If you think this is nifty, think again. We took a shower with the same water source. It was the slowest, most painful blockade (pun intended) of blue pixels. And it didn't even clean! (Via FFFound; thanks, Chelsea) Check out the highlights for today:
The B[ack]log finally returns with a special, three-part look at Metal Gear Solid:
It seems I've become the architect of my own failure. Instead of demolishing the skyscraper of untouched games in my living room, I recently and rather foolishly added three more stories to it. Three very involving, convoluted and relentlessly ridiculous stories, mind you, but ones that I've already been through once. With the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots close enough for me to start using the word "impending," I thought it was time for a Metal Gear Solid replay.
A word of warning: While I've tried to steer clear of plot-related spoilers, we're talking about a game that's nearly ten years old. FYI, the Titanic sinks at the end.
Normally we'd take a rumor like this gently by the hand, walk it outside of the house, and then run back in while locking the door behind us. However, there is some historic rational for this piece of gossip. In their Rykten (i.e. Rumor) section, Swedish magazine Game Reactor said Sega is looking to remake Shenmue I and II on the Nintendo Wii with – surprise! – extra Wiimote-related minigames. (You can view the scan here.)
Sega has been reviving quite a few franchises on the Wii lately, including NiGHTS, Sega Bass Fishing, Samba de Amigoand House of the Dead. Still, there isn't much traction for this rumor, so for now it's just a lead pipe dream.
In case you missed it, check out the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts trailer one more time. Watch closely, especially at the 1:45 mark. Yep, that's an 8-bit Mario in all his planar glory, as both a testament to the user-generated nature of the game as well as we suspect a not-so-subtle nod to their former publishing partner.
Reader Brian C sent us these images along with the following description: "As I was on my way back to work I was driving to my parking spot when all of a sudden I quickly slammed on my breaks. After sitting in awe for a few minutes with a huge smile on my face, I figured I would grab the camera and take a few shots for everyone. Included are shots of a 5' tall Mario sculpture created by Kelly Barnett of Vassar College. The pictures are no testament to how truly awesome this thing is!" Check out the highlights for today:
We've really been enjoying Gametrailers' well-researched and engaging Star Wars retrospective, so we were happy to see this morning that they had turned their attention to everyone's favorite sneaky soldier with their Metal Gear retrospective. The first episode, seen above, covers Metal Gear, Snake's Revenge and MG2: Solid Snake.
It's a good way to refresh before Metal Gear Solid 4, but we hope the narrator is prepared for when he has to start recapping Metal Gear Solid plots. (Exploded brain washes out of microphones, right?)
With so many proposed WiiWare titles crossing Nintendo's gold-lined desk, you might think that the company would be interested in picking the best and brightest to release alongside its upcoming online service on May 12. And you'd be right, if by best and brightest, you meant old and uninspired, two terms that are well suited to describe Protöthea, the latest launch game confirmed for WiiWare, and the first from Ubisoft.
If the game's name sounds familiar, that may be because the top-down shooter is actually a port of a nearly three year old PC title, and judging from the above video Protöthea feels antiquated even by those standards. The game will include newfangled controls care of the Wii remote and nunchuck, as well as a number of other additions being introduced by the developers at Sabarasa and Digital Builders, but with Protöthea sharing download space with more interesting shooters like Star Soldier R and Gyrostarr, we can't help but wonder what the point is.
Do you know what we really, truly and utterly despise about Pokémon games? It's the fact that every time something Pokémon related pops out of Nintendo's red-and-white capsule, we have to go hunting for that "é." You know, the one with the thingy on top. That's a period of 45 minutes we could spend being super effective and writing about this week's Virtual Console releases.
Pokémon Puzzle League (N64, 1-2 players, 1000 Wii Points): Pit those encapsulated creatures against one another in a battle of manic block rearrangement! Way to go!
Renegade (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Clean up your city by punching and jump-kicking every thug, gangster, villain, lowlife, miscreant and suspicious loiterer you can find. So, pretty much everyone in the game then.
Mother fans, rejoice! EarthBound, also known as Mother 2 and the only game of the series to be released in the US, has been rated by the ESRB for the Wii. While that seems to be a good indication the game is bound for the Virtual Console, we're not going to make that leap without an official confirmation from Nintendo. Besides, given the rabid fan base of the game here, we're half-serious when we say we suspect Nintendo might consider selling the game unchanged for $50 on a disc. We guarantee it would sell like gangbusters.
An ESRB rating is the only outside hurdle the Nintendo-owned property to putting it on the Virtual Console (if that's the route they take). Now wouldn't that make for a clever Mother's Day gift, hm?
While Capcom's Street Fighter IV wowed us in February with its new fangled graphics and animation, it was the game's decidedly retro feel that grabbed us by the neck and assaulted our head like a barrage of Yoga Noogies. As it turned out, for all its 3D charm the fighter played like a sexed up Street Fighter II, which to be fair is just fine by us.
Now Capcom has released screenshots of Street Fighter II's bad guy quartet, Balrog, Bison, Sagat and Vega, all of whom make a return in the upcoming sequel. We can hardly wait to face down Vega's (or M. Bison for those of you with a name hang up) ever-annoying Psycho Crusher, something judging by the above pic has Ryu equally enthused.
We can't even pretend that we're really excited about this week's Virtual Console release, Double Dragon, or that we didn't play it a year ago in a sexy high-res remake on XBLA for the exact same price (500 points/$5). We love us some side-scrolling and punching, but even we have limits.
But maybe you've never heard of the legend of Billy Lee and his decision to risk his kidnapped girlfriend's safety in order to keep his karate secrets to himself. If so, feel free to buy away, if only to more fully appreciate the roots of the beat-em-up genre.
Ghostbusters is one of those nerdy properties that when reissued, will never please all of its fans. Even in a brief demo with a few other writers, questions -- and follow-ups -- circled around "crossing the streams" and even geekier topics. I'm not at that level of spirit-stopping enthusiast, but I'm cautious about the new version, probably because it shows so much promise. I hate to get behind something, especially a beloved property, only to see it crumble.
The Ghostbusters animation, graphics, settings, and physics look great. The original cast has reassembled to record for this game. It's even being written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. But the biggest thing I didn't see was that story, and that narrative is an important part of Ghostbusters. We'll find out how well the script and setting hold up with its October, 2008 release.
When we think of great gaming experiences that are long overdue for a revival, only one name comes to mind. No, not RocketKnight Adventures (good call though) ... it's Splatterhouse. If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times: storytelling in games needs an injection of creativity! So what better property to invest our trust in than Namco Bandai's Splatterhouse? It's got it all: an evil mansion (the titular Splatterhouse, naturally); a Friday the 13th-style hockey mask ... err, "terror mask"; and a unique protagonist named Rick Taylor fighting gross, puss-filled baddies in a supernaturally enhanced quest to save his girlfriend.
With that said, we're sure you'll relish the news – literally bursting through the cover of next month's EGM – that Splatterhouse has had an ancient Mayan sacrificial mask strapped to its corpse and been resurrected for "next-gen" consoles, on a mission to retrieve money straight out of our wallets. But really, Splatterhouse?
Fan site UK:Resistance has uploaded your new rotating desktop background: screenshots of pages from Where's Sonic, the greatest infusion of Where's Waldo and Sonic ever to grace paper! Check out the highlights for today:
All right, we'll admit that headline is a little inaccurate. The heavily modified Super Mario Bros. cart shown above actually plays Japanese Famicom carts (like the not-at-all-bootleg Super Bros. 5), not the slightly larger American NES carts. Semantics aside, we're sure you'll share our sense of awe at the accomplishment of fitting an entire video game system into what, at one point, was used to hold the data for a single game.
All the pieces are there, believe it or not, including A/V outputs, a svelte power switch, and two controller ports sticking out at the bottom of the cartridge. The machine seems like a one-of-a-kind hack, and doesn't look like it's going to be sold any time soon. It's a shame, too ... we' d love to get our hands on one of these, if only so we could plug in our Flash Memory PowerPak via an adapter to create the ultimate NES-cartridge-shaped hacking monstrosity.
