The Late Night of Consoling

Although it's not the fabled DC Comics MMORPG, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment did announce a traditional RPG based on DC Comic's Justice League of America. The five featured superheroes of this PS2 and Xbox title will be Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and the Martian Manhunter. (Who the hell is Martian Manhunter?) Not much else was revealed, but expect this one by the end of next year.

Nintendo tried to inconspicuously upload an image to their website of new GameCube box art, but nothing ever slips by the vigilant fans of Nintendo. Turns out the Big N will release in August a new GameCube bundle; one that comes with a copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee! It has been the system's best title so far, selling just under three million copies. I was playing this on an 80-inch screen the other day and it was absolute lunacy. Even with the game, the price remains unchanged; still $99.99.

Last week, reports were swirling that beta Xbox 360 dev kits were arriving to developers' doors. Today comes this leaked pic of one of those machines. It's the black thing with the holes. As you can tell, it has the same form factor as the final Xbox 360 hardware except for that huge attachment at the top that's supposed to be for the hard drive. Jebus that thing is huge.

The breakup of Rare and Nintendo was public and messy for everyone involved. However, it appears the two have kissed and made up as the Microsoft-owned developer was recently spotted recruiting programmers and artists for Nintendo DS projects. Although there have been some GBA projects, it was believed that Rare wasn't going to work with Nintendo for long. Could these DS projects be part of the rumored downloadable content through Xbox Live?

SEGA announced the final roster for the PSP version of Virtua Tennis. The crew includes Roger Federer, Venus Williams, Andy Roddick, Maria Sharapova, Lleyton Hewitt, Lindsay Davenport, Tim Henman, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Tommy Haas, Sebastien Grosjean, David Nalbandian, Daniela Hantuchova, Amelie Mauresmo, and Nicole Vaidisova. Four-player multiplayer will be in the game.

NubyTech confirmed that they will release a PS2 version of the Resident Evil 4 chainsaw controller. It was given a color change and of course the button layout has been updated. However, it's been rumored that the chainsaw will be a new secret weapon in the game and the controller will come with a sensor that allows you to control the weapon in-game by waving it around. It's only a matter of time before a Congressman will blame videogames for training kids to murder with a chainsaw.

Remember that stupid game that was essentially a mildly interactive version of Girls Gone Wild? Well, the developers were sued by one of the nude girls in the game as she was 17 years old at the time she was filmed. A judge put a temporary holding order on sales of the game and now it appears it has been made permanent. The game has been pulled from store shelves and Top Heavy Studios, the devs, are going to release a DVD version of the footage used in the game.

TeamXbox has excerpts from an interview with an Xbox exec about the Xbox 360. IGN has a video interview regarding NCAA March Madness 06.