Gaming News Archive
September 2005

11/9/05

Hip Interactive Closes
Hip Interactive, a Canadian publisher, has run out of cash leaving Call Of Cthulha: Destiny's End and George Romero's City Of The Dead without a publisher.
Pokemon News
Pokemon games Diamond and Pearl are to be proper RPG's like Sapphire and Ruby, but for the Nintendo DS. Meanwhile, Pokemon Ranger will be an all-new game to coincide with the release of the new Pokemon movie of the same name.
Play-Yan News
Nintendo has released a patch for the Play-Yan multimedia accessory that allows the device, for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, to play MPEG4 movies.
The patch is available from Nintendo Japan's website, with an encoder available shortly (if not already). The Play-Yan is currently only available in Japan, though plans are afoot for it to be released in Europe soon.
Battlefield 2 Patch-o-rama
Electronic Arts released a patch back in July for Battlefield 2 which was meant to fix bugs. Instead the patch added new bugs which included turning your team mates names red and a memory leak.
EA advised users to uninstall B2 and reinstall without the patch which was designed to fix problems with the online browser.
At the end of the July EA released a 2nd patch for Battlefield 2, which fixed the original bugs and those created from installing the first patch.
Uematsu Has Left Square Enix
Nobuo Uematsu (composer of some of the Final Fantasy music) has left Square Enix. He now owns his own company, called Smile Please, and makes music for other companies, including Square Enix.
Destroy All Humans TV Series And Movie!
After being very pleased with the success of Destroy All Humans, publisher THQ have announced that the game will be turned into a TV series and a movie.
Sega's New Arcade Hardware
Sega's line of arcade boards have had impressive graphics for their time periods - STV "Titan" board (also used in their Sega Saturn console), Model 1 - 3, NOAMI (the heart of the Dreamcast, minus 10MB of RAM) and NOAMI 2. Now comes the time for a new board, a more powerful one, and Sega have delivered.
Based on a high end PowerVR graphics card, it has roughly the same power as the next-gen consoles, and was demoed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) back in May. The new arcade board is known as LindBergh.
Dead Or Alive For XBox 360
Tecmo have confirmed that Dead Or Alive 4 will be an XBox 360 launch title. DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball 2 has also been confirmed for Microsoft's next-gen machine, due out in November 2005 worldwide.
GTA: San Andreas Outrage
Hidden adult games in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas caused outrage in America, after a patch was released that unlocked the games not intended to be accessed by gamers.
The games rating has been changed to Adults Only (AO) whilst Rockstar work on a version of the game which doesn't include the mini-games hidden away in the games code. The new version is due out in the Autumn.
News In Brief...
Sony has dropped the ability for the Playstation 3 to be a home router due to cost concerns.
John Romero, co-creator of Doom and Daikatana, has confirmed, via his website, that he left publisher Midway 3 months ago.
J. E. Sawyer has also left Midway. This means that both designers of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows have left the company, but Midway still claim the game is still on schedule.
Capcom are working on a new Donkey Kong game for Nintendo. Donkey Kong: Jungle Fever was due to be officially unveiled last month, but I have heard nothing more about it.
Tomb Raider: Legend has been delayed until 2006, due to SCi buying Eidos.
Worms, Team 17's classic game, is heading for the Nintendo DS & Sony PSP.
Microsoft has stated that the harddrive in the XBox 360 is "only for game saves" - except that Final Fantasy XI won't work without it!
Electronic Arts will distribute all of Valves games in box form from now on, whilst downloadable versions are still being handled by Steam.
The PSP is to get it's own web browser, which will support HTML 4, whilst a white version of the machine will be available to buy, in Japan, from September 15th 2005.
An, as of yet, unnamed company is trying to revive Acclaim by buying its name for $100,000 USD.
Ken Kutaragi, the "father" of the Playstation, has stated that the Playstation 3 will cost $500 USD to buy in America. Thats how much it will cost Sony to manufacture each machine.
Pro Evolution Soccer 5 will be available on the Playstation Portable (PSP) at the same time as the console versions. It will feature wireless multiplayer modes and can upload data to the Playstation 2.
Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Japan, will be at the Tokyo Game Show on 16th September. Its very likely he will be talking about their new console, the Revolution.

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Gaming News ArchiveSeptember 2005

11/9/05

Gaming News Archive
September 2005