BlogThe Darkness II has been rated MA15+ (legally restricted for sale/hire to people over the age of 15) twice by the Classification Board of Australia, after voluntary re-submission to include a newer version containing a sex scene. Coming with the advice of "strong horror violence, blood and gore, sex scenes and coarse language", the game was not refused classification despite very strong violence. Read on

BlogKonami has announced that the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection will be available in the United States on November 8. Great if you live there. If you're in Europe - too bad. You have to wait until sometime next year, in 2012. Do we really still live in an era that requires months of extra waiting time for PAL releases because companies were too slack to get their European language localisation sorted earlier? Really? I call bullshit frankly, and I wish companies would move forward and localise things on time. It's not like Konami Europe didn't know the title was coming - what's the deal here? Final Fantasy XIII had no problem with this, neither did Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Even God of War III was only out a couple of days later in Europe than its United States release. Read on

BlogNatsume has announced both Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns and Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove are both being delayed until October in the United States. While there's perhaps a less sinister reason for Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove (Halloween theme in October makes sense) both are being delayed due to poor early sales of the Nintendo 3DS. Read on

BlogAustralia, the land of censorship. Or is it? For me, this is a part of normal life, with every form of conceivable media being rated by one board or another. Other countries (the United States specifically) seem to look down on our nation like we're run by some form of liberty destroying robots. Yet here we are at the crossroads; art galleries are now possibly going to have classification law setup.

Read on

BlogSony have officially unveiled the PlayStation Vita (previously known as the NGP). SCE's president Kazuo Hirai officially announced the device at E3 2011. Apparently vita means "life" in Latin. I personally associate 'vita' with either Vitalin from Commander Keen Episode V: The Armageddon Machine or Arnott's wholegrain crackers. The device will retail for US$249 or US$299 for the Wi-Fi and 3G models respectively. The device is currently slated for a late 2011 release.

Of course, the most exciting thing about the device is the potential for Zone of the Enders and Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner to be released on the device in HD glory. Read on

BlogThe Australian Classification Board determined that 2011's Mortal Kombat was Refused Classification meaning it is now illegal for the title to be sold, hired or advertised in Australia. The Classification Review Board is to meet on the 11th of March to review this decision.1 Read on

BlogThe federal and state Attorneys-General met in Canberra and on the agenda was an R18+ rating to be introduced for video games. They failed to come to a decision however have not rejected the idea just yet.

Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said:

Gamers have grown up. Games have grown up. We need to make sure we have a classification scheme that's grown up as well.1

BlogI haven't had as much time as I would have liked so far to play around with Final Fantasy XIV but I can share some impressions. Read on

BlogThe Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta is up now (and has been for a little over 7 hours), head over to http://entry.ffxiv.com/ to sign up. If you're like me and couldn't get a key all day due to server congestion, you might want to consider skipping the line just as I did. Read on

BlogThe Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta has been postponed and at this time has no release date. Read on

BlogThe Final Fantasy XIV open beta begins on Tuesday the 31st of August at 19:00 (PDT) or Wednesday September 1 at 2:00 (GMT) depending on which timezone is more relevant to you. [FFXIV Core] Read on

BlogIt occured to me a few days ago that I have far too many unfinished or even unplayed games. Yet despite these I have continued to purchase more? Why? This blog post will be a confession of the horrible atrocities I have committed.

Read on

BlogSquare Enix Music Online has revealed that pianist Benyamin Nuss will be releasing a piano album of Nobuo Uematsu's work on major label Universal Music (Deutsche Grammophon/DECCA).

Nuss is working with supervisor Thomas Boecker, the man who produced the world's first video game concert outside Japan in early 2003. This generous and passionate man (I say this as I have spoken to him before) has since produced many concerts and albums including drammatica The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura and Vielen Dank Masashi Hamauzu. Read on

BlogPopular film critic Roger Ebert (who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times) is standing by his previous argument that "video games can never be art".

He refers to a talk by Kellee Santiago (video game designer, producer and President & Co-Founder of thatgamecompany1) who made various points against Ebert's claim. His core argument is:

No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.

BlogAs reported by Kotaku Shigeru Miyamoto (Nintendo's creator of Mario, Zelda, Star Fox and Donkey Kong among others) has advised he's in no rush to retire at all.

Well, I am one of the company workers and the company has to retire me some time. So from that perspective, yes I may have to retire from Nintendo some day. But when I look around and see how aged cartoonists continue to work on their manga and how movie directors create new movies all the time, I understand that they would never retire. And by the same token, I guess I will still be making games somehow. The only question is whether the younger people will be willing to work with me at that far point in the future.