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Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a Comics2Film article mentioning that there are hidden unlock codes for the Hulk videogame stashed away in the Ang Lee-directed Hulk movie that opens this weekend. Apparently, "You may see a license plate in the movie and that will be a code to open up areas in the game." The unlockable goodies include the gray Hulk often seen in the comics, but of course, the people over at GameFAQs have found the code already - don't look if you want to play along at home.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an IGN Cube story summarizing the new features in the Japanese expanded re-release of sleeper Gamecube hit Animal Crossing. These include brand new features such as "..upgraded animal designs.. all-new events added.. more than 100 additional items.. visit the island without a GBA.. take photos of village life, store on SD Cards, and print using photo printers", and a number of features previously only found in the US version of the game. Gamers.com has some new screenshots of this release, which follows the pattern of titles such as Kingdom Hearts:Final Mix in exporting US-release improvements back to Japan in a 'special edition'. Although non-Japanese Animal Crossing fans may be looking hopefully for this expansion, a release outside Japan seems unlikely, and the poor Europeans still don't have the original Gamecube version.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to N-Sider's in-depth coverage of the forthcoming Gamecube FPS, Geist. This title was shown at E3, but the article goes into a lot more detail than most about the game, which is being co-developed by N-Space and Nintendo. Geist is described as "..a hybrid title that combines the fast-paced action and perspective of a traditional first person shooter with stealth-based game play and a unique new mechanic: the ability to 'possess' other characters in the game." Perhaps not unique, since Shiny's Messiah did something similar, but with competitive-looking graphics and multiple ways around problems ("while watching people play the demo, I noticed no one person played it the same"), it's possible that some of the developer's earlier titles may be improved upon.

Thanks to several readers for pointing out the official U.S. Final Fantasy XI website is now open for business, offering screenshots, details, and even a live 'webcam' of the Vana'Diel game world. There's also more details and screenshots on the Tetra Master card battle mini-game, which first appeared in Final Fantasy IX but is playable online in FFXI. This MMORPG title is currently in early US beta testing, and should be available for both Playstation 2 and PC in early 2004. For those curious, you can see some brief impressions of the FFXI Japanese release from GameFAQs reviewers.

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.

Gamefaq addict writes "GameFAQs has apparently been sold to CNET. The operator says it will stay free for now, but premium services may be introduced later." Looks like a good deal all around. CNET gets the first site most people turn to when they need to get past level two of the dungeon, and GameFAQs gets an added boost. Makes me curious what premium features they have in mind, and how useful they'll be.

Gamefaq addict writes "GameFAQs has apparently been sold to CNET. The operator says it will stay free for now, but premium services may be introduced later." Looks like a good deal all around. CNET gets the first site most people turn to when they need to get past level two of the dungeon, and GameFAQs gets an added boost. Makes me curious what premium features they have in mind, and how useful they'll be.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out that IGN Cube have hands-on impressions of Nintendo's latest 'communication game', Giftpia. This seemingly odd but addictive mushroom-chomping title is directed by Square veterans, and IGN ventures that "Giftpia may be billed as an RPG, but it's really more of an adventure.. there are no stats beyond your health meter, no random battles.. in a sense, Giftpia borrows a lot from Nintendo's Animal Crossing." Hopefully this'll include Animal Crossing's compulsiveness, as well as its saccharin-sweet style - in any case, the Japanese version of Giftpia is already released, and IGN mentions that "..shown off in English at this year's E3, Giftpia is almost guaranteed to see a US release."

psyco484 writes "A long-awaited patch (Build_45) to the PC action-RPG Anachronox has finally been released. Thanks to ex-Ion Storm programmer Joey 'Chinaman' Law, Anachronox now runs a lot better. Hope there's still a few fans out there, an excellent game with a good story. Read about it on the PlanetAnachronox forum, which also has a list of mirrors." Whatever you think of the game, adding new features like a Bricks Taxi short-cut service and fixing a heap of bugs, months/years after the Anachronox team got laid off when Ion Storm closed down, shows a lot of dedication.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a slew of end-of-year financial results from Japanese games companies. Read on for info on Square's excellent and Enix's disappointing results, and find out quite how Konami managed to lose 230 million dollars this year... Perhaps the most surprising results were Konami's loss of 28 billion yen (230 million dollars) for the year, but this was because of the devaluation of a fitness club business (Konami Sports) purchased in 2001 - sales were up 12 percent elsewhere, with Yu-Gi-Oh a high point.

Looking elsewhere, Namco's results were good, with a net profit of 4 billion yen (33 million dollars), partly due to a surprise hit for Taiko No Tatsujin, a drumming game that comes complete with a Japanese taiko drum controller, which has sold over 500,000 copies in Japan.

As for SquareEnix, they reported largely separate financial results for the two halves of the company, due to the recent merger, but Enix had a sharp fall in profits, whereas Square's were a record high. Enix's relatively poor results were blamed on disappointing sales of Star Ocean:Till The End Of Time, which is yet to launch in the US, but was nevertheless expected to do better in Japan, where it's sold a very respectable 500,000 but has already dropped out of the Top 30.

Finally, in a followup to our earlier story, Nintendo's profits came out, and were indeed hit by the sales slowdown and a strong yen, but still managed to reach a group net profit of some 67.3 billion yen (560 million dollars).

flipkin writes "MobyGames, an IMDb-inspired database of video games, has now surpassed the significant milestone of 10,000 game entries. The stated goal of the site has been to meticulously document and catalog every single game ever made, and while they still have a long way to go, 10k is an impressive start." Apart from this site and the excellent Gamefaqs, what other online game databases do you find handy?

Thanks to Gamespot for this story confirming Eidos' Fear Effect:Inferno is officially 'on hold'. The third in the series of Resident Evil-styled 3rd-person action titles was shown at E3 in 2002, but not this year. It was recently rumored in development at Crystal Dynamics (home of Legacy Of Kain) instead of former developer Kronos Digital, but apparently progress has stopped for now. The first two games were particularly known for salacious marketing - thanks to Gamerspress for saving this advert for Fear Effect 2 which pretty much says it all.

Thanks to Gamespot for this story confirming Eidos' Fear Effect:Inferno is officially 'on hold'. The third in the series of Resident Evil-styled 3rd-person action titles was shown at E3 in 2002, but not this year. It was recently rumored in development at Crystal Dynamics (home of Legacy Of Kain) instead of former developer Kronos Digital, but apparently progress has stopped for now. The first two games were particularly known for salacious marketing - thanks to Gamerspress for saving this advert for Fear Effect 2 which pretty much says it all.

Courtesy of IGN, who extracted the pictures from Nintendo's official E3 press booklet, comes pictures and more details of the Game And Watch E-Cards, the collectible data cards which you can swipe through your E-Reader add-on in order to load in classic G+W games. Although there's already Game And Watch 4 for GBA and several prequels for Gameboy, these e-cards look to include classic, if basic titles never converted to Nintendo's new-school portable gaming platform. Neat stuff.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out that the official Wario Ware, Inc. website has opened, advertising the forthcoming Gameboy Advance micro-game title (that's mini mini-games, of course) being released in the States on May 26th. Here's a preview with screenshots which explains the concept a little better - you have about 5 seconds to play and win each microgame, which even include riffs on Mario, Duck Hunt, and so on, and a massive amount of different microgames are chained together until.. well, your brain dribbles out of your ears. Should be fun.

US conversions of Japanese games can either be beautifully done or amateurishly botched. And the 2D shoot-'em-up (aka shmup) genre has seen both over the past few weeks. First, there's been Atari's conversion of Treasure's vertical 2D shmup for Gamecube, Ikaruga, which has been generally hailed as 'a great thing', with the preservation of turn-to-vertical mode (play with your TV on its side to exactly replicate the arcade version!) and even an online score ranking system. On the other hand, the budget US release of vertical shooter Mobile Light Force 2 (actually Shikigami) from XS Games has prompted howls of derision from the hardcore fans, with a bizarre Charlie's Angels-aping cover that has nothing to do with the game, and vertical mode and cut-scenes removed. But then, the game is still fundamentally intact - so how much should these import changes matter if you can snag the game cheap? Opinions, as always, welcome.

Rainier Wolfecastle writes "IGN.com is reporting Konami has confirmed that Metal Gear Solid 3 will be debuting at E3 next week in Los Angeles. There's no word on what will be shown, but if past shows are anything to go by, it's sure to be impressive." There's also a slightly Japlish-influenced teaser image on the Konami Japan site. But truly, how excited are you after the somewhat controversial (was it epoch-making, or just decent?) Metal Gear Solid 2?

sharph writes "A band called Boomkat, made up of Kellin Manning and his sister Taryn, use the Playstation game MTV Music Generator to sketch out songs before re-recording them. Here's a NY Times article about it (Yeah, free reg. required.) Their first single, "The Wreckoning", got to No. 24 on the US pop charts. Interesting read."

Every Christmas season brings with it a storm of new game releases, just in time for the gift-buying frenzy. This year however, marks the release of SquareSoft's first Final Fantasy title for the PS2. I was lucky enough to snag a copy soon after release and spend some time with it. Read on for my first impressions.

I expected a lot from Final Fantasy X, if only because it's Square's first RPG outing on PS2. Within the FF series, every time the jump to a new console was made, it resulted in either better graphics or gameplay, or in this case, both. Although fighting a battle in FFX initially feels like fighting a battle in one of it's predecessors there's been a significant amount of changes to the combat system.

I'm not going to discuss much in the way of plot or characters, because if you're like me, you'll want to discover that part on your own, since the plot is what keeps console RPGs moving.

What's New? Final Fantasy games have always been rather combat-heavy, and leveling up at different times had gotten mind-numbingly boring. In an effort to change that, there are many more options during combat. Characters can be swapped in and out of combat at any time, and they can perform moves as soon as entering the battle, so it's no longer a big deal when you have to fight the weak-against-magic monster and you forgot to include a magic user in the party. In the same way, summons (called Aeons this time around) remain summoned until one dismisses them, replacing the party in battle. When an Aeon's HP drops to zero, the party is brought back into battle, but the Aeon can also be dismissed before that. There's still random battles just like previous games in the series, but it feels like they turned down the frequency of the battles a bit, especially from last year's FF9.

What would be a new Final Fantasy without a new magic system? This time around, it's a little quirky, but it doesn't disappoint. Remember when I mentioned leveling up being boring? Well this time around there's no character levels. Instead, everything is determined by a large sphere grid, that the characters move on using points they accrue by fighting battles. At various points in the grid, characters can lay different types of spheres that enhance them with new abilities, increased character starts, or more max HP/MP. The result is a non-linear system which is more open ended than magic systems of the past, allowing for greater character customization. The trick is to guide a character to the places on the grid that will allow him/her to get the skills desired while using the least amount of sphere levels (which are essentially travel points). Backtracking on the grid is allowed, but is also counterproductive.

Now onto the most fun part of the game: the graphics! With the capability of the PS2 at its disposal, this is easily the best looking ever Final Fantasy title ever, and it's a beautiful world that's been painted. While walking around, the world really comes alive, as trees sway and grass moves as wind goes past. Many of the characters' facial expressions are done in realtime, and while the scenes aren't picture perfect, they are a far cry from the jagged polygonal models on Playstation as well as the two dimensional sprites from the earlier FF titles. The battle sequences look better than ever also, as characters move more fluidly, and enemies do as well. The already stunning realtime animations are augmented by amazing FMV sequences. My only small complaint here is that there's no way to skip the movies entirely. Since it's still my first time playing the game, I haven't wanted to skip anything, but I still feel sorry for the impatient. There is, however, a configuration setting to turn off the extended summoning animations, so there won't be a five minute wait for the huge Aeons enter from space.

Something else FFX features for the first time in a Final Fantasy game: voice acting! Although not every bit of dialogue is dubbed, the voices that are dubbed are done better than I expected. My only complaint is that the lips were synched to the Japanese dialogue, and never resynched during importing. However, that never stopped me from enjoying a Kung Fu movie, and it doesn't stop me from enjoying the game either. Given that the game was released two months earlier than originally planned, I'll let this detail slide.

What's the Same? Although the magic system was overhauled, most of the spells are still the same. There's still three levels of elemental spells, and an Ultima spell, and so on. Also, it wouldn't be much of a Final Fantasy without chocobos, and they are featured yet again.

When Final Fantasy IX was released last year, it featured characters with the traditional Final Fantasy classes, like summoner, white mage, blue mage, etc. I think Squaresoft found that players enjoyed the return to these classes, and decided to continue the trend. Although each character is ultimately customizable into any class, they each start with suggest paths across the sphere grid that resemble one of the classes.

Conclusions Well, if my synopsis of the game didn't sound glowing already, let me reiterate. This game is fun! I had more fun playing the first few hours of FFX than I have had while beating other games. After seeing the character designs for the game, I was worried it might degrade into a "Dude, Where's My Water Sword?" kind of angst-ridden adventure, but instead it's just been fun, and lots of it. On a ten point scale, I give this game a nine, and although it's a little early to call, it may be my favorite Final Fantasy yet. Battle is integrated well with the plot, and with the tutorials placed within the game itself, I'd even recommend this game for those who may not necessarily be RPG fans.

basscomm writes "Nintendojo has the first two parts of a two part editorial on the career of Gunpei Yokoi. Mr. Yokoi worked at Nintendo for many years and was responsible for such innovations as the D-pad, R.O.B., the Game and Watch, Kid Icarus, Metroid, the Game Boy, and the ill-fated Virtual Boy. This prolific inividual was killed in an automobile accident in 1997."