Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee in action. All this can be yours for only ninety US dollars.

Theres a lot of ground to cover here, with 2 days of the show already come and gone… [Read the rest of this entry…]

Newsarama has a note up saying that Jim Samples, the head executive officer at Cartoon Network resigned on Friday due to fall out from the guerilla marketing campaign gone wrong in Boston for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. In an internal memo to the company, Samples stated that he hoped his resignation would allow this event to be put in the past and allow the company to move forward. The article goes on to say that he had been with the company for 13 years.

You can read the rest of the internal memo in the article here.

Speaking as a Bostonian, this is another footnote in an embarassing chapter of history for the city of Boston.

Its about that time of the year again.

All the toy companies gather in New York to unveil their plans for the coming year. The event doesn’t actually start until tomorrow, but information and pictures are already making their way to our little set of tubes on Inter-net. We’ll try and do one Toy Fair post a day and maybe one wrap up post for the event so as not to clutter the news page.

Read on for info on GI Joe, Transformers, Marvel Legends, and more!

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TNI has a couple of interesting interviews up that both touch upon DC Comics action figures. First up is Ryan Mansaur, brand manager for DC Superheroes at Mattel. Next up is Georg Brewer of DC Direct.

I thought it was interesting to find out just how hamstrung Mattel is on the DC Superheroes line (the first decent answer to Marvel Legends from Mattel so far). DC Direct is similarly limited in their control since they contract sculptors instead of doing all the sculpting in-house like Toy Biz did. I always had reservations about DC Direct because of their inconsistency from line to line. Apparently, the outsourcing is the main reason at fault for that, but they are looking to correct that. I still think they underestimate the need for better articulation, but I’m a pretty hardcore Marvel Legends fan so you’d have a hard time convincing me otherwise.

Activision has formally announced some of the details of the forthcoming game based on the Transformers movie. IGN reports the Xbox 360, Wii, and DS will be joined by Sony’s systems as well: PS3, PS2 and PSP. Oh and theres a PC one too. So, just about anything you’ve got.

Better yet, the console developer has been revealed as Traveler’s Tales, who are responsible for LEGO Star Wars, arguably one of the best movie games in the past few years. They’ve confirmed seperate Autobot and Decepticon campaigns, along with massive destructable environments, and on-the-fly transformations. IGN has a short interview with producer Andy Burrows, who hints that they’ll mix in some non-movie bots inspired classic Generation One characters. Confirmed playable characters right now include Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream.

Transformers on DS will be handeled by Vicarious Visions, who have a massive catalog of successful ports for Activison, including Doom 3 for Xbox, Tony Hawk and Marvel Ultimate Alliance for portables. Savage Entertainment(developer of Star Wars: Battlefront II) takes the PSP, and is promising a very different game with over 20 (!) playable Transformers spanning further into the movie’s extended universe.

A playable demo of the game will be available at Toy Fair in New York City this weekend. Since this is an industry/press affair, we’re hoping to see a video come along soon. We’ll keep an eye on the official site.

In the meantime, here is the first screenshot from the game. It’s a picture someone took of a catalog of Transformers merchandise that just happened to have a tiny page advertising the game. If you can’t make it out, it’s Bumblebee fighting the Decepticon Barricade in the first shot, and then a single shot of Barricade. Its not much, but we’re starving for info here, so give me a break.

UPDATE! IGN has added lengthy impressions of the demo, but still no screens. Read it all here.

JoBlo.com shared with the internets some villain pictures from upcoming Marvel movies. Continue after the jump for mirrored images of two Spidey 3 baddies, and also Dr. Doom from Fantastic Four 2. [Read the rest of this entry…]

A skillfully done video edit, if I may say so. National Lampoon, which hasn’t been funny since Chevy Chase was, is apparently responsible.

In the early days of the PS1, the Twisted Metal series was to players what Halo pretty much is to Xbox players these days. It was an intense and bizzare car combat game that was filled with bizzare characters with equally bizzare vehicles blowing each other up with bizzare weapons. The first two editions were developed by developer Singletrac. The second game in the series, World Tour, was at the time considered by most to be the best in the series. However, the games took a dip in sales with Twisted Metal 3,when most of the developers had left after a contractual dispute with Sony and joined with GT Interactive. Sony’s in-house development team 989 studios handled the production, rewriting the code for the artificial intellegence and driving physics. These changes attracted new players while turning off longtime fans of the series. Twisted Metal 4 had corrected many of the faults from 3 and had even added a 4-player mode, but by then players had already moved on. Sony wanted to revive it’s flagship vehicular car-combat series for the Playstation 2. Enter Twisted Metal Black.

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