– What could someday easily be considered the greatest console yet to exist really proved itself this past November. In the Game Boy Advance‘s year and a half lifespan, there have been approximately nine million of its units sold. In just ten days during the Thanksgiving holiday, there were over one million of its units sold. That means that in a little over a week, Nintendo sold just as many Game Boy Advances as previously took them about two months to accomplish. Bravo, chaps!
– In an announcement that is sure to pique the interest of our very own Casual Gamer, Arush Entertainment and Groove Games have made a global licensing agreement with Playboy to create, market, and distribute games labeled with that boobie-associated brand name. One game that is planned, which should be seeing a 2004 release, will be a Sims-like world-builder simulation that sees players taking on the role of Hugh Hefner and trying to establish and build their own Playboy empire, while living the ultimate Playboy lifestyle. Following on the heels of BMX XXX, this game is very likely to contain nudity, and is predicted to be released on multiple platforms, including Playstation 2 and Xbox.
– Tough break for those readers of Honduran citizenship; your congress has recently voted to completely ban the sale and distribution of violent video games. The vote was unanimous among the 128 Honduran lawmakers, and currently awaits an official stamp of approval from president Ricardo Maduro. If passed the law will go into effect in June of this year, and will give business owners six months to clear their shelves of the supposedly violent specified games, which includes the following: Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Turok, The House of the Dead, Duke Nukem, Shadowman, Quake, Instinct Killer, Doom, The Legacy of Kane, Street Fighter, and Perfect Dark.
…Instinct Killer? Huh?
– Not very many people seem to remember this, but at the Spaceworld 2000 show, a demo entitled “Mario 128” was shown to tout the abilities of the developing GameCube. This demo showed Mario after Mario cropping up and interacting with one another on a sphere made up of his original 8-bit sprites, until 128 Mario’s were present on the screen. This demo, along with Pikmin 2, were announced by Shigeru Miyamoto during a recent interview with Japan’s Playboy for a GameCube release sometime in the future. Mario 128 is said to give players a different feel from last year’s Mario Sunshine, and remains very perplexing as far as “how is that even a game…” is concerned.
– Does the title URA Zelda sound familiar? It shouldn’t. URA Zelda was a game never released in the U.S. for a system never released in the U.S. — ill-fated N64 disc attachment the 64DD. But now U.S. GameCubers have a shot at it! Indeed, those who preorder upcoming GameCube title The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker will be rewarded with free GCN versions of not only this ne’er before seen faux sequel to the The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, but The Ocarina of Time itself as well. Pretty cool, eh?
