Gadgets and Video Games

Look, alright, we’ll level with you — we’ve got a short supply of schweet schwag hanging around Joystiq Prizeland as of late. That should at least partially help to explain last week’s absence of a contest. We also kind of felt like you might’ve been overloaded with games during our holiday giveaways at the end of 2009. What’s that?

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Swag Sunday: Bayonetta (360)

Taito is celebrating the success of its iPhone games in the best possible way: by making some of them cheaper. The Square Enix-owned publisher announced that its lineup of iPhone games appeared in Apple’s “Rewind 2009″ lists for 65 different regional App Stores, and that it’s temporarily discounting Cooking Mama and Bust-a-Move to mark the occasion. Cooking Mama is $3.99 for the first 50,000 people who download it, or until January 4 (whichever comes first). Bust-a-Move is just $2.99 from now until January 4. Taito also alerted us to new in-app purchases for that game, consisting of a new two-player cooperative mode and four additional 50-stage packs

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Taito iPhone games on sale for the holidays

For this week’s not-quite-the-holidays-yet giveaway, we’ve got a Band Hero prize pack for the Nintendo Wii and DS lined up for one lucky winner. That’s right! Not just Band Hero for your silly old home console, but also for your handheld (that is, unless you have a Nintendo DSi or XXL — sorry!). Prepare to be embraced by friends and relatives as a genuine American (or Canadian, excluding Quebec) hero while playing along to your favorite Taylor Swift song.

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Swag Sunday: Band Hero for everything Nintendo

Tecmo just sent out a release date for Again , the latest mystery adventure game from Hotel Dusk and Trace Memory developer Cing. North American gamers will be able to watch digitized actors explore the past and get headaches from dollar bills in March 2010. In addition, the company surprised us with another March 2010 release date for a Cing-developed DS game: Monster Rancher DS . Two DS games in Tecmo’s once-massive monster generating and collecting series came out on DS in Japan in 2007 and 2008 , featuring the ability to unlock monsters by drawing on the screen or talking into the microphone, but nothing was ever said about a North American release until now.

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Tecmo dates Again, dusts off Monster Rancher DS

EA Casual VP Harvey Elliott admits that the current price wars going on in the casual market is a concern, but feels that there will always be games customers will pay for more than others. CasualGaming.biz reports on Elliott’s keynote at the Casual Games Forum, where the executive said he doesn’t think that the gaming price wars incited by low-cost system’s like Apple’s App Store will go on forever. Elliott believes there are “certain games for certain markets, and sometimes free games will feel and fit right, but the same is true for low-priced games.” He thinks there will always be a place for “paid-for games of all price ranges” — we hope that’s what he thinks, because his job depends upon it. EA concerned by casual game price wars, but doesn’t think it will undermine industry originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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EA concerned by casual game price wars, but doesn’t think it will undermine industry

Sure, Sony’s orb-tipped PlayStation Motion Controller has yet to land in our laps, but that doesn’t mean the company’s not allowed to test the waters of other peripheral designs. Siliconera recently uncovered a series of patent illustrations for a new Sony-developed remote. There’s little info about the controller in the patent filing, but based on its shape and the manner in which the dotted hand is holding it, we’ve come up with a few titles which might implement the device. Buzz: Extreme Buzzer Trivia Challenge Champagne Shake N’ Spray Box Cutter: Deluxe Edition Imagine: Pipe Bombz Scene It?!: The Game Where You Pretend to Masturbate Arthur Fonzarelli’s Thumbs-Up Training Program Stranglin’ Ostriches New Sony controller patent is rich with opportunities originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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New Sony controller patent is rich with opportunities

King of Fighters fans would probably really appreciate a live-action movie that deals with the series’ surprisingly detailed storylines faithfully, while bringing their favorite characters into real life in a recognizable way. Those are the exact people who should never, ever watch the King of Fighters movie. Disclosure: if we weren’t watching this behind-the-scenes trailer (after the break) for work, we would have turned it off as soon as the narration said that the fighting took place in another dimension. But then we would have missed being introduced to the white guy playing Kyo Kusanagi! And to Iori Yagami’s hockey getup. Don’t worry, the movie’s actually in good hands: the actress playing Vice has heard of King of Fighters .

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Behind the horrifying scenes of the King of Fighters movie

Who doesn’t like transforming robots? No one . Square Enix is reviving its classic Thexder franchise on PSP later this year as a download-exclusive title. According to Andriasang , the PSP version of Thexder NEO will feature a new easy mode, additional bosses and a six player online race mode. The game is getting a Japanese release on October 1st — the same day as the PSP Go launches.

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Square Enix reveals transformed Thexder Neo for PSP

Ubisoft has released the first of its developer diaries for Avatar: The Game . This video mainly covers the Avatar universe and how the game will be directly related to the film.

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Avatar: The Game: The Developer Diary

Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq (“LGJ”), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games : There are, in the legal profession, certain kinds of activities that really make a statement after the fact about just how big a company is. One of those activities is using subterfuge in either getting a deal done or in filing with the government. When I say subterfuge, I don’t mean with the intent to defraud anyone, but rather with the intent that things be kept a secret. Walt Disney used dozens of companies to acquire the land that would later become Disney World, and now Sony is using alternate entities to file for FCC clearances on the PS3 Slim.

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LGJ: Welcome to the Big Leagues of Deception