News, rumors and other information (originally posted 11/29/95)
Capcom's X-Men: COTA
In talks with sources at Capcom recently we found out that their long awaited X-Men: Children of the Atom game for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, may not be out until early 1996 at the soonest. Apparently there are US licensing problems that need to be resolved before an official release date can be set.
ALG Kills Coin-Ops Division
In a recent announcement, American Laser Games announced that they are pulling out of the arcade coin-op business and focusing exclusively on their home PC CD-Rom and console platform development. Never fear though ALG will have a limited arcade presence do to licensing of their software titles to other companies. One such title will be a 3-D virtual reality version of the game Orbatak which will be released by Kaiser Electro-Optics (developers of the Virtual Odyssey system).
Dropped as well...
In the dropped title department, Capcom has dropped plans to release The Incredible Toon Factory which had been originally planned for both the Saturn and PlayStation.
U64 Coverage...
Or better yet, you're wondering "Where is it?". Unfortunately due to a rather lengthy and complicated chain of events, our coverage has been delayed. Pending other unforeseen problems, we should have exclusive video and photo coverage as well as other information available soon. Thanks for your patience.
Other Business...
In the next few days and beyond, look for our full-site update (reviews, etc...), new cartoons, a Sega Rally/Virtua Fighter 2 Warp Zone contest (around the second-third week of December), a massiveProPage update, news on T-Shirts (finally!), information about advertising options in our publication, Game Zero on CD-ROM, Salamander presents Pong 3-D for the PC (pending final QA tests...), and more. (And you thought we haven't been doing anything! tsk-tsk...)
* * * (originally posted 11/10/95)
Atari Cuts Staff
Well, it's certainly official... In conversations with internal sources to Atari, we confirmed what everyone has been reading in the newsgroups. Atari has laid off a good portion of its interal staff, including internal development, technical support and most of the QA playtesters for the Jaguar platform. What does this mean for Jaguar software? Well, we've been told that third party titles have still been slated for release up through Summer of 96'--what we'll see of promised titles remains to be seen though. What does this mean for third party developers? Well the biggest effect will be delays since developers now, for the most part, have nobody to call for technical assistance on the hardware, or anyone to QA test software. What does this mean for Atari? Well, it means they're potentially abandoning yet another platform (although answers regarding the future of the Jaguar ran from "don't know" to "not at liberty to say" with the various people we contacted). As plans currently stand, sometime six-eight months from now, Atari will start handling PC software as their primary market focus. As a final note, Atari's PR firm today indicated to us that none of these events should effect the Jaguar's future, and that we can expect to see titles for the system throughout next year and beyond. What's the reality here? ...only time will tell. We'll have more news on this as it's available.
49ers 22, Cowboys 7!
November 7th, XBAND featured a grudge match on-line via Madden NFL 96' between the 49ers (represented by Derrick Deese and Nate Singleton in San Mateo) and the Cowboys (represented by Robert Jones and Larry Allen in Dallas). Not only was the competition fierce, but as it turns out, everyone may get a glimps of how the game went prior to the 49er/Cowboys game this Sunday courtesy of video coverage by Fox Sports. You can read more of a blow-by-blow on the game here.
Scrambled Eggs
Some of you may recall reading here about the launch of the SNES title Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, where we reported that Nintendo would be "hatching" a huge pretend egg in the parking lot of a Toys 'R' Us in Culver City, CA. Well, we finally tracked down a photo from the event for you Mario/Yoshi fans. This picture was taken on October 5th, and shows Mario, Yoshi, and another individual sitting on top of the giant egg. Hmmm...
* * * (originally posted 11/07/95)
Namco News...
In a recent conversation, Namco confirmed that the NegCon controller will be sold in the US. A specific distibution date has not been established, but don't expect to see anything until early next year. Unfortunatly, titles are already hitting the stores with NegCon support built in, such as the soon to be released WipeOut from Psygnosis.
XBAND News
Catapult Entertainment and EA Sports will be hosting a grudge match between Nate Singleton and Derrick Deese of the 49ers and Larry Allen and Robert Jones of the Dallas Cowboys today, live on XBAND for a game of Madden NFL 96'. This event launches the availability of the Madden NFL 96 cartridge as well as the Madden NFL 96 XBAND Challenge where the grand prize is a trip to Super Bowl XXX. Be sure to read the updated XBAND Xclusive page here on Game Zero for more news on this subject.
In Stores This Week
In other PlayStation news, you can expect to see Jumping Flash and Tekken in stores this week. They shipped on 11/3 and 11/7 respectively.
...and Back To Our Regular Schedualed Programming
Yep, you guessed right. New revised release dates on Psygnosis' titles. Current revised release dates should have titles in stores as such: Novastorm - In Stores Now, Destruction Derby - week following 11/11, Wipeout - 11/17-18, Discworld - 11/18, and 3-D Lemmings - 11/22. These dates are official as of 11/6. Now, before you jump up and down and yell at Psygnosis, calm down... unconfirmed sources indicate that the delays are due, in part, to Sony not being able to meet CD manufacturing demands.
Still Kicking After All This Time
Believe it or not, the Turbo-Grafx/Duo platform is still alive and kicking although its US manufacturer, TTI is long since gone the way of the dinosaurs. A number of mail order firms around the country have indicated to us that not only do orders still come in for Duo units (sold from back stock), but they also receive a steady flow of orders for older domestic (US) titles and new import titles from Japan. You may ask, "what is the hotest import title for the Duo?"... At this point Konami's Dracula X still holds that honor, demanding retail import prices ranging from $60 to as high as $90.
1 Billion Served
On October 30th, 1995, Nintendo announced it will sell its one billionth video game worldwide. This number accounts for more than two thousand seperate games released across all of the various Nintendo platforms. In a break down, Nintendo indicated that 50 percent of games sold have been for the original 8-bit NES, 23 percent for the Game Boy, and 27 percent for the SuperNES. Additionally, 44 percent of the software cartridges were sold in Japan, 42 percent in North America, and 14 percent for the rest of the world. The largest single selling title of all time for Nintendo, is still the original Super Mario Brothers, clocking in at over 40 million copies sold worldwide.
Sony Hits 300,000
On October 30, 1995, Sony released some sales figures of their own. Sony has indicated that they have now sold 300,000 PlayStation consoles in the US since its launch on September 9th of this year. Additionally, figures also indicate over one million game titles sold in the US to date for the platform, working out to roughly four games bought for each console sold.
Capcom's X-Men: COTA