Gaming News Archive
July 2004

30/7/04

New Outrun 2!
Sega are to release Outrun 2 SP in arcades later this year. This new version contains tracks from Outrun and Turbo Outrun, aswell as remixed music.
Ghouls 'n' Ghosts Online
This new game in the franchise takes the classic series in to 3D. Only in development for PC and XBox (over versions have now been cancelled), it features fully customisable player avatars, along with a four player co-op and deathmatch modes.
Spidey flies off the shelves!
Spiderman 2, by Activision, is currently the biggest selling game around, with high chart positions in Australia, US and the UK, where it knocked Driv3r off the top of the charts a couple of weeks ago.
EA buys Criterion
Electronic Arts (EA) has bought Criterion. This means EA can now add the Burnout franchise to the many they already own. They also own Renderware, developed by Criterion, the most popular middleware package around, which has been used to make Grand Theft Auto and Pro Evolution Soccer among many others.
News in brief
ICO on the Playstation 2 has sold 650,000 units worldwide and now has a sequel in the works.
Ubi Soft's game sales are down 6.1% compared to this time last year, despite selling nearly 3 milion units of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.

26/7/04

GC Double Packs
Nintendo Of Japan has announced the release of 10 double-packs for the GameCube. Each pack contains 2 games and will sell for half the price of one normal game.< Br> For example, get the Pikmin pack and you get Pikmin 1 & 2, plus 5 free figurines!
A few more PSP related details...
Sony has revealed that the cost of producing UMD discs for the Playstation Portable (PSP) is the same as producing the DVD discs for the Playstation 2.
They also announced a multilingual translator for the PSP, called Talkman, that can understand and speak nine different languages.
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger cartoon!
DPS Film Roman, the company behind The Simpsons and King Of The Hill, have signed up the rights to make a cartoon based on the Ty The Tasmanian Tiger game.
Xbox Live users reach 1 million!
XBox Lives online subscriptions passed the 1 million user mark on July 15th. Thats an average of 265,549 hours per day or an average of 10.5 million XBox Live sessions per month.
Pro Evo 4 news
Konami has announced that the european version of Pro Evolution Soccer 4 will have official players details, shirt and kit sponsors for the Dutch, Italian and Spanish teams.

14/7/04

Musical genius
Richard Jacques, composer for various games including Metropolis Street Racer, Head Hunter, Daytona Championship Circuit Edition (CCE) and more, has been given the job of scoring the music for the forthcoming Startship Troopers game.
More mini-madness!
Jakks Pacific are going to release 2 plug and play mini-consoles in August, for Ł24.99 each.
The first one has a cool controller and contains 3 pinball tables to play on, whilst the second features various Disney characters in simple games.
Acclaim in more trouble...
Acclaim are in more trouble after the Supreme Court of the state of New York granted an injunction on July 9th to BattleBorne, the developer of Combat Elite.
You see, Acclaim were due to release Combat Elite in the US shortly, but Acclaim hasn't paid BattleBorne any contracted fees for development.
PS2 goes white!
After having released a special limited edition pink Sakura Playstation 2 (PS2) in Japan earlier this year, Sony are going to unveil a new limited edition PS2, the Pearly White Playstation 2, on July 15th.
Capcom publish more games
After releasing Grand Theft Auto in Japan, where it was a huge success, Capcom are going to release survival horror Run Like Hell!
Play Nintendo games at the cinema!
Nintendo of Australia and Village Cinema's have unveiled the Nintendo Superchallenge. Competitors will battle it out on a cinema screen (!) playing games that include F-Zero GX and 1020° Avalanche.
Every 2nd Sunday from 1st Aug. competitors will try to earn their place to play in the Superchallenge Final, on October 24th. The overall winner wins a trip to USA and a tour of Nintendo Of America, whilst the runner up wins a Nintendo Gamecube Interactive unit (?!) plus a years supply of games, whilst the person in 3rd place wins a Private Village Gold Class Cinema screening for 25 people. All finalists will win a limited edition Rip Curl backpack!
Tickets go on sale at each Village Cinema across Australia from July 1st and can also be bought online at:
www.villagecinemas.com.au
For more information visit www.nintendo.com.au.
More NES games in GBA!
The Famicom Mini Series (aka NES Classic Range) of Game Boy Advance games has been a huge success in Japan, so Nintendo are releasing more games in the range - a further 10 to be precise. The new NES games to be part of the Famicom Mini Series include Super Mario Bros. 2 and Kid Icarus.
More Live content for PGR2
Project Gotham Racing 2 has got another download pack released via Xbox Live. The Long Beach Pack features 8 new cars and 8 new tracks that allow you to race along the coast of California.
Ignition releasing SNK games...
Publisher Ignition are going to release more SNK Playmore games here in the UK, including Samurai Shodown, Capcom Vs. SNK and, next year, King Of Fighters: Maximum Impact.
Halo 2 delayed...
Halo 2's launch here in the UK is to be delayed by 2 days, now being released on 11th Novemebr 2004.
PS3 at E3 2005
Yes folks, Sony has officially announced that the Playstation 3 will be unveiled in all its glory at next years Electronic Entertainment Expo, held at the beginning of May in Los Angeles.
Sony's Playstation 2 awards...
Sony of Japan recently held its annual game rewards ceremony. Platinum winners, for selling more than 1 million units, included Samurai Warriors and popular RPG Dragon Quest 5. Gold winners, for selling more than 500,000 units , included Dragon Ball Z 2, Gran Turismo 4: Prologue, Derby Stallion '04 and Onimusha 3.
Final Fantasy 12
Final Fantasy 12 is well in to development and is looking great. The next instalment of FF is set 2 years after FF 10 and stars a whole bunch of new characters including Vaan, Bulthier (a sky pirate), Ashe and others. For more information visit the official site at:
www.ff12.com

7/7/04

Gosen leaves Nintendo
David Gosen, the Managing Director for Nintendo Europe, is leaving after 5 years of working with the company.
more Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat: Deception is out worldwide on the Playstation 2 and XBox on Nov. 5th.
The game will be known as Mortal Kombat: Mystification in France as "deception" is almost the French word for disappointment!
USB Saturn pad
Sega are going to release a USB version of its classic Saturn pad in Japan, for PC's.
The pad was originally bundled with Sonic Team's game Puyo Pop Fever, but since demand for the pad was so high Sega made the wise choice of releasing it as a stand alone peripheral.
virtual golfers
Sega Golf Club Network Pro is another arcade game to make use of Sega's ALL.net arcade networking system (which is also being used by Sammy and Namco) to allow you to play against other virtual golfers around the world and see how high you rank amongst them.
Acclaim lose Turok license!
Acclaim has lost the rights to produce any more games based around the Turok comic. The news comes after they announced a financial loss of Ł13.6 million ($25 milllion).
Classic Media, who own the rights to Turok, took away Acclaims rights to produce any more games on the dinosaur/evil skum hunting hero after they, allegedly, didn't recieve any royalties from Acclaim...
...and about time too... the last 3 Turok games - Turok: Rage Wars (Nintendo 64), Turok 3 (Nintendo 64) and Turok:Evolution (GameCube/Playstation/Xbox) - have all been pretty lame, despite boasting some nice visuals.
Final Fantasy XI update
Final Fantasy XI (online) is being released on the PC in Europe in September, on the same day as the expansion pack is released in the US and Japan.
The release date, if it is going to be released, for the Playstation 2 version in Europe is still unknown, despite the game being out in both Japan and the US for several months.

5/7/04

Burnout on PSP
Criterion has announced that a version of Burnout is being made for Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP), and they also confirmed Burnout 4 is in development.
Mario Tennis
Nintendo have confirmed that the GameCube version of Mario Tennis won't feature any form of online play (including LAN play).

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Gaming News ArchiveJuly 2004

30/7/04

26/7/04

14/7/04

7/7/04

5/7/04

Gaming News Archive
July 2004