As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Marvelous Entertainment foreign press event was just that, marvelous. No More Heroes 2 was the big announcement for me, but it would be unfair to overlook the other promising titles shown there. The most charming of these is without question “Little King’s Story”. 4cr recorded a video of the press event and you can watch it below.

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Karaoke Joysound enables you to turn your Wii into a karaoke machine and comes complete with microphone. Even though the mic was not connected (and was for display only), Vinnk gave it a go so we could all enjoy his vocal genius. He sung Video Killed the Radiostar… (no really, he’s very good!).

The game plays exactly like any karaoke machine except that to get the songs you want you have to download them. It costs 300 yen (that’s $3 or £1.50 roughly) to download as many songs as you want but you only get to keep them for 24 hours (think of it as a rental). However, the company says that you can get any song you could ever want to sing. So effectively it’s like going out to sing karaoke in a little Japanese karaoke booth, except you don’t have to leave your sofa.

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Famous models disappear into the night, teenage girls are chopped into pieces in dank hotel rooms, and corrupt doctors murder patients for the mob. New York has always been a rough city, especially for the innocent victims and those police officers who must solve them. Fortunately, you’re on the case.

Unsolved Crimes puts you in the role of a NYPD homicide detective during the turmoil of the 1970’s. With your partner, you must solve a series of grisly murders. If that wasn’t stressful enough, your partner’s sister is kidnapped and the two of you have to crack the case before she becomes yet another victim. Should be easy, right?

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The kind folks at Empire Interactive have offered us four copies of the DS version of their new puzzler, Pipemania, to give away to our readers. If you’ve played through the hacking bits in Bioshock, you’ll be right at home with Pipemania’s gameplay. This puzzle game, which is a remake of 80’s classic Pipe Dreams, tasks players with finding the quickest and most efficient path to the goal using only a limited number of pipe pieces.

That’s boring if there’s no time limit, so we’re shaking things up a bit. We want you to take the blank level below and design the craziest path to the goal (no limit on the number of pieces, just a limit on the amount of space). Twists, turns, and swirls are all welcome (if not expected). Bonus points if you can embed a picture or a message in there using pipe pieces.

Note: You don’t need to use the little pipe pieces in the template, you can just paint in the path. We didn’t intend to make it *that* hard.

Once you’ve designed your path, send it to mailbag@4colorrebellion.com with the subject “Pipemania Giveaway.” We’re even give you an extra couple of days, just get your entry in by 11:59 PM on Tuesday, October 14th.

Click here for the level template
4cr Preview

A day late, but it is well worth it. Building Houses with Side Views isn’t just a great name, it’s also a really fun puzzle game. You have three different views to keep track of, and you have to make sure that the “house” you are building fits all three of those views. It reminds me of the real-life puzzle games that you can get at puzzle stores, like Block by Block.

The first puzzles are pretty easy, but you’ll definitely have some problems with the level 2 problems. I ended up with 100 (perfect score) on level 1, but only an 80 on level 2.

It’s definitely worth a playthrough, and at about thirty minutes, it’s a good length for some quick puzzling.

Building Houses with Side Views

Like every year, we’ll be hosting our Halloween contest. Except this year there’s gonna be more prizes (still getting some stuff for it).

This post is just a reminder that we will still have our contest at the end of the month. Final entries should be in by midnight EST on the 5th of November and we’ll pick a winner November 8th.

There’s gonna be two contests, one for pumpkins and one for costumes. You should have 4cr written somewhere (not photoshopped) on your picture. For pumpkins, you can send two pics. One in daylight with the 4cr sign, and one at night, without.

Here are the links to our past contest.
Costumes
2007
2006

Pumpkins
2007
2006
2005

More info on the contest in the final week of October.

Vinnk Edit: As has been pointed out, this is not Phoenix Wright 5 but rather a spinoff from the Ace Attorney series starring Miles Edgeworth. Sorry if anyone felt deceived by the title.

“There’s more time to play games when you have a straight perm,” I advise Holli on the necessities of life at 8am on Sunday.

I am a self-confessed Phoenix Wright addict. When a new game comes out I play non-stop until it’s finished — you won’t see me and I don’t want to go out for anything, but when I do I bring my DS. If I’m talking to you, yeah I may be nodding along, but I’m actually thinking about how that salt got in the box and why the dead body of a ringmaster is lying on it.

I was super excited when I found out that the newest instalment was going to be shown at the Tokyo Game Show! My one drawback was my skills in Japanese, because right now the game isn’t in English. I do well on an everyday level, but thankfully I’ve never had to use words such as ‘objection’, ‘kill’, ‘murderer’, etc. So I was feeling so-so about the possibilities of doing a good write-up on it — hopefully I can do the game “justice”…

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This completes our look at the 2008 TGS girls. Please revel in their loveliness! I know I did…

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After a very relaxing first day in Tokyo it was time to actually enter the crazed, frantic world of the Tokyo Game Show. Thursday was not a public day so there were far less people and much shorter lines. We raced around trying to cover as much as possible. Here is a recap of the first actual day of TGS.

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So after several requests, Kevin agreed to write a post on the girls at the Tokyo Game Show. Armed with his camera he set out towards the first booth, however the girls seemed to have a slightly different idea…

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Holli and I spent a little too long at the stand for Cooking Mama and Gardening Mama today and yesterday, but sadly we were drawn in by the pretty lights and huge TV screen. Being an owner of both Cooking Mama and Cooking Mama 2 I felt I had to go in and check it out.

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And now it’s time for a look at another one of my all time favorite games as a Wiimake. Even though the video doesn’t really show anything (and again, no sound) it’s still a sight for sore eyes. I just love the Pikmin universe and can’t wait to jump back in it.

You guys brought up a ton of good points and concerns over the controls of the Jungle Beat Wiimake. I’m still hoping for the best on that one. It seems like Pikmin will be a much easier proposition for Wii control. I didn’t see any way of drawing a box, RTS style, around Pikmin in this video, but I’m certainly hoping for it.

Pikmin Wiimake Video

I am a big fan of the Grasshopper Manufacture game No More Heroes. I played this game for the first time at last years TGS. A few days ago Marvelous informed me that the director of No More Heroes, Suda51, was going to make an announcement at TGS. So of course, I went to the show expecting something fun. Suda delivered as usual and Kate got it on film. If you listen closely you can hear me screaming like a teenager at a rock concert. Click below to continue on to the embarrassing video.

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Today at TGS, we got the chance to play some new Wii games, one of which was Kororinpa 2. Actually, it’s going to be called Kororinpa 2 when it’s released in the UK and Marble Saga when it’s released in the USA.

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One of the things that angers me most in the world is when someone or something gets, in my opinion, undeserved praise. This extends to games as well. So, in our staff emails, when someone mentions a game or movie that I feel is overrated, I tend to voice my opinions very loudly. I may be a little harsh in my assessments at times, but I always try my best to give good reasons why I feel the way I do.

It’s actually become such a frequent event, that the other writers have suggested that I have a weekly “Evan Hates _” column. So I bring you “EVAN HATES YOUR FACE” (thank Shatton for the fantastic name). It’s not going to be weekly, and I am not going to force it. I think it would be better if I just posted what I wrote in the staff email, expanding to it and fixing up some grammar, but leaving it basically the same.

So without further ado, my thoughts on No More Heroes!

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