Weekly News Roundup: 7/18/2010

Games

These two characters with swords are somehow involved with flying and shooting mechs in the 1950s in Cave's Akai Katana. It doesn't have to make sense to be awesome.

  • Cave revealed a new shooter set in the 1950s called Akai Katana (translated as Red Katana). The ships will be piloted by two characters and will fight against 1950s style mechs. It sounds cool and is sure to have tons of bullets and shooting, but all the trailer has are characters looking depressed. Fans in Japan will get to check the game out at Akihabara Hey this week.

  • Japan's Okamiden Collector's Edition is amazing. It includes a soundtrack, DVD, storybook, plush key chain, and paw ear phones all in a big fancy box. We can only hope that Capcom decides to bring this to North America.

  • There will be a Dead Rising 2 Zombrex Edition that will include a Steelbook case, a hardcover art book, syringe pen, prescription note pad, safety card, band-aid, sales brochure, and a 24-minute "Making of" feature. The Xbox 360 version also gets the Zombrex: Dead Rising movie while the PS3 version gets a dynamic theme. Wait, why does the Xbox version only get the movie? What happened to all that extra free space on the Blu-ray?

  • It looks like the original Cho Aniki might be getting released on PSN, possibly as a PS One Classic.

  • Ed Boon revealed a cancelled Mortal Kombat game that would have teamed-up rivals Scorpion and Sub Zero called Fire & Ice. This would have been made by the same team that did Shaolin Monks, so it might have been decent.

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  • Hideo Kojima will be signing at SDCC on Thursday from 11am-3pm. I tried to do this over a year ago (not at SDCC, somewhere else) unsuccessfully, so maybe I can actually get his autograph this time.

  • What kind of game is Mega Man Universe? The trailer is cool, but not really helpful. Also, Ryu and Arthur are in it for some reason.

Movies / TV

  • The Alien Anthology will be on Blu-ray on 10/26. It'll include all the extras from the Quadrilogy box set plus brand new ones. A limited edition version will have an awesome illuminated statue by Sideshow Collectibles.

  • Larry Kenney, the voice of Lion-O in the original ThunderCats, will be voicing King Claudus, Lion-O's father, in the new ThunderCats cartoon.

  • A photo of Thor, Odin, and Loki went online this week and, well, Thor looks fine, but Odin and Loki look terrible.

  • Criterion will release Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai on Blu-ray on 10/19 and Nobuhiko Obayashi's House on Blu-ray and DVD on 10/26.

  • Ryan Reynolds in The Green Lantern all CG "costume" was revealed on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. It looks weird, but there's no way to tell how good it may or may not actually look until we see in in motion.

  • Here's a little more X-Men: First Class casting for you: Jennifer Lawrence will be Mystique and there's a rumor that Kevin Bacon will be a villain, possibly Mr. Sinister.

  • Edward Norton is no longer Bruce Banner in The Avengers movie and Mark Ruffalo could be taking his place.

  • Here's a completely underwhelming teaser for the new Gatchaman movie.

Figures

  • I usually don't like bobble heads, but now Entertainment Earth has an exclusive Pimp Daddy Destro bobble head, based on the rare original figure and the updated SDCC exclusive figure. Must resist Destro's supreme pimp-atude.

  • The awesome Predaking is being re-issued by Takara and looks to be the next figure in the Transformers 2010 campaign. The previously yellow paint will be gold, giving the king a more regal look.

  • Transformers customizer extraordinaire frenzy_rumble has made an Dinobots combiner called extinction. Unfortunately, Wheelie is the head.

  • You Chrono Trigger fans might want to check out this cool Avarus figurine by Camille Young.

- Shawn - 7/18/10

Weekly News Roundup: 7/11/2010

Figures / Collectibles

Jawa, Ewok, and Rebel flavors? Delicious!

  • Anyone attending Star Wars Celebration V in August will be able to get some silly yet cool Star Wars mini cereal boxes like Hothsted Flakes, Troop Loops, Grape-Hutts, Raisin Han, and more. I don't think I want to know how Grape-Hutts are made. There are sixteen different 4" boxes that will be handed out one per panel during the collecting panels. That's a really long time to sit around and hear someone talk about Star Wars collecting if you want all sixteen. However, a Troop Loops box would be awesome if someone wanted to get me one.

  • Pop Culture shock's next Street Fighter statue is M. Bison. It'll stand a menacing 19" tall and have interchangeable hands. The Sideshow Collectibles exclusive version is dressed in black.

  • Capcom will have some Okamiden Chibiterasu bracelets at SDCC in the shape of Chibiterasu. You can wear it like a normal bracelet, but snaps back into it's shape when you take it off.

  • The Sonic Colors pre-order bonus is a hat of Sonic's ears and hair. This will be great at parties or even for wearing during mundane activities, like going to the grocery store.

Movies / TV

  • Optimus Prime will have a trailer in Transformers 3. As much as I hated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, it's cool to see Optimus with his trailer. It even has that same stripe as the Generation 1 Optimus. We'll have to wait and see if the trailer transforms into a base like the toys or if Optimus will be transporting random stuff. The movie will also have stock cars with guns on them for some reason.

  • The new Machete trailer is playing in front of Predators, but if for some reason you haven't seen Predators yet (Do it now!), watch the awesome trailer here.

  • There's not one, but two Mad Max movies in the works and they might be shot back to back. Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa.

  • Nicholas Hoult is Beast, Caleb Landry Jones is Banshee, and Aaron Johnson might be young Cyclops in X-Men: First Class. I don't know what to think of this movie anymore.

Games

  • Dead Space Ignition is a downloadable title for PSN and XBLA that takes place before Dead Space 2. If you complete it, you'll be rewarded with some new space suit for Isaac in DS2.

  • To not give away the name of the next Batman: Arkham Asylum game, a lot of potential domain names have been registered. Which one is the real one?

  • The classic Blood Gulch map will return in Halo: Reach and is re-introduced by the Red Vs. Blue crew.

  • Drawing Nintendo characters gives you he correct math answers in Brain Age. The player did this by exploiting the stroke directions that detects the correct answers.

- Shawn - 7/11/10

Weekly News Roundup: 7/4/2010

Figures / Toys

Voltron, defender of your save files.

  • This Voltron USB drive looks amazing. It's tiny, heroic, cute, and functional all in one. You can't buy the 2GB Defender of the Universe yet, but it should be available soon.

  • Two sets of custom resin Mega Man Legends 2 / Rockman Dash 2 figures will be exclusives to Japan's Wonder Festival 2010 Summer event. The first set includes Mega Man and the monkey Data. The second set has Tron and a Servbot.

  • Capcom Japan's e-store has the cutest plush ever: a near life-size Chibiterasu from Okamiden.

  • These Street Fighter sneakers just look like normal sneakers. Is there anything Street Fighter about them aside from the color scheme? If not, then pretty much any shoe could be considered a "Street Fighter shoe." These purple high heels are Juri shoes, or these clown shoes are Ken shoes because they're red and have yellow laces.

Games

  • The Transformers: War for Cybertron players who are paying up to $105 for a pre-order character code will feel really dumb when Activision releases the first DLC pack for the game. The pack will probably contain the three pre-order characters of Shockwave, Jazz, and Demolisher, two new characters of Scattershot and Onslaught, plus two maps for multiplayer and two maps for Escalation mode.

  • The Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 DLC that was taken off PSN and Xbox Live is back, or will be soon. If you missed the short window to get it last year you can now buy it until December 31st, when it gets removed for no reason again.

  • GameTrailers' Pop fiction Episode 3 discusses the Super Smash Bros. trick that lets you play as Master Hand. This trick wasn't discovered until 7 years after the game was out. The game came out in 2001, with the code cracked in 2008. This is the first time I've ever heard of this, so it probably is for many of you, too.

  • Lost Planet 2 will be getting new DLC of a boss rush mode and a new Post Modern skin later in July.

  • I'm not up on Twitter knowledge, nor do I want to be, but does this mean someone at Twitter is a Darius fan, or is this just a fan-made thing?

Movies

  • Here's some X-Men: First Class casting news: Michael Fassbender will be Magneto and Alice Eve will be Emma Frost.

Awesome

- Shawn - 7/4/10