Nine Over Ten 9/10

It’s just two more weeks to the release of Need for Speed: Shift! Check out the following video which is Need for Speed: Shift’s TV advert in HD:

Check this out, Play-Asia’s summer sale is back in the form of Visa Summer Promotion. This time it’s a little more exclusive as discounts only apply to those who use VISA cards to purchase stuff.

Here’s a snippet from the website:

In partnership with VISA, from now until September 6th, all in-stock items except those that have been released during the last 30 days, are discounted by 20%. Please be reminded that this is a VISA exclusive promotion, only valid for orders paid with your VISA card directly at Play-Asia.com. Make sure to watch out for the 20% off discount logo on the final payment page.

So if you have a VISA card, head on over to Play-Asia and start enjoying 20% off your purchases, be it videogames, or toys or accessories. Now’s a pretty good time to stock up on imported titles among other things.

Click here to head over to Play-Asia, or here to read more about the promotion.

I can’t recall reading the list of cars that are going to be featured in the upcoming Need for Speed: Shift, but if the car garage screenshots that I received today are to be taken as it is, you can expect a list in excess of 70 cars!

Ranging from Japanese speedsters such as the new Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and Nissan GT-R SpecV to European marques such as Lamborghini Reventon and Maserati MC12 GTI and not forgetting American muscle such as the Viper SRT10 and Corvette Z06, the game seems to have something for everyone.

Check out the pics below, and you can download the entire collection of 72 screenshots here.

Road America, that’s a pretty strange name for a race track, but it’s a pretty old and illustrious one at that. Here are some trivia gleaned from it’s Wikipedia page: It has hosted races since the 1950s(!) and currently hosts SCCA Speed World Challenge Series, American Le Mans, ASRA and AMA Superbike.

The course is one of only a handful of race courses to maintain its original configuration and measures 6.5 km in length and has 14 turns. It kinda reminds me of European race courses with  many elevation changes.

This track has been featured in a number of video games, but its inclusion in the upcoming Need for Speed Shift marks the first time this track is featured in any NFS game. Having said that, it’s pretty appropriate that the developers came up with the following NFS: Shift trailer that doubles-up as a guide to racing in Road America! And I must say, it does look pretty hardcore:

Konami is on fire today with iPhone-related discounts. First Silent Scope’s price was dropped to 99 cents and now, for all you baseball fans (and Power Pros fans out there), Power Pros Touch is now selling at a super low price of, you guessed it, 99 cents!

For those of you who wouldn’t spend a buck on this, there’s Power Pros Touch Lite coming soon to an App Store near you, with 2 teams from the full game and a single inning of play. For further details check out the press release below, or click here to get Power Pros Touch now.

POWER PROS TOUCH NOW AVAILABLE FOR 99 CENTS ON iPOD AND iPOD TOUCH

Players Can Now Hit a Home Run with Power Pros Touch for 99 Cents and Power Pros Lite Free Download Coming to App Store Soon

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced that Power Pros Touch is now available for 99 cents on the App store. Additionally, a free download of Power Pros Touch Lite is also on its way soon! Power Pros Touch will be offered to consumers for 99 cents from August 27 to August 30 so casual gamers and baseball enthusiasts can experience authentic baseball action without breaking the bank.

Like the original, Power Pros Touch Lite utilizes the innovative user interface of the iPhone and iPod touch to allow players to pitch, run and hit with a tap or slide of the screen. Players can choose from two of the original teams and play against the CPU for one inning of action. With rich and dynamic graphics, the Power Pros Touch Lite App allows baseball fans to pick-up-and-play on the go.

Gamers can experience the full original game experience from the crowd noise to the fight songs in Power Pros Touch for a low cost for a limited time only. The game offers 120 variations of play-by-play commentary as they customize their season, selecting anywhere from 25, 50, or 162 games. During gameplay, players can also choose from six baseball teams and play against the device with three different difficulty settings including Novice, Normal and Expert. Players can chose to play three, six or nine innings per game to satisfy their on-the-go baseball cravings.

Power Pros Touch Lite is coming soon and Power Pros Touch will be available for 99 cents from August 27 to August 30 only on the App Store for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

I don’t quite remember the arcade game Silent Scope, but nevertheless, Konami released the game for the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch back in April 2009. If you haven’t gotten the game at that point of time, good news, as the game is now at an offer price of just 99 cents from the 27th to the 29th of August 2009.

Check out the press release below:

SILENT SCOPE NOW AVAILABLE FOR 99 CENTS ON APP STORE

Gamers Warm up Their Sniper Skills as They Get the Chance to  Own the Popular Arcade Game for Less

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced that Silent Scope for the iPhone and iPod touch is now available on the App Store for 99 cents, exclusively from August 27 to August 29. Based on the popular arcade game originally released in 1999, players test their marksmen abilities on the go as they protect and defend the American First Family in the fast-paced rail shooter.

Silent Scope takes full advantage of Apple’s innovative Multi-Touch user interface, enabling players to save the President and the first family from terrorists. Throughout the game, players can chose from two different gameplay modes including Arcade Mode and Training Mode. The Training Mode allows new players to practice precision shooting, while the Arcade Mode features three stages of gameplay for the veteran sniper: Story, Shooting Range and Time Attack. Additionally, Arcade Mode gives all players the chance to change the game settings to Difficulty, Player Life and Branch Attack.

Silent Scope is now available for 99 cents from August 27 to August 29 only on the App Store for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Click here to purchase the game from Apple’s App Store.

If you are a Mario Kart Wii fan, or simply a Nintendo related merchandise or collectibles, check out the recently released Mario Kart Wii Key Chain ToyVol. 2 from Banpresto. This official Nintendo-licensed collection consists of Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach in their respective vehicles along with the Green Shell and Lightning Bolt.

Measuring about 5 centimeters, each of them carry the price tag of USD 6.49 and can be ordered separately from Play-Asia.com. Interested? Check out the following links for order information:

• Mario Kart Wii Vol 2. Key Chain Toy: Thunder (Lightning)
• Mario Kart Wii Vol 2. Key Chain Toy: Midori Koura (Green Shell)
• Mario Kart Wii Vol 2. Key Chain Toy: Luigi
• Mario Kart Wii Vol 2. Key Chain Toy: Mario
• Mario Kart Wii Vol 2. Key Chain Toy: Princess Peach

Here’s a long press release. This time it’s Nickelodeon leveraging its vast library of online games to create games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. From a business point of view, that’s pretty smart actually, considering that consumers will have to pay for what was previously free-to-play on a PC/Laptop’s Internet browser.

The price of admission to get your casual gaming fix on the go is pretty cheap though, at .99 cents a game. Casual games FTW people.

ADDICTINGGAMES BRINGS TOP ONLINE CASUAL GAMES TO THE iPHONE™

iPark It!, World Wars, and 50 States Now Available for Download

NEW YORK – Aug. 25, 2009 – Nickelodeon’s AddictingGames, the largest source of the best free online games with 15 million unique visitors (source: comScore US, July), launches some of its most popular online casual games on the iPhone.

Available at the Apple iTunes store for .99 cents per game, iPark It!, World Wars, and 50 States are the first of several games to be released on as part of AddictingGames iNetwork, a cross-promotion publishing network on which game developers can tap into AddictingGames.com’s promotional reach, upsell capabilities and social gaming features.

“These apps pull from some of our hottest titles developed by our talented developers who continuously pump out entertaining content for teens and adults,” said Dave Williams, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Games Group. “As the online gaming market continues to mature, people want to play games wherever they are, and we will be there with the AddictingGames iNetwork.”

New AddictingGames now available on the iPhone include:

ParkIt! – Using the touch screen controls, guide your car through the parking lot to the flashing parking spot. Combine your driving skills with your speed to get the best time and score. Forty levels make this a game to play again and again. Download: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323253827&mt=8

World Wars – Take the world by force! Battle one to seven opposing armies, wage war and strategize your way to Victory! Download: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323382721&mt=8

50 States – Satellite pictures bring you the background on this version of 50 States. Challenge your social studies teacher to a hardcore geography duel and win. Download: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323249156&mt=8

More titles based on properties from Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL, MTV and other divisions of MTV Networks will be part of the AddictingGames iNetwork and released in coming months.

Developers who sign up for the AddictingGames iNetwork will gain access to the AddictingGames suite of game community services such as high scores, level builders, Facebook Connect integration, player matching, and more in exchange for a revenue share of their titles.

AddictingGames on the iPhone will be supported on AddictingGames.com and Shockwave.com through weekly “iPhone Game of the Week” spotlights, promotions across select MTV Networks’ sites, and within the AddictingGames titles on the iPhone. Certain game apps will also be prominently featured on AddictingGames.com with “Download now on iPhone” promotions running across associated game pages.

Here’s a pretty big update for Need for Speed: Shift, inconjunction with this year’s gamescom in Cologne, Germany, with a whopping 31 new pictures. Yup, the game is certainly pretty and Nine Over Ten 9/10 has the raw files (1280 * 720) for you to make them your own (e.g. put ‘em up as your wallpaper…click here to download).

See whether can you spot makes such as Nissan, BMW and Aston Martin in the screenshots below:

There’s plenty of weird stuff coming out from Japan. One of my good friends is slightly obsessed with Hatsune Miku, the “female voice” of the Character Vocal Series, a computer program that according to Wikipedia, synthesizes singing in Japanese! Imagine that, singing by just typing in lyrics and melody.

Check out the end result in the video below. For those of you looking for Hatsune Miku stuff, there are even games and other forms of merchandise available, check it out over here.

A chance encounter with a DVD collection led me to of all things, a Mazinger-Z parody in the form of the super-cute Panda-Z. The anime shorts don’t really make sense, but those bunch of robot  Pandas make for a quick afternoon entertainment:

Anyways, the Panda-Z DVD collection comes with a limited edition Panda-Z figurine, and the whole thing is priced at just USD 11.90! Check it out over here.