Yeah, don't even speculate about it. It's Musou, Hokuto Shinken style, coming to the third-gen consoles come 2010.

"You're already dead."



Koei must have gotten their fair share of joyous experience bringing their Musou formula and applying it on manga/anime epic with their 2007 effort, Dynasty Warrior: Gundam. So much so that they are now releasing another such joint-collaboration.

Ever heard the everlasting single complaint (other than its repetitive gameplay) for Musou series that despite its usually heavy body counts in the gameplay, not one drop of blood were ever present in all the glorious violence? Samurai Warriors did nothing to change that, and so is Dynasty Warrior: Gundam. However, things will almost definitely be different for this animal.

Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳 AKA Hokuto no Ken), the iconic Japanese manga series illustrated by Tetsuo Hara and written by Buronson originally serialized from 1983 to 1988 in Weekly Shōnen Jump has been an inspiration to more pop culture products than you can possibly think of. And insanely explosive bloody gore violence (that actually inspired Riki-Oh (力王 Riki-Ō), which notorious HK movie adaptation remained as the staple of splatter fest for its insane amount of gore scenes.) is indeed the signature of the series, of which interestingly, transferring these scenes to the game is actually the main appeal of the game. Successfully getting the right gameplay mechanics for this element will in fact determine the success of this Koei's production.

Set for release on the next-gen consoles (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) in mid 2010, Hokuto Musou will take gamers down that nostalgic line to the apocalyptic wasteland in 20XX, with the ultimate tough guy protagonist, Kenshiro bringing the battle for survival to his brother, the equally cool and tough-as-nail Raoh, AKA Ken-oh (拳王) or the King of Fist, the fan-favourite antagonist. Pathetically sandwiched between them are hordes after hordes of freakshows, the likes of which only apocalyptic future can produced. Ever the master of the incredibly ass-kicking martial art, Hokuto Shinken, expect exploding heads, flying organs in the game, raising the bar of the Musou series.

According to the official media release from Koei, two main story modes will be featured; one chronicling the original manga plot (I wondered how are they pulling this off with the relative lengthy arcs), while the other one will feature Kenshiro in an original storyline.

Hardcore gamers will probably be wondering by now if the game will make it outside Japan due to licensing issues (not unlike Capcom's Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, as posted earlier). Although it is still early to speculate on this, a Koei representative had indicated that they have not made the final decision on this. Nevertheless, this should be inconsequential for PS3 owners since almost all PS3 Blu-Ray games have no regional issues though it will be somewhat costly to import the game this way.

Anyway, Fist of the North Star is no stranger to gaming adaptations with its stellar list of games ever since 1986, with Playstation One's Hokuto no Ken : Seikimatsu Kyūseishu Densetsu (北斗の拳 世紀末救世主伝説) in 2000 of particular interest. Not to forget the Nintendo Entertainment System Family Computer's longrunning series from 1986 to 1991.


The hype for this news can be summarized down one word. Musou. Known for its crazy-ass actions, the anticipation will no doubt be extremely high for this one.

Can't wait to see some of the actions? Well you can only make do with the teaser video trailer from Gamespot embedded below.

Welcome to the continuing chapter of the (hopefully) neverending battle between the gaming console. Reason for the joyous tone?
I got two words for you: Price War.

Previously...
We ended with "Do you seriously think that Nintendo gonna let its Wii sit by, missing all this fun?".

Well, it sure doesn't take a prophet to deduce this out. Nintendo has announced that moving forward from September 27th, the price of Wii will drop by $50 to $200 in the U.S., while the price of Wii would drop in Japan to 20,000 yen (about $210) on October 1st. Interestingly, the announcement was made while Sony's head honcho, Kaz Hirai, were in the midst of his, reportedly boredom-filled speech in the disguise of "an announcement".

The game console war rages on to the next level... And it has just reached every gamers' favourite level... Price War.






Reports came in on last Thursday (August 27th) that the price on all three models of Xbox 360 videogame console will drop in price on August 28th. In short, this means that Xbox 360 Elite, the higher-end evil big brother of the triplets with its superior hard disk capacity (120 GB), will drop in price from USD $400 to an encouraging price of 300 bucks, aligning itself perfectly in line with the PS3 Slim.

Just in time for the next round of gaming console world war.

The move came one week after Sony Playstation 3 Slim was announced with several new modification such as upgradeable 120GB hard drive and is 33% smaller, 36% lighter, and consumes 34% less power than previous models.

On the other hand, the top of the line of the Xbox 360 promotion, the Elite model, get more than its price cut. The component and HDMI cables will be removed as well, leaving only the standard issue composite ones. Before you admire the slyness of Microsoft, hell they even have reason for that: The player didn't need it in the first place. Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's Director of Product Management for Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE told ArsTechnica, "According to our research, most of the customers who bought the Elite weren't using the HDMI. We've removed it, and passed it on as part of our price savings". Yeah right.

On the other hand, the Xbox 360 Arcade (affectionately called by the Wired crew as better known among hardcore gamers as the Xbox 360 Your Elite Red-Ringed Out of Warranty So Why Spend The Money On An Extra Hard Drive You Won’t Use) is still priced at $200.

Regardless, being a gamer these days just got better. Do you seriously think that Nintendo gonna let its Wii sit by, missing all this fun?