Thanks to the good folks over at 1up.com, we have the first look at the cover art for the new Halo expanded universe novel, The Cole Protocol. The book will release on November 25, which is perfect timing to bring it with you on all those lovely trips to visit family during the holidays. You could even bring it to family dinners and read more Halo goodness instead of talking to relatives. I’m not necessarily endorsing that sort of behavior, just saying you could. Anyway, here’s the pic. Thanks again to 1up.

Full article, for those interested.

As a follow-up to their press conference in Japan on Wednesday, Nintendo held another media event on Thursday in San Francisco, California, bringing some of the same information and some new reveals for the North American audience.

First and foremost, that new DSi announced yesterday will not be coming to our shores any time soon. Though it’s slated to release in Japan on November 1, it won’t be in the States until late 2009, according to Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime.

One of the big exclusives for this side of the Pacific is that we’re finally going to be able to participate in Club Nintendo, a long-standing program that has been in place for the Asian and European markets for some time now. It allows fans to register games and take surveys on Nintendo websites in order to earn Star Points, which can later be redeemed for prizes or other goodies. The program should be unveiled by this coming holiday season.

As mentioned earlier in our report from the Japan conference, a new Punch Out!! title is coming, and 1up, courtesy of GameTrailers, has the first footage, and it looks friggin sweet. Several classics are back, and the good ol’ music is enough to get your heart and fists pumping. Also available are videos from Sin and Punishment 2 and Madworld for the Wii, and the new Mario and Luigi RPG for the DS.

You can check out Nintendo’s entire press release on their website, and get more information on the new WiiSpeak channel for the console, which will allow people to chat over their Wii consoles… I guess in case their free night and/or weekend minutes haven’t kicked in yet. We’ll see what that leads to.

Nintendo held a press conference in Japan yesterday, where they announced that the new DSi (no forensics or blood splatter for me, thanks) will be releasing on November 1 for what converts to around $180 US. The news was reported by 1up, who snagged a few tips from Wired’s Game|Life blog.

The biggest new feature you’ll notice right away about the DSi is a 3-megapixel camera, and new functionality that allows for touch-screen photo editing. The system will also have an SD memory card slot to take those pictures with you, either to the Wii console or to the nearest photo kiosk for some hard copies. Gone is the GBA game slot, which reduces the overall profile of the system, allowing it to be slimmer even than the DS Lite. Despite the smaller external size, though, the screens have been enlarged to 3.5″ each.
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If you happen to frequent the world’s largest retail chain, you’ve probably noticed that over the past year or so, Walmart has secured some pretty big music exclusives, starting with the latest Eagles album last year. The latest is the upcoming AC/DC album Black Ice, to be released October 20. These have been huge deals for the company, ensuring that customers must come to their stores if they want these albums.

Well, now Walmart has moved onto video games, and they’re bringing AC/DC along with them. According to The New York Times, Walmart and MTV Games are prepared to announce that “AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack” will be coming exclusively to the retail chain’s stores (Walmart, Sam’s Club, and walmart.com).

This is a huge step for all three parties involved, and of course means loads of money for each of them, but it will certainly be interesting for the video game industry to follow. Sure, different chains have offered pre-order bonuses or collector’s editions in the past, but this is the first time that one store will be carrying a game, and no one else will get the chance. Who knows what other exclusives this might lead to.

Joystick Division totally busted TriplePoint PR for sneakily starting up a game review website. Hilarious! But at first read, I thought, yeah so…that’s just par for this course, Tiger. Game Informer* and you-have-to-buy-all-your-GAMEs-at-this-STOP are separate tentacles on the same part-Godzilla, part-shadow creature, semi-squiddy monster gaming/techie conglomerate . And IGN’s torial is about 78 percent adver and 22 percent edi. But then I read this:  

Is Telltale Games a client of TriplePoint?
They were a client; they are not a client.

Okay. And—
This is something by the way that Jesse did not know. He is a very big, uh, Telltale fan and a Strong Bad fan (I had not mentioned Henning’s glowing reviews of the Strong Bad games - gwh). He also wrote reviews of games from Empire Interactive and products from Nyko that were quite negative. The reviews of Telltale were obviously positive.

A glowing review of Strong Bad? Oh I call bullshit! Okay, sure…you probably already figured this by my aforementioned reckless WiiWare downloading behavior** , but yes, I downloaded and played Strong Bad episode. Sure, it’s funny, but I refuse to download any more episodes for two reasons. 1. Like most point-n-click “adventures”, I find it to be over-priced. And 2. I could not possibly smoke enough weed to continue to find Strong Bad funny for one more episode…nevermind ten! Sure, there’s probably enough weed in the state of California, but I just can’t smoke that much. Moderation, people! 

* I admit I kind of like Game Informer…except for their strange compulsion to argue with 14 year olds in each and every Letters section.
** Please wait for my pending lemon drop before recklessly downloading My Aquarium. 

The countdown on Bungie.net has finally reached zero (after month’s of waiting), revealing a new trailer, which can be seen/downloaded here. It’s nice of the guys at Bungie to tell the fans, “We hope you haven’t dedicated too much time and stress to this 12-hour long countdown event.” It’s finally here, and it seems like it was worth the wait.

Despite plenty of speculation that the Superintendent was an AI from Earth or one of her colonies, it looks from the trailer as though he is in fact an AI from the planet toward which the Chief was falling at the end of Halo 3 (if you didn’t beat the game on Legendary, go YouTube the video). The tagline, “Prepare to drop” also appears in the trailer, and it looks like the upcoming project (which does not have a date attached yet) will be a continuation of Halo 3. It won’t be Halo 4, as the trailer also clearly said “Halo 3″, so we’ll have to wait and see if this is a downloadable expansion or a new disk with more missions.

Okay, upon further review (of the large version), scratch my previous idea - when one of the SI’s messages comes up, you can clearly see “City of New Mombassa” on the screen, meaning that we’re talking about someone or something invading Earth - forerunner machines, perhaps?

The Superintendent “Error” message, which previously appeared during E3, has returned to the homepage at Bungie.net (with the word “Again” added to the message, as a little dig toward Microsoft, no doubt), with a countdown clock set to end at 10:07 Eastern time tomorrow morning… which is 7:07 Pacific time, for those of you who can’t subtract or don’t already know that Bungie is:
a) located in Washington, and
b) obsessed with the number 7.

Stay tuned for more details as the announcement goes live!

Oh, and tomorrow happens to be one year since Halo 3 was released. Expect big things, people. If you’re a Halo fan, a Bungie fan, or just like following all of the hype, this is gonna be a lot of fun to watch.

According to some recent insider info, the upcoming 160 gb model Playstation 3 will NOT have backward compatibility, putting to rest the rumors that the latest incarnation of the console would take the place of the 60 and old 80 gig models before it. Apparently, if you want to play your PS2 games, you’re going to have to keep your PS2 hooked up.

Now, this isn’t that bad, as far as I can see, because really, most people who play PS2 games on a regular basis have a functional system, and though the system is far from dead in Sony’s eyes, there aren’t many top-notch titles being released that aren’t also avaiable for its new-gen brother. Also, at just $129, the system is cheap enough for just about anyone with a hankering for older titles (or those lacking the cash for the PS3 and its $60 games) to pick one up.

Still, I can see why Sony’s fanbase would be upset by this, seeing as this now makes Playstation 3 the only current-gen system on the market with zero backward compatibility currently on the shelves (meaning we’re not counting the discontinued 60 and 80 gig models). All that extra cable switching can be a real pain in the ass, too. Any thoughts?

Remember that mysterious event Bungie was talking about that was supposed to happen during E3? They had this up on their website’s front page…

Well, there’s a new update in their info pane, revealing this data stream accompanied by the following pic:

Whereas everyone at first was wondering if this was going to be a new IP for Bungie, focusing on a character that some were referring to as the “Superintendent”, now we can be pretty damn sure that the game will take place in the Halo universe, given the inclusion of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence headers during the coded message that has been posted to the site. Of course, we’re no closer to actually finding out what the hell this game will be or when it will arrive, but it’s coming soon, and that’s definitely good news.

Also, for you Bungie-philes out there, note the time when the info was posted - 7:07 pm. Oh those crazy Bungie people.

P.S. I was originally coming back here to post about yesterday’s info on Bungie’s latest title update to Halo 3, which will be arriving next week, bringing new features to the matchmaking servers and a slew of new achievements for us all to get lost in once again. Feel free to check that out, too, but for now, the ONI communication is a bit more important.

Announced today pretty much everywhere, including 1up.com, one of my frequent internet pit stops, Mega Man 9, the new downloadable 8-bit sequel, will be appearing first on WiiWare next Monday. After that, the game will be released on Thursday for the Playstation Network, and then on Wednesday, October 1, for Xbox Live Arcade. I’ve yet to find any real good reasons behind all the spreading out, though it is nice to see Capcom giving Nintendo at least a few days’ head start over the competition since Mega Man did start his career on the NES. Also, no word on PSN trophy support, but there are definitely some nasty achievements for the 360 version, which can be found in an accompanying link within the 1up.com story.

(Thanks to 1up for the pic.)