Some highlights or lowlights - really, you should go see the whole thing - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 bottomed out after releasing to Xbox Live Arcade and PSN this year. After reaching highs of $109.99 (PlayStation 2) and $91.99 (Xbox), they slumped to $43 and $30 respectively after the title went out online. Ouch.

The games get a dead-cat bounce but prospects for a recovery beyond that aren't good, if Castlevania is any indication. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in its PSOne form hit $50.75 in December 2006. The next year, the game was released on XBLA and PSN, dropping the hard copy value to $19.99. It's recovered slightly to $27.12, but that's just a little over half its pre-re-release (say that three times fast) high.

MTV Multiplayer did its analysis according to VideoGamePriceCharts.com. Really, though, take a look for yourself. They covered much more than those two titles above, and offer tips for the safest investments unlikely to be undercut by re-releases.

Video Game Collectors Feeling the Pain of Re-Releases [MTV Multiplayer]

One part of that select group is the PlayStation Museum, which offers a fascinating little making of and post mortem on Pac-Man Ghost Zone, a fully 3D adventure starring the dot-hungry blob created by Toru Iwatani. It's a little rough around the edges in the early working version that PlayStation Museum played, closer to a Bubsy 3D than a Super Mario 64, as unkind as that sounds.

It's actually a sharp looking little game that Namco never got out the door, partly due to management level snafus, according to former Pac-Man Ghost Zone staffers.

Hit up PlayStation Museum for a look behind the scenes and video of a game you've likely never seen before.

Pac-Man Ghost Zone [PlayStation Museum]

For those not in the loop - that includes me, fair warning - Policenauts was a sci-fi adventure game produced for 3DO, PlayStation, and the Sega Saturn back in 1996. While an English localization of the game was promised, and work began on it, it never was released. Kojima said developers were simply unable to synchronize English dialogue with the original cut-scenes.

Now, 13 years later, it finally arrives. The project took nearly two years, much of that trying to find a programmer to insert the translation into the code. Quoting from its wiki here, the project got a kickstart last year when a Something Awful member began experiments inserting text into the game. A year later, here we are.

The patch is 7.9 megs, and available through five different sources here.

The Policenauts Translation Project [site, thanks Donald B. Zorak, Joey M., Andrew H., Inu B. and others]

That Michael Jackson signed PlayStation is now for sale, seemingly authentic in its scrawling upon by the late King of Pop. While the starting bid is not ludicrous, the Buy It Now price on eBay certainly is. The seller is willing to part with it right now for $1.5 million.

It's doubly special, according to the seller, being the 1,000,001st PlayStation to roll off the assembly line. Funny, that somehow sounds a little less believable than the Moonwalker actually scribbling "I Love You, Michael Jackson" on a game console.

Hand signed Michael Jackson Playstation with proof [eBay - thanks, Zeuxis!]

Gamasutra procured a list of the top ten most popular PSone Classics in the PlayStation Store for North America, and the results really aren't that surprising, especially the top two spots. Street Fighter Alpha and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night top off the list, two third-party titles atop a sea of originally Sony-published titles. Crash Bandicoot shows up three times in the top ten, with his original outing taking the number three spot. Twisted Metal 2 and Spyro the Dragon come next, followed by Crash 3 and 2, Wild Arms, MediEvil, and Hot Shots Golf 2. 2 Xtreme came nowhere near making this list, a sign that all is right in the world.

Unfortunately the list doesn't also contain sales numbers for each title, which would shed a greater light on the whole PSone Classics situation. We've dropped a line to Sony to see if that info is available. In the meantime, head over to Gamasutra to see their analysis of this top ten list.

Top 10 Most Popular PS1 Games In PlayStation Store [Gamasutra]

In theory, the idea that the game’s variable difficulty settings will make the game more accessible to someone like my mother is somewhat appealing. And then I think a bit and it’s not. When I toast Mom’s secondary for my sixth TD, I doubt I’ll get up, dance around, and mime like I’m teabagging her. But after nearly 20 years at this, beginning with Madden 93 on the Genesis, it’s almost an instinctive reaction.

I also seriously doubt guys’ girlfriends are going to be interested in one of the game’s great diversions — creating 6-11, 300 pound solid muscle running backs of all-99 ability, and giving them names like “Ass Raper.” My buddy David, from the Rocky Mountain News, and I did that on his Gamecube in 2003. (A.R.’s alma mater was Yale.) David brought him out against Jim’s Seahawks and paused every replay so Jim (another RMN pal) could read the guy’s name and number aloud. Jim responded the next week by creating his entire family as 99ers. His dog caught eight touchdowns.

In the new big-tent Madden community, you won’t see things like Spite Bowl, Late-Hit Bowl, and Halfback Option Pass Bowl, complete perversions of the game that can only be dreamed up by two guys, playing on the same couch, at equivalent levels of skill and sobriety. Spite Bowl pits two guys playing as their friend’s biggest rival teams. The object is more “do not lose to those overrated sons of bitches” rather than “I want my team to win.” The 49ers and Dolphins are a hideous matchup this year — unless they’re being led by Bills and Raiders fans.

Late-Hit Bowl, the object was to get flagged for as many late hits as possible and if the other guy ended up on the one yard line or scored on the drive, you got his points. Halfback Option Pass Bowl was a game invented with two other friends in Oneonta, N.Y., on the Playstation version of Madden 98. The only play you could run was the option pass and the only defense you could call was a prevent. Naturally, when you employed drinking-game rules this game became a lot more fun.

And while you might be able to have an online league with 31 of your closest friends, who the hell is going to buy the Taco Bell? There’s no league I could play that will top the Friday Madden League in 2004, with three other co-workers from the Rocky. Four-way, in-person cooperative play tells you just how strong your friendship is when your pal does stupid shit like whiff on three straight kickoffs. It forces you to invent your own hand signals and decoys. You dream up celebrations and end zone dances that didn’t depend on motion capture, quicktime, or moving to an endzone hotspot and pressing the right button.

None of this is to say I won’t enjoy Madden 09, and it's silly to resent others for enjoying it in different ways. But the tone of the game experience seems to be changing. Madden 09’s new AI is meant to tell gamers of all skill levels that there’s no wrong way to play the game. But my friends and I delighted in playing the game the wrong way, and I’m sure we weren't alone. Doing stupid things together online doesn’t have the same appeal, and it no longer provokes the same reaction from the game. It’s a little like your parents giving you permission to cuss all you want. After a few willful minutes on your own, you give up, and join polite company as a well-adjusted participant.

We had a secret test program in Europe back in 1997 on PSOne, running a black and white text-based, moderator-led community chat group with a special box called 'Net-Station' that hooked up PCs to the TV. Nick Parker ran it. The project codename was 'Moccasin 5'. I have no idea where it came from.

Then, at Sony Europe, we worked on a PS2 concept called 'Central Station' which was planned to stream its own PlayStation TV channel, back in 2002. This was four years ahead of YouTube. But uptake in broadband and wireless routers took longer to reach mass market levels than we expected, and we couldn't get other regions of the Sony PlayStation world to buy in.

It just goes to show, success isn't just about having a great idea or the ability to pull it off. In many ways, timing really is everything. And I'm guessing that actually releasing the product has something to do with it too.

Sony beat Facebook... to Facebook [MCVUK]

ESRB Game Ratings

The US Patent and Trademark Office has taken a much more vague approach to determining what may or may not be patented. Its guidelines for patent examiners requires that the invention produce a concrete, useful, and tangible result, and gameplay patents are being allowed.

[Video games] are not inventions at all in the normal sense of the word. They are imaginary systems. Unlike mathematical theorems (which cannot be patented), game rules don't even have to be coherent — though obviously they should be for playability reasons.

The Designer's Notebook: Damn All Gameplay Patents! [Gamasutra][image]

01. Bust a Groove (Other/Music games)
02. Crash Bandicoot 3 (Action/Platform)
03. Colony Wars (Action/Platform)
04. Cool Boarders 2 (Sports/Extreme Sports)
05. Cool boarders 3 (Sports/Extreme Sports)
06. Destruction Derby 2 (Racing)
07. Devil Dice (Puzzle)
08. Everybody's Golf (Sports/Golf)
09. Klonoa (Action/Platform)
10. Kurushi Final (Puzzle)
11. Motor Toon Grand Prix (Racing)
12. Namco Museum (Other/Mini game Collection)
13. Namco Museum 2 (Puzzle)
14. Namco Museum 4 (Puzzle)
15. Omega Boost (Action/Shooter)
16. Ridge Racer (Racing/Arcade Racing)
17. Ridge Racer Type 4 (Racing)
18. Rollcage (Racing)
19. Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Action/Platform)
20. Tekken 2 (Fighting/Beat-Em-Up)
21. Tekken 3 (Fighting/Beat-Em-Up)
22. Twisted Metal (Racing)
23. Vib Ribbon (Other/Music games)
24. Wip3out (Racing/Futuristic Racing)
25. WipeOut 2097 (Racing/Futuristic Racing)

I was actually incredibly excited about the prospect of Tekken 3 before I remembered that I have Tekken Tag Tournament sitting on my shelf...and the original Twisted Metal looked enticing before I remembered the sequel was already on my hard drive. See anything you're jazzed about?

Thanks to Shard's hard work!
PEGI PSN List [PEGI via Videogamesblogger][image]

ESRB Game Ratings

• Biohazard 2
• Intelligent Qube
• PoPoLoCrois Monogatari II
• Crime Crackers 2
• Atelier Marie Plus
• Tantei Junguji Saburo Early Collection
• Magical Drop
• Baroque
• Robin Lloyd no Bouken

PlayStation Store (JP) [PlayStation]

Rumor has it that the latest firmware updates for the PSP and PS3 have allowed playing of all PSOne discs on the Playstation Portable via the PS3 using remote play.

I haven't been able to check PSOne disc based games, because I can't find a single one, but we do have readers reporting in that they work on the system via Remote Play. In a bit of unwarranted exuberance I decided to see if any PS2 games would play via Remote Play, and the answer remains no. I did test out some PSOne games I had downloaded from the Playstation Store and they all seemed to work fine.

Another neat feature I noticed is that you can now assign which buttons do what on your PSP while in Remote Play meaning Lair should finally work if you want to play it remotely... and still own it.

Comment here if you can get your PSOne discs to work via Remote Play.

Update: SCEA just got back to us to confirm the rumors: "I can confirm that with today's firmware release, some PlayStation games can be inserted into PS3 and played via Remote Play on PSP." Sweet!

Only donors of the developer's last projects will be invited to the early beta, but we'll keep an eye out for the final release so you can spend your time worrying about other things, like "do these shoes look good with this phone, or do I need to burn them immediately?"

[psx4all NEWS] Playstation has arrived on the iPhone and iPod Touch! [via infiniteloop]

We've seen screen shots and video of Capcom's aborted Resident Evil 2 before, but nothing this extensive, and certainly not this long. The PlayStation Museum's walk through of many of the shelved sequel's areas provide a better look at what we could have been given instead of the proper, and arguably much better, final version of Resident Evil 2. Ten minutes of Leon S. Kennedy and Elza Walker await you above, with a proper preview of the prototype at the link below.

Resident Evil 2 Prototype (aka Resident Evil 1.5) [PlayStation Museum]

Hit the jump for the full list of classics coming today to Japan. King's Field III may be a necessary download. I purchased my original Playstation just to play King's Field II, but was lured in by the Twisted Metal series and never got around to it. Yeah...I played a lot of TM2...

Sanwa Pachinko Paradise (Irem) Sanwa Pachinko Paradise 2 (Irem) Alundra (Sony) XII Jumbo (Sony) Popologue (Sony) Hanafuda Graffiti Koikoi Monogatari (Hamster) Echo Night #2 (From Software) King's Field III (From Software)

Attendees at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival were witness to a prime example of spin control and knowing your audience.

Former SEE boss Chris Deering did a bit of dub work on the truth by using the price of beer to prove that the Playstation 3 is in fact cheaper than the original Playstation was when it was released.

"In terms of the number of pints of beer you have to forego to get a PS3 it's really just the same as the number of pints of beer you had to forego to get a PS1 back in 1995".

And the math checks out, according to Spong. The Deering Beers Scale proves that you could purchase a PS3 and nearly three beers for the cost of a PSOne. Whoever figured that out for Deering deserves a raise, in Guinness.

PlayStation 3 Cheaper Than PSOne In Beer [Spong]

The rest of this week's updates are mostly trailers, with video content for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, inFamous and Heavenly Sword ready for download. Movie trailers for The Brothers Solomon, I Am Legend, Resident Evil: Extinction and The Brave One round out the list.

European PS3 owners can also download a demo for 2K Games' The Darkness. Of course, North American gamers can also get their hands on it, they'll just need to create a UK account.

Not so, says FF VII character designer Tetsuya Nomura. According to a recent Dorimaga interview, by way of IGN, rumors of a remake are just that—rumors. He says:

It appears that there are often overseas rumors like 'Are you currently developing a [Final Fantasy] VII remake?' My apologies, but were absolutely not making [such a game].

Nomura does then mention that, while they're not officially working on it, "As long as there are people who want to make it and people who are waiting for it, we don't want to proclaim 'the end." Argh! So which is it? I just want them to announce the damned thing already, just so the hopeless fans will shut up about it already. Michael McWhertor

FFVII Not Being Remade — Nomura [IGN]