Late Night Consoling
So it took 11 CD-RW burns (not including the two discs that died on me), but I finally managed to get all the music I wanted over to my Xbox. Yowza. Now comes the fun part...tagging them all! The first batch I started labeling by artist, but that quickly disappeared when I discovered the character limit on track names (grr). Plus of course, it was taking too damn long. This whole process has been a real annoyance, but at least it's something I'll never have to do again (at least, not until this Xbox dies anyway). I swear...all this just so I can speed through GTA3 while listening to Dark Side of the Moon.
| Haitian Groups Protest GTA Two Haitian-American advocacy groups staged a protest in my old backyard today, as they stormed City Hall to declare Grand Theft Auto: Vice City racist to Hatian-Americans. The specific issue has to deal with a point in the game when you're specifically asked to "kill the Haitians" which of course refers to the Haitian-gang in the game, and not literally every Haitian immigrant. |
|
| Ninja Gaiden Delayed? Oh please, don't act surprised. IGN is reporting that although no official word has come down from Tecmo, they don't expect Team Ninja to make the planned December release date. Again, nothing's official yet, but IGN says they expect the game to be bumped back to February. |
|
| PS3 to Have Advanced EyeToy? Apparently in an interview with an Australian financial news outlet, SCEE head Phil Harrison declared the EyeToy as "a signpost for things in the future" and an EyeToy-like device could be used for such far-out uses as determining the user's emotions based on facial expressions and gesture-based interfaces, as was depicted in Minority Report. While I don't doubt we'll see an EyeToy 2 for the PS3, let's all come back down to reality for a moment and remember some of the other wild predictions made by Sony and other companies (I'm still waiting to start downloading movies via my PS2). |
| Castlevania on Cell Phones Here's a good reason to switch carriers (now that number portability is possible)...Konami has announced that they will soon be offering both Castlevania and Gradius to users of AT&T Wireless' mMode service. |
|
| X-Wing, Tie Fighter in SWON Hey, cooool...LucasArts has confirmed that the X-Wing and Tie Fighter craft from the Star Wars universe are both available as unlockable extras in Secret Weapons Over Normandy. This is of course a nod to developer Totally Games' previous projects, which include the classics X-Wing, Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. |
| Latest UK Sales Figures The UK marketplace has been unusually entertaining lately, and this week's no exception...according to Computer and Video Games, this past week saw Nintendo's GameCube leap ahead of Microsoft, coasting by on the strength of their recent price drop. As for the N-Gage sales have dropped to slightly more than 200 units across all 6,000 retailers covered by ChartTrack. |
|
| Halo Soundtrack Re-Released Publisher Sumthing Else Music Works has announced that they are releasing a new "Special Edition" version of the Halo soundtrack. This re-release will contain a bonus DVD with "trailers and videos" from Halo 2 as well as new surround-sound versions of Halo music. |
|
| Sega Server Hiccup If you've attempted to play ESPN College Hoops or ESPN NBA Basketball online with your PS2 over the last few days, you may have noticed that doing so is nigh-impossible. GameSpot is reporting that the culprit is a server-side issue, which Sega expects to have resolved shortly, and the servers should be up and running tomorrow. The Xbox versions are still running fine through Xbox Live. |
|
| Give This Man a Prize! In a moment of extreme clarity, Yoshihiro Maruyama, the head of Microsoft Game Studios Japan has told the Japanese magazine Weekly Famitsu that in order to grow in that country, they need more RPGs. Maruyama was once a VP at Squaresoft USA, so clearly he knows the power of RPGs. Hopefully this newfound discovery will lead to more RPGs for the platform, as good as it may be, KOTOR probably won't sell too many consoles in Asia. |
| New Releases This Week This week's list is surprisingly short, but next week will be much, much bigger. For PS2 there's just Monster 4x4: Masters of Metal, for Xbox there's Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Midway Arcade Treasures and Spy Hunter 2, for GBA is Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu and on the multi-platform front is XIII, which ships for GameCube and Xbox this week, after last week's PS2 and PC release. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
|
| New shots from Auto Modellista are up at GameSpot tonight and GameCube goes hands-on with Gotcha Force. |
|
| GameSpot has posted a new preview of Nightshade, while IGN has a hands-on look at Mojib Ribbon and CVG has new shots from Killzone. |
|
| New goodies from BioWare's Jade Empire can be found at IGN along with a hands-on look at Magatama. |
|
| IGN has new media from Max Payne, Rare's Sabre Wulf and Sonic Battle. |
|
| CVG has a hands-on look at Rayman. |
|
| IGN has a new commercial from Sonic Heroes (GC, PS2, Xbox) and goes hands-on with Mission: Impossible: Operation Surma (GC, PS2, Xbox), CVG has new footage from Star Trek: Shattered Universe (PS2, Xbox) and GameInformer has a hands-on look at NBA Ballers. |
