In what may be the most ambitious music game ever conceived, the developers of Guitar Hero have teamed with MTV and mega-publisher Electronic Arts to release Rock Band for PS3 and Xbox 360 this winter. USA Today brings us the story.

Take Guitar Hero II’s guitar/bass co-op play, add in some Karaoke Revolution singing, and keep the beat with a set of drums. Theres been no mention of how the drums will look or operate, but with so many successful music games under their belt, Harmonix should be able to find something that works for casual and hardcore gamers alike.

Game|Life reports from the press event early Monday that there will no longer be cover versions of songs, instead you’ll be treated to the real thing. Latency problems that kept Guitar Hero II from having full online multiplayer have been resolved and Harmonix promises your band can have practice online instead of in your garage. And though not formally announced at this time, a Wii version is inevitable.

Now… is it too much to ask they get The Clash in there?

Remember all that NiGHTS talk? Yeah, its officially no joke now.

French gaming supersite Jeux-France got a hold of a game mag from Portugal, and now the first screen of the Wii sequel to NiGHTS are before our eyes. Thank goodness this web is as wide as the world, otherwise we might have had to wait days for the inescapable official announcement. Take a look at the screen here.

The time has finally come to take direct control the genderless jester! Now, given how few people actually had a Saturn and this game, is it possible they’ll find some way of re-releasing the original? Either the Virtual Console or a bonus on disc would be well worth it to get the cult classic into more hands.
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The video game crossover you’ve waited your entire life for is now a reality.

Mario and Sonic will finally compete on the Wii and Nintendo DS… on a game licensed by the Olympics.

I’m speechless. Official site is up. If we don’t get Sonic in Smash Bros now, I’ll be real mad.

Activision’s Daniel Suarez has a few words with Superhero Hype about their next game, Transformers: The Game.

The game, which will launch on multiple platforms, is supposed to feature 9 playable Transformers and 7 destructable levels over 2 seperate Autobot and Decepticon campaigns. Of note is this comment:

We’re making a game that is for Transformers fans. Since the very beginning, we’ve been very conscious of the heritage of this brand and have worked hard to integrate characters, locations and even subtle acknowledgements to G1 anywhere we can. There are a lot of special surprises, unique elements and bonus features that fans will enjoy.

Considering the unlockable costumes in all of Activision’s Marvel games and the character variations in Traveler’s Tales’ LEGO Star War series, is there any chance we’ll see some alternate looks for the playable characters? I can’t very well expect full 1984 remakes of the whole cast, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Bumblebee’s goofy face returning.

See also: CVG and GameSpot‘s previews.

Thanks Dru!

I’ve done a fair amount of trying to debunk this one. It keeps coming up at forums and I keep saying “No guys, this is just an early April Fools” because frankly we’ve heard this talk before.

Official Nintendo Magazine (which is the like the Nintendo Power for England) published this teaser on the last page of their April issue. The image of the stars could easily imply a lot of things, but the most direct conclusion was an update of the Sega Saturn game NiGHTS Into Dreams. Many blogs ran this image as truth, many ran it as rumor, and most ran it as a joke. I, on the other hand, wasn’t going to run it at all until we had better evidence.

Now we’ve got some. Chandra from ONM has come out and said “This is not April Fool” but also won’t confirm what it actually is becuase, hey, they still want you to talk and buy the mag when it comes out.

So with a new NiGHTS game coming further into the realm of reality we have to deal with the next big hurdle… the fact that Sonic Team hasn’t made a good game in several years.

Pokemon Battle Revolution is due June 25 on Nintendo Wii and it will be the first online multiplayer title for the system. Already released in Japan, it supports the dreaded “friend code” system that makes pairing with friends and keeping track in game much more difficult than in the firmware available for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.

That may change now. GameSpy, who not only are a video game news site, but also a middleware developer for online games, have been charged with turning the Wii’s online capabilities into a full functional network. They developed the software that governs existing DS WiFi titles, but promise something more robust for the console. Full press release after the jump, but I’ll spoil it for you right here with the important parts

• Friends Lists
• Ranked Matches
• Matchmaking

Of course, all of those have been in place since Mario Kart DS became the first Nintendo online title, but the promise of keeping a list using the console’s identity rather than each game’s is enough to give us hope for the future. Launching 7 months after the Wii’s debut and a year and half after the Nintendo WiFi service launched on DS, they’ve had plenty of time to get this right.

Still no word if this GameSpy middleware is being sent to 3rd party developers.

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Update 2011-01-09: This game never happened but a new Sailor Moon game will be released on the Nintendo DS this spring.

Not letting the fact that the show’s been off the air for over 10 years stop it Sailor Moon seems to have a game planned for release on the Wii. Asian import store YesAsia has this product description up for a Sailor Moon game published by Namco set to be released in December 2007. While this isn’t a certain confirmation that a game will be released YesAsia is a reputable online store I’ve dealt with a number of times so this should be taken more seriously than your run of the mill bogus Totaka rumour.

Who knows what kind of game play such a title could have in store or how it will use the Wii’s functionality but rest assured Powet.tv will be the place to get news on this title as it becomes available.

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Hold your horses, I’m not talking about your favorite Monday night show. I’m talking about this game coming out for Wii. This is a title from Suda-51, who did last gen’s Killer 7.

Now if anyone can explain just what the heck happened there, I’ll be impressed.