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Tonight is a blog post about the major three publishers in the West, who have been rather embarrassing as usual.

Eidos

Eidos apparently didn’t learn their lesson after the fiasco caused by Gamespot’s review of Kane and Lynch. Rumors flew last week about a desired embargo on any early UK reviews of Tomb Raider: Underworld that gave it less than an 8/10. The first rep from their press company claimed this was an active attempt at artificially boosting that favorite number of Corporate Gaming, the Metacritic average. The followup from a superior claims this is hardly the case, though whatever is the truth, the damage is done. Eidos’s reputation has been taking a nosedive in the last year and a half thanks to their aggressive love of shovelware and their complete disrespect for their potentially great original IP. →  Read Theft Auto 4

Being a lazy man, as well as one who wants to use the best possible television in the house but is too spineless to actively ask for it, I picked up the PS3 memory card adapter this week. If I want to save money this holiday season, the best way to do so is to burn through some PS2 backlog, and the best way to convince myself to do that is to be able to play them upscaled on the PS3 downstairs. However, since I have to share the remote with my housemates, sometimes the upstairs CRT is the only option. The adapter makes the dream a reality, and also means I don’t have to re-unlock all the goodies in my old fighting games. →  Welcome to read zone!

Apple Corps (Not to be confused with Pretentious Hipster Apple Computers) and MTV, announced today they are teaming up to create an all new music game featuring the Beatles. The Beatles have long been viewed as a gold standard of music, both because their music is awesome, and because their licensing situation is complicated, therefore making awesome music more desirable due to lack of availability.

Unfortunately, by creating a whole new game to accommodate a single band, the announcement has a sellout tinge to me. The whole point of building a phenomenally successful platform like Rock Band is to bring content to it and sell the hell out of it, while leveraging the core platform, guaranteeing huge margins – a model that has worked phenomenally well for Harmonix to date. →  Actraiser Readnaissance

Dear Bethesda,

It’s Christian. I hope you have been well. It has been a long time since we played together. I know those few hours in Morrowind weren’t too exciting, but I still appreciated how hard you tried. I also saw you play with some friends in Oblivion, and they all had a lot of fun.

That is why I am looking forward to our next play date. I hear you are bringing Fallout 3. I can’t wait. In case you didn’t know, Fallout is my favorite RPG series ever. I like it so much, I’d rather play them again and again than play some other RPGs for the first time. Still, I hope that we can have as much fun with Fallout 3. →  Article Kombat

It recently occurred to me that I have a great deal of pithy wisdom to pass out, but often cannot express such wisdom in a detailed format as would traditionally befit this site. As a result, this knowledge is lost, much like many of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the QA department of Firaxis. To staunch the hemorrhaging of this critical knowledge, I bring you my irregular Nuggets of Wisdom, where I will give quick shout-outs to games, concepts, society–whatever I feel like. You are to take these nuggets and to cling to them like the final acorn a squirrel devours in a harsh winter, not knowing when the next meal will come. You will get extra points for contradicting me, and even more points for worshiping my mighty e-peen. →  All the lonely gamers, where do they all belong?

There is no question that music/rhythm games have become huge sellers across all demographics. In fact, they may just be as popular as Madden and company. With that success comes a small problem: retailers are stuffed to the gills with music games. Their boxes are often big and clunky, and there simply isn’t enough shelf and floor space for all of them.

As MTV blogger Patrick Klepek sharply points out, this issue may affect the games themselves. Walmart and other big retailers are very powerful in this industry. If they choose not to sell a niche game, no one is crying, but if you are trying to make something that could appeal to the entire market, you need to be everywhere. →  Fire Post Wrestling Returns

Do we have to?
I hope that the delay in the World of Warcraft movie (which apparently is still being planned) is a result of them deciding to not make it about Orcs and Wizards and all that crap but instead, about the broken marriages, child neglect, olestra o.d.’ing and all that stuff that goes on when people spend all their days trying to get more powerful in a game that has no point and no “end.”

Oh wait that’s already a South Park episode. I guess I’m not that funny. :(

Ok well maybe the hero could be some mama’s-basement-dwelling gamer who gets sucked into the magical WoW world like in TRON and The Last Starfighter and all those other wonderful family classics. →  The happiest post on Earth.

The October Nintendo conference, held close to the Tokyo Games Show because Nintendo are jerks and won’t go to the TGS, was received better by gamers than their last E3 show. Among the new titles shown off were Wii Punch Out, Mario & Luigi 3 for the DS, a Klonoa remake for the Wii, a Trace Memory sequel for Wii, and most importantly, Sin and Punishment 2. Beyond the slew of new games, mostly focused at the core market (us), they also announced that they would be refitting Cube games with Wii controls. Donkey Konga and Pikmin are among the confirmed reworks.

The problem with all of these nice announcements is those of us in the West have no assurance these titles will make the trip. →  God of War: Readnarok

For reasons and in ways I need not delve into here, I made the sky open up and rain money down upon me. Lots and lots of money. Enough money to get me out of debt and leave me with almost a grand to disperse however I saw fit. I could have done many things with this leftover cash: I could have bought new tires for my car that desperately needs new tires, I could have paid off all of this upcoming semester of school, but instead, I bought a Playstation 3. I am Yoda wise.

I didn’t just go out and get any old PS3 either, I had to get one that was backwards compatible with PS2 games and so my only option was the $500, 80gig Metal Gear Solid bundle. →  The happiest post on Earth.