Remember the chalkboard fight series of photos from about two years ago? Basically Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat moves done with chalk effects. One of the original creators just dropped me a line saying that they’ve released a stop-motion animated version, which required more than 3,000 photos, and many hours of post production. Given that they don’t actually use chalk in it (I don’t think?) I’m not sure why they kept the chalkboard – but it’s still fun to watch!

Update: nobody bothered to mention to me that I forgot to link the video. Come on people! When I do something stupid, call me on it!

The Card Fighters Project is an attempt to make a real, playable version of the Neo Geo Pocket classic SNK vs Capcom Cardfighters Clash (a new version of which just shipped for the DS). The cards this fellow has made are printable and of moderately good quality. Right now he’s got the rules section up, and a number of Capcom cards done. His SNK section only has Terry so far, and there are no actions or reactions yet. But the project is certainly interesting, so go give it a look – might encourage him to speed up work on the project! Thanks to flavor for the link – he’s the guy who brought us this CFC computer matching thing, way back when.

To promote the release of Gyakuten Saiban 4 (the Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney series in the west), Capcom is airing a TV drama next week in japan. Not sure if it’ll be live action or animated, but it’s a 5~10 minute mystery with a case for viewers to solve. The solution will appear on the GS4 site. Thanks to Zepy for pointing it out.

Another Aving find, here‘s a toy that was on display at the recent Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair. It’s basically a plug and play eyetoy. Granted the music is probably rudimentary and terrible, it’s pretty impressive what you can get into small packages these days. Made by Asia AV Development – it’s called the iTogo – maybe these things are out in the states already?

Also from Aving, check out these DS Light kiosks in a mall over there. Seems very classy – and enclosed, to keep you away from sweaty patrons. Or maybe to keep all the sweaty patrons in? Depends I guess. I assume these things are attended by Nintendo sales folks – very nice though. Lots more pics in that link!

As we know, Gamepark has gone bankrupt, and the GP32 is now without a parent. The company had plans to release a system called the XGP as a PSP competitor, and also the GP Kids, which was basically the smaller, friendlier successor to the GP32. An old Aving report I found while browsing around shows what appears to be a playable unit. The report was from november 2006, and the system was scheduled to ship in mid-2007, so it must’ve been quite far along. Granted, one photo shows the thing playing a game with an SD card still sticking out, but maybe it had some internal memory? Not sure. Anyway, here’s an interesting line: “The company is under discussion with a US-based education content company to supply the product.” I wonder how far along that deal was, and if that company invested any money – if so, they may be able to gain ownership of the thing and release it in some form. Just speculation, but it’s interesting to see the progress they made.

Bandai Namco Games has announced in the latest famitsu that they will be porting their popular music game, Taiko no Tatsujin(or Taiko: Drum Master in the US), to the DS. The game will apparantly feature classic Nintendo music such as the Super Mario Brother theme song, among assorted j-pop and classical music. It is not yet known if it will have anime music like the other editions of the game. A release date has not been announced.

This is pretty odd – Ontama, a game for the DS, coming out on june 7 for 5040 yen, tax included. It’s a rhythm action game from Noise Factory, a onetime SNK internal studio, which now appears to be its own entity. New Power Instinct: Matrimelee (aka Gouketsuji Ichizoku Toukou Matrimelee) was released by Excite in japan after all. Noise is releasing this one on their own through Sega Direct, it appears. You can get it through play asia of course.

The game itself is…maybe not that exciting? It’s really hard to tell, though they have a movie of the game on the main page. It seems like you press the d-pad in time with the music, while circling little ‘ontama’ on the screen. They will apparently have some music from 80 Pan, a band composed of mildly mentally retarded girls.

Noise really does seem to be pursuing the ‘cute’ these days, and now offers a “Desktop Mascot” digital action figures. Basically digital anime girls for your desktop, which work with Windows 2000 and XP. Very odd stuff all around, from a company that has a legacy of doing some quite nice fighting games.

Kentia Hall-styled peripheral company eDimensional, which also makes 3D glasses and motion control thingies, is apparently making a peripheral designed by everone’s favorite ben heckendorn, ben heckendorn. They’ve got a contest going now where you can win it if you guess what it is. More accurately, if you guess it right, you’ll be entered to win, and then chosen from there. The thingie will be signed, but you probably won’t know what it is. If the image to the left is any indication, it’ll be some sort of upside-down NES cart thing. But with black plastic! Exciting, maybe! I personally hope it’s a peripheral that makes Sonic games good again. Like magic! Partnering with him was a smart idea though, I’ll give them that.

Here are a couple of nice links I found when doing some research earlier in the week. First, there’s Barcade – it’s generally an arcade locator. That page also has news about arcades (the locations themselves), which is kind of interesting to see. Unfortunately, while you can search for games, it only returns results showing the versions of that game in the database – not where they’re located. If you just search for a location and a genre, such as los angeles and fighters, it returns results of (properly released) fighting games in the area, and then a list of locations. Unfortunately the two results aren’t tied! So while it’s awesome to learn that there’s a bar called Outrigger, this site (though interesting for peripheral reasons) really falls short of its potential.

The next link I found was Arcade Heaven, an arcade-themed blog, though lately it’s been getting a bit looser, with virtual console and console releases of arcade games in the mix. But they’ve got some really nice bits like release news and impressions of Ghost Squad Evolution, or a query about the potential sale of the location of the ATEI and ICE shows in the U.K. It’s nice to see somebody covering this beat well, even if it’s a bit UK-centric. Probably worth a bookmark. Personally I vastly prefer their proper arcade coverage to their consumer entries, but that’s how I feel about everything, so there you go.