The stories for this week:
- Brutal Legend Coming to Wii, Not Developed by Double Fine
- Filefront Dies, Rises from the Grave
- Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier Announced for PSP/PS2
- Steve Wiebe Attempts to Retake Donkey Kong Throne at E3
- DSi, Godfather II and Assault on Dark Athena Highlight Weekly Releases
Brutal Legend Coming to Wii, Not Developed by Double Fine
No big surprise here honestly, other than the fact that Double Fine will not be developing it. When your game gets picked up by Electronic Arts it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are interested in bringing a Wii version out as well. Although rumors are it will be a port of the 360/PS3 game, who is to say it won’t be akin to the Dead Space game on the Wii that EA is working on? Since development has just started, do not expect the Wii version to be out at the same time as the 360/PS3 game. Other good news here is that many online publications got a look at Brutal Legend at GDC last week and most have nothing but good things to say about it.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Variety
Filefront Dies, Rises from the Grave
Last week there was news of Filefront dying off, but the news on April 1st this week was that the creators of Filefront had purchased it from Ziff-Davis and the popular download site had risen from the grave. Everyone was of course skeptical because it was April Fools Day and all, but it ended up being true.
Source: Filefront
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier Announced for PSP/PS2
This somewhat ties into the news that Sony has dropped the PS2 price to $99 this week. Of course, everyone was all atwitter with the idea that Sony’s big announcement was going to be a PS3 price drop, but once again Sony failed to satisfy everyone. It’s getting to the point now that whenever Sony announces a “major announcement” that the media isn’t going to show up one of these days. Learn from Chicken Little Sony, don’t say the sky is falling when it really isn’t.
Anyway, a new Jak and Daxter game is in the works for the PSP and PS2, releasing on the same day in the fall. This game takes place right after Jak 3. It is too bad this game is being made for PSP and PS2 because its platform brethren Ratchet and Clank has made the move to the PS3…why not Jak?
Source: Colony of Gamers
Steve Wiebe Attempts to Retake Donkey Kong Throne at E3
Not quite sure how they’re going to pull this off, but Steve Wiebe will attempt to take back the Donkey Kong hi-score throne from Billy Mitchell at E3. I’m going to guess they’ll put him on a platform with the Donkey Kong game and have multiple huge screens up so people can see him play it. I just can’t see them not having screens and just having people walk up and watch Wiebe from behind as he does it, we’re far more sophisticated than that right?
I want to plug the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters here. It is available for instant watch via Netflix, so you can watch it on your Xbox 360 if you so feel. Although it is edited in such a way that skews it too much toward Wiebe (and makes Billy Mitchell look like a total egomaniacal douche who is obsessed with keeping the record…which further evidence has shown was not the case), it is still a really well done documentary about Wiebe’s battle to beat Billy Mitchell’s high score, although Billy’s score had been beaten before the documentary came out by another player. Later on Wiebe got the throne and then Mitchell took it back 4 months later. Now Wiebe will try again. Good luck Steve.
Source: Joystiq
DSi, Godfather II and Assault on Dark Athena Highlight Weekly Releases
The Nintendo DSi, Godfather II and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena highlight the releases this week. I’m not too excited about the DSi, mostly because it has no GBA port like the other DS systems. The additions sound cool and it is also sounding like there will be DSi-only games coming out down the line, but to me that is stupid unless it gets major market penetration like the regular DS systems have. Godfather II is intriguing, although it was delayed for a couple months. Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is an interesting release. It contains an updated version of the fantastic Escape from Butcher Bay game that came out last generation and also adds some extra levels as well on top of that. I’m not sure it is worth the price of a full game, especially if you’ve already played Escape from Butcher Bay because I hear the new stuff isn’t all that plentiful.
Source: me