In less than 48 hours, one of the greatest first person shooter franchises will make its return. So what better time than the present to take a look at one of the other types of shooters? Before FPS games, 2-d side scrollers (and their cousins the vertical scrolling shooters) ruled over gaming. They came at a dime a dozen, but three series stood out amongst the rest: Darius, R-Type, and Konami’s Gradius. Gradius had some awesome levels, cool music, challenging gameplay, and a unique power-up system. There have been several classic entries in the series, including the spin-off series Parodius, and the two-play cooperative Life Force/Salamander. Lets take a look at this classic series, becuase its as gamers, it’s imperative that we don’t forget where we came from, particularly in this age of Unreal Engine 3 graphics, Havok Physics, and Emotion engines.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Even though Nintendo had no official presence at Tokyo Game Show, Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto made a surprise appearance, stealing the show on the first day open to the public. 4cr and Powet.TV were there, which means you get to be too! Virtually, anyway.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on the comings and goings of Hollywood moguls Stephen Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen with their company Dreamworks SKG and dropped this nugget of info:

Even if he leaves, Spielberg will remain the crown jewel of the acquisition [of Dreamworks by Viacom] for many years. He and director Michael Bay have signed on to make “Transformers 2,” scheduled to hit theaters in the summer of 2009.

Bay has been iffy on whether there’s time to make the movie before the strike, and producer Don Murphy has flatly stated as much.
Strike or not, they all want to see the Autobots back, and so this movie will get made. If there’s no strike in June 2008, you can expect Transformers in 2009.

From the man who brought you Babe: Pig In The City and Happy Feet will come the big screen debut of DC’s best and brightest: The Justice League.

Let’s forget that Miller hasn’t directed anything other than children’s movies in the past 15 years. Let forget that Warners is pushing a movie with Superman and Batman into theaters when they already have independent Superman and Batman series. Instead, let’s think of the one way this might be good: Tom Welling as Superman. He’s paid his dues, time to give him the cape. Include the Leaguers already on Smallville, set it in Smallville’s universe, and get Rosenbaum as Luthor while you’re at it. Keep Bale and Batman out of it.

Variety says the movie will begin casting and go into production soon to be completed before the Hollywood strike, planned for a 2009 release. Right around when Bryan Singer was hoping to get Man of Steel out. Ugh.

Game blog Kotaku caught our globe-trotting reporter SeanOrange unawares. Luke Plunkett snapped this photo.

To be fair, the time difference from the states to Japan is pretty big. Its the middle of the night when this picture was taken. I’m sure when he awakens from his slumber, he’ll have loads of gaming news for us all. In the mean time, some shut eye.

Source: Tender Press Room Moment: Sleepy Time and also on 4CR
Thanks to Joe for the link!

Vinnk came running up to me after talking with SNK staff about one of their upcoming Wii games. It made me excited, and I didn’t even know what he was talking about! So I made him repeat again for the camera.

Straight from the Tokyo Game Show floor:

Quick post before the day is out. A new trailer for Devil May Cry 4 has been released, featuring some rather awesome gameplay and cutscenes staring everyone’s favorite Devil Hunter, Dante – as well as newcomer Nero. From what can be gathered, this is a shorter version of a full trailer to be released at a later date. If this is just a smidgen of what we’re going to be seeing in the future, it can’t come soon enough.

We’re a bit late this week due to the outage, but we’re back. I’m gonna give you the $20 GOTW and the Lost Classics at the same time this week, as to not to overshadow aDam’s Mexican Independence day. One of this week’s featured games is one of the all time greats of the RTS genre, while the other is one of the few good movie based games of the 16-bit era. So, lets waste no further time in getting started. Click the jump and come ride with me to your local video game dealers bargain bin.
[Read the rest of this entry…]