All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

It appears that some people have gone through the official Sonic and SEGA All-Stars website to see what names are hidden deep within the lines of code. As of right now, these are all the names that could be pulled. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be more added in the future, but [...]

Producer Toshifumi Nabeshima shared first details on the sequel in this week's Famitsu.

We already knew their names, but now we can see what the 8 robot masters look like! Commando Man: Attacks with a powerful explosive wave. Blade Man: Attacks with three swords. Nitro Man: Can transform into a motorcycle. Sheep Man: Splits up and creates lightning strikes. Solar Man: Absorbs attacks and attacks with solar energy from his head. Chill Man: Fires [...]

New Ghost Recon title to ship before March 2011.

- due out March 6th in Japan - on launch day, players will be able to download a special Deoxys mission to obtain the D.N.A. Pokemon, which can then be transferred to Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, or SoulSilver - more info to come from Pokemon Sunday - takes place in the Oblivia region, a series of islands filled [...]

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHYUM, a new Raving Rabbids already? With Ubisoft's latest financial revision citing underperformance in several aspects of its business during 2009 -- including the DS market and "non-casual Wii titles" -- the publisher plans to play it safer during its next fiscal year, starting April 1, 2010. That means "a greater number of franchise releases" and, presumably, a continued effort in the realm of Wii casual games. Naturally, Raving Rabbids 4 (as it's currently titled) ticks both of those boxes. The publisher also plans to release a new Driver game during the same period, though it hasn't specified the target platforms nor how it intends to revitalize the franchise. The last time fans saw the action racer, it was hurtling over a cliff, Thelma and Louise style.

Publisher to refocuse its efforts in 2011.

New MMORPG coming.

In a financial performance update chock full of thrilling tidbits, like "revised financial predictions" and "sales targets," Ubisoft today announced the unfortunate news that Splinter Cell: Conviction would be bumped back from February 23 to "April 2010" and Ruse even further; to the ambiguous fiscal year "2010-11" (April 1, 2010 - March 31, 2011). No reason was given for either delay -- which is at least the second for just this version of Conviction, by our estimations.

Explore the universe across the endless stars and make it yours.

Activision is rolling in dough.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the best-selling game in the UK during 2009, according to data from ELSPA/GFK Chart-Track. That surely comes as a foregone conclusion to any devout follower of the weekly Chart-Track all-formats report, which has seen Modern Warfare 2 at the top of the charts for nine weeks in a row. Last year's Call of Duty installment, World at War, made the ninth spot in the top 10 for the past year. Running up the field in second was FIFA 10, with FIFA 09 taking the tenth spot. Assassin's Creed 2 hung on to sixth place, with the rest of the all formats chart occupied by Wii titles. Check out the full all formats list, along with the top five for each console, after the break. The top 20 can be found on the ELSPA site.

Previously playable only as an offline single player mode with an AI companion, TEKKEN 6's Scenario Campaign mode now let's two players come together online and power their way through numerous stages. Use voice chat to work together strategically and beat down vicious opponents and their legions of minions. To keep the fires of competition in the forefront, a co-op leaderboard will be implemented so players can size up their skills against the best in the world.

Netflix's Wii disc sign-up page (remember, you need the disc to access the movie streaming service) is now live. All you need to do is sign in to your account and press the big blue button on the page. Yup, it's really that simple. We're currently trying to find out from Netflix if the launch and service on the Wii will be relatively similar to that offered on the PS3 -- beyond requiring a disc. We're also trying to narrow down that "spring" release window, if possible.

Download in HD from BigDownload Two months from now, Final Fantasy fans in America and Europe will be able to play the franchise's first numbered release since Final Fantasy XII -- roughly four years ago. To promote the game, Square Enix has released yet another five-minute trailer, thankfully devoid of Square Enix PR dudes trapped within humongous calendar mazes. New to this trailer is the English theme song for the RPG, "My Hands" by Leona Lewis. "When Square Enix approached Leona about including her song 'My Hands' in Final Fantasy XIII, she was honored to be partnered with such an iconic and groundbreaking video game series," RCA Music Group's Tom Corson said in a press release. "Leona is a natural fit with the game's powerful themes and strong female protagonist." Y'know, themes like being able summon a giant ice motorcycle-robot-thing while falling from an exploding dragon airship-thing.

The twice-delayed Return to Ostagar DLC for Dragon Age: Origins seems to have fought its way onto Xbox Live, as reader Harry has sent in a couple images showing the item being available through the in-game menu. Going through Xbox Live, we managed to access the content after sorting by "All Downloads." We can confirm that neither the PS3 nor PC versions of Dragon Age: Origins could access the add-on at the time of writing this post. By the way, Harry, if you need some help spending all those points you've stacked, we may have a few ideas for you. Shortcut: Return to Ostagar for Dragon Age: Origins [Xbox.com] [Thanks, Harry] Source - Return to Ostagar download screen Source - Dragon Age: Origins menu

Was one of your goals for 2009 to give Activision a billion dollars? It may be a little late, but that's what you all, in aggregate, have done -- and that's only for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The publisher announced that Infinity Ward's mega-hit FPS just crossed the $1 billion threshold in sell-throughs. Which means, yes, that some of that billion went to retailers and not just Activision. The company reminded us that $550 million of those sales happened in the first five days, meaning that more than half of the game's total worldwide sales occurred right at launch. "There are only a handful of entertainment properties that have ever reached the $1 billion mark," Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, beneficiary of some of that one billion dollars you put into this game, said, "which illustrates the power of the Call of Duty franchise and mass appeal of this game."

Capcom informed G4 at CES that it's certainly working on "stuff" for Microsoft's Project Natal, including a "brand we haven't seen in a while." The publisher's VP of strategic planning and business development, Christian Svensson, explained that it's creating something "from the ground up for Natal." As he put it, "We're not looking at Natal as 'okay, here's a little Natal gimmick that we've worked into some existing game.'" Svensson added that Keiji Inafune, Mega Man's papa and head of R&D at Capcom, is "really excited" about working with the peripheral (as demonstrated during Tokyo Game Show's Xbox 360 Creator Panel). Not that Capcom is planning to rush the process, mind you. "We're gonna cook something and it's gonna to take a while to cook."

Sony announced that the Japanese release of Gran Turismo 5 has been delayed from its unspecified March date to an undecided future date, to be announced later. Sony apologized for the inconvenience, citing some kind of "circumstances" around the release date. No concrete information was provided about what exactly caused this drastic move. Things seemed to be looking up for Gran Turismo 5 for a while. Sony announced a March release for Japan and a tentative summer release for North America, sent out a very popular demo, and even revealed the North American box art design. But this latest move suggests that Polyphony's latest racer may not be as close to the finish line as expected. [Thanks, Copland and Niko]

Cyan Worlds' late-2000 remastered version of the classic adventure game, Myst, is now available for DRM-free purchase on Good Old Games. Real Myst takes the classic graphic adventure title and refines it with free-roaming and real-time 3D graphics, replacing the original's pre-rendered stills. According to GoG, this is the Myst designers Robyn and Rand Miller originally wanted to make. So, like George Lucas before it, Cyan Worlds reworks the original to take advantage of modern technology -- but with the added benefit of not ruining our childhoods in the process. The title is a steal at $5.99 and recommended for any adventure game junkie.

Remember Stonekeep? If so, you're going to be delighted and vaguely confused by this news! If you don't remember the game, you'll just be vaguely confused. Interplay (remember Interplay) just announced that it's reviving the 15-year-old PC RPG franchise for ... WiiWare! And if you kind of remember Stonekeep and want a refresher, you can get it for $6 from GOG -- then come back and experience some confusion: Rather than a port, Alpine Studios is concocting a new game based on the original, with "fun, a little fear and many exciting moments to all family members who dare to seek their fortunes and rid Stonekeep´s dungeons and corridors of evil using the Wii Remote controller," according to Alpine founder Les Pardew. We'll find out what this means sometime before the Q3 2010 release. Will Alpine really come up with a casual, family-friendly concept based on ... first-person dungeon RPGs? It's hard to imagine a less casual-oriented genre.

Racing title no longer hitting this March in Japan.

Service available this spring.

Assignment #1: Acquire Mega Man 2 and defeat 2 robot masters. Please discuss your observations about design, death, frustrations, etc over here in the forum. We’ll meet back next Monday. Good luck!

If Don't Look Back creator Terry Cavanagh's latest game is any indication, 2010 is already a great year for indie platformers. Taking its graphical inspiration from games of the Spectrum/C64 era, VVVVVV is based upon a gravity-flipping mechanic like the one in Metal Storm -- instead of jumping, the stranded hero of this game is able to reverse gravity at the touch of a button, immediately falling upward into the ceiling. Trying the game out cut dangerously into the time we intended to use telling you about it. And it's not like we need to say much anyway: Cavanagh has released a downloadable demo for both Mac and PC, as well as a browser-based Flash version on Kongregate. The full game costs $15. [Thanks, Erik]

Stardock has confirmed that its PC turn-based strategy-RPG Elemental: War on Magic is strategically shifting its release to somewhere between July and September of 2010. Big Download reports, despite the continued presence of a February 15 release date on Impulse, that the game is escaping the jam-packed first quarter. What's a shame, really, is that the game will now miss the release date it's had since way back in November of 2008. It also means that Stardock may have to rethink its Q1 release strategy, which the company planned to stick with for a half-decade, and seemed completely logical, until 2010 changed the landscape of the once-barren land of Q1 video game releases.

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 Vaunted science magazine Popular Science got to check out Project Natal at CES, and has posted its own take on the project over on its site. While most of the coverage we've seen of Microsoft's motion controller has been from the gaming press, Pop Sci comes at it from a software engineering perspective. Essentially, Microsoft is trying to build a sophisticated AI that can look at video of what you're doing in front of a camera, and translate that to information the game can use. To accomplish that, the coders behind Natal took lots and lots of reference pictures and videos, and they're still "teaching" the software what it looks like when you try to hit a soccer ball or wave at Milo. It's fascinating stuff -- thirty "guesses" per second at your body's location and movement based on what the computer "knows" about what bodies look like and how they move, and lots of calculations based on that data. Hopefully by the time it's supposed to release later this year, Natal will have figured out what it looks like when we melee with a battle rifle. [Thanks, Wonderflex!]

ModNation Racers shows off their drifting mechanics in this gameplay from CES 2010.