Megaton News

…and for you rich Europeans 250.00 euros!!

Target will no longer carry Manhunt 2 because of the potential to hack the PSP version to remove the violence filters. ABCNews reporting:

On the heels of criticism over its violent content, the video game “Manhunt 2″ will not be carried by Target, the company confirmed to ABCNEWS.com in a statement Tuesday.

“All video games and computer software sold at Target currently carry ratings by the Entertainment Software Rating Board — from early childhood through mature audiences,” the statement said. “While ‘Manhunt 2′ was given a ‘Mature’ rating by the ESRB, we received additional information that players can potentially view previously filtered content by altering the game code. As a result, we have decided not to carry the game.”

This despite the ESRB saying that Manhunt 2 could keep it’s M rating:

During a conference call this afternoon, ESRB president Patricia Vance gave the rating board’s answer: Rockstar did nothing wrong.

“Once numerous changes to the game’s code have been made and other unauthorized software programs have been downloaded to the hardware device which circumvent security controls that prevent unauthorized games from being played on that hardware, a player can view unobscured versions of certain violent acts in the game,” Vance said.  “Contrary to some reports, however, we do not believe these modifications fully restore the product to the version that originally received an AO rating, nor is this a matter of unlocking content.”

The original reporting isn’t clear, but it seems likely that Target will be pulling all versions of Manhunt 2 rather than just the PSP version of the game.

From timesonline.co.uk:

Like many middle-class, suburban American parents, Shannan and Joey Troiano worried about their son’s behaviour and his bad grades at high school. And like many wayward teenagers, Cory Ryder was grounded for weeks at a time, had a PlayStation confiscated and was banned from watching TV.

Less typically, this 16-year-old was plotting to murder his parents by hiring a hitman, while his mother was organising a sting operation involving a police officer posing as a contract killer.

Cory’s trial is scheduled to begin today at the circuit court in St Mary’s County, Maryland. His mother is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution.

At an earlier court hearing Mrs Troiano, 35, explained how her emotions were torn between being an agonised mother and a murder victim. “I miss him being at home,” she said, “and I miss us joking around and kidding around. And then in the very same breath – I don’t know what this kid will do, because it’s not my son. That can’t be my little boy sitting there.”

Mrs Troiano remembers the night on June 2 when she discovered that the vague threats her son had made were serious. A woman Cory trusted, the mother of one of his friends, took him to a hotel room where he met an undercover police officer pretending to be a hitman.

At home in southern Maryland, Mrs Troiano told her husband that Cory would never go through with it and began frantically tidying the house, according to an account in The Washington Post yesterday.

After a few hours’ waiting, the policeman called: Cory was in custody and would be charged with attempted murder. Mrs Troiano fell to her knees in the bathroom she was cleaning and burst into tears.

Police say that Cory offered the undercover officer his stepfather’s new pickup truck as payment for killing his parents. “Two bullets is all it takes,” he is alleged to have said.

His mother, a financial manager at Patuxent River naval station, and stepfather, a computer specialist, had lived an ordinary life with Cory and his two stepsisters. Mrs Troiano had left his father when Cory was little more than a year old but, by the time she remarried, her son’s behaviour was getting steadily worse.

He walked out of lessons at Spring Ridge Middle School in Lexington Park, smashed a fire extinguisher case and then broke into the county fairgrounds, where he vandalised property. A judge sentenced him to supervised probation and his parents attended no less than 36 meetings with the authorities about him.

But Cory dropped out of school and then, after stealing $45 (£22) from his sister’s piggy bank, had a fight with his mother, which led to him being kicked out of home. He has since told officials that he was upset about being thrown out of the house and that he felt pressured to talk to the man in the hotel.

Cory insists that he never intended to have his parents killed and that he wanted to call the police that night in the hotel room. A judge has ruled that he should be tried in the juvenile system, which means that he cannot be held beyond his 21st birthday.

He has also been writing to his mother, saying: “You know I love you with all my heart mom!” Mrs Troiano fears that he is being manipulative. She wanted him tried in an adult court where he would have faced a much longer sentence. “He needs to understand what he did was wrong,” she told the court in September. “I’m scared to death that if this kid is serious, and they put him in a three-month programme, they’re going to release him to the street.”

Sounds like entrapment, unlike the Halo 3 kid who beat up his Mom and the cops.

Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law has been delayed until sometime in ‘08 to avoid being crushed by other holiday releases.

Capcom’s Christian Svensson said:

“The game is and has been finished, submitted and approved, however we felt releasing the game on the same day 112 other SKUs released was not ideal for its chances. Retail buyers agreed.

As such, we’ve opted to move the title out into a slightly cleaner release window. This will allow us to get on more shelves, do a bit more outreach to the media and hopefully get the fans in on the action a bit more.”

Scans/photos of Famitsu click to enlarge.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

There haven’t been any updates for a while I’ve been having some internet connection issues. With Halo 3 dominating all gaming coverage I haven’t missed much, but here’s some of what I did miss.

The Limited Edition version of Halo 3 has shitty packaging resulting in scratched disks.

Microsoft announces they will replace the damaged Halo 3 disks for free through Feb 1st 2008.

Grasshopper Interactive will be working on the next installment of Fatal Frame for the Wii, once they’re finished with No More Heroes.

Activision buys Project Gothem Racing developer Bizarre Creations.

The new slightly thinner PSP is projected to have sold 326,645 in Japan as of Sept. 23.

Microsoft claims Halo 3 as biggest day in US entertainment history:

Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360 exclusive game “Halo 3” has officially become the biggest entertainment launch in history, garnering an estimated $170 million in sales in the United States alone in the first 24 hours. The Xbox 360 title beat previous records set by blockbuster theatrical releases like Spider-man 3 and novels such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

From Jeux-France

Featured at the Square Enix Closed Mega Theatre are trailers for the new KH spinoff games.

KH Coded – Mobile
KH 358/2 Days (358 Days Over 2) – DS
KH Birth by Sleep – PSP

Source

Update from 1up

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for PSP looks to be a single-player adventure in the vein of the PlayStation 2 iterations, though not “Kingdom Hearts III.” Birth by Sleep’s protagonist was not explicitly named in the presentation, but he looked an awful lot like Zack of Final Fantasy VII/Crisis Core fame.

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days for Nintendo DS appears to star Roxas from Kingdom Hearts II, but its main draw looks to be four-player simultaneous play using members of Organization XIII. It will be in full 3D.

Kingdom Hearts: Coded is a mobile game, likely for Japanese cell phones. It stars the familiar cast of main characters from the original Kingdom Hearts (Sora & co.) and seems to be set between the first and second PlayStation 2 titles.

Each title is said to have a time-related theme: Birth by Sleep is “the distant past,” KH: 358/2 Days is “time of the other side,” and Code is “time has gone by.” More as it comes!

Update 2 from Duckroll

KH 358/2 Days:

- Begins with the ending of KH Re:CoM, and mentions “the opposite side of time, while Sora was sleeping”.

- The entire game is centered around Roxas, and his time while Sora is asleep, as expected.

- XIII Org game total. 4 player multiplay.

- Ends with “In another 151 days, I will disappear from this world…”

KH Birth by Sleep:

The main character of Birth by Sleep is Terra

- Begins with the the KH ending going backwards to the Opening. “The distant past”, “Destiny is born from the sleeping secret”.

- Takes place in Hollow Bastion.

- Features the characters from the KH2FM+ secret ending, including the old man.

More Here