In Soul Calibur II, Cassandra had an unlockable third costume, remembered for its winged helmet. General opinon was that it looked goofy, though not unlikable. The outfit returned in Soul Calibur III as individually-purchased articles of clothing. In my browsing of tiny anime girl figurines, I’ve found multiple sculpts of this odd secret costume and wondered why. When I saw that it was back again in merchandise for Namco X Capcom, I got suspicious. After some research, I found Valkyrie. I love an obscure cameo, and this one ranks in with the Ice Climbers. 

Well not exactly, but you get the idea.  A while I told you about The PSP version of Nintendo…… I mean a PSP game called the Dog Happy Life, now Atari is getting into the act with a game called Hot PXL.  The game puts players in the control of a character called Djon and play more than 200 micro…I mean minigames.  These include stage diving, skateboarding, and trying to cross a street.  The game also promised downloadable content.  Hmm…a collection of minigames…where have I played this before?

The Dead or Alive series has never been as deep as the Soulcaliburs or the Tekkens of the 3-d fighting wolrd, but it’s interactive environments, Tag team gameplay, and it’s ‘fan service’ has always bought it a unique flavor. Dead or alive ultimate is a double package of both DOA 1 (saturn version, never before released in the US) and DOA2 (with a new intro, costumes, and backgrounds) and throws it together with online play. THis two pack is perfect for Xbox owners looking to pass the time until they pick up DOA 4 on 360.

Nintendo has started to put DS download stations in stores everywhere. Basically you just walk into a store that has one, turn on your DS and use the built in download option to download demos of games just like you would from your friend’s DS.

To find out if there’s one near you check out this store locator which lets you find all locations within 50 miles. Here in Canada it would seem that EB has cornered the market though in the US they seem to be primarily at Best Buys.

I dropped by my local EB and tried it out. Apparently the station had been there for 3 weeks which I found pretty annoying considering I’ve been to EBs a bunch of times since then without noticing. My DS saw the station as “volume 1” insinuating there would naturally be more demos to come as new games neared release. I spoke with a friendly EB employee who explained that it was just a DS sitting there with a cartridge that provided this functionality. He said their Nintendo rep would eventually come by to switch the cartridge when new demos are available. A pretty simple but engenious gimmick.

Nintendo’s customer service FAQ boasts that these stations will work within 65 feet of the source. The guy at EB said they kept it behind the cash and it worked at about a 15 foot raduis from there. Some pretty conflicting opinions there. I didn’t try to log on from the parking lot but I’d be more inclined to believe the 15 feet story as it’s just a DS sitting there. When I’d go to Best Buy to set up the display DS with the chat and hide behind the aisles sending pictures of penises to it with my DS while looking for people’s reaction I noticed that the range was in the wearabouts of 15 feet. Maybe a bit more but not 65 to be sure.

These games will stay on your DS as long as you can keep it powered. This means no turning it off and no switching to another game you’ve got in there without losing your download. Luckily it will still retain the game in sleep mode so, as long as you don’t leave it unplugged for days at a time, you should have no real problem keeping a game for long periods with a little common sense.

So go and steal games as sales people look at you hoping you’ll actually buy something for a change.

In the days before I had TechTV and G4 hadn’t even risen, let alone fell, video game programming on television was rare.
Some kind soul has uploaded a Discovery Channel special on the history of video games, one I really liked the first time I saw it. Starts with Atari and Pong and goes up until the success of Tetris, touching on the lesser known struggles of the early days of the electronic game world.

This link also provides a download option if you want to watch on your computer or iPod.

An inventive homebrew app writer has created the first online cross platform portable game.
TIC-TAC-TOE!
Ok, so the game in question ain’t exactly that exciting, but the implications of common code and compatibility for future homebrew applications are grand!
Thanks Caliongeo!

digg?

As noted earlier today the Playstation 2 is dropping twenty dollars to $129.99.

And we ask, why didn’t they go all the way to $99? I think I know why. The PS3.

Every pundit, analyst, and scholar and predicted the pricetag of Sony’s third home game console to be anywhere between “very expensive” to “EXTREMELY expensive.” Sony knows it will have to east some loss on hardware, especially if they want to stay price competitive with the Xbox 360, or even competitive with a high end gaming PC.

Microsoft was able to afford a consistent loss on the first Xbox because they have a software department that pulls in quite a bit of money. Sony’s portable electronics empire it built in the 80s has been toppled by Apple’s iPod, and their home theater department doesn’t exactly dominate the market either. The most successful arm of the Sony machine is gaming, specifically the PS2.

By still being able to scratch a profit off this 5-year old console, they’re suring up a warchest to keep them stable for the coming Playstation 3 launch. This is not to say Sony will be able to afford to get a new box out the door for $299 or even $399, but it will substantially help them to continue selling the PS2 for the highest price the market will bear. If theres still people out there who don’t own a PS2 and are willing to drop $129 on it, then thats a few more dollars Sony can roll over into padding out a PS3 launch.

Sony really can’t afford to lose the market to Microsoft. And honestly, we all know that that Sony has had some of the best developers working on their systems in the past decade. So the only real deciding factor in the Xbox 360 challenge is price. Every penny will count.

Gamespy’s review of Splinter Cell Essentials is a measly 2 out of 5. So why is Ubisoft running ad saying Gamespy liked it?
VGM has filed gathered up all the fact and the investigations and put them in one big article for your reading pleasure.