From Magic-Box:

Quote:- Nintendo of Europe confirmed that a GameCube version of Paper Mario (Super Mario RPG) will be coming out in the first half of 2004.

Quote:1. PS2 World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 -- 128,100 / 770,500
2. PS2 Monster Rancher 4 -- 100,800 / 100,800
3. GCN Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles -- 82,000 / 276,100
4. GBA Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire -- 54,400 / 132,200
5. GBA Super Mario Advance 4 -- 50,200 / 298,200
6. PS2 Super Robot Great War -- 40,500 / 154,100
7. GCN Kirby's Air Ride -- 38,200 / 246,400
8. PS2 Salmon Knight 3 -- 32,100 / 188,400
9. PS2 Live Power Pro Baseball 10 -- 28,500 / 421,200
10. PS2 The Masters -- 23,100 / 58,900

1. Game Boy Advance SP -- 64,400 / 1,500,400
1. Playstation -- 59,000 / 1,884,600
3. GameCube -- 26,900 / 435,400
5. Game Boy Advance -- 21,800 / 1,007,400
5. Playstation -- 1,200 / 52,500
6. Xbox -- 880 / 71,400

Nintendojo is reporting that uh... Game Informer is reporting that Nintendo and Konami may do a quick port of MGS2 (hopefully Substance) for release alongside of Twin Snakes. That would be good news for GC-only owners, but I just hope that they sell it for a reasonable price and not charge $40 for a straight port like Capcom did with RE's 2 & 3.

From VE3D:

Quote:August 20, 2003 -

At least two of last week's three fatal shootings outside Kanawha County convenience stores could be drug-related, authorities said Tuesday.
Chief Deputy Phil Morris sent a group of sheriff's deputies to Campbells Creek on Monday to interview residents, and they learned of concerns about methamphetamine use in the unincorporated area where the victims of Thursday's two separate shootings lived and where one shooting occurred.

...

Two Kanawha County Wal-Mart stores have pulled sniper-style video games from their shelves, company spokeswoman Melissa Berryhill said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Bentonville, Ark.

"We have not made a corporate decision to remove these games from our store shelves," she said. "Individual store managers can make a decision based on what they feel is right for the community."

One store is located in Carrier's hometown of South Charleston. The other is located in the nearby city of Nitro.

Both removed the games "Halo" and "Grand Theft Auto Vice City," Berryhill said.

They bought the Army Men franchise...

Quote:TheDeal has revealed more information on the recently completed auction of bankrupt 3DO's assests. The site reports that JoWood Productions Software got a hold of the Jacked Asset Group for $90,000, while Crave Entertainment snatched up the Army Men Asset Group for $750,000.

Also, 3DO CEO Trip Hawkins himself won a pair of bids—paying $200,000 for a backlist of pre-2001 titles, which included Jonny Moseley Mad Trix, and also acquiring 3DO’s internet patent, described as a business concept revolving around the trade of virtual products, for $205,000.

Patent Purchase Manager LLC also purchased a variety of development tools and IP for $75,000.

The Deal reports 3DO raised a total $4.6 million from the auction.

Thanks to Canadian copyright laws
http://techcentralstation.com/1051/techw...51-081803C

Quote:Blame Canada

A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago. In Canada.



"On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the (Canadian) Copyright Act dealing with private copying came into force. Until that time, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright, although, in practice, the prohibition was largely unenforceable. The amendment to the Act legalized copying of sound recordings of musical works onto audio recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy (referred to as "private copying"). In addition, the amendment made provision for the imposition of a levy on blank audio recording media to compensate authors, performers and makers who own copyright in eligible sound recordings being copied for private use."

-- Copyright Board of Canada: Fact Sheet: Private Copying 1999-2000 Decision



The Copyright Board of Canada administers the Copyright Act and sets the amount of the levies on blank recording media and determines which media will have levies imposed. Five years ago this seemed like a pretty good deal for the music industry: $0.77 CDN for a blank CD and .29 a blank tape, whether used for recording music or not. Found money for the music moguls who had been pretty disturbed that some of their product was being burned onto CDs. To date over 70 million dollars has been collected through the levy and there is a good possibility the levy will be raised and extended to MP3 players, flash memory cards and recordable DVDs sometime in 2003.



While hardware vendors whine about the levy, consumers seem fairly indifferent. Why? Arguably because the levy is fairly invisible - just another tax in an overtaxed country. And because it makes copying music legal in Canada.



A year before Shawn Fanning invented Napster, these amendments to Canada's Copyright Act were passed with earnest lobbying from the music business. The amendments were really about home taping. The rather cumbersome process of ripping a CD and then burning a copy was included as afterthought to deal with this acme of the digital revolution. The drafters and the music industry lobbyists never imagined full-on P2P access.



As the RIAA wages its increasingly desperate campaign of litigation in terrorum to try to take down the largest American file sharers on the various P2P networks, it seems to be utterly unaware of the radically different status of private copying in Canada.



This is a fatal oversight, because P2P networks are international. While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may make it illegal to share copyright material in America, the Canadian Copyright Act expressly allows exactly the sort of copying which is at the base of the P2P revolution.



In fact, you could not have designed a law which more perfectly captures the peer to peer process. "Private copying" is a term of art in the Act. In Canada, if I own a CD and you borrow it and make a copy of it that is legal private copying; however, if I make you a copy of that same CD and give it to you that would be infringement. Odd, but ideal for protecting file sharers.



Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying." I have not made you a copy, rather you have downloaded the song yourself.



The premise of the RIAA's litigation is to go after the "supernodes," the people who have thousands, even tens of thousands of songs on their drives and whose big bandwidth allows massive sharing. The music biz has had some success bringing infringement claims under the DMCA. Critically, that success and the success of the current campaign hinges on it being a violation of the law to "share" music. At this point, in the United States, that is a legally contested question and that contest may take several years to fully play out in the Courts.



RIAA spokesperson Amanda Collins seemed unaware of the situation in Canada. "Our goal is deterrence. We are focused on uploaders in the US. Filing lawsuits against individuals making files available in the US."



Which will be a colossal waste of time because in Canada it is expressly legal to share music. If the RIAA were to somehow succeed in shutting down every "supernode" in America all this would do is transfer the traffic to the millions of file sharers in Canada. And, as 50% of Canadians on the net have broadband (as compared to 20% of Americans) Canadian file sharers are likely to be able to meet the demand.



The Canada Hole in the RIAA's strategic thinking is not likely to close. While Canadians are not very keen about seeing the copyright levy extended to other media or increased, there is not much political traction in the issue. There is no political interest at all in revisiting the Copyright Act. Any lobbying attempt by the RIAA to change the copyright rules in Canada would be met with a howl of anger from nationalist Canadians who are not willing to further reduce Canada's sovereignty. (These folks are still trying to get over NAFTA.)



Nor are there any plausible technical fixes short of banning any connections from American internet users to servers located in Canada.



As the RIAA's "sue your customer" campaign begins to run into stiffening opposition and serious procedural obstacles it may be time to think about a "Plan B". A small levy on storage media, say a penny a megabyte, would be more lucrative than trying to extract 60 million dollars from a music obsessed, file sharing, thirteen year-old.



If American consumers objected -- well, the music biz could always follow Southpark's lead and burst into a chorus of "Blame Canada". Hey, we can take it….We'll even lend you Anne Murray.

Wherever you are...

And instead of using that hot Japanese girl, I'll use this ancient PA strip instead:

From IGN:

Quote:
August 19, 2003 - A recent rumor column in Japan's Dengeki GC gaming publication suggests that something big is in store for the Game Boy Advance. According to the publication, the system will see a super big (dare we say it -- Mega big) title released to Japan at the end of the year. This title is assured sales of a million, and could even reach sales of two million copies.
There aren't too many GBA games we can think of that could possibly achieve such numbers (and they all begin with Pokemon). The magazine promises clarification in its next issue, so stay tuned for next month!

In a very short time one of the coolest racers ever will finally be released: F-Zero GX!

It's only six days away!

Quote:President Satoru Iwata and former HAL Labs producer Masahiro Sakurai have reportedly held a number of reconciliation meetings in the past few weeks. The creator of Kirby, as well as the Super Smash Brothers series, decided to leave HAL earlier this summer due to conflicts over the development of Kirby Air Ride. As a result of the talks between the two Japanese gaming tycoons, Sakurai is now willing to work with Nintendo at some point in the future, although he will not be returning to his job at HAL Labs. Sakurai confirmed this report in an interview with the Japanese publication 'Nintendo Dream', and also stated that Iwata was compassionate and understanding about the decision to leave HAL.

Also, HAL Labs is now undergoing major internal changes and restructuring efforts, as a result.