This is not to be confused with the fan favorite PC and Dreamcast game Soldier of Fortune. Soldiers of Fortune is the name given to the USA Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis release of the Amiga cult hit The Chaos Engine, which was developed and published by UK developers The Bitmap Brothers. It was also ported to the RISC OS, the Amiga CD32, and the Atari ST. Soldiers of Fortune is a 2-player top-down shooter in the vein of Ikari Warriors with a few elements borrowed from Gauntlet, and some alternate history science fiction thrown in for good measure.
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It was revealed earlier today by Namco Bandai that a third Star Wars character will be making an appearance in the upcoming Soul Calibur IV game, due out in July, in the form of Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice from the game Star Wars: Force Unleashed.

“The Secret Apprentice is a great fit for Soulcalibur, a franchise known for its over-the-top characters and frenzied fighting action,” said Haden Blackman, project lead for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed at LucasArts. “We’re extremely proud to give fighting fans a sneak peek at one of the most intriguing new Star Wars videogame characters in a long time.”

Along with Darth Vader himself, exclusive to the Playstation 3 version of the game, and Yoda, exclusive to the 360 version, the “Starkiller” will be available for both versions. For those of you who are out of the loop, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a next-gen Star Wars video game that takes place between the films Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It is a multimedia project developed by LucasArts along with Dark Horse Comics, Lego, Hasbro, and Del Rey Books due out in September of 2008.

We have a new Hulk movie coming out this summer, and Sega is supplying us the prerequisite tie-in game to go along with it. Here is hope that it’s good, but with the flop of the recent Iron Man game, Marvel fans may have to prepare for the worst. However, there is a bit of hope for it, as preliminary screens indicate that the game resembles this 2005 classic from Radical and Sierra. That can be considered somewhat of a good thing too, as Ultimate Destruction was the first really good Hulk game. It helped bring players into the role of the Hulk the same way that Activision’s Spider-man 2 video game did. It (along with Scarface:The World Is Yours which came a year later) also proved that Radical entertainment was adept of creating good open-world experiences that weren’t rip offs of Grand Theft Auto.

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Tecmo’s Team Ninja is bringing the highly anticipated Ninja Gaiden 2 to Xbox 360 very soon. What better way to celebrate than to take a look back to the very beginning, when Ninja Gaiden was at the peak of its popularity on the 8-bit Nintendo? Even back then, Ninja Gaiden was known for its cutting-edge action gameplay, catchy music, and punishing difficulty. After three well-received games on the NES, a game boy spin off , various Sega-developed games featuring the title, and a Super Nintendo compilation pack of the three NES games, the most we would ever see of the series would be Ryu Hayabusa’s appearance among the cast of the Dead or Alive series. When the Xbox was nearing its release, one of the games announced for it was Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden, an all new game unrelated to any previous game in the series. It would finally see a release in 2004, and became as much of a favorite among Xbox players as the originals had been among Nintendo players. The Xbox game took what was awesome about the NES games and bought it into 3-d. As a nod back to it’s past, it even included the three NES games as unlockables. Lets take a look now at this franchise’s 8-bit roots.

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Ubisoft showed this scene with no set up and no announcement at their Ubidays Conference today. While clever game journalists were quick to identify “The Pig” as Uncle Pey’j from Beyond Good & Evil, theres very little happening in this preview. Is the unseen woman with the umbrella Jade? Wheres the aliens? Wasn’t their world mostly covered with water?
Its possible that the game isn’t not going to be called “Beyond Good & Evil 2” but without a doubt, we’re actually getting a sequel. Fans, you actually won this one. Ubisoft listened to demand and now even though BG&E wasn’t a platnium seller, we’re going to get a next gen follow up. Lets make sure this one sells well so we won’t have to spend 4+ years worrying about whether the story gets told.

I’ve touched on this a few times with the topic of feminism in games, but I think this guy does the topic justice more than I have.

After the cut, another video Daniel Floyd made about Storytelling.
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In the world of 3-d fighting, there are two kings: Namco (Tekken and Soul Calibur) and Sega’s AM2 (Virtua Fighter). Tecmo’s Team Ninja and its Dead Or Alive franchise is closely behind the two, and is quickly gaining steam. Although Dead Or Alive has been criticized for it’s more simplistic play mechanics and heavy focus on the female form, it has earned praise for it’s envelope-pushing graphics, gorgeous backdrops, awesome looking player models, and robust online system. While DOA may not be a huge innovator in the fighting world, Team Ninja’s fighting franchise becomes deeper and more enjoyable with each iteration, and the series’s first appearance on the Xbox 360 is no different.

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It would seem like the recent revelations of “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe” isn’t the only oddly-matched versus title in the works. In an interesting twist, “Tatsunoko vs. CAPCOM: Cross Generation of Heroes” is in development for an arcade release in Japan in winter of this year. A article in the upcoming issue of Weekly Famitsu Magazine will reveal more tidbits about the game.

For those who might not be anime buffs, Tatsunoko is an anime production studio famous for classic animes such as Speed Racer, Gatchaman (Battle of Planets), and also provided animation work on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Whether Capcom means to include a lineup similar to it’s “Marvel vs.” games or not has yet to be confirmed, but one can simply imagine the thought of Speed attempting to beat Ryu senseless with a tire iron. Or maybe that’s just me. Regardless, it’s hard not to think that such a game isn’t grasping at straws in terms of good versus material, but given the aforementioned MK vs. DC game, I suppose nothing is out of the question for game developers these days.