With Brett Favre booked for a one-way ticket out of retirement and into New York (as a Jet!), Madden NFL 09 will look decidedly vintage when it releases next week with Favre on the cover ... as a Packer. Some may attribute the gaffe to evidence of the "Madden Curse" at work (c'mon, it can do better than that!), but EA Sports boss Peter Moore assures, "There's a plan."
While IGN has already confirmed there will be no second printing -- Favre will remain a Packer on the surface of Madden 09, at least -- a Crispy Gamer interview with Moore and marketing director David Tinson published last week addressed the possibility of Favre switching teams; to which Moore offered his vague assurance. "It will ship with what you've seen. Yes. And then we'll have a plan if he's not [a Packer]," Tinson added. Day-one roster update confirmed!
Update: EA will indeed release a day-one update placing Favre on the Jets (and reflecting any other relevant roster changes), reports MTV Multiplayer. But that's not all: "We do not plan to re-issue packaging, but WILL offer a free downloadable cover in the coming days on easports.com featuring Brett Favre in a Jets uniform. Fans can print this new cover out and insert it into the case of Madden NFL 09," a company spokesperson revealed to MTV. See, EA did have a plan! ... But if you're not feelin' it, why not make your own cover?
As with most of Square Enix's release dates, it's best to put a clarifying asterisk next to it. For Infinite Undiscovery, that simultaneous worldwide release was actually a 9-day span. For Final Fantasy XIII, it's PS3 Only ... in Japan (at least for now). Let's revisit the end of that Chrono Trigger DS teaser: "2008. Winter.* (Except for Europe)." Those across the pond will have to wait until Early 2009, according to Square Enix (via CVG). All we can offer is condolences and some screenshots that -- surprise -- look exactly like the 1995 rendition.
Is there some sort of global law that states SNK must make a new Metal Slug every year or face certain doom? We kid, but it seems that way, what with the series hitting its seventh installment and there being a larger proliferation of ports out there than Starbucks in Seattle.
Proclaiming that it is the "ultimate game," this trailer for the Nintendo DS version of Metal Slug 7 is all business. Loud, hot lead business. It's the first entry in the very action-packed series on Ninty's dual-screener, which seems from this video to be more than up to the sprite-pushing challenge it presents. There's nary a hint of slowdown, which tells us either the programmers are ace or the video is sped up. Surely it's the former. We'll know for certain when the game hits – nay, demolishes – shelves in November.
Let's be honest: Shigeru Miyamoto would never post on Joystiq, and if he would, we'd like to think our response would be something wittier than ":(". So while we object to The Slackerz'totally false characterization of us, we are required by Blogger Law to award it webcomic of the week.
A very close second (as of this writing) goes to Dueling Analogs, with Digital Unrestin third. Thanks to everyone who voted, and be sure to let us know of any game-related webcomics you stumble upon this week!
This is it, folks. The winners of the official Game Critics Awards for E3 2008 – as chosen by 36 representatives (including yours truly) from most of the leading video game outlets – have been revealed. Leading the pack with two wins each are Fallout 3 – winner of "Best of Show" and "Best RPG" – along with LittleBigPlanet – winner of Best Console game and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle game.
The top publisher was EA (just like in our own awards) with five wins, while Sony took second place with an impressive three wins. In terms of platform concentration, the Xbox 360 barely edged out the competition with eight wins versus both the PC and PS3's seven (for those of you keeping track, the Wii only managed one win and that was for its version of Madden 09). We've got the full list after the break, or check out the Game Critics site for the breakdown by publisher and platform or refresh your memory with this list of nominees in the various categories.
Aside from spontaneous automobile theft and an abundance of paper lanterns, we really don't know what we can expect to find in Rockstar's DS downsizing of its infamous crime caper, Grand Theft Auto. If an alleged survey sent in to UGO's Games Blog is to be believed -- and let's be clear, this "if" is large enough to trample just about any virtual metropolis -- Chinatown Wars will have plenty of features to clutter up the back of its tiny box.
An open world with changing weather and traffic patterns? Check. A "mature" storyline featuring a "young gang soldier involved in the internal power struggle for control of his gang?" Check. Multiplayer modes, 70+ missions and stylus-based minigames, "such as assembling a sniper rifle?" Check. Truthfulness of survey and its claim that said features are connected to Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars? We'll have to check on that. But purely out of interest, does this sound like a portable GTA you'd want to play?
Ready to "beat it" with fire-lit butterfly wings? (Note to self: That came out wrong.) The latest issue of Stuff Magazine (via Guitar Hero Community) has a Guitar Hero World Tour preview, which lists nine confirmed tracks and five more confirmed artists. Although we already knew a few of those songs, five of them are new, including The Doors' "Light My Fire," Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" and -- yes, really -- Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
Additionally, two of the listed artists with "unknown" track contributions already have confirmed songs (Foo Fighters' "Everlong" and Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher"). Newcomers include Muse, Beastie Boys and Nirvana. We've compiled a list of confirmed GHWT tracks after the break.
Here we are again, another month, and another 31 days of gaming possibility. August of 2008 is actually faring a bit better than stinky, unsatisfying predecessor July of 2008, with a handful of titles we can't wait to take for a spin, and a few that we might carve out a few minutes for.
We've grown quite content to simply sit on our fat surpluses and crank out Japanese hardware sales charts to the enraptured masses week after week -- however, the all-important figures you see at the bottom of every entry seem to always get lost in a maelstrom of eloquent prose. We thought long and hard about how to improve the format of these posts without changing the time-tested formula that has served us so well over the years -- surprisingly, we decided to take a cue from the MMO market. Yes, after months of silent development, we're proud to announce the first ever expansion to this distinguished feature: Japanese Hardware Sales:Rise of the Lavender Fluke.
This exciting addition is currently in ultra-secret closed epsilon testing, and the feedback we've been receiving has been entirely positive. Well, except for all the complaints, bug reports, vulgar e-mails, death threats, and one actual attempt on our lives. Aside from that, we're pretty optimistic that we can hit the Q1 2009 release date we set for ourselves -- though our development team mistook Q1 2009 to mean "one quinquennium from 2009", so it should actually be arriving sometime in 2014. Trust us, it's worth it.
We've got the full list of updates and changes featured in JHS:RotLF posted after the jump. Make sure you check them out -- but not before paying your dues to the facts and figures posted below. We would hate for you to miss any of the excitement.
The first two blockbusters sliding down the Pure Dreams chute are both based off of popular licenses in Japan -- Snoopy DS: Let's Go Meet Snoopy and His Friends! lets the player create their own member of the Peanuts gallery and play minigames with their hydrocephalitic neighbors, and Pingu's Wonderful Carnival is also a minigame collection, based off of the popular Swiss stop-motion series. We absolutely cannot wait to see Peppermint Patty's limit break.
Sega has set loose a new trailer for BioWare's portable Sonicthe HedgehogRPG ... and the video was apparently created with the aid of Blast Processing. We think we can see Sonic running, characters battling, puzzles being solved, and – oh no – is that Sonic with guns? It isn't? Whew.
The actual overworld traversing reminds us a lot of Sonic 3D Blast – just in terms of the isometric perspective, mind you. Something tells us that this game will end up a lot better than Sega's "2.5D" offering for Genesis and Saturn did. Maybe it's the fact that, as this trailer so boldly (and largely) touts, the game is from the creators of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic?
We thought it'd be best to start off the month of August by cleaning house and collecting all our E3 impressions from around the Joystiq Network into one easy-to-peruse guide. In case you missed anything (and there's a pretty good chance you did), check out all of our impressions from E3 2008.
We gave the last Trackmania DS trailer a hard time for its ... well, its complete lack of gameplay footage, not to put too fine a point on it. Now, we have some actual footage of the game and we don't know what all the secrecy was about: It looks great to the TM fans in our digi-office.
We still have some concerns, chiefly that the game will be decidedly less free than its PC counterpart. But with the promised track editing and sharing features, it still sounds like it could be a worthy purchase when it's released later this year.
Wedbush Morgan's infamous fortune teller Michael Pachter is at it again, this time predicting that a successor to Nintendo's money-printing DS could arrive as early as this year (via Edge Online). In investor notes, Pachter said, "DS sales are solid worldwide, but are weak in Japan, leading us to expect an introduction of a new device in Japan before the end of the calendar year." Looking at the Japanese hardware sales, the PSP has overtaken the DS almost every week this year with few exceptions.
The logic falls in line with recent comments from Nintendo's Satoru Iwata, who said a Wii successor would come only when the Wii itself begins to slow in sales (read: unlikely for some time). If a new Nintendo portable is to be announced, our best guess would be an announcement at October's Tokyo Game Show. That's assuming Nintendo can swim their way out of that kingdom-sized pool of cash.
"It prints money" just isn't going to cut it anymore in conveying Nintendo's cash flow. The House of Mario announced today that in its first quarter the company brought in $993 million (+34%) in profit! Net sales were up 24% to $3.91 billion. The company sold 5.17 million Wii consoles globally (+50%) and 6.94 million DS units, which means the total lifetime sales of the units are 29.62 million and 77.54 million units for the Wii and DS, respectively.
In the software department, Mario Kart Wii drove away with 6.42 million units sold and Wii Fit continued its quest to save the Fat Princesses with 3.42 million units in people's homes -- more than likely collecting dust, along with the Bowflex and Thighmaster. Nintendo maintains its forecast of reaching a net profit of $3.04 billion and operating profit of $4.97 billion by the end of its fiscal year in March '09.
6,572 (8.88%)
2,437 (4.47%) 
733 (17.42%)
_thumbnail.jpg "I Am 8 Bit: 2008")
