Quantum Theory is penciled in for March 25.

The game was developed by Tecmo's Team Tachyon, which recently developed Undead Knights and before that Wii title Rygar: The Battle of Argus. Quantum Theory features a cover system a la Gears of War. The spin is that the environment is "living", so ideal cover can disappear.

The release comes in two flavors: standard and limited editions. The ¥9,980 limited edition one is packed with a special art book, a soundtrack CD and a character download code for multiplayer. Standard version is ¥7,980.

DoA Paradise will be released in Japan on April 2, 2010.

As we previously noted, because Dead or Alive: Paradise is a lot like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, only without all that volleyball, giving extra attention to the gambling, mini-games and relationship management aspects of the Team Ninja series. And it's probably a port of the game of the same name released for Japanese cell phones in late 2006. Expect to see the DOA girls in bikinis, doing bikini-appropriate things.

The game will be sold either as a stand alone or in two different bundles. The ¥7,329 "Secret Paradise Box" is bundled with a secret photo album, soundtrack CD, an original Kasumi box cover and the game. The ¥15,729 is bundled with all that plus the Kasumi figurine. It allows players to enjoy two different bathing suits: skimpy and skimpier.

Because Dead or Alive: Paradise is a lot like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, only without all that volleyball, giving extra attention to the gambling, mini-games and relationship management aspects of the Team Ninja series. And it's probably a port of the game of the same name released for Japanese cell phones in late 2006. Expect to see the DOA girls in bikinis, doing bikini-appropriate things.

From what we've seen, the entire line-up of Dead or Alive ladies is here, as is Tecmo's short-skirted and similarly stacked gambling mascot Rio. If you found the Dead or Alive Xtreme series "fun" this is probably going to be right up your alley.

No, that screenshot isn't a PlayStation 3 owner's head exploding at the loss of an exclusive title to the Xbox 360. Judging by the reaction to McWhertor's hands-on with the game during this year's Tokyo Game Show, this Gears of War-looking action shooter isn't exactly a large glowing dot on anyone's radar, so news that it's coming out on the Xbox 360 as well should be met with a mild 'hmm.' It does have that interesting art nouveau environment and the ever-shifting Living Tower going for it, but then it's a third-person shooter created by a Japanese developer, which seems to raise warning flags in many a gamer's mind.

So yes, Quantum Theory is coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this spring. How excited are you?

Frankly, I think the four bucks is a small price to pay to improve upon Ayane's look and give Rachel something more business-like to wear. But it's also four bucks worth of virtual clothing. You'll have to judge for yourself.

Ayane, Momiji, Rachel, and Ryu each get some fancy new duds in next week's Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 costume pack, available on November 19th in North America for $3.99. Momiji shows off her meaty thighs in her Matsuri Festival costume; Ayane sports the latest Venice Festival fashions; Rachel dresses up like the other sort of New York Working Woman; and Ryu prepares to hide in a snow bank with his Special White costume.

Seems like Ryu is getting the short end of the stick here, but then Sigma 2 was never really about Ryu, was it?

Announced back in June of this year, NBA Unrivaled is Tecmo's entry into the basketball video game market since 1992's Tecmo NBA Basketball, the basketball companion to Tecmo Super Bowl. Like Tecmo NBA, Unrivaled features cut scenes and exaggerated special moves, making it more NBA Jam and less NBA Live.

Unlike the game from 1992, however, NBA Unrivalled features all 30 NBA teams with top players from the latest rosters, full 5-on-5 arcade gameplay, and full 1080P HD support.

NBA Unrivaled drops on Wednesday on the Xbox Live Arcade in North America, Japan, and Europe, with a PlayStation Network version coming in the near future.

The manga (Hokuto no Ken) debuted in 1983 and went on to spin off two animated series and motion pictures.

Dubbed Hokuto Musou, the game is scheduled for release sometime next year. Wasn't that interested — blurry magazine scans do that — but this leaked footage has me intrigued. Looks fun! With all that blood, wonder what rating it will get in Japan.

The clip is originally from Nico Nico Douga — hence the scrolling Japanese text.

The manga debuted in 1983 and went on to spin off two animated series and motion pictures. Check out the Japanese opening.

Details are still scant, but early (and blurry) scans characters Kenshiro, Rei, Raoh and Yuria. The game is scheduled for release sometime next year from the folks at Tecmo Koei.

These questions popped into my head last week in Tokyo. Koichi Yamaguchi was the game producer in question: A nice Japanese producer with an apparently nice game.

His game is called Again. It's a crime, mystery-solving game on the DS. And it has a lot of non-gameplay story sequences in it, something that would foil him the night he tried to show it to me, Crecente and McWhertor during a party at the pirate-themed club in the New Otani Hotel.

I had never met Yamaguchi before we stood on the dance floor for his impromptu demo at this mixer for overseas media and the video game producers at Tecmo Koei.

On a cheat sheet handed to reporters entering Yamaguchi had listed his hobbies as "drinking beer and speaking English." One or both of those gave him the courage to approach me, Crecente and McWhertor to flip open his DS and show us his game, Again.

Yamaguchi didn't have to say much to get me interested in Again. By the time he told me that the game was developed by Cing, the makers of the solid DS adventure games Another Code and Hotel Dusk, I was adding it to my mental list of games to follow.

The amiable game producer, however, didn't want to just drop the name of the development studio and be done. He wanted to show us parts of the game. And that introduced the problem — the one making me wonder if we should blame nightclubs or game design for what happened next.

He started losing us. Each of us, in turn, got distracted. There was a crowd. People were saying hello. But there was also the issue of his game starting with lots of text. Speech balloon after speech balloon appeared. Each needed a tap of the screen to go away before another appeared.

What could normally have been story set-up was now just interference. I think it was Crecente who was getting pulled away the most by PR folks and who knows what else. Yamaguchi urged me and McWhertor to pay attention. He kept tapping, right past the dialogue. The subtext was that his game's text wasn't important. "Wait for the cool part," he said. More tapping. More flipping past intro stuff.

Yamaguchi would not have had much trouble if he was showing us action. If he had been able to jump to a chase scene or a boss battle or something else that dynamic, the quality of his game alone should have been able to determine whether we kept watching or suddenly remembered we just had to doublecheck the smell of the room next door. But his game may not even have chase scenes to show. It is a mystery game that mixes animation with short clips of real, filmed actors. It is an investigation game. It is a talking game. It is a game requiring focus.

But it's also a game that isn't really a game for its first few minutes. It's something you watch, something you tap through before the playing begins.

In a quieter setting when there's more time, the long non-interactive part of Again might not be a hindrance to catching a potential player's attention. But in a pirate-themed Nightclub? I felt bad for Yamaguchi, but I wondered if he had inadvertently exposed a flaw in his game's design. If so, then we'd have to deem so many games flawed, because so many of them start this way.

Eventually he got to the cool part. That part is the core aspect of Again: The DS, held book-style shows a place like, say, a room, in the game's present timeframe on the right screen and that same space in another timeframe, the past, on the left. The player compares the two, looks for clues, then manipulates the scene in the present. Noticing a difference might help reveal the whereabouts of a switch to a hidden door, for example.

The three of us had to leave Yamaguchi because we really did have a dinner to attend. He'd had only a few minutes to show us his game, enough to catch my interest but barely enough to show what it's like to actually play his game.

Blame the pirate-themed nightclub? Or blame the staple of game design that starts Again?

(If you'd like to see the game in action, check out this Japanese trailer.)

This two-sided document was handed to reporters who attended a Tecmo-Koei event in Tokyo last week. Video game producers from the recently-merged company mingled with press like us. At least, that was the goal. This sheet was designed to help break the ice and the language barrier.

And it might have been educational, too.

For the record, Tecmo's Kohei Shibata did do his zombie walk. It was passable.

Also, note the lack of info for Yosuke Hayashi, who Crecente and I last saw at E3 when he was talking about Tecmo's role in co-developing Metroid: Other M. I asked him how the game was going. He said, "Very, very good." I did not ask him about his likes or dislikes. Nor did I request a fun fact. Next time!

[PIC]

They should probably figure that one out.

We played the Tokyo Game Show demo of Quantum Theory at the PlayStation booth, immediately feeling comfortable with the controls. Quantum Theory feels immediately like standard third-person shooter stuff—aim and shoot with the left and right triggers, take cover behind walls and sprint with the X button. Quantum Theory—simply known as Quantum in North America—looks to have borrowed heavily from the current generation of shooters, then given a Japanese visual flair.

While the shooting and hand-to-hand combat is stock stuff, Quantum Theory has something its forebears don't—an AI controlled lady-partner named Filena. Oh, and you can throw her. Simply tap the L1 button when Filena is around and Syd will launch her toward your target. When we tossed her at a foe shielded by a mounted gun, she hovered above them momentarily, firing what appeared to be an electrically charged weapon, stunning the gunner.

A second attack with Filena, performed by holding down the L1 button, will send her flying directly at the enemy, slashing at them with her sword. The time commitment dedicated to holding the button down a second longer deals more damage, as one might expect.

Two levels were on hand at Tokyo Game Show. The first showed off Syd and Filena's co-op abilities as the player shoots through a series of ornate-looking—but somehow also generic-looking—bad guys. Killing one turns them instantly into an explosion of mustard-colored goo. And killing those goo-filled enemies can be done with one of Quantum Theory's many guns or a melee combo attack.

Quantum Theory's guns have fancy names and fancy designs—many look like dragon heads or a chaotic metal sculpture worn on the arm—but they do pretty standard stuff. The Impulsus is a shotgun. The Plasma Lancer is a sniper rifle. The Gravedigger is a machine gun. And the Arc Screamer shoots electric bolts. You can carry three of these beastly looking weapons at a time, picking them up (down, with the D-pad) from fallen foes. They sound chunky and look heavy, but don't give much of a sensation of weight.

The second portion of the TGS Quantum Theory demo shows off the game's other core gimmick, the living tower that Syd and Filena climb throughout the game. The game was advertised to offer organic cover, with waist-high walls growing and shrinking so that Syd and his foes can hide behind them. But I was a little surprised to see just how much of the tower was in flux. Massive bridges and platforms shifted as I walked through the level. That added some small amount of platforming, part of the action game elements that Tecmo is bringing to the genre.

While some of what Quantum Theory is bringing to the third person shooter genre is interesting, the game currently smacks of a Gears of War clone, with animation, character design and gameplay aspects that feel more copied wholesale than inspired by. And even though it's still many months away from its "early 2010" release, the game looks rough. The graphic design is officially described as an "art nouveau style world that is on the verge of becoming postapocalyptic, which merges the beauty of organic motifs with technology" but it tends to be dark, depressing and garish with muddy textures and chunky geometry.

On the bright side, it sounds like Quantum Theory director Makoto Shibata is not oblivious to some of these visual problems. He said during an interview at TGS that the team will continue to work on the game's graphics over the coming months. Shibata also says that the team will be improving upon the enemy AI to make the action a little more interesting. We hope that the game's iffy camera is also on the list of planned improvements.

There's definitely potential in Quantum Theory, if the combination of third-person shooting and action game mechanics can find the right balance. What we know of the storyline so far is interesting, as is the organic tower that Syd and Filena must climb. But we'll check in on it closer to completion to see if some of the kinks have been worked out.

Ninja Gaiden character Ryu Hayabusa will be appearing in Koei's PS3 version of Sangoku Musou Multi-Raid as an unlockable costumed character in armor, while Warrior Orochi's Nu Wa on the Xbox 360 version of Multi Raid. And costumes of Multi-Raid characters Sun Shang Xiang and Zhao Yun are going to pop up on the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.

We look forward to seeing Dynasty Warrior character relaxing on the beach with the girls from Dead or Alive Xtreme. Make it happen, Koei Tecmo!

The story doesn't seem too hard to follow: there was a king who had some knights and he decided to kill them and one of their girlfriends because one of the knights didn't like his new wife. So now they're Undead Knights who control zombies and turn other people into zombies. Or just kill everybody – that's their other modus operandi.

What Is It?
Undead Knights is a hack-‘n'-slash adventure game for the PSP. Players take the role of Romulus, Remus or Sylvia and set about killing or turning undead all the forces of the king who offed them in the intro movie. Once an NPC is turned into a zombie with a simple press of the O button, players can control the zombies to kill yet more people or organize themselves into platforms or formations that will solve puzzles later in the game.

What We Saw
I played through Chapter 1 of the game (called Duke Gloucester's Lands) three times, each with a different character.

How Far Along Is It?
The release date is set for September 29.

What Needs Improvement?
Targeting With Zombies Is Fiddly: Much like the game Overlord, you're expected to command your zombies to sweep entire areas, picking off cowering NPCs as they go. To go into command mode, you only need to press one of the face buttons and a reticule pops up on screen that you can move around with the analog stick. The zombies follow it and pounce on whatever the reticule highlights. I had a bit of trouble with this because sometimes the knights I wanted to attack where cowering at my feet and I couldn't get the reticule to target them. I'd have to exit command mode, back up, and then go back into command mode to re-sweep the area.

So Goth, It Hurts: I'm into it, but based on the overwrought opening text of the mission ("It began as it ended… with a wedding."), I wonder if some people will be turned off by the Goth instead of amused by it.

What Should Stay The Same?
Nice And Easy Controls: The combat and zombie-turning controls work very smoothly. The X button did most of the heavy lifting for me because it's the quick-attack, but you can also press Square for heavy attacks and randomly tap O to grab the nearest guy and start turning him into a zombie (there's a gauge that fills up – and the more injured the guy is, the fast the gauge fills). The attack animations chain together without much pausing in between moves. So if you get a large enough mob on screen (I counted about ten enemies plus three of my zombies at one time), the combat becomes a soothing experience of hack-slash-turn zombie-repeat.

Character Variety: I liked Remus best because he was the fastest character; but I appreciate having three styles of combat to choose from. Also, I dig that I can play as a chick.

Tag, You're A Zombie! It was really fun to wade into a mob of enemy knights and just start randomly turning people into zombies. The zombies then turn on their former shield mates and wreak havoc, freeing you up to run to the next mob and tag a few more for undead servitude.

Final Thoughts
I enjoyed this game, even if it didn't look all that amazing (needs a bit more polish, I think). The controls were simple and the mechanic of zombie-making appealing. So unless the word Goth makes you break out in hives, you might want to give it a go.

Note: All images are from the Japanese version of the game.

But we really haven't gotten a good look at it in action. And look at them — in action. We're not quite sure what to make of this. Nobody really is.

In Ninja Gaiden Σ 2, players can control the breasts of certain characters by moving the PS3's SIXAXIS motion controls — something not possible in Xbox 360 title Ninja Gaiden 2. Progress?

Don't miss the old man in the bathrobe with the glass of red wine. He's relaxing.

Yasuda was at the center of the Itagaki vs. Tecmo legal suit. Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki is suing for unpaid DoA 4 wages. These were "special incentive" wages that Itagaki claims were agreed to by the former Tecmo president and the board of directors, but the current president is claiming these "special incentive" wages were made single-handedly by the former president and not approved by the Tecmo board.

During the court proceedings, evidence was presented, such as this secret audio tape that we broke, which contained statements by Yasuda that seemed in direct conflict with his court claim that this "special incentives" proposal was made single-handedly by the former president and not approved by the Tecmo board. The recording helps support Itagaki's claim that his special incentive bonus was approved by Tecmo's former president and the board of directors, and that the current president knows this, contradicting himself.

Yasuda was embroiled in a totally separate lawsuit filed by other Tecmo employees as well - Hiroaki Ozawa and co-plaintiff Tatsuki Tsunoda. Ozawa is the Tecmo Labor Union leader and Ninja Gaiden 2 lead engineer, while Tsunoda is the Ninja Gaiden 2 level design lead. According to the suit, the workers were illegally placed on a "flexible hours" work scheme where overtime was not paid.

Like we said, it was a mess.

This year has looked up. After avoiding being taken over by Square Enix, Tecmo merged with Koei. 2008 is water under the bridge. The past!

However, it seems that a Tecmo employee has apparently been altering the company's Wiki page — a user with the company's IP address has been making changes to the page. Some of those changes seem related to the events of last year, such as trying to hide info about who quit the company. Wikipedia has warned Tecmo about editing its own Wiki page.

If this is true, Tecmo is hardly the only company editing its own Wiki page. The issue that Wikipedia seems to be taking is that Tecmo appears to be covering up factual information that might make the company look bad. That's that past, Tecmo! This year is great.

【トレビアン】ゲーム会社、テクモがWikipediaを改ざん！ 指摘をうけるまでに [livedoor] [Pic]

The beginning of the trailer is a very cool, comic book style clip. The rest of it is traditional game trailer stuff. More comic book stuff, please!