ZDnet News Blog

Like a jacket that’s leopard print on the inside and tweed on the outside, that’s party animal or professorial as the occasion demands, Izuna 2’s box art is reversible.  Flip over the game’s box art and gamers will find a pretty little portrait of the game’s pink-haired protagonist, perfect for a bedroom wall or the inside of a locker door. 

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To go along with the new animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie coming out this summer, LucasArts has created two new Clone Wars games that have nothing to do with the crappy last-gen Clone Wars games.

Lightsaber Duels for the Wii and Jedi Alliance on the DS promise all kinds of motion control function and Alliance even has drop-in, drop-out co-op. Details are a bit scarce at the moment, but we’ve got the first two screens below and some info from our buddies at CVG.

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Nintendo’s director of public relations Marc Franklin has said that core gamers should expect great things from the company at E3.

“We will be announcing several new titles that core gamers will be interested in around the time of E3,” he told GamePro recently.

Speculation has run rampant about Nintendo’s release schedule near the end of this year. We’re crossing our fingers for more Pilotwings, Starfox or Pikmin action.

Whilst the first half of 2008 was full of goodness in the form of Mario Kart and Smash Bros, the post-June line-up is looking a bit bare. Nintendo looks set to rectify this at E3.

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D3Publisher has confirmed that it will release a DS game based on the Shaun the Sheep TV show before the year is out.

The company, who previously distributed PS3/360 title Dark Sector and Puzzle Quest, will be working closely with Aardman Animation to authentically bring the personality and humour of the series to life.

In the game, the sheep have all escaped and Shaun must find them before the Farmer comes home. He will get to interact with Shirley, Timmy, Bitzer and other characters through areas like the junk pile, the sheep pool and the circus tent.

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Fact - people love ninjas. Another fact - people love getting free stuff. Obvious conclusion? Winning a free ninja could be one of the greatest things to ever happen in the history of the universe.

Best of all, it could happen to you. We recently had an exclusive first look at Ninjatown, a DS real-time strategy game that stars some of the deadliest - and cuddliest - ninjas we’ve ever seen. Ninjatown is based on the imaginative universe of Shawn Smith, an ex-gaming journalist who now sells his creations in stuffed plush form on his website, Shawnimals.com.

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Proving you don’t need to make more Star Wars movies to keep the merchandising vehicle moving, Titan Books has confirmed that The Force Unleashed will receive both an official novelisation and comic book adaptation in the next couple of months.

From August 22, Star Wars fans - or anyone, for that matter - will be able to buy a graphic novel or a hardback book chronicling the story of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice.

Hopefully, we’ll also get to see exactly how a skin-head has the power to cause a Star Destroyer to crash whilst Yoda can’t even walk across a room without using a walking stick.

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A large number of Team Ninja employees are reported to have left Tecmo following Itagaki’s walkout earlier this month, according to rumours.

It is reported that “as many as three dozen” Team Ninja employees have done a runner and, to make things worse for Tecmo, also plan to take the company to court over unpaid bonuses for completed games.

Things got nasty early this month when Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki publicly announced his resignation and lawsuit filing against Tecmo, along with a few damning statements against company president Yoshimi Yasuda.

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Yes, folks – it’s that special time of year again. The 26th annual Golden Joysticks game awards are upon us, and the shortlist of games that have been selected by the community to go up for the final voting contest has just been announced on the official site. Now all you have to do is decide which of them is deserving enough to win in each category, including the prestigious Game of the Year.

Not only will you be rewarding the developers of your favourite games with the recognition they deserve, you might even bag yourself some cool gaming swag too, as there will be prizes up for grabs. Check the site for details.

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Activision is remaining tight-lipped regarding rumors today that Neversoft has been taken off the Tony Hawk’s franchise.

The rumours suggest that the Neversoft-created series is now in the hands of new developer Robomodo, who has already disclosed that it’s working on an as-yet unnamed game for Activision.

But Activision on the matter that it “does not comment on rumor and speculation.”

It seems likely enough to us, considering Activision has gone on record that it’s looking to inject a bit more innovation into the series, but we’ll have to wait and see…

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Electronic Arts has been hit with a lawsuit for what the plaintiffs describe as the publisher’s “blatantly anticompetitive conduct” in the football gaming genre.

According to the San Jose Business Journal, EA’s move to tie up exclusive licenses with US football associations for games based on the sport is at the heart of the case.

The plaintiffs point out that competition from rival publisher Take-Two, which sold more than two million copies of NFL 2K5 at a $19.99 price point, saw EA slash the price of Madden 2005 from $49.95 to $29.95, creating healthy competition that benefited consumers.

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