Unless you’ve been living in a monastery high atop a secluded mountain there’s really no excuse not to have either seen or at the very least, heard of Noboru Iguchi’s blood soaked action film Machine Girl and/or the perversely twisted Tokyo Gore Police from Yoshihiro Nishimura. If you haven’t already seen or heard of these films then let me be the first to provide you with a little insight of what you can expect to see: copious amounts of gyser-esque, high-pressure blood spray, gratuitous violence, highly creative and suggestive weapons, a dash of twisted sexual innuendo (like only Japan can pull off) and of course large body counts that have the potential to rival the likes of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. If your interest has been peaked, please, read on.

For their next film, RoboGeisha, the duo will team up-Iguchi writing and directing and Nishimura handling the film’s special effects. As you can see from the debut trailer above the two haven’t lost any steam coming off of either project. Look for RoboGeisha to hit in early 2010.

[Twitch]

Explosions coming from every corner of the frame? Check. Torched cars barreling through the air? Check. Dozens of bullets blanketing the screen? Check. Could this perhaps be the latest action-packed film from Michael Bay?! No, surprisingly its not. Its Gamer from directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. You know, Neveldine and Taylor. The gentlemen who brought us Crank and Crank: High Voltage.
Didn’t see them huh? Don’t sweat it, neither did I. That’s not to say they weren’t any good…I just never got around to seeing ‘em.

The duo’s latest film, Gamer, takes place in the not too distant future and follows Kabel (300’s Gerard Butler), one of many death-row inmates forced into participating in “Slayers”: an ultra-violent multi-player online game created by the reclusive twisted billionaire, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall).

In Slayers inmates are controlled remotely through by high-paying participants using a pseudo-virtual mind control interface. To Kabel’s highly-skilled controller Simon, and the other paying customers, the inmates are nothing but disposable sacks of flesh that serve as a form of entertainment. Not only for them, but for the millions who tune in to watch Slayers online each week. However, to Kabel, Simon’s skill might be the key he needs to put a stop to Slayers and eliminate Castle.

Now if the core premise of inmates being forced to run a gauntlet of death and destruction in exchange for huge ratings sounds at all familiar to you, that’s because its been done before. You may recall a little film from 1987 called The Running Man which is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.

Rather than sit around twiddling your thumbs while you wait for Lionsgate to release Gamer into theaters later this year on September 4th, perhaps you can ponder some of the following questions:

Pending Gamer warrants a sequel, I’ll bet dollars for donuts that they use a videogame-related term(s) in the film’s title. I can see the possibilities now: Slayers: Time Extended. Or Gamer: Powered-Up.

[FirstShowing.net]
[Gamer - official site]

Ah, that old familiar logo and that old familiar sound. It certainly brings back some good memories.
If you haven’t heard already, Mac is back! The NES classic Punch-Out!! is receiving the royal treatment and is being made over for the Wii to be released on May 18, 2009 (according to Gamestop).

Earlier today Gametrailers posted a new clip that reintroduced us to a few familiar faces (Glass Joe, Von Kaiser, King Hippo) and lifted the veil on a new opponent: “Disco Kid.” Little is known about this new character, but he sure does look like an average Joe amongst a sea of odd-balls.

The game is shaping up nicely, and with only a couple of months to go before launch let’s hope Nintendo’s old-school remake has what it take to go 8 rounds with the press when review time comes. This is definitely one to keep on the radar.

[Game Trailers]

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!

One of the anime projects that has excited me the most since 2007 is Cencoroll, an independent anime feature film which was announced at the Tokyo Anime Fair 2007. With backing from Anime Innovaton Tokyo, a project incubator, Cencoroll not only promised amazing animation but an offbeat story and delivery like those we haven’t seen since the mid 90’s (read: pretty awesome). The expected release was somewhere in 2008 and from the look of the teaser back in 2007 the movie was in advanced production stages.

Now its 2009 and we really don’t know much else about Cencoroll, could this brilliant project become Anime Vaporware? The joke that Cencoroll will come out one week after Duke Nukem Forever comes out isnt all that uncommon nowadays. Watch the 2007 trailer for a little refresher.

Cencoroll, where are you?!

I’ve just gotta put this out there before you proceed to watch this trailer… It’s amazing. It’s epic. It will remove any doubts you had about this game that the playable demo may have placed in your mind. And it’s a tiny bit spoilerific. Press play dammit! Press it NOW!

Let’s get down to business. The female figure in the coat. Who is she? A great deal is pointing towards her being Jill Valentine. But, wasn’t Jill shown to be dead in a previous trailer!? Not necessarily. All we saw was a tombstone. No body. Plus, dead don’t always mean dead in Resident evil. The hooded figure’s voice sounded EXACTLY like Jill’s. And then you have Wesker saying what he said to Chris at the end of the trailer: surely its got to be Jill. There’s every chance that Jill indeed did die. But who is to say Jill’s body wasn’t experimented on, resulting in her resurrection? Or perhaps her T-virus infection during the events of Resident evil 3: Nemesis wasn’t completely vaccinated, there-by bringing her back to life! I’m leaning towards the hooded figure being Miss Valentine. But there’s also every chance it could be Sherry Birkin or Claire. I’m hoping Capcom throw the most gangsta curveball ever regarding the hooded lady’s identity.

Resident evil 5 is already looking like it’ll be one of the most plot driven games in the series since game 2. It could also be the one game to potentially bookend the entire Resident evil saga. But it probably won’t. Capcom will keep spinning this shit off for as long as possible. Day-of-release-purchase most definitely.

This trailer is available on the Xbox live marketplace. So those of you with Xboxes and Live accounts, go download this to watch it in all it’s HD glory…over and over and over until March 13.

After the absolutely crushing announcement that Activision was dropping the Ghostbusters game, I was actually a bit hesitant when I heard Atari picked it back up. I mean, Atari’s not really put out anything terribly great as of late. But then I saw this latest trailer, all doubt was removed from my mind.

Ghostbusters: The Game hits shelves on June 16th.

[From Kotaku]

Shots of this trailer were released yonks ago. God knows why it took so long for Square Enix to release it officially. Did this trailer do anything for you? Because it didn’t do a thing for me. This trailer doesn’t reveal anything more about the game than the E3 2008 trailer did. From this trailer it’s pretty much certain that the gunblade wielding hottie, the dude in the beanie hat and the red haired girl are allies, but we gathered this from before – it’s old news now. We knew we were going to get summons, we knew there’d be lots of robots, we knew there’d be lots of FMV. So what exactly new stuff did this trailer show? Nothing. What more do we know about the plot? Nothing. The game looks stunning graphically, but what’s new? It’s a given that any game Square Enix produce is going to look the business and they’ve got a lot of processing power to mess around with this generation.

Final Fantasy has fallen off big time. I say the series started to fall off from VII onwards, and some would say VI. Square Enix need to start putting more effort into the game play and the story of their Final Fantasy games. Good graphics can only have a gamer sprung for so long; and once this ‘wow’ factor wears off there needs to be solid gameplay and a tight story to keep gamers enthralled until the end. No 20 minute summoning sequence which features every particle effect under the sun and high action FMV sequence will be able to compensate for the fundamental short comings. I thought Final Fantasy XII was bloody awful. The graphics were brilliant, way more than I expected the PS2 to deliver; but it was boring to play and the story was crap, and the graphics meant jack shit once I came to these realizations.

I hope Final Fantasy XIII turns out to be a good game. It honestly doesn’t have to be, because it will break sales records regardless. But for all of the FF fans, the PS3 and Xbox 360 owning RPG lovers: I hope the game is solid and a return to form. Square do need to step their game up though, because there are several decent RPG’s releasing across all formats over the course of next year. PS3 owners already have an RPG masterpiece in the form of Valkyria chronicles, a game which got me excited in a way XIII didn’t and hasn’t as of yet.

Somehow, two weeks earlier than expected, the trailer for Dragonball’s been released online, and to nobody’s surprise it looks awful. I still don’t totally get why Mai’s there, but not Pilaf, and everyone who predicted that they’d Hollywood Romance up Goku and Bulma, give yourself a round of applause. See for yourself.

Feels good, man. I honestly wouldn’t have expected anything less (or more, for that matter) from the latest installment in a series that’s always delivered the hardcore goods. The graphics have gotten a nice touch-up since the last installment on PS1, sporting lots of fancy transparency effects.

The triumphant return of the deadly Free Range weapon brought a smile to my face, and there appear to be some additions to the old arsenal: some crescent-shaped bullets showed up, as well as a multi-pronged beam that spouted out from all sides of the ship.

There are also some bosses that look very similar to the ones found in Thunderforce V, like the purple sea dragon. I’ll be looking forward to this title, although there’s still no word of a stateside release. It’s coming to Japan October 30th for the PS2.

[Siliconera]