Taking a cue from the Metal Gear Solid folks, Capcom has decided to re-issue the first three Onimusha games together in one package. The “Onimusha Essentials” pack will bundle the three games together for the budget price of $30. All three were great games — though the first couple might be a little dated by today’s standards — but if you want to see essentially the precursor to God of War, then here it is. Now we just need publishers to make this even easier on us and start issuing them for the next-gen consoles, preferably as a download.

Yesterday, Jonathan let you all in on the weird and not very secretly coded message plastered across a teaser site for Metal Gear Solid. The last code is mostly likely the power button for a PC–at least that is what the symbol on my power button looks like, but it also looks like the one for the Xbox 360. Then again, if you looks at the codes closely, you would also see other gaming symbols that looks very familiar to you. Therefore, one might think that the “i” is for the Wii, and the “!” is for the Xbox 360 and the last one is for the PC.  Yet, the Wii most likely would not be able to handle an exact port of Metal Gear Solid 4, therefore I personally think this had to do with the Xbox 360 and PC only.

So, if my deductive reasoning (and upon further investigation-most of the internet) is correct, MGS4 will no longer be a PS3 exclusive in the near future. That, or all the old Metal Gear Solid games will be heading to other formats–but it is best not to think on this too hard and instead focus on the obvious.

All of the speculation from yesterday is getting even more heightened today, with people chatting on all sorts of forums, but if you look back on the actual beginnings of these rumors, the teaser site just makes perfect sense.

Read the full article

On Sunday, December 14th, Jack Black will take viewers on a trip to gamer heaven as host of Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards.” Recognizing outstanding artistic and technical achievement in the gaming industry, plus premiering first-looks at the hottest games of 2009 and beyond, the 2008 “VGAs” debuts live and in high definition on Sunday, December 14 at 9:00-11:00 p.m. EST (tape delay on west coast).

In emceeing the night’s festivities, Black will be capping a 2008 which saw him star in Tropic Thunder and Kung Fu Panda that grossed over $800 million worldwide combined. Also, he will star opposite Michael Cera in director Harold Ramis’ June 2009 release of The Year One.

In addition to the world premiere of Brütal Legend gameplay from designer Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango and Psychonauts) and Double Fine Productions, the 2008 “VGAs” will be stacked with exclusives featuring the first look at the gameplay of the PS3 exclusive God of War III, Uncharted 2, EA’s Sports Fight Night Round 4, Mafia II, Terminator Salvation, Watchmen: The End is Nigh. A special announcement regarding Gears of War 2 and other surprises are supposed to revealed at a later date leading up to the festivities.

At the show, legendary game designer Will Wright will receive the first-ever “Gamer God” award for his achievements in the gaming industry. Other industry luminaries set to attend include Game of the Year-nominees Hideo Kojima (designer, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots), Cliff Bleszinski (design director, Gears of War 2), Todd Howard (executive producer, Fallout 3), Alex Evans (co-founder, Media Molecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet), Rockstar Games and more names soon to be announced.

Nominees and winners for Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards” were determined by the VGA Advisory Council, made up of a group of the top journalists in the industry. Games released between December 2, 2007 and December 1, 2008 were eligible for nomination. The Best Independent Game Fueled by Dew winner will be selected by fans who vote on VGA.Spike.com.

Remember back in June when when all those Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots bundles for the PS3 went on sale? Did you miss out on your chance to get one? Well, Walmart has your back because they are selling the Limited Edition Kojima Silver MSG4 40GB PS3 Bundles for $399.99–but you may want to check for availability before you head down to you nearest boxmart.

You can, however order one online and if you want to save $19.94 on shipping, you can have it delivered to your nearest Walmart store for pick-up. Kind of like Circuit City but without all the lies.

Now that we know these bundles are still in demand after all these months, let us hope that those of us out there who still want the 80GB model will be shown some love as well relatively soon.

(Thanks VG247)

Available to the highest bidder on eBay right now is a modded 60GB PlayStation 3 system that has been completely reworked to the beauty you see above which, in addition to the lovely paint job, sports 15 white LEDs to light up the artwork, a modded Nyko PS3 controller with red backlit buttons, and the signatures of both series mastermind Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear Solid 4 voice actor Yumi Kikuchi.

In addition to the system itself, you’ll be getting a handful of other Metal Gear goodies, including launch day dog tags, a GA-KO alarm clock, custom embroidered Otacon patches, and other rare items.

15% of the final price will be going to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, so you won’t have to feel too terribly guilty about bidding. Of course, you will need to have a fair amount of cash handy to bid — with just under seven hours to go, the highest bid is currently $17,200. That’s a pretty penny (1,720,000 pretty pennies, to be exact), but hey — at least shipping is free.

There have been many game demos before that people spent hours on (God only knows how many times I played that Metal Gear Solid 2 demo packaged with ZOE). But how many demos have taken that long for just one playthrough? Apparently, that’s exactly what Square-Enix has planned for the Final Fantasy XIII demo, which will take PS3-owners through an early portion of the game. According to an upcoming issue of Famitsu, the demo will come packaged with the Blu-Ray release of the feature-length film, Final Fantasy: Advent Children Complete, which will feature new and deleted scenes for a much longer run-time than before. More impressive than that though is that the accompanying demo will apparently run even longer than the film; probably well over two hours.

That’s pretty gutsy of Square-Enix actually. I’ve encountered many demos that took less than five minutes for me to get tired of, so a two hour one would have to be pretty spectacular to hold peoples’ interest. You have to wonder if they’ll actually give you the option to save in the middle though, even if it is a demo. You also have to wonder what the cut-scene to gameplay ratio is for this portion of the game.

Via Playstation Universe

This has got to be one of the most inventive ads for a video game I’ve seen in awhile. At first, I thought this was simply one helluva fan creation, but it turns out to actually be an ad for Metal Gear Ac!d Mobile. It’s kind of strange that they don’t show any actual gameplay footage here, but watching little fingers kill each other is entertaining all by itself. Finally we get an answer to the age-old question: “Can thumb wrestling bloom on the battlefield?”

If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered what our favorite Metal Gear Solid 4 characters would look like if they were redone to resemble small, cute anime girls.  Thankfully, Konami is going to make our dreams finally come true on December 11th!

The production of the Fugimate Sweet Snake figurines are all being supervised by Hiroshi Arakawa, who is the original art director for the Metal Gear series.  They’ll come in four different flavors: Ocelot, Solid Snake, Raiden, & Otacon.  Each are 7cm (2.76 in.) tall and will cost 2,940 yen (approx. $27).

I think it goes without saying that this will only be available in Japan, which just shows that we never get anything good here in the states.  I guess the only way we’ll ever see these is during a local convention, but you better believe they’ll be selling this for more than $27 bucks since its production is going to be limited.

[Via DannyChoo]

Interested in some fascinating developer insight about Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2? Then you probably won’t get much out of the video interview above with the “developers” from Loading.Ready.Run., which instead focuses on finding out how they were going for a “truly cinematic experience” which they think “should give Metal Gear Solid 4 a run for its money.”

It’s funny stuff, particularly seeing them pretend to use a green screen (which, remember, is the expensive technique also used for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films!) to model the behavior of the blue diamond, which has returned as “the principal antagonist.”

You can find more hilarious videos and other good stuff at Loading.Ready.Run.

(Thanks to Infinity Ward’s fourzerotwo for pointing it out!)

We all know that the 20GB Xbox 360’s price drop is just artificial — once those units sell through, it’ll be gone, and we’ll be back to the three current price points for the Arcade, Premium and Elite SKUs.

Todd Greenwald, an analyst with Signal Hill, has told investors that the “Xbox 360 needs a real price cut.” This temporary cut isn’t enough to stave off the fierce competition from the Wii and PlayStation 3.

“We remain very sceptical of Microsoft’s pricing strategy and competitive positioning versus the PlayStation 3.

“At USD 349, with a 60GB hard drive, we just don’t think it is a compelling product compared with the PS3 at USD 399 with an 80GB hard drive (along with more processing horsepower, Blu-ray, Wifi, HDMI, and going forward, more exclusive content),” Greenwald said.

“We’d also note that the Xbox 360 has just been surpassed by the Wii in the US, despite Microsoft’s one year head start over Nintendo.

“We do think that the Netflix announcement is a significant addition for Xbox users, though its far more of a positive for Netflix than it is for Microsoft in our opinion,” he said of one of the new features in the ‘new Xbox experience.’

“Sony’s biggest announcement was a strong counter-punch to Microsoft’s USD 50 price cut on the 360.

“We think this should give Sony a leg up versus the 360, along with several exclusive titles like the just-released Metal Gear Solid, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, etc.

“Beyond Gears of War 2, Microsoft doesn’t seem to have the same library of exclusive, must-have titles,” he concluded.

Greenwald makes a good point. If Microsoft could drop the price across the board and get the system under or equal to the price of the Wii at $250, it would be an extremely helpful selling point going into this holiday season.

via GamesIndustry.biz