General gaming

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• NYCC: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Brings the Games to Film with Style
• Review: Guardian Heroes Storms Back From the Dead
• NYCC: Street Fighter X Tekken Gets an Early March Release Date, Special Edition
• NYCC: The Amazing Spider-Man Movie Has a Videogame Tie-In
• NYCC: What's the Oldest Video Game for Sale at the Show?
• Why We Play Japanese Games
• NYCC: Suddenly the Star Wars Kinect Xbox 360 Seems a Lot Less Cool
• NYCC: Mega Man Legends 3 Cast on the Rebound
• Resistance 3 Sold Only 180,000 Units in the U.S. Last Month
• Xbox Live Accounts Targeted in FIFA DLC Scam

NYCC: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Brings the Games to Film with Style Posted: 14 Oct 2011 09:26 PM PDT 1UP's resident Batman expert, Thierry Nguyen, once told me that one of the most basic canonical facts in DC Comics' style guide is that Batman always wins. Over in Japan, on the even more hardboiled side of things, you have Golgo-13, the emotionless sniper who never misses his shot. And now it seems Level-5 is making a serious bid to boost their own leading man, Hershel Layton, to those vaunted heights. With their new (or at least newly translated into English) film Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, a new bit of fictive infallibility has come to light: Professor Layton always has the answer.

Review: Guardian Heroes Storms Back From the Dead Posted: 14 Oct 2011 04:10 PM PDT 2011 seems destined to be the Year of the HD Remake. With major publishers raiding their back catalogs for material to resell, both retail shelves and online marketplaces seem increasingly packed with familiar games from the last console generation (and beyond). These revivals often play on the strength of a popular brand such as Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid. Other times, an HD remake can offer a little-known game a second chance. One such remake hitting the Xbox Live Arcade this week is Guardian Heroes, a cult favorite and critical darling that had the misfortune of being a Sega Saturn exclusive. The sprawling beat-em-up with RPG stat-management and multiple endings never found the audience it deserved in 1996, but fifteen years later it still represents one of the best examples of the genre.

NYCC: Street Fighter X Tekken Gets an Early March Release Date, Special Edition Posted: 14 Oct 2011 04:03 PM PDT A March release for Street Fighter X Tekken was looking highly and we've now gotten confirmation that's the case. Better yet, it'll be out earlier in the month than we previously suspected. A fact sheet for the game sent out in August listed it with a spring 2012 release. With spring starting during the latter half of the month and Capcom's sales forecast saying the game would be out before April 1, March 27 was the only date that seemed to fit. Instead, the game will be out right before the end of winter, on March 6 in North America. The date was revealed at a New York Comic Con panel today along with a March 9 date for the game in Europe.

NYCC: The Amazing Spider-Man Movie Has a Videogame Tie-In Posted: 14 Oct 2011 03:35 PM PDT Men in Black III isn't the only 2012 movie with an Activision game tie-in being revealed this week. As spotted at New York Comic-Con today, the poster you see above for The Amazing Spider-Man features the Activision logo and an ESRB "Rating Pending" mark. No developer is listed, though Beenox appears to be the one behind it. That makes sense as it was responsible for the two most recent Spider-Man games, Edge of Time and Shattered Dimensions. Edge of Time came out earlier this month. The Amazing Spider-Man is set for release on July 3, 2012, and one would think the game will be released as close as possible to that date. That would give Beenox a fairly short amount of time -- not even a full year -- to develop the new game.

NYCC: What's the Oldest Video Game for Sale at the Show? Posted: 14 Oct 2011 03:02 PM PDT At any nerd culture event like New York Comic-Con, the dealer's room is always fairly massive and includes local video game peddlers eager to share their wares with the public. Sometimes, the games in question are downright ancient -- most dealers' offerings fizzle out around the NES era, but every once in a while there's some real legacy content. This year's NYCC is no different, with a handful of the countless retail booths selling Atari VCS games, Intellivision carts, Game & Watch systems, and even older wares. Still, the absolute oldest video game item at the show appears to be this Pong clone, which my Internet research suggests was produced by a German company as one of countless ripoffs of Atari's home game megahit. I can't find a specific date for this particular unit, because it's pretty obscure even as far as Pong clones go, but chatter on AtariAge and other, similar collector forums pins its chip design to about 1977. That makes it roughly a year older than the Magnavox Odyssey2 being sold in the same booth (it hails from 1978).

Why We Play Japanese Games Posted: 14 Oct 2011 02:37 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet Why We Play Japanese Games All the reasons we still can't get enough of Eastern-developed games. By: Nadia Oxford October 14, 2011 Most 20- and- 30-somethings probably owe their first gaming experience to the tangle of American-made consoles and computers that blew through the late '70s and early '80s. But it was arguably Nintendo Entertainment System and its accompanying games that immersed us neck-deep in a fantasy worlds populated by dragons, robots, and princesses in peril -- worlds we didn't want to leave, much to our parents' chagrin. Japan's contribution to video games gave the North American side of the industry a shot of adrenaline right in the heart. For years, kids in English-speaking countries associated Japan with video games (for better or worse), to the point that some of us were inspired to study the language and then look overseas for jobs in the industry.

NYCC: Suddenly the Star Wars Kinect Xbox 360 Seems a Lot Less Cool Posted: 14 Oct 2011 02:33 PM PDT Wandering through the floor of New York Comic-Con this afternoon, I had to stop and gawk at the neatly crafted R2-D2 and R2-Q5 statuettes adorning the table of Major League Mods because, well, I'm a sucker for astromechs. But then I noticed the miniature robots had game controllers in front of them. Then I realized that they are, in fact, functional game systems: Artoo is an Xbox 360, while his darker counterpart is, naturally, a PlayStation 3. Not only that, but in a nod of the hat to the movies that inspired these amazing frivolities, Artoo's projector (with which he beamed Princess Leia's holographic distress signal) is, in fact, a real-life projector. I thought I was in love with Microsoft's limited edition Xbox 360 bundle for Star Wars Kinect, but now I'm not so sure. On the other hand, these custom mods are priced according to their ability to inspire awe, coming in at a cool $1200. Expensive, sure; but to be fair, their creator (Major League Mods owner Mark Bongo) builds each one to order. He also does randomly awesome other mods, like a 2.1 stereo speaker system built into a glossy Death Star, and an Xbox 360 slim model customized to look like Iron Man's convertible briefcase armor.

NYCC: Mega Man Legends 3 Cast on the Rebound Posted: 14 Oct 2011 02:25 PM PDT Are you still bummed about the fact that Capcom canned Mega Man Legends 3? 'Cause I sure am. But at least the cast isn't taking defeat lying down. That there on the left is Mega Man Legends villainess/love interest Tron Bonne gettin' down to Just Dance 3. She seemed to enjoying herself. Good to see the characters bouncing back, even if fans are having trouble letting go.

Resistance 3 Sold Only 180,000 Units in the U.S. Last Month Posted: 14 Oct 2011 01:43 PM PDT Sony's big PlayStation 3 exclusive for September was Insomniac's Resistance 3. With the release of the NPD Group's monthly numbers yesterday, we saw it was among the ten best-selling games in the United States, coming in at number seven. Without sales numbers, though, its position on the sales chart means very little. Thanks to the NPD opening up a bit, we now know the number of copies it sold, and it's less than half of what Resistance 2 did during its first month. Eurogamer was told by NPD analyst Anita Frazier that Resistance 3 sold 180,000 units in the United States during September. That's significantly fewer than one would expect from a big-name FPS franchise, particularly given it had almost the full month to sell (it was released on September 6) and a relatively comfortable, two-week gap between it and other big shooter releases Deus Ex: Human Revolution (August 23) and Gears of War 3 (September 20). Resistance 2's debut was even further down the top ten than R3 -- it came in at number nine back in November 2008. The difference is it sold 385,000 units in the U.S. despite going up against Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, and the Wii's onslaught of games like Wii Play and Wii Fit.

Xbox Live Accounts Targeted in FIFA DLC Scam Posted: 14 Oct 2011 01:11 PM PDT Update: Electronic Arts claims FIFA 12 isn't attracting hackers at an especially high rate. "We haven't seen a spike or increase in reports of FIFA 12 players having their accounts hacked," said an EA rep in a statement sent to Giant Bomb. "With the launch of FIFA 12 it likely has just shifted renewed focus onto this particular game." Microsoft also expanded upon its original statement, adding that it's a coincidence that FIFA is a common element in many of these hacking reports. "It's not a title-specific issue and is coincidental that FIFA has been tied to a number of compromised accounts," a Microsoft rep said.

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