Late Night Consoling

Japan's most popular RPG series will send its latest and greatest overseas to the United States sometime this year. Square Enix quietly updated their release calendar recently and fans quickly noticed the addition of Dragon Quest VIII. Not much else is known, but a Square Enix representative did confirm to EuroGamer that the game is coming to North America. A European release is undecided at this moment.

Last week, we learned about a Mario Dream Team to be included with the GameCube version of NBA Street V3; well now today, EuroGamer has discovered another pact between Nintendo and Electronic Arts. The GCN version of Fight Night Round 2 will have, as an unlockable, Super Punch-Out!!, the SNES follow-up to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. The game is due out for all three home consoles on March 21.

For the readers down under, Nintendo revealed that they plan to ship their newest handheld, the Nintendo DS, to Australian stores for availability on February 24. Like the US version, it'll have PictoChat and a demo of Metroid Prime: Hunters included. It'll sell for $199.95. Nintendo will reveal their launch lineup in the near future.

Do you use a PAL PS2? Well, get ready, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan announced a new EyeToy game for PAL territories. It's called EyeToy: Monkey Mania and it features the hat-wearing monkeys from Ape Escape. It supports up to four players as they make their way through mini-games that involve eating bananas, playing music, participating in a snowball fight, and many other scenarios. It's set for a spring release; no indication has been made if it will come stateside.

Gamers can now log on and purchase three new games for use within Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. The three games are Zuma, Alien Sky, and Astropop. Zuma is $19.99 whereas the other two are $9.99.

FileFront talks with a producer that worked on Mortal Kombat: Deception. GamesAreFun translates bits and pieces of an interview with Tsuyoshi Tanaka, producer of the Devil May Cry games.