Jim’s been talking about this game for a while now, and it was announced during E3 that we’re going to be getting the game stateside! It’s from the team who brought you WarioWare and looks awesome.

The video below is a collection of Japanese commercials for the game which offer a few seconds of gameplay and the same level or weirdness we’re used to when dealing with Japanese game commercials.

For 360 owners in the USA, the Netflix announcement was probably one of the highlights of the Microsoft press conference (unless you like green screen games). Well now we get a good first look at the 360/Netflix integration. I’m actually seriously excited about this, as an avid Netflix user I’ll be putting this service to the test. I’ve never rented/bought any video for my 360 or PS3, but since I’m already a Netflix subscriber this is essentially free for me (well, at least it won’t cost me anything more).

I still laugh to myself when I hear the MSoft people refer to the UI on the 360 as “the experience” and any group of friends as a “party.” It just oozes of PR speak and talking points.

Hey! Are you one of those jackasses that likes to complain about games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band and tell people to “learn a real instrument?” Well, now no matter what instrument you like to get all high-and-mighty about there’s probably a Guitar Hero inspired version over at BandGeekHero.

Whether it’s the oboe or the triangle, the mandolin or the piano (or my favorite the didgeridoo). It’s from the guys behind the uber-offensive TShirtHell.com and the slightly less-so TorsoPants.com.

Oh, and to answer your question about learning a real instrument… I’ll do it right after I learn how to drive a racecar, fly a plane, save the world as a super-agent, fight my way through WWII, or any of the other hundreds of things I do for escape when I play video games…. dick.

The shirts can be found and ordered here.

Is this thing on? I think game companies forgot about this week (must’ve been all the not-caring they put into E3) cause there ain’t nothing of note here…. Next week is looking pretty bleak too. I mean there’s a Final Fantasy game, but it’s a port… so…

• Final Fantasy IV (DS)
• 1942: Joint Strike (PS3, 360)
• Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns (DS)
• Order Up! (Wii)
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (PS2, Wii, DS)
• New International Track & Field (DS)
• Chess Crusade (Wii, DS)

Well, that was certainly an interesting show… wasn’t it? Interesting in the fact that is passed without almost nothing interesting happening at all. Which I suppose is in some ironic way interesting, though personally I’m not that surprised. Ever since the ESA decided to re-tool the show’s format and not only exclude thousands and thousands of fans but also decide which journalists get to go people have wondered about the viability of the show.

While in attendance last year I spent most of the show thinking the same thing myself. I mean, it was empty, sterile and boring. It was also spread all over Santa Monica and made it a goddamn nightmare to get from place to place. Luckily they fixed that problem and brought it back to the Los Angeles Convention Center but they made an even more detrimental mistake… they moved the show from May to July, thereby guaranteeing that we’d see no new important announcements. By July all these companies have their holiday plan in motion, and there’s no way in hell they’re going to wait until the middle of July to drop a bomb on us.

Watching those press conferences nearly put me to sleep, and I left before two of them finished. With the exception of Final Fantasy coming to the 360 and the Netflix thing, we barely heard anything new worth hearing… unless you count that dumb fucking You’re in the Movies game for the Xbox. Nintendo talked about how much money they made and Animal Crossing: City Folk is apparently how Nintendo plans on satisfying the core market. Sony had a ton to talk about but we knew almost of it going in. They launched the video service, which is cool and all, but not exactly jaw-dropping.

And for the record, I realize it’s probably easier to get work done without so many tertiary people there (i.e. the fans that snuck in a’la old E3) but guess what, getting rid of them not only got rid of the excitement… you got rid of thousands of people that would’ve given you more word-of-mouth than any blog. My first E3 I flew out and went just as a fan, not as a journalist. And when I got back I constantly got into conversations talking about what I saw and how excited I was for this or that. As they say, you can’t buy publicity like that.

Nowhere was this more obvious than at the press conferences. All 3 of them had pauses built in for applause, and while there was some polite clapping here and there…. a room full of journalists aren’t going to scream and yell. The people that do that aren’t welcome anymore.

I’m starting to believe that E3 is not only a shadow of it’s former self, it’s on life-support. I don’t think the companies put much stock into it’s importance anymore, and figure the show isn’t worth wasting a big announcement on. Obviously I could be wrong, but just look at Bungie. They were supposed to have an announcement and pulled it at the last minute, saving it for a better time.

Now you can certainly counter-argue about specific titles, and there are certainly things coming down the pike to be excited about. Left4Dead, Gears 2, Mirror’s Edge, Resistance 2, etc. But how much of it had we seen or heard about already?

With the numerous defections of companies out of the ESA, I don’t think I’m alone in my assumption. The very members of the ESA seem to feel the same way.

I’ve watched this trailer over and over and can’t quite seem to find the titles of the games included in Apogee’s Duke Nukem Trilogy. Maybe you guys can help me? Please? I hate it when these trailers are so unclear about what you’re actually getting. Seriously, just give me the names of the games!

Sorry bout that, I just couldn’t resist. It possibly the worst game trailer I’ve ever seen, and was most likely put together by an intern 30 minutes before showtime. It’s amazing what one can do with copy+paste commands and crappy filters.

Man-o-man talk about violent… and this is on a Nintendo system?? Easily one of the most unique-looking games on the horizon, the stark black and white make the blood look all the more visceral. And there are buckets of the stuff. Buckets.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Mad World, and this below clip just kinda reinforces what we’ve already seen. Still, looks cool.