Some gaming news

Variety has details up regarding a new Ghostbusters video game to be published by Vivendi. Just look at the screenshot of Marshmallow Man (well, a target renfder, but whatever) above and tell me it isn't brilliant. The four principal cast from the films - Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis will be lending their voice and image likeness for the game as will other supporting casts like Annie Potts and William Atherton. Aykroyd and Ramis will also be writing parts of the scripts. Game of the decade surely.

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BioWare's next major game Mass Effect, will be banned in grumpy ol' Singapore due to "homosexuals" scenes within the game. Surprise? Well you shouldn't. Apparently their PM's logic was that "the city-state should keep its conservative values and not allow special rights for homosexuals". You mean does not allow any equal rights for homosexuals right while maintaining special rights for cronies? You can watch a video here to see what the fuss is all about. Frankly I have seen much worse when I last visited Singapore so I really have no idea why the country is back peddling.

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Early estimates for last week's Japanese hardware sales has put the PS3 ahead of the Nintendo Wii for the first time since like forever. This includes one week of normal (60GB) PS3 sales and one day of the new cheaper (especially with the crazy exchange rate) 40GB PS3. Sales are encouraging and any Nintendo fanboys who thinks this is a bad thing are idiots. Competition is good. Nintendo has been arrogant for far too long taking the easy route of appealing to non-gamers. I think many gamers are getting irritated, including yours truly. I have never felt more regret in getting a Wii than anything else.

Continuing with the Wii, the BBC's lead technology article on the supposed low supplies of the console this Christmas has been consistently in the top 5 most e-mail and read articles on BBC News yesterday according to their little widget. This can only be a good thing as Nintendo's marketing ploy would mean high demand/low supply = high profitability for used Wii.

KEER-CHIIING!

I normally frown on such practices, but hei when there are no games worth playing then it is better to let go for now and re buy it after Christmas when the price drops back down to below £160. Maybe after renting Super Mario Galaxy.

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Not understanding the logic by Nintendo in not bringing over an official translated version of MOTHER 3, but then again they started hating video games when they saw the amount of non-games money they can make (see above). For the non-Japanese speaking gaming fans waiting patiently to play the game, the MOTHER 3 fan translation team has released a video marking the first anniversary when the unofficial translation began at Starman.net:



Great trailer. I tried to play the game in Japanese once and it gave me a headache so I will be waiting for the time when the wonderful team finally release the full patch.