First the bad news…

By way of Joe, we find out Civil War #4 and #5 have been delayed over a month from their original ship date. As if that wasn’t bad enough, all the tie-in books like Fantastic 4, Frontline, Punisher, and Spider-Man have been delayed too. Newsarama has the full run down.

I don’t think it would be unfair to be upset with Marvel for not only the delay but the last minute notification. I mean a lot of fans aren’t going to find out this has slipped until they walk into the shop tomorrow and find their pull box bare. Given the magnitude of the slip and the number of titles involved, I’d say Marvel knew this was going to happen and didn’t want to tell us. For shame.

On a comparitivly optimistic note, the revamp Justice Leage of America #1 has only been delayed until next week, August 23rd.

Writer/Mastermind Brad Meltzer has posted on his blog. That DC informed him of the slip but didn’t provide an explaination. Eager to not disappoint, Meltzer informs fans “One more week. They promised. If not, we revolt and I send out the scans online.”

JLA readers do get a bonus, the first chapter from Meltzer’s new novel “The Book of Fate“

This past week Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting became the fastest selling Xbox Live Arcade game so far, but Street Fighter fans need look no further than this enthusiastic cosplayer who invaded Otakon to celebrate their favorite franchise.

vid courtesy tentopet

The biggest event in gaming may be gone for good.

Cost, over crowding, and undue stress on developers to get games ready for the show are all a factor in an announcement expected to be made monday morning, July 31st.

Next-Gen says the convention is to be done with altogether, and replaced with multiple yearly events for publishers. Gamespot says it will simply be shrunk to a press only event.

Until we get an official press statement from ESA’s Doug Lowenstein, enjoy the baseless rumor mongering and over excited reactionaries of the blogosphere:
4CR: E3 Gone Kaput?
Joystiq: E3 cancelled for next year and beyond
Kotaku: E3 Cancelled?!
NeoGAF: E3 Cancelled for Next Year and “Forseeable Future”?
Powet: e 3 Cancelled?

1UP’s Jenn Frank reports on the launch party for the new PSP exclusive Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. Held at Sony’s Metreon center in San Fransisco, PSP toting fans weren’t as prevalent as hardcore arcade competition players. She’s rather amazed that arcade fighters have such a devoted following, and talks about the community as if it were some kind of fringe thing.

I’m not exactly new to this scene(see: Chicago), but I’m weirded out that a games journalist could be barely aware of the fighter community. Fighters like Tekken would fall off the face of the earth without the annual, monthly and even weekly events fans organize. I mean, you can’t play against the computer for very long before getting bored, and your non fighting game friends stop playing if you beat them enough times. Thats why these competitive events exist.

You get to like a game and you’ve gotta find people who will play with you, even if they’re not always friends. And the more specific your taste, the harder it is to get a game going. Running with Soul Calibur and Tekken players doesn’t mean they’ll play Virtua Fighter or Street Fighter III. And while DOA, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter have all migrated online in the past few years, the split second timing required for fighters has kept a lot of them off Xbox Live or other services. Who can blame them? Maybe as broadband speeds increase over the years this will change, but for right now, the only way to fight real fighting game fans is at events.

Retro Gaming with racketboy has graciously decided to share some classic game magazines with those of us who missed them or just want to remember good times.
PDF: Sega Visions Magazine – Summer 1991
PDF: Nintendo Power #1 – Jul-Aug 1988
PDF: Playstation Magazine #1 – September 1997

Update: While we all thought the magazines would be a fun read, who knew they would yeild this kind of pertinent info–
Kotaku: Sony Pulls Rumble… from the Playstation! Apparently, Sony announced they were going to not included rumble in their original Playstation Dual Analog pad because of a patent dispute with Immersion Technologies. Sony went ahead with the DualShock anyway, the rest is history.
Joystiq: CliffyB, the retro gaming god. A sharp reader spotted the name Cliff Blezinski as the having the top score in Super Mario Bros on NES, and one email later confirmed that it is in fact Cliff Bleszinski aka “Cliffy B” now of Epic Games and lead for Microsoft’s winter tentpole, Gears Of War!

According their official website the new Gargoyles comic was meant to be released this past Wednesday June 14th 2006… yet here we are. According to more reliable sources it will in fact be released this coming Wednesday, June 21st 2006. After such a time I will have a proper review. Until then please enjoy this stupid review of old crap mainly the old Gargoyles comic, a French Gargoyles comic or “Bande Desiné” as we call them and also a colouring book (seriously aDam? A colouring book?)

As the video resolution is fairly sub par I have included a few sample high mediocre quality scans of the reviewed items.

The biggest gaming event of the year is apparently so big, news from it is still being reported on.
First, look how fast the Wii ejects!
The big hit of the show was not the Wii, but the GameCube! The devkit for the new Nintendo system is based so closely on the prior generation that demo units for the Nintendo Booth were made up of just a stock black gamecube with a couple modifications to utilize the controller!
Kotaku also sat down with Miyamoto for a good 25 minute interview and he address all the next-gen hot topics.
IGN and GameTrailers have also compiled best-of-E3 lists that kinda surprise. I mean obviously Halo 3, Smash Brothers, etc took a lot of the glory, but those games weren’t playable and had only a small actual showing. IGN hands the award to Bioshock, a game I totally missed last week. GameTrailers says Assassin’s Creed, which was announced for PS3, but anyone who got to play will be quick to tell you that they were holding an Xbox 360 controller to do so (Ubisoft says they haven’t announced a 360 port yet, but considering its already running on a 360, I’d say its a safe bet!)
Last, and least surprisingly, Karima Adebibe (the rookie model currently cast as Lara Croft) tells CNN how she handles the smell and numbers of fanboys at E3.