Resident Evil isn’t the only big video game series that made the news in Nippon today: Konami announced [JP] the so-called METAL GEAR SOLID SNAKE EATER 3D PREMIUM PACKAGE for the Japanese market. The set includes a special 3DS system, a copy of Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D, and two clear files in MGS design.

Here’s the so-called “Snake Camouflage”-style 3DS:

Here’s a photo of the box and the clear files:

The MGS package is only available in Konami Style [JP], the company’s online shop, for US$298.

Players living in Japan can already pre-order the set, but they will only get to buy one when they enter a raffle: the lucky winners get an email from Konami by February 10, followed by the package itself on March 8.

Headline swerve! Can we all cut Olivia Munn a little slack? Yes, it would appear that she misspoke at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, saying that she had been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 on Xbox 360, but it’s not like the show was any good to begin with. It was, from top to bottom, pointless.

If your name is Jeff Green, and I’d go so far as to say that Today We Are All Jeff Green, then the show was “an embarrassment and an insult to the industry it is supposedly saluting.”

Yes, it was. It was juvenile rubbish, and I 100 percent was embarrassed to be associated with gaming—and that’s just based on the 10 minutes or so I watched.

Again, a pointless awards show with go-away heat from the word go. The less attention paid to it, the better.

Sony in Japan once again updated their Walkman lineup today, this time with the Walkman W series. The new NWD-W253 [JP] has two things going for it: first, it’s waterproof (IPX5), which means you can use the “Wearable Walkman” in the rain or even “wash” it under water. And second, Sony will roll out a special Metal Gear Solid  – Peace Walker version.

That MGS Walkman is technically identical to the regular models, which will be available in white, black, green, and – of course – pink. Expect 4GB of internal memory, a USB mini port, and compatibility with ATRAC/MP3/WMA/AAC and Linear PCM (WAV) formats. The only difference is that the Snake version comes pre-installed with six songs from the game’s official soundtrack.

Sony plans to start selling the NWD-W253 in Japan starting May 22 (price: $110). The MGS model is limited, costs $20 more and is (probably) Japan-only.

Here’s Sony Japan’s official promo video:
http://www.sony.jp/video/player.swf

I was able to play Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the new MGS title for Sony’s PSP, at last year’s Tokyo Game Show (where the game was playable for the first time). I thought it was pretty good back then, and now the Famitsu, Japan’s (and probably the world’s) best selling video game magazine reviewed the title and gave it a perfect total score of 40.

That 40/40 score means that four Famitsu editors rated Peace Walker with 10/10, the first time for a PSP title ever. Maker Konami plans to ship the game in the US on June 8 (see cover art above) and in Europe on June. The Japanese version will be released as early as April 29.

The last game getting this score was New Super Mario Bros. back in November 2009. For some reason, the number of perfect scores awarded by Famitsu has accelerated in the past years.

Here is a time line for all of Famitsu’s 40/40-games so far:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, for Nintendo 64)
2. Soul Calibur (1999, for Dreamcast)
3. Vagrant Story (2000, for PlayStation)
4. The Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker (2003, for GameCube)
5. Nintendogs (2005, for the DS)
6. Final Fantasy XII (2006, for PlayStation 2)
7. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, for the Wii)
8. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008, for PlayStation 3)
9. 428: Fusasareta Shibuya de (2008, for the Wii)
10. Dragon Quest IX (2009, for the DS)
11. Monster Hunter Tri (2009, for the Wii)
12. Bayonetta (2009, for PlayStation 3/XBox 360)
13. New Super Mario Bros. (2009, for Wii)
14. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010, for PSP)

We’ve covered Metal Gear Solid 3D (whose first playable version was announced by Konami last week) twice so far, and now it’s time to look at the game in more detail. Konami is still in the middle of optimizing the gameplay (which is based on Metal Gear Online) and hasn’t fixed a release date yet.

In the video embedded below, you can see a model holding a gun in her hands and wearing the “VR” 3D goggles, the main selling point of the title. Your viewpoint in the game changes in line with the direction your head (in reality) is facing. There’s an analog stick on the gun, which allows you to move in the game independent of where you look in reality, too.

As we reported before, you need to cooperate and communicate with other players to advance in the game, which offers 5.1 sound to give you that extra-realistic feeling of being engaged in combat.

Here’s the video (courtesy of DigInfo in Tokyo)

You can watch a trailer for the game here, where it (briefly) shows the glasses, but that’s not really what it’s going to be like. You’re going to be strapped in with a 5.1 system wrapped around your head, a gun in your hands, and freaking VR goggles on your eyes with the excellent graphics of the latest Metal Gear pretty much fooling you into thinking you’re actually there.

[via Joystiq]

Konami’s hit game series Metal Gear Solid is finally getting an arcade treatment: Aptly named “Metal Gear Solid Arcade 3D”, the game was first shown during the E3 last year in the US. Konami has now announced [JP] it will bring the game cabinet to the AOU 2010 expo tomorrow in its full glory. And, for the first time, the title will be playable.

Vaguely described as an “tactical online action game”, MGS Arcade’s main selling point are the cool 3D glasses players will need to wear (Konami calls the things “head controllers”). The company promises an extra-intense gaming experience, enhanced by sound in 5.1. Gameplay-wise, players will need to cooperate and communicate with each other over mics in order to complete missions in the game.

Unfortunately, Konami isn’t saying yet when exactly MGS Arcade will be released. But at least there’s a special site [JP] dedicated to the game, which includes a placeholder for a trailer that I think will be online tomorrow. We’ll update this post then, but for now the screenshot will have to do.

One of the biggest titles of this year’s Tokyo Game Show is certainly Metal Gear Solid – Peace Walker for the PSP. And it’s all about multiplayer. I was able to play the game with a friend (in co-op mode) for about 15 minutes and it completely rocked (the game was playable for the first time). In fact, up to four players could play at the same time (and some TGS guests did).

There was a long waiting line for Peace Walker (even on this “business day” of the show), but Konami had a cool idea: They let this cosplay girl you see above brief all gamers waiting in line for about 10 minutes in rude Japanese (she’s a military instructor after all) about how the game is played and what you should know about the background story.

Check out these videos I took at the show:
http://blip.tv/play/grExgaLOYQI
http://blip.tv/play/grExgaLPAgI

Kojima made it very clear from day 1 that the Xbox 360 could not handle the MGS4 engine. When it was announced at E3 that the MGS franchise would be coming to the Microsoft platform I wondered if Kojima had made progress in making the MGS4 engine compatible with the Xbox 360, but that appears to be untrue. During the latest Kojima podcast, Sean Eyestone stated that Kojima has reworked the “engine from scratch” to make MGS: Rising compatible with all three major platforms.

Kojima podcast via GamerCenterOnline

Who saw this coming? Konami—that is to see, Mr. Hideo Kojima himself—just announced Metal Gear Solid: Rising for the Xbox 360. That’s what all those little clues were about.

Do we know anything particularly useful, like a release date or plot? Nope. All Kojimi-san said was that it’s coming, it’s a whole new experience, and then the disembodied voice yelled something like “Raiden is back!”

Now we being months of speculation. How much did Microsoft throw at Konami to get the game? What does this mean for Sony and the PS3? What does this have to do with Project Natal? Etc.

Konami’s Hideo Kojima is apparently tearing up GDC right now, and Peter Ha sends us this exclusive photo from the press conference. MISSON: THE NEXT MGS, starring a cane-wilding Snake. So, if Snake went by Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4, what do we call Snake this time around?

Anyhow, here’s the trailer of Metal Gear Solid from E3 in 1997. I remember watching this trailer approximately 1,000 times when it came on an Official PlayStation Magazine disc. Oh, youth.

Right around Christmastime was the last time we heard anything about Metal Gear Solid Touch, Konami’s first game for the iPhone/iPod touch. (Why do people refer to the iPod touch as the “iTouch”?) You play as Old Snake, as he sashays around international hot spots—Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Shadow Moses. Who knew the whole of South America could be considered a hot spot?

Konami says we’ll run into “well-known antagonists from past Metal Gear Solid titles,” in this, the “final chapter in the legendary saga of Solid Snake.” Sounds good to me, and it’s certainly good news for iPhone-owning gamers.

Even better news? Expect to see a demo of the game—Konami calls it an “Advance Edition”—sometime this month. It’ll have the first 12 levels of the game right there. Presumably this will be a for-pay demo, as Konami is offering a free upgrade to the full game for owners of the “Advance Edition” once said full game is available.

[PSGallery=3v2lqftxt3]

Konami has just eliminated any remaining doubts about the iPhone being a proper video game platform. It just announced that it will release Metal Gear Solid Touch in March, 2009. Available for both the iPhone and iPod touch, the game follows the story laid down by MGS 4, playable over an initial eight levels. More levels will be added after the game’s release.

Also, unrelated to Metal Gear, Konami also said it’ll release Silent Hill: The Escape for the iPhone later this month.

Sorry the photo is awful. I blame Konami.

Konami has launched a new teaser site for the next Metal Gear Solid. See for yourself and decide what the green characters mean. I’m not sure any more because I tend to get excited about the series coming to the Xbox 360. But hey, why not?

[Via gamepod.hu [HR]]

According to Gameplayer, a young Australian man named Alastair recently attended his brother’s wedding and realized that an uncle he hadn’t seen for ten years bore a striking resemblance to Solid Snake, of the Metal Gear Solid series. By day, Alastair’s uncle is a carpenter. By night, he’s a swift, silent killing machine.

via ALBOTAS

I like Zero Punctuation because Yahtzee and I essentially share the same view: that Western RPGs are far more lucid and playable than Eastern ones and those who love games like Final Fantasy have to to pick up quite a bit of suspended disbelief at the store every week. While I’m sure this is the most striking game in all the world – both graphically and logistically – I’m hard pressed to say it warrants picking up the PS3 just to play it. Fanboys attack now.

A big, shiny gold star goes to Konami for being cool about Metal Gear Solid 4 being sold before the June 12th release date. According to PlayStation Universe, “This week, a couple of Wal-Marts were reported to have sold the Metal Gear Solid 80GB PS3 bundles up to a week before the scheduled release of the title on June 12.”

Konami’s response to this happy little accident shows that the company realizes that time, as we know it, moves forward – not side to side or backwards.

“Unfortunately, these things happen. As much as we like see that no one breaks streets dates, no one can monitor every single moment that a title gets packed up for shipment and when its on its way to the stores.The store could be at fault as well, for letting someone get a copy before the street date.”

I’m not a betting man, but I’d guess that Wal-Mart has remedied the situation by now. If you’re bored and/or desperate to get the game early, though, swing by your local superstore during your lunch break to see if you can get your hands on a copy. It appears that you might have to buy the entire PS3 bundle but, hey, early MGS4, right?

To celebrate the upcoming launch of Metal Gear Solid 4, Sony will release a special edition 80GB PlayStation 3 SKU based on the game. Come June 12, you’ll be able to grab a MGS-themed PS3 complete with a pack-in “very, very” limited edition of the game. Oh, and it’ll include the DualShock 3, too. Yowzers!

There’s also going to be a plain ol’ limited edition of the game exclusively at GameStop. Um, people still shop at specialized game stores? I thought it was “cool” to dislike GameStop these days.

But no! The “sources” claimed by XboxFamily are clearly in error. Guns of the Patriots will be exclusively on the PS3, if it ever does come out.

Konami Denies Metal Gear Solid 4 on Xbox 360 [Shack News]

Metal Gear Solid 4 will come out for the Xbox 360 12-14 months after its PS3 debut (which is currently scheduled for Q2 of this year). That’s a bold claim from the team at XboxFamily, but they’re swearing by their sources on this one. We’ll see.

A Konami representative allegedly told the site that the game has been in production for the 360 since early 2007. For its part, Microsoft, which gave the ol’ “no comment” line, replied to XboxFamily that leaking information is a serious matter, violators will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, etc.

I wonder what Sony has to say about all this?

Metal Gear Solid 4 Coming to Xbox 360 [XboxFamily via Xbox-Scene]