Having now charged through Modern Warfare 2's single player twice I am confident that I still have no idea who any of the other guys in the squad are other than Price and Soap. I know there was witty banter going on here and there, but it's hard to pay attention to it when the Russians are trying to rip you to shreds. Evidently, there are some popular characters in the squad and Ghost is one of them. He's so popular in fact that he got his own comic book and now he might be getting his own game. At the launch event for MW2 in the UK Craig Fairbrass, the man who voiced Ghost  in MW2 and Gaz in the previous game (conspiracy!), had a few choice words about the future of his masked character.

“I did in the last game a voice for a character called Gaz and in this game I’m now voicing a guy called Ghost, who now just got a spin-off comic of his own and they’re talking about another little game to go with it,” Fairbrass said, “so, I’m quite excited about it. It’s grown and grown and grown.”

He was then questioned on why people got so excited over Ghost and responded, “I don’t know. It’s the whole thing I suppose of not knowing who he is. He’s like the head of the SAS and… I’m just so thrilled to be a part of it, I mean it just gets bigger and bigger each year.”

"Another little game" to go along with a comic book sounds like some flash game that accompanies the comic book's launch, but who knows. Since the world is evidently unsure of who he is, and people who paid attention to the game's characters have become attached to him, this could be a big time spin-off.

Nintendo is encouraging any and all fans to celebrate the launch of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and it's shaping up to be one helluva neat shindig.

On November 14, from 3:00 - 7:00 PM, you'll have the chance to see a real-life Mushroom Kingdom at the Nintendo World store, which is located in New York at the Rockefeller Plaza in case you forgot.

Game stations, people dressed up as characters, trivia challenges, prize giveaways, a New SMB Wii tournament ... yep, this sounds like a game launch all right. Best of all, there's going to be some sort of Super Mario Bros. museum with "memorabilia pulled from Nintendo's archives." Now I'm intrigued.

The game of course hits store shelves the next day. Anyone else planning on getting this game for the whole family, and not just yourself?

At Nintendo’s Wii Sports Resort launch event in Times Square yesterday, I was able to speak briefly with the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Nintendo of America, Bill Trinen. (You may recognize him as the translator for the company’s Japanese leaders, Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata.)

Trinen seemed to be in high spirits, even as it began to drizzle at the tail end of the day’s festivities; I suspect he was happy that the event had been such a success. Hit the jump to get his opinion on the launch of Wii Sports Resort, Wii MotionPlus, and what the tagline for the game, “Escape to reality,” means.

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Yesterday, Nintendo held a launch event for Wii Sports Resort in New York City’s Times Square, allowing the public to try out the game three full days before its launch on Sunday, July 26th. They went all-out for this one, trucking in fifty tons of sand from across the Hudson River in New Jersey and turning Military Island into the game’s fictional tropical paradise, Wuhu Island. (Get it? “Woo-hoo”?)

I checked out the oasis of sand at the intersection of 7th Avenue and Broadway, and I’m here to tell you all about it. You can also take a gander at all the pretty pictures I snapped in the gallery below! I should mention that the first two were taken by Dtoider CactarCrush, who joined me in playing Wii Sports Resort. (She’s in two of the photos herself.)

Be sure to check back in twenty minutes, when I’ll be putting up an interview with Bill Trinen, Nintendo of America’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, on Wii Sports Resort, the launch event, and MotionPlus.

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Oh Atlus, how we love thee. I know Atlus has put out bad games, but even their bad games are so geared towards niche audiences that you have to love them. Crimson Gem Saga does not look to be a bad game, it looks to be an RPG-tastic game, and also another reason to actually covet the PSP. Atlus has shot over the launch trailer for the game and its all Japanese and RPG and wonderful.

The game is set to hit the US on May 26, which is two days from now. If you've got a PSP you might just be treated to some greatness. If you haven't read up on the game it plays like most classic JRPGs, but does have a few tweaks in there like a ambush system for fighting monsters and a few interesting leveling up tactics. I know what will be keeping me company as I fly across the country to E3.

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So Resident Evil 5 has finally released itself onto the hoard of shambling consumers. Pretty great, huh? All I’ve got to say it’s about freaking time. We’ve known about this game for what, almost three years. Damn.

At least Capcom knows how to throw a debutante ball for its latest release. On March 12, Capcom and GameStop took over the entirety of Union Square, the heart of San Francisco, for a massive release party for RE5. Besides the hoard of jaded journalists, there were loads of exuberant fans ready to get some sweet swag, enter screaming contests, and get a solid hands-on time with the game.

There was even members of the dev team and actors such as Reuben Langdon (who performed stunts for the game's motion capture, and also voiced Ken in Street Fighter IV) on hand for some autographs. It was a good night with some good fun, and even the “secret” announcement of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles was charming in how Capcom put us on “quarantine.” Cute.

Oh! And community member (and superstar photographer) Tactix had IGN's Jessica Chobot sign his Frisbee. So it was a night very well spent!

I... I don't know what to say! I expected Nintendo to do something big for their Mario Kart Wii launch party, but they're recruiting a 1990s television star to host it? That's weird!

Jason Priestley, star of the popular TV drama Beverly Hills 90210, will host the launch party at the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Plaza. Fans can attend and line up to compete in the Mario Kart Wii Challenge to win a chance to race the former teen star.

Now, before you go reaching for the caps key, know that Priestley does have some relevance to racing. After his decade-long stint with 90210, he moved on to racing. The press release says that he used to be a driver and a race analyst, and now he owns the Rubicon Race Team, which will race in its first Indianapolis 500 in May.

It still seems a bit weird to me, but I guess celeb power never hurts. It all goes down on Saturday, April 26 from 2-6 p.m. It's bad they couldn't work something out with 90210's Jennie Garth -- I used to have the hots for her. 

For the rest of you, Mario Kart Wii hits stores on Sunday, April 27.

Were there any good television shows in the 1990s?

Sam's Club, home of the mindblowing dual-boxed Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes combo, sends word that they're up to their launch day hijinks again. It seems that the Rock Band and Super Smash Bros Brawl midnight launches were a huge success for the company, and now they're looking doing even more for the next high-profile game release.

You already know that Mario Kart (Wii) comes out on April 27th. I see it there on your calendar. As before, many Sam's Club locations will be open at midnight to sell the title. Get in line on April 26th -- you know the drill. They haven't given a price on it yet, but if it's near what the price was for Brawl, you'll be pleased.  They are also working to have plenty of Wii accessories on hand.

Even better, each club will have at least 15 Wii units on hand at launch. Wii systems are still a bitch to find, and I think that Sam's Club knows that having some on hand is a great way to get people into the store.

Although a bit unrelated, Sam's Club has a pretty nifty preorder page for gamers. There's a few pretty good things there, like the WiiFit board, GTAIV, and Metal Gear Solid 4.

[Update: Internet matlocking gives a price of $44.88.]

See you at Sam's? 

We totally dig that Sam's Club is stepping up their game when it comes to videogames, and now they send word that a Super Smash Bros. Brawl midnight launch is in the works.

The retailer will open up all US stores on March 9th at midnight to sell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. What's even better is that they've lined up a price of $43.66 for the game. The event will run until 2:00 a.m.

Sam's Club games buyer Joe Muha tells us, "Folks should come to Sam's Club as we will be the first place that they can buy it in their community. Additionally, we will have at least 20 units of Wii hardware at each club for the event."

That's really convenient for those gamers that have been holding out for this game's purchase to pick up a Wii. 

On top of all of this, they also send word that Rock Band will drop in price to under $150. If you haven't picked it up already, this will save you a fair bit of money on the bundle.

More on Sam's Club's and gaming after the jump. 

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So, yesterday Rock Band was finally released in Canada, due to the fact Electronic Arts and Harmonix had to push our release date back twice. [Editor's note: Harmonix has insisted that initial announced North American date didn't apply to Canada to begin with.] They didn't have enough units to cover even the U.S. launch, so they pushed our launch date back in hopes they could handle the U.S. demand at first.

And hey, that's fine ... we're used to getting screwed. *cough* Xbox Live Marketplace *cough*

But yesterday when I unloaded those puppies from our truck at work (Toys 'R' Us), I was greeted by only eight copies of the game; four kits for the Xbox 360, and four kits for the PlayStation 3. We didn't even know if we were getting any units to begin with, but receiving just 8 was disappointing.

Apparently my work wasn't the only store to have problems. EB Games stores expected shipments to arrive on Thursday but didn't even know how many they were going to receive, Best Buy and Future Shop stores were telling customers that the game was due out on December 28th and one local St. Catharines store, Entertainment Overload was forced to buy units from the United States just to get some in stock for the Canadian release date.

One store in Calgary called Play Me was trying to sell 50 early copies of Rock Band that they had purchased in the United States for $800 buck a pop. They recently lowered the price to $500 when the game wasn't flying off the shelves. 

Retailers are blaming EA for the lack of units and the lack of knowledge about the game's pricing and release date. I'm just annoyed that I couldn't buy one. 

Thanks Scotty G for reminding me to post about this and to Jim Squires from BBPS.com for the local info.

[Via Game|Life and Monster and Critics] 

Sam's Club was once a store you'd visit infrequently to procure 188-pack bundles of prune diet bars and a small mountain of toilet paper (to be used conjunctionally, of course), but it seems that in recent years they've been stepping things up in the game space. One positive move is the announcement of a Rock Band midnight launch event for some of their locations. Way to go, Sam's Club!

Six Sam's Club locations in Florida will be opening their doors at midnight on November 20th to kick off a Rock Band launch party. There, members will be able to rock out with faux guitars and drums, and then bring home the bundle for themselves. The event lasts until 2 a.m., and it will be offered in the following locations:

• 4763 West Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway
      Kissimmee, FL
• 1101 Rinehart Road
      Sanford, FL
• 7810 West Colonial Drive
      Ocoee, FL
• 9498 South Orange Blossom Trail
      Orlando, FL
• 7701 East Colonial Drive
      Orlando, FL
• 344 Semoran Boulevard
      Fern Park, FL

Knowing that Sam's Club regularly has lower prices on games and consoles, we did our best to pry a price for the Rock Band bundle out of them. Unfortunately, we had no luck, but Sam's Club's Joe Muha did tell us that we would be "pleased with the price." 

Hopefully they'll be able to branch out past Florida soon. 

Destructoid reader Glum Funk was kind enough to pass along some details from the Best Buy "Launch Playbook" on the give-away items that will be distributed to customers attending Best Buy's midnight Halo 3 launch events. 

First off, each store is supposed to receive 25 inflatable gamer chairs, which are supposed to be given to the first 25 customers in line to support an advertised promotion. Aside from the fact that they're co-branded with Halo 3 and Best Buy logos, we don't know much more about these chairs. At least you'll have a place to sit all night.

Participating stores are also to receive a "consumer launch kit," which will contain several different types of give-away items to be handed to line-waiting customers. The kit will be packed Halo 3 t-shirts, Halo 3 hats, "molecular ball" hand toys, Halo 3 bamsticks (those damned noisemakers), and Verizon Halo 3 pass-out cards (for Halo 3-themed ringtones, wallpapers, etc). The word is that there is a one-per-customer limit on these goodies, and each of them should get their pick from 100 shirts, 100 hats, 50 balls and 50 bamsticks. 

Judging from this information, you'll need to be early in line to get your hands on these goodies.

[thanks again, Glum Funk] 

There no doubt in anyone's mind that the upcoming Halo 3 launch is going to be a big deal. Over 1 million copies have already been preordered, and Microsoft expects sales numbers to easily exceed the 2.4 million copies and $125 million Halo 2 pulled in in its first 24 hours. Microsoft has some big events and promotions lined up to make Halo 3's launch the biggest ever.

Over 10,000 stores in the United States alone are expected to have some kind of midnight Halo 3 launch event on September 25th. Some of those stores will surely be selling the Halo 3-themed Xbox 360 console. Be sure to check out the new Xbox 360 Halo 3 theme and gamerpic, available that week.

Also, Xbox Live Gold will be free for all Xbox 360 owners during the first three days of Halo 3's launch, September 25th through September 27th, thanks to Best Buy.  

Celebrities abound: Microsoft's "Unite to Fight" launch event will see events in Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York City, all with local celebrities in attendance to do battle with gamers. There will also be launch sessions of Microsoft's Game with Fame, pitting players against celebs in online matches. Even Bungie will be online that week to school overconfident players.

Finally, Microsoft is give-away crazy! They will be giving away 8,000 Microsoft Points to 144 randomly-selected people, and those lucky people have a chance to win bigger prizes like a Halo-themed Pontiac GXP Street Edition valued at $28,000 or a Samsung home theater entertainment system valued at $3,500. Pontiac is also in on the game, giving away 1,000 copies of Halo 3 to winners before it's even available in stores.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz -- thanks, JV] 

Instead of staggering release dates for PlayStation 3 games in Europe, it appears as if Sony is just gonna go ahead and explode onto the region with one massive launch -- to make up for the delay? As a potential olive branch, the company is launching on March 23 in Europe with 30 games available to gamers there. From Eurogamer:

"It is our aspiration that all of the 30 titles mentioned in our announcement will be available at launch of PlayStation 3 on 23rd March," Sony's David Wilson told Eurogamer.
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The launch line-up is vast and features big titles like Oblivion, Virtua Tennis 3 and MotorStorm. Quite a few are already available on Xbox 360 - something Sony believes won't matter, insisting that depth and choice will ultimately prevail.

If you haven't been living in a cave, you may have noticed that Capcom's Lost Planet came out today. To celebrate that fact, Capcom held their Lost Planet launch party last night in San Francisco.  To call the event a mere launch party, though, would be a massive understatement. You see, Capcom doesn't throw tiny little launch parties, they throw gigantic warehouse-rave launch parties. Check out the pictures to see how Capcom rolls.

Update 1: Here's the official word on the turnout:

The event drew over 1,000 gamers last night. There were 96 Xbox 360s wired for people to play Lost Planet and there were approximately 180 people that competed in multiplayer sessions to win the top 8 spots to move on the finals against the developers themselves.

Checkout Capcom's blog for more deets.

Thought I'd share the rest of the images from last week's PlayStation 3 launch at the Sony Store in NYC. Good times were certainly had by all.

If you're in the NYC area and plan on stopping by the huge launch event tonight at Toys R' Us in Times Square, be on the look out for not only Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime, but Destructoid as well! Tonight, the festivities kick off at 8 p.m. with "live entertainment including acrobats and performances by DJ Ravidrums" and supposedly "interactive game play while waiting in line."

I'll of course be there, trying to get all the coverage for those not fortunate enough to live in NYC or L.A. for Nintendo's big night. If you happen to see a tall, lanky, sleepless Summa, make sure you say hi. We'd love to get you on camera giving as many shout outs as you can. Nintendo and Dtoid, a match made in gaming heaven. 

[Update: I'm taking three DS games with me to give away to people at Toys R Us tonight. So, if you are a reader, and you see me, call me out ASAP so I can give you a game, otherwise I'll be making kids cry and beg for them. Also, I'll probably be drunk tonight while I'm there. Dtoid, Nintendo, we're about to make beautiful music.]

San Francisco is home to the Sony PlayStation store, and for last two days it has also been home to something else: the hardcore. Over 750 people were lined up and waiting outside the Metreon when the PlayStation store started its midnight sale of the PS3. Some people getting in line as early as Wednesday at 5 a.m. By 11 p.m. on Wednesday, the line had become 300 deep. Always fashionably late, I grabbed my camera and headed down to try my luck. Arriving around 1 a.m. early Thursday morning, I didn't think my chances would be that good of getting a system. But rumors were flying like bullets in a gang war, and the one that convinced me to stay was that Sony had at least 400 hundred units available. So began the next 27 hours of my life, in line, and written down and photographed for you, my D-toid readers.

The madness begins after the break. (This is a long post) view full story + comments

Well damn, it's only been one special night for the PlayStation 3 and already eBay is blowin' up everybody's spot. The auction site just sent me some stats on the action so far. Check it out:

• At present there are 1,579 live listings
• Average price of a PS3 for the past week is $1,959.73
• Yesterday, 334 sold $2,184.85- expecting today to be another busy day
  
• A month ago [the week of 10/17], the unit was going on average for $959.60; now the average price [the week 11/11-17] is $1,955.29.

OK rich people, go buy your kids their PS3 now.

Just got an update. Here are the numbers as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern:

• Today: 564 Playstation3 consoles have sold for an average selling price of $2,711.48
• At present there are 2037 live listings
• A month ago [the week of 10/17], the unit was going on average for $959.60; now the average price [this week- 11/11-17] is $2,172.76
  

While the videos may have the most craptastic quality you've ever seen on GoogleTube, it is kinda cool to see different perspectives of the launch from different areas of the country. So, enjoy the shaky cam and PS3 vs Wii screaming.

[Thanks, tehuberone]

Waiting for a PlayStation 3 is hard. On one hand, you've got to camp out on some dingy street for a few days and nights, and on the other, well, you get f'ing shot! It seems as soon as the PS3 dropped, civility in American went right out the window. Forget BB guns, people are now shooting with real bullets:

On the first day the much anticipated PlayStation 3 hit shelves in stores across the country, two armed thugs in Connecticut targeted game seekers with fat wallets, shooting one person waiting in a Wal-Mart line who refused to give up money, authorities said.

Police were still searching for the suspects, both believed to be in their teens. Police said one suspect was wearing a ski mask and brandishing a handgun, and the other had what appeared to be a shotgun.

The two tried to rob of line of people waiting to buy the new gaming console early Friday. They confronted a "bunch of people who were in line" outside a Wal-Mart store shortly after 3 a.m. and demanded money, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the state police. The new Sony consoles are selling for around $500 to $600.

"One of the patron's resisted. That patron was shot," Vance said.

The two gunmen apparently fled, and the 21-year-old male victim was taken to University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. There was no immediate word on the victim's condition.

I wonder if the Sony execs feel good about their decision to rush a console like this. It'd be interesting to see how many people got beat up, shot at, sick, lost a job, whatever could happen to someone camping outside because Sony wanted to rush out the most wanted console without sufficient units. Somewhere Kaz is smiling and a child is bleeding to death. Welcome to next gen.