Happy Thanksgiving, indeed: If you were one of the people who just missed the cut for a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Official Soundtrack back when it was offered as an early registration bonus, you may have had another chance at it. Some of you have probably already received this e-mail:

Hello,

Thanks for registering your copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D in your Club Nintendo account. We know it’s been a while since you registered, but we’ve managed to locate a few extra copies of the soundtrack CD that was awarded to those who registered the game in June. As you just missed getting a copy, we’re going to send one of these newly located copies to you!

If you haven’t already received an email notification, you will soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,

Nintendo of America Inc.
Consumer Service Department

I can just imagine someone at Nintendo opening a random box they found in some back room, and someone’s Zelda Item Fanfare ringtone coincidentally goes off as they realize what’s in the box. Were you one of the lucky ones?

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It’s a rainy day here in Chicago — one of those days where you just don’t really feel like being productive. You need something to keep you busy, something to keep you entertained. The solution? A Google Easter egg for Star Fox fans!

Head on over to the Google home page and search for “Do a barrel roll” to entertain yourself for the rest of the afternoon… assuming you’re using Safari, Firefox, or Chrome — sorry IE fans!

Google
via Technolog [MSNBC]

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This past Sunday, the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert series presented back-to-back concerts at the world-renowned Symphony Center, home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I was able to sit down with conductor Arnie Roth two days prior to talk about a number topics related to the production.

Head past the break to read about how Distant Worlds got started, a couple of a the soloists from this weekend’s double concert, the future of the tour (specifically a Mexico stop), and more!

Christian Ponte: We’ll get started. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. You’ve got a very special concert coming up, and for many it’s their first Distant Worlds concert, maybe even their first AND second. For those people, could you briefly just talk about how you got involved with this concert series?

Arnie Roth: Yeah, probably the very first time was in 2005. It’s also when I met Nobuo Uematsu. Prior to 2004, there hadn’t been any video game music concerts in the United States. My colleague in Germany, Thomas Böcker, had started doing some concerts: the Leipzig Games [Convention], things like that. Thomas and I have continued working together for many years now, but [back then] he was the only one outside of Japan that had done some video game music concerts. Of course, you’re aware that Dear Friends performed in L.A. in 2004, but it was during E3 and was kind of a trade situation in terms of attendance. At that time, I was researching video game music concerts. I’m the music director and conductor of the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra here, and I tour around the country and the world conducting various orchestras, so I’m always looking at different possibilities for concerts, both multimedia and traditional concerts. In researching this, it was very interesting that no symphony orchestras or presenters in North America believed that you could do a concert of video game music as a separate, public-sold ticket; in other words, as an individually-sold ticket not connected with a convention or a trade thing of some sort, because they looked at that E3 concert and said, “Well, E3 was going on, it doesn’t really count.”

We were the first commercial presenter to take a chance on doing any concert, and it happened to be Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy, and that was in February of 2005. That was the first commercially presented concert, and it sold out completely. It was here at the Rosemont Theater in the Chicago area, and after that — and that’s when I first met Nobuo Uematsu at the same time — then I was asked to continue Dear Friends, and finish the Dear Friends tour. It was very short, maybe five concerts or something like that. I conducted the rest of those with the Atlanta Symphony, the Detroit Symphony… I’m trying to remember the others, there [were] maybe three or four others. It was a lot of fun, it was terrific, but that was my first exposure to video game music concerts, per se.

Out of that grew a very wonderful relationship with not only Nobuo Uematsu, but also Square Enix as a parent company. They asked me to do More Friends in L.A. — that was another concert — and I actually was asked by Square Enix to (besides conduct the concert) produce the live record for the CD, a Japan-only release of More Friends. Then the year after that, they asked me to fly to Japan and do the Voices concert. I was the only non-Japanese performer there; it was all the various solo singers from the games that had sung, plus choir and orchestra. I was honored to be asked on that.

Following that, it kind of evolved to where they came to us and said, “We really want to do a proper, global tour.” The difference there with Distant Worlds was that they wanted it to really have more of a global reach — not just North America, not just Asia, but Europe, Central and South America, other markets in Asia, Australia… That’s been the goal for Distant Worlds. My company has the exclusive license with Square Enix to present Distant Worlds. We’re now in our fourth year, and we have renewed the license with Square Enix. They’re thrilled and so are we, and we’re going to keep going and expanding Distant Worlds, and with the goal, again, being new markets — places we haven’t been to before — and adding more and more repertoire, which we do on almost every concert. [Adding repertoire] is a lot of fun, except the problem is that I run out of time. The concert has to be a finite number of minutes, and if I’m only doing one [concert], I can’t do everything. (laughs) I try.

Here in Chicago this weekend, we have this unusual marathon where I’m doing two almost completely different concerts between the afternoon and the evening, and so you’ll hear everything from Distant Worlds I & II, and you’ll hear a lot of things from our DVD from Japan (from the concerts we just did in November). We have Benyamin Nuss from Germany, a wonderful — I think he’s 22 — wonderful pianist who’s done several concerts with me. I just did the music of Nintendo with the Royal Stockholm [Philharmonic Orchestra] a couple weeks ago — June 1st — and that was with Thomas Böcker, and Benyamin played on that as well.

So yes, that’s my whole involvement with video games. Obviously I was involved with Play! as well for the first few years of getting Play! going, writing a lot of the arrangements for Play! and working with an awful lot of composers, different composers around the world with that, and that was a lot of fun as well. So I guess, yeah, I’ve done a lot of video game music. I guess I have.

CP: And we appreciate it!

AR: And I like it! I not just like it, I mean… the passion that the Final Fantasy fans have for the music of Final Fantasy is what is most exciting to me. They are different, I think in my humble opinion, from other audiences I conduct. I don’t mean traditional orchestra concerts necessarily, but comparing it more to even other video game music concerts. Great enthusiasm in all them, but it’s the question with how strongly they want to hear the music performed live or whether they’re simply into the action of the game. They’re coming because they like the game, but are they really into the music?

That is truly the case with Final Fantasy fans. They know these scores really well! (laughs) I’m constantly kind of getting little comments about, “Oh wow, you took that really fast,” or “You really took a big pause here between these movements,” and “What were you thinking there?” and this kind of thing. They question, they listen very intensely, and so it’s a very educated, intense, listening audience. I appreciate that. I think all the musicians appreciate that.

CP: …you actually covered about four of my questions already.

AR: I covered all I can!

CP: We’ll jump ahead! You’ve got a fabulous soloist in Susan Calloway. The fans love her, and it’s not just the fact that she’s singing Final Fantasy songs. What do you think it is about her talent that sets her apart, and makes her and integral part of this program?

AR: One of the concepts that I operate on is you must get the correct or the absolute best musician for the particular piece or performance that you’re trying to do. The very best musician for a Beethoven symphony is not necessarily the very best musician for an opera performance, a ballet performance, an orchestrated rock concert, or a video game music concert. Some of them are very flexible and can do all these different genres, but more often than not, you want a particular kind of vocalist. They’re quite individual. [Sometimes] you want maybe a very ethereal, esoteric kind of voice, and then other times you want a full-blooded, operatic soloist. We find that it’s important to kind of differentiate these.

Susan Calloway does something very interesting. She comes at this from studio background. She’s one of the most well-known voiceover talents for TV and radio commercials in North America. She’s constantly flying to New York, Chicago, L.A. from, she lives in the Detroit area, specifically to sing on national recordings — mostly jingles, mostly television and radio jingles. She’s very, very flexible — style-wise — for that reason. You’re constantly doing different kinds of styles of these things, and she has not only a wonderful pop voice, but she is very savvy in terms of when I ask her to change some phrasing or when I ask her to try a different style. She doesn’t naturally know all the music of Final Fantasy, so it was kind of a joint venture of teaching her the style that we wanted to go on on a particular piece. She has such good ear and vocal ability — it’s at a such a high range that she’s able to adapt to these styles very quickly.

I think she’s one of these artists that when you talk about a “Kiss Me Good-Bye,” for instance, [it's] a perfect fit for her voice. “Suteki da ne” may be a little bit more of a stretch for her to get to that very etherial kind of place, to tell the story as this kind of extended poem, and to ease back the intensity of her voice (which is a quite focused, intense, pop voice). She’s grown into that as we’ve done that more often. “Melodies of Life” is an easier thing for her, I think.

Now, the best one (and we’re doing that this Sunday) is “Answers,” which is an unbelievable piece of music — and you can tell Nobuo I said so. He knows it. Out of all the things in [Final Fantasy] XIV, I enjoy that one so much, and it’s a wonderful pairing between the chorus, the soloist, and the orchestra. So we get to do that here in Chicago, which is great, and I know [Nobuo Uematsu is] excited about that too. He feels that some of the Final Fantasy XIV pieces –most of which I really like a lot — we should probably not play so much of them, because so many of the fans haven’t had the opportunity to really get to know the music yet. But whenever we have Susan, a chorus, and orchestra, we must do “Answers.” That’s one of my favorites.

CP: You’re a Chicagoan, so you know as well as I do that we’re actually a bit spoiled having one of the world’s best in our own backyard: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

AR: Of course, yeah. And we’re playing in their home!

CP: Your concert with the CSO at last year’s Ravinia Festival fell through, but — like you said — you are performing at their home venue this weekend. I don’t know that you’re in a position to actually announce anything, but do you still see a performance with the CSO in Distant Worlds‘ future?

AR: I would like to think there is one. I want to emphasize, as I did when the whole situation with Ravinia happened, that that was literally a contractual issue between the Chicago Symphony and Ravinia Festival. [It] had nothing to do with Distant Worlds; we happened to get caught in the middle of it. While that is the only date that was canceled/postponed/whatever, we used this one as the postponement date because we quickly tried to arrange this date and in the Chicago Symphony home. The orchestra, as it turns out, wasn’t available, but we still were performing in the Symphony Center, so we felt that was important, and frankly it’s a beautiful venue for us for this kind of a concert.

I just want to stress the fact that I could see us going back to Ravinia when they’ve resolved their contract issues, which had nothing to do with Distant Worlds — it really was something having to do with the number of classical versus non-classical services that the Chicago Symphony does at Ravinia, and an error was made by someone in the process after we had already been contracted and released we were doing the concert, and so we had to postpone it for that reason. It really was one of those situations that I hated, but I tried to rectify it as quickly as we could find a date in Chicago where it was related in some way.

At least at Symphony Center, we would be able to do something better than what we could have done at Ravinia. At Ravinia it would have been one concert with very little rehearsal time with the Chicago Symphony. Yes, Chicago Symphony would be fantastic, but one long rehearsal with them — that’s it. Now, I’m doing two full programs and giving so much more repertoire in these two programs than I could have done [with the CSO]. Their performance length is shorter at Ravinia, so there’s a lot of other things that would have been impacted to doing that one concert. So I’m very happy that we did this.

I also take note that Symphony Center is delighted at the two sold out shows, and they are taking note of that. It would be a surprise, frankly, if they didn’t come back to us and say, “Okay,” a year, two years from now, because frankly what I’m searching for — and you can ask all of your readers or listeners — I’m researching what to do about the 25th Anniversary of Final Fantasy, which is coming up in December of next year. We’re already playing Royal Albert Hall in London this year. What do we do? (laughs) We’re adding more and more pieces, and of course we know how to do that. So we’re thinking. Everyone’s thinking, and so if anyone has any suggestions, I look at all of them. I can’t respond to them all the time, but we read everything that goes into our Facebook site –you know we have something like 33,000 or 34,000 registered — and I read everything. So, if anyone has any ideas, I’m listening.

CP: You’ve got the Returning Home DVD of the recent Tokyo concert. Do you see other DVDs or Blu-rays in Distant Worlds’ future, or do you think one is enough for this particular concert series?

AR: Well, I was kind of thrilled that we had the opportunity to get that one out. People had been asking us for the whole first three years. I was delighted that we had done two records with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and I consider those really wonderful recordings. I mean, these are ones that were recorded at a much higher bit rate/sample rate than conventional. 48-bit versus 24-bit. The resolution on those is astounding, and the orchestra’s playing, I think, is just absolutely without peer.

I think with those two records and the DVD of Returning Home – which showcased a lot of repertoire from [Final Fantasy] XIII and XIV, as well as all the hits, as well as new arrangements of “Clash on the Big Bridge” and actually other new solo piano things. We did “Those Who Fight,” which Benyamin Nuss is going to play this weekend. We’re kind of recapping what he did in Japan with us, so he’ll be the piano soloist on “Love Grows,” on “Saber’s Edge” from Final Fantasy XIII which has a solo piano part, he’ll also play the a cappella Final Fantasy XIII piece by [Masashi] Hamauzu, “March of the Dreadnoughts,” and he will play solo piano from the Piano Collections of “Those Who Fight.” So yeah, I’m thrilled he’s here, and so we’re recapping those four on the Chicago concerts, split between the two of them.

So, should we have more? I don’t know, you tell me! Do you think we should? I think we’re okay for right now. I think we’ll give it a little time.

I’m looking at Distant Worlds III though, in terms of the next record, because we now have assembled so much new repertoire that we literally have enough for a whole ‘nother record — easily — and there are some big, important pieces that we’re adding in Chicago for the first time that could get onto that; things like “You’re Not Alone” — we’re now performing that again this weekend — and we’re doing a new piece that I just finished the arrangement of that we’re premiering during Chicago which is from Final Fantasy VI, “Dark World,” and not because we had to do “Dark World,” but because I’d been searching for a piece to get Nobuo Uematsu to play live as a soloist on stage with us, and he kept resisting. He says, “No, I’m too nervous!” that he didn’t want to do it. I finally found the right piece for him to do, and I went to him, I said, “This is the piece we’re going to do, and I’ll do it with you!” So I’m going to play solo violin, he’s going to play solo keyboards, [we'll have] full orchestration, and we’re going to play that live. I’m very excited about it. We haven’t rehearsed or anything yet, but we’d been going back and forth on the Internet about, “I’m going to do this,” and showing him what the demos sound like, that kind of thing, so… we’re ready! (laughs)

CP: Looking forward to it!

AR: Oh, it’ll be fun! Yeah!

CP: “Melodies of Life” is a personal favorite of mine, and I absolutely loved hearing the English premiere of “Suteki da ne” the last time you were here. What pieces from the program do you in particular enjoy the most?

AR: I would say out of all the songs, if we’re talking about [those]… I mean, you’re probably looking at everything, but out of all the songs, I like “Suteki da ne.” I find it a little more unique. I find as far the more typical pop style that Uematsu has adopted occasionally, I find “Kiss Me Good-Bye” is a really good example of that. Also, Susan does a really good job on that one, and it lays well for her in terms of her own voice. So, I like that. “Memoro de la Stono” — beautiful, both that combination of the opening and the actual song itself, “Distant Worlds.”

You know, the business of trying to decide what’s my favorite, Uematsu and I always kind of laugh about this. We come off the stage, the last thing that we play is, let’s say, “One-Winged Angel,” and we’re all like, “We can’t get it out of our heads!” the next two hours while we’re having an after-dinner or after-show bite to eat or something like that. It will not get out of our head!

“Liberi Fatali” is one of those that a is very compelling piece. Just as importantly, pieces like “Aerith’s Theme” — a very intimate, personal kind of statement and beautifully crafted — I find just as powerful as those. I enjoy doing “Dancing Mad” as well! It’s much more sectionalized in different sections, and so the flow of the piece is a little different than some of the other ones, but there’s so much wonderful power and epic qualities to it that it’s a fun compelling piece for us to do, which we’re doing in this weekend as well.

CP: Well, that almost wraps it up for me. Are there any closing comments from you specifically for our Final Fantasy fans and music fans?

AR: Really the reason we’re here is because of the fans, for no other reason the fact that they have supported this tour. The biggest thing I can do is thank all the fans, and it’s literally when I say that it’s the reason that we’re able to continue — not just one year’s worth of concerts or a couple of years, but four years, five years, six years — we can continue because… what, are we playing Chicago for the fifth time, maybe? Fourth time? Fifth time? Of just Final Fantasy concerts? It’s amazing, frankly, and we’re sold out for both of these performances. It’s that kind of support that allows us to keep going.

If there was an obvious erosion of fan interest, then it would be a very simple matter for Square Enix to say, “You know, that was wonderful, I think we’ll take a break.” But right now, both Square Enix and my own company, AWR Music, and Nobuo Uematsu, we all feel there’s so much more to give, and there are so many places we haven’t played. We just played Australia for the first time — sold out there. Royal Albert Hall sold out in two weeks, and that’s not happening until November. There are a lot of other markets in Europe and Asia and elsewhere; we want to get to Mexico City, and they should stay tuned because that’s very close to being announced now. There are some dates in South America also that we’re working on.

I think the idea of getting out into some of the other areas and trying to spread it that way, and then how do we evolve the tour, long term? Besides adding more and more repertoire, do we branch off and have a second tour that maybe features perhaps not just Final Fantasy, but other games as well on that? Not so much a Play! or something like that because we’re not attempting to be that. We really are aligned right now with Square Enix, but possibly there are a lot of other games that Square Enix has: Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger… I heard that Dragon Quest is opening in the United States sometime soon, and it’s tremendously popular in Japan, so that could also be something interesting. I think there’s many possibilities to move forward, and we’re looking at that all the time, so thank you to the fans for allowing us to move forward.

CP: Arnie Roth, thank you very much for your time. It’s been a pleasure!

A big thanks to Chris Szuberla for arranging the interview. You can check out the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy official website and Facebook Page for tour dates and information. You can also purchase their albums digitally from their online store in qualities as high as 24/88.2 FLAC!

Be sure to check back soon for more from this past weekend!

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If there’s one thing that contributing to the “Save KP” movement taught me, it’s that well-organized petition movements can work. RPG fans have taken that same spirit to Nintendo of America in order to get some anticipated Wii games localized here in the States.

Operation Rainfall is hoping their efforts can give Stateside releases to JRPGs Pandora’s Tower, Xenoblade, and The Last Story through a systematic ”bombardment of emails, snail mails, phone calls, tweets, and facebook responses.” Fans of the movement have begun pre-ordering Monado on Amazon (where the placeholder page still exists) and are planning a concentrated mail blitz in mid-July for the game, retitled Xenoblade.

You can keep up with the movement via their website below, along with their Facebook and Twitter profiles. In fact, one of their tweets suggests that Nintendo will be commenting on the Rainfall campaign later today. Maybe if this works, we can do something about a local DS release for Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem while we’re at it!

Operation Rainfall

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Video game music fans out there were ecstatic years ago when it was revealed in 2007 that the composer behind the Super Smash Bros. Brawl “Main Theme” was none other than famed Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. Today, the Smash Bros. sequels for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS are still in their early development phases, but Uematsu has already expressed his interest in returning to contribute original music to the new games.

“If I have the opportunity to work with Nintendo for the new Smash Bros., yes, I absolutely would like to.”

When asked (hypothetically) if Final Fantasy characters and music were to be included in the games, Nobuo remarked that that he wouldn’t mind the implementation of his Final Fantasy compositions via new arrangements.

This comes from my time this afternoon with the Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy duo of Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth. More tidbits and transcripts to come!

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Smash Bros. fans who were hesitant to transition to a more modern method of playing will have to make the switch soon: Nintendo’s Wii U console will not be compatible with those GameCube controllers. In fact, if you’re one of the fans also preaching that Melee is better than Brawl, you might want to keep a ‘Cube or Wii around as well — GameCube games and memory cards won’t work with Wii U either.

NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime has gone on record to clarify that the Wii U will only be backwards compatible with Wii titles, not GameCube software. In addition, the GameCube controller and memory cards ports on the Wii are nowhere to be found on the Wii U hardware.

Of course, with increased internal flash storage and expandability via external storage, it’s not unfeasible that the Wii U could introduce GameCube titles to their Virtual Console offerings in the future. It would certainly be an efficient way of introducing great titles such as Luigi’s Mansion, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,and Super Mario Sunshine to gamers that weren’t among the nearly 22 million GameCube owners. Plus, we can never buy enough copies of Pikmin, Metroid Prime, or Resident Evil 4, right?

Kotaku

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What should be a no-brainer has seemingly been confirmed: the processor inside the Wii U is faster than those found inside the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, launched in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Developers are estimating the Wii U at about 50% faster than Microsoft’s and Sony’s current console offerings.

The custom 45-nanometer CPU will be provided once again by IBM, and the custom Radeon GPU by AMD. The latter is said to be similar to the Radeon HD 4890, released in 2009. This puts the Wii U’s graphical capabilities well below those of today’s high-end PCs, but significantly beyond anything the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 can do.

Gizmag (pic)

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Pokémon fans are some of the most impatient gamers I know. You can’t blame us, though — with 649 (and eventually more) to see, we were bound to take shortcuts with everything at some point.

With Pokédex 3D now available in the Nintendo 3DS eShop, fans have been filling up their extra-realistic Pokédexes through the SpotPass feature as well as some special AR cards distributed by Nintendo at E3 2011. Others such as Arcane have already extracted/calculated/whatever the AR Markers for all 150+ Unova Pokémon (including different forms), which you can see below. Keep in mind you’re only supposed to be able to scan three (-ish) per day, so the rest will appear as shadows until tomorrow.

PokemonAus

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While Nintendo won’t confirm anything regarding the final product, we know that none of the E3 demos used more than one Wii U tablet controller per system at a time. Any multiplayer was done by either adding Wii Remotes or by playing over a network with multiple systems. The lack of player indicator lights on the controllers also suggested no more than one. When asked about this, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto had the following to say:

Our basic premise is that you can use one with a system. If we got to an idea of having multiple (controllers) it might be just more convenient for people to use their Nintendo 3DS and have a way to connect that. That being said, we are doing research about if someone brings their controller to their friends house and they want to play together on Wii U to whether or not something like that would be possible.

So nothing’s set in stone yet, but they’re looking into possibly allowing more than one tablet controller per system, as well as allowing you to use that $250 handheld you bought as a potential controller substitute.

…and here we thought $50 was plenty for a controller.

News.com.au
via Siliconera

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Sandwiched in between the September 16th Blu-ray movie releases and the February 10th 3D theatrical release of The Phantom Menace, Kinect Star Wars‘s Holiday 2011 release will allow you the chance to actually use the Force! You’ll be taking your first step into a larger world!

You won’t physically be using a lightsaber — your eyes can deceive you, so don’t trust them — it’s just the Kinect at work. That said, if they could partner with Master Replicas and give us some replica lightsaber hilts to hold while playing, that would be amazing.

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I probably spent more time hovering around the Square Enix booth than I needed to, but hey… I do that every year. Part of their lineup that was keeping me around was the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. You can view the E3 trailer above, before heading out to your local mall to pre-order the title. You know you’ll want to.

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This one was almost a surprise, and you could tell by the time they showed it at Microsoft’s media briefing, the air had been let out of the balloon. Nonetheless, it was nice to see Master Chief back on the screen at E3!

Set in the aftermath of Halo 3, Master Chief returns to confront his own destiny and face an ancient evil that threatens the fate of the entire universe. Halo 4 marks the start of a new trilogy that begins with its release in 2012.

The teaser trailer doesn’t reveal a ton, but you can look forward to more from 343 Industries, to whom the Halo baton has been passed.

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12:45p – Need for Speed: The Run trailer just finished.

12:45p – Star Wars music plays. BioWare’s turn: Star Wars: The Old Republic. Lightsabers and Force lightning all around. Plus some guy who looked like Deadshot.

12:51 – SSX time! I’ll try and upload this trailer later, or see if someone else can. The graphics are unreal. Holy cow.

12:52 – Peter Moore takes the stage for EA Sports to talk SSX. They’ve actually scanned the major mountains of the world to take you to the best slopes in existence. January 2012.

12:52 – FIFA stats. People, lots of people are playing it. We get it.

12:54 – FIFA 12 talk. Player impact engine brings unprecedented reality to allow you to push, shove, get hit, and get injured more realistically in the game.

12:58 – Video montage of FIFA fans.

12:59 – BTW, sorry we can’t do a video stream. I’m a little short-handed at this particular press conference.

12:59 – EA Sports Football Club – a new live service for FIFA fans. Social way to connect and compete with others around the world. Leaderboards and such. Comes at no additional charge with FIFA 12 on all platforms.

1:01 – Now for the real football.

1:02 – Madden 12 trailer. Needs more Bears.

1:03 – Bringing NFL stars on stage. Ray Lewis, Peyton Willis, Clay Matthews. Boo Packers!

1:07 – John Riccitiello back on stage.

1:07 – The Sims Social announced. Facebook! and a knock on Farmville

1:08 - It’s pretty much a detailed Facebook app/game.

1:10 – Curt Shilling, of Boston Red Sox and 38 Studios, talking about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning he’s working on.

1:11 – KoA:R trailer. I’ll try and have this uploaded soon.

1:12 – Insomniac fans, listen up: Ted Price takes the stage. Insomniac Games expanding to Xbox.

1:13 – Overstrike announced. Trailer shown. You’ll like it. Will upload.

1:17 – Battlefield 3 Teaser shown. Karl Magnus Troedsson from DICE comes on stage to talk about it. Live demo coming up. Frostbite 2 – new game engine. You can annihilate buildings, destroy cover, see cinematic lighting and imagery, large scale backgrounds, etc.

1:21 – Multiplayer online beta in September. Demo starts. Trying to fix live blog lag – sorry.

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As the gaming industry descends on to Los Angeles this weekend, The Tanooki’s E3 team is about to head off to the valley of brown air ourselves. You probably won’t see us kick the coverage until later tonight at the soonest, but maybe we’ll get lucky and find a good signal at the airports.

Time to get excited, people: we’re on E3′s doorstep, and things are about to get real! While we’re on route, drop us a line in the comments or the forums. What are you most excited about? What are you expecting to see? What would surprises could potentially blow your mind?

(image)

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  Go Beyond Good & Evil in 2011

Sony has finally launched its Welcome Back Program as a thanks to PSN users for their loyalty and patience during the lengthy outage. As long as you signed up before the outage began on April 20th, you’re eligible to download two games for each the PS3 and PSP.

Through July 3, PS3 owners have a buffet made up of Dead Nation, inFAMOUS, LittleBigPlanet, Super Stardust HD, and Wipeout HD + Fury. PSP owners can pick their pair of games from LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, Pursuit Force, and Killzone Liberation. In addition, non-PlayStation Plus subscribers will get 30 days free of the Plus service, while existing subscribers have already had 60 free days added to their subscriptions.

There are a few more freebies for you, so hit the link below or check your email. Sony also notes that as the new program launches, you may encounter erros trying to access it. The solution? Keep trying or come back later.

PlayStation.Blog

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