All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Your Avatar can celebrate the next dance around the sun by putting on some hideous 2010 glasses, now available in the Avatar Marketplace for free. Wearing the glasses will have your virtual representation come dangerously close to committing the high crime of fashion: socks and sandals (which is, sadly, also available on the marketplace). However, if you think your Avatar can rock the look, by all means, have them go for it. If you regret getting these, just remember that hindsight is 2010. Shortcut: Download "2010 Glasses" to Xbox 360 [via Xbox.com]

After the completion of Persona 4, the team responsible for the game at Atlus split in two, with one half tasked with creating Persona 3 Portable, while the other half got to work on "an original new game." According to a translation by Andriasang of the P3 Portable creator's blog, that first game is "nearing completion," and the two teams will re-form [insert Voltron reference here] in 2010. Persona 4 producer Katsura Hashino says that the re-unified team will work on "an even bigger title" in the coming year, though no details have been formally announced. We'll just have to giddily think about the impending release of 3D Dot Game Heroes in North America, while we wait for Hashino to dish. [Via Andriasang]

The chatter surrounding the multiplayer aspect of Splinter Cell: Conviction began late last month, culminating in yesterday's release of the co-op teaser trailer on Xbox Live. Well, I can one-up the trailer. I've actually played the mode. Everything you may have heard is true: The main co-op mode (either online or local play, with a human partner or A.I.) is a prequel to the events of the game and doesn't star series staple Sam Fisher. Instead, the estimated 5- to 6-hour campaign focuses on two wetworks operatives -- one American, one Russian -- who must work together to recover stolen nuclear warheads before they're sold on the black market. The game will also feature co-op play in what are being called "deniable ops" -- more conventional intrusion missions and the like -- as well as a player-vs-player-vs-CPU "duel" mode. What I played was part of the the prequel campaign: an admittedly brief but eye-opening mission set in Moscow's fortified metro system. You can watch a walkthrough video of the section I played above. Read on after the break for my thoughts.

Two spies are better than one.

Kasumi and the girls head off to a paradise island for beach volleyball, gambling, and swimsuit fashion shows.

Ultimate Ninja Storm goes multiplatform for sequel.

Ultimate Ninja Storm goes multiplatform for sequel.

Square Enix blockbuster is fastest selling PS3 title ever in Japan.

Sorting through the best new games and movies out this week.

A look back at the best and worst of console gaming in 2009.

Just as freaky as the other ones. I still can’t believe that the postman hasn’t asked me about these yet. He’s probably too afraid to!

The official Japanese website for Captain Tsubasa DS has opened up, and the image above is just about all you’ll get at the site. It’s in teaser form right now, but at least we get a small peek at what the game looks like. Might as well bookmark the site now, as I’m [...]

Remember, Blip Festival is now underway. Don’t worry, if you can’t get to the actual show, you can listen to all the concerts for free at the link below.

The Australian Classification Board changes its mind.

Feeling left out by today's Army of Two demo news, PSP owners? You may not get to play the PSP version of Army of Two: The 40th Day today, but EA sent out a trailer, ensuring that you'll be able to ... watch it being played. And this trailer does feature a good amount of footage of the Commando/Ikari Warriors-esque top-down shooter. Not that you won't get the chance to step into the shoes of a masked, bloodthirsty murderer before the January 13 release in North America. A PSP demo will be available on PSN January 7 (January 14 in Europe). Just try to hold out until then. Maybe seek comfort from one good friend.

Which game did you spend more time with? For me, I’ve definitely been more involved with The Conduit. I’m tired of Call of Duty, but I’ll never tire of aliens!

I don’t really want to go into detail on this developer profile, simply because we have no idea who is actually developing the Wii or DS versions of Transformers: War For Cybertron. I doubt High Moon Studios is going to be behind it, but I’ll hold out hope until I have confirmation otherwise.

Photo Fighter X at IGN.com Screens and impressions here (thanks JetPilot!)

Here are some good factoids from Iwata's interview with and Tezuka and Nakago:

• The first Super Mario and Zelda titles were made simultaneously, with the same staff.
• Spinning bars of fire were first in Zelda, but were then transferred to Mario.
• At first Zelda was only going to be a series of dungeons (no over ground world)
• SMB levels were designed on graph paper, and took a full day to get a change onto a ROM.
• World 1-1 was the last level finished.
• The grass and clouds in SMB are the same object.
• Goombas were added last.  At first it was going to be only Koopa Troopas.
• Heart pieces in Zelda came about because they wanted more items in the game.
• The P-Wing from SMB3 stands for Paratroopa (Koopa Paratroopa's wing)
• Miyamoto wanted to put Yoshi in SMB3
• They attempted to put multiplayer in SMB3, SMW, and NSMB DS.
• All the Super Guide & Hint Movies in NSMB Wii were performed by real players.

"So in that sense, you could describe New Super Mario Bros. Wii as being the first straight-ahead evolution in the horizontally-scrolling 2D platform game since Super Mario World, with which it is comparable in terms of the attention to detail and care that went into it."

Imagine that…1up posts their 6th installment of bad boxart covers on the same day that Game Informer talks about bad covers…which lead me to talk about Rinry’s latest video on video game boxart! Could Rinry be influencing the entire internet?! I’d love to pretend that that’s the case!

Nintendo has had some ridiculously high highs as well as low lows in the past 10 years. It’s hard to imagine the same company putting out the third-place Cube and the first-place Wii. Hell, that’s barely even scratching the surface when you look at what the Big N has done in the last [...]

As usual, we have no idea what this update is for…but it’s free. You can’t go wrong with free, right!? Thanks to GWX for the heads up!

The PSP contains the power to raise your heart rate in many ways.

Here it is! If you can't access the PlayStation Store on your PSP, you can download the English language demo of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker right here. Make sure you have the latest firmware update on your PSP and at least 103MB of free space on your system. Connect your PSP via USB, extract the ZIP file and copy the NPUH90066 folder to your PSP's Memory Stick, under PSP/GAME. Download from BigDownload

This will be the final "normal" PSN Thursday of 2009. Next week the update will occur on Tuesday, December 22, and there will be no update the following week. Let's be honest, though, there's plenty of great downloadable games and DLC available that one week without an update isn't going to be that painful. For those who've been practicing their aversion to fun this year and are ready to accept joy, now's the time to check out some of this year's PSN titles like Fat Princess, Critter Crunch and PixelJunk Shooter. Also, today's update adds Final Fantasy VIII. Any other great downloadable titles from 2009 worth mentioning? Check out the full PSN update after the break. Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list: (Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)

This past Saturday brought us the Spike TV Video Game Awards and - before experiencing the litany of world exclusives that awaited us inside - we spent some time outside cruising the red carpet and talking (briefly!) to many of the game developers and talent. We squeezed them for information as fast as we could while simultaneously wishing them holiday cheer and good tidings. Yes, it was as awkward as it sounds. HHere's what we learned from Bungie's Curtis Creamer about Halo 3: ODST. Was there a decision made to have no DLC for Halo 3: ODST? Well, that was something that we didn't really think we could do for ODST because traditionally all of our DLC has been about competitive multiplayer. That's something that we had the systems in place for. But, since Firefight is more based on the co-operative campaign mode, that was a technology that we hadn't built up to a point where we could add DLC to the game. It would have been too much of an investment to make that happen.

During the always thrilling Take-Two Interactive quarterly investors call this afternoon, the ever-elusive Mafia 2 received an almost, kinda sorta release date: Q3 2010. When applying Take-Two's Q3 dates to the Gregorian calendar that most folks on this planet use, we can infer that the game will arrive somewhere between May 1 and July 31. This isn't to say that the title is a shoe-in for release, though, with company CEO Strauss Zelnick saying the game is "scheduled to fall in our third quarter." Remember when Max Payne 3 was scheduled for release in Winter of 2009? Exactly.