Eurogamer in blog format

Eurogamer snags a rare one-on-one audience with the legend behind The Legend, who talks life at Nintendo, working with Miyamoto, and what the future holds for Link.

Tim Langdell's Edge Games has convinced Apple to remove Edge by Mobigame from the App Store for a second time.

A statement made by the company - and possibly Langdell himself - alleged that renaming EDGE to Edge by Mobigame "was determined not to get around infringement".

"Clearly, if Sony tried to use the mark 'iPod by Sony' they would hardly expect Apple not to take action to protect their mark iPod. In trademark law adding 'by (name)' to another company's registered trademark does not mean a company can use that trademark without being guilty of willful [sic] infringement," claimed Edge Games (posted by Develop). Read more...

Denis Dyack, the outspoken boss of Too Human developer Silicon Knights, believes his studio is now "one of the last of the V8s", following a turbulent year in the industry of videogames.

"It's been really a rough year and a half for the industry as a whole. The number of layoffs in the industry has been staggering," Dyack told GamesIndustry.biz.

"As an external developer it's been tough. I actually don't know anyone who's older than us any more. There used to be four or five people I knew of but I feel right now that we're we're one of the last of the V8s. I've talked to a lot of people and I know a lot of people who have gone out of business." Read more...

If you're going to start working in games development, you might as well begin on one of the greatest games of all-time. That was the rather serendipitous position Eiji Aonuma found himself in, hired by Nintendo to work on the momentous first 3D instalment of the Zelda series.

Since then, Shigeru Miyamoto has taken a step back to allow the designer to direct the series for over a decade now, creating a string of classic experiences across multiple platforms. The next, Spirit Tracks, is out on DS next month, while Nintendo beavers away in secret on Link's first bespoke Wii adventure.

In London last week to promote his new handheld game, Eurogamer snagged a rare one-on-one audience with the manager of Software Development Group No.3 in Nintendo's fabled EAD division, to discuss his career, the relationship with Miyamoto, and what's coming next. Watch the interview on video or scroll down for the entire transcript. Read more...

Colossal Modern Warfare 2 sales have nudged Activision's Call of Duty franchise over the $3 billion revenue mark.

The publisher announced today that the six titles in the series have combined to sell over 55 million units around the world.

Activision boss Bobby Kotick said this data - based on NPD, GfK Chart-Track and international data - has made Call of Duty one of the "greatest entertainment franchises of all time". Read more...

Artificial Life has immortalised British pop star Robbie Williams in a brand new iPhone game available right now on the App Store.

Robbie Williams Racing costs £1.79 and invites you to ride against the singer in a motorbike dash across the Mojave desert, because this, obviously, was the setting for his recent "Bodies" single.

That song "Bodies", along with "Difficult for Weirdos", has been recreated in-game, and you can unlock remixes, photos and videos as you go. Read more...

Nintendo wrestled dominance of the Japanese hardware market back from Sony this week, launching its new DSi LL to enviable success.

Regional data collector Media Create counted 100,553 sales on 22nd November - one day after the handheld's launch. That's more than Sony's PSPgo has sold in Japan (54,102) since it went on sale on 1st November.

Add DSi (32,070) and DS Lite (5051) sales and Nintendo's handheld posted a region-leading total of 137,674. The PSP (32,752) and PSPgo (4574) combined to sell 37,326 units. Read more...

"Right now, there's nobody younger than me that I feel threatened by. I haven't met anyone that I felt possesses the skill to surpass me in the future. I'm not over-evaluating myself. I can analytically see their weakness, their ineptitudes."

Daigo Umehara is better at Street Fighter than you and he knows it. Fighting games always bring out the inner show-off, but his is no hollow boast. Earlier this year, the 28-year-old Japanese defeated American champion Justin Wong at the Evolution 2009 Championship to take the Street Fighter IV world title.

Daigo Umehara, it turns out, is better than everyone at Street Fighter. Read more...

It's worth it for the tents alone. My little one-man pyramid of canvas was bought so as not to waste precious hours returning to the hotel whilst out on a long expedition, but it was upon realising it was in my Sim's inventory on my return to homely Riverview that I realised its true worth.

Why, I can sleep anywhere! Outside the bookshop! In the park! In my ex-girlfriend's garden! In the graveyard. Pfft. I don't need a house now I've got a tent. There are toilets at work, computers in the library, and I can always pull off a guerrilla shower whilst visiting a mate's house. Truly, this is the life.

Briefly, I entertained the idea in reality. It was only the image of writing this very review in a tent, at night, in the rain, with a screaming cat at my side that stopped me from embarking on an extraordinarily reckless evening. This only served to hammer home the great appeal of the Sims - it offers fulfilment of our most mundane wishes, with none of the repercussions. Security, freedom, comfort, friends who don't mind if you turn up at their door and demand to use their shower at 4am... Read more...

Modern Warfare 2 writer Jesse Stern made headlines earlier this month when he spoke about the background to the infamous "No Russian" level in Infinity Ward's latest blockbusting first-person shooter. But who is Jesse Stern, and how did he get involved in Call of Duty in the first place? Friend-of-Eurogamer John Gaudiosi tracked him down.

Reflect Missile, the first DSiWare game by PixelJunk maker Q-Games, has been released.

It costs 500 DSi Points (approx. £4.50/€5) and is based on a simple idea: blow-up enemy blocks with Bomber, Driller or Reflector missiles. Your supply of missiles, however, is limited and enemy blocks will be surrounded by obstacles.

Might Flip Champs (800 DSi Points - approx. £7/€8) also arrives on DSiWare today. This is a puzzle-platform game based around 'flipping' levels. The top DS screen shows the current level and the bottom screen shows what is coming next. Your task is to guide character Alta to safe place that so she can be flipped from one level to the next. There are pictures to help explain this on the Nintendo website. Read more...

Sony has promised a selection of more than 500 comics when its PSP Comic Store arrives in mid-December.

Comic publishers pledging support so far are Marvel (Astonishing X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man), 2000AD (Judge Dredd, Durham Red), Disney (Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck) and IDW (Astro Boy, Transformers, Star Trek, Wormwood).

Less well-known outfits Insomnia (Burke & Hare, Cages, Cancer Town), iVerse (responsible for Ape Entertainment, Archie Comics, Dabel Brothers, Image & Red 5 content) and Titan (Wallace & Gromit) are also on-board. Read more...

Sin and Punishment 2 looks like what would happen if a music visualiser developed sentience and tried to kill you. It envelops you in sweeping patterns of bullets, elegantly criss-crossing lasers and lens-flare, a deadly visual cacophony that puts you into a comforting trance as you flit defensively around the screen. But hidden behind these familiar graphical patterns is a deceptively innovative and flexible shooter; developer Treasure plays with your expectations and your instincts, and Sin and Punishment 2 comes out feeling at once like a genre greatest hits compilation and completely fresh.

Depending on which mood you catch it in, it can echo Bangai-O, Ikaruga or Space Harrier, but its own personality always shines through. A large part of the appeal is the glorious, inventive insanity of the levels, particularly the boss design. Each of the game's seven stages is wonderfully distinct, only occasionally throwing up a staple environment like a factory or a volcanic landscape or the final extraterrestrial battle with an enormous spaceship. The rest of the time it's completely off the rails. Some illustrative phrases from my notebook, jotted down whenever there was a five-second gap in the bullet assault: "forest of the testicle-mace golem", "magma guinea-pig and the baffling cranes", "four-pronged whale assault", "moonlit battle with the giant stonefrog", "cactus-hatted sand leeches".

Most of the time you're running into the screen on a 2D plane, but the camera angles are creative and the game sometimes turns you on your axis and becomes a side-scrolling shooter for a while, or zooms out to offer a panoramic top-down view. The elven main characters, Kachi and Isa, have been freed from the floor since the original Sin and Punishment, pulling out a hover skateboard or jetpack to float around the entire screen. Read more...

It's not like us Europeans to take a day off work just to say thank you and shove large chunks of turkey in our gobs. No that wouldn't do at all. Instead here we are, WORKING, and telling you what's on the PlayStation Store.

To start there's Gravity Crash (£6.29), a rare PSN exclusive made by Just Add Water and heavily promoted by Sony presumably as a game that can narrow the gap between PS3's online offerings and Xbox Live Arcade.

Or there's the first (always the most exciting) batch of DLC for Borderlands, The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned. This, as you may have seen, was reviewed on Eurogamer earlier this week. Read more...

A few of the original characters from Super Street Fighter II return, as well as Final Fight's finest and new girl Juri.

BioWare has popped out two new videos for Mass Effect 2; one showing the improvements made to the Adept class and the other detailing the return of Tali.

Adepts wield the game's biotic abilities with more power and breadth than any other class. Available to them are abilities Warp, Shockwave, Singularity, Throw and Pull as well as Heavy Pistol and Submachine Gun weapon training.

"We've improved Biotic powers for Mass Effect 2. You can curve them around corners or around cover to hit hidden enemies. You can precisely angle a throw or pull to send an enemy flying off an edge. And when you combine multiple powers on a target the results are devastating," said Christina Norman, lead game designer, during the video. Read more...

The resistance continues on PSP as Valkyria Chronicles gets a sequel.

More epic confrontation from this fantasy brawler, complete with giant scorpions - a must for any party this season.

This online RTS/RPG is known as Avalon Online in Asia, and should be touching down in Europe early next year.

Some of the attendees at one of SEGA's recent press events talk about their experience with AvP's multiplayer modes.

A spokesperson for Eidos Montreal has dismissed talk that the third Deus Ex game will be exclusive to PC.

The rumours began after a story on Bit-Tech stated, "[Deus Ex 3] won't be getting a console release due to the complexity of the game."

However Eidos man Rene, writing on the company's forum, stated, "Only the PC version has been announced so far... I dunno where that website is getting its info from!" Read more...

And so the slow, painful death of 2009 continues, although once again there are a couple of passable death throes for desperate gamers to investigate should the last two months' worth of releases have done nothing for them.

Aptly topping the death-throe list, given its content, is the largely enjoyable Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, another example of Capcom putting the Wii to good use and refreshing some of its best Resident Evil stories in the process. There are some "Capcom bits" in it, but as long as you can cope with shouting at the game occasionally, you'll come out on top.

Wii owners also might want to consider Muramasa: The Demon Blade. We were ultimately down on it, but it remains a very pretty curiosity, and one from which it's not impossible to draw a good bit of fun, providing it doesn't draw too much money from you for the privilege. Read more...

The Biotic-heavy Adept class. Weapons? Who needs them.

The next Castlevania game is so different from previous instalments in the series it almost wasn't called Castlevania at all.

That's according to Konami exec Dave Cox. He was speaking to GameReactor (as reported by VG247) about the announcement of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow at the 2008 Games Convention.

"It was quite a radical departure from what had gone before with Castlevania and there was a little bit of nervousness that perhaps it wouldn’t be accepted as a Castlevania game," said Cox. Read more...

Quarian Tali returns to join Shepard's cause once more. Exiled by her own race? I wonder what happened.

BioWare plans to do PlayStation 3 development in-house from now on following the positive experience it had working on the console with Dragon Age: Origins.

"We think it's one of the key platforms, obviously, so we're definitely going to be doing PS3," BioWare final boss Greg Zeschuk told Joystiq when asked whether the studio would take control of PS3 development itself.

"You know, I can't say anything about Mass Effect in that regard but you know, I can definitely say Dragon Age and other things we do will definitely be on PS3. Read more...

UK and Europe top brass weigh in on the autumn Xbox update, as Last.fm, Twitter, Facebook, Zune Marketplace go Live. Also: popstars!

Two short, scene-setting trailers for Nexon's free-to-play MMORPG.

This new, free multiplayer map should feature all of the lush jungle nooks you could wish for.

A solid RPG sadly plagued by too many irritating bugs, Divinity II will no doubt find many a fan amongst the faithful.

More pretty plastic pop for your Minifigs to bounce to.

Gosh, what a wholesome party. Can't imagine who'll be reviewing this one, Ellie.

Any of you who played Shiren's outing on the DS not too long ago will probably already be pretty excited about the return of Koppa and the hat, but here's a trailer to stoke you up just a little more.

Turns out that, despite all their protestations about wanting to save the world and its delicate eco system, what the Navi are really after is the enemy's flag.

You'd have thought, being conflict embodied and personified, that War would have a fairly handy toolbox of destruction. You'd be right.

Here's how yesterday's scene in the diner would have worked out should the AI have analysed the player's psyche differently.

Square-Enix turn up the heat with this beautiful FFXIII trailer, with a cheeky bit of gameplay footage at the very end.

Relive one of history's greatest naval battles as Lord Nelson defends the English coast against Napoleon's invasion fleet.