Yesteday there was somewhat of an uproar over Maxis developer Chris Hecker calling the Wii a “piece of shit” and “two gamecubes duct taped together” and implied that Nintendo doesn’t care about games as art.
Here is Super Mario Galaxy, shown today.

Now Hecker apologizes. Does a Mario game need to look any better than that? I mean, thats beyond all my wildest expectations for Mario! Really delivers on Wii being more than just a funny controller.
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I just got a very nice email from the Xbox Live Rewards program. You may recall this little promotion being set up so that Xbox Live gamers can get a reward for spending so much time bulking up their gamer scores. Prizes included copies of Fusion Frenzy, downloads of Contra, and Microsoft points. I had trouble getting through the registration when the site went Live, and given my low gamer score, I kinda gave up on it. I wasn’t alone, and now they’re sending out consolation prizes for putting up with these technical difficulties

The email in my inbox tonight included all the rules for participation and registration and they admitted to having problems, and to make up for it, they included codes to redeem for a free download of Robotron and Joust from Live Arcade. Thats pretty generous considering I just was going to sit the whole thing out.

Anyone else who had problems get this email? Leave a comment below.

Full email after the jump.
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The Doctor Who Information Network reports that CBC in Canada will be airing season 3 of Doctor Who in June 2007 and season 1 of the spin off series Torchwood sometime in the fall.

This is much sooner than season 2 which didn’t begin airing until October of last year and wasn’t even done airing when the DVDs were released.

Even though Game Developer’s Conference should by name be about developers coming together and networking and talking about how to make better games, the big names all bring tons of new info and use their keynotes to stump their product. Sony’s Phil Harrison actually showed Killzone on PS3 last night in playable form but touted it as an exercise in their new game engine and developer tools. Whatever, Phil. You wanted to show Killzone to someone.

Sony came out swinging after almost a year of bad press following their E3 announcement of the PS3’s pricepoint. The bombshell is Playstation Home (trailer) is a service thats part Xbox Achievements, part Mii, and part Second Life. Its almost… too much. It lack’s Mii’s simple charm, and 360’s slick menu system in favor of stocking an apartment full of trophies earned in game and having an avatar you can clothe and send around the virtual world. I have a feeling this sounds cooler than it will be, but at least it sounds cool.

Another feather in Sony’s cap is LittleBigPlanet. Its a platformer. A platformer! Its community based, so you can make and share your own levels. Just Look, we’ll talk about it later. I’ll just say this is a game I’d buy a PS3 for.

Nintendo has good news and bad news. Bad News: This summer has no Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3. No wonder Reggie’s driver looks mad. Good news? [Read the rest of this entry…]

15 years ago today, on March 7th 1992, the first episode of Sailor Moon, “Crybaby Usagi’s Magnificent Transformation”, aired for the first time in Japan. The series spanned 200 episodes until it’s finale on February 8th 1997. It also spawned 3 theatrical movies, 2 specials, musicals, videos games and an immense assortment of merchandise.

Sailor Moon was based on a Manga series by the same name which began appearing in Nakayoshi in December 1991, 4 months before the premiere of the show, and ran for 52 acts over a span of 5 years.

At its prime Sailor Moon saw great success worldwide as it was broadcast and published in nearly every country in the world. In the mid 90s you’d be hard pressed to go very far without seing some sort of Sailor Moon merchandise. It was likely the most internationally widespread franchise of it’s time. Sailor Moon herself is one of the most popular fictional characters ever, up there with such greats as Santa Claus, Superman and Jesus.

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1up‘s Jeremy Parish and Wired‘s Chris Kohler take a look at some of the good and not good on Wii’s download service in Japan.

UPDATED – The direct links expired today at 9 PM, PST. Stick with the YouTube links now, kiddies.

The new Spidey trailer debuted a couple days ago at San Francisco’s WonderCon, and was featured during last night’s Heroes episode. To briefly summarize, it features a lot of Peter and Mary Jane’s love story, and a crazy badass fight sequence.

Today, finally, it’s available on NBC’s site, with the main site link right here. Or, if you’re looking to download directly, here are some direct links to the files:

480p HD Version (229 MB)

720p HD Version (285 MB)

Make sure you have Quicktime 7. Though it goes without saying, you won’t need Quicktime if you happen to stick purely to YouTube versions.