Sin and Punishment was one of the best-kept secrets on the N64. It never received a North American release until it was put out on the Virtual Console a while back, whereupon a whole lot of people who'd done some deeply unwise things to their Nintendo 64s got to feel a little silly.

Sin and Punishment 2 is a shooter from Treasure, and like the original game, it is set in a parallel universe where a post-apocalyptic city - I want to say it's Tokyo, but I may just be assuming that it is -  is being invaded by aliens and the only way to defeat them is by being as ridiculously goddamned awesome as you possibly can. It is a game about detonating massive groups of aliens while dodging their return fire with your hover skateboard, or perhaps deflecting it with your laser sword.

 

Of course, it's not an easy game, but then, Treasure games usually aren't. If you're unfamiliar with the studio, they're responsible for handing out some truly memorable asskickings to the hardcore crowd over the last few years, such as Ikaruga, Gunstar Super Heroes, and (the exception to their usual trend of making challenging games) Wario World.

I got to play through a few minutes' worth of the game at E3, and it's pretty easy to start with. One of the new playable characters, Kachi, is the game's "easy mode"; she has a charge attack that allows you to lock onto multiple targets and blow them all away at once, which lets you focus most of your efforts on dodging their attacks. The stage takes the form of a running gun battle set in, over, and amidst the ruins of a city, leading up to a fight against what can only be described as a giant chicken.

It takes some guts to bring out a sequel to this game, particularly a sequel that's getting a full retail release; this is very much a hardcore twitch shooter, and you have to be pretty up on your gaming to know about the original game at all. Just the same, I enjoyed playing it, and I'm glad to see something like it coming back.

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One of the odd things about Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles was the omission of Resident Evil 2. As the apex of the series pre-RE4, it has a genuine claim to the title of the best survival horror game of all time (with its only real competitor being Silent Hill 2; survival horror series tend to go straight downhill after the second installment), so not including it as a main scenario was pretty baffling. Granted, it wasn't totally absent, with Hunk and Ada both getting their own bonus scenarios, but Claire and Leon were nowhere in sight.

Darkside Chronicles puts them back in the spotlight, giving the Chronicles rail-shooter treatment to RE2. Of course, because most blessings are mixed, it also hits up perennial series whipping-boy Resident Evil: Code Veronica.

That's right. Steve Burnside is back. This is not a drill.

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You may remember that I was skeptical about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories back in April, when it was first announced. A completely combat-free horror game has been tried before, and it usually winds up as, at best, an interesting train wreck.

The Wii version of Shattered Memories (and only the Wii version) was playable on the E3 show floor, so I finally got to take it out for a spin. Admittedly, games that depend to any real extent on atmosphere aren't particularly good in that environment; one of these days, I hope to see an E3 that has the Horror Room, a darkened area far away from the show floor where you get headphones, near-absolute silence, a dude who's specifically there to pummel anyone who speaks above a whisper, and possibly fresh undergarments in a box by the door.

GameCube fans probably remember the two Baten Kaitos RPGs very fondly. Xenosaga was one of the defining PS2 RPG franchises. Heck, DS fans may have played through Super Robot Taisen OG Saga not too long ago. 

Now, Monolith Soft is bringing their RPG touch to Wii with new game Monado: The Beginning of the World. As we covered a bit earlier on the blog, Monado is one of E3's "hidden games," stuff Nintendo announced at the show but didn't really emphasize or hype up. The E3 debut trailer for the game is probably the first time you've seen anything from it. 

This is a little baffling when it comes to Monado, because Wii has a huge RPG-shaped hole in its system library. There are few RPGs currently available for the system and fewer yet with broad mainstream appeal. Monado seems built from the ground-up to capture the appeal of spectacular late-gen PS2 RPGs like Final Fantasy XII. Sharp graphics, compelling designs, sweeping music.

There's very little known about the plot at this point (and what is known sounds typical for the genre), but Monado is definitely a game to watch. The real question is if Nintendo is ever going to try and promote this title to hardcore RPG fans, or... well, anyone. 

It's one of the major tenets of gaming that, if given the opportunity, a player will take any chance he can get to be a cock to the other guy. Nintendo made sure to emphasize the fact that you can play New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMBW) cooperatively.

You also can brush your teeth with Preparation H. That doesn't mean you're going to do it.

 

This image is what Shigeru Miyamoto showed journalists at Tuesday's behind-closed-doors press meeting when he talked about the next console Zelda title, which appears to be on track to get its big reveal at next year's E3. Miyamoto stated that the art hinted at what the themes of the next game would be, but it's anyone's guess what this image of Twilight Princess's Link and the weird statue-girl in blue is supposed to mean.

(My guess is that it means the next Zelda game is going to be pretty sweet.)

So select journalists got to meet Shigeru Miyamoto at a behind-closed-doors press session yesterday at E3. Nintendo does something like this every year-- last year's session announced Pikmin 3 while 2007's announced Super Smash Bros. Brawl, if memory serves. This year's session announced a new Zelda game that's probably still a few years off... and what could be the death knell of the Wii as we know it.

When asked about whether or not New Super Mario Bros. Wii would support online multiplayer for all four players, Miyamoto admitted that the game wouldn't-- because simply running the game without online support maxed out the Wii's processor. Miyamoto tried to excuse this by saying that all developers are ultimately limited by a system's processor, but the fact remains that a maxed-out processor is usually a sign of a new console generation on the horizon. Once a processor is maxed then it quickly gets difficult to make new games seem more impressive than older ones.

In recent years increasingly complacent casual audiences willing to keep supporting systems years and years after they've been maxed out and begun to enter decline. Remember that in terms of pure hours played and units sold, right now the most popular video game system on the market is the PS2, which is a sprightly nine years old. It's possible that Nintendo could use controller gimmicks and add-ons to keep Wii alive as long as the competition. Problem: games on 360 and especialy PS3 are just going to keep looking better and better for at least a couple more years-- while we may see everything Wii has to offer before the end of 2009.

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One of E3's biggest surprises for Wii got leaked nearly a week before the actual show: a US release for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the anime-based Versus series fighter that nobody ever expected to see. It's a gorgeous game and a fun fighter, one we're very happy to see headed to the Stateside Wii community.

Of course, it's hard not to have a lot of questions about how Capcom pulled off a US release for a game that all but the most die-hard gave up on seeing officially released. How did they sort of the licensing issue for the Tatsunoko characters? How are they going to explain all of the vintage anime craziness to modern American gamers? Can you hope to sell a hardcore 2.5D fighting game to casual-crazy Wii owners? 

Capcom USA's Seth Killian and Chris Kramer sat down to give us answers to some of our questions and share plenty of details about every aspect of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, from basic gameplay to how it's being localized. They confirmed that new features and characters may be headed to the US version of the game and so much more. Hit the cut and get to reading if you're any kind of hardcore Wii fan, because this is a game for you.

Nintendo's press conference this year was held at the Club Nokia on S. Figeroa Street in Los Angeles, about a block east of the Staples Center. Because of Lynxara's unspecified ailments, I got told at the last minute that I was going, and using a surprisingly minimal amount of chicanery, I managed to get in.



Though Nintendo shared an impressive amount of new titles in its E3 press conference this morning, the company also revealed in press materials made available later over a dozen other first-party DS and Wii games previously unannounced for the States, such as Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (due August 24th), the sequel to Level-5's puzzle adventure game that debuted last year.

Also unveiled was Monado: Beginning of the World, a Japanese RPG that looks an awful lot like Capcom's Monster Hunter series, presumably developed by Baten Kaitos studio Monolith Soft. Also announced for Wii: Endless Ocean 2, Span Smasher, and Line Attack Heroes. As for first-party WiiWare releases, gamers can look forward to PictureBook Games: Pop-Up Pursuit and You, Me & the Cubes.

For Nintendo DS, Nintendo is planning HAL Laboratory's puzzler Picross 3D, Paon's JRPG Glory of Heracles, and Red Entertainment's Pokemon-styled dinosaur game Fossil Fighters. DSiWare has no less than five games coming based on the adorable Domo character -- Hard-Hat Domo, White-Water Domo, Pro-Putt Domo, Crash Course Domo, and Rock-n-Roll Domo -- and a mysterious release titled Six-in-One Translator.