Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announced what new PlayStation Network downloadable games, expansions, demos and videos were released for PlayStation 3 today.

American Games (Demos):
* Conflict: Denied Ops
* NeoPets: PetPet Adventures — The Wand of Wishing (PSP game via PC store) - $15.99

American Games (Content):
* Folklore Add-on #5 “Nightmares” - $3.99
* Folklore Add-on #6 “Visions of the Tower” - $3.99
* Add-on Bundle 3 (includes Add-ons #5 & #6) - $5.99
* Rock Band song Smashing Pumpkins’ “Siva” - $1.99
* Rock Band song Rush’s “Working Man” - $1.99
* Rock Band song Coheed and Cambria’s “Ten Speed Of God’s Blood & Burial” - $1.99

American Trailers:
* Go! Sports Skydiving
* Battlefield: Bad Company Haggard’s Blog

American Themes:
* PixelJunk Monsters Theme 2

American Wallpaper:
* (2) PixelJunk Monsters

European Games (Demos):
* Devil May Cry 4 Demo
* Fade to Black (PSone game for PS3 / PSP) - €4.99 / £3.49
* Motorhead (PSone game for PS3 / PSP) - €4.99 / £3.49
* MX vs ATV Untamed Demo
* Theme Hospital (PSone game for PS3 / PSP) - €4.99 / £3.49

European Trailers:
* PixelJunk Monsters

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The Wii-exclusive point-and-click adventure Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure filled every nook and cranny of the game disc with smart puzzles that were so rewarding to solve our Zack & Wiki review rated the game 9 out of 10. With an average Gamerankings score of 86% out of 38 reviews, fans of the game are now asking themselves “Will we see a Zack & Wiki 2 sequel?”

Capcom Producer on Zack & Wiki, Hironobu Takeshita, was interviewed last year about the game. During this interview he was asked if he sees Zack & Wiki become one of Capcom’s banner franchises with sequels or if it’s a one-time game only. To this Mr. Takeshita replied: “First of all, I’m very happy to be asked that question. So, for us making Zack & Wiki was a very new way of making games in that it forces you to use your head, to get inspiration to use the puzzles, and also use your body in order to physically control [the game]. So it’s a very new way of making games. I have a lot of confidence in Zack & Wiki, and especially the foreign media [outside of Japan] seem to have a lot of hope and respect for the title. So of course it depends on how it sells, and the sales of the title, but that is something I would like to do, to turn it into a series.”

Zack & Wiki has sold only 35,000 units in the US in its release month, November 2007. And in the UK it reaching #17 in the all format games charts during its first few days on sale in January 2008. So unless the game keeps selling at a steady pace or increases popularity through word-of-mouth, it’s unsure if we’ll see a sequel. All I can say is “Try it out!” because it’s a really inventive challenging game to play and deserves any success it can get.

In the following video interview you can see what else he said about the storyline of the original Zack & Wiki game, the success of the Nintendo Wii, and the possibility of future sequels in the Zack & Wiki world.

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Issue 1,000 of the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu has an interview with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto reflecting on the past, but what’s interesting is that he also hints at future plans.

The magazine asked Mr. Miyamoto the inevitable question about sequels, and he gave the expected answer: Mr. Miyamoto is indeed interested in making a Super Mario Galaxy 2 sequel. He’s also thinking about the next Legend of Zelda 2 Wii title.

As for the Balance Wii Board, the peripheral that’s included with the fitness title Wii Fit, the magazine noted that Wii Fit has been quite the success story for Nintendo of Japan so far [it sold over 1 million units in one month]. Mr. Miyamoto responded that if Wii Fit sees success overseas as well, Nintendo may end up releasing separate titles that make use of the peripheral. Bandai Namco’s Family Ski, the second title to use the Balance Board, will actually be released in Japan tomorrow. Could Nintendo’s 1080 Snowboarding franchise be next?

IGN also translated that Mr. Miyamoto gave some vague hints as to Nintendo’s plans for the DS in 2008. One of which is to be able to use your DS to do a number of interesting things in public spaces. He wouldn’t get into specifics. Earlier in the interview, he shared a vision of Nintendo supporting DS owners by setting up servers to create a play environment that’s shared between the home and outdoors.

At the end of the interview, Mr. Miyamoto gave a special shout out to the games and creators that have caught his eye. Recently, he was impressed with Level 5’s Professor Layton series and its producer, Akihiro Hino. Looking forward, he hopes players will take to the new style of play offered by Konami’s Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008.

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Developed by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold over seven million units worldwide on PC, Xbox 360 & PS3 since its launch in November 2007. Activision claims that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the #1 title in units worldwide for calendar year 2007, according to The NPD Group, Chart Track and The GFK Group. I hate to ruin Activision’s party but at the early-January 2007 Consumer Electronics Show keynote address, Microsoft announced that Halo 3 sold 8.1 million copies worldwide in 2007 since its September release.

Call of Duty 4 has garnered critical acclaim, we rated it 9.5 out of 10 in our Call of Duty 4 review, and the game secured more than 18 perfect score reviews and over 40 combined Editors’ Choice and Game of the Year awards in the U.S. alone. The game has been nominated for 10 prestigious Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences awards, including Game of the Year. Call of Duty 4 also currently is the #1 Xbox 360 title on Xbox Live, based on unique users.

“We’re very excited about this achievement especially given so many competitive titles this year,” said Will Kassoy, senior vice president, global brand management Activision, “Consumer and critics agree that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best games ever created and further establishes Call of Duty as one of the premier brands in the industry. This ground-breaking game and franchise continue to establish new standards by which all other action games will be judged.”

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Rockstar Games has finally released the first Bully: Scholarship Edition video for the action-adventure sandbox game that originally appeared on PS2 back in October 2006. The enhanced Bully port will be released for Wii and Xbox 360 on March 4th in America and March 7th, 2008, in Europe.

Playtime is over, its time to return to Bullworth! Watch the first Bully: Scholarship Edition video:

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Ubisoft announced the release of the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Co-op Collection, a new downloadable content (DLC) package for for the game’s Xbox 360 version. This new DLC package adds an all-new co-op campaign and a total of nine maps, seven of which are inspired by classic maps from Ghost Recon’s illustrious history and two that are totally brand new. This premium content package is available now via the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 800 Microsoft points (that’s US$10 / €9.60 / £6.80 / CAN$12.40 / AU$13.20). Take a look below for the full info and a video:

OVERVIEW: The GRAW 2 Co-op Collection consists of five Co-op Campaign missions that continue the story from GRAW 2. In total there are nine maps, seven of which are inspired by classic maps from Ghost Recon’s illustrious history and two that are totally brand new. All nine maps (including adversarial versions of the Co-op Campaign maps) have exquisite visuals and support all of GRAW 2’s thousands of customizable game modes.

ACHIEVEMENTS: The Co-op Collection offers nine new achievements for GRAW 2, totaling 125 achievement points.

VIDEO: Got what it takes to win? Lead by example in this downloadable content co-op expansion available through Xbox Live.

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Attention gore fans: Brash Entertainment has announced it has acquired the rights to make a Saw game based on grisly horror movie series Saw.

Underneath an eerie headline of ‘Oh yes.. There will be blood…’ a Brash press release sent out today reveals the title will be released in October 2009 – to coincide with the fifth film in the series coming to cinemas. The title is being developed for next-gen platforms and is being built using Epic’s Unreal 3 game engine.

Brash promises that Saw the video game “will have its own unique storyline, while answering questions left unanswered by the Saw films”. The firm says it is “working closely” with film companies Lions Gate and Twisted pictures, as well as creators of the Saw franchise, Leigh Whannell and James Wan.

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Actress Emmy Rossum, who plays Bulma in the upcoming Dragonball movie next to Chow Yun Fat’s Master Roshi, posted a funny update on her Myspace. To quote:

“I got an xbox to occupy some downtime in the trailer. I’ve never been much of a video gamer, but I like the adventure games and the shooting games might help my hand/eye coordination for the gun sequences in the film. I picked up a few games not really knowing what I was buying and when I started playing one I realized I had picked up “Stranglehold” starring Chow Yun Fat! Based on the John Woo movie “Hard Boiled,” the graphics are incredible, he jumps, flies and shoots in slow-mo, very John Woo, very cool. I feel a little shy to tell him I’m playing him on a video game, to tell him how cool it is!”
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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee goes underground with the Umbrella Corporation in Capcom’s Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. The action/shooter hybrid takes the horror series on-rails in arcade light-gun style with the Wii Remote controller. With the game recapping past Resident Evil games, it’s the perfect title for fans of the series, which is why we reviewed Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles as a 8 out of 10 game.

The game’s unintentionally hilarious dialog is equaled by Yahtzee lightning-fast ramblings in this coarse video review.

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Super Mario 64 is considered one of the greatest games of all time for a very good reason; the game is still a heck of a lot of fun even in the year 2008. Amazing, for a game released in 1996.

Super Mario 64 does so much right it’s mind-boggling. Even more so when you consider the fact that it birthed so many firsts and almost exclusively revolutionized the video game industry. The game was one of the first to be in full 3D (it was released before the original Tomb Raider) and the graphics were incredibly impressive, with crisp, vibrant colors.

It basically set the standard for all 3D games to come after it, and made strides in two areas that up until that point hadn’t become standards in the industry: Full analog control (thanks to the control stick built into the Nintendo 64 controller) and user camera control, which allowed the player to not only zoom in and out and look in “first-person”, but also rotate the camera 360 degrees around Mario.

Many trends were also got their start in Super Mario 64, particularly among 3D mascot and platformer games. Such as the whole collection craze, due to the Stars you have to collect to progress in Super Mario 64, something that even Super Mario Galaxy still retains in the same style. And this craze continued long after Super Mario 64, with even the latest platformers like the Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank franchises containing some type of collectible. Other trends include some of Mario’s moves, such as the wall jump and Mario’s infamous Butt-Stomp move, which made it’s debut here and would be copied by many other games.

Super Mario 64 has also been rediscovered by new generations of youth with it’s various re-releases. The game so far has been re-released twice: On the Nintendo DS with three additional characters and more Stars to collect on new levels, and most recently in it’s original form on the Wii Virtual Console (where you can play it with either the GameCube or Classic Controllers).

My review below is of the original Nintendo 64 version, because nothing beats playing the game with that special brand of N64 game pad.
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