New from SuccessHK



The peaceful land of Slimenia has been suddenly invaded by a mysterious cartel called "the Plob," who then proceed to kidnap all the slimes in the capital city of Boingburg. Our protagonist, Rocket, is the only slime left behind, and must embark on a journey throughout Slimenia to save his friends and uncover the Plob's nefarious plot!
Part of a series of Slime Mori Mori games in Japan, Dragon Quest Heroes is full of adventure stages that take advantage of our hero's bouncing and stretching abilities as he works to solve the challenges of each area in the game and rescue his captured slime friends. Each adventure stage culminates in Rocket hopping aboard a colossal slime-shaped, player-customizable war machines. Pit tanks against a friend's in exciting player-vs-player action, using the Nintendo DS wireless multiplayer game feature!

...

Well, the Wii is now breaking a long-standing tradition against game pack-ins for console sales. Unfortunately, their pack-in sucks (trust me on this). Luckily, Microsoft is one-upping them.

Starting September 30th, a new 360 Premium bundle will arrive, featuring Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and the XBLA arcade pack, featuring Geometry Wars Evoloved, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, Wik: Fable of Souls, Hardwood Backgammon, Outpost Kaloki X and Texas Hold'Em.

You do need to take this with a grain of salt: this isn't Microsoft confirmed yet. It's only according to Clubskill.com... dead certain as they sound, better off keeping yourself zipped until Microsoft says something. But if this is true, this is just a great deal. ...

Apple's recent annoucement of iPod games has visions of Doom and sugarplums dancing in our heads. I mean, we know you can already technically do Doom on the iPod. But we're looking for a solution that doesn't require us to install some godawful Linux OS.

Unfortunately, it looks like the iPod's game SDK is extremely closed... homebrew at this point looks like a virtual impossibility on a stock iPod:

Modifying the games is difficult at best, if not impossible, because of the checksumming of every file in the bundle, and then the certificate against the manifest.
Game resource files, particularly audio, aren't obfuscated and can be extracted successfully.

Homebrew is probably an impossibility at this point because of the expectation of a signed cert from Apple.

The fact that there are platform identifiers in the plists makes me wonder what Apple's future plans entail. Maybe this would just be for later iPod revisions, or maybe they're just looking forward. Still, quite interesting.

Cathode Tan, where we snagged this from, points out how absurd it is that while Microsoft releases an SDK for the 360 and Sony updates their PSP firmware, Apple won't even acknowledge the homebrew community one way or another. Then again, Apple has never made any attempt to capture gamers — that's why every Apple Intel Mac owner has Boot Camp installed. ...

Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will all be available at the US launch of PlayStation 3 this November, according to Activision big-wig Robert Kotick.

Kotick then went on to unveil publisher Activision's plans for the next 12 months, with Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Transformers set for a June release, followed by a new Call of Duty, Tony Hawk Next, The Bee Movie, a Marvel title and a new Guitar Hero game later in the year.

Several of these are working titles but it's no surprise that Activision plans to continue releasing new versions of its strongest games.

During his revealing presentation at a recent conference, Kotick also confirmed that Activision's PS3 games would be priced at the same level as its 360 games: "We have not seen a lot of consumer resistance at the higher price points and we expect that all of our next-gen products will be launched at $60 (£31) price points".

Which is depressing, really, as it suggests that Activision could go lower if it were forced to.

Of course, don't expect to see that dollar-to-pound converted price of around £30 slapped on PS3 titles in our neck of the woods. Despite 360's high-priced games, Dead Rising, Saints Row and Test Drive Unlimited have all shot high into the charts this week at an RRP of £50, and you can bet your last penny that we won't see a change to the premium pricing in the near future. ...

At the 44th Amusement machine show in Japan today, SNK Playmore announced support for Taito's new Type X2 arcade board.

The longtime fighting game publisher said it is already developing two games for the machine: KOF Maximum Impact: Regulation A and Samurai Spirits Sen. While details on the titles have yet to be disclosed, SNK showed trailers to give a hint of how the titles might play.

KOF Maximum Impact: Regulation A is based on the 3D home-console fighting series carrying the same name. It includes at least one new character, Ash Crimson. Ash is the main character in KOF2003 and KOF XI.

Samurai Spirits Sen will also play as a 3D game. This will be the second time the sword fighting series makes its way to the arcade (in 3D) since it landed on the Hyper Neo-Geo 64 system in 1997.

SNK also said it will bring a new title from its best-selling franchise to the Type X2. While only a logo was displayed during the stage presentation, the company announced that King of Fighters XII will be released on the new system. ...

Take-Two Interactive has had its share of controversies in the last couple of years. The discovery of a sex minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, dubbed "Hot Coffee," and that game's subsequent rerating comes in at the high end of the controversy scale for inspiring federal gaming legislation, while the discovery of a "nude" skin and more violence than was initially rated in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion seemed to cause less of a stir.

In between the two was Bully. Originally announced in May of 2005, the game puts players in the role of a student at the fictional Bullworth Academy, where the protagonist is said to "stand up to bullies, get picked on by teachers, play pranks on malicious kids, win or lose the girl, and ultimately learn to navigate the obstacles of the fictitious reform school." Critics soon jumped on the game, labeling it "a Columbine simulator," calling for it to be banned, and demanding that Take-Two stop production of the game.

A new wrinkle has entered the discussion today, as the Entertainment Software Rating Board told GameSpot that Bully has been rated T for Teen. When it hits the PlayStation 2 next month, Bully will carry content descriptors warning consumers of "Crude Humor, Violence, Sexual Themes, Language and Use of Alcohol & Tobacco." According to the ESRB rating guide, T for Teen games have content that "may be suitable for ages 13 and older."

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter told GameSpot he actually expected the game to get a T-for-Teen rating given recent information Take-Two has released on the game since confirming the October launch.

"I think that Take-Two generated a lot of unintentional bad will with the Hot Coffee fiasco, and I think that they are trying to enhance their reputation by avoiding controversy where it doesn't help their business," Pachter said. "Bully will be just as fun with a T rating as it would have been with an M [for Mature] rating. To be honest, I think that Manhunt would have performed better with the violence toned down a bit. It was an incredible game but got a lot of criticism from the gaming press for over-the-top violence."

Pachter said he wasn't sure if the game's rating would help or hurt its prospects at retail but said he didn't expect the game to be a huge seller, anyway.

"I have low unit estimates for the game, especially since it's only on PS2," Pachter said, "so it will likely not have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. If anything, there is probably some upside to my estimates if the game performs well." ...

The price of next-gen console games was a hot issue last year when the bulk of Xbox 360 launch titles carried a $60 price tag. This week, Activision CEO Robert Kotick confirmed what many gamers already expected or even assumed: the company's PlayStation 3 games will retail for roughly $60.

In a presentation to the Merrill Lynch Media and Entertainment Conference yesterday, Kotick indicated that the company is taking a next-gen pricing approach to its next-gen software, thanks in part to its success pricing PlayStation Portable games at $50, and Xbox 360 software like the best-selling Call of Duty 2 at $60.

"We have not seen a lot of consumer resistance at the higher price points and we expect that all of our next-generation products will be launched at $60 price points," Kotick said.

On the surface that would suggest $60 Wii games from the company, but an Activision representative confirmed for GameSpot that Kotick was only referring to PS3 and Xbox 360 games. In fact, the publisher's Activision Value label is already preparing a pair of Wii launch titles: Rapala Tournament Fishing and World Series of Poker.

Since the Xbox 360 launched last year, some publishers have defended the $59.99 standard price for next-gen releases by citing the increased development costs associated with the new platforms. While Kotick did not bring the example up specifically in relation to the company's pricing strategy on games, he did mention that Spider-Man 3 has cost the company more than $35 million to develop on all formats. He did not specify on which consoles the game would appear."

"That is the most expensive product that we've created, and for good reason," Kotick said. "You'll see how much it really takes advantage of the assets and the capabilities of the hardware." ...

With old man winter around the corner, devoted golfers outside of the warmer parts of the United States will be reluctantly retiring their swings for the season. However, they will still be able to get a few virtual rounds in, thanks to Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, which hits stores next month for the Xbox 360, Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC, and PlayStation Portable.

Xbox 360 owners currently in rain-drenched parts of the country won't have to wait until then, though. GameSpot has learned that the Xbox 360 demo for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace on Thursday, September 14. The exact timing of the demo's release and the details have not yet been revealed.

Tiger 07 doubles the number of playable courses from last year's version, with an even dozen. The game has also ramped up the difficulty, with more of golf's frustrating factors, such as skill, coming into play on each shot. ...

The saying goes, "What goes up must come down." However, in the case of New Super Mario Bros., it goes back up again. The plucky DS game has once again topped the latest console-game sales rankings from Bestbuy.com. During the week of September 5-11, it edged out the previous week's champion, THQ's Saints Row (Xbox 360), which now finds itself parked in fifth place.

New Super Mario Bros. also edged out Madden NFL 07, the latest installment in the top sports franchise of all time. The PlayStation 2 edition of the game was relegated to the number-two slot, just in front of the Xbox 360 version. No other versions of Madden made it into the top 10, although another Electronic Arts sports title, NASCAR 07 (PlayStation 2), raced into sixth place.

Another new entrant on the list was LucasArts' Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy for the PlayStation 2 (ninth). The rest of the top 10, was all about the DS. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day stayed strong in fourth, Mario Kart DS cruised along in seventh, Star Fox Command ruled eighth place, and Tetris DS was tail-end Charlie in 10th.


Best Buy console charts: September 5-11, 2006

1 New Super Mario Bros.
Platform: DS
2 Madden NFL 07
Platform: PS2
3 Madden NFL 07
Platform: X360
4 Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
Platform: DS
5 Saints Row
Platform: X360
6 NASCAR 07
Platform: PS2
7 Mario Kart DS
Platform: DS
8 Star Fox Command
Platform: DS
9 LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Platform: PS2
10 Tetris DS
Platform: DS

Via Gamespot ...