Xbox360Fanboy cornered Harmonix at E3 and found out some of the best news I’ve ever heard for any music game in the history of forever.

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos announced that Rock Band has some serious plans for delivering content to players. First off, Harmonix plans to release new music tracks every week. They can be released in singles, multi track bundles, or more deliciously, full albums. As an example Alex announced that The Who’s Who’s Next would be available for download following the game’s release.

I was already thinking I’d want to get Rock Band for the drums. Knowing I can play as Keith Moon on my favorite album by own of my favorite bands is personally very exciting. I cannot expect you, dear reader, to understand. Maybe you can get excited at the idea of your favorite album to get added to the list. But right now the only one they’ve announced is my favorite album.

I call that a bargain… the best I ever had.

thanks to RJK for the news!

If you had told me 20 years ago, after the abysmal box office showing that was the original Transformers animated feature, that a Transformers film would outdo Spider-Man’s opening week gross, I would have said, “What, that weird kid that appeared in the comic book? So?”

Sorry, run that forward a little bit.

If you had told me five years ago, after Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film made $400 million at the domestic box office, breaking records along the way, that a Transformers film would (so far) outdo that hot property the same year as the third installment, I would have laughed. If the best that the Aquaman property could hope for was to beat Spider-Man in a fictional scenario in the HBO series Entourage, surely in the real world a toy company’s property had even less of a chance.

Well, now Michael Bay is laughing. All the way to his gold-plated Camaro. (Goldbug?)

The Transformers opening 6-day gross of over $155 milion has beaten out Spider-Man’s $151 million, and so far it shows little sign of slowing down. Along the way, it garnered the highest opening Tuesday ever (by $12 million dollars — up 80% from now-second place), the third highest Wednesday ever (now fourth, thanks to Harry Potter’s new record-setting Wednesday premiere), and the title as the biggest opening week for a non-sequel in all of film history — the title which Spider-Man held until last Sunday.

Spider-Man is clearly not very happy about this development. Not content to leave the battle at the box office, our intrepid arachnid friend was last seen hurling himself into battle against the alien robot menace at the end of the first issue of the New Avengers / Transformers 4-part mini-series. Not since Transformers #3 — at the time a Marvel publication — have we seen these two clash. Guys, can’t we all just get along?

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Some more E3 goodness being thrown your way, it would appear that Nintendo has saved one of it’s biggest announcements for the media event. It’s been proclaimed that Super Smash Brother’s Brawl will have a release date of December 3rd of this year.

However, it seems that’s about all Nintendo has released about the game. The company is keeping a tight lip as to any other real details, so seeing much else come about from E3 may be wishful thinking. Regardless, the game’s hype looks to make the later release date well worth the wait.

Here’s a short clip of the announcement with some footage from the game.

As I reported on earlier this week with Umbrella Chronicles, the head honchos from Capcom have seen fit to tease us all a little more with a new trailer for the long anticipated Resident Evil 5 game, which has yet to have a confirmed release date. A smaller trailer had been seen before which depicts a unidentified male protagonist roaming about a deserted 3rd-world village (ala: RE4), only to be swarmed upon by fast-moving unseen figures.

This new trailer gives a bit more insight to the environment that RE5 will take place in, and some hints as to what may be affecting people. It also gives a bit more exposure to the protagonist. (who was “spoiled” a few weeks ago to supposedly be Billy Coen from RE0)

More info will be shared as it becomes available. Here’s hoping this isn’t the last we’ve seen from E3 of the famous survival horror goodness that is Resident Evil.

1up seems to have locked up all the Soul Calibur news. see also these images and The 1UP Show Soul Calibur IV Special, a 16 minute look at the game.

Yes, Trailerz.

First up, a live action promo shot by Neil Blomkamp and WETA, the team that would’ve been making the Halo movie by now had Fox not dropped out. Orbital Drop Shock Troopers suit up, and the factories ramp up production on war hardware.

Now the gameplay trailer. The Covenant have invaded Earth, Chief and The Arbiter must work together to stop them and save Cortana from the Flood.

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In 1983, director Brian DePalma created a film starring Al Pacino that would forever change the way we would think about drug dealers, cocaine, Cubans, immigration, and pelicans. This film would be known as the story of a man named Tony Montana. It was the chronicle of his journey from yet another Cuban refugee looking for the American dream to the biggest drug dealer in all of Miami, all the way to his violent end as a desperate man consumed by a coccaine-fueled blind rage. This film would be the stuff of legends, serving as inspiration to entire generations of rappers, actors, gangsters, and other entertainers. This film is called Scarface. Nearly 2 decades later, Tony Montana’s story would continue on as a video game courtesy of Vivendi Universal.

Yes, I did a review for this game several months back, but it’s such a solid title that it’s worth looking at again. Sierra’s alternate look at a world where Tony Montana escaped the big shoot out at the movie’s end makes for a compelling set up. Not only that, it’s one of the few good games to make use of Grand Theft Auto’s style of open-world gameplay. It does a good job of putting you in the shoes of Tony Montana, excessive cursing, extravagant spending, and all. You have to make your way back to the top by making drug deals and waging war upon your rivals. You’ll visit all the familiar locations in the movie such as the Babylon Club, Freedom Town, and the Sun Ray Motel. Some repetition sets in with the drug deals, but the sheer fun of cursing out people and going into a blind rage make up for it. So for a $20 spot*, you can get what is a faithful tribute to one of the greatest movies of all time.

*Or you can spend a $50 spot and get the Wii version with new motion control actions.

Event just started with a performance from Corpreal, the band of high school students who played the Halo theme to some success on youtube in the past year. They played in Peter Moore, who spoke briefly about the change of venue and then announced that every game they’d show in the conference tonight will be released this year.

Then Moore introduced some of the Harmonix crew to play Rock Band. After some stumbles and Peter’s off key adlib vocals while playing guitar, they wheeled out the evenings next big gun… Viva Pinata Party Animals.

Viva Pinata Party Animals will be a party game not unlike Mario Party with… Viva Pintata characters. Yeah, I’ll leave this one to aDam.

The Mass Effect trailer. [Read the rest of this entry…]