Amazonys – Wii Games

Sony & Level 5’s White Knight Chronicles, for the PS3, is a very serious affair. Lots of world-saving, and giant creatures with sharp knees. So it’s refreshing to see the game’s characters presented in a softer light.

This White Knight character pack for PS3 platformer LittleBigPlanet will be out on February 25, along with some stickers as well, so you can craft your own LittleBigPlanet level about a game that says it’s new but feels like it’s been out for years…

One of the biggest potential stumbling points for the 360’s (and PC’s!) Game Room – having to secure an endless stream of ESRB ratings – has been solved in a fairly unique way by Microsoft.

Whereas similar platforms – like Nintendo’s Virtual Console for the Wii – submit each game to the ratings board individually, Microsoft has had the Game Room itself classified, the virtual arcade given a E10+ rating.

This means Microsoft can release as many games on the service as often as it likes without having to submit them to the ESRB, which should not only speed up the delivery of titles onto the Game Room, but prevent ESRB listings from spoiling the fun in advance, something that happens all too often with Virtual Console titles on the Wii.

There is, of course, a catch, and it has the potential to be a big one for fans of certain titles: the “universal” rating means that no games rated over E10+ will be released onto the Game Room. While this won’t affect the majority of the retro titles due to appear on the platform, it will affect a few of the biggest potential releases, like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Metal Slug.

Still, those are in the minority, and as GamerBytes points out, you’ve probably already got them on your 360 in some form or another.

Microsoft’s Genius – Rate The Room, Rate Every Game – But Those Rated Teen And Up Left Out. [GamerBytes]

Gearbox Software and 2K Games will take the currently release downloadable content for their hit Borderlands and slap it on some DVDs next month with the release of the Borderlands Add-On Pack.

Retailer GameStop is listing the double DLC disc for a February 23 release date, bundling the add-on we liked a lot (The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned) and the add-on we liked less (Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot) and releasing them for $19.99 on Xbox 360 and PC.

Not included is the recently announced, but not dated Secret Armory of General Knoxx. GameStop doesn’t list a comparable PlayStation 3 version of the Borderlands Add-On pack, but we’ve asked folks at Gearbox if that’s happening.

Borderlands Add-On Pack PC & Xbox 360 [GameStop]

There really aren’t enough video games built around the concept of the hamburger. Similarly a shame, the amount of burger in my digestive tract at this very moment. I’m about to correct that.

While you’re reading, contemplating and commenting in tonight’s Kotaku Off Topic thread, in which anything can be discussed, I’ll be at my nearest Umami Burger. I’ll probably be eating malt liquor tempura onion rings and eating an unhealthy amount of beef. We’re not lacking for quality burger places in Los Angeles (In ‘n’ Out, The Counter, Fathers Office, etc.), but this will be my first trip to Umami.

I’m always on the lookout for good food and travel often, so recommendations about your favorite local restaurants—whether they serve burgers or not—are welcome and highly appreciated in the comments. Otherwise, this Kotaku Off Topic is all yours…

• Charlie Brooker on How To Report The News – Hilarious.
• Woman sues rail line for ‘exploding’ toilet – There’s a very tasteful picture.
• Man carried 9 miles through New York City by 155 people – He ain’t heavy, he’s a random stranger.
• Bill & Melinda Gates dropping $10 billion on vaccines – Big money. Big donations. I love it.
• Cat Business Trip – Today has been catty.

[Image Credit]

MLB 09 The Show won wide praise for the strength of its visuals, and in these six screenshots SCEA’s released, it’s a solid bet MLB 10 The Show will live up to those expectations too.

I went back into this game this week to reacclimate myself to it, since the March 2 release is not too far off. Right now, in Road to the Show, I’m an 18-year-old southpaw in Harrisburg, the Nats’ double-A farm. I’m 7-2 with some great stats but man alive, we have the world’s worst third baseman. He’s not even a third baseman, he’s a left fielder, so it’s practically an automatic throwing error every time he tosses to first. Nice to see this franchise realistically captures the harebrained player development operation of one of the majors’ worst teams.

The Japanese release of No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 port of the Wii original, won’t make its previously announced February 25 release date. Travis and company won’t touch down until sometime in April.

So what does that mean for those of us outside of Japan? Well, at least we know when we’ll be able to import the high-def makeover of the Grasshopper Manufacture game. With publisher Ubisoft reportedly passing on the remake and no publisher stepping up to the plate just yet, we shouldn’t expect No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise on these shores soon.

Can we interest you in Dead or Alive Paradise? Practically the same thing!

No More Heroes [Marvelous via Andriasang]

Rebellion’s boss promised the Steam re-release of 1999’s original Aliens vs. Predator would support multiplayer. They’ve delivered, patching in the support for that today.

Here’s what it will and won’t do:

• Integrated with Steam Overlay
• Uses Steam name
• Host/Join games via bare-bones in-game lobby browser
• Can invite and join friends and others via the Steam overlay
• Game attempts host migration
• Dedicated servers are not supported or planned

The game is $4.99 but if you already bought it, the multiplayer patch will be served for free.

Aliens vs. Predator Classic 2000 [Steam]

Game programming may come to the masses in the most micro of forms with Nintendo’s upcoming do-it-yourself mini-game collection WarioWare D.I.Y., one of a handful of new titles we got to go hands-on with this week.

I’ve been a longtime fan of the WarioWare series of seconds-long games since the original WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! for the Game Boy Advance. But I’ve never been a fan of creating my own content in titles like LittleBigPlanet or Forza Motorsport, in part due to my limited attention span.

But the addition of a game editor to the next WarioWare game for the Nintendo DS—and the accompanying WarioWare D.I.Y. Showcase player for WiiWare—has changed that, turning me into an excited fan eager to start creating by offering a simple micro-game editor on top of the built-in 90 new WarioWare games.

While I didn’t get to edit any games myself, I did get a chance to play some of the user generated micro-games already created for a demo version of WarioWare D.I.Y. and had the opportunity to see a game—one as simple and built from scratch.

The creation process is split into digestible chunks.

The first is creating the art for a game, painting backgrounds then dropping sprites (aka “stamps”) on top of them to lay out the game’s interface. In the creation process demonstrated to us, in which a Nintendo game evaluator constructed a game that involved launching a rocket, the background was built with a grass texture in the bottom half of the screen, a star-filled night sky above the horizon. A pair of moai heads from the game’s clip art… sorry, stamps library, and a few trees were deposited on the ground.

Then came the rocket, custom drawn with the game’s Mario Paint-like sketching program. It’s about as fully featured of a drawing tool as you’d expect from a Nintendo DS game, with a not-too-deep color palette, erasers, copy and paste tools, fill buckets and a mirroring clone tool that made creating a symmetrical rocket (and its accompanying flames) a breeze.

WarioWare D.I.Y. also lets players add a few frames of animation to their sprites or lets them pick from a handful of appropriate classic sprites and patterns from games like Metroid, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. The drawing tool also offers a grid overlay, should players want to draw and animate more precise sprites.

After sketching out and arranging that rocket and its animated flames on the playfield, the Nintendo rep steering our demo defined the simple rules for the game in the “Assembly” section of WarioWare D.I.Y.’s game editor—tap the rocket, the rocket takes off, the player wins. That’s par for the WarioWare course in terms of micro-game complexity, rules which take far more time to set up than to execute during play. But it wasn’t daunting, thanks to helpful descriptions and a clean, concise editor for adding objects and triggers to a game’s AI, firing off animations and sound effects.

Speaking of sound, WarioWare D.I.Y. also comes with an equally capable sound editor. There is a selection of songs already built in to the game, which players can edit or tweak. Players can also create their own tunes from scratch using one of WarioWare D.I.Y.’s coolest features, which lets song writers hum into the Nintendo DS microphone, leaving the digitizing of notes up to the software.

WarioWare D.I.Y. lets players share, remix and upload their creations to the WiiWare version known as WarioWare D.I.Y. Showcase, which also adds another 70 games designed by Nintendo to the DS version. Nintendo also plans to add new micro-games through the in-game NinSoft store after the two games launch.

Micro-game sharing can be done from DS to DS or from Wii to Wii, provided everyone has the required software and Friend Codes in place.

WarioWare D.I.Y. may be the last game in the series I purchase—at least until Nintendo ships new hardware and a WarioWare game designed around it—due to the near limitless amount of micro-games it will bring the player. That the games are so short and the editor appears to have been so smartly designed—and that WarioWare’s distinctive art style(s) is so non-threateningly amateur in appearance—has almost assuredly made me into a future content generator.

Nintendo plans to release WarioWare D.I.Y. in North America on March 28 for the Nintendo DS. Won’t you join me in micro-generating then?

Until then, here are some helpful screen shots to go with that description.

Somalia has a ton of problems, but at least it does have cybercafes where kids can enjoy playing games. But a fun-killing Islamist group has ordered them shut down in a ban on games in territories under its control.

Hezb al-Islam ordered the cafes closed and declared that “laying video games will be prohibited. Video games are designed in such a way that they destroy our social traditions and for that reason, anybody found ignoring this order will be punished and equipment will be confiscated.” Yikes. “Punished” doesn’t sound like it means you’re grounded.

GamePolitics, which spotted the item, notes that by taking away games – much in the same way films have been banned – the group might be deliberately giving them nothing to do except join up a local militia fighting in and around the capital. So these Hezb al-Islam jokers are both mean and evil.

Islamist Group in Somalia Bans Video Games [Game Politics]

You may not think off Tecmo as a company that’s targeting the fairer sex with much of its line-up, but Quantum Theory producer Yasuo Egawa says that is exactly what the publisher has been doing for the past few years.

Egawa tells Edge that Tecmo wants to offer the female gamer something that’s not just a shooter with “big, sweaty men,” one of the reasons third-person shooter Quantum Theory features the AI-controlled co-op partner Filena, a “softer character” in the producer’s words. A softer character that players can throw at enemies, by the way.

To Egawa’s credit, I can see recent and upcoming releases like Again, Fret Nice and Monster Rancher reaching out to a broader, less horny for virtual T&A audience than, say, Dead or Alive Paradise or Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. But if Tecmo is banking on Quantum Theory to appeal broadly, I think their aim might be a bit off.

Tecmo: Quantum Theory Can Be Our ‘Third Pillar’ [Edge]