Still waiting anxiously for September 8th, when Raiden IV hits the 360? Yeah, so am I. Hell, I’m waiting for it to hit the shelves like Zack Morris waiting for the bell to ring on the last day of school at Bayside. “Fare the well Mr. Belding!”

While September 8th is still a good 6 weeks away, UFO Interactive has revealed to us that the first shipment of Raiden IV will ship as a Limited Edition bundle and will include an exclusive soundtrack at no additional cost. In addition, there will also be a GameStop Limited [variant] Edition of the game that will include a “Secret File”  cd packed with “enemy and boss data, concept art and other secret material.”

I think my 6 week wait just got a little longer. Perhaps I will take a trip to the land that time forgot (AKA my closet) and return to my shmup roots. Perhaps occupying myself with some old-school shooters will help pass the time. “Anyone for some Life Force or Alpha Mission? No? How about some Area 88?”

What do you plan on doing to help pass the time?

If Raiden Fighters Aces wasn’t enough to quench your appetite for fast-paced twitch gaming and mind blowing bullet hell action then fear not shmup fans as the time to rejoice is near. In exactly two months time, on September 8, 2009 UFO Interactive will be blessing Xbox 360 owners will Raiden IV. Fans of the series can expect to see new stages, exclusive weapons and bosses along with online features that include leaderboards, replays, downloadable themes, art and even unlockable ships (Fairy, Raiden Mark II)! That should be more than enough to keep your thumbs mashin’ away.

We’ll have more on Raiden IV soon, so be sure to keep it tuned to DDN.

Wii owners can re-joice in that Capcom hasn’t left them out on some Resi action – because Resident evil: The darkside chronicles is on the way! (Yay!)

The darkside chronicles will feature scenario’s from Resident evil 2, something that fans were majorly pissed were glaringly omitted from The umbrella chronicles. It’s unknown at this point, but its highly likely that Code: Veronica and possibly Degeneration will see their scenario’s played out in this game – seeing as Leon and Claire seem to be the focus of this game. Read more!

It is safe to say that Ultimate Shooting Collection from UFO Interactive is far from the Ultimate Shooting Collection that most shoot ‘em up (shmup) fans dream of (a compilation disc that features Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Mars Matrix to name only a select few). However, in a time where most shmups seem to be XBLA or PSN bound it is nice to see a publisher paying some respect to the genre starved Wii. Even if those shmups just so happen to have been previously released on last generation consoles.

Ultimate Shooting Collection for the Nintendo Wii features three top-down shmups from Japan-based developer Milestone: Radio Allergy, Karous and Chaos Field. Chaos Field as some may recall was previously released a few years back on the Nintendo GameCube, whereas Radio Allergy and Karous; this is the first time they are setting foot on US soil…’er flying around in US air space. But like Chaos Field, all three have been previously released in Asian territories on the Sega Dreamcast. So in essence, it really should be called Milestone Shooting Collection. At any rate it is what it is so let’s move on and take a deeper look into the depths of bullet hell.

Read more!

So Sin and punishment 2 will be heading to Wii! Which is a bit of a surprise, but not really. It wasn’t that long ago that Nintendo made the game available for the Virtual console. And once they did it became a huge hit. So I guess with that in mind a sequel was to be expected. It would also seem that Nintendo have also realized they can’t keep whoring Mario out in every sport known to man to sell first party titles, and that they’ve realized what we did yonks ago: That there are other Nintendo IP’s that deserve air time.

I really liked the original Sin and punishment, but it was bloody difficult. I hit a stage which robbed me of continues had me dying in seconds and this was on the easiest difficulty setting! I doubt I’ll ever complete the game at this rate – so I may as well look to the sequel. If Nintendo and Treasure co. decide to go Wii friendly, I imagine Sin and punishment 2 will feature unlimited continues and a super easy difficulty which actually makes the game beatable. But it would be kind of cool if they went 100% hardcore.

The graphics don’t look anything special, which is a shame. Because a bit of graphical sheen can go a long way. A few particle effects, more dynamic lighting and better quality textures would’ve been nice. But the game looks decent enough and if the core gameplay can be kept as tight as it was before – then it’ll be a solid game and worthy sequel.

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]