In Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant, a rejuvenated Neo Cortex is taking over the world one brain at a time! Cortex and N. Brio devise a new kind of evil – a text-messaging, do-anything device which controls both mutant and bandicoot minds. Armed with his quick-wits and lightening agility, Crash must free his friends, the titans and save the day!

"The Crash Bandicoot franchise has built a wide audience of loyal fans, appealing to both male and female gamers of all ages," said Al Simone, senior vice president, Global Marketing for Sierra Entertainment. "The Crash series remains one of the most recognizable franchises in our industry and we're excited to make this year's family-friendly title appear at the top of every gamer's wish list this holiday."

Key features in Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant include:

Mutant in your Pocket! - Not only does Crash gain the ability to control his enemies when he jacks them – now he can store his favorite monsters in his pocket, upgrade them and utilize their powers when they are most advantageous

"Free-Romping" World Design - Wumpa Island becomes a "free-romping" environment, allowing players to travel and explore through intersecting worlds, with different gameplay options available depending on what creature you've brought along for the ride

Girl Power! - Your co-op partner is Crash's sister, Coco, playable for the first time in the cooperative mode. Not only does Coco make the game that much more inviting for girls to pick up and play, she also brings with her a new tactile "treasure hunt" ability

New Abilities

Roll and Counter Combat System - Crash will have a fun, agile dodge move and "counter" move which will inflict extra damage on his enemies

Digging - Crash can now dig underground as real-life bandicoots really do; this will allow for Crash to unlock bonus items

Climbing - Crash can climb vertical surfaces and jump side-to-side to connected areas and dodge hazards

Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant is being developed by Radical Entertainment and will be available this fall at retail stores worldwide on Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 system and PSP system. For more information, please visit www.crashbandicoot.com.

Reprising their roles as the characters of Spyro and his mentor Ignitus, are two popular Hollywood leading men, Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and Gary Oldman (Sirius Black from the Harry Potter films). Joining the Spyro roster this year are Christina Ricci, Blair Underwood, Mark Hamill and Wayne Brady, rounding out an all-star voice cast.

In the final chapter of the trilogy, players find Sypro teaming up with an unlikely ally - Cynder, his former enemy, to face his most challenging mission to date. As the Dark Master's (voiced by Mark Hamill) evil envelopes the world like a plague, Spyro must fulfill his destiny and unlock the true power of the purple dragon within him to stop the Dark Master in his tracks.

The game introduces two never before seen elements into the Spyro universe: Spyro can now fly at any time and players can drop-in/drop-out with the new cooperative feature. The co-op feature allows players to have the option of completing the game as either Spyro or Cynder, giving them more freedom to explore Spyro's world in completely new ways.

"Spyro has grown up a lot since his debut, and players are going to notice advanced gameplay, character design and story lines in Dawn of the Dragon," said Al Simone, senior vice president, Global Marketing for Sierra Entertainment. "The game takes some exciting twists and turns – fans of the series and newcomers alike will experience non-stop fun, a renewed sense of intensity and the type of challenging adventure only Spyro can overcome."

Well, now we have a finished translation of Dragon Scroll for NES.
If you really enjoyed how the original Legend of Zelda set you off on a quest
with no real idea where to go or what to do, here you go.
While the game can be beaten in only an hour or two if you know where
everything is, good luck on that last, especially if you plan to do it without help.
I'll probably whip up an English walkthrough soon.
(I wonder how quickly the TAS crowd could beat it?)

Despite its fanboy following and favorable reviews from critics, the GBA adaptation for The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night will not see a follow-up on single-screen portable, according to Sierra's 2008 Spring Event held over the weekend.

Interestingly, of all the platforms The Eternal Night released on (PS2/Wii/DS/GBA), the GBA version, a 2D platformer/brawler some described as Devil May Cry meets Astro Boy: Omega Factor, has the highest average review score by a large margin. Quality doesn't equal quantity sold, however, especially on a dying console, and we're not surprised that Sierra opted to not complete its The Legend of Spyro trilogy on the GBA.

Sega Superstars Tennis 2? Hahahahaha! That's a good one! With the game just five weeks old in North America, GameStop is already slashing prices on Sega and Sumo Digital's Sonic-filled answer to Mario Tennis, with Sega Superstars Tennis bottoming out at $US19.99 for the Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2. The Nintendo DS version? Just $US14.99.

If you're in need of a GTA IV hype deflection shield or you're now willing to bite at this price—even I am, despite my bitterness about a lack of Space Harrier or Cosmic Smash Guy—you can pick it up in-store or online as of right now.

According to EspioKaos's translations of Shougai PSO and Rakuten, Phantasy Star Portable is scheduled to be released on July 31, 2008. These websites make reference to some tenative plans to include some form of integration with the PC/Playstation 2 version of Ambition of the Illuminus. This might include the ability to download various online character information. However, there is no definitve confirmation of this feature yet. In spite of this uncertainty, the following concrete details were announced:

* Special Mission - This mission will be released on Ambition of the Illuminus and Phantasy Star Portable to celebrate the game's release.
* 1500 Items - This will include weapons from Phantasy Star Universe and Ambition of the Illuminus.
* Multiple Endings - The ending you receive will depend on the choices you make while going through Story Mode.
* Downloadable Missions

Early impressions of Sonic Unleashed at the SEGA Blog reveal what most have suspected from preview screenshots and videos. Speedy Sonic gameplay from the SEGA Genesis 2D era in a refreshed 3D perspective. "SegaDawg" shares his impressions of 15-minutes of play time on the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed.

From SegaDawg at the SEGA USA blog:
"There’s speed, and lots of it. Those of you wanting 2D — you’ve got it. Those of you wanting 3D, well, you’ve got it too. Each perspective brings its own challenges.
The gameplay itself on the level I played really felt like classic Sonic. There’s rings, there’s bumpers, there’s loops, there’s jumping … but there’s also a few other things in there as well that add to the experience.
The level I played had multiple paths so you’ll be encouraged to play each level several times over and try to find the fastest path or the most rings you can.
There was a cool section in 3D perspective where Sonic has to use a quick-step to the left or right to avoid multiple obstacles in his path. This is done with a button-push, not with the stick, so it’s an almost-instant jump left or right without breaking stride. Pretty cool.
The landscape and environments look great and there are some things there that Sonic can interact with.
A couple of the sections felt a lot like a roller coaster.
Not all the bumpers work in Sonic’s favor."

Sonic Unleashed will be coming in Holiday 2008 to the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3 and Wii

The organizing team just recieved an email from someone who pretends to know more about a commercial “Giana Sisters” remake, which is in the works by the german company “bhv Software GmbH”. If we can believe Amazon Germany the game should be out in shelves on 15th May 2008. We are really looking forward to have a talk with the guy who has details.

Actually this is something which scares some of us off.

I might repeat a part of the story again, for those who don’t know:
The history of ”Giana’s Return” has begun as Giana 32k (DOS), a Giana Sisters clone with 7 levels, coded in less than 32 kilobyte. Later on, he wanted to make a full game out of it and was looking for a leveldesigner, this is where Kojote, the current organizer of Giana’s Return came in.

To shorten it a bit, Myth was working on a Windows version (Giant Worlds) which was published on a computer magazins cover CD. From this moment on he had the attention of the copyrightholder Armin Gessert, who tried to sue him, but after a chat on the phone, he dropped this.

Myth was too scared to continue development, but Kojote had plenty of new levels left, which were now without use. Considering building a level and testing etc takes more than some would believe, he took the project into his hands, now as “Giana’s Return”. Due to Myth complaining about his poor code and not giving the relevant parts, we had to start from scratch.

“Giana’s Return” was now born in 2001/2002. With the help of a console coder known as Christian Nowak, we have gone pretty far and were able to release a 0.90 beta version to the public, mainly for Dreamcast, GP32 and Windows (32-Bit). Due to unkown reasons, CHN dropped the work on Giana’s Return and left the console scene in general.

There we were… an almost done game, but with some minor bugs which destroyed the gameplay - and the best part - no source code.

It came what had to come…

The whole game required a new team and a new code base. In 2004 we pulled our head in an iceblock and started over again, with a NEW team.

Of course the organizer tried to get in touch with the responsible people, specially Armin Gessert. It turned out into a real pain, as Armin seems to hide himself pretty well. We have sent a written statement to him, CHN at the beginning of the project, as long as the project organizer. Without direct response from Armin. We didn’t take it too serious as we know he has to earn his bread as well, but we did not gave up. We even tried to ring up Armin Gessert at his company “Spellbound AG” in Germany - all we reached was talking to Mr. Speer, who said he will talk with Armin. No direct response from Armin again at all - up to now.

Considering “no answer” is an answer too and the word of Mr. Speer (see E-Mail above), we accepted his silence as “Do what you want”. After all we had no money intensions and just bring a worthy sequel of Armin’s great game. We have also been in touch with Chris Hülsbeck, who allowed us to use his original .SID files (the e-mail is still in our hands) and Manfred Trenz allowed us to redo all of the levels one by one. Of course the last two don’t have too much to say, as the copyright holder is still Armin, but having support from two people who were involved as well, nothing could have gone wrong.

Regardless to this, we want to point out again that no profit money has been made from this project, a four digit Euro sum has been invested by the organizer up to this day. Not to mention the hours and hours of work, provided by all team members.

Depending on the conflict which turns up now (no one is interested in getting sued for something), we either change the name of the game (as already announced) or we will limit the release to platforms which are comercially dead such as the Dreamcast and GP32.

The situation is more than disappointing, specialy after the progress we made recently and still do.

Well… let’s find out how limited the license of “bhv Software GmbH” is, maybe they just have the rights for a Windows version - and the Giana’s Return Team can easily avoid a Windows release, to keep everyone happy.

Time will tell…

Giana’s Return Organizing

As reported by PSO-World member Cranberry, the US XBox Phantasy Star Online Episode 1&2 servers appear to have been shutdown a week early. XBox players have been unable to login since the last maintenance period on April 22nd. It is currently unknown whether users will receive a pro-rated refund for this early shutoff, on top of the one that was planned to be payed back.