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  A New Marathon Trademark? What’s That Pfhor?

  One week ago Bungie filed a new trademark application for Marathon, the FPS superstar of Mac gaming’s brief apogee during the mid- to late-1990s. There are few details beyond that but the paperwork’s enough to stoke fantasies of a reboot. It’s definitely Bungie filing it, though the application notes the first use in commerce was…

  By Owen Good Published March 15, 2010
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  Sony: Passing On Demon’s Souls “A Mistake”

  Sony Computer Entertainment published From Software’s brilliant Demon’s Souls in its native Japan, but when it came time to take it westward, it was up to publisher Atlus to step forward and localize the PS3 game. “That was a mistake.” So says Sony Computer Entertainment VP of international software Yeonkyung Kim, according to 1UP’s account…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Multiplayer Fix for MLB 2K10 Could Arrive This Week

  A fix correcting a debilitating dead-end bug for players connecting to random ranked matches in MLB 2K10 could go live as early as this week. The patch addressing the error contains a multitude of other fixes as well. On its forums, 2K Sports has published the patch notes. There are a lot of cosmetic changes…

  By Owen Good Published March 15, 2010
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  Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD First Look At The Inevitable Re-purchase

  Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, the Nintendo DS strategy-RPG that went under-appreciated—and under-purchased—by too many last year, is getting a second chance on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in 2010. How’s it looking? Damn good, based on our hands-off preview of developer Capy’s high-definition upgrade to Clash of Heroes. The game’s hand animated…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Raise a Toast to Toast Mario

  Mario, represented by several dozen slices of toasted bread and some plain hamburger buns. Seen via Epic Win FTW. You know what’s coming next: Bacon Luigi.

  By Owen Good Published March 15, 2010
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  Joanna Dark Returns, GTA: San Andreas Goes Cheap On XBLA This Week

  Perfect Dark keeps Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade Block Party going, with the re-release of Rare’s 10-year-old first-person shooter hitting the Xbox 360 this Wednesday. Also, available, damn good deals on Xbox Originals. If you’re looking to spend exactly 800 Microsoft Points on downloadable video games this week, you have four new choices: Perfect Dark in…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Backstage Access with Kotaku, Ko, Ko, Ko-taku

  To: Ash From: Crecente Last week was insane and things don’t show any signs of letting up anytime soon. Our GDC coverage marched right through the weekend and will continue well into the week with plenty of big stories including interviews with some huge names like Reggie Fils-Aime. We also had some interesting news out…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 15, 2010
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  What Are Halo Creators Making With ‘Bungie Aerospace’?

  Halo creators Bungie are cooking up something new, something that, despite its new name, may not actually follow in the trail blazed by id Software’s John Carmack and involve shooting rockets into space. So what is Bungie Aerospace? Well, it’s not much more than a trademark spotted by Attack of the Fanboy while many of…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  NCAA Video Game Picks Kentucky, but Trouble Lies Beneath

  A tournament simulation I did with NCAA Basketball 10 returns a believable national championship – Kentucky 88, Kansas 82 – but the rest reads like 3/4ths of the brackets in your average pool: Lots of chalk, and several WTF upsets. Yesterday, after suffering with plugging in this year’s 64 teams (the sim does not include…

  By Owen Good Published March 15, 2010
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  An Extra Life In The Dying Light

  Photographer Jon Beard discovered an extra life in the dying light of an unprotected light bulb filament. Ghostly and gorgeous, as seen (appropriately enough) on Flickr, via Digg

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Final Fantasy Director’s Take On Western Vs. Japanese RPGs

  How does Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama explain the difference between Japanese-designed role-playing games and their western counterparts? By pointing out the divide between classic RPGs like Tomb Raider, Hitman and Final Fantasy. I know what you’re thinking. “Tomb Raider and Hitman aren’t western RPGs!” But Toriyama’s argument was that western gamers—or, more specifically,…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  ModNation Dated, Kratos, Ratchet & Clank, And Nathan Drake Join The Race

  Want to know how to get Ratchet & Clank, Kratos, and Nathan Drake figures for ModNation Racers when it hits stores on May 25? It all depends on which retailer you preorder the game from. Don’t you love retailer-exclusive preorder bonuses? Me neither, but Sony seems to enjoy them, so much so that the company…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Call of Duty For The Rest Of Them

  There are people who can’t play Call of Duty. Maybe, according to a flight of fancy proposed last week at the Game Developers Conference, those people could at least help us CoD players out. The theory was explained during a panel at GDC 2010 entitled Sporadic Play: The History And Future Of Making Games For…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, The Cool Thing At GDC

  I wish I’d seen Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP for the iPhone/iPod Touch at the start of last week’s Game Developers Conference, instead of at the end, so that I could better answer the event’s most commonly asked question. It’s the best response to the frequent smalltalk question “So, did you see anything cool at…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  The Hunt For Sam Fisher Begins On Facebook

  Third Echelon’s best agent has gone rogue, and they’ve turned to Facebook for help tracking down Sam Fisher. Where would you go if you were a top secret government agency trying to track down a traitor? MySpace? Please. Even super spies need social networking. The National Security Administration’s Third Echelon is on the hunt for…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Should Windows Phone 7 Offer Easy Achievements?

  One of the stories I told to a few people at the Game Developers Conference was about the bright idea I had on Tuesday about a psychological trick Microsoft could play, if they wanted to. I guessed that this company, eager to sell the world its new cell phone platform — and therefore probably convert…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  The Super Championship Edition Mash Up That Is Pac-Man Battle Royale

  What is Pac-Man Battle Royale? This week’s Amusement Expo in Vegas explains it all with a playable four-player Pac-Man face off that borrows from both Pac-Man Championship Edition and Super Pac-Man to interesting results. Arcade Heroes captured first footage of the newest multiplayer Pac-Man arcade “come back”, giving us a good idea of how it…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Building The Ultimate Transformers Origin Story

  In this video documentary for Transformers: War for Cybertron, the development team at High Moon Studios talk about bringing the Autobots and Decepticons back to Cybertron to tell a story never fully told. With the team working closely with Hasbro, War for Cybertron is definitely Transformers canon, which is both good and bad news to…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  EA Sports MMA: Who Knows About Broken Bones?

  I was outclassed last week by the other games reporter watching a demonstration of EA Sports MMA. He knew the name of the game’s fighters, the name of the referee — and — he knew the ref’s shaving habits. I am an oddball who likes boxing and pro wrestling but has never had the urge…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  Frankenreview: Final Fantasy XIII

  Come, brave adventurers, and witness the Final Fantasy XIII Frankenreview, a Franken so disparate we decided to run the graph right at the top of the post. As you can plainly see, Final Fantasy XIII isn’t shaping up to be the runaway critical hit that Square Enix was hoping for. Metacritic scores are currently hovering…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010