Koei and W-force’s Musou games (known over here as Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors) are Japan’s equivalent to our sports franchises, except for the fact that they have educational value added to them. They featured anime-styled versions of historical figures and battles throughout the Warring States and Three Kingdoms eras. The games get periodic releases with a roster update, slight graphical updates, and some new features added. They also get a bad rap for their repetition and simplistic playing mechanics. While some of the criticism is deserved, the series does a excellent job of catering to it’s small-but-devoted fanbase, and this entry is no exception.
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Not only is the 8th 4th game in the Grand Theft Auto series taking in more money Rockstar games than protagonist Niko Bellic could ever steal, the game now sits high atop Game Rankings and Meta Critic‘s score compilations.

Its surely the most important game to be released this year, but its not perfect. Can GTA stop Iron Man this weekend? We’ll have to wait and see.

In 1994, MGM released the Roland Emmerich-directed film Stargate. It told the tale of a portal which led to an alternate world which was not unlike ancient Egypt, but with futuristic technologies. Although it received a lukewarm reaction from critics, the public enjoyed it enough for it to eventually become a franchise, complete with comic books, TV spin-offs, an animated cartoon, novels, made-for-dvd movies, and a few video games. One of these video games was a decent if by-the-numbers 16-bit title from Acclaim. It wasn’t anything mind-blowing, but you could do a lot worse for a Super Nintendo movie tie-in.
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Something that made my heart flutter happened to be smack dab on the cover of June’s EGM issue – it would appear that Namco’s cult-classic horror game Splatterhouse will be getting a well-deserved updating and makeover. Given that there have been a recent string of “retro-revivals” lately, including a new Golden Axe game (squee!!), this is a welcome addition to that list.

Splatterhouse should be name that pops up in the minds of survival-horror fans, as it was the progenitor of the genre itself. Released in 1988 for the TurboGrafx-16, the original game was quite gorey and violent for something coming out before the likes of Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat, which are well known for both, and was the first game ever to receive the parental advisory disclaimer. Just to exemplify, the American version of the game had to be censored due to depictions of an inverted cross with severed heads as a boss, less blood and gruesome sound FX coming from enemies when they’re smashed against walls, and less graphic death scenes of bosses. The game came out for the Virtual Console in 2007, but unfortunately featured the toned-down western version. Check out The West Mansion for more information on the series and games.

While this might not have been the most original open-world crime game, it was one of the best and most unique. When it was released, Grand Theft Auto 4 was more than a year away from release. Volition’s (The Punisher, Red Faction) game helped to make the wait much more bearable, and it even improved some of Grand Theft Auto’s game mechanics. With a sequel on deck for later this year, GTA IV less than a week away from release, and even Mercenaries 2 arriving this fall, now is a perfect time to visit Stillwater, if for no other reason than to get yourself ready for the open-world goodness arriving throughout the next several months.
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Discuss the Gargoyles Comic reviews in our forum.

WYOU Community TV in Madison, WI is in the middle of a 4 week series of airing local Rock Band gamers playing short sets and pitting them against each other for prizes. I stopped by the studio last week and filed this report for The Daily Page: Stars are born with Virtual Rock Band on WYOU

Read more by Zac Shipley at The Daily Page.

Mattel’s panel at NYCC has brought us some great news for He-Man fans. Mattel announced an upcoming line for MOTU spanning all previous incarnations of the property. That includes the classic figures from the 80’s, characters from the original mini-comics, the New Adventures of He-Man, the 2002 MYP MOTU relaunch series and She-Ra, Princess of Power. It was unclear if the She-Ra figures would be based on the series of the original figures.

Some quick details from He-Man.org:

• The line will be a 6″ Masters of the Universe collector’s line
• The line will be super-poseable, using high-end articulation
• It will be comparable to the DC Universe line that is currently being produced by Mattel and sculpted by the 4H
• Mattel stated this line is definitely going to be for the collectors, and not for children
• They will be shipped in even case ratios. Mattel said “You are not going to see six Skeletors and one Beastman”
• The first figure in the line will be King Grayskull, who will be a SDCC Exclusive.
• King Grayskull will have a chase variant that is colored to look like the statue of King Grayskull seen by Adam from the MYP Power of Grayskull episode.
• This collector’s line will contain “the entire pantheon of MOTU characters”, which will include characters from the classic MOTU toy line, the New Adventures of He-Man, MYP cartoon characters, characters from the mini-comics (a photo of the Green Goddess was flashed), characters from the unproduced Powers of Grayskull line (a photo of He-Ro was flashed), and POP characters (a screengrab of Force Captain Adora from SOTS was flashed)

I have included the lengthy notes from the Fan Q&A and He-Man.org’s exclusive Q&A after the jump.

I found it interesting to note that Mattel does not own the rights to any character in the Filmation series that was not a toy or in the original mini-comics.
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