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Nintendo Wii owning Tatsunoko, Capcom and Street Fighter fanboys rejoice. Capcom latest cross over battle game will be making it’s way to Wii!! The not so good news is that due to licensing issues, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding a Western release. But Capcom USA are on the case, so it’s looking hopeful. With any luck Capcom’ll throw down an aluminum suitcase full of money in front of the Tatsunoko exec’s to help sway ‘em…just a tad.

I always had a feeling Tatsunoko VS Capcom would end up on Wii. From the start it seemed like it was potentially going to end up being a pity game for Wii in the absence of Street Fighter IV on the little white box that couldn’t. Not that I was ever complaining mind you. If this is Capcom’s pity, then I’ll take it in spades and skips! I’m actually more excited about Tatsunoko VS Capcom than Street Fighter IV personally. The game looks awesome! But this is coming from a complete whore of the VS. series. I own all the games. Even the God awful port of X-Men VS Street Fighter for the PlayStation. Yes. I am THAT sprung. Read more!

 

Finally the first US test location of bemani’s (Konami’s rhythm games division) Ubeat is up and running, and I must say, I haven’t quite seen a game like this before. Rather than hitting a handful of buttons in response to on-screen commands, here the buttons and the screen are one and the same, though the massive controller is a 4×4 grid (for the math-challenged among you, that makes for 16 buttons to smash furiously). The player looks for a panel in the grid to light up in time with music, and then taps that panel.

While the idea is simple, the game gets devilishly complicated, as expected of any good bemani title. Early first-hands impressions are glowing, and the lines to play the machine were even bigger than those for the new Dance Dance Revolution X. Another positive is the tracklist, featuring such surprising picks as A-Ha – Take on Me, Aqua – Barbie Girl, and Scatman John – Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop) (no, seriously, I’m not making this up). It would be great to see Konami win back its American fanbase of hardcore bemani players, and this game could be poised to do both that and seduce more casual gamers due to its poppy tracklist and flashy presentation. Hopefully the large number of panels won’t scare newcomers away.

[bemanistyle.com]

Here’s a photo from the second DDR X location test in Japan, showing off how the new DDR arcade iteration looks. The screen is much wider than before, and the whole cabinet is more sleek and looks a bit more GAR all around (the logo reminds me of the Japanese Super Smash Bros. Brawl one). As bemanistyle noted, it looks a bit like an IIDX machine.

Other details include more padded bars and modified arrow panels. Also, there are rumors that Brunswick Zone in Napperville IL (known for its godly collection of rhythm games) could serve as the first US test location of the machine.

[bemanistyle.com]

Akumjao Dracula THE ARCADE is going through Japanese test locations right now, and a Kotaku reader sent his first hands-on impressions of the cab in to the publication to tell them all about it. It’s a co-op, House of the Dead-style game, except with whips and subweapons like knives. The whip is controlled by a motion-sensing Wii-mote like device.

It sounds like a lot of fun, and the player said the graphics and music were great too. Even the cabinet looks pretty! But unfortunately I think the chances of it coming stateside are somewhere between zilch and goose egg.

[Kotaku]

I wasn’t 100% sold on this game before, but after having watching that trailer, I’m now a believer and REALLY want to play this game. Having Ryu’s classic theme kick in towards the end just brought it all home. It would be cool if we got cool revamps of the classic Street Fighter II themes. Sure, they’re as old as hell and have been overplayed to absolute death. But none of the new themes Capcom have given the Street Fighter II crew in the past have ever stuck like their classic themes - despite being funky and not that bad.

As awesome as that trailer was, it didn’t show us everything and there is more. Every character will have their own set of anime style animated sequences!!

So this means the death static JPEG’s of character sliding across the screen for intro’s and endings!! Capcom should’ve been doing this from yonks ago. I think they were possibly one of the only beat ‘em up developers who weren’t putting animated intro’s and endings in their games. But I guess it’s better late than never. The screen shots look really cool. And even though the Street Fighter cast don’t have the richest and most compelling back stories - the animated sequences definitely look as though they’ll be bringing something interesting to the table.

Between the hot graphics, the awesome looking gameplay, the return of classic characters, animated sequences and online play - Street Fighter IV is shaping up to be a must own for fans. If we get an EX+ alpha style Training mode, and Alpha 3’s World tour and Dramatic battle modes - then this game could be the explosive return to form that many have been waiting for.

Street Fighter IV is slated for a tentative July release in arcades, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions set for release in February 2009.

This just released new trailer for Street Fighter 4 is pretty amazing. Starting with an ode to the great 2D classics and then showing us some gameplay clips, it frankly makes me feel like searching for the nearest arcade in the middle of the night.

Also I simply love the song! Its so damn heroic, like out of a Rocky soundtrack. I must have it, anyone know the name?

I’m not even sure why I’m bothering to post the trailer to his game. I’m sure many of us have seen House of the dead 2 and 3 before. None the less, here goes.

I can tell you now that I won’t be buying this. Sega couldn’t even add new shit to the games. They just straight ported the Dreamcast and Xbox games respectively. Some call it faithful porting, I call it straight up lazy. Sega have revealed this game will release at the budget price of $29.99, which works out at about £15. But knowing how UK gamers get shafted when it comes to games, the price will probably get rounded up to about £24.99. I think it would’ve been a much better move for Sega to have released this game via the Wii shop. But as we all know, the Wii has no hard drive to facilitate such a thing. A download of this game would’ve gone down better, because I honestly think asking people to get up and go to a shop to buy this game is too much. I loved House of the dead 2, about 9 years and 2 generations ago. I still wonder why the first game appears to have been omitted from the Wii re-release, but it could well feature as an unlockable. That would be pretty cool as it’d mark the first time an arcade perfect version of the game has appeared on a console. I know it released on the Sega Saturn, but let’s face it. None of those ragged Saturn ports Sega did of their arcade games were ever arcade perfect.

Despite my cynicism I think any release of an arcade game is good, period. I’m glad Sega are continuing to follow the trend they set on the Dreamcast and GameCube by re-releasing their console and arcade classics, but I’d like to see Sega push it more. I’d like to see their more successful arcade games re-released, along with some of their more obscure titles such as Last Bronx and Virtual On. Sega have such a brilliant back catalog of arcade games and it seems they’re forgetting all about them.

House of the dead 2 & 3 return is slated for a March 18 North American release.

[Cubed3]

Ever since Guitar Hero came to be my reaction to it has been bittersweet at best. On the one hand it was connected to RedOctane, my favorite peripheral company of all time. On the other, there were now thousands of people claiming that Guitar Hero was the best thing since Pong and how it was so awesome that someone had finally done a Guitar simulator. Every time I heard someone say Guitar Hero was the first Guitar simulator and how someone should have thought about it sooner I died a little inside, did they not know about Guitar Freaks?

Guitar Freaks, the legendary arcade and PS2 game that made you rock out with a toy guitar, only 3 frets but a more eclectic music selection, it is the game which inspired Guitar Hero yet it got no respect, until now.

In an excerpt of the book “Inside Game Design” posted at Gamasutra, Iain Simons talks about how Guitar Hero came to be:

[Red Octane] was interested in making a guitar game as they’d seen Guitar Freaks, which Konami had done. So they came to Harmonix with the request, “will you make us a great guitar game for our new piece of guitar hardware?”

And there you have it, finally Guitar Freaks gets a little official recognition, that’s one down, can we now talk about Drumania and how it was a better drum sim? and how you could connect Guitar Freaks to Drumania and have bass, guitar and drums before Rock Band did?

Sure it didn’t have a microphone but making one of your friends sing should be considered a design flaw!

[Gamasutra / Kotaku]

I can say with the utmost certainty and a smirk in my face that if you like Fighting games, you’ve played any KOF. You haven’t you say? Well, in that case you haven’t seen the sun in the last 14 years either!

The great KOF series, starting as a revival project for SNK’s “Art of Fighting” and “Fatal fury” franchise, featured a lot of familiar faces from the SNK world, Terry “Are-U-Okay” Bogard and Ryo Sakazaki (the true Ryu clone), just to mention two of them, in this new franchise that offered a better way to make big bucks: making it yearly.

But today the topic isn’t how Kyo’s looks are influencing the fashion industry in Japan or how Ash’s emo-gay looks and combos are the cancer killing the KOF franchise; this time we talk about the characters with the best story in KOF. Not the Yashiro team in the Orochi Saga, or the other Ash team fiasco in the 2003 saga, but the Psycho Soldier team (Kensou, Athena, and as of 2007, Momoko).

Released in 1986 for the Arcade, Psycho Soldier is a side-scrolling shooter, where you get tons of power ups and shields to destroy a lot of enemies invading Japan. As you may think, the shields are the famous 4-balls protecting Athena when she does her special power in the KOF series.

It is very important to note that this was the first arcade to feature a full-vocalized song by Kaori Shimizu. My, imagine all the stuff needed to do that in the 1980’s. Wicked. . .and you guessed right, the song is the Psycho Soldier Team song for the KOF game.

One last easter egg for the followers of the Soldiers’ adventures: When getting a certain power-up in Psycho Soldier, Kensou transforms into a dragon and Athena into a Phoenix (Connecting the dots, aren’t we?!)

Here, moffstarr shows us the first minutes of the game. I tell you, if you can play the game, do it, it’s lots of fun!

Last weekend, on Sunday the 9th of September, marked the eighth birthday of one of the most underrated and underappreciated console to grace the American market. In a nutshell, it ran on 128-bit hardware, had a load of A-list titles, and was just awesome to play. But because of poor marketing decisions, it went into a downward spiral of low sales figure. To say it wasn’t commercially successful was an understatement. Ironically, Peter Moore, former Xbox 360 PR mogul, used to helm the marketing side of this console. Perhaps his venture in Sega was a lifelong lesson on how he should improve his marketing and PR skills before working for Microsoft.

Moving on, I would like to point out the many landmarks the Dreamcast created, both the good, the bad, and the obligatory “WTFs”.
Read more!

Once upon a time in Japan existed an arcade called Tetris Grand Master, there also existed a man who went by the name Jin8, he was the true Tetris Grand Master in all the land. Watch as he plays the hardest mode at an ever increasing, music-matching ludicrous speed!

Holy mother of all things Tetris! Did you see that? INVISIBLE TETRIS! This man is a god, we are not worthy.

[Hemmy]

Along my living arcade life, even though I’ve been playing it for a long time, and even beat it some times, my liking for this game has never been altered. You’ve got a left to right side scrolling shooter with 3 different pilots who have to save the galaxy from some aliens / robots that are trying to conquer it. Well, for most SNK games, I think this one does a decent job in the Story department.

About the gameplay, you select your ship for which, unlike most shooters, you can select between 3 kinds of front bullets, 3 kinds of Missiles, and 3 kinds of Rear bullets, from homing, to straight, to diagonal, it’s just customization awesomeness! That means that when selecting character / ship, you’re just selecting the speed of the shuttle, so don’t worry, you can get the girl instead of the Dolphin like in Aero Fighters 3!

Among some other nice features that make this game so cool is the introduction of an excellent OST that manages to fit perfectly to every stage and situation, I mean, even the menu music gets your spine chillin’ just ready for the action!

Mobility is great, enemies are gradually tough, and it has an awful lot of replay value. You must play this game, don’t live another day without doing so!

moffstar shows us the very beginning of the game, and with this sweet audio. . .I just want to play again ;_;

You gotta give it to Nintendo on this one. If it weren’t for their severe fixation in introducing peripherals for the sake of innovation, we’d still be sticking with the normal D-pad, no cart wheels, no guns, no nothing.

Take this game, Lethal Enforcers, made by Konami in 1993, a FPS from the 1st generation of Arcade FPS, you know. . . 2D backgrounds with animated sprites shooting at you, instead of the now-standard 3d scenarios and characters like in Virtua Cop. Not only did Lethal Enforcers challenged the power of the SNES, but we players could experience the game like the arcade, with both guns bundled with the package (They named them the Konami Justifiers. . .).

puppykik wrings us this vintage video of a real Lethal Enforcers machine and real non-emulated gameplay. Pure awesome!

This guy really looks like a police officer from the 80’s going undercover, combine it with the music from the game and Bam! you get some sort of inbred Miami Vice.

Oh it seems the old soviet motherland wasnt all about communist glory and shunning everything the western devils did. Oh no, they were living the life, they even had arcades! As this Wired article points out, soviet video games were developed by the military for “entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities.” So, yeah, in the end even the arcades were a means turn their youth into super soviet soldiers (which is probably the name of one of the arcades!)

And while some were original models most of them were reversed engineered from the very first Japanese models. One difference with their western coutnerparts, though, was that highscores were non-existant. Why? Well as Alexander Stakhanov, one of the founders of the first Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, said “That kind of competition wasn’t encouraged,if you got enough points you won a free game, but there was no ‘high score’ culture as in the West.”

And that, kids, is why they lost the cold war.

P.S. Sorry for the very very lame joke on the title.

[Wired]

This is what happens to old Video Game characters when they age and people forget them, they die. This 35cm Pac-Man skeleton was created back in 2002 by Le Gentil Garcon with the aid of paleontologist Francois Escuilie. From the creators:

Study in plaster of a complete skeleton of Pac-man, created by extrapolation from a comparative observation of a human skull and different predatory animal skulls.

How very scientific, yet I dont see a way this skull could have ever collapsed into itself like Pac-Man did.

[Le Gentil Garcon / Via Slashgear]