Game looks GREAT, but the editing of the trailer is a little annoying. Bill Murray’s subtle delivery is kinda drowned out by the louder music and effects.

Atari grabbed Ghostbusters after Activision dropped it. Here’s hoping the new publisher and the delay will make for a better game.

Show notes:

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Even though it’s still Thursday here in the States, the second day of the Tokyo Game Show is already well under way. I wasn’t able to attend this year, but Famicom Dojo is still being represented by Vinnk — assisted by two new equally-as-foreign-but-much-more-female companions! (You can check out their profiles over at 4 Color Rebellion.)

Vinnk on the scene the first day of TGS for the announcement of the No More Heroes sequel: Desperate Struggle:

Quite appropriate, as we tried out the original game in our Famicom Dojo Special about the first day of TGS 2007!

(More after the jump)

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Seems SEGA isn’t out of the game just yet, and has decided to produce and release a brand new addition to their classic HotD series – House of the Dead: Overkill.

The game itself seems to be a prequel in the long-running franchise of light-gun shooters, and takes place in a small backwater town of Bayou City, where rookie AMS agent “G” finds himself and new partner Washington eventually battling with hordes of the walking dead created by a mysterious source. (three guesses as to who might have a hand in it)

Overkill appears to take a page out of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles in it’s use of the Wiimote targeting and looks to have it’s roots in the traditional on-rails gameplay of previous titles of the series. Headstrong Studios, who have taken it upon themselves to create the game, have said that they’re basing it off of old grindhouse movies, right down to the gritty film of cutscenes and the copious amounts of gore and violence that should be commonplace in anything related to hacking apart zombies.

If the trailer is a faithful depiction of the actual gameplay of the title, then I do believe we have ourselves another fine offspring of the HotD’s deliciously screwed-up family. (with HotD4 being the redheaded stepchild and HotD3 being the awkward middle-child in comparison to their elder sibling titles)

This year’s Otakon had a great Sailor Moon showing with 2 fan panels lead by Lilly-chan. One was for “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon”, the live action series from a few years ago, and the other was for Naoko Takeuchi, the creator of the Sailor Moon manga, among other things.

I was asked to record both videos to share with the Sailor Moon fan community over at Genvid.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Fan Panel:

Panel features Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Sakura with Kungpow and Moon Jump doing the game demo.

Naoko Takeuchi Fan Panel:

Panel features Kungpow, Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Moon Jump.

Also at this year’s convention were two Sailor Moon animators Kazuko Tadano and Hiromi Matsushita who did a great panel but my camera ate the footage.

Links to various pages mentioned in the two videos appear below.

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Swagshow, a venue not unlike our own here at Powet but limited to YouTube videos, managed to make their way down to E3 and capture some footage of the two new Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia and Judgement.

Order of Ecclesia already had some footage released that’s been floating around the net, and this video just provides greater coverage of the Glyph system that the game uses, as well as a bit of dialogue between main character Shanoa and her mentor Barlowe. The Glyph system is interesting in that you can assign glyphs to each hand to attack with, using either the same glyph for both or different glyph for each. As has been mentioned before, the action will be combination of styles from previous recent Castlevania games such as Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow, with a traveling map similar to oldschool classic Simon’s quest.

As for Judgement, we only get to see a small snippet of playtime. Playable characters revealed are Simon Belmont, Maria Renard, and Alucard. Though gameplay seems fluid and the characters seem to move and attack well, the game thus far looks like a clone of Soul Calibur….with zombies. However, I will hold off on my contempt for the game until I get to watch the full thing when it’s released.

This fall will be a heavy time for Castlevania fanatics, as it’s been announced by Konami that both of the newest titles of the acclaimed series, “Order of Ecclesia” and “Judgement” will be released sometime later this year.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, reported upon earlier, is the Nintendo DS title following upon the footsteps of previous games such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow in terms of gameplay, as an action-adventure 2D platformer. It takes control of newcomer Shanoa as she searches for the lost Belmont family while battling the minions of Dracula.

Castlevania: Judgement, if you haven’t heard yet, will be a 3D fighting game; a first for the series. (for obvious reasons) Castlevania characters from all over the series continuum will be thrown together in a style leechingly-similar to Soul Calibur to fight one another in a (hopefully) non-canon battle royale. A even more shocking twist is the hiring of Death Note’s Takeshi Obata to do character designs, completely overhauling pre-existing designs mostly coming from series-usual Ayame Kojima.

This fall will surely prove to be an interesting turn of events for Castlevania fans. Many debates have already begun as to the fate of both games as numerous fans, while liking the usual-style Ecclesia is going with, denounce Judgement as straying too far from the Castlevania norm and claim it to be merely Konami’s cash-maker. Come this autumn, we’ll see what’s what when both games are launched to brave public scrutiny.

Capcom has announced a new 3rd person action adventure game for Wii that quite frankly looks like real fun. They’re going for an 80s afternoon cartoon vibe, complete with minigames taking place of commercial breaks. Spyborgs doesn’t have much to show yet (just this trailer and a press release after the break), but the new team Bionic Games has members who worked on some of the biggest games of the last few years, including members of Insomniac (Ratchet & Clank) and Activision (Tony Hawk, Call Of Duty).
Game comes out next year, but a goofy over the top action game is always welcome.

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