Here’s a list of this weeks U.S. game releases. The most popular games are Guitar Hero: Aerosmith on Wii, Xbox 360, PS2 & PS3, and Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 on DS. On the downloadable games front we’ve got today’s Wii Shop titles Magnetica Twist and Fatal Fury 2, as well as Soulcalibur coming to Xbox Live Arcade (updates Wednesday). No word yet on any PlayStation Store games (updates Thursday).

Monday:
1 vs. 100 (DS)
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Wii, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (DS)
The Immortals of Terra (PC)

Tuesday:
AMF Bowling Pinbusters! (DS)
Ducati Moto (DS)
Purr Pals (Wii)
Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 (DS)

Wednesday:
Dungeon Runners (PC)
Fading Shadows (PSP)

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Today Nintendo adds new/classic games to the popular Wii Shop Channel. The games go live at 9AM Pacific time. Wii owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at stores like Amazon (see Card above).

We’ve included videos of each of today’s games for nostalgia’s sake or so you can see if a new game might be to your liking.

This week’s new WiiWare game is:

Magnetica Twist (Nintendo, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone-Comic Mischief, 1,000 Wii Points = $10): The classic puzzle game Magnetica is now available on WiiWare , putting its own unique “twist” on the puzzle-game experience. You’re surrounded by marbles, marching slowly but surely down a track. Use a launcher (piloted by a Mii of your choice) to shoot marbles with matching colors and wipe them out before they reach the end of the track. Control couldn’t be simpler, as all you need to do is twist the Wii Remote controller to aim and press the A button to shoot. And the game play remains as addictive and deep as you’ve come to expect in Nintendo’s puzzle games, with five varied play modes, advanced mechanics such as the ability to lob marbles, and a never-ending supply of combos. This definitely isn’t your typical game of marbles.

This week’s new Virtual Console game is:

Fatal Fury 2 Read more…

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At E3 in May 2002, LucasArts public relations manager Tom Sarris stated that “they are definitely going to make Monkey Island 5 since it is their most popular franchise. However, we shouldn’t expect it in the near future.” At the same show ex-LEC president Simon Jeffrey had this to say about a possible Monkey Island 5: “At some point in the future, there will undoubtedly be more Monkey Island games. No doubt about that.”

Later that year PC Gamer magazine asked Tom Sarris again if there are any other popular franchises that LucasArts will re-visit? To which he answered: “There’ll definitely be another Monkey Island game. You’ve seen four incredibly well-done versions of Monkey Island, and there’s an immense amount of stories that remain to be told within that series.” This lead to claims by the magazine that “The Spy’s LucasArts informers let the monkey out of the bag: there is, apparently, a fifth Monkey Island game in production. The adventure genre continues to cheat death,” cites Scummbar. Another Monkey Island fansite mentions an issue of CVG magazine, where Mr. Sarris explained the sequel possibilities in more detail. To quote him: “I’d say that they’re extremely viable properties for us to tap into in the future, in the same way that we’re doing with Sam & Max. There’s no reason why we can’t adapt those to another generation of games players. I think there are stories that still remain to be told within Monkey Island and Grim Fandango.”

In 2006, LucasArts director Jim Ward jokingly added that he will make the fifth game in 2015, according to an archived Wikipedia quote. That’s the last time anyone at LucasArts ever publicly spoke about the game.

But what will happen to the series now that LucasArts fired 100 out of its 350 employees in early June 2008? It’s said it was the team that just finished Lego Indiana Jones. Later in June the company fired more of its internal developers who were work on finishing up Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. What’s even worse about this is that these key developers include several long-time members who worked on classic LucasArts titles like Star Wars: X-Wing (1993), Full Throttle (1995), and Grim Fandango (1998) according to a Joystiq source.

Unless an external studio is hired to work on Monkey Island 5, it looks like the game will not be created.

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Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is set two years after the events of Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo GameCube. The Wii-exclusive has a release date in America on November 1st, 2008.

Dawn of the New World follows the journey of two new young heroes, Emil Castagnier and Marta Lualdi, as they seek to uncover the mystery of why their world has fallen into ruin. In their quest, their paths will cross with the original cast of Tales of Symphonia (including Lloyd and Colette) as well as a summon spirit known as Ratatosk who claims to be the lord of all monsters.

Dawn of the New World introduces a new monster recruitment feature in which players can capture more than 200 unique enemies and train them to actively participate in battle. Players can then feed these monsters to make them more effective, and even evolve them into several new fearsome forms. The game also features an updated real-time battle system that lets players move freely in all directions around the battlefield, execute powerful unison attacks and take advantage of a new elemental alignment system for even more strategic depth.

Check Tales of Symphonia 2 out in action in this Japanese first video of the RPG.

Read more…

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A new video for a Far Cry 2 demo clocks in at 24 minutes and extensively shows off the game world. Skip to the bottom of the page to watch it right away, read on for more info on what’s being shown in the video.

In case you haven’t heard, Far Cry 2 is entirely open-ended and non-linear (like Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Just Cause or STALKER), instead of using individual maps. It takes place in a sprawling, nondescript land in Africa with all different types of terrain. The gameplay area is huge, at around 50km2. The environment is extremely realistic as well; The team actually spent 2 weeks in several locations in Africa filming and photographic the native wildlife in order to use the animal and environmental footage to create extremely realistic environments.

The protagonist of previous Far Cry games, Jack Carver, will not be featured in this game. Instead you get nine different characters, each unique with a different look and backstory. Whoever you don’t pick to play as becomes NPC friends of yours in the game.

The goal of the player’s character will be to find and assassinate “The Jackal”, an arms dealer that has been selling weapons to both sides of the conflict that’s tearing apart a small fictional African country. The way this is done, however is entirely up to the player, being possible to ally with anyone he/she chooses.

Various factions and vehicles will be featured; enemies will include human mercenaries, but sci-fi creatures such as the mutants from Far Cry will not be featured. Furthermore, the player’s feral abilities introduced in Far Cry Instincts and its expansions will not be returning in Far Cry 2. A dynamic weather system has been added that varies the weather based on the players ability - if the player is doing exceptionally well the sky will be clear and sunny, but if problems arise the sky will become dark and stormy.

Graphical updates include extremely realistic breaking of trees and vegetation, even topping that of the first game, including the ability to shoot leaves and branches off trees. The trees themselves can even grow back. The game also features the dynamic propagation of fire and volumetric wind effects capable of breaking vegetation and spreading fire. And naturally, man-made objects and building are highly destructible as well.

Far Cry 2 will be much more realistic with the player having to use a map and compass to get around, and more life or death related features such as having to use tools to dig bullets out of the body and pat themselves down when on fire. Several species of African wildlife can be encountered in the game, and will be able to distract the enemy as well as make them aware of your presence.

In the video below, Ubisoft developers also showcased some new game play mechanics, such as weapon jamming, vehicle damage, propagating fire, destructible environments, adaptive enemy artificial intelligence, as well as day and night cycles, and dynamic weather. Check it out:

Via Bigdownload

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X-Play visited with Kari Wahlgren to show you what a day is like in the life of a voice over artist who is voicing, what else, video games!

Although you may not recognize her name, you will DEFINITELY recognize her voice, as she has voiced characters from between 50 to 60 different video game titles (she herself has lost track), including: Jeane from No More Heroes, Sonia from Ninja Gaiden II, Ashe from Final Fantasy XII, Young Jenny in The Darkness, Kasumi in Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, various Xenosaga characters, Setsuka from Soulcalibur III, Lady from Devil May Cry 3, Raine Sage from Tales of Symphonia and much more. She even did voices for female soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 4! As well as a host of other jobs including cartoons and anime.

Via N4G

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We Love Golf for Wii is scheduled for release on July 15th, and if you pre-order now at Gamestop, Game Crazy, Circuit City, Toys R Us, the Official Capcom Store, and several other retailers you will get a free red, zippy storage baggy to hold your Wii Remote. It can even hook on to your keychain or belt for easy carrying to a friends house! Or who knows, maybe you can tote the Wii Remote with you 24/7 wherever you go. Even sleep with it. Since it now has it’s own little sleeping bag. I’m sure the Wii makes a great bed-fellow.

Ahem. Not that I’d know anything about that . . . Oh and by the way, the Wii Remote is NOT included. But still, it’s a cool little bonus that will definitely make golfing fans happy. Personally I wouldn’t mind having one of those little carrying cases for all four of my Wii Remotes.

Here’s a We Love Golf producer walkthrough video which shows off the modes, characters and gameplay. The American version will have two new characters added to the line-up for a total of 48, including “star” characters from other popular Capcom games such as Chun Li and Ryu from Street Fighter, Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, Zack from Zack & Wiki and characters from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney 4!

Via Capcom

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The organizers of the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) have announced show exhibitors and programming details for this year’s show. PAX is the next big game event after E3 and has grown into one of the most exciting events, after E3 shrank in size. E3 is held from July 15-17th.

In addition to seeing pre-release games on the show floor, attendees (anyone can attend) can expect a lots of panels, the Omegathon gaming competition, tournaments, an independent video games showcase, nerdcore rock concerts and the ECTO-1 of Ghostbusters fame (just in case you needed more nerd than you can handle).

“We nearly doubled our exhibition hall and added another 80,000 square feet of content overall, so the show is going to be pretty amazing this year,” said Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo. “You should come. I think you would like it.”

Exhibitors confirmed for the show include:
* 1up.com
* 2K Games
* Activision
* Bethesda
* Bioware
* Blizzard
* Bungie
* Cryptic Studios
* D3P
* Destineer
* EA Mythic
* Electronic Arts
* Foundation 9 Entertainment
* Gamecock
* Garage Games
* Harmonix
* Hothead Games
* Hudson
* Microsoft
* Midway
* Namco Bandai
* NCsoft
* Nintendo
* Nokia
* Rockstar
* Sierra/Vivendi
* Sony
* SouthPeak Games
* THQ
* Turbine
* Ubisoft

PAX 2008 will be held Aug 29 - 31 at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle.

PAX 2008 tickets range in price from $25 to $50 dollars. Early-bird registration is now open, so if you plan to attend, then get your tickets early! Cause they are sure to sell out fast.

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Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a sports game developed and published by Sega for North America and Europe and published by Nintendo for Japan. It was released on the Wii in November of 2007 and the DS in early 2008. The game is officially licensed by the International Olympic Committee through exclusive licensee International Sports Multimedia.

It was the first official game of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to be released, with a more realistic sports game (Beijing 2008) to be later released by Sega in 2008.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was a big success for Sega selling over 5 million copies worldwide since it’s release last November.

The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics will run from August 8th to August 24th at the Beijing National Stadium in Beijing, China. Watch the new Wii ad.

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Microsoft has released a workaround that allows Xbox 360 owners to transfer licenses, i.e. Xbox Live Arcade games and other downloadable content from the Marketplace (the exception being rented movies, make sure to watch them first), from your old Xbox 360 to a new one.

It used to be that whatever you bought on Xbox Live and downloaded to your 360, was attached to THAT specific console, as opposed to being attached to your Xbox Live account. This meant that if you got another Xbox 360, the only way to access your downloadable content from your other system was to log onto Xbox Live with the GamerTag that originally purchased that content.

Now Microsoft has released said workaround that allows you to transfer your files from one system to another (though you will still have to redownload them to actually get them on the system). To do so you must be able to connect to a computer that has Internet access and then sign onto Xbox Live with your 360.

The catch is that this process can only be performed once every 12 months. And Microsoft has reiterated that it’s only necessary for those people who have purchased a new Xbox 360 console, and isn’t necessary for repaired or refurbished systems.

Watch the video demonstration License Transfer Tool to see exactly how to do it:

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