1P Start

Remember Konami’s horrendous drum set? If the rumored “leaked” set list is any indication, I don’t think Rock Band 1,2 or Guitar Hero: World Tour will have anything to worry about. The list of songs after the break:

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What’s the best way to generate interest in your tired, nearly dead franchise? To change it up and then return it to it’s roots. It worked for Coke with New Coke and it may just work for Mortal Kombat with the change up being Mortal Kombat vs. DC and a switch back to form with Mortal Kombat 9… although let’s all hope that it’s not as bad as new Coke.

Kotaku talked to series creater Ed Boon who didn’t really reveal anything at all other than the visions for a more gritty, totally kick ass Mortal Kombat are dancing in his head like some fantastically bloody ballerina. Perhaps the break from the standard Mortal Kombat is just what the series needed to get people to actually care again before putting us back into the world of ultra violence.

In the realm of rumors, this is a big one. A German gaming website is reporting that 40 gig PS3 owners will eventually be able to play PS2 games because there is a firmware update that will open up backwards compatibility. The German site had this to say (translation by a News 4 Gamers member):

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If you’re a game developer, what’s the best way to ensure that you’ll have all your current secret projects leaked to the press? Fire a bunch of your employees for no reason! When LucasArts let go one hundred staff members the rumors began flying by disgruntled employees. Perhaps the most intriguing is that KotOR (or Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic) 3 is in development. According to the staffer, KotR is the super secret project being worked in conjunction with BioWare and it’s not a single player adventure, rather it’s an MMO.

I’m as happy as the next KotOR fan about getting a new game, but an MMO? Really? I can’t stand MMOs. I don’t have the time nor the willpower to waste on days worth of level grinding, much less have the desire to have to pay a monthly fee to play a game.

Other games rumored to be in progress are an Indiana Jones game, another Indiana Jones Lego game, and a Star Wars lightsaber game. Can’t wait to hear what the non-Lego Indiana Jones game will be about.

Thanks to: Gaming Today

The latest in rumerish news is that Bioshock is coming to the PS3. Apparently in the next issue of the UK based PlayStation mag, PSM3 they have the official details on Bioshock’s arrivial on Sony’s console. According to the gaming website CVG, the magazine will feature both an extensive preview of the game and a bunch of screenshots.

360 fanboys will undoubtedly be upset if this is true, but it’s a good news day for those with a PS3 hankering to play one of the best shooters ever without having to fork over cash for Microsoft’s beast. And if this is true, hopefully there will be a bit of extra content in the works. There’s nothing worse than having a game come out that’s a year old on another format with nothing extra for the delay.

The Metal Gear Solid games have always been shall we say a bit long-winded, with long cut scenes and FMV sequences which go on for ages with no interaction from the player, but it seems that Metal gear Solid 4 is ramping that up even more.

CVG is reporting that after playing through the review copy of the game they managed to lay their hands on, they found that some cut scenes lasted as long as 90 minutes. This outdoes the previous instalments by quite a margin, with the longest reported before this being a 45-minute long scene during Metal Gear Solid 2.

We all expected there to be long cut scenes included in the game as the series has a history of them and Hideo Kojima, the game’s creator is renowned for them, but is one lasting 90 minutes really necessary? I personally baulk at going to see a movie at the cinema if it goes far beyond that as I know I’d start to get bored and have a sore butt by the end of it, so I really don’t want my video games to start going that way as well.

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At the beginning of last month, rumours emerged of Microsoft developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360 in an attempt to grab a piece of Nintendo’s obviously huge market. The company has already started this strategy by releasing the Xbox Arcade pack, a cheap and cheerful package to appeal to casual gamers everywhere.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, here’s a short rehash of the rumours. MTV News (not who I’d normally look to for gaming news, or any other news for that matter) reported that an inside Microsoft source has revealed the plans for an almost exact replica of the Wii Remote. It looks almost identical, although is thought to have a microphone included for future games similar to Singstar.

At the time, Microsoft refused to comment on the speculation, as they do with almost every rumour, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has chosen to speak out.

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Microsoft has seen sales of the Xbox 360 falling badly over the last few months, with 2008 proving so far to be the year of the PS3, and the Wii of course. So what to do? Why, try and steal your competitor’s market of course.

We’ve already seen the Xbox 360 getting dropped in price, and the Arcade pack released in order to cater to the less well off consumers who snapped up the Wii in droves.

Now, according to a company source talking to MTV, Microsoft are also going to muscle in on the motion control elements of the Wii and are busy developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360.

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For a different take on April Fool’s, Rare posted five different possible plots for the new Banjo game, with one being actual truth. A NeoGAF poster helped clear out some choices by eliminating three of the choices as they are the plots from other games. Rumor 2 = Banjo Effect (Mass Effect), Rumor 4: Too Banjo (Too Human), and Rumor 5: Banjo Wars (Halo Wars). Still, any of these really are possible, right now im going with Rumor One as being the real deal, as I just can’t see a Banjo being put out with the word “T.I.T.” in the game description, that is more of a Conker thing.

Rumor One: Banjo and Grunty team up against a new threat, falling in love in the process.
Sexy post-transformation Grunty makes a return and proves irresistible to our heroic bear, much to Kazooie’s disgust. Can the mismatched trio defeat their fire-breathing foe?

Rumor Two: Kazooie is abducted by aliens and Banjo heads out to search the cosmos.
Partway through his low-gravity exploits, he discovers who’s taken her… and it’s a familiar face from the Rare archives who has been ‘turned to the green side’ by Grunty.

Rumor Three: Banjo and Kazooie travel back through time in pursuit of the witch’s giant T.I.T.
Grunty drives her Time Interfering Truck back to before the bear and bird met. The duo must reintroduce themselves and relearn everything they know in a completely new way!

Rumor Four: Banjo comes out of retirement to stop his home being redeveloped into tower blocks and malls.
To end the struggle, a capricious higher power engineers a bear/witch showdown through worlds of the imagination – with Spiral Mountain’s ownership deeds going to the victor.

Rumor Five: War comes to Spiral Mountain, and Banjo becomes a reluctant leader.
Ever seen a Jinjo Tank? Or Grunty’s Grappling Grenadier Grunts? You will when you take on our innovative RTS-platformer hybrid campaign.

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Rareware, Rare, Banjo Kazooie, BK3, Xbox 360

I’m a huge fan of the Gran Turismo series of games, starting with the first version on the original Playstation, and the revolutionary 3 and 4 on the PS2. So as you’d expect, I can’t wait until the fifth game, and first on the PS3 gets released. Unfortunately I may have to wait some time.

SCEA associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda spoke last week on the Official Playstation Blog about the series, and about a mixtape which they’d put together for the US version of GT5: Prologue.

In the comments under the article, a reader asked if it’s actually worth buying Prologue now, only to have to shell out more money for the full version of the game a few months later. This elicited the following response from Hinojosa-Miranda:

“GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.”

About a year away? Man, that’s disappointing, and I can’t really see why there’s that much of a delay between Prologue coming out (in Europe last week, and North America on April 17th) and the full version. What are they going to do in those 12 months?

Unless they are finally going to put car damage in to the game, something which the fans have been calling for right from day one.

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Ever since HD DVD as a format died a bitter death back in early February, there has been speculation over what Microsoft would do now that their decision to support the format has gone horribly wrong. Now it seems that they are at least talking to Sony about the possibility of a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360, to replace the now virtually worthless HD DVD one.

Microsoft has already cut the price of the HD DVD drive to bargain basement levels, and now it seems they are keen to move on from the dead format altogether.

There are reports that not only could an Xbox Blu-ray drive be on its way, it might actually be fully integrated in to the console, rather than merely available as an expensive add-on.

According to the Financial Times, Sony Electronics US president, Stan Glasgow, claims his company is in talks with Microsoft about the possibility.

if this does happen, what’s interesting is that it would mean Sony making money on every Xbox 360 sold, as well as every Playstation 3, which regardless of sales figures would make it the big winner in this format war.

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I’m a huge Guitar Hero fan, having got the second one for Christmas 2006, and then buying numbers 1 and 3 since. I think I’ll also be getting ‘Rock The 80s‘ for my birthday (fingers crossed that my girlfriend is reading this). So I’m excited beyond what would be considered healthy to learn through the grapevine that the third instalment of the wildly popular franchise could be due for a release later this year.

Now at the moment, this is a mere rumour, hence the filing under Mill O’ Rumour, but I have to say it’s a good one, and quite feasible with it.

Like most of you, I had imagined the game getting a 2009 release, with Activision Blizzard wanting a bit of extra time to come up with some new innovations to nail on to the glorious basic concept of the game. However, according to a British rock group called The Answer, the game looks set to be out in time for Christmas 2008.

The band have issued a press release claiming that their song called Never Too Late will be featured in the game’s track listing line-up. This honour being bestowed upon them after the song was picked out with 19 others from a field of 200 hopefuls at the annual ‘Marché International de l’édition Musicale’, held in Cannes, France this past month.

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There have been rumours rumbling for months now about a version of Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii. Although Electronic Arts, who distributes the game for publisher MTV, wouldn’t confirm of deny the intense speculation, it seems EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello just couldn’t hold the news in any longer.

During a conference call discussing EA’s 3rd quarter financial results, he spilled the beans on what will be music (pun intended) to Wii owners ears, saying:

“In terms of pacing the next few quarters, you’re probably well aware of the more than $2.5 million music downloads that have occurred on Rock Band,”

“What’s probably the most interesting pieces right now is the coming launch on the Wii, the continued sale of the core platforms in North America, and then the fiscal ‘09 launch across Europe against all of the SKU.”

That seems pretty clear to me, and unless it’s a wind up of massive magnitude, I think a release on the Wii is almost guaranteed now.

There are obviously no further details present as of yet, including how the game would work, the control method it will use, a release date, and planned pricing strategy.

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This past week has seen a multitude of rumours spreading from both online forums, and industry insiders, over price drops for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. But are any of them true, and at the end of the day, does it really matter when the Wii is kicking so much hardware sales ass?

The talks f a price cut for the PS3 have emerged solely from Internet forums, and seem to be insistent that the console is due for a reduction in price to £299. And this will reportedly be announced by Sony on or around January 28th, which is next Monday by my reckoning.

A couple of things point to a possible reduction in price for Sony’s behemoth of a games console. For starters, there is the white PS3 coming to the States, which despite Sony denying is going to happen, I would put good money on. What better way to introduce the new colour of console than by coupling its launch with a well publicised price cut?

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Ladies and Gents it pains me to say my farewells to 1PStart. I’ve been here only a short time, though I’ve been at Xbox 360 Rally (another 451 site) for just under a year. I will miss you guys, though you’re probably throwing a party, chanting “he’s leaving! Huzzah! Huzzah!”. If you do miss me, though, you can find me at my new home BingeGamer.net.

It’s been fun, and I hope to see y’all around.

P.S.: Qbix — E-mail me, dude. I’m still gonna get your GTA IV to ya.