This week on Xbox Live Arcade, “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” will be made available for download for $15.

If you pay and download this, the answer is: NO.

I finally managed to wrap up my review of the most recent in the Silent Hill series of survival-horror games with my return to video reviews.

If you can switch to the higher quality version, do so. I tried a slightly different way of presenting things than my last two videos, which help highlight my opinions alot better, but they get a wee bit obscured.

Like Encounters in Space in my $20 Game of the Week, this week’s Lost Classic, Gundam Wing: Endless Duel is one of the few good Gundam games in existence. For those of you not in the know, the Gundam Wing series takes place in the After Colony Universe, which is outside of the Universal Century universe depicted in the original Gundam series, War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, and pretty much any other Gundam series which had been released up to that point (besides the G Gundam series, which itself takes place in its own universe, but that’s another story). Like the original Gundam series, Gundam Wing tells of a war between Earth and the space colonies. A group of young pilots wage a war against a corrupt organization which is trying to play both sides against each other. The series spawned movie, Endless Waltz, which takes place a year later and deals with the aftermath of the war. The series proved to be a favorite among fans everywhere, despite a few annoying characters here and there. Unfortunately, at the time of this game’s release(1996), Gundam, like many other classic anime properties, had no presence in North America (indeed, the Gundam Wing series wouldn’t make its U.S. debut until 2000). It goes without saying that Bandai didn’t bother with an English translation, leaving this game a favorite of importers and emulation pirates.

Endless Duel is pretty much your basic mid 90s fighting game which makes use of a preexisting intellectual property. You take your pick of several pilots and defeat the rest in a series of one on one battles. Each mobile suit has its selection of special moves. They can also hover for a short time. There is a super meter which allows players to preform more powerful versions of their special moves as well as machine gun attacks. Players can play through arcade, versus, and trial modes. Some of the music has been lifted from the show. By completing the game on hard mode, players can unlock a secret code to play as the boss. Although there isn’t much in the way of replay value, the control is responsive, the backgrounds are detailed, and the game does a good job of representing the source material.

Although Endless duel makes no huge attempt to set itself apart from the numerous other fighting games out there, it does a good job of providing fun gameplay and representing the series in interactive form. It’s doubtful that we will see this game come to Virtual Console any time soon (as Wing’s popularity has waned in favor of more recent Gundam series), but since Namco-Bandai still holds the rights to the license, there is always hope.

As one of the better games utilizing the Gundam license, Encounters in Space has a lot to offer Gundam fans, and it plays decent too. The game focuses on the Universal Century universe (which includes the One-year war from the first TV series, as well as the events of the Stardust Memory miniseries), but there are also some Easter eggs from G-Gundam, Gundam Wing, and Gundam Seed. What makes the single player modes of this game interesting is that instead of simply having one huge campaign, there are several smaller ones, each starring a different main character and having their own separate storyline. The main storyline takes players through the last half of the original TV series. Along with that, there is a game-exclusive campaign featuring an all new character and a storyline which takes place parallel to the main series. The Ace Pilot mode is a series of vignettes in which players play as different faces from the Gundam Saga. Along with a few choice members of the Earth Federation, you’ll also play as several of Zeon’s finest including Char Aznable, Anavel Gato, and even the Black Tri-Stars. There are dozens of mobile suits to choose from, and each character has their own special abilities. There is also a training mode, in which you can create a character, and train through 8 missions in order to build up his/her stats as much as possible. You can then take your pilot into a two-player versus mode, where you can build a team of any three characters using any mobile suits you wish.
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A lot of new Star Trek photos hit the net today on a variety of sites, but I think this one is the coolest. From left to right we have Chekov, Kirk, Scott, McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura.
Slashfilm has links for the rest.
Do they look the part? The uniforms take some liberties (though Uhura is still in a short skirt), and obviously the actors aren’t dopplegangers for the old cast, but I have hope this Trek will revitalize the franchise.
Star Trek from director JJ Abrams will release May 2009. Trailer is due soon.

News surfaced in recent days from a pre-order listing at BigBadToyStore.com of a Masterpiece Grimlock possibly getting a release in March of 2009. It has been long rumored that Grimlock would join the ranks of this highly detailed and articulated line, but not much beyond that tidbit. Today, it seems the first image has come to light and it certainly looks to impress.

For any of you who thought the Sega Genesis no longer has any surprises and is a dead console, prepare to be sorely mistaken. It seems some people haven’t quite given up on Sega or it’s veteran consoles.

A brand new game called Pier Solar, is getting readied for a release. Set to be a huge (for Genesis) 64Mb cartridge, this game is 100% original from it’s story and characters, to its music and graphics. It’s been in the making for the last four years roughly, and is supposed to be coming out on Christmas Eve of this year, barring any delays like what pushed it back from its original Oct. 29th release date. Considering this is basically a game that was originally meant as a homebrew, a fully-working game capable of being played on a Genesis being the end result is epic.

Pier Solar is orginated from the Sega homebrew community of Eidolon’s Inn in 2004. Started as a small effort to bring the members of the site to virtual life in a little RPG, time has passed and the game has grown into something much more. Now Pier Solar is on it’s way to hopefully become a Role Playing Game maching all other great classics of the 16-bit era…..

A working demo is available for play on the game’s website. The game itself is available for pre-order in two different packages with extra goodies.
http://www.piersolar.com/