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If you’re a Tales of Symphonia fan then you might have gotten quite upset after finding out that the so-waited OVA covered just around 35% of the story, when Lloyd and company are about to warp to Tethe’alla. Well, it seems Bandai Namco Games heard the fans and recently announced at the Tales of Festival (event dedicated to everything related to the ‘Tales of. . .’ franchise) that Tales of Symphonia: Tethe’alla Chapter has now a green light for production.

This new addition to the original will also come in OVA form, although it’s still uncertain how many episodes it will consist of. A great announcement for the Tales of Symphonia fans, waiting just for the right moment for Lloyd to shout “Demon Fang!”

[ANN]

Valkyria Chronicles has been receiving a lot of love in the form of downloadable content since its release in Japan this summer. First it got an additional difficulty level which features you getting the snot bombed out of you every turn for a mere 200¥, and now SEGA has released a new pack for 800¥ which allows you to fight the Gallian War from the other side of the battlefield, playing as the invading country of Selvaria.

The new content will feature new cutscenes, voice acting, and battlefields as you fight to claim what is rightfully(?) yours: The land of Gallia. Since Disgaea 3’s DLC is heading stateside at some point, we can expect this to be on the North American PSN at some point relatively soon after the release of the game in November.

Until then, you can check out the demo of Valkyria Chronicles in next week’s issue of Qore.

[PS3 Fanboy]

Last Friday, September 19, my travels brought me to the designer toy shop/art gallery Double Punch in San Francisco, CA to check out SouthPeak Games’ upcoming Nintendo DS™ title Ninjatown. Aside from scoring some hands on time with what played like a near-complete version of the game, creators Shawn Smith and Jennifer Brody were on hand to show off some really cool concept art, exclusive collectible plushies and more.

Hit the jump to read about Ninjatown and for your chance to win a Ninjatown poster signed by Shawn Smith.

Read more!

After 10 years of Street Fighter intro and ending sequences consisting of gif images that slide across the screen, it’s great that Capcom finally decided to grace us with animated sequences. Nobody looks to Street Fighter for its story, but it’s good to finally have a game with a stronger narrative that everybody can follow. It’s a shame we didn’t get Chun-Li sporting the un-bunned hair, wife beater and denim hot pant combo that she rocked in her Street Fighter II ending on the SNES version. But I guess waistcoat, skinny jean, Chuck Taylor wearing Chun-Li will do for now. Fans of ‘Chun-Li’s titties in the shower’ scene from Super Street Fighter II: The animated movie can do away with their wishful thinking of that scene getting re-created for Street Fighter IV. It ain’t happening.

One thing got me though. Why does Guile’s wife look like a man? I thought it was Ken at first and that Capcom were throwing a gay relationship into the mix. Well…people have argued for years Ryu and Ken have never had eyes for anybody else but one another. But to have an all American man like Guile embark on a relationship with Ken would be a curveball to say the least!

Street Fighter IV doesn’t have a console release date as of yet, but this anime video shows Capcom are well into production and that Cammy is a dead cert. Other console exclusive characters include Dan and Fei-Long, with the possibility of other characters from the Alpha and III series’ making appearances. I’m all for Sakura and Ibuki.

[Gamekyo]

Tired of such mundane, tacky and plain tasteless entertainment such as theater, the opera and fox hunting? Perhaps its time you cleaned your monocle and delighted yourself in a more civilized manner. Perhaps watching these Japanese mascots engaging in the gentlemen’s game of football will quench your thirst for diversion.

Wasn’t that just wonderful? It almost wants to make you clap politely. Japan Probe has some more clips from the show, should you need more highbrow entertainment.

[Japan Probe]

According to a report in the Nikkei newspaper posted in the NeoGaf forums, a new Nintendo DS is on the way. Nintendo have been denying a new DS revision all year, but folk in the games industry deny for a living. Making games is secondary.

According to said report, the new DS is set to include: A digital camera, games which will make use of said camera, music playback functionality, larger screens and an SD card slot. The revised DS is also slated for a release in Japan by the end of the year and will retail for under 20,000 yen.

I was actually believing this until I saw ‘Music playback functionality’. Nintendo won’t even allow CD playback on the Wii, would they really allow any form of music playback on the DS unless it’s a video game sound test? I guess we’ll see. I don’t think Nintendo need to worry about a DS revision just yet. The DS lite still looks as slick and sexy as it did 2 years ago. I think they need to focus on the Wii; sorting out storage issues, true HD output and trying to coax third parties into releasing decent games, as well as a possible revision. Sure, the Wii is only 2 years old; but already the graphics are looking like shit and as a Wii owner it’s near unbearable seeing the amount of games that the Wii is missing out on as a result of it being so badly underpowered.

A new DS which features all of the aforementioned features would be really cool, but I’m skeptical until I see an official statement confirming this from Nintendo themselves, accompanied by a picture of the new DS.

[NeoGAF]

Well, it’s that time of the week again, the time to enlighten you with my great knowledge in list form. And this week, we have a fun one. Sure, there’s plenty of anime shows that are hyped. In fact, a handful of them actually deserve that hype. For all the others, we have this list.

It pains me to see a good show be ruined by it’s fanbase. It just sucks when you watch a series after being told it’s amazing, and it ends up being sub-par. However, it’s important to note that just because a show is on here, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. In fact, I enjoyed most of the shows on this list at one point! Now, without further ado, on to the list!

Read more!

Capcom seem to be going port crazy at the moment! They recently revealed that the GameCube REmake of the original Resident evil game will release in Wii edition form. The game will of course be Wii remote compatible (but still support GameCube controls) and that’s about it! The Wii edition may feature a new costume for Chris and Jill, but that’s as extra as it gets in terms of new content. Everything else will be as it was 6 years ago.

You may ask “What’s the point?” I know I did. But I guess it’s another adult, non-kiddy title in the Wii’s library. God knows it needs ‘em about now. It’s also a chance for those who missed out on the GameCube classic to pick up a copy now. It’d probably be cheaper to buy the GameCube version - but good luck finding it now! It’s highly unlikely this game will release outside of Japan, but Wii owners can stay a little hopeful. REmake was a brilliant game on every front. The graphics were and still are amazing and the suspense the game built up created some tense moments. The whole experience felt so different from the PlayStation original that it really did feel like a new game. Capcom out did themselves. My only gripe was that the game was too difficult! The whole burning zombies bodies dealio got old and annoying real quick.

Many are speculating that Capcom’s decision to Wii-release Resident evil 0 and 1 is to lead up to a possible REmake of game number 2. I’ve been silently hoping for a REmake of 2 for a long time. I wish Capcom would stop porting and re-releasing shit and just re-make the damn game already! I’m not going to believe a REmake of 2 is on the cards, because I can’t afford to raise my hopes and then have Capcom break my heart when they announce “It is not happening” and then stamp on my broken heart with a “It never will”. A fan can still hope though. But given how long I’ve been hoping for a REmake of Resident evil 2, I’ll probably end up hoping for life.

Nintendo have released their latest trailer for Wario land: The shake dimension, Shake it! or Shake depending on where you live and it’s pretty good. You may wonder why I didn’t embed this video, but it’ll become apparent why when you watch it. And trust me…you need to watch it!

Check it out: Wario shakes it up on YouTube

How cool was that!! As cool as the trailer was, it didn’t entice me to buy the game - although I own all of Wario’s hand held adventures. There’s just nothing about this game that makes me want to part with 40 quid of my money. If it dropped to around £20 by Christmas I’d strongly consider picking it up. Not that I speak on behalf of every Wii owning gamers out there, but I imagine many share my sentiments: “Cool looking game, but not sure if I’d buy it at full price right now”.

I am loving the art direction and style of the game though. The animation is really slick. Jokes about the Wii not being powerful aside - it’s cool that a developer is still embracing good old 2D graphics on consoles. 3D isn’t necessary for everything. If Sega kept Sonic in the 2nd dimension for consoles, then perhaps we’d finally get a good Sonic game. Me-thinks they should take note.

Wario’s latest adventure will be available for Wii worldwide by the end of this week.

Well, looks like whatever they had to hide from us at E3 isn’t being held back anymore. Over the last few days, Bungie has posted 2 news posts that, as is tradition for new game announcements from Bungie, make no fucking sense at all. Entitled “KEEP IT CLEAN” and “PARDON OUR DUST“, both of these seem to be some kind of UNSC logs containing some really confusing stuff.

So, what the hell does all this mean? Well, for one thing, Bungie’s got more than just some achievements and maps up their sleeves. It’s pretty obvious they’re about to either announce or release a new game. And from the sounds of it, the oft-rumored Marathon remakes might not be far off.

UPDATE: Bungie has posted a teaser on their site regarding their newest project. All we know is that it is what was rumored as the Mythic pack. It will contain 7 new maps and a completely new campaign setting that seems to be an ODST-themed one. Check out the teaser here.

[from Kotaku]

Late last night, Bungie rolled out what it’s calling "Title Update 2", including multiple new achievements and a new ranking system for all playlists. Dubbed "Playlist Rankings", the system adds new military ranks for each playlist, on top of your global ranking and your "Trueskill" rank (That number next to your name in each playlist). This basically removes the Trueskill rank from your experience ranking, which only matters because it gives you more stats to prove that you’re better than your friends at a playlist.

Hit the jump for the 10 new achievements and why there’s more to this update.

Read more!

AWESOME, THAT’S WHAT. Well, at least that’s what Japanese performing group Takarazuka Revue is hoping. They’ve devised a musical version of the popular DS game series Phoenix Wright which will be performed by the group’s all-female cast. The musical follows the story of the first game, Ace Attorney, in which titular character Phoenix Wright tries to make his name in the fast-paced world of defense litigation. It’s interesting to note that the group chose to go with the English name, Phoenix Wright, as opposed to his Japanese name, Ryuichi Naruhodo. Well, maybe some nice soul will record it and put it up somewhere. I’d sorta like to see this.

[From Kotaku]

According to Mark Jacobs, co-founder of Mythic Entertainment (Developers of Warhammer Online), he hates gold farmers. He writes on his blog:

"I hate gold sellers/spammers. No, that’s not strong enough, let me try again. I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. Ah, that’s better. Now, why do I hate them you may ask? I hate them for a number of reasons, most of which have been detailed in various interviews I’ve done over the years. And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE."

Now, this is no new news. Everyone involved in the development and upkeep of an MMO hates these little bastards. But what Mythic is doing different is that they’re nipping this in the bud before it becomes as big as it has on, say, WoW or Everquest. According to Gamasutra, Mythic already dropped the proverbial hammer on 400 of the spamming yahoos as of Saturday. As Jacobs mentioned on his blog, "We don’t wait and let them stay in the game and ban them en-masse, my guys ban their useless, time-consuming butts right away. We have a strike team whose sole job it is to get these guys off our servers as quickly as possible." Yeesh, a strike team devoted to banning farmers? They’re serious about this one. Hopefully they can pull off what Blizzard and Sony Online have failed to do.

[From Kotaku, via Gamasutra]

Earlier this morning, Level 5 (Developers of Professor Layton and White Knight Chronicles) announced that they’ll be working with the famous and insanely awesome animation house Studio Ghibli on their newest DS game. Titled "Ninokuni: THE ANOTHER WORLD", Ghibli will, naturally, be handling the art design. We don’t know much about the title, however we do know that it will include a "Magic Master" book, which is a replica of the book the hero carries with him throughout the game. The book will include special information that can be used in-game. We’ll be looking for more details coming up in a few weeks at TGS.

[From Kotaku]

Thanks to the nice folks at Fathom Events we have 2 free tickets for the nationwide October screening of Death Note II: The Last Name, the latest Death Note live action movie. Screenings are on October 15th & 16th, so we have to give these away fast!

Fan or not, worst case scenario you can take this opportunity as a cultural expedition!

First off, to find out if you will be able to make it to this event, check here for the theater nearest you. Then  simply comment in this post. Yes, that is right, all you need to do is comment in this post and we will pick the winner at random. What should your comment be? Well, if you’re at a loss simply write a story on how much you like Death Note, or any funny anecdote on Death Note that may have happened to you, a friend, or someone you know. The content of your comment wont be judged but posting “LOL COMMENT, DID I WIN YET?” Will get old fast. Also one comment per person, be nice.

You have until the end of the month so we can get the proper prizes out to the right place!

GET POSTING!