Siliconera reports that Katamari will make a triumphant return to the Playstation later this year with Katamari Damacy Tribute. It will be the first in the series to feature full 1080p resolution, and is likely to feature a ‘best-of’ selection of levels and music from the series. The text from the magazine scan apparently mentions a “new visual presentation”, although this could just be referring to the HD shininess.

I just have two things to say- new Katamari is always something to look forward to, and also, Keep on rollin’.

Via Destructoid.

Keita Takahashi, Noby Noby Boy’s proud father, has posted an update on the PlayStation Blog today to let the world know that Noby Noby Boy will be receiving an update “in the hopes that more people can enjoy the game”. The update will include an offline multiplayer mode, Takahashi says, adding “it’ll still be fun”. Oh and regarding the long journey to Mars? “Please be patient.” Offline multiplayer sounds great to me, since Noby Noby Boy is best played with a friend in the room. What I really want from this mode is that each person controls each end of Boy, resulting in madness.

Of all the new fighting games being released this year, SoulCalibur IV represents, like, half of them. Considering it doesn’t have much competition, SoulCalibur really didn’t need to try very hard to pillage the average fighting game fan’s cash. Instead of just phoning it in like some series do (*cough, Madden, *cough), Namco Bandai Games has hand-delivered a game that makes Street Fighter 3 Turbo Alpha Pro Edition look like Street Fighter 2 Championship Hyper Tournament Edition.

I personally have been of the belief that the time of the fighting game has come and gone. At some point, there was nothing but fighting games, and all I did was sit around at home and bitch with my brother that there were too many fighters and not enough RPG’s. Then the first-person shooter craze took off, and we sat around playing Mortal Kombat II on the SNES complaining that there were too many shooters… and still not enough RPG’s.

Fast-forward ten years and we have an abundance of RPG’s, and shooters managed to survive somehow (damn shooters!), but the fighting genre has all but died. So now with the release of SoulCalibur IV, we have a rarity amongst rarities — a fighting game that is so kick-ass that I, not being a big fan of fighting games, find myself surprisingly entertained.

Some of you die-hards might read that and think that if a non-fan of fighters likes a fighter, that fighter must not be made for the hardcore fighter fans — and you would be wrong. SoulCalibur IV’s combat system is so deep it needs a lifeguard.

At first I thought that perhaps the geek in me is giving this game automatic cool points just for having Star Wars characters in it… but then I remembered how stupid I thought it was that there are Star Wars characters in it. Don’t get me wrong, Yoda is a dyslexic doofus but a pretty fun character to play, and the Apprentice is fairly awesome as well. Vader, however, seems too “animated” for me, not the lumbering super-force he’s supposed to be.

While having these Star Wars dudes in SoulCalibur is kinda dumb, it does give me the distinct impression that a full-on Star Wars fighter in the vein of SoulCalibur could Force Push some ass. Perhaps a LucasArts/Namco Bandai collaboration is already in the works, and this was just a testing ground? Excited by the possibilities I have become.

So while the Star Wars characters are an on-the-fence feature, SoulCalibur IV has plenty of awesomeness to make up for it. The game presents multiple game modes: Story mode gives you a little narrative about your chosen character’s journey and how it relates to the swords Soul Calibur and Soul Edge; Arcade mode is essentially, as you’d imagine, just like playing in the arcade, where you plow through a series of combatants to beat the game with the best score; and the Tower of Lost Souls is basically a survival mode, where you ascend or descend the tower for unique rewards.

All of these modes can also be played with a customized character. Customization is both visual and statistical — the pieces of armor, accessories, and weapon all affect the attack, defense, and hit points of your character. They also may offer points in the different areas of special skill, like Impact, Power, Gauge, etc.

These skill points can be spent on the skills themselves, which can do anything from absorbing HP to increasing the chance you will automatically counter a grapple attempt. It’s quite the balancing act to get your character to not only look cool, but to also have the points available to buy all of the skills you want.

The special skills and stat bonuses don’t apply in Arcade mode, however, because Arcade mode is essentially the pristine ranked version of SoulCalibur IV. If you are planning on competing in Arcade mode, you might as well make an alternate version of your character that focuses mainly on looking like a total douche, just because it’s fun.

See how stupid you can make them look? Oh, wait…

One of the most impressive things I experienced with my created character was the ending cinematic in Story mode. When it first started, I thought to myself “That can’t possibly be in-engine graphics” but it obviously was because there’s no way they could have predicted what my character looked like to make a pre-rendered movie. It was amazing, and it really motivated me to want to unlock more customization parts so that my character in the scene would look that much cooler.

Character customization can be used not only to create your very own combatant, but you can also customize the already-included fighters, with some exceptions. For example, you can put all of Nightmare’s armor pieces on Astaroth and then give him a nice pair of bifocals to complete the outfit. You can’t, however, customize any of the bonus characters, which includes most of the unlockables as well as the Star Wars characters.

I tried to make a custom character right off the bat but found that I had very little options. At first I was pissed and thought the creation tools sucked. I played through the Story mode once, and then went back to the character creator to find that I now had more parts. The moral of the story is that you should play the game first before you start trying to change it.

After managing to make it through the Story mode that first time, I realized that I had very little idea what I was doing. I loaded up Training and looked through the moves list. One of the things I noticed that wasn’t really explained anywhere and didn’t show up in the moves list is that your fighter attacks differently depending on how he/she is standing. My fighter would stand differently after certain attacks, which would cause some future attacks to also be different until I found myself back in my default stance.

Adding to that complexity is the Soul Gauge (Force Gauge for Star Wars characters), which depletes as you block attacks (or use Force powers) and gradually refills over time and as you land successful attacks. If your Soul Gauge is depleted, it flashes red and makes you susceptible to a Soul Crush, which essentially puts you in a Mortal Kombat-style “Finish Him!” sort of defenselessness.

Once you are Soul Crushed, your opponent can destroy you in one ultra-powerful move called a Critical Finish. The Star Wars characters, apparently having no soul, cannot be Soul Crushed and instead become dizzy and uncontrollable if their Force Gauge is depleted.

Critical Finishers are pretty impressive.

One might think that this immunity to being Soul Crushed makes the Star Wars characters kinda cheap fighters, but you’d be wrong. The only way to get Soul Crushed is by blocking a lot, and blocking is for pussies. So basically, don’t be a pussy and you will actually have an advantage over them.

Another advanced technique is the Guard Impact, which stops the attack completely instead of just blocking it. This move is something that a non-blocking non-pussy like myself would never use, and that’s a big reason why I will never enter a SoulCalibur IV tournament. Blocking, dodging, and Guard Impacting are all above the relative button-mashing and special-spamming that I find to be all that I am capable of.

If you do find yourself being a big pussy and deciding to block all the time, Guard Impact is definitely a better option. Not only does it give you an advantage, but it also prevents your soul from getting crushed and your armor from breaking. When your armor breaks, you take more damage if attacked in that area, and you also take shame-over-time damage from having your underoos exposed.

This is a situation where some people might cry “pervert” in addition to the game supposedly being so focused on top-heavy chicks. To be honest, I really didn’t notice the boobage too much while playing since the action is so furious, and if anyone cared enough to look at these girls in the near-nude, they could just take all of their clothes off in the character creation menu and even change what style they were wearing.

Ironically, my unintelligent non-pussy fighting style has won me more games than it has lost. Taking the game online via Xbox Live, I found the battles to be virtually lag-free. Knowing what I know about Xbox Live and myself, however, I kept the headset off just in case I found myself calling some kid a pussy because he repeatedly used that cursed Guard Impact on me.

SoulCalibur IV also features local multiplayer, but there was one thing I didn’t like about it. SoulCalibur IV only loads one save file, so even if a friend brings his memory card with his custom character on it, there is no way we can make him fight against my custom character. This is something that should be a relatively easy thing to accomplish, and it baffles me that we’re unable to do it.

One final thing I want to mention is that SoulCalibur IV has a fairly complex (if a bit convoluted) storyline that stretches back through all of the previous games. It’s surprising the amount of lore involved, and it goes above and beyond the story of pretty much every other fighting game, with the closest competition being Mortal Kombat.

SoulCalibur IV’s Museum menu lets you look at the “Chain of Souls” which shows how all of the characters are connected to each other, and it also lets you view unlocked cinematics, artwork, and your fight statistics.

Overall, SoulCalibur IV is a highly polished fighting game that has surprising depth while still remaining accessible to non-fighters like myself. The lag-free online versus battles give the game the longevity it needs to make it worth the price of games these days, and the character customization keeps the single-player modes relevant and worth revisiting just to unlock more parts.

The only thing really missing is the Weapon Master mode from SoulCalibur 2, but it could arguably be stated that the Tower of Lost Souls and Story mode feature most of what Weapon Master mode used to be. Regardless, SoulCalibur IV stands as one of the best fighting games I’ve ever played, and will likely be the best brawler on a console until Street Fighter IV attempts to dethrone it… which it might not be able to do.

In honor of the upcoming release of Namco’s Soul Calibur IV, containing Yoda on the 360 (and possibly the PS3 at some point). I thought it would be a good time to share some videos depicting key moments in the small but powerful Master Jedi’s life.

Videos you want? The jump you must hit.

YODA KICKS ASS – “If so powerful you are, why leave?”

LUKE MEETS YODA – “Looking? Found someone you have I would say.”

YODA TRAINS LUKE – “Do, or do not. There is no try”

THE DEATH OF YODA – “Strong am I with the force, but not that strong.”

DON’T CRY, YODA’S OK

The rumor surrounding the possibility of being able to download Yoda on the PS3, and Vader on the 360, edged a tad bit closer to reality today, as supposed leaked in-game screens and video seem to confirm their simultaneous existence in the game.

The website housing both the leaked images (shown above and below), and the video which appears at the tail end of this article, claims that the content comes directly from Namco and has not been altered in any way.

While the screens are being reported as those of the Xbox 360 version (made evident by the green and red select buttons shown below), the site also states their belief that the PS3 version will share the same DLC option for Yoda.

Images have been known to be shopped on the web, but the addition of the video, which surfaced shortly after the screens were leaked, makes it hard for us to deny that, at the very least, there is some version of the game out there that contains the two characters.

Assuming that this confirms Namco’s intent to release both Yoda and Vader as DLC on their respective consoles, there is still no mention of price, and it’s hard to believe that a merger of two forces this epic would come for free.

Below is what appears to be an in-game video depicting Yoda battling it out with none other than Darth Vader himself. Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: gamersreports.com

News from the world of the National Football League is that former 1st round draft pick by the Tennessee Titans, Adam “Pacman” Jones (currently with the Dallas Cowboys), has publicly requested to the press that he no longer be referred to as “Pacman”.

At one point in time, “Pacman” was synonymous with Adam Jones. The two were inseparable. Ask Forrest Gump, and he would tell you they were like “peas and carrots”. His NFL jersey even featured the initial “P”. If you are asking yourself, “why would Adam part ways with Pacman?”, allow us to explain…

“Pacman” was suspended for the duration of the 2007 NFL season due to his off the field antics which included tossing gobs (roughly 81 thousand dollars) of money into the air at a Las Vegas strip club, spitting in the face of stripper (who he accused of stealing his wallet), refusing to pay his valet charge, confrontation with the law, and failing to meet the requirements of his probation.

—- begin sarcasm —-

The sad thing is, that while “Pacman” was out causing problems, “Adam” was home watching Antiques Roadshow on PBS, eating Fig Newtons, and contemplating solutions for world peace. Despite Adam’s best efforts to control Pacman, the off the field antics continued.

—- end sarcasm —-

During his 2007 suspension from pro football, “Pacman” signed with TNA Wrestling, making several appearances on the program, and even sharing half of the tag team title despite a contract between his current NFL team and TNA which clearly stated that he would not take on any type of physical role.

—- begin sarcasm —-

This was the last straw for “Adam” — he was not about to let that evil “Pacman” ruin his good name any further.

—- end sarcasm —-

Run a quick search on Google for the word Pacman, and sadly you will get mixed results — some will be the character we all know and love as gamers, while the others will pertain to an overpaid immature athlete.

My heart goes out to Namco’s yellow ball of arcade nostalgia. Not only did Adam “Grow Up” Jones embrace the nickname of one of the most iconic figures in videogame history, he now intends to permanently tie his foolish and despicable past to the Pac-Man, as he attempts to break his ties with him forever.

Bad Pacman! Leave poor Adam alone!

P.S. The pleasure that Pacman once shared in being tied to Adam Jones, will now be passed on to Adam Jones, the Grammy Award-winning musician born in 1965.

Remember Cellius? The company formed by Sony and Namco Bandai to create Cell based games? It was announced last year and since then things have been very quiet. Too quiet. Especially when you know that Ken Kutaragi is meant to be the chairman. A year later Cellius rears its head once more.

To apparentlly take market share from Microsoft and Nintendo in the games division, Cellius has high expectations.

Cellius will use Sony’s Cell Broadband chip, which powers PlayStation 3, to create games for the console and content for mobile phones and personal computers. Perhaps even arcade machines.

Where the hell are they then? Cellius was announced in January last year, and the venture was said to begin operations March 6th 2007. I expect they have been putting together prototype games and developing engines to pitch and present this year.

Our first sign that they are still alive is the addition of a logo (above) on the official Cellius website. Yes I’m afraid that’s it. A nice, pretty logo. But that’s the start of any good business, as we ourselves know at Ripten. It’s a pretty snazzy logo to say the least, with a form of morse code spelling out Cellius above the letters.

Whether this new company will develop on the Playstation 3, or will seek to further Cell usage in other entertainment devices (or both) is still unclear. Until we know more, all Sony and Namco have to show for the merge is a futuristic logo.

Source: Cellius.jp

Paul’s hair has always been ridiculous and now as Namco christen his new item move as “Long Paul” we get to see his hair grow like he was dunked in some radioactive miracle grow:

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Bruce moves like a chicken, so why not make him lay chickens? Namco says yes sir!

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Leo’s got hold of a pistol, though I feel it’d be more humorous if a flag saying “BANG!” popped out when he shot it:

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Funny stuff. More videos of the item moves can be found at SDTekken.

What’s also new in the Tekken world? Namco have revealed the complete list of Tekken moves – that’s right 117 pages of Tekken 6 moves. The list can be downloaded here as a PDF file (needs Adobe Acrobat Reader).

To end, how about a bad ass unblockable move from Miguel, a new character in the Tekken franchise:

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Now that’s what I’m talking about!

The golden era of videogames is a hot topic among gamers, mainly because many game enthusiasts don't agree when the gaming utopia took place.

Some feel that it occurred in the mid to late 80s with the introduction and domination of the NES. Others found the 16-bit epoch to be their own personal Shangri-La. Younger gamers feel that this current “next-gen” period we find ourselves in, with its online capabilities and cutting-edge graphics, is the pinnacle of gaming paradise.

Everyone feels differently because everyone has a different collection games that define them and their age bracket. But when bringing up the topic of arcades and the era in which they thrived, there is little room for debate. The golden era took place in the 80s and the king of the cabinets was Namco.

Like many other videogame companies, Namco's early beginnings can be found in business completely unrelated to the gaming industry. Started in the 1950s, the company scraped up its capital by selling mechanical rocking horses and kiddy rides. Namco first started making videogames in 1974 after they snatched the Japanese division of Atari. A few early games followed, but they were all just a preamble to the bomb that would be dropped in 1980.

Apparently inspired by a pizza pie (sans one slice) by Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man would arguably become the most famous videogame in the world. Every respectable arcade would house a Pac-Man machine.

The game would become instantly recognizable to all who heard that opening jingle, felt its battle-worn joystick, and guided that simple little sphere to strategically munch those delicious dots in a quest to tame his paranormal enemies. Pac-Man would do a lot more than build a videogame fan base the world over. It would bring videogames into the mainstream.

Having a background in amusement parks, Namco focused on developing its arcade library, which was the main vehicle to carry a gaming fix to the consumers of the day. If you were to take a stroll through a gallery displaying these works of art you would see an assortment of masterpieces.

There is Galaga, the superior sequel to 1979's Galaxian that would have kids around the world risking alien abduction in order to get a chance at doubling their firepower. Pole Position was a hugely successful racing game for the company. Dig Dug and Xevious (the world's first vertical shooter) would both be released in the same year.

Namco had a lot of “firsts” in the gaming industry, many of which have become clichés within the community. King and Balloon was the first game to use synthesized voices. Rally X was the first game to include the ever-popular bonus round. Dragon Buster introduced the idea of a life bar, and Splatterhouse was the first game to be branded with a parental advisory warning.

Arcades are still Namco's territory. Like their amusement parks, they continue to make fantastic rides for people of all ages and preferences. Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Time Crisis continue to push the envelopes of their respected genres, and Ridge Racer continues its legacy on the PS3.

The transition to consoles came initially with ports of their coin-op successes, but original games like the Ace Combat series and the Xenosaga series offer a nice alternative to the frenzied action of your standard quarter cruncher.

Namco Cybertainment Inc. has become the largest arcade company in the world, with roughly 30,000 games in their inventory. Two years ago Namco merged with the toy manufacturing giant Bandai. They now stand as the 3rd largest videogame entity in Japan.

The merger will deliver Namco's classics to a whole slew of fresh-faced customers. By developing versions of their classics for operation on either cell phones or Xbox Live, they are guaranteeing the longevity of their product.

We will be seeing Namco for generations to come, mainly because their great videogames tap into a digital fountain of youth, preventing them from ever getting old.

Must Haves:
Pac-Man Championship Edition (Xbox Live),
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (Xbox 360).

Have Nots:
Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 (PS2)
Dead to Rights (Multi)

Top Ten Developer List: 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

Two days is the amount of time we’ve spent here at E for All and frankly, that is more than enough time to view and play all the games at this expo. The Electronic Arts demo booth had plenty of playable video games, but when asked for some press material we were told, “ … we didn’t bring any because we thought the press wasn’t going to come here,” said an EA employee.

That was pretty harsh. The expo is for the consumers to play video games before they come out, but that just doesn’t seem like a valid enough excuse to NOT have any material ready for the media, and it wasn’t just EA that came unprepared, other companies also seemed to care less about the press in attendance.

This was a consumer expo, and memo went out months ago, however the only companies that seemed like they got it were Nintendo and Konami. Excluding those two, the layouts for booths were terrible and the representation was more or less non-existent.

The first thing I did when I arrived was interview the President & CEO of TN Games, Mark Ombrellaro. The company developed an innovative peripheral 3rd Space Vest, which allows the player of a 1st person shooter or racing game to feel impact throughout his or her upper torso.

Our group then had an informal sit down with Metal Gear Solid 4 Assistant Producer Ryan Payton. Konami’s MGS4 looks to be Playstation 3’s most anticipated game of 2008, and its expo presence reinforced that. Ryan was great, and Konami from an overall standpoint impressed us as well, as they showcased their products and made information about their company and games easily accessible to consumers as well as the media.

Next up we made our way to EA’s Rock Band stage where Anthony Niven, Andrew Podolsky, and I got to finally rock out to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Great game, but it will undoubtedly be one of the most cumbersome setups in your living room’s history.

THQ and Namco represented, but didn’t pick up as much of the crowd as Nintendo or Konami. There were plenty of other exhibitors like Intel and HP showcasing the latest computer technology, but it wasn’t enough to convince me that it was time for a $5,000 upgrade.

Overall, the expo didn’t seem to make much of an impact on consumers, and was definitely not worth the price of a 4-day pass, as it took us less than two days to see everything the 1st time expo had to offer.

In closing, it was a great opportunity for the smaller companies and start-ups of the world to gain exposure (assuming they came prepared) but the big players, outside of those mentioned here, just didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass.

E3, also known as “min-E3″, is being held this year from July 11th to the 13th at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA. Anyone who is familiar with the E3 of old knows that the new “min-E3″ pales in comparison to the event held in years past, that said … it is still better than nothing.

A schedule of events was released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) for the show on the official E3 website.

Getting the ball rolling this year will be Microsoft with a “pre-E3 conference” at 8:30pm on July 10th. Next up will be Nintendo, offering up a tasty batch wii goodness, with a conference at 9:00 the next morning. Sony will bat clean up with a conference of their own at 11:30am on the 11th.

Time slots have also been granted to third parties such as Konami, Activision, Take Two, EA, Ubisoft, and few others. For your convenience we have posted the full show schedule below:

7/10/07:

• 8:30pm – Microsoft Press Conference

7/11/07:

• 9:00am – Nintendo Press Conference
• 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 11:30am – Sony Press Conference
• 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
• 2:00pm – Electronic Arts conference
• 3:15pm – Activision conference
• 4:30pm – Midway conference
• 5:45pm – Konami conference

7/12/07:

• 8:00am – Take-Two conference
• 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 9:15am – THQ conference
• 10:30am – Ubisoft conference
• 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
• 1:00pm – Namco Bandai conference
• 3:30pm – Disney Interactive conference

7/13/07:

• 9:00am-3:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 11:00am-3:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games

Booths will be set up for over 30 companies on the floor of the hangar, however we are sad to report that there are some notable names that will not be offering up formal conferences namely; Capcom, SEGA, and Square-Enix.

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