Kotaku

New Sonic Wii Game Revealed, Brings Much Needed Swordplay To Series

The latest issue of Nintendo Power reveals, via cover story, that Sonic the Hedgehog is back! After a painfully long absence, the "Blue Blur" is returning to the Wii with Sonic & The Black Knight which the mag pitches as a "big new Wii-exclusive adventure" in which Sonic "swings cool steel." Yep, the Sonic drought is over.

We have little info beyond the cover details for Sonic's third Wii outing, but can imagine a Sonic themed adventure with the compelling gameplay of Red Steel or Dragon Quest Swords will fit the series like a glove. Hey, we'll take it (begrudgingly) over gunplay any day.

To sum up... :\

Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii) revealed in new Nintendo Power [NeoGAF - thanks, Carlos!]

OK, and after this, I promise no more bashing on Nintendo's press conference. But I used to work in internal PR for a very large software company (that may or may not have produced products that rhyme with Shmorton Shminternet Shmecurity) and we'd go to RSA, host our own user conference, all that stuff. What I mean to say is that I've seen some eye-rolling moments in keynotes, when top executives try to get hip. But I've never seen anything close to this.

The -Minus World sums it all up with the five most embarrassing moments. Yes, No. 1 is DJ Ravi flailing away like a toddler batting at a mobile. But the other four are alternately hilarious/pathetic too, and I think any one of them, by themselves, would have made it a trainwreck.

Anyway, enjoy. See you back here tomorrow.

The 5 Most Embarrassing Moments of Nintendo's E3 Conference [The -Minus World, and pic]

Message boards and forums are livid at EA and NCAA Football 09, whose problems apparently go well beyond EA Locker corrupting the roster files. AOL Fanhouse went through the boards and made a full accounting, and it's grim.

Damn, does this count as simulating a "war economy" too? Gamepolitics picked up an item out of Tacoma, Wash. that a former technical advisor on the original Metal Gear Solid faces a federal charge of attempted parts smuggling. The parts in question are "sophisticated holographic night vision gunsights," bound for Japan.

Capt. Tomoaki Iishiba, a Japanese national who joined the U.S. Military in 1993, faces one count. He basically acquired the sights and then mailed them to others without an export license. The sights cost more than $600 each.

He's scheduled to enter a guilty plea at the end of the month.

Metal Gear Solid Tech Advisor Busted By Feds for Shipping Weapons Parts [GamePolitics]

Penny Arcade nails it in three panels. Then F@NBOY$ goes and re-nails it in seven. Well, they re-nail Nintendo's cringe-inducing presser, anyway.

Both full size strips are on the jump. Sorry to do that, but at front-page width you can't make out the words.

Going For the Mass Market: Good News or Bad?

Lego Batman Gameplay Footage from E3

Wasn't there to see it, don't know, as this is the E3 Gameplay Trailer for Lego Batman, but it has no sound. Not sure if that's a bug or intentional. But it begins with Lego Riddler sitting on a toilet, and if I see that I have an ethical obligation to report it to you mature people. (Snicker). Then Riddler and Mister Freeze go out, drive a cop car into a lot of smashable minikits, and Freeze goes apeshit with the gun, freezing Riddler in the process.

This video is 15 minutes long. I'm pissed there's no sound, because I love the Lego speak in the cutscenes, and God only knows what they're "saying" in that opening. It looks like a delightful game, with tons of LOL potential.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame E3 2008 Gameplay Trailer (HD) [GamersHell]

Ever wanted to decimate the world's population or see if you could develop a super-bug that would leave the globe in utter pandemonium? If the answer is yes, browser-based Pandemic 2 is your game; even if the answer is 'uh, no,' it's an interesting way to while away some time. Watch as your customized disease of choice is let loose on the world, then use your 'evolution points' to mutate the perfect delivery method for a global pandemic — the goal is to have a trail of devastation (and bodies) left in your wake. There are two different modes, 'realistic' and 'relaxed,' so if you're not sure you're ready for a realistic onslaught, you can try your hand with the easier mode.

Pandemic 2 [CrazyMonkeyGames via IndieGames]

This is absolutely parody. It could be unintentional self-parody. Or it could be someone masquerading as a PS3 fanboy to parody that particular constituency. But it's parody. A guy who gives the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII for the 360 equal weight to Asperger's is, shall we say, having a disproportionate reaction. (Full text on the jump). Still, we had a video earlier of an angry, ticked off PS3 fanboy who claimed to know Japanese culture about as well as Marcus Brody could [teeth clenched] blend in [/teeth clenched] in the Middle East of the late 1930s. That guy turned out to be a Something Awful goon.

The fact the text is available only as a screen capture (full version after the jump) leads me to be skeptical someone actually feels this way. But, if you're a Microsoft partisan and want to gloat, here you go. And if you are four-square for Sony and want to rage, here is a comrade-in-arms. And if you invest your emotions and identity in pro bono advocacy for multinational corporations with billions in market capitalization and brigades of PR professionals, you need some perspective. Like this guy.

Blizzard Versus Glider: A Pyrrhic Victory?

Rumor: Prank Results in Half-Assed "Confirmation" of GTA IV for PC

Not sure what to make of this. Bullshit radar says "proof of nothing" because there's no reason for tech support to be looped in on a game in development. That said, two guys worked up an extremely patient, social engineering prank that had 2K Games support believing, or at least suspicious of the possibility of a hacked Grand Theft Auto IV demo on pirate sites. And in the back-and-forth, it turned up this reply from tech support:

"The PC version of GTA IV has not even been announced for release and is still in development so is not about to be released on a website."

Top Travel Spots for Gamers

Sweet Pyro Costume from Down Under

Reader Paul from Australia sends in this pic (and two others) of his homebrewed homage to Pyro from Team Fortress 2. Naturally, because this is how my mind works, I thought "well if Pyro is a female character, this dude is running around in girls' clothes." I kid! I keeeed! The mask is right on, but the suit's not the same texture as Pyro's rubberized get-up, which in addition to being expensive would also look like fetish gear. What. What?!

No really, I think I have a strange form of Tourette's, that causes me to blurt out wildly inappropriate, if not profane, things. Fahey and Leigh can attest to that. So can my girlfriend from my senior year of high school. We saw "Ghost" on a date and, while she was crying during the scene where Patrick Swayze possesses the mystic's body so he can hold his wife one last time, I leaned in close to whisper, "You know, what's really going on here, is Demi Moore is actually dancing with and kissing Whoopi Goldberg." And I wondered why I was a teenage virgin.

Wow, that was a digression. Hit the jump for the images.

The Expert Bias: Reviewing for a New Culture

Soulcalibur IV Start Screen and Character Selection

Reader Sourside21 found four Photobucket images of Soulcalibur IV breaking the street date by about 10 days. Well, maybe. It looks like these guys are playing it in the back of a store, so maybe they're employees (or friends) playing with the stock after hours. Naturally, we don't see any gameplay. But we do see the character selection page and Kratos ain't on it. "We'll probably be getting a lot of information on how each of the characters play soon," Sourside21 surmises. Good bet. All the full size photos are on the jump. Officially, Soulcalibur IV drops on July 29 in North America, July 31 in Japan, Australia and Europe, and Aug. 1 in the UK.

Perfect World International Trailer

Beijing Perfect World is launching Perfect World International, an English version of the MMORPG that's built for English-speaking spots in North America and Europe (you won't have to play the Malaysian version if you don't feel like wading through other languages!). The closed beta will be coming next month with anticipated release in September of this year. It sure looks pretty — I may just have to fire up the game this weekend to see if it's actually that pretty on my computer.

So Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was patched earlier this month with a slew of upgrades and gameplay changes, all of it free. Unfortunately, it also inserted a disc check — big problem for those who got the game via digital download.

The fix? I mean the official frickin' fix? The Register says an Ubisoft employee uploaded a fix to the company's support site that was actually a hack written by software pirates to defeat the disc-check. Yeah, Ruh-roh, Rubi. And presumably that guy has stepped in Ubi-doo, as the company removed the executable and is "thoroughly investigating the matter."

Tomb Raider: Underworld Trailer, and Release Date