Readers of the magazine will see that there’s a special celebration of Crash magazine in today’s issue. I was lucky enough to travel up to Ludlow and visit co-founders Roger Kean and Oliver Frey and also Matthew Uffindell. I’m also fortunate enoug to work with two ex staff members of the magazine as well, Nick Roberts and Mark Kendrick. What follows is the full interview with Nick and Mark, which was sadly too long to fit in the actual issue.
I’ve also included a few YouTube videos of my visit. Enjoy.

Nick Roberts

Nick started off as a staff writer at Crash and moved up to deputy editor. He now works at Imagine Publishing.

How did you get your job on Crash?
I was just a reader picking up his monthly copy of the mag for 95p when I discovered in the mag that the Playing Tips writer, Hannah Smith, was leaving. Luckily I also lived in Ludlow, the home of Crash Micro Games Action, which was a big bonus. I don’t really know what possessed me, but I sent in a letter to Roger Kean, on Alphacom 32 thermal paper printed out from my Spectrum, asking if I could take over. I hadn’t really given my future career any thought at that time, I was only 15 in 1987, but as it turned out that piece of thermal paper set me off on a career that has lasted 22 years as Roger took me on as an after school reviewer.
I came in and played Spectrum games, and they paid me £5 a time! I think my first ever review was Finder’s Keepers, and I impressed Roger as I knew who had programmed it and what they had done before. As you can imagine, I soon gave up my paper round and dedicated all my free time to Crash. After about three months I got the Playing Tips job that I had written in for when Lloyd Mangram couldn’t be bothered to do it any more. I soon discovered why… typing in long POKEs listings was a bitch!

What was it like working on the magazine?
It was like being a member of an exclusive club, and very rock ‘n’ roll. There was a great bunch of people around at the time… Robin Candy, Mike Dunn, Ben Stone, Richard Eddy, Mark Kendrick, Julian Rignall… many of them are still big in publishing and videogames today. We were all working above Victoria Wine in Ludlow, playing the latest games, getting taken out to lunch by PR people, going off on trips that you would never normally get to do and ending up in The Bull after work for a few pints. Just don’t tell my mum… I was only 15 at the start remember! I have fond memories of the launch of Lotus Turbo Esprit where I got taken for a 200mph ride in a sports car up Ludlow by-pass. I remember visiting the Rank VIP cinema in London for a preview of a new sci-fi film called Robocop as we were writing about the game. We used to have a great time at the PCW Show too where we were made to feel like popstars as readers queued up for autographs! That’s a weird feeling, doesn’t happen much these days.

Was there any pressure from publishers when writing reviews?
Yeah, much the same as it is now, but I think in the 80s they were much more open about simply splashing some cash to gain a good review. Not that any of it every influenced Crash’s writers of course. I do remember a particularly bad game from a software company (mentioning no names, but the company name rhymed with Potion) where the PR guy simply said “You know it’s rubbish, I know it’s rubbish, do you fancy some new CDs?!” We refused.

What did working on Crash teach you?
I think the magazine, and the various editors I worked with, gave me a strong work ethic. It was the best work experience I could have wished for, learning from the best in the business about writing style and magazine production. We all worked hard to hit those deadlines, and I’m still doing the job to this day and loving it. I can’t imagine where I would be if it wasn’t for Crash and Newsfield Publications. I owe Roger a lot, and I thank him for the break.

How has the editorial process changed over the years?
In my opinion, things were a lot more focused then. We had PCW 8256 green-screen word processors that we wrote the magazine on, and that’s about all they could do – process words. As an old fogey 37 year old working in magazine production today I see the 18 year olds starting out and they have so many distractions to take them away from the games playing and writing. When they come in there’s email to check, then there’s their favourite website to look at, maybe check out the online news or write something for their blog. Then their mobile goes off and they have to return the text message. The internet is a wonderful tool for magazine publishers, but I hate to think how many man hours are lost each day that were spent doing the job back in the 80s and 90s.
You had to be extra careful about mistakes too. The Editor would obviously edit what you did on his Apricot computer, and then your review would be type-set – the words came back from Tortoiseshell Press on long strips of special paper – all in columns and in the right fonts. Then the magazine was pieced together by hand by arty types with a scalpel. These days right up to the moment you press Print on your pdf you can change words and pictures around. Of course the biggest change is that today one man with a Mac can make a magazine – back then it was a ten-strong team of people in various departments! Of course the Christmas parties were better when there was ten of you…

Is it true you’re Crash’s longest running writer?
Yes that’s right. I started on issue 47 and wrote for the magazine until issue 98 when the company went bust. 51 issues man and boy! I worked my way up to Assistant Editor by the end.

It must have been devastating when Crash closed 2 issues short of the big 100.
It was a shame not to get to 100, but to be honest the magazine was a shadow of its former self by then. 32 thin pages with a cassette glued to the front. Poor old Crash became the unloved older child of the company, while young whipper-snapper magazines were being launched to cover the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive. I just wish they had kept the name going, but evolved the magazine into a multiformat mag to take on C&VG, or something. It might still be around today. Mmmm… that’s an idea!

Mark Kendrick

Mark Kendrick was an art editor at Crash. He is now creative director at Imagine Publishing

So what did you do at Newsfield?
My first role was actually Designer, which was part of a team of staff who literally put the company’s magazines together. I was looking at job section in my local Birmingham newspaper one week after having a pretty awful week in my design job at the time which was as ‘Visualiser’ and ‘Finished artist’ doing packaging work for companies like Cadbury’s. I saw an recruitment advert in there for ‘graphic artist required for magazines’. I applied over the phone and arranged for an early evening interview ‘after I finished work’. I drove the 90 minute trip to Ludlow where in ‘Crash Towers’ I was interviewed by Oli Frey and the Production Director Dave Western on the top floor in the art studio area, where I showed my obligatory portfolio of work and some pieces of illustration I’d done too. They were looking to expand on their portfolio of mags and I was specifically interviewed to work within the studio on all magazines but with an emphasis on a new title which was in the pipeline called ‘LM magazine’. After a 40 minute chat I was offered the job there and then! I started four weeks later in September ‘86, but… I was late on first day! My car broke down on ‘Clee Hill’ and I eventually got there about an hour late. Once there my first design work was actually on Zzap! 64 (still my all time favourite title to work on) on a ‘Jon Twiddy’ interview. From there I worked daily on Crash, Zzap!, Amtix, Einstein User and then worked with Art Director Gordon Druce and Oli on the launch of ‘LM’. It was a fantastic start to my career.

What was it like working there?
I learned very quickly that this was unlike any working environment that I’d known or have experienced since. It was unique in that it was like we were creating something very special indeed at a great time of technological development. It was a wild time, when computer gaming was the new ‘rock n roll’ and the magazines and indeed the people who worked on them were like superstars. Roger and Oli were the ’sages’ there, but on a daily basis the teams were largely self reliant to craft the magazines. There was no real ‘production workflow’ or anything like you get today. and the editorial staff such as Julian Rignall, Gaz Penn, Ciaran Brennan and so on worked incredibly hard and played hard too. As such, for designers it was a case of effectively ‘two weeks on/two weeks off’, where nothing really happened in the first week of a mag cycle at all, but by the last week everyone was literally working 24 hours a day. I lost count the number of times I popped out to get take away and bring it back to the office for the evening work. Everyone had their own knives and forks at their desks. Ludlow is a small provincial town, with a mix of incredibly young, but enthusiastic local and ‘imported’ talent, so the company developed it’s own social culture, which was part of what made the magazines and working on them so special. Just reading a copy of Crash or Zzap! you, even now, get a sense of ‘belonging’ to a unique group of people who were ‘living the dream’. As crazy as this may seem I’m really not overstating’ this, as I believe this injected the magazines with magic, which made them what they were. To illustrate the effect the mags had on people, we even used to get people going on holiday to Ludlow just to get a chance of seeing ‘King St’ offices and having their magazine signed by the team. They were crazy times indeed.

What did you learn from working with Oliver?
Perhaps the most important thing I learn from Oli was to have confidence in your own ’style’. Oli’s illustration work is so distinctive and against a backdrop of so many other styles going on at the time, his work has continued to this day to be enduring. Overall though, from Oli I learned the visual aspects of magazine craft, and in particular how cover structure and the balance between type and art is essential making the difference between a cover that attracts and sells, and one that just presents the info. There is a big difference between the two. Oh, and the speed that confidence gives you. Oli could create an amazing piece of art overnight. I was staggered how that was possible. Especially given how basic his airbrush set up seemed. I applied his use of speed to layout and I prided myself how accurate and quick I could layout a magazine. I remember once I designed a whole issue of Zzap! 64 in two days. I didn’t sleep, but I did it. I think it was the ‘Creatures’ issue.
I also learned a lot from Roger. Roger’s skill in editorial magazine craft cannot be understated. Even now everyone who ever worked with him will quote him in relation to the golden rules of magazine craft. His attention to detail in flatplanning, editorial balance, feature elements and general use of ‘English’ in terms of subbing and proofing set the standard for me. Everyone who had the opportunity to work on the classic Newsfield magazines such as Crash and Zzap! worked on magazines that set the gold standard for mag craft. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have worked for two such talented people that without whom I doubt I’d be in the position I am now, and I’d argue the magazine industry wouldn’t be what it is today without them.

How have video game magazines changed from a design point of view over the years?
Where shall I start? Back when I started things were sooo different. For a start there were no computers that you could really relate as magazine design tools. The text was written by editorial on old Apricot word processors. The text files were bagged and popped down the road to a typesetters (Tortoiseshell Press) who ran out the strips of text. We had a ‘runner’ who regularly had to go and get the text for the mags from there which would turn up in big fat rolled bundles. Back then we used wax machines for applying glue to back of strips of text, which we cut up with a scalpel and stuck to artboards which had a page template marked on them by specially printed ‘bloo’ ink. This ink was invisible when exposed to a light camera that converted the page art to four colour film plates. This was called ‘reprographics’ and we had a six strong team of people who took my black and white art page layouts and applied my ‘invisible bloo’ colour and tint instructions.
Back then, when designing pages you had to imagine in your head how the page would look finished. There was no ‘preview’, no colour correction, no InDesign, no Photoshop and no Quark Xpress. It was all done by hand. This meant that the ‘barriers to entry’ was very high for anyone wanting to create a magazine. A magazine was really crafted by hand, and it was a highly skilled profession. It still is today, but things have changed. In the very late 80s/early 90s Apple computers running early versions of Quark Xpress, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator meant that a single workstation could create a whole magazine there on screen. The impact was immense and immediate. The magazine industry changed within a year, and gone were the artboard days and reprographics departments. The design and creative industry went through a huge upheaval and there was a lot of fallout as technology made things easier but there were casualties and people like myself had a whole new skillset to learn very quickly. Luckily I did, and made the move to computer based design on issue 74 of Zzap! 64. I remember it clearly, as all of a sudden you could change colours of boxouts whenever you wanted. Typefaces became like clay as you could model anythign you wanted. Layouts allowed for text to ‘flow’ around pictures and the ability to merge pictures and text in a way never seen before. It was a revolution, and with it came new magazines, new ideas and more entrants into the market. It became much easier to make a magazine, and unfortunately Newsfield found it difficult to move quickly enough to capitalise on this. But in terms of magazine design, it was the best thing to happen in for hundreds of years. A designer could really let rip creatively. But this also led to a lot of hideous mag design too by those who, without some core disciplines in the basic arts which traditional paste-up layout, threw the kitchen sink on every page of layout because now they could and it was ‘free’ thanks to new tech. The early to mid 90s was a bad time for video games design. It took quite a while for the disciplines to come back in, which it did thankfully. I recall one of the first that set the standards for the ‘new vision’ was the original ‘Official PlayStation Magazine’ from Future. It was very clean, done in FF Meta font and was lovely. It was very clean indeed. This was one of the first that settled things down and brought magazine design back to about presenting content as opposed to ‘turning tricks’ such as ‘Ultimate Future Games’ did a couple of years before (although, I did really like this!). These days magazine design has come full circle. It’s about presenting well written, informative content in a way that uses restrained but distinctive typography and a template that hangs the content together in a cohesive structure that allows for creativity without compromising on the reason behind the magazine’s job, which is to excite, enthuse and inform. And in terms of videogames titles is exactly what Oli, Roger and Franco set out to do with Crash back in 1984. I hope they are proud of their legacy.

Why do you think the magazine is still held with such high esteem?
I think Crash is held in such high esteem as it was the right product, at the right time with the right tone. In under two years the huge lists of command lines required on the ZX80 just to get a sprite to move on screen was replaced by pocket money video gaming on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 that had story, music and full interaction with the player. It was a fast moving, exciting time. Crash came along to fuel the excitement and give a sense of community to a new massively expanding hobby of home computing and games playing to the ‘Star Wars’ generation just when home computing became accessible to all. Crash and Zzap! 64 were of the time and hugely successful, when there was no email, internet or 24 hour TV. The magazines and the people on those mags were central for readers to interact with, identify with and idolise. I look back at the mags now and I really think it would be tough for another ‘independent’ videogames magazine to top over 100,000 sales every month ever again. The will forever be the giants of single format games titles.

Tell us an interesting anecdote about your time at Crash
Tell you something that’s printable? That may be tough without consulting my lawyer. I’ve so many stories about my time at Newsfield and after that when the company became Europress Impact that maybe I should I write a book. or example, did you know I’m actually the longest serving team member on Zzap! 64?
If there’s one enduring thing that Crash, Zzap! and Newsfield gave me besides my career (which is seriously still in mags!) it’s that I met and married my wonderful wife on Crash. Claire started work as a staff writer on the mag, and I met her while one day berating Stuart Wynne (editor of Crash) one why his editorial work was sooo late. He was terrible at timekeeping and I’d always be working really late thanks to his slovenly ways. (Only joking Stu ). Anyway, Claire had just started and was scared to death of me after hearing this. So when I popped over to say hi, I got a very steely response indeed. Still, it didn’t put me off, as 18 months later we were married, still are to this day and now with a wonderful 19 month old daughter.
Personally I have so much to thank Oli and Roger for as they not only gave me my training in magazine publishing which I still appreciate to this day, and of which I have such wonderful memories of, but my life has been utterly shaped by the eight years I spent working and ‘living’ those magazines. These days I’m lucky enough that any chance I get I try to incorporate some of the style of Crash and Zzap! 64 into the magazines I now produce. Take a look at the early retro section of Gamestm to see my homage to Crash, or in RetroGamer, the ‘back to the 80s’ section uses a Zzap! 64 template and has brought back the ‘reviewer head’ drawings. So in a way Crash isn’t dead but alive and well in every mag I create in some way.

In a slight change to our usual transmission, we’ve decided to actually play and rush-review the games behind some of videogames most rubbish box arts to see if they are actually jerky or whether their covers hide some real gems. First up, Vice: Project Doom.

There were two things about this game that made me want to immediately play it. The first was the title, the second thing was also the title. The box art for this brilliantly titled NES game is truly dreadful, you’ll get no arguments from us - it kinda looks a little like a knock-off copy of Die Hard but starring Simon Cowell and Danni Minogue, and with a marketing budget so tiny that its artists were forced to create the cover using coloured pencils. It did allow curiosity to take over our better judgement though. And if you see this box art and are currently getting a similar worrying pang, fret not. We’ve played the game, and have even gone to the trouble of including a few screenshots to document our experience. And would you believe it, despite looking like an utter turd of the highest turdiest order, Vice: Project Doom is actually a pretty decent and well-presented NES game. And here’s why;

Here’s the opening intro, where some mysterious anime guys talk about some important guy they don’t want to see go missing actually doing just that. We found this bit to be a little confusing if we’re honest, especially as one of the guys thinks ‘it’s raining’ is a great way to end a conversation. The graphics look good though, don’t you think?

Then we were introduced to our character - a cop - and jumped straight into this quirky top-down racing/shmup bit where we had to apprehend an absconding perp (presumably the guy that’s gone missing). This section seemed to knick gameplay and sprites from Super Spy Hunter, but we forgave it because we liked the way that when we drove into boxes and traffic cones they would fly into the air and get bigger. Damn this game is so awesome.

After our hero apprehended his target, he discovers the driver has a claw for a hand, and immediately decides he wants to get to the bottom of why - bad news for those anime guys we suspect. We’re then greeted to the game’s title screen. OMG, we’ve just realised that we have just played this game’s intro. OMG x 100,000,760!  

As if that’s wasn’t cool enough we get to the real meat of the game: this enjoyable side-scrolling platform action game that boasts slick graphics, varied - if a little random (pumpkin-headed spectres and hopping monks…Mmm) - enemies, three choices of weapons (sword, handgun and grenades), quirky boss fights, plus the ability to actually deflect enemy projectiles.

[Conclusion]

This is clearly a win for the game, and a monumental loss for its box art. The artist people responsible should be ashamed of themselves.

Lego Mario can also double up as a giant egg cup

No Travellers Tales aren’t in talks with Nintendo to bring us a Lego take on the seminal platform game series (well they could be, but we’re not privy to the news), but rather some talented Lego fan has painstakingly constructed a 6 ft Mario out of the Danish building blocks.

The sculpture was unveiled to attendees at Lego World Fair this October and is said to be made up of over 40,000 Lego bricks (and we can believe it too). It was recently bought on eBay for over $5000, with the money raised going to the Ronald McDonald House Charity in the Netherlands.

Story and image via Kotaku  

It’s the drug of choice for many, but just how does alcohol get you drunk, and why do we suffer from the side effects?

There are actually many kinds of alcohol in the chemical world, but the one we drink the most is ethanol. It’s the particular shape of an ethanol molecule that gives a glass of beer or a shot of the hard stuff its specific effects on the human brain. The molecule is very tiny, made up of just two carbon atoms, six hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom. Ethanol is water soluble, which means it enters the blood stream readily, there to be carried quickly to all parts of the body (most notably the liver and the brain). It’s also fat soluble; like an all-access pass through various cell membranes and other places that are normally off limits.

A certain portion of the ethanol you drink passes through your stomach to your small intestine, is absorbed into your bloodstream and carried to your brain. That’s what we’re really concerned with. Research has not conclusively determined exactly how ethanol accomplishes all of its various effects in the brain, but there are some well-supported theories. The slow reactions, slurred speech and memory loss of a drunk are probably caused by ethanol attaching to glutamate receptors in your brain’s neural circuitry. These receptors normally receive chemical signals from other parts of the brain, but instead they get an ethanol molecule. This disrupts the flow of signals and generally slows the whole brain down.

Ethanol also binds to GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptors, which normally serve to slow down brain activity. Unlike glutamate receptors, ethanol actually makes GABA receptors more receptive, causing the brain to slow down even more. But alcohol isn’t simply a depressant, because it also stimulates the production of dopamine and endorphins, chemicals that produce feelings of pleasure. Research hasn’t yet revealed the exact mechanism involved, but it may be similar to the way ethanol stimulates the GABA receptors.

For more bite-sized and in-depth, science-infused information pick up a copy of How It Works, the latest science and technology magazine from Imagine Publishing. The first issue goes on sale 29 October in UK and end of November in the US. It features such awe-inspiring subjects as; a look inside the Eurofighter Typhoon, the causes of extreme weather like tornados, tsunamis and hurricanes, the Bugatti Veyron, vision and sight, nuclear subs and the Large Hadron Collider. The magazine is complemented by a constantly updated website located at www.howitworksdaily.com.

The magazine that feeds minds is available now!

Ever wondered about the world around us? Do questions like how do sharks hunt, how big is the sun and what’s inside an iPod fascinate you? Then get to the shops and buy a copy of How It Works magazine, a new accessible, entertaining science and technology title that delivers absorbing articles packed with facts and information on sale today across the UK.

How It Works covers the environment, history, science, space, technology and transport, and is packed with facts and information. The first issue boasts over 831 amazing facts and explanations, including how sharks hunt, why we get drunk, how fireworks explode and a look at how the world’s leading jet fighters measure up. Other topics covered in issue one include: bionic eyes, extreme weather, 3D movies, ejector seats, snake bites, iPhone 3GS, thermite, spacesuits, brain freeze, medieval castles and digital cameras. The companion website www.howitworksdaily.com features more fascinating facts and amazing videos.

How It Works goes on sale in the UK today and is available at all good newsagents, supermarkets, Barnes & Noble, Borders and online at www.imagineshop.co.uk. It will be available in US at the end of November.

Drake gets down and dirty.

Naughty Dog’s new game sets impossibly high standards for all other action adventures to match. A bold claim perhaps, but from the minute you start playing and find yourself hanging on for dear life to a train carriage that’s dangerously hanging off a cliff top you know that Uncharted 2 is something special.

The first thing that hits you is the fantastic sense of scale that Naughty Dog has managed to capture. As with the original Uncharted you really do feel that hero Nathan Drake is fighting against both the elements as well as the numerous bad guys that he’s constantly required to mow down.

The second thing that hits you is that no one, absolutely no one is able to craft cut scenes as well as Naughty Dog. Meticulously directed and featuring superb acting from the cast – they record their lines with each other and various props to make them as authentic as possible – they make efforts by all other developers look childish in the extreme.

Uncharted 2's visuals look absolutely glorious.

Tightly scripted and brilliantly paced they draw you into the onscreen action and are so mesmerising that even my non-gaming wife (she lost interest in my occupation after the N64) was transfixed by what was happening onscreen. Yes you can tell that new character Flynn is going to double cross our hero as soon as its gets a chance, but it doesn’t matter. Uncharted 2’s cut scenes, like its actual gameplay, may not feature innovative and startlingly good ideas, but what it is is polished to perfection.

Every dollar spent on Uncharted 2 is up there onscreen for all to see. From the truly glorious visuals, to the stunning cut scenes and dynamic set pieces, this is a game that’s been crafted with skill, an amazing amount of technical expertise and, dare we say it? even love. In fact, the most telling moment in Uncharted 2 is when you finish and immediately bemoan the wait for Uncharted 3, only to realise that you can simply play through Naughty Dog’s game immediately.

The hallmark of any great game is in its standout moments and Uncharted 2 has a plethora of them. While set pieces like the hind helicopter attack and the hotel collapse that you subsequently find yourself in set new standards for videogame action scenes, it’s the quite moments that can be just as impressive. The mind-blowing beauty as you take a rest in Borneo and see the jungle stretching out forever below you, the tranquil stroll through a Tibetan village that has you interacting with both the villagers and their wildlife and the unspoken bond that develops between you and Tensin, the guide that leads you on your quest in one of the later stages of the game.

Action scenes are brilliant. You'll be constantly surprised by what Naughty Dog throws at you.

In fact, the addition of Tensin is an absolute masterstroke and for this jaded reviewer, one of Uncharted 2’s cleverest moments. The guide doesn’t speak a word of English, and yet the two explorers are able to connect with each other thanks to wild gesticulations and slow, pronounced speech. It works brilliantly and gives you a real sense of achievement as you make your way through the dangerous, yet oh so beautiful caverns.

Balance is also something that Naughty Dog has achieved with amazing assuredness. The original Uncharted felt like a platform game and a shooting game and very rarely worked when the two elements were spliced together, but it’s a totally different story for Uncharted 2. Levels are fantastically designed allowing you to climb and scrabble around the huge open environments in order to seek out both weapons and the best routes for stealth attacks. That’s right we said the S word. Worry not though for while your introduction to the new gameplay mechanic feels rather stunted when you first encounter it, you soon realise that it’s there to simply enhance the exciting fire fights and not hinder you. Mess up an attack or get spotted and you simply move straight into a shoot out, there’s no restart, and if you’re good enough you can make the subsequent face-offs far easier for yourself. Again it’s the seamless way that every gameplay mechanic is integrated with each other that most impresses with Uncharted 2 and as the game continues those moments keep getting better and better and better.

Hopefully Uncharted 2 will go on to amaze punters as much as it has amazed critics and it really deserves to. For me Naughty Dog has not only created the finest action game since Capcom’s Resident Evil, but has also delivered the best game I’ve played all year. I’ll be incredibly surprised if anything else due next year, or even in 2010 comes close to the magnificence of Uncharted 2, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be playing them all to find out.

Uncharted 2 proves money things. It cements Naughty Dog as one of this generation’s finest developers, gives Sony a great chance of success over the Christmas period and proves that both Lara Croft and Indiana Jones have finally had their day. Oh and if you’re wondering why I’ve not mentioned the multiplayer it’s because I’m still too busy enjoying the single player experience.

Finally here’s a video of Uncharted 2’s opening moments

Video of Uncharted 2

Re-imaginings of retro classics are a solid source of revenue for publishers in these turbulent times. New announcements are posted every day but it takes a special kind of game to snag our attention and the 1988 gore-tour Splatterhouse is one such game.

Alongside the recent announcement of Clash Of The Titans, Namco Bandai has now confirmed that a new version of Splatterhouse is set for release on Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2010. Commenting on the announcement, Namco Bandai’s VP of sales and marketing, Hiroaki Ochiai, said: “Today’s console technology is literally decades ahead of what powered Splatterhouse when it made its first indelible bloody mark on gaming, which means we now have gore like never before for all the fans and the new generation of gamers lining up to get to grips with Rick.”

In this new iteration protagonist Rick will stray far beyond the West Mansion in a storyline written by Gordon Rennie, the comic book author behind works such as Judge Dredd, and original artwork for the game comes care of artist and Marvel contributor Dave Wilkins.

New gameplay dynamics will see Rick using torn limbs as weapons and swinging his way through the environments as well as reanimating corpses of the fallen to fight alongside him. The trademark ‘Terror Mask’ makes a comeback and will aid Rick’s regenerative capabilities.

Grab an arm and start swinging from 2010.

Story via NowGamer

One of the most fondly remembered yet neglected platform heroes to emerge from the 16-bit era was Sparkster: an armour wearing, rocket-powered opossum. Well it’s good news for opossum lovers everywhere with Konami’s recent announcement that the neglected critter will be making a return to our screens in a new game released across Xbox Live, PSN and Steam sometime next year.

News about the game is pretty thin on the ground at the moment, but this is what we know so far: the game is being developed by Climax (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories), will be 2.5D, set 15 years after the first game, and take a steampunk meets Crash Bandicoot approach to its visuals.

We’ll keep you posted about more developments about the game as and when we hear anything.

The more we see of this game the more we get excited. After all, Sega are the masters when it comes to exhilarating arcade racing games, and with the talented chaps at Sumo Digital at the helm, we reckon this could be a title to keep a beady eye on this year.

Well Sega - in savvy mode - has revealed a brand new character who will be joining Sonic, Tails, Alex Kidd, Amigo and cohorts on the starting grid, and it’s none other than Ryo from Shenmue! Want to see? Here’s an awesome video courtesy of NowGamer to whet your appetites; Said awesome video courtesy of NowGamer  

This will of course raise the hopes of millions of Shenmue fans out there who are desperate, nay willing, Sega and Yu Suzuki to finally wrap up their epic arcade-RPG.

While this is certainly great news, we hope Sega doesn’t decide to make this an official chapter in the Shenmue saga - like a dream sequence in which Ryo gets to race Sega heroes from past, present and future (remember the game’s set in the Eighties). Similarly, lets hope Sega doesn’t try to shoehorn the remaining chapters into Ryo’s ending to the game. Like he wins the race, wakes up, his adventure was all just a bad dream, and so off he trots to light fireworks with his dad. Instead, let us put our collective minds together and will this to be a warning shot from Sega that Shenmue 3 could finally be heading to our lives, sooner than never.  

 The official Japanese Street Fighter blog is putting fans through one hell of a trial by teasing the announcement of another Street Fighter game, most likely a spin-off of SFIV.

Natsuki Shiozawa promised last week that she would say more about a sequel this week, but has now only said that we’ll hear more soon.

This seems like a pretty strong indication of more Street Fighter coming to the PS3 sooner rather than later. The announcement of Street Fighter IV took many by surprise, but now Ryu and co are back we’re not all that shocked that Capcom wants to get some more out of the series again. Rather than seeing Street Fighter V, though, we would expect a title more in the vein of SFIII: 2nd Impact and 3rd Strike, offering new characters and slight tweaks to the gameplay.

Seeing as the Tokyo Game Show is just around the corner we would expect to find out much more then.

Story via NowGamer.com