BitSnark

Nintendo have confirmed that Sin & Punishment 2 will arrive on the Wii on May 7th.

Previously unknown to the West, Sin & Punishment was a frenetic and stylish shooter developed by Japanese shooter developer Treasure and was released on the N64 console well over ten years ago.

Hey, it’s a shooter, it has been developed by Treasure and it looks amazing.

Trust me, its time to start caring 🙂

After April 20th was confirmed as the US release date for Monster Hunter Tri, the rest of us were left somewhat in the dark as to when the title hit our fair shores.

Well mark it down in your diary/calendar/whatever, Monster Hunter Tri releases just three days later on April 23rd.

Monster Hunter Tri is the next ‘proper’ entry in the wildly successful monster hunting RPG title and will be available in a package bundled with a classic controller.

Happy days indeed.

Nintendo has today confirmed that they will handle the publishing reins for Dragon Quest IX when it releases sometime this Summer in Europe.

The 4 million plus selling title in Japan will be unlikely to replicate similar success here sadly due to the general lack of awareness and penetration of the Dragon Quest franchise in Western territories.

The smart ones however, will dive in to what will surely be one of the premier RPG titles for the system and a marquee title for non-casual gaming on the DS in 2010.

Can’t wait.

In yet more Wii AAA title related coolness, comes the news from the Nintendo Media Summit that the Team Ninja developed side-scrolling 2.5D Metroid title, Metroid Other M, will arrive in the US on June 27th.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 in May and Metroid Other M the month after?

Seems like its good to be a Wii owner again 🙂

Nintendo today confirmed at their San-Francisco held media summit, that the sequel to perhaps the best platform game ever Super Mario Galaxy, will hit American shores on May 23rd.

Holy crap, I don’t expect anyone reasonably thought that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would launch this year, let alone in the first half of it.

No UK/EU dates have been announced yet, but I wouldn’t expect it to be more than a month, two at the most away from the US release.

UPDATE
======

Nintendo have now confirmed that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will arrive on European Wii consoles on June 11.

Good going Ninty.

In a communication with IGN, Sega has mentioned that the forthcoming release of Yakuza 3 in the West, will actually have less features than it’s Japanese counterpart. The reasoning behind this was that all the features which were cut ‘wouldn’t make sense’ for the Western market.

Sega had this to say to IGN:

‘The content between Yakuza 3 US/UK and Yakuza [3] JP is a little different in that we took out certain bits in order to bring the game to the West in the time allotted for us to do so. The parts we ended up taking out were parts that we felt wouldn’t make sense (like a Japanese history quiz game) or wouldn’t resonate as much (such as the concept of a hostess club).’

Do not fret though my morally-barren friends, the title will still have stripper bars where you can oogle at and throw money at girls who should really be at home doing their homework and watching Hello Kitty.

Yakuza 3 releases on the 12th of March and contains much Yakuza face-stomping violence, narrative intrigue and tattoos.

Get downloading!

No you’re still not drunk from the weekend, Capcom has confirmed that Street Fighter IV will hit the iPhone in all of it’s arty 2D/3D glory.

To back this up, Capcom has impressively made a game that has more than a passing resemblance to its current gen counterparts. Boasting scaled down models taken from the 360/PS3 versions and assets taken directly from the same code, Street Fighter IV on the iPhone at least looks the part.

In regards to controls, the iPhone rendition of the title has touch screen based directional arrows and input buttons which while a requirement, don’t fill me with hope as to how intuitively it will all control.

The package is quite nicely rounded off by a practice mode and 1 vs 1 versus modes over Bluetooth.

An impressive undertaking for sure, I just can’t help but think that as a game which lives or dies by its control system, that Street Fighter IV on the iPhone may well die here.

What do you think?

Ten things you should probably know about Perfect Dark on XBox Live Arcade:

1) It’s 800 MSP. (Yep couldn’t believe it either)
2) It has 8-player online co-op and deathmatch modes.
3) It runs at 60 FPS/1080P with no slowdown.
4) All of the original graphics have been improved with models boasting ten times the polygonal detail than they had back in the day.
5) It has the old N64 control scheme but also comes with two new control schemes for fans of modern FPS’s. The control schemes are called ‘Spartan’ and ‘Duty Calls’. Har Har.
6) The Temple, Facility and Complex maps from Goldeneye are in the game.
7) The ENTIRE weapon set from Goldeneye is in the game (Yes!)
8) The number of bots that can be chosen from has been doubled and they can be used to fill spots in player deathmatch modes.
9) A number of cameos are expected to be seen in the game. For example, Peter Molyneux is a selectable character and can be used in deathmatch and counter op modes.
10) It makes Perfect Dark Zero look like the red headed stepchild it really is.

Yep, officially can’t wait.

On the popular ‘Major Nelson’ blog, a community blog run by Microsoft’s director of Xbox Live Programming Larry Hyb, he confirmed that Square-Enix and Microsoft would be bringing a special Final Fantasy XIII 360 hardware pack to retail.

The Xbox 360 Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition Bundle will release starting March 9 for £299, and include a 250GB Hard Drive, two Wireless Controllers, exclusive downloadable content and a Standard Edition copy of the game.

Exclusive downloadable content eh? I wonder what it could be, and how soon PS3 owners will get to see it?