Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

July was an interesting month for sales. It seems that if your name wasn’t EA or Nintendo, you didn’t even crack the top ten list for game sales. In fact, Nintendo’s month of dominance is even more astounding when you consider that the top sellers included New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS, games well past their prime. This tough economy is making it rough to be anyone but Nintendo, but I’m sure that the holiday season will bring other games to the forefront. There’s lots of good stuff in the pipe.

Speaking of dominance…

Pokémon Platinum launched about a year ago in Japan (September 2008). As of right now, lifetime, worldwide sales of that title have reached 5.66 million. That’s a lot of pokémon. Even more ridiculous are the lifetime sales figures for the franchise, which stand at 193 million units. It’s astounding to see just how well this series has done.

Expect that 193 million to increase by two come spring 2010, since Nintendo has announced that HeartGold and SoulSilver will be launching then. I’m a sucker for catching them all, so I’ll be picking both copies up, probably in the mail to spare myself some embarrassment at the store.

Expansion!

My most recent WoW relapse occurred around the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I can safely say that I’ve been cured of the need to grind in Azeroth, but that doesn’t mean I’m disinterested in rumors pertaining to the game’s expansions. While we’ll probably get most of this confirmed or denied at this weekend’s Blizzcon, there’s no harm in talking about proposed changes.

It’s MMO 101 to raise a level cap and open up classes to races to loosen restrictions and bring in more players and it’s MMO 201 to add in new races, so you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the level cap will supposedly be 85, classes will be available to more races, and there are rumors that the Worgen and the Goblins will become the next playable races, but it’s most surprising to me to hear that they might remake classic Azeroth. That would be a monumental undertaking and it would seriously alter the way that people play the game to start. It would be cool to see them shake things up a bit.

I’ve also heard they’re buffing Onyxia so she’s less of a joke. Good on you Blizz.

Quick Update

While we’re talking about Blizzard, the Starcraft II LAN petition has reached 100,000 signatures. Unfortunately, 99,000 of those people (maybe more) will still buy the game when it launches, regardless of this petition. My guess is that Blizzard still doesn’t care. With how much money WoW makes them, they can easily shrug off a few lost purchases.

1776 Grudge?

Everyone loves when a company starts to talk price changes. Who wants to spend so much money on those consoles, right? I’m sure that the UK was thinking it was a good day when they heard that they were going to be changes to the MSRP of the 360, but it turns out that Microsoft is raising the price. By £30. That’s about $50.

Sorry England, I don’t know why M$ is treating you so poorly. I still like you guys.

OBJECTION!

Phoenix Wright is getting an UDON art book! Those guys are responsible for the fantastic Street Fighter comics and the new sprites in the HD Turbo Remix and they do fine work.

You can see images from the book here.

OVER 50%?!

It’s hardly scientific, but a Game Informer magazine survey suggests that the hardware failure rate for Xbox 360s over their lifetime has been over 50% (54.2%). This was revealed based on a survey of 5,000 of their readers and it’s kind of alarming. To be fair, the new hardware boards are supposed to have fixed this, but it’s still at a highly unacceptable level.

Also unacceptable, Microsoft is planning on cutting HDMI and component cables out of their packaging, forcing users to buy cables that used to come bundled. Thanks for being cheapskates guys, but I guess the economy’s pretty bad right now, so I can’t complain too much.

PERSONA!

I think it’s fair to say that I love the Persona series. A lot. I love seeing new games in the series announced and I’d love to see a remake of Persona 2 (both games). That’s what makes the announcement of a PSP version of P3 so strange. That game came out nearly two years ago and it’s getting a remake that allows the player to play as a female? More details as they become available, but I think I’m just bitter because I don’t have a PSP.

The Real Slim

After months of leaks and speculation, Sony finally confirmed the PS3 Slim at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. The new hardware SKU will replace the older hardware and retail at $300 with some slight changes.

There will no longer be a power switch on the back and the power and eject buttons will be actual buttons instead of whatever tech they had there before, the system is obviously slimmer and smaller, there are only two USB ports, no media card slots, a new, faster disk drive, and, unfortunately, no custom OS (no Linux!), and no backwards compatibility.

Still, it’s a great deal for a blu-ray player and a fine system for gaming. Good to know it’s for real.

There you have it, the biggest news (to me) of the week. To those of you keeping score at home, yes, this is the first week I’ve gone without a Left 4 Dead 2-related story since forever ago and I’m devastated about it.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

Guess what guys, it’s the slow season. Not much is going on…at all…

Let’s celebrate the start of this week with some Phoenix Wright!

The folks over at OCRemix have put out some mixed versions of the songs from the soundtrack.

Man do I love this series. OBJECTION! Classic.

No Yakuza?

In some seriously sad news, it seems that Yakuza 3 won’t be making its way to Western shores. SEGA smartly cites the 40,000 units of Yakuza 2 as a valid reason not to bring the sequel stateside. Can’t blame them, I guess.

EDIT: The interview where this was stated has been amended with claims that SEGA America’s statements were not an “official SEGA statements”

The Examiner further said

SEGA still hasn’t made any mention of an upcoming release or revealed plans to release it stateside.

Minor News

Fat Princess finally came out this week. I’ve yet to try it out.

Dragon Quest IX is up to 3.2 million units sold in Japan. Keep on rolling, you can hit 5 if you really try Squeenix!

Declining Rock Band sales have accounted for an 8% drop in revenue for Viacom. If you recall from last week, Rock Band and Guitar Hero sales are down almost 50%, resulting in this huge decrease in revenue for Viacom.

If you’re the type of person who cares (I’m not), Uncharted 2 will not have a mandatory install.

World of Warcraft sales are reported to be somewhere around 8.6 million. Just in the US! That’s insane.

L4D2

Obligatory L4D2 mention of the week!

Common Uncommon (or are they calling them Uncommon Common?) will feature bulletproof horde or zombies who were cops in riot gear before they were infected. Since they will be bulletproof (thanks to their riot gear), you’ll have to melee them down and then shoot their exposed backside.

On a totally different note, Rochelle can be seen in artwork wearing a Depeche Mode t-shirt. Why? The band asked to be in the game (and probably shelled out some cash). Not a bad idea. The whole story is that Valve was soliciting a few labels and bands and DM came through in a big way, allowing the use of their music, likenesses, and merchandise. If we get to shoot Depeche Mode zombies, I’m going to call this one of the greatest games of 2009.

Who am I kidding? This will probably be my game of 2009 like L4D was my game of 2008.

20 Years of Mother

The Mother series is 20!

It’s a terrible shame that we haven’t seen more than Mother 2 hit US shores. Perhaps I’ll pick up a Mother 3 cart while I’m abroad…

Comic-Con Cosplay!

Who’s that Pokémon?

It’s PIKACHU!

Speaking of Pokémon, Platinum players will be able to get the Member Card through Wi-Fi gift from 3 August to 13 September. Be sure to get it or you won’t be able to catch Darkrai!

And that’s all he wrote for this week folks! See you next week!

Happy Fourth of July!

Recent statistics packages on my blog allowed me to browse search terms that lead to my site. So here’s what you’ve been searching in July along with relevant links and/or answers to your questions.

mlb power pros 2009 – 68 hits

MLB Power Pros continues to be a strong draw for my blog since I’m probably one of the few guys who talks about it. Real shame too, because it’s such a great game. Many come to the blog hoping to find news about the 2009 edition, but, if they’ve hit up my post they know that I’m skeptical that the game will come stateside.

vinny caravella – 21hits

persona 4 endurance run – 14 hits

Embedding the Persona 4 Endurance Runs on this website has had a profound effect on my traffic as Vinny Caravella and the Endurance Run itself seems to draw quite a bit of traffic to me.

server.ericsbinaryworld.com – 14 hits

Not too surprising, the root search for my brother’s server yields my website.

pokemon platinum evolution table – 13 hits

I’m not quite sure what a Pokemon Platinum evolution table is, but you can find good pokedex resources at Marriland and Serebii.net

dwarf fortress stories – 12 hits

Clearly a reference to these two posts: (1, 2), folks looking for Dwarf Fortress stories can also find some great ones at the official forums. Other options include the fantastically hilarious story of BoatMurdered and the more serious, but still fun Nist Akath

claudia black nude – 11 hits

Claudia Black, newest addition to the Uncharted franchise, seems to be a rather popular figure on the blog. According to this VERY NSFW SITE, she has never done any nude roles. Sorry guys, tough luck.

power pros 2009 – 7 hits

See above!

mai shiranui nude – 6

This one shouldn’t really be all that hard to find people, seriously! Here’s are VERY NSFW links. I don’t know if that’s the best stuff out there, but I’m not really willing to look.

fallout 3 vegas – 5 hits

No real news on this.

persona 4 review – 5

No doubt searching for my review.

giant bomb achievements – 5 hits

My achievements. Let me show you them.

i bring nothing to the table – 4 hits

The URL. You can’t miss it, it’s right at the top of the screen.

timon – 4 hits

I’m guessing they mean the meerkat, but just in case, here’s a disambiguation.

gears of war 2 exp table – 4 hits

Are you referring to the new experience system? Google also gets confused cause the word Table is in my URL, despite it having nothing to do with GoW 2.

endurance run persona 4 – 4 hits

See above

metal gear solid 4 proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good – 4 hits

Totally wrong. MGS4 has FANTASTIC gameplay. It’s the story that’s seriously lacking.
mlb power pros 2009 release 4

bubblegum crisis hentai – 3 hits

Kicking it old school, huh? Not sure if this link will ever work, but please don’t make me keep searching for this stuff…

pete mccullough bass – 3 hits

The bassist for Streetlight Manifesto. Their URL can be found here

endurance run persona – 3 hits

See above

tabel van dempster – 3

I have no idea what this is or why it leads to me. Probably because my site contains the word Table and I’ve spoken about Ryan Demptser

youtube mariano rivera major league at bat – 3

Mariano Rivera got himself his first RBI on the same day he got his 500th save. What a milestone! MLB doesn’t allow video of their games on Youtube, but you can try their website. No guarantee how long it will be up.

mlb power pros 2009 wii – 3 hits
“mlb power pros 2009” – 3 hits

See above

nothingtothetable.com – 3

My fantastic URL!

kings quest princess bride clues – 3

One big problem with this search term: It should be King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. Other than that, you can find some FAQs and walkthroughs here.

the gregory brothers – 3 hits

I love Auto-Tune the News. You can find the Gregory Brothers URL here.

best dwarf fortress stories – 3 hits

See above!

pokemon fight table – 2 hits

Again, see above.

streetlight manifesto christian – 2

You know the drill. You’re also confused. There’s never been a member named Christian and this is NOT a Christian band.

super punch out super hard mode – 2 hits

Officially called Title Defense Mode, here are some hints.

dean strelau – 2 hits

A friend of mine mentioned in this post about baseball. I wonder who was google-stalking him?

gustavo sorola – 2 hits

One of the founders of Rooster Teeth. Very funny man.

youtube boston batter shatters bat against washington 2

Pretty dangerous event. The bat almost hit Nick Green and caused him to miss the fielding.

l4d zoey track jacket – 2

Surprising that I get the L4D track jacket (available here) as a hit instead of the nude Zoey mod post I made. No complaints here.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

Ok, now that we’ve finished with all the villains of Final Fantasy, let’s do all the Heroes!…Just kidding, we’re gonna stick to some hard news for now and maybe come back to features sometime in the future.

That doesn’t mean we won’t be talking about Final Fantasy, though. It seems that the much better Japanese PSN store got themselves FF VII released for download for about $15. I’d say that’s a pretty cool win and hopefully it will lead into them finally creating that PS3 FF VII that everyone wishes was real, but will probably never happen.

Famitsu is teaching you how to take upskirt pictures in Monster Hunter Frontier. Instead of implying that it can be done, the Famitsu-run Monster Hunter rag printed an article called “The Way To Take The Screenshots You Want ~ What a Pantsuful world ~” to show you how to take the screenshots that you so desire.

Wanna learn about boxart design? Go to Valve’s page about Left 4 Dead’s cover to see evolution of their boxart from red with the heroes all the way to green with just a hand. A pretty neat evolution there and proof that the iterative design process that Valve is so famous for extends far beyond game design.

And last in news: Flock is out! Go try out the demo, I know I will. It’s supposed to be quite good…

UPDATE: Need the secret key in Pokemon Platinum? Here’s how to get it

Went to the nearest Toys “R” Us today to finally get my hands on the Regigigas that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. The process was quick and easy and I was only slightly embarrassed to complete it. Probably the funniest part of it was that, since I had two copies of the game, I received double the reward pictured below:

That’s right, I got TWO Pokemon movie posters, TWO Regigigas and his assorted buddies sticker sheets, and TWO $5 coupons for Pokemon games at Toys “R” Us. Too bad I already pre-ordered Platinum at Amazon.com.

For those of you wondering about my Regigigas’ stats, here’s the breakdown:

lvl 100

Ability: Slow Start

Moveset:
Iron Head
Rock Slide
Icy Wind
Crush Grip