Phantom Brave was released in America on August 31st, 2004 with two editions available. The Phantom Brave - Special Edition came with a free soundtrack CD but a shortened instruction booklet when compared to the normal edition.

Phantom Brave was Nippon Ichi’s fourth release in the U.S. following Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure for PS1 and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and La Pucelle: Tactics for PS2. Games with which Nippon Ichi had seen significant sales success (particularly with Disagea).

Now without further ado, to the review!

Story

In the year of 913, in a world called Ivoire, lives Marona, a 13 year old orphaned girl with a special ability to communicate with phantoms. Her ability brings resentment from others, but cheerful and optimistic Marona is not bothered. Marona believes in her parents’ teachings that people will one day come to like her as long as she stays compassionate and kind. Now Marona travels throughout Ivoire with her guardian, Ash the Phantom, taking jobs somewhat similar to a bounty hunter.

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Guilty Gear 2: Overture is a complete re-imagining of the Guilty Gear franchise that takes the series in some surprising directions and is expected for release in the U.S. on September 30th (set for fall 2008) for the Xbox 360.

The game is a mix of third-person action a la Devil May Cry 4 and real-time strategy (yes, RTS) elements as well as some other mixtures for something completely different than what fighting fans would expect from the Guilty Gear name. It’s also super fast paced and just as crazy as ever.

The game features troops that you can control in order to take points of a map or destroy that level (or your opponents, up to four in online multiplayer) Master Ghost unit.

There is a cast of six playable characters in Guilty Gear 2: Overture who are your “Commanders”. As well as two other characters featured in the game.

Click on the pictures of each character’s artwork (or name) below to see a much larger picture pop up.

Playable Characters:

1. Dr. Paradigm

Dr. Paradigm (voice actor: Yuji Mikimoto) is a sentient Gear that is styled after a Chinese dragon. He carries around a book of magic spells and along with some fellow Gears was sealed away in The Backyard so that Justice could not control him.

2. Izuna

Izuna (voice actor: Toru Furusawa) is a the spirit of a fox who was exiled from “The Backyard”, another plane of existence. Izuna first appears as a voice in Sol and Sin’s heads when they are attacked by a mysterious new enemy. He teaches Sol about the new enemy (which acts as the game’s tutorial) and later travels the lands with Sol and Sin.
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Electronic Arts will celebrate Command & Conquer: Red Alert’s 13th Anniversary by giving away the original Red Alert as a free download, compatible for Windows XP! The same version was included with the RTS collectors pack Command & Conquer: The First Decade. But if you didn’t get that, then from Sunday, August 31st 2008, you’ll be able to download it directly from www.redalert3.com starting 12:00 AM Pacific Time for an undetermined period.

Electronic Arts also announced that you’ll get a free copy of Red Alert 2 if you pre-order Red Alert 3 via the EA Store, GameStop or Best Buy. That pre-order also includes desktop wallpapers from women in the game, a Red Alert series retrospective, and an exclusive multiplayer map.

This old Red Alert 1 trailer shows what to expect: classic RTS goodness and campy cutscenes.

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What are the best-selling games in America, Japan, and Europe (UK) this week? Thanks to Amazon online sales data here are the games that are the most popular now.

Nintendo Wii
North America: 1. Wii Fit (Nintendo), 2. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo), 3. Mario Super Sluggers (Nintendo), 4. Wii Play (Nintendo), 5. Rock Band (Electronic Arts).

Japan: 1. Wii Fit (Nintendo), 2. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo), 3. Captain Rainbow (Nintendo), 4. Wii Sports (Nintendo), 5. Fatal Frame IV (Nintendo).

Europe: 1. Wii Fit (Nintendo), 2. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Electronic Arts), 3. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo), 4. Wii Play (Nintendo), 5. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Sega).

Xbox 360
North America: 1. Tales of Vesperia - Premium Edition (Namco Bandai), 2. Tales of Vesperia (Namco Bandai), 3. Madden NFL 09 (Electronic Arts), 4. Too Human (Microsoft), 5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Electronic Arts).

Japan: 1. Tales of Vesperia (Namco), 2. Clannad (Prototype), 3. Too Human (Microsoft), 4. SoulCalibur IV (Namco Bandai), 5. Dead Rising - Platinum Edition (Capcom).

Europe: 1. Too Human (Microsoft), 2. Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar), 3. Beijing 2008 (Sega), 4. Halo 3 (Microsoft), 5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Electronic Arts).

PlayStation 3
North America: 1. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Sony), 2. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (Sony), 3. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (Sony), 4. Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom), 5. Blazing Angels II: Secret Missions of WWII (Ubisoft).

Japan: 1. Afrika (Sony), 2. Battlefield: Bad Company (Electronic Arts), 3. SoulCalibur IV (Namco), 4. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Special Edition (Konami), 5. Valkyrie of the Battlefield: Gallian Chronicles (Sega).

Europe: 1. Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar), 2. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Sony), 3. Beijing 2008 (Sega), 4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Electronic Arts), 5. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (Konami).

PlayStation 2 Read more…

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The Penny Arcade Expo 2008 (PAX 2008) will be running all weekend, from August 29th to August 31st.

The PAX expo has really grown by leaps and bounds the past few years and this year promises to be even bigger than last. In some ways the show is on track to become as important an annual convention as E3 was.

And that means that lots and lots of games will be on display and playable to anyone at the show, which is open to the public. And many of those games will be making their first public appearance.

Here is the list of what Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are showing at PAX 2008.
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Bionic Commando: Rearmed has sold 130,000 downloadable copies in only 1 week says Capcom! That’s quite the achievement for a downloadable title and Capcom has to be quite pleased to see the remake of their classic NES game do so well.

The game is available for PC, Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network and sales were across all three platforms.

Producer Ben Judd was quite elated and had this to say:

“Holy fiddlesticks,” Judd proclaims in his post. “That may not seem impressive compared to package titles that sell in the millions but compared to other digital titles that is a friggin’ JUGGERNAUT!

“And while, it’s great to have my first title be not only a critically acclaimed one but also a financial success, there is a bigger picture at play here that we need to look at. Consumers voted with their dollars. They basically have sent the message loud and clear:

We are tired of meta-emulated crap.
We want the titles of yesteryear to be paid the proper respect.
We want them done right.
And if the price is right, we’ll buy.”

Personally I think it’s great to see Bionic Commando: Rearmed doing so well. Hopefully it’ll help to raise the bar for remakes of classic games even higher. And not only that, I hope it makes Nintendo and Capcom both realize that Bionic Commando SHOULD come to the Wii Virtual Console! Forget anything that’s already happened, it’s such a classic that the game simply MUST come!

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There’s a hilarious Mercenaries 2 “Oh No You Didn’t” TV commercial that’s making the rounds and tremendously helping to get the word out about the incredible open-world action extravaganza.

The ad features a unique, all-new song that was created just for the ad! It became so popular that developer Pandemic Studios and publisher EA Games are even offering an Oh No You Didn’t Mercenaries 2 song download for FREE! Burn it to a CD and start banging the song in your trunk to really attract curious on-lookers so you can point them in the direction of open-world action game heaven.

In all seriousness, the ad is very effective and the song is pretty catchy. A friend of mine even told me she was humming it all day long and couldn’t get out of her head. Enough so that her boyfriend was about to dis-own her when she started looking up the video on her cell phone. If that’s not good advertising, I don’t know WHAT is. See what all the fuss is about in the video below.

Mercenaries 2: World In Flames releases tomorrow in America for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PC. And in Europe on September 5th.

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Any gamer who has followed the industry for some time will remember the classic “Booth Babes”, pretty ladies who were dressed up to show off whatever video games or peripherals they were packing . . . er, that is, that the video game companies they work for were showing off.

But a practice that started in Japan has since become less and less in most gaming conventions of recent years, and has been all out banned in some conventions (typically to portray to the watching world a more professional image of the video game industry as a whole).

Europe however, will have none of it! As the below video proves, Booth Babes were in full force at the recent Games Convention 2008 in Leipzig, Germany. Don’t watch if you’re adverse to incredibly beautiful women walking around in incredibly skimpy outfits.

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Hack, slash, and smash your way to victory in this red-hot arcade adventure from the award-winning development studio, The Behemoth. Featuring hand-drawn characters, Castle Crashers delivers unique hi-res illustrated visuals. Play with up to three friends locally or over Xbox Live and discover the mind-boggling magic and mystery in the amazing world created just for you. Save your princess, defend your kingdom, and crash some castles! Play with more than 20 unlockable characters, 40 weapons to customize your hero, and an arsenal of combos and magical attacks to choose from.

It isn’t too often that you see a good retro-themed game hit the market - does Castle Crashers live up to the challenge? Find out in this Castle Crashers video review.

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Gold Farming: -verb- A general term for an MMORPG (Massively Muliplayer Online RPG) activity in which a player attempts to acquire (”farm”) items of value within a game, usually by exploiting repetitive elements of the game’s mechanics. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items. An organization which organizes farmers is known as a sweatshop.

The BBC has reported that gold farming, a practice much despised by most MMO players, is a $500 million dollar global business, employing a half-million people.

They cite research conducted by Professor Richard Heeks of Manchester University, reporting that 80% of worldwide gold farming is based in China. Workers there earn about $145 per month for their efforts.

Explaining his research, Heeks said:

I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It’s just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands. I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it’s a significant phenomenon that academics and development organizations are unaware of. It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld. Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the “Third World” far more than we typically realize.”

Heeks maintains that the worldwide gold farming business has already surpassed the annual revenue of India’s booming software outsourcing market!

Meanwhile, Secure Play exec Steven Davis doesn’t expect an end to gold farming anytime soon:

“When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet. You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction.”

Via GamePolitics

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