The store that offers you $10 for a game they’ll sell for $40. The store that asks you buy a strategy guide and a subscription to GameInformer with every purchase. The store that berates you for not pre-ordering.

They took in $5 Billion last year.

I want you to think about that the next time that pimply pencilneck clerk tries to sell you an opened game at full price.

Back in September I said the next LEGO game and the next Batman game were going to be one and the same.

Today the news is official. Warner Bros Interactive will publish and Traveller’s Tales will develop LEGO Batman for all consoles and PC.

Thankfully, they promise to maintain some of the elements that made LEGO Star Wars great, namely the co-op multiplayer as Batman and Robin, along with Free Play using unlocked secret characters. At last, The Joker will be playable in a video game!

Full Press Release follows. [Read the rest of this entry…]

WIRED Magazine has just released their annual list spotlighting the best and brightest companies in tech.

The Wired 40 this year puts Nintendo on the list for the first time at an astounding #6. Microsoft, unstoppable juggernaut of the industry they are, barely made the list at #40. Don’t feel too bad for them: Sony didn’t make the list at all. Google and Apple retain their 1 & 2 spots from last year.

Bonus: a lenticular cover featuring The Office‘s Jenna Fischer.

Perhaps one of the last great Super Nintendo platformers, Kirby Super Star went above and beyond other games of its kind in terms of content. While most games simply offered huge overworld maps, this game divided its content up into 9 different games, each with their own distinct gameplay features. Although it can be beaten in a weekend, the game is still one of the best in the series. For those of you who don’t know about Kirby, he’s a little pink puff ball who swallows enemies. He can then either take on their powers for himself or spit out the enemy for use as a helper character, who can then be controlled by a second player.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

One of the best kept secrets of the original Sega Saturn was the Panzer Dragoon series. It was a mash up of 3-d polygonial graphics (which were ahead of their time even to this day) and old-school rail shooting action. You took control of a dragon rider, and it was your goal to bring down an evil empire. The story might have been all too typical, but it was window dressing for the intense sky-high combat. There were two more entries in the series before the Saturn was laid to rest, and the fate of the series was up in the air. That is, until 2003, when the series returned on the Xbox with a vengeance.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Kotaku reports on an article in the April issue of Game Informer which has specs and a picture of a new black XBox 360 model. This new model will feature a 120gb hard drive, an HDMI port and HDMI cable for a retail price of 479$, which is 80$ more than the price of the XBox 360 Premium console.

Game Informer has stated this is not an April Fool’s fake story, however it should be pointed out the image they supplied for the article is merely a black debug Xbox 360, used by developers and the press.

Microsoft has not yet made any official statement about the authenticity of this article.

Thanks to forum member Luchador138 for the heads up.

Orange Lounge Radio is reporting Activision plans to release the next version of Guitar Hero in just a few short months.

Activision has announced another sequel for the award winning music game franchise to distribution and retailers. Guitar Hero 80’s Edition will arrive on the PS2 in June on the 13th and will retail for $39.99. Of course, release dates always like to shift around, but as this is Activision’s initial printing of the date to distributers, hopefully this one will stick.

Guitar Hero 80s Edition was originally mentioned as a forthcoming PS2 release back in the January issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, but official word has been mum since then.

Oh, and obviously this game will include only music from the 1980s. Because we really need more ZZ Top.

Japanator gives word that a Dragon Ball MMO is on the way for Korea and Japan next year. The game will be set some 200 years after the original manga, so don’t worry about teaming up with Goku or Vegeta as they’re all dead. Akira Toriyama will be contributing to character designs of course, and even play created avatars will retain the Toriyama look. Player classes include humans, Nameks and Saiyans, though you’ll start out as a little kid and have to grow up over the course of the game.

Given how popular MMOs and Dragon Ball are in the US, its a forgone conclusion that they’d make it come here too.

*insert joke about spending hours to charge a single attack*