 news, a new rumor started making the rounds today (care of the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly) that says a bonus disc that will ship with Mario Kart: Double Dash will contain a port of Mario Kart 64. Note that this is still very much a rumor at this point. | |
| Sega Q&A Video Fenky has translated a Q&A with Hisao Oguchi, the newly promoted president of Sega. Oguchi comes to the corporate side as a former game producer, so this is a much more interesting interview than most you'll find with the heads of major companies. |
LAN Play in Star Fox 2, GameSpy Support Committed A post on Nintendojo confirms that both 1080: Avalanche and Star Fox 2 will support LAN play when used with the GameCube's broadband adapter. A second post confirms that Mario Kart: Double Dash will support up to 16 players over a LAN, and reminds us that GameSpy has already committed to supporting GameCube games via their tunneling software. Thanks Slashdot Games for the tip. | |
Battlestar Galactica Q&A A new Q&A with well-known british comic writer Grant Morrison is up at GameSpot tonight, talking with him about his work on the upcoming Battlestar Galactica game. | |
Activision Anthology Games List IGN has posted a list of confirmed games for Aspyr's upcoming Activision Anthology for GBA. Included are some 50 classic (and not-so-classic) 2600 games, as well as a handful of community developed titles that were created after the system was designated an open platform. | |
GBA Unlockables in Billy Hatcher Sega has announced that Billy Hatcher & the Giant Egg will contain several unlockable games that can be downloaded to a connected GBA. Three games that have been announced so far as NiGHTS: Into Dreams, Puyo Pop and Chu Chu Rocket, with at least one more still to be revealed. | |
| Kingdom Hearts 2 at TGS? Hudson's Mystery Game? Rumors have started circulating over the last few days that SquareSoft will unveil Kingdom Hearts 2 at the Tokyo Game Show next month in Japan. The original source for this news seems to be a presentation by the president of Disney Consumer Products, who mentioned this in a presentation at the GC2003 event in Germany, along with the news that an animated series based on the game(s) is also in the works. Also making the rounds is word that Hudson Soft (who hasn't really had a whole lot to be excited about lately) will be announcing a new "big" title at the show. |
Rainbow Six 3 Q&A HomeLAN has conducted a Q&A with Mike McCoy, the producer at Ubi Soft on their upcoming Xbox title Rainbow Six 3, which is no simple port, but rather what is basically an entirely new game for the Xbox. | |
| Soul Calibur II Stick Q&A Also at HomeLAN is a Q&A with an unnamed representative for Nuby, talking about their universal Soul Calibur II stick, which is the official SC2 controller for North America. |
Cube/GBA Connection List Updated IGN has updated their master list of games that utilize the connection between the GameCube and GBA. As always, they make note of whether or not the game takes advantage of the e-Reader device, and mention whether it's a miniscule, minor or major feature. | |
| Misc. Media/Previews |
Console Game of the Evening: Strider for the Turbo Grafx-16. "(For SuperGrafx) I drooled heavily over the first screenshots I saw of this in EGM back in the day. Never was released, unfortunately: apparently the programmer had to be hospitalized!" (submitted by funkatron).