For the past few years this show has been largely an embarassment to hardcore and casual gamers alike. Aside from the terrible presentation, awards and nominations are given to brand new unreleased games or ones with big sponsors. Just glance at the apparent mediocrity in the 2005 Winners.

But this year might be different. The first ad is from Mega64, and while they’ve done contract work for years with Ubisoft, they also don’t hold any punches.

We’ll have to wait for December 13th to find out if this is just one clever ad, or a sign of a change.
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Well imagine that. Tomonobu Itagaki, the “too cool” lead producer from Team Ninja, is the subject of a lawsuit seeking compensation for a string of sexual harassment incidents over the span of 3 years.

No comment yet from the usually out-spoken Itagaki. Though to be fair, he usually only speaks about how awesome he thinks he is and his games are. I don’t suppose his comicly objectifying games can be used as evidence against him?

In other news, DOA4 on Xbox 360 just sold a million copies, making it the fastest selling fighting game on Xbox 360 from Tecmo.

Excuse me while I chuckle a bit. He’s so pompous.

via Kotaku

Gaming Age is running a story reprinting a press release announcing Sega has grabbed the rights to make games based on Marvel’s Iron Man movie. All they’re saying now is “next-gen” which says to me “Xbox 360, PS3 if we have time, PSP port, halfassed DS, and completely different game for Wii”

But maybe I’m just a little jaded when it comes to license games. And Sega games.

Like a lot of superhero games, theres a lot of potential, especially if they draw from the vast arsenal Tony Stark’s used in comics. This will be a shooter and it will shoot everything. Press release after the jump.

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The Xbox 360 wireless headset came out yesterday, despite being delayed several days, much like the Live Vision Camera before it. It comes in a rather large box (roughly the same size as the camera) and similar to all the other packaging Microsoft as made for their accessories. This is the first official headset that Plantronics has NOT made for Microsoft (someone correct me if I’m wrong) as the official wired headset still is.

The headset is built relatively solid and feels a lot like many of Motorola’s bluetooth offerings. In fact, if you wear a bluetooth headset, you’ll feel right at home here. The design is fairly simplistic and like a bluetooth headset, it features a minimal amount of buttons. You’ll find a ‘power’, ‘find’, ‘volume up’ and ‘volume down’ button on the piece, nothing more, nothing less. It has a padded earpiece and a rubber loop that goes behind the ear. It’s very light, about the same weight as your standard bluetooth headset and it features an adjustable boom mic. I know I keep saying “bluetooth”, but this headset apparently runs on an RF signal, just like the controllers. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Major League Gaming will finally gets its televised debut as the MLG Pro circuit is broadcast on the USA Cable Network starting November 11. This will be 7 pre-recorded events of the Halo 2 Championship.

For more info see USA Network’s page or MLGpro.com

So far the show looks a lot more tasteful than SpikeTV or even G4 has ever presented Pro gaming. Could MLG be the next World Series of Poker? Is a pro like Walshy the next Tiger Woods?

Not exactly a shocker since he was in the last two, but Star Fox has been revealed as a playable character. I also spotted a new stage based on Mario Kart!

See the trailer here: Mov / WMV

Edit: Fixed link, goes to high definition source.

Lets head back to 1989. Hudson soft released this often overlooked but high quality action game on the NES. You play as Apollo and your goal is to rescue the princess. Okay, so the plot isn’t all that original, but the levels offer up a mix of side scrolling shooter levels and platforming. It’s linear, but there are hidden areas to discover, as well as new upgrades and abilities. It’s kinda like Gradius meets Mega Man and Metroid. There is a small chance that this could come to the virtual console, so check out the rom until then.

This week’s $20 GOTY and lost classics are gonna take you waaaaaay back. First, lets take a trip back to the PS2 launch. Although there weren’t many titles worth grabbing at the time, (except Timesplitters and Tekken Tag Tournament) Capcom gave us fighting game fans something to tide us over.

You either love the EX series or you hate it. Those who like it, (me for instance) like the cool music, intresting new characters (although some are somewhat dull), and the fact that our favorite 2-d series translated so well to 3-d. Those who hate it harp on it’s static backgrounds, dull characters, and consider it blasphemy to take a 2-d stalwart and take it into 3-d. Capcom’s 3-d fighters have been more of a test run than anything, and the fact that they still continue to produce 2-d games speaks volumes of thier apprehension to make the jump to 3-d. Be that as it may, beside Rival Schools and Tech Romancer, this is probably thier best 3-d effort.

Although the only new character introduced here is Ace (a robot who you can set special attacks for in an all new mission mode), many of your favorites from the EX series have arrived. A new Tag Team mode, similar to the Marvel vs Capcom games is also included. You can’t change in and out as rapidly here as you did in MVC though, so it adds a layer of strategy and timing. A new single player mode tries to do things differently by having you fight more than one opponent at once, and giving you the option to recruit defeated opponents to your team. Finally, beating the aforementioned single player mode treats you to the wildest credit sequence ever; a free-for all brawl where the goal is to take out as many enemies as you can.

As I mentioned before, not everyone will like SFEX3, particularly series purists. I kinda miss the remixed barrel breaking game from the original EX. For those who don’t mind a little change now and then however, you can’t go wrong with this PS2 blast from the past.