Nick's News Roundup

Happy Friday The 13th everybody! Since Blogger was down for all of yesterday I couldn't post anything at all so here's a massive news update with all the news that's been going around the interwebs as of late.

Pinball News

Two bits of pinball in the news this week. As I posted on Tuesday Stern has a new teaser trailer for their new Tron pinball machine. They have said they will be releasing a gameplay video of it soon so whenever they upload it I'll be sure to share it. I'm glad their doing it because they did no advertising on their Youtube channel for The Rolling Stones. (Who's video I hope to complete this weekend) The fine folks over at PinballNews.Com have gotten brand new high res shots of the playfield and if you'd like to check em' out for yourself you can check the link HERE. I love the "Flynn's Arcade" scoop shot has a mini Tron Arcade game on top of it.

Here is a small video from Jersey Jack Pinball of the Wicked Witch of The West toy from their upcoming Wizard of Oz pinball machine!

OH WHAT A WORLD! WHAT A WORLD!!

Shooter News

Last night on Facebook CAVE announced that they will be releasing Deathsmiles IIX on Microsoft's "Games on Demand" service for the Xbox 360. The game will be released this Tuesday May 17th for 30 dollars. The game will be a straight port of the Japanese version so it won't be translated. The major thing to note is this announcement is only for North America. No plans of releasing the game in Europe have been announced as of yet.

I really think CAVE, G.Rev and any other company that makes shooters for the Xbox 360 should just go the extra mile and make all their games region free. It was great that Aksys took a chance with the first Deathsmiles but STG's are just too niche for American players. When you say shooters to a new school gamer they'll think you're talking about Counter Strike or Halo, not Raident Silvergun or Under Defeat. I hate region encoding all together, I don't want to have to buy a Japanese 360 just to play a handful of games that will never be released in the US. Let's hope that the companies will make all their games region free so people outside of Japan can enjoy the games they make too.

Fighting Game News

Yesterday Warner Brothers and NetherRealm Studios announced that they will be releasing a Mortal Kombat Collection for Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. The collection will have MK1, MKII and UMK3 for 800 MS Points or 9.99 on PSN. There will also be a special "Klassic Fight Stick" coming from PDP to go along with the release of the game. If you'd like to see the fight stick and the complete press release check out this link from TRMK.org Also, this weekend is the PDP Mortal Kombat tournament in Vegas. 22 grand is on the line. Check out G4 for a live feed of the event this weekend.

Also this week Namco/Bandai Games announced Soul Calibur V, but just like with SCIV it looks like this game is going to be a console exclusive. Some of the news on the game has it taking place 17 years after the last game with the main hero being Sophitia's son, Patroklos. Their also saying they will be focusing on short swords and that has a lot of people thinking that characters with longer weapons might get the axe. (Pun intended) I haven't been excited about a SC game since the one on Game Cube so lets hope they'll make a good game. Here's the trailer.

Movie News

Finally we got some news on the games and movies front. As you may have seen a few weeks ago I posted about a project called "Arcade: The Last Night at Chinatown Fair". The buzz around it has been very positive and they hit their donation goal in record time. You can still donate money to the project and get a copy of the movie on DVD or a T-Shirt that's based off of the CTF Token (Which I still have a dollar's worth of) plus a bunch of other things depending on how much you donate. They will be taking donations till the end of the month so if you'd like to help you can check out the Kickstarter page HERE!

Finally, the pinball documentary "Special When Lit" will be on The Documentary Channel next Saturday. So check your local listings to see if you get the channel and set your VCR, DVR's or just watch it. They'll be two showings at 8PM and 10PM. So I'll make sure to check it out after Dr. Who!

Have a great weekend everybody. Don't forget to check out our new Facebook page and our new page on Tumblr that I'll be updating daily!