Left 4 Dead Maps Resurrected in Left 4 Dead 2 Over Forty New Final Fantasy XIII Screens Just In Time For The Weekend PlayStation Network Plans To Implement Premium Content Subscription-Based Model Microsoft Game Studios Hiring Epic Liason/Producer For Gears of War & Shadow Complex Madden NFL Arcade Game Changers Video Toys“R”Us Goes Game Stop, Geoffrey the Giraffe Now Accepting Used Console Trade-Ins

These videos may help explain why I’m interested in Majesty 2. Who wants to be a wandering hero collecting meager amounts of gold for bounties when you can be the King who has all the gold and can pay heroes whatever you want to do the bounties you assign?
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Although Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was released 4 months ago, it still has yet to recieve any of the DLC Rare had promised. Recently, Rare announced the first DLC for the game, entitled L.O.G.’s Lost Challenges, as well as the release date and price, April 7th for 400 MS Points. The DLC is pretty heavy too- it comes with 250 extra achievement points, 7 new multiplayer games, and 12 new challenges. After completing the challenges, you also gain access to Klungo’s arcade game, which is shown above.

Rare also mentioned that you’ll be able to unlock the winning vehicles from their design contest via Banjo Tooie’s Stop N’ Swop when the game is released on XBLA in the spring. For so many challenges and such a low price, I assume a lot of people will be picking this up. I’ll probably buy the DLC, once I buy the actual game. It’s on my to-do list, right after publishing a thesis in astrophysics. There’s also a trailer for the DLC after the jump.

Source: Destructoid

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Seeing as it’s arguably one of the best consoles of our time, the Dreamcast had way too short of a life. We all know that this is mainly the fault of the piratablity of the games, but the hardware could’ve used a little tweaking too. WERD of the Benheck forums knew this all too well, and took the matter into his hands, by encasing the Dreamcast’s innards in a tablet PC screen.

The unibody Dreamcast tablet sports a 15″ screen, along with a GD-ROM loading drive. It runs off of batteries, and can last for about 3 to 3.5 hours off of said batteries. Just to make sure that it was working fine, WERD made a video of the Dreamcast tablet playing Xtreme Sports and House of the Dead 2. Hit the jump for the video.

Source: Benheck Forums

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Electronic Arts has announced the release date for this year’s entry in the Madden franchise, Madden NFL 10. The game will release on August 14, 2009, and of course football fans will gather that day to play each other online and curse each other out like there’s no tomorrow.

Electronic Arts has said the game will feature “online innovation that will connect Madden fans together like never before” and “an immersive broadcast presentation that captures the suspense and emotion of the NFL.”

The cover athlete will be revealed in a presentation on Friday, April 24th.

Source

The Behemoth’s third project is looking great, judging from the trailer they debuted just about three weeks ago (which we’ve included at the jump). The game’s producer, John Baez, sat down with Gamasutra for some discussion on the upcoming project.

Baez revealed that the game will be a multiplayer affair, meaning you can get your party-play on, but will also have a single-player mode. As for the platforms, instead of announcing it for the Xbox LIVE Arcade exclusively, Baez stated that “platforms have yet to be decided”.

There is hope yet for the PS3 and Wii. Trailer at the jump. Read more…

A week ago,we reported the rumor that Sony was going to make an announcement on March 31st/April 1st, and now we know what that announcement is. Fortunately, it wasn’t a crudely made April Fool’s joke, (we hope) it was a price drop for the PlayStation 2.

Although the chances are that anyone that was going to hop on the PlayStation 2 bandwagon has done so already, the fact that Sony isn’t discarding the PS2 yet is still comforting. If you have been waiting for the PS2 to drop in price before picking one up, starting tomorrow, April 1st, you can pick one up at your nearest retailer for $100, 30 dollars less than the previous price.

Source: Destructoid

It’s no secret that Insomniac Games is one of the best developer studios to work at- they’ve won a “Best Place to Work” award year after year. With the Ratchet and Clank and Resistance franchises in their repertoire, anyone wanting to break into the developer industry would be lucky to work for them- and now they can!

Insomniac Games is hiring, and they have a humorous series of videos to prove it. The series follows Chris, a man from Burbank who quit his job at Insomniac Games and moved so he could work for Megacorp, a company that… well, I have no idea what they do, but they don’t do it as well as Insomniac. Hit the jump for the second and third videos in the series.

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Square Enix has launched the official website for their upcoming Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers for the Nintendo Wii. As of now, the website features the trailer released with the Japanese version of Echoes of Time and wallpaper from the game. There are two grayed out unclickables titled “It’s Gonna Be A Long Night” and “Public Spectacle”, with the words “Mor eVisits, More Movies” flashing above them.

So that means you need to visit the site more to unlock those two trailers. Well, get to work.

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: THE CRYSTAL BEARERS

The ESRB has never been an impenetrable fortress of information, and the fact that they have a search function on their website doesn’t really help them keep things secret. Destructoid pointed our earlier today that the ESRB is now listing three Max Payne games, one being the poorly-recieved Max Payne Advance, and the other two being Max Payne 1 and 2, which are listed for the Xbox 360.

Since Rockstar announced Max Payne 3 a short time ago, they may be looking to release the previous games on Xbox Live in the same time frame as the third’s release in retail. Destructoid also pointed out that the games weren’t listed for the PS3, which could signal another exclusive for Microsoft. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what Rockstar says on the matter.

Source; ESRB (via Destructoid)

According to one Mike Tomich (and a few other doctors), kids under the age of eight years old shouldn’t be playing any video games at all. And children under five shouldn’t be coloring! These grown-up activities will ruin their hands! Read more…

All you Wii gamers looking to catch a deal or two, get your wallets and one-click purchases ready because Amazon.com is holding a Wii Gold Box event tomorrow, March 31st. On the official Gold Box forum, the Amazon Gold Box team posted:

All Wii Games, All Day. Make sure to visit the Gold Box on March 31 for six great Nintendo Wii video game deals. Happy gaming.

Tomorrow’s the day, so make sure you check them out and see what kind of deals they have to offer. You never know if they’ll have MadWorld on the cheap.

Source

Sites with user driven content sound great, but are they? N4G can be viewed as an example to many who have used it over the years of a site which started out great and has become little more than a corporate mouthpiece in recent months.

If you have tried to submit a story containing video or images to the site recently, chances are that you have been met with hordes of individuals directing you to embed the video/images. That wasn’t always the case. The site used to be much more laid back and willing to reward the sites hosting the content as long as they had a link to it on their own. So what has changed? Well, one thing that hasn’t is N4G’s official policy regarding the inclusion of video and images (shown below): Read more…

I know, I know. I haven’t kept up with my Wii-kly Virtual Console and WiiWare update for the past two weeks or so, but I’m back with this week’s edition and it’s a fairly special one. Why so special you ask?

Well according to Nintendo, this is “The Farewell Edition” of their normal Wii-kly Update press release because starting next week, with the April 5 release of the DSi, they will be opening the Nintendo DSi Shop. So from now on this Wii-kly update will feature not only new downloadable titles for the Wii, but also for the DSi. So now I’ve got to come up with a new name for this post by next week. Any recommendations?

Hit the jump to find out what two games were uploaded to the Virtual Console and WiiWare today, and fans of the upcoming Punch-Out!! for the Wii should be in for a surprise with what the VC has to offer this week. Read more…

The next time you attend a gaming convention like GDC, make sure to pack some gaming related costumes. Throw them on and beg a few recognizable developers to cameo in your own handheld movie. If done correctly, you too can be internet famous.

Hit the jump for the video. Read more…

A gigantic patch for both Company of Heroes and Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts has been released via Steam today, so restart your Steam clients to allow the update to automatically download. The patch includes way too much stuff to list here; the full list is after the jump for those of you who want to see all of the changes. I can’t help but think that this has something to do with the upcoming expansion Company of Heroes: Tales of Valour releasing on April 9th, but maybe that’s just me. Hit the jump for the patch notes.
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Capcom have announced (accidentally) that Dead Rising 2 will feature a multiplayer component of some kind, although just what was not mentioned. The comment came out in a GDC panel during which a Capcom representative also made a silly comment about there being 6000 zombies on-screen at once. Take a look at your TV, and you’ll see that to fit 6000 rotting undead on the screen at once, they’ll have to be tiny (or squashed in, making it unplayable).

Either way, a multiplayer mode is always welcome. Unless it’s not very good, in which case it’s not welcome at all. The game is also going to feature 800 types of zombie, meaning you won’t be seeing the same models over and over as you smash their heads in with/against your buddy/buddies.

Tim Eves, a healthy 25-year-old UK man, hung up the phone with his mother only to die abruptly several moments later while playing Wii Fit with his girlfriend. Your first thought may be to link the Wii Balance board (as many outlets are) to his death, but if you stopped there you would be doing your inner detective an epic disservice. Read more…

When I first read the headline that said Zelda: Ocarina of Time was coming to the Nintendo Wii, my first thought was “I thought it was already on virtual console.”

It is already on virtual console and I’m just an idiot. Read more…

Confession time: I’ve never actually played any of the Metal Gear Solid games. Well, to completion anyway; I own a copy of MGS2: Substance for the Xbox, but I’ve never actually played it past the the first level. I got confused towards the end of it, and I just never picked it up. When Konami announced Metal Gear Solid Touch, I thought it would be a great way for me to finally get into the MGS franchise.

I knew they’d worked hard on it, because they mentioned how Kojima actually scrapped the entire game and started from scratch halfway into development. Konami said it wouldn’t be a lot like the console games, and I didn’t expect it to, but with such a great legacy, how would Metal Gear Solid Touch live up to the Metal Gear games before it? Would it finally get me into the Metal Gear series? Hit the jump for the full review.
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I’m sure some people will be upset by this week’s Rock Band offerings, but it’s not as if this is the first time that Harmonix has released Nickelodeon songs. And for those of you that are upset (for reasons unknown) about the Spongebob songs, you can always just skip it and download Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing or even Pat Benetar’s Heartbreaker, which was previously a GHWT exclusive.

As always, songs are 160 MS Points or $1.99, while the Spongebob bundle is up for 440 MS Points or $5.50. Though, I should note that the song in the video isn’t in the game. Even if it were, it’s a David Glen Eisley song. Hit the jump for the full list of this week’s song releases.

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