Before Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, Republic Commando, heck, even X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, there was the Super Star Wars trilogy. Solid 2-d platforming action similar to Super Castlevania, multiple playable characters, a near-perfect recreation of the film’s original score, and mode 7 vehicle sequences helped to bring the original trilogy to gaming consoles in a way that couldn’t be matched to this day. The difficulty was high, but it was on a Ninja Gaiden level where your pitfalls would only make you want to try that much harder to get through the games. Yeah, we rave about how good Lego Star Wars, but this is the best interpretation of the original trilogy that doesn’t involve kid’s toys or advanced gaming technologies.

Instead of simply porting over Unreal Championship 2004 on the PC, Epic Games (you know them from “Gears of War”) decided to take a different approach to the next Xbox iteration of its Xbox FPS fragfest. From Doom’s chainsaw to Halo’s energy sword, melee combat has always been a part of FPS combat. This time however, hand-to-hand combat skills are just as important as your l33t sniper skills. Shooting at your opponent isn’t enough, now you have to learn how to pull off combos, reflect shots, and use special attacks just like in a fighting game. There are several characters to choose from, each with different abilities and techniques. Along with the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes, there is also the new nali slaughter mode, in which you have to kill more Nali creatures than your opponent. Single player modes include tournament ladders for each character, challenge mode, and the story based “Rites of Ascension”, which tells the story of Anubis, one of the game’s characters. Of course, you can also take the game on Xbox Live as well, and you can even grab the free downloadable content (including new characters and arenas) while you’re at it.

Toys based on video games is still a woefully untapped and underserved market. Even massively popular lines like Halo 2 from Joyride don’t make it much further than stores that sell video games (even Toys R Us stocked them near the Xbox games).

Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have a release date, but the 12″ Solid Snake (picutred) will be out in November. He’s pretty detailed, and employs some advanced action figure technology to keep his body in realistic posts, which sounds nice but its really a shady way of saying he’s not getting double jointed limbs. Couldn’t find a price point, and Medicom is a Japanese toy company so be prepared to pay brutal import prices.

NECA has a handful of figures already out based on Eidos properties: Tomb Raider Legend, Hitman, and Legacy of Kain. They also announced at Toy Fair they’ll have some Resident Evil figures out by September, and Castlevania in October. Simon Belmont will be based on the NES box art, but Alucard, Dracula, and Succubus will be styled after Symphony Of The Night.

First 4 Figures has a Metroid license, but seem intent on making statues too expensive to buy on a whim. Zero Suit Samus will retail for $109. An excellent likeness, and sure to be the pride of your basement collection. They’re also stamping out Zelda statues. Why not make me a proper 6″ Varia Suit Samus Aran action figure and some Space Pirates, F4F?

SOTA Toys will have some Darkstalkers to add to their Street Fighter line. Dimitri and Lord Raptor will be out late spring 2007.

Its really frustrating that theres still no line that conforms to a scale and offers more than the most obvious characters as figures. Getting ONLY Snake or ONLY Lara Croft seems odd. Even Mario brought some supporting characters to Happy meals.

Theres a fair number of Marvel fans and a fair number of Transformer fans around here. Both should be pleased to hear this: The long rumored crossover book between the Avengers and Transformers is a reality.

Comics Continuum reports:
“Stuart Moore and Tyler Kirkham are the creative team for the Transformers/Avengers crossover between IDW Publishing and Marvel. Look for more on that book soon here in The Continuum.”

Direct and to the point. No word on whether this is a “team-up” or a “versus” or what. This is of course, not the first time Transformers have found their way into the Marvel Universe. The original comic series was published by Marvel, and issue #3 guest starred Spider-Man.

Thanks to Shiv’kala for the tip.

The New York Comic-Con reached the end of its first day, and there’s been a flurry of newsbits, largely focusing on World War Hulk for Marvel, and Countdown for DC. Here’s the rundown:

MARVEL:

• World War Hulk will bring us a number of minis including World War Hulk (this being the main series)…
• World War Hulk: X-Men, written by Cristos Gage, art by Andrea DiVito – In it, the Hulk hunts for Professor X, despite (because of?) the fact that Xavier wasn’t there at the meeting where they decided to boot the Hulk to space.
• World War Hulk: Frontline – This will be very much like Civil War: Frontline, only I imagine the quality-of-storytelling gap between the two won’t be nearly so vast this time around. Again, it will be written by Paul Jenkins with an army of artists at hand.
• World War Hulk: Gamma Corps & World War Hulk: Young Avengers are also announced, but lacking details.
• The new Thor series will launch in July of this year. JMS is still on as writer, with Oliver Coipel on art.
• As has been announced previously, a New Warriors book will be coming out, starting in June. Writer will be Kevin Grevioux, art by Paco Medina.
• MarvelousNews.com has images up of Spider Man 3 movie figures, Fantastic Four 2 movie figures, Spider-Man 3 Minimates, Marvel Zombies Minimates, Marvel Legends Icons Wave 2, and the Hasbro Marvel Legends Wave 3. Not pictured are the previously announced X-Men III Colossus, WWII Captain America, WWII Bucky, and a Hydra Soldier.

DC:

• There’s really only 5 big points to hit on from the DC panel from today, and they can all be capsulated in image form. Images mirrored from Newsarama’s coverage.

Meandering across message boards, as I do, I happened upon a link to a couple of cool customs. These customs were made from scratch and are based on the Transformers Generation 1 cartoon versions of Wheelie and Cyclonus. Check them out! They are surprisingly faithful to the original concept.

 

I went by my local comic shop on Wednesday to pick up the final issue of Civil War and the new Immortal Iron Fist and to my surprise, I found DC Minimates! While I didn’t pick any up on this trip, I did manage to score a free poster showing some of the upcoming figures and when they are expected to be released. Start hunting DC and Minimate fans!

• There’s minimal to report at the moment – just lots of room to speculate – but Warner has hired Kiernan and Michele Mulroney (who and who?) to write a script for a Justice League movie. I wonder, if they actually get those Wonder Woman and Flash movies out the door, are the leads (like Brandon Routh and Christian Bale) going to be up for parts in it? I’d imagine the budget couldn’t allow for it, but it’s fun to think about. Ooh, but if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get Giffen, Dematteis, & Maguire’s Detriot League! (Dare to dream, friends, dare to dream.)
• In case you missed that animated Invincible Iron Man movie, you have a chance to see it for free on Cartoon Network on Saturday, March 3rd.
• Again we turn to Cartoon Network, which will be premeiring the second Hellboy animated feature, Hellboy: Blood & Iron on Saturday, March 10th. I missed the first one, but hopefully I’ll be a little more on-the-ball for this one.