PSP HOMEPAGE

Six new characters have been revealed to join the Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce roster. The character renders you see here are those of their Shin Musou Kakusei forms (what I’d playfully call their Dragoon forms, a la Legend of Dragoon).

So, anyone wanna play the name game? See if you can guess the characters from their special forms alone - and no looking at their in-set normal picture at the bottom right. If you want it spelled out though, today’s batch sees Taichi Ci, Xhu Huang, Yue Ying, Sun Jian, Cao Cao, and Liu Bei.

Koei’s Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is heading to North America and Europe next year.

Many thanks to Peter Bauer for the tip!

Related articles:

• New screenshots for Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce
• More screens, characters for Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce revealed; official site goes live

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Square Enix’s marketing department doesn’t seem to know the meaning of “suspense.”

They currently have a countdown running down to what is is supposedly an unannounced Bahamut game. They went ahead and announced the game anyway without waiting for the clock. They even provided the title, platform, screenshots, and even some game details. These were revealed in the latest issue of the Japanese mag, Shonen Jump.

The game is titled Blood of Bahamut, and - shock! - will be released on the Nintendo DS. Square Enix seems to be infatuated with the handheld lately. Anyway, judging from the single solitary gameplay screen from the scans, the game does look like a Shadow of the Colossus-type game, Square Enix style.

Here are some details from the mag, followed by the scans:

• The game will feature two protagonists Ibuki and Yui.
• They live in a fortified city built on the back of a giant.
• The giant will wake up during an enemy attack, our heroes must fight and defend their city.
• Cooperative multiplayer mode for up to four players locally available.
• The game will be presented at Jump Festa expo in Japan at the end of the year.

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The road to LittleBigPlanet’s release was surely a very long one, with its many ups and downs - not to mention u-turns too, as noted from the recalled discs. Now that the game is very much out there already (having fun, are we?), it still pays to look back on where the game’s been.

Prompted by this post at ThreeSpeech made today, we’ve decided to use this opportunity for some trivia too. As you may have guessed, this isn’t much of a news piece, but rather, more of a retrospective.

Below is a video taken from the early years (circa 2007) of LittleBigPlanet. It shows a prototype of the game, complete with Yellow Head, the pre-cursor and ancestor of what we now affectionately call Sackboy.

Some other interesting trivia that might save your life one day:

• The idea for the game was first discussed by Media Molecule co-founders Mark Healey and Dave Smith after watching Studio Ghibli’s animated movie Howl’s Moving Castle.
• In its prototype stage, the game’s working title was “Craftworld”.
• Control design was first implemented using a PS2 controller connected to the PC. Almost akin to controlling a Katamari, Yellow Head’s right arm was controllable by the right analog stick, while the left arm, the left analog stick.
• When LittleBigPlanet was first presented - this would have been during GDC 2007 - the game had only gone less than one year into development.

So where does this bring us now? Seeing LittleBigPlanet in its infantile years sure makes you think up of a lot of other things in the future: for example, I believe Media Molecule might want to rack up on some sentimentality and actually bring back Yellow Head here as a Sackboy costume. That’d be way cool!

• New SackBoy costumes for US LittleBigPlanet this Thursday
• LittleBigDLC: Sony outlines downloadable SackBoy costumes

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A new study is out on the effect of violent video games. “Oh no, not another one” I bet you’re thinking.

Unlike other studies though, this one doesn’t offer conclusions like “violent video games is teh evilz.” Their study only offers what the data says, with a methodology that’s direct to the point and simple, if a little limited in scope and test groups.

Their study asked boys aged 12-15 to play two different video games at home in the evening, one violent, and one with ponies non-violent. Monitoring their heart rate, they found that the violent game had a higher effect on heart rate than non-violent ones, lasting even into sleep.

While the boys themselves said that they didn’t sleep poorly after playing the violent games, the results suggest that the biological system is affected - to a degree - by violent video games without us even being aware of it.

The study offers no conclusions as to the long term effects, but it does give a definite link to violent video games and biological functions. Mental links are a different matter altogether, despite what Jack Thompson would have you think.

• ECA: recent study on violent video games is wanting
• Violent video games make you aggressive
• Look, Ma! No hands! Study suspects violent games are healthy for kids
• Study: Video games activate reward regions of brain in men more than women
• Bet you didn’t know: video games are good for you; study shows social, political, civic effects
• Study shows playing video games may damage brain
• Pyschologists: obsessive video game habits are part of larger issue

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Looks like it’ll be a Grand Theft Auto-less holiday season. Santa must have been reindeer-jacked.

According to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, both the Xbox 360-exclusive Grand Theft Auto IV DLC and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS have been delayed. Says Zelnick:

[The GTA IV DLC is] close to being complete. That said, it may move into the second quarter. Downloadable content is a big undertaking. It is important to be really special.

We might not see it until Spring of 2009. Chinatown Wars, on the other hand, is now promised to be released in the first of the fiscal year, which translates to April of next year.

It’ll be interesting to see how this will go down. If you guys have been following news on the Houser brothers, the creative think tank behind the GTA franchise, you’d know that their contract expires this February. If both games will be released after their contract expires, does this mean suggest that they will renew their contract with T2 after all?

• Rockstar’s Dan Houser: we’re focused on quality, no date on GTA IV DLC yet

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