Crispy Gamer News

Early today at the Tokyo Game Show, Capcom confirmed that Japanese multi-platinum selling PSP title, Monster Hunter Portable 2G will be coming to North American gamers as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Monster Hunter Portable 2G was the Japan-exclusive expansion to the popular Monster Hunter Freedom 2. Since its release in Japan earlier this year, the game has sold over 2.4 million copies, easily making it one of the most successful games ever for Sony’s PSP. In fact, according to Capcom, the Monster Hunter franchise has sold over 7.8 million units worldwide.

Packed with more than five hundred hours of gameplay and a slew of unreleased monsters, weapons, and missions, Capcom is promising that Monster Hunter Freedom Unite will be the biggest game of the series so far. One of the new features in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is a customizable AI “felyne” companion who will accompany players on quests and gather extra resources and can be shared and traded with other players. The game will also include an improved “Media Install Option,” which gives players the ability to save portions of the game from UMD to Memory Stick, resulting in much faster load times as well as improved battery life. Plus, as an added bonus, fans of the series will be able to transfer their character and data from Monster Hunter Freedom 2 over to the new game.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is scheduled for a North American release on PSP sometime in Spring 2009.

We’ve seen it demoed at E3. We’ve dealt with downtime as Xbox LIVE got ready for it. And now, finally, the folks over at Microsoft have given us a date for it. I’m talking, of course, about the “New Xbox Experience”, Microsoft’s updated dashboard interface. At the Tokyo Game Show yesterday, Microsoft announced that the new dashboard, along with all of its included features, will officially go live worldwide on November 19th.

The New Xbox Experience will allow Xbox 360 owners to create animated avatars, jump into a “LIVE Party” with up to seven friends, compete in new community games, share pictures and music, and even set up a virtual movie night, courtesy of new Netflix integration. The new dashboard will also dump the blade system of the current Xbox 360 dashboard in favor of a new design overhaul meant to make things easier to navigate.

“Our industry is defining the future of entertainment,” said John Schappert, corporate vice president of Interactive Entertainment LIVE, Software and Studios, while at the Tokyo Game Show 2008. “When the New Xbox Experience launches in just six weeks, we will be inviting the whole world to play.”

For some time now, Microsoft has been teasing gamers with talk of more titles set within the Halo Universe, from the upcoming Halo Wars real time strategy game to a mysterious Peter Jackson helmed Halo project. There was even an ambiguous trailer released last week from Bungie Studios about yet another mysterious Halo project. Well last night, at Microsoft’s Tokyo Game Show press conference, the curtain was finally raised on that last one, as the company formally announced the development of the standalone expansion, Halo 3: Recon.
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KOEI today revealed what games it plans to have on display at the Tokyo Game Show next week. The KOEI booth will be located in Hall 1, booth# “1-C1″ of Makuhari Messe. As one would expect from KOEI, several Dynasty Warriors games will be on display in addition to a new G1 Jockey game, a new Romance of the Three Kingdoms game and several new online games. Full list after the jump.

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Resident Evil: Degeneration, Sony Pictures’ and Capcom’s CG-animated film, will make its public debut October 10th at Tokyo Game Show. The animated film follows the continuing exploits Leon and Claire as they battle an army of zombies in a Midwestern airport. The film is set approximately seven years after the destruction of Raccoon City. For those of us not lucky enough to make it to TGS this year, have no fear. the film will also be shown New York City Horror Film Festival on November 13th and at a screening in Los Angeles on November 18th hosted by Fangoria.

The film is produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi (associate producer of Resident Evil: Apocalypse and video game producer of Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry 4) and directed by Makoto Kamiya (special effects director of L: Change The World, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack).

For a tease of the film, check out www.sonypictures.com.

While every other Japanese company attends the Tokyo Game Show next month, Nintendo will forgo (as usual) the annual event to hold its own press conference to make a few choice announcements, according to a news story in Nihon Securities Journal. While details on just what Nintendo will announce are not disclosed, Nintendo has confirmed that it does plan such an event and that announcements will be made. Yeah, we kind of picked that vibe up..

Will the company rehash what it plans to release later this year or make some new announcements about franchises that were conspicuously absent during E3 in July? Let the wild speculation begin, but I suspect it will be rolling out some announcements about sequels to a number of its core franchises.

Source: Nihon Securities Journal by way of a translation from Kotaku.