Thoguh there’s not much up now, Konami has a new English home page up for the Castlevania series. Nice atmosphere and music! Worth soaking in for a few seconds, even if there’s nothing in particular to to read yet.

Thanks to Manekineko and Psiga on the forums for pointing this out: a surgical tool with a videogame-like interface, where the surgeon manipulates tools in 3D virtual space. From the official site: ”Powered by state-of-the-art robotic technology, the surgeon’s hand movements are scaled, filtered and seamlessly translated into precise movements of the EndoWrist Instruments. The net result: an intuitive interface with breakthrough surgical capabilities.” Looks more like a proctology instrument to me.

From Software’s Adventure Maker for PSP is now getting some of the promised downloadable games for sale on From’s nouten site. Thanks to jiji, via simoniker.

Here’s a nice japanese blog, which tends to focus on D3′s simple series, but also branches into things like Londonian Gothics and Screw Breaker. Worth a look, as it sometimes has some decent digicam pics. Thanks to jiji for finding it.

An actual saturn-playable demo of Sonic-Xtreme has been sold via Frank Cifaldi, on the Assembler forums. Apparently the demo sold for over $3,000, considering that it’s the only known demo in existence. Very unlikely that this will be shared with the community, as one would assume the buyer wouldn’t want to devalue the purchase…
While you’re at it, take another look at Secrets of Sonic Team, which has tons of great info on sonic prototypes, glitches, and hidden data.

EA released a roster update for madden ’06, but had to recall it – why? It made one player, Michael King of the New York Jets, seven inches tall. Check the gaming-age forums for screenshots. (He’s the little white dot in the screenshot left.)

Not to make this ‘all Gama, all the time’, but some of you may not have spotted IC uber-ally Frank Cifaldi’s two regular columns for biz site Gamasutra, ‘Catching Up With’ (a more polite version of “Where Are They Now?”, Spinal Tap fans), and ‘Media Consumption’ (dealing with what media game professionals have been, uhh, consuming.)

Anyhow, there’s been a lot of updates to the column recently: the rather fun/educative ‘Catching Up With’ just got a hold of The Fat Man (infamous old The 7th Guest musician), and before that found Ted Woolsey (Final Fantasy translator), David Siller (veteran Aero The Acrobat creator), Dan Kramer (Atari trackball designer), Will Harvey (Zany Golf creator), Howard Scott Warshaw (Yars’ Revenge, E.T. for the Atari 2600), Steve Purcell (saintly Sam & Max creator), Al Lowe (captain of the Leisure Suit Larry sloop), and Paul Reiche III (Archon, Star Control creator).

Meanwhile, ‘Media Consumption’ has also extracted important cultural information on currently favored music, books, DVDs, films, and even games from various creators, including God Of War’s David Jaffe, WayForward’s Abbie Goldsmith, comic/game writer Paul Jenkins, Death Jr’s Chris Charla, Tilted Mill’s Keith Zizza, The Godfather’s Jenny Ryu, Puzzle Pirates’ Daniel James, Treyarch’s Jamie Fristrom, Sony Japan’s Gregg Tavares, Lionhead’s Tadhg Kelly, Double Fine supremo Tim Schafer, and Alien Hominid’s mighty fine Dan Paladin. These columns are much fun for of the reading – watch for more.