Games Cheats and Reviews

At the end of a week that saw both Nintendo and — especially — Capcom report big drops in profit for the first fiscal quarter of the year (ending June 30), Sega has now also reported their own numbers, and surprise-surprise, it’s actually good news…kind of. Despite disappointing sales from two of their more high-profile releases, Sega still saw a profit of 7 billion yen ($80.8 million), although much of it was due to their pachinko business in Japan.

Sega reports that Alpha Protocol and Iron Man 2 both recorded sluggish sales, with the former selling 700,000 units globally and the latter only slightly better at 1.12 million units (via Industry Gamers). “While domestic sales were mostly firm, in the overseas markets, sales of new titles remained slow as affected by the adverse market condition,” Sega said.

Despite this statement, though, Sega actually saw most of their game sales in the quarter coming from overseas, with 1.68 million units sold in North America, 1.33 million in Europe, and only 270,000 in Japan (for a worldwide total of 3.29 million units sold).

During today’s discussion panel at Comic-Con 2010, Capcom unveiled a handful of new screenshots for the upcoming 3DS version of Street Fighter IV.

No specific new announcements were made about the game, so we present these screenshots without further comment. Apologies for the quality — I am in no way a professional photographer, and my girlfriend’s camera is merely adequate.

Capcom bans Germany

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At a discussion panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2010, Capcom’s Keiji Inafune discussed the origins of Dead Rising’s 2 casino setting, revealing scrapped plans to make the game take place in a Disneyland-inspired theme park.

The original Dead Rising took place in a shopping mall, explained Inafune, and because Japan doesn’t have American-style malls, the team had to go on a trip to research them.

Tune in live right here for our on-the-spot liveblog coverage of Capcom’s preview panel at Comic-Con 2010!

What is this panel exactly? We’ll let Comic-Con’s official show guide explain:

While the annual Evo Championship Series fighting game tournament has famously produced many crazy-awesome YouTube videos like this, fighting game fans will finally be able to witness the action as it happens for the first time this year. Capcom and Evo have announced that they’ll be airing a webcast of the entire tournament on G4TV.com, as well as an Evo-dedicated special on G4’s cable network.

The announcement was made on the Capcom Unity blog, with the press release promising 45 hours of live online streaming, covering the entire tournament from its start on July 9 through to the finals on July 11. Then, on July 20th, a 30-minute special will air on G4 covering the history of the tournament and re-airing the finals.

This year’s tournament — taking place in Las Vegas — will feature the following six games in its lineup:

Monster hunting (example pictured above) is all the rage in Japan, with Capcom’s Monster Hunter series selling into the millions and becoming a nationwide phenomenon over there in the space of a few short years. It makes sense, then, that other developers are trying to horn in on the formula — first Namco Bandai with God Eater, and now Square Enix with Lord of Arcana, a PSP title announced this week in Japanese magazines.

Set in a fantasy world protected by the power of Arcana, the game lets you play the role of a Slayer, a rugged monster killer-for-hire that you can customize to your liking. Starting at a village base, you’ll pick up quests and venture into the wilderness to kill all sorts of fearsome creatures, using the spoils to upgrade your equipment. Sound a bit familiar? The Monster Hunter “inspiration” isn’t the slightest bit hidden here, no, right down to the desert and fire cave-themed fields Square Enix is showing off in screenshots. Up to four players can hunt at once via wireless LAN play.

The game, which is due out sometime in 2010 in Japan, is being produced by Takamasa Shiba, whose previous work includes stuff in the Drakengard and Final Fantasy Tactics series. A free demo is slated for launch sometime in August.

Game compilations run the gamut from lavish affairs crammed with bonus content and a suite of options to cheap, barely-functional shovelware. Capcom’s Mega Man Zero Collection holds the middle ground between those extremes. It’s a bare-bones anthology to be sure, consisting of four Game Boy Advance games with few bells and whistles. On the other hand, the included titles play perfectly, and they’re excellent games to begin with.

Among the few additions MMZC offers over the standalone games, the most important is the option to play through the entire series in sequence. The Zero games remain the most story-driven niche of the entire Mega Man franchise, picking up a century after the Mega Man X series and ultimately building to a very conclusive finale that brings unambiguous closure to the tales of heroes X and Zero.

Like any fighting game after its initial release, extensive play of Super Street Fighter 4 has uncovered a few exploitable balance issues that can rob matches of their competitiveness. But Capcom’s already on the case as they’re planning to release a patch for the game on June 15.

The patch will be rolled into the previously revealed free Tournament Mode DLC that’s releasing June 15, and as you’d expect, it fixes various exploitable moves and reconfigures more finer issues like counter damage. The fixes in the patch were detailed on Capcom’s Japanese SSF4 blog, which Andriasang (via Event Hubs) has translated.

Here is a detailed (and fighting-game-jargon filled) listing of the fixes: