Games Announced, Dated, and Delayed

The year is finally picking up some steam, with new game announcements, ship dates confirmed, and delays expected. Besides the already announced Zelda delay, Nintendo actually has good news to offer. New Super Mario Bros. is slated for a May 7th release here in the states. Fallout 3 will not be at E3 this year, despite the highly anticipated nature of the game. Oblivion, Bethesda's upcoming RPG, doesn't quite have a release date yet. It should be coming out 'soon', though. NCSoft is apparently working on a dungeon crawler themselves, with the City of Heroes publisher announcing Dungeon Runners at the Taipei game show. For those of you who (like me) loved the title, there are sequels to F.E.A.R. on the way. They won't be carrying the stupid name, thankfully. There will also be a sequel to God of War, slated for release next February. Finally, for classic gaming fans, the GameTap service will be offering the Ultima series of games for play in the near future, probably around the same time that Street Fighter 2 will be on the Xbox 360 Arcade. Looks like we've got a 2006 worth looking forward to. Update: 02/22 20:18 GMT by Z : Changed the God of War information link to Gamasutra; Eurogamer pulled the info after legal threats from Sony.

Comments

Meanwhile

[CRCulver]

Meanwhile Duke Nukem Forever is promised to be out shortly after the sun expands into a red giant and destroys the Earth and the entire population of gamers left on it.

Re:Meanwhile

[gbobeck]

Duke Nukem Forever is promised to be out shortly after the sun expands into a red giant and destroys the Earth and the entire population of gamers left on it.

That soon??!?? I always thought that the ship date for that game will be right about the time the entire universe is destroyed.

Re:Meanwhile

[Dubpal]

Yeah, the clue was in the title. It's actually a release date.

Duke Nukem: Forever

God of War Sequel

[steveo777]

God of War II. Game to include new features: More boobs, more blood, more boobs, more bodies, more boobs. Also, seeing as Kratos has slain basically every mythical creature in The Illiad and The Odyssey, you will now be up agains legions of Nintendogs and Pokemon. Borowing from Don Quixote, you will have to take down the evil windmills and kill random "sorcerers" to cleans the lands. Also, Mario will make an appearence for the GameCube version as Zues, God of Thunder.

Cranking up the rumor mill

[Zigg]

Might as well pitch this rumor here too.

May 7 is a Sunday. Nintendo doesn't release games on Sundays all that often. One of the more recent big titles they did release on a Sunday was Super Mario 64 DS — as a launch title for the original Nintendo DS.

Draw your own conclusions. I have, and hope to get a DS Lite on May 7.

Re:Cranking up the rumor mill

[Zigg]

Heh. Definitely at least hold out for the Lite -- it sounds like it's worlds better than the original. Just perhaps more fragile... of course, for Nintendo, fragile means "like any other piece of hardware". My classic DS has parking lot marks on it and still works great. :)

Re:Cranking up the rumor mill

[7Prime]

World's Better? It looks exactly the same, just lighter.

I just recently got a DS, and my ONLY complaint with the system is its ergonomics. It's like if you put shoulder buttons on an NES controller! After about 5 minutes on MarioKart DS, my right hand starts to fall asleep. This is due to the shape of the controller (completely rectangular), not the size or weight. The size and weight are perfect the way they are, it's no heavier than a GameCube controller or a DualShock 2, and the size seems just fine to me. I also have had absolutely no complaints about the screen brightness. The Lite seems like a total waste. Now, if they re-shaped it to be more comfortable to hold, I'd buy one without a second thought.

Re:Dragon Runner

[chrismcdirty]

They probably mentioned CoH since NCSoft has published (or planned to publish) a fair amount of different MMOs in recent years, with CoH (arguably) being the most recognizable/successful.

God of War story gone already?!

[cluke]

"The information that previously appeared here has been removed under the threat of legal action from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe."

What's going on? Did anyone get the chance to read it before it was pulled? Can't imagine this pretty obvious news provoking such a threat!

(Oh yeah, and nice one Sony, your PR machine pulls another great move)

Re:No release date for Oblivion? Tell that to stor

[ivan256]

That's silly Amazon crap. They have PC CD-ROM as the platform like where they'd put "PS2" or "GC" if it were for a console. That makes it so a game that comes out on DVD-ROM ends up having conflicting acronyms in the description. It looks right on the item page, but it always looks screwy in the e-mail if you have it set to 'plain text'.

This item is particularly bad because "(DVD)" is part of the name, so you get "(DVD)" (title) "[CD-ROM]" (platform), "[DVD-ROM]" (media).

DS Lite?

[RyoShin]

There's been a lot of talk about it, but I haven't seen a release date for the DS Lite state side. I know that the Japanese gamers get it in the middle of March, and I believe Reggie said it would hit stateside in the summer (and the original DS would be phased out), but have they stated an actual release date for it?