It would appear that there’s more to reveal at the San Diego Comic-Con than just neat toys and teasers for comics. TokyoPop, which is the #1 publisher of manga and graphic novels in the US and the and the largest supplier in the world, has seen fit to team up with in a marketing partnership with the largest touring video game music concert, Video Games Live.

“We are extremely excited to form this exclusive marketing alliance with Video Games Live,” quotes Marco Pavia, Director of Marketing at TOKYOPOP. ”There is strong crossover between manga fans and gamers. Some of our hottest manga is video-game based, including Warcraft, Kingdom Hearts, Devil May Cry 3, .hack, and Archlord. Forming this partnership with the sizzling Video Games Live concert series was a perfect fit.”

For those who don’t know, Video Games Live™ features the best music and exclusive synchronized video clips from the most popular games from the beginning of video gaming to the present, and tours the country in concert-style featuring music from popular games such as Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Final Fantasy.

This partnership makes TokyoPop the exclusive sponsor for Video Games Live, and will be sponsoring shows for the world-renowned tour for the rest of 2007, including special promotions and giveaways for each stop in the tour. Exclusive live video of the concerts will also be featured on the TP.com website.

This, of course, helps bridge the gap between video games and anime/manga a little closer. With big-name games being released as manga and anime, such as the new Devil May Cry anime (and the manga which has been out for a while), this could help signal the beginning of a large-scale boom in game-based manga and anime being created in the near future. Shall we be seeing things such as Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania manga and anime on the horizon? We can only hope.

Amazingly, ComiCon is not all movie trailers, toy prototypes, and video game news. Theres also TV news! Well and comics, but I’m talking about TV here. Specifically a TV show thats been off the air far too long: FUTURAMA.

Thanks to the outstanding fan demand, Fox and Comedy Central are bringing the classic back in the form of 4 straight to DVD movies, which will be cut up into a full season of 16 shows for Comedy Central.

The first movie, Bender’s Big Score, will be released on DVD and on Blu-Ray Disc November 27th.

source: TV Squad Comic-Con: Futurama panel report

The studios and ComiCon really ought to provide official versions of these teasers online. But, if Shakycam is what I get, Shakycam is what I’ll take. Here is Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark.

Sorry guys, the video got taken down. I had a backup bookmarked on another site, but that one got taken down too. I’ll keep looking!”

After the success of LEGO Star Wars, the next game announced was to be LEGO Batman, but now out of nowhere we get a trailer for LEGO Indiana Jones!

I won’t complain about more LEGO games, but I was kind of hoping I’d get Batman first… Oh well, I can’t wait to see how the infamouse Nazi face-melting works on LEGO characters. Or ripping a LEGO heart out of a LEGO Chest.

Fresh from ComiCon via a handycam, here is the brand new Transformers Animated series in motion.
I’d complain about the angle, but this guy probably snuck the camera in, so for that they are heroic.

Rabban from the Powet Community found us a link on Wizard that shows some stills from the animation and lots of toys.

Little known fact to everyone who dreamed about being a producer: you don’t need hundreds of dollars worth of studio equipment to make hits. All you need is a Playstation, a little patience, and some skill. This week’s lost classic is one of my favorite games that isn’t really a game. Probably one of the earliest and most thorough music composition tools available on a video gaming system, Codemaster’s MTV Music Generator allows you to make some nice compositions. You simply pick a few of the hundreds of sound samples included, lay them down on the track, adjust the pitch, length, and timing, and there you go. You can even sample tunes off a compact disc, although it takes up a lot of memory. After you are done, you can add a light show to go along with your music. Just take some time to learn the ins and outs of this disc, and you can crank out some nice tunes in minutes. It was way ahead of its time, and its only limitation is the Playstation 1 itself. As stated before, sampling off a cd can easily take up a lot of space on a memory card, and there is no way of exporting an MP3 of your music (which is strange, as the manual states that you are granted royalty-free commercial releases of your creations). Also the collection is geared more toward techno and R&B, so users interested in making hip-hop tunes will have to improvise a little. Even so, this is a nice start for aspiring producers who don’t have a lot of money to spend on expensive equipment. There are two sequels that have been released, and there are several other games (such as the recently released Traxxpad for PSP) that expand on the functionality offered here. With a little more work and functionality on future products (such as say, an MP3 exporter), it could be possible for our Playstations and Xboxes to become vital equipment for up and coming musicians and producers.

WhySoSerious.com has the trailer. No footage, but there is spoken dialog from Bruce and Alfred followed by another voice…

We also get the full Police Report on the Joker’s Death. Yeah, death. Whats this all mean? Your guess is as good as mine. See you in December.

Direct Download

As with each year at the SDCC, news is flowing out about upcoming plans, events and merchandise. Due to the sheer volume of data, I’m just going to cover the toy news from the Preview night (yesterday) and Day 1 (today).

I will be covering news for:

• The 7th Kingdom (FANtastic Exclusives)
• Minimates (Marvel)
• Marvel Legends (Main line and supplemental lines)

So if you are interested in any of these, continue on below!

More coming tomorrow!
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