Veteran anime studio Ghibli is teaming up with game developer Level-5 (Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy) for a new Nintendo DS game going by the name of Ni no Kuni: The Another World, or simply Ninokuni. It seems like a pretty cute-, albeit childish-looking fantasy RPG - as can be seen below - and it's scheduled for release in Japan during 2009.



You won't find much else about it on the official website, but the original announcement made in the latest Famitsu magazine does shed some light on what to expect from Ninokuni. Shameless copy-paste from Gamekyo (via AnimeNation) follows.

- The animation in the game is all by Studio Ghibli.
- Level-5's first 10th Anniversary product.
- There will be a book bundled with the game filled with information on various magic crests and spell recipes. This 'Magic Master' book is something that the main character in the game has, and the player will need to refer to from time to time while playing the game.
- There will be a console version of the game, but the hardware is not decided yet.
- They want the console version to offer something different for people that have already played the DS version, the selection of the hardware will be based on which is most suitable for this purpose.
- The exact same book will be packaged with the console version as well.

All my bets are lost. I was dead-sure that WotLK would only be released in 2009, but fortunately, it seems that me and my fellow horde of skeptics (no pun intended) were wrong. If you visit the WoW website right now, odds are you'll be greeted with a page announcing the release date for the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion - "In Stores 11.13.08". That's like... really bloody soon! Better get your pre-orders sorted out, fast.


The same thing is also beeing announced by Blizzard in a full-fledged press release, which also sheds some light on when the expansion will land in different territories: November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia. November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. And finally November 18 in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The Lich King's wrath will be sealed in a DVD box inscriptioned with a $39.99 price tag, and a special Collector's Edition priced at $69.99 will also be available "in select regions".

Long before there was Heroes of Might and Magic, there was a little game called King's Bounty - a strikingly similar turn-based strategy, that had also been created by the late New World Computing five years earlier, in 1990. Fast forward 18 years, and today we finally have the chance to see first-hand how the sequel King's Bounty: The Legend turned out, thanks to the demo version released by publisher 1C Company, hot off Katauri Interactive's work benches.


The FTP link that came with the press release is pretty useless right now, as it's being hammered down to a crawl, so you might want to try your regular download website of choice. Like WorthPlaying or something. The 700ish MB demo includes the first city in the game, all three character types, multiple quests and dozens of spells. Now if you'll pardon me... let's see what we have here.

Update: After 8 hours of playing the demo, all I can say is... win. Pure win!

To complement our previous story bringing the announcement of Diablo III, here is a selection of screenshots we handpicked from the debut collection posted by Blizzard on the game's website today.

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 Continue reading 'Diablo 3 Screenshots'...

Twenty years after the cataclysmic events of Diablo II - and eight years after its release in the real world back in 2000 - the long-speculated, and even longer-awaited sequel Diablo III has finally been unveiled today, at Blizzard's 2008 Worldwide Invitational event. Aside from the announcement itself, fans are already treated with dozens of screenshots, a few wallpapers, artworks and, best of all, the first three Diablo III trailers covering all of the above, and a whole lot more! Need I say they're a must-see?

We've already added the HD trailers locally, and we'll return in a bit with a selection of screenshots as well, but in the meantime all there is to know about the game can be found on the newly-opened Diablo III website. No release date yet, obviously, just some stuff about the game's story, locations, characters, monsters, and adventures awaiting you upon your return to the world of Sanctuary. Dig in!


Below we're including the gist of today's press release: (...)

 Continue reading 'Diablo 3 Announced, With Pics And Trailers'...

Today, developer Funcom and publisher Eidos have made a joint mediatic effort to lift the veil on what they call Age of Conan's "promising future", revealing selected new features which are now in production - including a massive new PvP update called "To the death" (going live near the end of June), followed later this year by a MASSIVE (ed. - notice the CAPS) free update called "Kingship!". Which will basically be a guild alliance warfare system.

During autumn, a reward and character evolution system called "Powerpoints" will also be introduced, along with the mandatory new areas and dungeons in the months ahead, improved player-made villages and Battlekeep systems, social updates, and the generic "more adventures". You'll find all of these detailed below. (...)

 Continue reading 'The Future of Age of Conan'...

The self-professed, made-in-Taiwan future of free-to-play MMOs, to be more precise. This is how the German publisher Frogster announced its latest acquisition, Runes of Magic - a fantasy MMORPG originally developed by the Taiwanese studio Runewaker Entertainment under the title Radiant Arcana, which is already completed and currently in open-beta phase in China.


This definitely lends credence to Frogster's plans of releasing it before Christmas 2008 in Germany, and "soon afterwards" in English-speaking territories. But the rest of their communique isn't too convincing in regard to their earlier claim, about Runes of Magic being "the future". Just the usual set of features, topped by the promise of a "free2play, no monthly fees, free download" MMO. You can find them all listed on the Runes of Magic website, along with the game's story, various artworks, and a "beta infoletter". The first screenshots are just below this abstract from Frogster's announcement: (...)

 Continue reading 'Runes of Magic, The Future Of Free MMOs'...

One must, with the power of mighty Thor, love Internet rumors. They are just fabulous. Recently, the dudes and dudettes (and all their little sisters combined) from Blizz Planet gave the fanboys some new wanking material, stating that the more-than-purple, legendary gaming guru magazine, PC Gamer, will feature a full fledged Diablo 3 announcement, from the golden mouth of Blizzard itself.

You have to realize the insanity this little thing spawned on the web. I bet if those people reading the said “news” had guns, they would have gone to some country in South Africa and start a revolution, proclaiming the Everlasting Empire of Diablo’s Left Kidney. Ah well, sadly, things are not so bright beyond the Looking Glass, since the ladies at Voodoo Extreme just received word from PC Gamer itself that the whole thing whas just a big, smelly fuss. More exactly, We're officially squelching the Diablo rumor. We've got two big announcements coming in our August issue, but neither is from Blizzard.

Rumors come and go, and folks should be accustomed by now that no rumor regarding Blizzard is true until they say so. As for the said two big announcements, who gives a crap.

As Age of Conan launches today for all North American players (not just those with a 3-day early access), it does so with another decidedly positive PR news. The game's Collector's Edition, totalling 111,000 units in its initial prints, has "completely sold out in all markets". If you've been meaning to get your bloody hands on one, the only advice Funcom can give you is to look on retail shelves, cause there sure aren't any re-orders available.

All in all, Funcom is shipping around 700,000 copies of Age of Conan on day one. This may not seem like a record-breaking figure - considering that World of Warcraft's expansion, The Burning Crusade set a record of nearly 2.4 million copies sold in the first 24 hours of availability last year. Nevertheless, Funcom's Morten Larssen is confident that their pre-order numbers for Age of Conan "represent the highest pre-order number for any global launch of an original PC game, ever, including the original World of Warcraft launch".

So, shipping and sales figures are looking good, the servers held up "exceptionally well" during the early access period, the first Age of Conan review rated it at 9 out of 10 (in the Nordic magazine Game Reactor)... looks almost perfect. Almost, because there was some bad news after all: the DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan is not shipping with the initial launch. They're still working on it, apparently, and they plan to premiere it at the Leipzig Games Convention (August 20-24). Also, a special preview showing off the advanced graphics made possible by the DX10 technology will be unveiled this summer at nVidia’s NVISION event in San Jose, California, August 25-27.

And finally, fellow Europeans, rest assured you're not forgotten: Age of Conan will launch in Europe in just a few days, on May 23.

All's looking good for next week's public launch, as Funcom and Eidos proclaimed that over 1 million people have signed up for the Age of Conan beta, a figure shadowed only by the 5 million unique visitors tracked on the game's official website during 2008. They even believe this represents "the largest ever beta sign-up figure in the [Western] history of the genre", thought admitedly they're still not sure how these figures will convert into sales and, most importantly, subscriptions. I know plenty of people are going to give it a try, at the very least.

And if that's no clear indication of the game's short-term success, World of Warcraft's population is already starting to take a hit, as half of my betraying guildies will tell you. As far as I can tell, no other MMO has triggered such a large exodus of WoW players, over the past three years since Blizzard launched it. LotR Online came close in 2007, but it was a very, very short-lived distraction. The question is, will Age of Conan last long enough to threaten WoW's undisputed reign?

I still have my doubts.

P.S. We have a new Age of Conan 'femme fatale' trailer added yesterday, in case you didn't notice.