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Manhunt 2 Gets Green Light for Release in North America
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Action, Corporate News, PlayStation 2, PSP, Release Dates, Survival Horror, Take2, Wii,
Rockstar Games found itself in a bit of a pickle earlier this year when the ESRB slapped Manhunt 2 with an Adults Only rating. Most stores balk at selling AO-rated games, but more importantly, Nintendo and Sony refuse to publish them. As a result, the game’s original release date of July 10th was scrapped, and much hand-wringing ensued on the part of Rockstar executives wondering just what the hell to do next.
Well, Rockstar’s long nightmare appears to be over, as company PR has revealed that Manhunt 2 has been modified, rated M by the ESRB, and will hit North American store shelves this October 31st on PS2, PSP, and Nintendo Wii. “Manhunt 2 is important to us, and we’re glad it can finally be appreciated as a gaming experience. We love the horror genre. Manhunt 2 is a powerful piece of interactive story telling that is a unique video game experience. We think horror fans will love it,” said Sam Houser, founder and executive producer of Rockstar Games.
There has been no word yet on what content changes were made to the game in order to lock down a Mature rating. And sadly, the game is still banned over in the UK.
Read More 
| GameDaily
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Top Spin Tennis Coming to Wii
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Casual, Nintendo, Release Dates, Sports, Take2, Wii,
2K Sports has announced that it is bringing the popular Top Spin Tennis franchise to the Nintendo Wii. Such a move seems like a no-brainer; Wii Sports is fun and all, but Wii owners have been clamoring for a tennis game with a little more depth for a long time now.
“We are excited to bring our popular Top Spin series to the Wii,” said Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K. “Given the Wii’s unique controllers and the fun family-oriented gameplay, Top Spin Tennis effectively bridges the gap between a sports and a party game.”
Unfortunately, gamers eager to whack some balls around with their Wii remotes will have to wait a bit, as the game isn’t scheduled to ship until Spring ‘08.
Read More | Take2 Games
Console Downloads Feature Space Bounty Hunters and Also Giraffes
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Adventure, Nintendo, Platformers, Retro, Third Person Shooters, Virtual Console, Wii, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade,
People with virtual currency burning pixelated holes in their alternate reality pockets can check out the Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console this week for some new (or perhaps old) titles. The most exciting offerings this week look to be the Jeff Minter shooter Space Giraffe and the wonderful SNES classic, Super Metroid.
Click to continue reading Console Downloads Feature Space Bounty Hunters and Also Giraffes
Read More | Nintendo Press Release
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Wii Supply Problems May Not Be Fixed This Year
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Nintendo, Wii,
Despite being much harder to find throughout the year in retail outlets than the competitor’s next-gen console hardware, Nintendo‘s Wii may not see much improvement in availability until sometime in 2008. Nintendo originally planned to expand their production in June but were forced to delay their expansion plans due to tight supply of certain components coming from Taiwan-based suppliers.
Wii units are certainly far more available than they were shortly after launch but that may be related to the comparatively lighter demand; with the 2007 holiday season fast approaching and key titles like Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl expected before Christmas, this could mean another tough Christmas on shoppers with Wii systems high on their lists.
Still, Nintendo has not backed down on projections made in April of this year and in a statement to GameSpot said, “Nintendo has no revisions to announce to its most recent shipment forecasts at this time.” They originally predicted that they would sell 14 million Wiis this fiscal year.
Read More | DigiTimes via GameSpot
Tomb Raider Anniversary Wii Revealed
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Action, Adventure, Nintendo, Wii,
In this promotional trailer for the Wii version of Tomb Raider Anniversary, Producer Morgan Gray demonstrates some of the game’s Wii-specific motion controls. Using their Wiimotes, budding Lara Crofts will be able to “touch the game world for the first time.” Not in that way! No, instead players can use the controller as a pick-axe to remove obstructions or as a brush to clean off artifacts. Wiimote-specific control schemes for the various puzzles and combat sequences are obviously a given. All in all, this brief peek hints at motion control mechanics that are surprisingly well integrated with the core Tomb Raider gameplay. Gamers are understandably wary of some of these quickie PS2/PSP-to-Wii ports, but Tomb Raider Anniversary is one to keep an eye on.
Eidos has not given official word on a release date for the game besides “Coming Soon,” but we’re guessing it will hit in time for the holidays.
Read More | Tomb Raider Anniversary
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Gameplay Showcases Shooting
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: First Person Shooters, Nintendo, Trailers, Wii,
GameTrailers.com has footage of the gameplay from upcoming Wii game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption showcasing some of the heavier shooting action compared to previous Prime games. This is apparently a conscious decision by developer Retro Studios. Talking to EGM in their September issue, Senior Producer Bryan Walker said, “In the first two games, we never really concentrated on the shooting. The Wii controller allows the combat to be better, more intuitive, and I feel we could incorporate more of that into the game.”
Metroid Prime 3 is scheduled to be released on August 27.
Beautiful Katamari Demo Rolls Onto Xbox Live
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Internet, Microsoft, Namco, Puzzle, Wii, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Marketplace,
First the Big Daddy, now the Little Prince. Live demo madness continues as the latest installment of Namco’s popular roll-everything-into-a-ball-and-create-a-new-star franchise (how would you describe it?) has a little taster up on Xbox Live Marketplace. This gameplay tease, all too brief at three minutes, will hopefully give fans a little something to tide them over until the full game hits Xbox 360 and Wii later this year.
Read More | Major Nelson
Console Downloads This Week Featuring Metroid and Hexic 2
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Adventure, Puzzle, Retro, Virtual Console, Wii, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade,
Following a light week, Microsoft returns this Wednesday to the two game new/old format, dropping Hexic 2 (800 Microsoft Points) and the Sega classic Ecco the Dolphin (400 Microsoft Points). Hexic 2 comes from famed Tetris creator Alexy Patjitnov and follows up the packed-in original XBLA title and adds new modes including same-screen or Live multiplayer; Ecco the Dolphin boasts enhanced graphics and sound plus a “Best Time” leaderboard.
These games join more than 75 others on the service which has been a huge success for Microsoft as detailed in a lecture by Marc Whitten this week at GameFest, where he discussed the company’s plan for attracting the casual gamer to the XBox 360. Whitten stated that they’ve seen a 156% average financial return in the past year on XBLA titles, earning more than $30 million to date. Based on this success they expect revenue on XBox Live Arcade to double in the next fiscal year and predict that by the end of this year they will have reached 45 million downloads of over 100 available titles.
On Nintendo’s similar download service, Virtual Console, they’re dropping three new games this week including the original NES classic Metroid (500 Wii Points), plus the Sega dungeon crawler Shining in the Darkness (800 Wii Points) as well as the TurbGrafx-16 game Cratermaze (600 Wii Points). Nintendo is choosing now to push the original Metroid title onto the VC as a means of keeping their Metroid brand fresh in gamers’ minds as they prepare to release the marquee Wii game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in two weeks. As part of this effort, next week’s VC title is expected to be the SNES sequel, Super Metroid.
Read More | Gamasutra
Earlier today, the Wii received a firmware update that closed the Wii Shop for several hours. Now that’s it’s back up, it’s readily apparent that the Shop was the main beneficiary. It now sports a search feature and lists the most popular games, among other things. There was a variety of other, smaller changes that have been documented on NeoGAF.
Channels:
- Digital Clock added to the Wii Menu right under the channel bar
- Forecast Channel now displays the current condition (cloudy, raining, etc.) directly in the Wii Menu in the Forecast Channel box
- News Channel can now show 2 scrolling headlines at a time in the Wii Menu, 3 when you click on the button (supposedly this requires occasional downloading of the headlines to keep the ticker updated)
- Message Board now has the “Today’s Accomplishments” message as a white message which allows it to stand out from other messages
- Address Book entries can now be shifted around using A+B (supposed to be a launch feature) but only to empty spaces. Not too convenient.
- Calendar in Message Board no longer shows “Today’s Accomplishment” only days as having messages
- Scrolling messages in the Message Board now uses a different sound
- Today’s Accomplishments in Message Boards now includes the names of people to whom messages were sent out
Wii Shop Channel Overhauled: (Visual aesthetic is the same, changes made to organization and browsing methods mostly)
- New Welcome screen detailing 4 Recommended Titles and the points they cost (gone is the title screen bar that had linkable games). The title bar can be clicked on to bring up a list of 20 recommended games.
- Titles You’ve Downloaded was moved to the main shop menu
- New ways to browse
- Popular Titles (2 pages of 10 and includes launch games so not only based on recent info)
- Newest Additions remains the same
- Search for a title which can use partial names
- Search by Category
- System shows the different systems and how many titles have been released under each
- Publisher showing different publishers and amount of titles released (Nice logos!)
- Genre (different genres listed and amount of titles under each)
Accessibility
- Load times in interchannel loading has supposedly decreased
- Password fields filled in using the keyboard (like on the Internet Channel) now display
Settings
- Warning added pre-system update detailing that technically modified consoles may cease to function upon being updated. Also the only way to not accept an update is to power down the console by holding the button for 4 seconds (the user can’t back out of hitting I Accept w/o powering down)
- Ability to quickly scroll the different options pages using the +,- keys
- Blue disc light lights up when inserting or removing a game
- Light also comes on when starting the Forecast or News Channels
Read More | NeoGAF
Virtual Console 8/6: Wave Race 64, Galaga ’90, And Adventures of Lolo
Posted by Chris Pereira Categories: Action, Driving, Nintendo, Puzzle, Retro, Virtual Console, Wii,
Okay, this week’s crop of games on the Virtual Console is pretty simple: one game you might care about, and two you shouldn’t. Galaga ’90 (TurboGrafx16, 1 player, 600 points) is an updated version of the arcade Galaga, so unless you’re infatuated with Galaga, chances are it isn’t worth your Wii Points. Adventures of Lolo (NES, 1 player, 500 points) is a strange puzzle game that’s only going to get in your way of Wave Race 64 (Nintendo 64, 1-2 players, 1000 points). It’s two players and was pretty fun in the day, and just happens to be the type of game that still holds up today. If you enjoyed the GameCube sequel, are looking for some VC fun or are a fan of jet-skiing, give Wave Race 64 a look.
Click to continue reading Virtual Console 8/6: Wave Race 64, Galaga ’90, And Adventures of Lolo
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