StuffWeLike

Magnetica Twist and Fatal Fury 2 Arrive on Wii

You want fireworks? Look no further than the Wii Shop Channel, where vibrant bursts of classic gaming action and fresh WiiWare content will help fill your living room with a flurry of ooohs and ahhhs. Puzzle-game mavens can enjoy a wild new addition to the WiiWare library, while the Virtual Console brings a truly classic fighting game to the fore. For an added holiday-week blast, fans of the WiiWare hit FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a King can enhance the action with new Add-On Content.

Nintendo adds new and classic games to the Wii Shop Channel at 9 a.m. Pacific time every Monday. Wii owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week’s new games are:

WiiWare

Magnetica Twist (Nintendo, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone—Comic Mischief, 1,000 Wii Points): The classic puzzle game Magnetica is now available on WiiWare , putting its own unique “twist” on the puzzle-game experience. You’re surrounded by marbles, marching slowly but surely down a track. Use a launcher (piloted by a Mii of your choice) to shoot marbles with matching colors and wipe them out before they reach the end of the track. Control couldn’t be simpler, as all you need to do is twist the Wii Remote controller to aim and press the A button to shoot. And the game play remains as addictive and deep as you’ve come to expect in Nintendo’s puzzle games, with five varied play modes, advanced mechanics such as the ability to lob marbles, and a never-ending supply of combos. This definitely isn’t your typical game of marbles.

Virtual Console

FATAL FURY 2 (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated T for Teen—Animated Blood, Violence, 900 Wii Points): Released in 1992 by SNK, FATAL FURY 2 is the second installment in the renowned fighting-game series. In addition to Terry, Andy and Joe, who appeared in the original game, another five distinctive fighters gather from around the world to compete for the championship title. Also newly added are stage-specific hazards and the ability to perform desperation attacks when a character’s strength is low. These particularly deadly techniques create the chance for a come-from-behind victory achieved with a single strike. Moreover, the innovative two-line battle, which proved popular in the previous version, also has been radically enhanced. Pressing the weak-attack and strong-attack buttons simultaneously enables players to move their fighters to another line themselves, or to launch an attack that pushes opponents back to another line. This game mechanic, unique to this title in the series, allows the player to take advantage of the depth of the screen and create even more exciting bouts. Can you prove yourself the king of fighters again?

Journey to the Center of the Earth DS Game

THQ Inc. today announced that Journey to the Center of the Earth has shipped to retailers worldwide. The game is based on the upcoming film Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D by New Line Cinema and is available exclusively for Nintendo DS.

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, players can use the Nintendo DS stylus to search for a passage to the surface of the earth while navigating through all seven of the exotic underground worlds from the movie. A wide variety of mini-games will allow players to rock climb, dig for dinosaur bones and raft across an ancient sea. Players will relive the excitement from the film while playing as all three main characters: Trevor, Sean and Hannah – each with their own unique abilities.

An exciting adventure based on the classic Jules Verne novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3-D stars Brendan Fraser (The Mummy Trilogy) as a science professor whose untraditional hypotheses have made him the laughing stock of the academic community. While on an expedition in Iceland, he and his nephew stumble upon a major discovery that launches them on a thrilling journey deep beneath the Earth’s surface, where they travel through never-before-seen worlds and encounter a variety of unusual creatures. Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3-D is directed by Academy Award-winning visual effects veteran Eric Brevig (Total Recall, Pearl Harbor). The film is a co-venture between New Line Cinema and Walden Media.

For more information on Journey to the Center of the Earth, as well as additional THQ titles, please visit www.playthq.com.

The official web site for New Line Cinema’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D is www.journey3dmovie.com.

300 Follow-up definitely happening!

$Frank Miller\'s 300$

Trust Hollywood to not let a money-making oppurtunity slip by. While a sequel wasn’t the first thing on our minds when we saw the epic 300, we all thought about it sometime or the other, and then rumours began. Official word came here and there, and now it’s definitely up: the 300 follow-up will happen!

Variety reports that Legendary Pictures has confirmed a 300 follow-up with Zack Snyder signed on as director (yes!) and Frank Miller working on the writing. What’s more, if the report is spot-on accurate, Miller is working on a graphic novel, which should be in every way as awesomely epic as its predecessor! This is excellent, with both Snyder and Miller on the project, it has to be awesome! I, uh think.

Snyder, however, has said that he’ll wait for Miller’s novel first before he commits anything, but yeah. Legendary is going to make sure that the story is as great as it was before, because as Thomas Tull from Legendary said, “The vision of Frank Miller’s universe that Zack Snyder brought to the screen in ‘300’ is unlike anything ever seen before.” And that’s totally true.

We wonder what the movie will be about. Will it be a prequel with Gerard Butler back kicking Persian ass as Leonidas? Will we see Leonidas Jr. become a badass king? Will we see the Spartans taking revenge? Speculation abound! We will see where Legendary and Miller go with this.

3D Realms: E3 is “Irrelevant”, Duke still coming along (yeah, right)

While everyone is getting all excited about what games they’ll bring to this year’s E3, there’s one development studio that doesn’t give a shit about E3. That’s 3D Realms, the infamous and mysteriously funded studio that is still, after 11 goddamn years making Duke Nukem Forever. That is one video game, guys. The entire Halo trilogy started and ended, but the Duke is still not ready.

Scott Miller, chief of 3D Realms updated the progress of DNF at Next-Gen:

“Development is swimming along nicely. Seriously nicely.”

How very informative. Seriously nicely. Maybe that’s code or something, because it sure as hell doesn’t say a thing about a game that has been under development for 11 years. And about this year’s E3:

“It’s just that we view E3 as irrelevant nowadays. In fact, I wasn’t even aware it was coming up.”

There you go, guys. No Duke Nukem goodness for you this E3, better luck next year. Or the next. Or the next. But I can assure you this, that the game sure as hell ain’t gonna release in your lifetime.

Diablo III – Coming Soon

Diablo III is finally arriving to PCs and Macs “when it’s ready” according to Blizzard! Diablo III was announced at The 2008 Blizzard Invitational held at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center in Paris. As always with any Blizzard trailer, it looks fantastic! The development team spans 50-55 members and has been in development for 4 years.

Make sure to check out the Diablo III website for more movies, artwork, and info!

Saw V Poster looks Impressive

…but we’re sure that the movie will be far from impressive. Repulsive, maybe, but definitely not impressive. It amazes me how poster artists of such calibre are still working with Saw. Maybe it makes money. I dunno who goes to see Saw when all you need is a good ’80s slasher horror flick, maybe a snuff. Still, there’s this teaser poster below. Click it.

The guys at Latino Review asked Tobin Bell, who says:

“I, of course, enjoyed it. It was a rough 3 hours of work but I wanted to make sure I keep the Jigsaw legacy alive through these vibrant, gross and scary pictures. I know everything must come to an end, but I’m hoping the writers can keep coming up with scary poster ideas. Why stop at just five, right? Hopefully one day they will make a movie fleshing out the horror of these wonderful 24 X 36 posters.”

Oh yeah, definitely: the writers are ace when it comes to devilish torture ideas. I’d wager that they were given a copy of Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom instead of fairy tale books when they were kids.

All in all, I like the subtlety of this one. I didn’t get it at first: I thought it was just Jigsaw’s body until I saw the edges of the “mask”. Suddenly, the face just doesn’t look the same. And that creepy Saw feeling comes alive within you. Of course, we have no doubt that the movie is going to be a lot less subtle than that.

Hit the poster below for full size: