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Maintain Your Dignity With Geek Chic Gaming Gear Should Sakaguchi End Career With One Last Final Fantasy?

Software sales on PSP becoming harder to track.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the best-selling non-cowboy game in the United States last month. The 548,000 copies sold during June put the spacefaring platformer above the one-million mark in US sales, as proclaimed by Nintendo in a triumphant announcement. In kind of a bummer of a month in terms of general software sales, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was one of the few success stories for June.

While one million copies in two months (41 days of NPD reporting time) is impressive, it doesn't approach the level of success enjoyed by the first Super Mario Galaxy, which broke a million in its first month on the market, only 12 days of which counted for NPD. (The fact that its first month was November may have had something to do with that strong start.)

Nintendo also announced that DS hardware sales have reached "nearly 42 million," with Wii sales "closing in on a cumulative milestone of 30 million units sold in the United States alone." Both systems enjoyed sales spikes last month.

When you pick up Lucha Libre: AAA Heroes Del Ring, you’ll get a voucher that you can exchange for one of the four masks you see above. That’s a pretty sweet deal if you ask me!

#screens Now that we're done with the AFC, it's time for Madden NFL 11 to go to the league's men's department: the NFC, and proven leaders like Matt Leinart; old school hardasses like Wade Phillips, and perennial champions like the Philadelphia Eagles. More »

Know the name but not the game? We're here to help.

Dress your Avatar up like a real Spartan.

In this photo provided by Nintendo of America, a group of summer camp kids takes a break to cool down during the Wii Games: Summer 2010 kickoff event on July 16, 2010, at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J. In one of the coolest cooling centers around the city, participants are encouraged to enjoy [...]

The NPD figures for June show that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 didn't have a debut comparable to the previous year's game. In fact, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 only managed to unload 32% of the copies sold during Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10's initial launch month, Venturebeat offers. We contacted the NPD, who told us the same thing: "The new Tiger Woods release sold only 32 percent of what last year's release sold in its introductory month at retail. That said, last year's game saw a huge sales increase over previous versions, but still, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 did not break into the top 10 games for the month."

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is Tiger's promiscuity -- a likely factor behind Tiger's waning popularity. But, EA's Rob Semsey contributed that the slowing Wii market and Tiger's performance on the course as of late are also contributors to the dip in sales. Now the real question is: with the drop in sales, will EA still stand by its man?

And so is the lovely Cortana.

#blizzard It's taken more than a decade and over $100 million USD to get here, but StarCraft II will be hitting store shelves on July 27. And while that hefty development price tag may seem like a lot, well, it's not. More »

It's pretty much a Wii version of Uncharted 2.

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. However, one of the levels of Namco Bandai's Active Life Explorer has you running down a train, jumping from car to car, as you try to make your way to the front. Along the way, you'll be dodging overhead lights, in a frantic rush to stop the train from meeting a fiery end. But, unlike Naughty Dog's PS3 game, you're not shooting your way through. Instead, you use a DDR-esque mat to literally run through the game.

The Wii is no stranger to fitness games (the Active Life franchise already has multiple iterations on Nintendo's console). However, what makes Explorer so charming is that it actually feels like a game. The game's Treasure Adventure mode features a world map and story, and has you traveling through the map, talking to NPCs and activating challenges to progress in a quest to find treasures. Although simplistic, the narrative does a good enough job of giving some context to the various mini-games you play.

#beta Those wanting to get in on Spec Ops: The Line early, 2K is now taking signups through a beta site, but the test will run for the Xbox 360 only. More »

A shallow game that still manages to pack some fun for ten bucks.

When good guys go bad...

Rare has officially opened its new studio in Birmingham, England. Watch the video below to learn about the new studio, as well as Rare's evolving game development philosophy. Be sure to keep an eye out for the testing area, in which Rare appears to be banging away on Kinect Sports table tennis.

EA Sports discusses their decisions on who will shine in this year's game.

#ncaafootball11 The veteran roster editor Fairdale Kings has published the first fully named roster for the Xbox 360 version of NCAA Football 11. You can now play with real-life player names on all 120 teams on both platforms. More »

Retro graphics, 8-bit music and classic dungeon crawling for the PSN.

Gamers sometimes criticize games for playing too much like movies. But as Ninja Theory Designer Tameem Antonaides explained at a Develop Conference session this week, bringing in screenwriting veteran Alex Garland to consult on their upcoming game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West made their game more movie-like is some very beneficial ways.

As the writer behind movies like Sunshine and 28 Days Later, Garland had a feel for how to get the most drama out of Enslaved's story scenes, Antonaides said. Garland would write scenes with very simple, reductive dialogue that looked thin on the page, Antonaides said, but gained more "meat" with an actor's performance behind them.

Indeed, the short story clips shown at the conference were notable for how much they relied on body language and vocal cues to convey information without words. Antonaides said they ended up cutting the game's cutscenes down from two hours of dialogue to a lean 80 minutes, with less focus on exposition and more on drama. "If you have too much dialogue, it doesn't work," Antonaides said. "Alex changed my view of what writing meant," Antonaides said. "I felt like a schoolboy so many times talking to Alex."

Sail the seas looking for treasure and battling sea monsters

Ton of new images from NISA's RPG, plus your first look at the Premium Edition.

According to a statement issued by Sony yesterday alongside the publication of the NPD Group's June sales report, the PS3 shortages cited by GameStop in its Q1 earnings report have been "resolved." No explanation for the resolution was given in said statement, though we imagine it has something to do with making more consoles and delivering them to stores at a faster pace.

Perhaps this particular resolution had something to do with the PS3's 97 percent rise in sales during the month of June. Then again, every piece of gaming hardware saw pretty significant increases in sales last month. Was everyone experiencing a recently resolved shortage? We're super glad we stocked up early.

#science There's fun to be had and lessons to be learned about cellular biology in CellCraft, as long as you can weather the argument over whether or not it's a creationist take on the subject. More »

#rumor An Alabama GameStop allegedly made a cover of a crying Tim Tebow - who (in)famously wept as Alabama beat Florida for last year's SEC championship - and inserted it into the cases of NCAA Football 11 games on display. More »

A ton of new images from NISA's upcoming RPG.