Konami is experiencing technical difficulties. please stand by.

I spent my afternoon racing across the internet trying to actually get to Konami's press conference. I tried You tube, and it wasn't being shown there, I tried the other major sites, but finally after a while I went to Konami's site and found that they were looping the stream. Good.




Then the trailer for Def Jam Rapstar seemed to be undergoing technical difficulties which ended in the most awkward period of silence ever. Russell Simmons wound up talking a bit about the game and the state of hip hop, which was actually pretty entertaining. I got a lot more out of  listening to him than I did with the actual trailer when it was up. Think of it this way; The game itself should be called "Rap Tube" because all it is is you rapping over someone else's lyrics, uploading it to a service where people can see it, and then battle against other guys doing the same thing. I guess we're supposed to vote for the winner. (Note that a million views make you a rapstar.... do with that information what you will.) Like I said that's cool and all, but I can do that on youtube. Besides that there obviously isn't an MC alive that could touch Eli Porter in a rap battle. Please believe!

So the next game they reveal is a wrestling game called "Lucha Libre" for all three consoles with this hardcore video of  luchadore wrestlers getting hyped. There's even a freaking promo. I love it when Luchas cut promos in spanish. It just sounds so badass. This gave me a bit of nostalgia as I remembered a simpler time in life back in 86 when wrestling was effing awesome and not the crap it is now, but I digress. That's an argument for another time, I'm sure. After the trailer the Luchas featured in the game came out and started picking fights with each other over who will win the belt for some promotional match that's going on at the actual booth. Ok  that's cool. Then one of them start to choke out the announcer .. little too much machismo for me, but fine, you're badass you proved it ...now get off the stage. And they leave. Ok.

Saw II is announced, which we already knew because they talked about it a couple months ago. The game features puzzle segments which if solved incorrectly will result in the same crap you'd see in the movies if you were a fan. It's odd though, because I lost interest after Saw III, but I'm strangely interested in the game. I'd give it a chance.

Ninety-Nine Nights 3 was revealed with very little confidence behind it. Or I think it's just that the Japanese are rather modest about the way they present things. Tak Fuji, who is the lead producer walked out and put his arm out towards the logo about five times before the crowd really cheered. Then he said that he hopes that we are excited for it, Bless his heart.  There seems to be more characters and classes introduced like the thief, guardian, assassin, Queen.


Otomedius Excellent was the next game, which seems to be the mixture of Parodius and Gradius and moe anime chicks. From the person speaking this is the first Otomedius game that is going to be released in the US, and I love a god Shmup now and then. However the trailer just had those moe chicks transform into bikes. This might be big for the anime crowd, but I don't think it's going to have as long legs as the company hopes.

Next is their Kinect titles.... yeah. A snowboarding title with cartoony animals called Adrenaline Misfits. very cartoony, very EXTREME. Surfing on lava.. cats with flaming tails.  Dance Master was kind of cool. and the guy who worked on DDR was up there dancing and sounding like Benimaru Nakaido from The King of Fighters. The game seems to be more like a hybrid between Just Dance and DDR. Interesting concept, and by the look of the characters you can tell that they're trying to cater to people who play Just Dance. That girl character looks suspiciously like her name would be Rady Garga. Then again if you're trying to get the expanded market on that then good choice in character designs.


New game announced and it's Karaoke Revolution. Well it's Glee Karaoke Revolution, and who better to announce this than an actual Glee club (Edit: The Burbank show choir) singing the music from the hit show....which is actually Queen's hit song "Somebody to love". Cute, but of course the only person who would of did it better was both banned from Zanzibar, and is now dead.. god bless his departed mustachioed soul.

 Hudson's own Mike Pepe talks about the four games that Hudson will be delivering this year. The first is Beyblade, which surprises only the people who realized that that trend died ages ago. Of course they're trying to revive the series in a big way, with a newly planned Cartoon Network show, and new video game. It's back and hotter than ever... I'll let that go without any snark whatsoever.. why? you may be asking. because I am a classy bastard. Deca sports 3 will be taking full use of the Motion Plus, and feature some new sports games like fencing, snowboarding and logging. Deca Sports: Freedom which seems to be the same thing but for Kinect. Lost in Shadow is the game that seems the most interesting to me out of the four. I've had an eye for this game ever since I read up about it a while back. I love the concept to death, and hope the final product is just as good.


Of course this is where the big announcements are made.

Silent Hill was announced. The newest character to be revealed was a prison escapee. who stumbles through the woods and finds.. well you guessed it. Silent Hill. The music seems to be composed by the guy who worked on Dexter, which kind of sucks, because that means we won't be getting  Akira Yamaoka's usual blend of atmospheric goodness.

Neverdead is well... to me it looks like Devil May Cry, but instead of a half-demon being the main character, we have an undead guy with guns who randomly falls apart. This is thus further emphasized by one of the guys who worked on the game wearing a rigged costume that allowed his head to drop down in his hands... cute. Hopefully the game is better.

Metal Gear Rising trailer again, and the team that worked on it is going in depth into what Zan-Datsu means.. surprise it's a kind of made up word which was created to explain what kind of game this is. Also Raiden is going to be doing all sorts of cutting and mega-manning energy, items and ammo from fallen robotic foes.

Finally the Castlevania game for XBLA, Castlevania Harmony of Despair was announced, and who better than Koji Igarashi  could explain why you should want to play it. Turns out that he wanted to see an entire HD screen filled to the brim with "dot art" which is fine, I guess. and you can play pretty much most of the characters from the exploratory Castlevania games. I saw Juste, Alucard, and a couple other charcters.  It looks kind of cool because of the multiplayer element, but there's really not much there that make me feel like I have to have the game, or anything.  After that, the torch is passed to the team who's working on Lord of Shadow, which shows the trailer, and pretty much confirms the things we already knew.

At the end of the conference the director of marketing comes out and announces most of the games that will be out for 3DS, and tells us good night. So a lot of announcements, a few of them we already knew about, but there were some of note. That's it for the live streams, and I'll be periodically updating the site for the remainder of the evening. take care guys.