SPOnG has long suspected that Peter Moore’s GTA IV tattoo which he proudly showed off at E3 this year is not actually real. Admittedly we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence on which to base this suspicion, other than Moore seems to have not shown the tattoo in public since E3. Oh, and it looked very much like it was a wash-on/wash off jobbie too, from where we were sitting in Mann’s Chinese Theatre back in May. Which was, admittedly, near the back.

So it’s interesting to hear that Moore was challenged to show said tattoo at the recent Xbox 360 launch in Japan over the weekend, with Kotaku quoting ‘game journo Ishaan’ who tells them:
“I also asked him [Moore] in front of an entire room of people to show us his GTA and Halo tattoos. He replied he was wearing a full-sleeved shirt, so it wouldn't be possible. I then asked him if we could see it later, maybe backstage. To which he laughed really loudly and replied 'Are you asking me to take my shirt off for you!?'

SPOnG will aim to get photographic evidence of the fabled GTA IV tattoo when we hopefully run into Peter at X06 later this week.

Perhaps Peter was just a bit shy, as it was his first trip to India after all. Although he wasn’t too shy to tell the assembled press: “After the legendary worldwide customer euphoria around the Xbox 360, we are extremely proud to introduce the Xbox 360 in the Indian market. In fact, going by the stupendous customer anticipation around the launch here, we can confidently say that India is more than ready for its leap into the next generation of digital entertainment experiences. In this context, the Xbox 360 with its strong portfolio of gaming titles and limitless possibilities will appeal to Indian gamers across multiple genres and equip them to explore new entertainment options.”

An exclusive cricket title was unveiled at the launch, entitled ‘Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007’, created specifically to cater to the tastes of the Indian gaming market. Popular Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar and cricketer Yuvraj Singh have been signed up as the Brand Ambassadors for Xbox 360 in India.

Recent reports indicate that over a quarter of Indians still live below the poverty line.

Via Spong ...

Nintendo is planning the biggest online, TV and sampling campaigns it has ever undertaken in the UK according to Robert Lowe, Nintendo's product manager for home consoles, in a recent interview with respected online marketing trade rag New Media Age.

"We're just in the final stages of putting our media plan together for Wii, but in terms of online, our spend is way more than anything we've done before," Lowe told NMA.

He continued: "There will be three main channels through which we'll communicate Wii - online, TV and sampling - and of the top line ad budget of £10m-£11m, leading up to the December launch, a large proportion is going online."

The tagline for the campaign is 'Wii Move You' (with 'Wii Will Rock You' almost certainly having been dropped as too cheesy, despite what certain SPOnG staffers continue to argue). 'Wii Move You' spots are planned in on major portals including Lycos, Yahoo! and MSN. TV spots have yet to be finalised, so we will bring you news on that as we get it.

"Particularly over the launch week we'll completely take them over - you'll go online and see Wii everywhere," Lowe confidently asserted. ...

News Via Spong:

Over 190,000 eager Japanese gamers packed out the Tokyo Game Show at Makuhari Messe over the weekend, a record number of attendees according to the event’s organisers. Total attendance from Friday until Sunday, was 192,411 people, compared with 176,056 from last year.

The busiest day was Saturday, with 84,823 people cramming in and willing to wait for hours in the long queues outside the exhibition centre, and then patiently wait to get a few minutes hands-on time with a demo unit once inside, according to the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association.

The organisers had originally estimated only around 160,000 attendees making the trip this year, which just goes to show the massive appeal to Japanese gamers of finally being able to get a hands on with PlayStation 3.

Games which generated the biggest hype (and longest queues) were the trailers for Blue Dragon (Xbox 360) and Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) with well over two hour waits for each. Unsurprisingly, the new Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) trailer was also a favourite, as were playable versions of next gen Sonic The Hedgehog (PS3/360), Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) and Ridge Racer 7 (PS3).

Next year's Tokyo Game Show will take place from September 21 to 23 - time to start saving up for the airfare.

Finally, the following eleven titles have been voted "best games showing particular promise" from attendees at the show:


Elebits (Konami) for the Wii

Gyakuten Saiban 4 [Phoenix Wright] (Capcom) for the DS

Gran Turismo HD (Sony) for the PS3

The Eye of Judgment (Sony) for the PS3

Seiken Densetsu 4 [Dawn of Mana] (Square Enix) for the PS2

Tales of Destiny (Namco Bandai) for the PS2

Blue Dragon (Microsoft) for the Xbox 360

Heavenly Sword (Sony) for the PS3

Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (Konami) for the PSP

Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (Capcom) for the PSP

Lost Planet (Capcom) for the Xbox 360 ...

News Via Gamespot

It takes a huge property to dominate sales charts in the game industry. This week, two behemoth licenses jumped into the sales battle to take on BestBuy.com's top 10 list of best-selling games. Unfortunately for other games trying to get onto the list, both properties were in the same game.

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy bumped off a few top-10 list mainstays, sending all but two editions of Madden NFL 07 and Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day packing. The LucasArts game took four spots in the top 10, including the number one spot with the PlayStation 2 edition. The GameCube edition of Lego Star Wars II gave a rare appearance for the platform at number five, followed by the Xbox edition at six and the Xbox 360 version at eight.

Madden NFL 07 continued to show why it's an annual juggernaut, with its PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions landing in second and seventh, respectively.

The DS, which enjoyed outstanding sales this past spring and summer, had four games in the list. Star Fox Command led the charge in third, New Super Mario Bros. fell to fourth, Mario Kart DS slid to ninth, and Animal Crossing: Wild World placed 10th. As noted above, Brain Age failed to make the top 10 list.

Best Buy console charts: September 11-17, 2006

1 LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Platform: PS2 Category
2 Madden NFL 07
Platform: PS2
3 Star Fox Command
Platform: DS
4 New Super Mario Bros.
Platform: DS
5 Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Platform: GC
6 Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Platform: XBOX
7 Madden NFL 07
Platform: X360
8 Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Platform: X360
9 Mario Kart DS
Platform: DS
10 Animal Crossing: Wild World
Platform: DS ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPMSX the the MSX series Emulator for PSP.

For those who haven't seen previous versions, fMSX is a famous emulator of the MSX, MSX2, and
MSX2+ 8bit home computers.
It runs MSX/MSX2/MSX2+ software on many different platforms including Windows and Unix.
See http://fms.komkon.org/fMSX/ for further informations.
It has been first written by Marat Fayzullin, and later Vincent van Dam ported it on SDL.

*** Many thanks to Malkster and Pou-Chan for their help ***

What's new in version 1.0.6 :

- Icons and background images designed by Malkster
- Emulator menus reorganization (new menu for settings)
- Multiple keyboard mappings feature developped by Pou-chan :
You can now toggle between 3 different keyboard mapping using
LTrigger and RTrigger keys
- Add keyboard change skin option :
you can add your own virtual keyboard images in the graphics directory.
- New speed limiter (more accurate)
- New feature to save and load a distinct setting file for each games
- Delete files option (in the file selector)
- Screenshots are now saved in PNG format instead of BMP
- The percent of battery left is now displayed in the emulator window
- Add a watchdog to automatically return to the emulator menu
when the battery is very low (< 5%)
- Bug fix and code cleaning

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

[subliminal message on]
(if all homebrew coders could do the same, and
release the source of GNU protected stuff
[subliminal message off]

Enjoy,

Zx. ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPMSX the the MSX series Emulator for PSP.

For those who haven't seen previous versions, fMSX is a famous emulator of the MSX, MSX2, and
MSX2+ 8bit home computers.
It runs MSX/MSX2/MSX2+ software on many different platforms including Windows and Unix.
See http://fms.komkon.org/fMSX/ for further informations.
It has been first written by Marat Fayzullin, and later Vincent van Dam ported it on SDL.

*** Many thanks to Malkster and Pou-Chan for their help ***

What's new in version 1.0.6 :

- Icons and background images designed by Malkster
- Emulator menus reorganization (new menu for settings)
- Multiple keyboard mappings feature developped by Pou-chan :
You can now toggle between 3 different keyboard mapping using
LTrigger and RTrigger keys
- Add keyboard change skin option :
you can add your own virtual keyboard images in the graphics directory.
- New speed limiter (more accurate)
- New feature to save and load a distinct setting file for each games
- Delete files option (in the file selector)
- Screenshots are now saved in PNG format instead of BMP
- The percent of battery left is now displayed in the emulator window
- Add a watchdog to automatically return to the emulator menu
when the battery is very low (< 5%)
- Bug fix and code cleaning

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

[subliminal message on]
(if all homebrew coders could do the same, and
release the source of GNU protected stuff
[subliminal message off]

Enjoy,

Zx. ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPMSX the the MSX series Emulator for PSP.

For those who haven't seen previous versions, fMSX is a famous emulator of the MSX, MSX2, and
MSX2+ 8bit home computers.
It runs MSX/MSX2/MSX2+ software on many different platforms including Windows and Unix.
See http://fms.komkon.org/fMSX/ for further informations.
It has been first written by Marat Fayzullin, and later Vincent van Dam ported it on SDL.

*** Many thanks to Malkster and Pou-Chan for their help ***

What's new in version 1.0.6 :

- Icons and background images designed by Malkster
- Emulator menus reorganization (new menu for settings)
- Multiple keyboard mappings feature developped by Pou-chan :
You can now toggle between 3 different keyboard mapping using
LTrigger and RTrigger keys
- Add keyboard change skin option :
you can add your own virtual keyboard images in the graphics directory.
- New speed limiter (more accurate)
- New feature to save and load a distinct setting file for each games
- Delete files option (in the file selector)
- Screenshots are now saved in PNG format instead of BMP
- The percent of battery left is now displayed in the emulator window
- Add a watchdog to automatically return to the emulator menu
when the battery is very low (< 5%)
- Bug fix and code cleaning

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

[subliminal message on]
(if all homebrew coders could do the same, and
release the source of GNU protected stuff
[subliminal message off]

Enjoy,

Zx. ...

New game released for DS:



It seems like folks love those Mini Mario Toys! So much that the Mario Toy Company has expanded the line to include Mini DK, Mini Toad and Mini Peach figures to the series. With all these toys bringing him more money than he knows what to do with, Mario decides to fulfill his lifelong dream and open a theme park called Super Mini Mario World!

The opening day crowds include Pauline and Donkey Kong - who immediately falls head over heels for the lovely lass. The big ape tries to show her some toys, but when Pauline picks the Mini Mario figure above all else, Donkey Kong becomes enraged! He smashes displays, destroys the toys and takes Pauline to the top floor of the amusement park!

Now it's up to YOU to find Pauline and save the day!

More info --> http://www.yesasia.com/?/info.php?pro...5&lsaid=219793 ...

Great News article and more about the recent Tokyo Show from Lik Sang:



Celebrating its 10th anniversary last weekend was the Tokyo Game Show, held at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. Unlike the ‘press only’ E3 Expo, two of the three days here open the doors to the public, meaning the wait to play some games like Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360 for example, was nearly 3 hours! Before looking at those though, and with Nintendo not having a booth, the next gen hardware wars were raging here between the PS3 and the Xbox 360. First for Microsoft’s entry, the HD-DVD drive was announced to launch on Nov 22nd for 19,800 yen (about US$ 170). Also revealed was that the console will receive a software upgrade to support 1080p (although there’s still no HDMI port), and the core package now includes PGR3 and Ninety-Nine Nights free for a limited time.

Full Article at Lik Sang ...