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 Foreign Pringles Commercial Proves Video Games Are More Fun with Crunch and Nudity

My tendency to go with overly descriptive and often lengthy headlines sort of leaves me grasping for additional things to say in the body copy at times. This isn’t one of them.

The video below showcases an NES remake of Left 4 Dead, complete with instantaneous vanishing bodies and bloodless kills. Remind of you of a more modern censored sequel of the same game? Hmm?

While the absence of persistent zombie corpses lying in puddles of their own blood does remind me of the Australian censored Left 4 Dead 2 game, the NES version of L4D isn’t completely void of blood. It does offer a few random splatters on floors and walls to help set the mood, and that’s more than we can say about its Aussie counterpart. Don’t take my word for it though, check it out for yourself. Read more…

Nintendo Wii’s New Super Mario Bros. Wii title has been on store shelves for less than two days now, and there are already a few level editors out there. The above 1-1 remake is far from perfect, but considering the game hasn’t been out long at all and the modder himself claims it was 2AM when he made it, we should probably cut him some slack.

Check out the video below. Read more…

If you remember the 80s, there’s a good chance you spent some quality time with Konami’s Castlevania for the NES. You probably also had a cool Sony Walkman and ate lots of spooky Ghostbusters cereal while watching He-Man cartoons on the TV in your brightly colored Jams, but that’s not the point of this article.

Thanks to modder and YouTube user, M0rtanius, you can play the classic 2D side scroller in glorious Half-Life 2 3D. Get a glimpse of the level in the video below and download the mod here if you’re interested. Read more…

Remember that poll Sega ran a while back on which game everybody wanted to see come to Xbox Live Arcade? For a while it looked like Earthworm Jim would emerge the victor, but Toejam and Earl pulled out the win in the end. Unfortunately for those who voted for the funky space duo, that may not even happen. Read more…

Hate sitting on your couch watching your Roomba do all the work? Boring you say? You could get off your ass and do it yourself, but that would require actual movement. No sweat. A team of geeked-out developers with a cleaning fetish hacked into a few Roomba units and dressed them up like Pac-Man, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. Enjoy the power pellet vacuum fest below. Read more…

Good Old Games, the best place for nostalgia-loving PC gamers, announced the arrival of some brand new old games to their ever-growing catalogue this week; Majesco Entertainment’s Advent Rising and the highly acclaimed Psychonauts. To celebrate, we’re giving 15 Ripten readers the chance to win the game of their choice from GoG.com’s archive of over 160 classic PC games.

All you have to do is register for a free account here at Ripten and post a comment in the comments section below. Let us know which game you’d like from the library of games at GoG.com and a brief explanation why.

It really is that simple, folks! Just remember, you can’t win if you don’t register for an account here at Ripten. We’ll pick the winners on Monday, November 9, so you’ve got plenty of time to think of a game you’d like to add to your collection. All winners will be contacted through the email they used when registering.

Update: The competition is now closed. Thanks to all who entered! Here is the post outlining the winners!

Nintendo have announced via the above children’s television show video that a brand new side-scrolling Excitebike game will be coming to WiiWare. As you can see, it’s pretty much an updated version of the original- it also includes a track editor and even WiFi play. I’m kind of surprised at my reaction to this, as I’m usually quite cynical about these things- I think it looks pretty cool.

I loved Excitebike when I was younger. I don’t know why; perhaps it was just that it had a good sense of speed and timing the jumps and angles could be quite entertaining. It doesn’t really capture my attention the way it did then any more, but this new one looks decent. Maybe it was just that the presenters reverted me to a younger state of mind with their patronising banter.

Via Gamezine.

The remake of LucasArts’ classic adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island has been bumped down to just £3.49/$5 on Steam today, in honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on the Nineteenth. That’s what I like to call a good deal which you should probably take advantage of.

I bought the game on release (hindsight is 20/20), and I can confirm that this is a quality remake, and the art, while perhaps not perfect for everyone, is very high quality and the voice acting is absolutely fine. You can switch at any time to the classic style, too. I heartily recommend this, ye land lubbers and all that.

Shacknews reports that LucasArts will be re-releasing their classic Jedi Knight/Dark Forces series on Steam and Direct2Drive on Wednesday. The release will include all of the games in the series, even the expansion pack Mysteries of the Sith. This follows from their recent re-release of Knights of the Old Republic on Steam, as well as the re-vamped Monkey Island franchise.

Direct2Drive are also having a celebration of 5 years of not-bad service by having a pretty good sale. Everything is $5/£5 in the sale, which includes Bioshock and Saints Row 2 at the time of writing. The games will change soon though, so keep checking back for the best deal.

In an age where social networking and word economy reign supreme, it’s hard to find a rumor that didn’t originate or spread through Twitter. Geoff Keighley, host of Spike’s GameTrailers TV, knows this, and recently took to his Twitter to stir the rumor mill regarding a brand new LucasArts IP to be announced on GTTV this weekend.

“LucasArts will announce a brand-new original game on this week’s GTTV – with first footage. More details soon.” tweets Keighley. Keighley, you’re such a tease! Come on, give us more than that. A name, a genre, a platform- I’ll even accept a 32 x 18 screenshot! But until Thursday, when GTTV airs (at 12:30AM) I’ll just pray that you were lying about it being original. I just want a new Grim Fandango, LucasArts.

This week in NintendoWares features the release of the Super Star Wars from the SNES hitting the Virtual Console, along with the Balance Board-inspired Rock N’ Roll Climber and the Greek Mythology journey of NyxQuest: Kindred Spirts for the WiiWare, backed-up by a new addition to the Brain Age series with Arts & Letters for the DSiWare. Hit the jump for a brief description of each new downloadable title and how much they’ll cost you.
Read more…

As you can see, this person is quite the Nintendo 64 collector. He appears to have every version of the N64 ever produced, although the Goldeneye version appears to be missing. Could easily be behind the other boxes, though. I have to admit, I don’t see the appeal of collecting stuff that is different only aesthetically. This is especially true with N64s- just think.

30 or so consoles. That means about 30 broken joysticks, 30 stuck reset buttons, and about a hundred thousand puffs of air into dusty cartridges. Fine, that last one applies to any N64 owner.

Full-size pic here.

This week is packed full of Nintendo downloads with a total of six games available today. The WiiWare gets a four new titles today, including Bit Boy!!, an adventure with Bit Boy Kubi through video game history taking on terrains of the virtual world in 4-bit all the way to 128-bit (brief trailer after the break). The Virtual Console gets two Sega oldies with Secret Command and Pulseman, and the DSiWare gets another puzzler with Brain Challenge.

Hit the jump for the complete list of Nintendo DLC for this week and a brief description of each title along with how much they’ll cost you.
Read more…

Another slow week in the summer for new game releases. The two big ones coming out this week are The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and NCAA Football 10, but nothing much after that. I never played Secret of Monkey Island before, so I might have to hit up the Xbox Live Arcade and check that out (I’m not a PC gamer by any means). Hit the jump for the full list of new games this week and my pick of the week.

Read more…

Following the death of “The King of Pop” last thursday, sales for Sega’s Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker video game have rised on Ebay. Read more…

Video game music is something we don’t cover enough here on Ripten, and it’d probably be best to remedy that- starting with Jake Kaufman’s (virt) awesome cover of Katamari on the Rock, known colloquially as the Katamari theme song. But unlike the original song done with a full orchestra, Kaufman’s cover is done with a NES, a VRC6 multi-memory chip, and a whole lot of talent.

I’ve listened to this song a bunch of times (since I learned about it an hour ago) and I love it. Yu Miyake’s original version of the song was really cheery and bouncy, and the 8-bit effect on the song doesn’t change that. You can check out the song at the link below.

Bleep bloop bleep bloop do your best! (thanks, tiff chow)

Now that Final Fantasy XIV has been announced, let’s go back seven Final Fantasy games and let it be known that Final Fantasy VII is now available for the PS3 through the PlayStation Store for $9.99 in the PS1 classics section. Weighing in at about 1.3 gigs, FFVII is one of my favorite games of all time and the chance to get a fresh digital copy of the game is fabulous news. Go download this game now homies!

Not really feeling the direction of the new Punch-Out!! for the Wii? Not into using the Balance Board or Wii Remote-Nunchuk combo? Well, check out this video to see how two guys made their own Punch-Out!! boxing dummy using the original Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for the NES. I gotta admit, it’s some pretty neat shit.

In one of the most exciting rumours in a long time, Destructoid has received info that LucasArts will possibly be reviving an old franchise, and note Grim Fandango and The Secret of Monkey Island as possible candidates. In case you didn’t know, I’m a big fan of both. Perhaps it’s a little sad that I’m so optimistic about games being announced that I’ve already played, but I don’t care. I love them both, even with my cold, dry heart.

Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes was a fan-made ROM modification for the widely-acclaimed SNES RPG Chrono Trigger. I say “was” because Square Enix have sent the fans a Cease-and-Desist letter, letting them know that if the project is released, there will be a lawsuit. The mod “featured ~35 hours of game play, 10 multiple endings, and 23 chapters, much like the original Chrono Trigger; it was around 98% complete.” As ZeaLitY says, the game was made only out of the goodness of fan’s hearts and certainly not for profit. The video above is the trailer for the game, made this year.

I must say that I feel this is a bad show on the part of Square Enix. This was a fan-made mod, with no intent for profit, and people had spent countless hours of their lives in the process of making this game. What harm can a mod like this do? Surely it can only provide free advertisement for their game. My consolations to the fans who put all this work into the game only to have it completely trashed.