New Super Mario Brothers info

penny-arcade forum has the scoop from Nintendo Power's latest issue. It looks pretty clear that this is going to have some of the greatest elements of the original SMB as well as a few things incorporated from SMW and SM64. MAY 7 CANNOT COME FAST ENOUGH.

Meteos

In Meteos, a puzzle game from Q Entertainment, you manipulate falling blocks into patterns of 3 of the same color vertically or horizontally in order to clear them from the screen. No! I swear this isn't like Puzzle League! or Dr Mario! or even Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine! Meteos can be played with the D-pad for greater accuracy, but using the stylus to move blocks around is much faster (though you will drag the wrong block from time to time, its quicker to correct that mistake). The real originality of this titles shines through with being about to launch your blocks back up into the air when you've cleared them. They'll take all the blocks on top of them as well, though your planetary gravity will make them fall back down if theres too many. Never fear, just make some more matches and they'll blast away. Action doesn't take long to get fast and furious. Playing the same game for more than a few minutes will mean blocks falling at an almost unmanagable speed! This is where reflexes for making quick color matches comes in handy as you can clear sometimes 30 or 40 blocks at a time with a couple moves. The game keeps count of all the blocks you clear, and you can use those to buy items, planets (each with specific tile sets), and sounds from the game. Multiplayer is also a blast and you can easily slap together a 4 player game off only 1 game card. This is really an ideal title for those of us waiting for Tetris DS to come out or still keeping their DS' GBA slot warm with Wario Ware or some other great pick-up-and-play title. Puzzle games never really die or get old, so even though this one has been out since middle of last year, its still worth picking up if you haven't already. Meteos Trailer

Super Mario Brothers Race - Google Video

Head-to-Headrace on the original Super Mario Brothers. Some amazing stunts used on this, runs about 6 and a half minutes.

Soul Calibur III: Arcade Edition

Over the weekend Kotaku got the jump on reporting about the SCIII's jump to arcades Now it looks likea preview from 1UP.com has even more details. Oh man, I just notice the owl-looking character and was about bust out some photoshop, but someone beat me to it! O RLY? YA RLY.

Chicago

Not unlike Ferris Bueller, I spent my day off in Chicago having an unheard amount of fun with 2 of my friends (powet forum regulars TheOrange and Phil Bond). First up was GameWorks. Instead of tokens or quarters they use some weird card system that depending on the day will subtract either points or time after you swipe into your cabinet of choice. As advanced and cool as this sound, the system was DOWN when we arrived and so all we could do was stare at the Mario Kart arcade machine. A helpful attendant gave a free play while we waited for the card system to be fixed and we sat down to enjoy some MK action. The action was less than spectacular. We were not impressed and realized we were missing nothing by not having a machine closer to home. Then the card system was working again so we gave the game another go. Wow. What a difference. After adjusting to the controls and weapons system a little bit we were having a great time. We tried most of the tracks and the ultimate conclusion is if these tracks and weapons don't make it into the Revolution Mario Kart it'll be a shame. Elsewhere in GameWorks, my friends tried Guitar Freaks, a precursor to the PS2 hit Guitar Hero. This game actually did suck, as it lacked any licensed music and controlled a lot simpler. We had to hop out of there and head for another arcade, Nickel City, for the Soul Calibur III regional tournament. Powet forum regular Phil Bond has been in Soul Calibur tournaments for longer than the site has been around, and though Chicago hosts some of the best players in the world, this was to be a great learning experience. Nickel City charges $2 to get in and then after that none of the games take quarters or tokens, just nickels. Dropping 8 coins into the Mario Kart machine there felt like a lot but for only 40 cents a play it wasn't bad. In the back of the arcade there was 2 rows of Free-Play machines. Older games, but still some really good stuff. Mortal Kombat 1, Killer Instinct 2, a half dozen variations of Street Fighter, TMNT the arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man, Tetris... yeah it was really worth the $2 to get in there to play all these games until you got tired. I got a bag of nickels and ended up only really spending it on San Fransisco Rush 2049, which I've got on dreamcast in a closet somewhere. It was a real throwback to about 6 years ago. After a breif intermission at a Chinese Buffet and JToy (an import shop formerly located in the Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa), we retired to TheOrange's apartment. There we played some real Guitar Hero, Mario Kart and Meteos on DS, and I got to see what Halo 2 looks like on an xbox 360 (cleaner graphics, higher frame rate!). It was the most sunrise-to-sunset gaming I'd done a long, long while. Why haven't we done this before?

How to make your DS not "lite"

Much ado about the slimmed and trimmed DS Lite. But what if we want a BIGGER DS? You could pop on a 4GB MAX Media Playerfor $225 smackers and make your system heavier and more functional! For just heavy and not fucntional, have some cake Damn I'm hungry and want to watch Lost now.

A Peak at PS3 Development Kits

Kikizo Games has an exclusive hands on with the final PS3 devkit running near final hardware, all backed up by anonymous developer comments. The site is probably getting hammered with links right now so it takes a minute to load a page, but its an interesting read.

LEGO Star Wars!

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy sequelizes probably the best Star Wars game in years, and certainly the best based on the prequel trilogy. Doing episodes 4, 5 and 6 I really, really hope to get a LEGO Admiral Ackbar.