Section: Gaming News, Consoles, PS3, Wii, Xbox-360, Game-Companies, Developers, Publishers, Web-Sites

According to MTV’s Multiplayer blog, Wii gamers are in for a serious dose of survival horror action, as last fall’s acclaimed Dead Space is headed to Nintendo’s money machine. The news comes via EA CEO John Riccitiello himself, and the game will reportedly be as good as its big brothers on the beefier platforms:

“It is absolutely going to be the quality of fear factor of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.”

Now, I have no idea how faithful the audiovisual presentation will be, but a decent port with solid, Wii-enhanced controls could be a great thing for the kiddie-and-casual deluged console. Just look at how fantastic RE 4 ported over to the Wii…

There’s no release date yet, but MTV’s Stephen Totilo is betting on the game coming out within “the next year or so”. We’ll keep you posted with more details as they come in.

Read [Multiplayer]

Full Story » | Written by Danielle Riendeau for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Gaming News, Consoles, PS3

Citing a subpar holiday season and Sony’s Playstation 3 still being the most expensive console, an article in the Wall Street Journal this week indicates there is almost no way the PS3 can catch the Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii in sales. In early results, November 2008 sales of Sony’s controversial console were down 19 percent from the same period in 2007.

During that same time, the Nintendo Wii’s sales doubled and Microsoft Xbox 360 went up 8 percent according to stats supplied by research firm NPD. That makes Sony’s corporate goal of selling 10 million PS3s by March 2009 seem like a long shot. The article also notes that at $399, the PS3 is far and away the most expensive console on the market. During a global recession, that’s not a great distinction to have. It’s hurting Sony’s overall bottom line as the company’s electronics division isn’t as profitable as it used to be. Many analysts think that prevented Sony from slashing the PS3 price for this holiday season.

These numbers may surprise economists but probably not gamers.

Nintendo has ridden its newly harvested crop of casual gamers to the top of the industry with the Nintendo Wii. That console has become a huge hit in spite of a large percentage of shovelware and lack of any big titles released since Mario Kart in the spring. Hardware shortages made the Wii a tough find again this Christmas season, earning it a great deal of publicity in mainstream media. Microsoft Xbox 360 is becoming the console of choice for the hardcore gamer as exclusives like Gears of War 2 propel its holiday sales. The 360 cut its price to $199, earning it a solid hold on second place for the time being.

One of Sony’s major selling points touts the PS3 as an inexpensive Blu-Ray player but, with customers being slow to adopt that technology, regular Blu-Ray players have dipped to $200. There’s still a lot of this console war to go, but Sony does appear to have a climb comparable to the one its game hero Kratos undertook when he climbed Mount Olympus.

Read [Wall Street Journal] Via [Joystiq]

Full Story » | Written by Brian Allen for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Gaming News, Consoles, GameCube, Wii, Handhelds, DS, Game-Companies, Developers, Distributors, Publishers, Updates, Wii-Virtual-Console

Nintendo promised us that the North America chapter of Club Nintendo would be available by the end of the 2008 year and sure enough, only 15 days until 2009, Club Nintendo is now officially live.

If you have already signed up for a “My Nintendo” account, you can use that login information and anything you already registered on that account will be transferred over to you Club Nintendo account, meaning you will have coins to spend from the get-go.

If you don’t already have a My Nintendo account, all you need to do is fill out your name, age, and email address (also choosing a username and password) and you’re all set to start registering those Nintendo products for coins. An “Intend to Buy” survey allows you to earn an additional 10 coins when you register your purchased (now previously intended-to-buy) game.

Coin values for Nintendo games (specific point values for systems weren’t detailed) are as follows:

• Wii games = 50 Coins
• Nintendo DS games = 30 Coins
• Wii Shop Channel games/Wii Channels = 10 Coins

As for spending your coinage, Nintendo already has a few items available for you to “purchase” although none are as sharp as that Super Famicom Wii controller Nintendo gave to the Japanese clubbers (Japanese get all the luck). There is at least one decent item on the list – the official North American version of the DS Game & Watch Collection. The Game & Watch Collection contains three Game & Watch Gallery games for 800 coins.

A poster on NeoGaf took this screen shot of all the prizes earlier today, yes they are the official prizes:

Way to finally include North America, Nintendo!

Official Site [Club Nintendo]  Read [Joystiq] Also Read [Gamertell]

Full Story » | Written by Kris Rosado for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Reviews, Features, Opinions, Consoles, Wii, PCs, PCs-Other

Title: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People: 8-Bit is Enough
Price: $8.95 PC, $10 Willware
System(s): *PC, WiiWare
Release Date: December, 15, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Telltale Games (Adventure Company)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone +10? for comic mischief
Pros: You get to play games within a game. Chock full of video game clichés that will keep you laughing. See the Homestar characters as zany video game characters. Plus you get to fight Trogdor.
Cons: Seemed shorter than the other episodes, no mini games to speak of, not even searching via the metal detector.
Overall Score:Two thumbs up; 96/100; A; * * * * 1/2 out of five.

The final installment of Strong Bad’s Cool Games for Attractive People has made its way to your PC and Wii. It’ s called 8-Bit is Enough and as always you play as Strong Bad getting into all kinds of predicaments.

In this one, Strong Bad accidentally breaks the Trogdor arcade machine he has in his living room, causing it to come to life and wreak havoc all over the town. When he tries to fix it, he ends up causing the whole town to warp into a paradox, where the town’s people and the video games he plays become mixed up.

So now it’s up to you, Strong Bad, to defeat the evil dragon and restore the town back to its normal state. Uh, does anyone know how to defeat a dragon?par

And the dragon lives in the niiiight!

This is another interesting episode, seeing as you are playing a world that has basically been converted into different video games. You get to see Marzipan as Donkey Kong Girl, throwing crates at a poor hapless Bubs, and Homestar appears to you in obnoxious pop-up box giving you “advice” throughout the game. Also you get to interact with some of the classic Homestar Runner games you know and love like Peasant’s Quest and Stinkoman 20XD6.

Because you are playing a game within a game, Strong Bad will make a lot of cracks at his own game (Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People),. For example, when entering a certain game, he will say, “Man I hope this isn’t one of those lame ‘pick up item, use item, or ask someone about item picked up’ type games!”

It’s worth playing just to find all the video game clichés within the game, similar to the last episode which was packed with movie clichés. Some good ones are the item that can’t be grabbed no matter what you do, the lame licensed video game companies come out with to promote their product and the awesome use of a checkpoint.

Even powerful dragons have their weak spots

This episode seemed much shorter than the previous episodees. That may be because there was less to do in this one, due to the fact there was no side quests of any kind. You could still play the Fun Machine but it was really part of a quest you had to do.

They even got rid of the searching via metal detector since it is destroyed after its first use, likely alluding to the fact that it wasn’t a very important aspect of any of the games.

When you beat every episode, you unlock “free mode” where you can roam around and do whatever. In this game, though, there was absolutely nothing to do in free mode. I was hoping that you could at least play some of the games on your fun machine. The only thing you could do that wasn’t available the rest of the game was a Trogdor mini-game where you burnanate peasants.

Over Too Soon

We come to the end of our reign of terror with Strong Bad and his crew. This was definitely a very fun way to end the series. It was unique, hilarious as always, and brought back all the elements you learned to love from old-school video games.

I wish it was a bit longer but I guess the length of the game really depends on how quickly you figure out and solve the puzzles. Also we never got to see the Cheat Commandos in a mini game, among other things.

So congrats Telltale on a great Strong Bad series and I really hope they decide to make more of these episodes in the future.

Previous Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People Reviews:

• Episode One: Homestar Ruinner
• Episode Two: Strongbadia the Free
• Episode Three: Baddest of the Bands
• Episode Four: Dangeresque 3
• Episode Five: 8-Bit is Enough

Site [Telltale Games] Read [Nintendo]

Full Story » | Written by Jessica Moen for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »