Back when I picked up Echochrome for the PSP in Japan, I got a tiny bonus with it: a set of four Echochrome postcards, each with their own 4-koma on them. A 4-koma is Japan’s equivalent of the comic strip, telling a joke within 4 panels (koma). Series like Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, and Hidamari Sketch all follow the 4-koma pattern. Just your daily dose of manga education from Japanator.com.

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Previously unbeknownst to me, the guys over at the official PlayStation blog have a sense of humor. In an effort to answer some frequently asked questions about the upcoming firmware update for the PS3, Eric Lempel has put all the answers to those burning questions into blog form.

After reading it, though, I’ve to wonder how frequently some of these question were really asked. Not only does Eric humorously answer up to what his favorite cheese is (mozzarella ftw!), he also answers this gem of a question:

When you get a trophy, does it make a noise?

Currently, no.

Seriously? Enough PS3 people asked this enough times for it to make the FAQ?! Maybe I’m the only one who thinks that question is equal parts hilarious and retarded, but every time I read it I imagine that there’s a PS3 fan somewhere thinking, “Oh my god. Do the trophies make a noise? Tell me the trophies make noise.”

Yeah, it’s probably just me. Anyway, you can check out the complete 2.40 FAQ after the jump.

[Thanks, Joe!]

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Resident Evil 5’s composer, Kota Suzuki, recently took a trip to Los Angeles to record the melodramatic portion of the upcoming horror game. Suzuki utilized the 103-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony to lay down his tracks. At the end of the day, only fifteen minutes of music were required to fulfill the need.

Scoring Sessions reports that the music “sounded large on the stage, with frenetic orchestral driving rhythms, and strong melodic themes.” Portions of the session had an African theme, which was pronounced by an assortment of percussion that originated from the continent. An additional tiny ditty was created for the opening of the game.

As much as I would love to act like a connoisseur of fine music, I still find the majority of my time with KMFDM pumping in my ears. Fifteen minutes seems short, though, even if the score is looped repeatedly over crazy break beats. Yet I like the trouble to which Capcom went. To me, flying overseas instead of emulating an orchestral score is a sign of quality to come. Spare no expense, Capcom. I think we’re all ready to bust some zombie heads again in 2009.

Via Destructoid

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Headsets seem to be the norm when it comes to extras that accompany massive PS3 online games. Bundled with every specially marked box of SOCOM: Confrontation is a very sleek Bluetooth headset.

The headset’s color is a silky flat black, with precious decal work on the side. The Sony PlayStation logo has never looked so refined. Notice the smooth curvature of the earpiece. It is style and comfort redefined. It practically screams, “Wear me!” Now observe the delicate button work, sure to satisfy any lucky consumer clicking the power button. Finally, check out the stand. Its noble base beckons the frag-tired player to relax, and quit screaming at kids for a few hours.

For the refined gamer, this is a must-have. Unfortunately, as elegant as the headset is, it can’t hide the smell of body odor after a long night of spawn-camping, nor can it make anyone appear better to the opposite sex. Regardless, check out the gallery below for a few stunning screenshots of the tender hearing device that’s set to ship October 14, this year.

[Via GamePro –- Thanks, Buck!]

Via Destructoid

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God, I hope so. Sure, there’s plenty of PSOne hits we’ve yet to see, but I’ve really been hoping for some PS2 downloads. You all know good and well that the system could pull it off. It was just a matter of waiting until Sony had it ready. So when?

While not official, the above picture gives me hope. This tiny gem comes from the N4G boards, where a board member claims this shot came from a Sony London employee. He says that a new PlayStation 2 Store will be announced at E3, and its launch is marked for late summer. And it’s supposed to launch in Europe!

Of course, none of this is confirmed. But the screenshot looks real enough. If you squint (or use the bigger one in the gallery below), you can see Metal Gear Solid 2, Fantavision, The Bouncer, Ridge Racer V, Smuggler’s Run, Red Faction, and SSX. The highlighted selection, MGS2, lists for

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Ah, wrestling games. Back in high school, my friends and I were heavily into wrestling, and we all owned the first two WWF SmackDown! games (the ones on the PS1). We’d watch Raw and SmackDown! every week, and we’d beat the living hell out of each other (in the game, of course) each weekday afternoon after school. But the series’ third game, the first on the PS2, lacked the same luster and charm of its prior-gen predecessors — at least in our view — and we stopped following wrestling anyway soon afterwards.

Still, my group of friends is obviously not a microcosm or a good sample size of Americans in general, since the WWE remains hugely popular (at the very least, we all know that Suff0cat is a massive fan). THQ has decided to pump out a new iteration of the games each year, so this will be the fifth title in the SmackDown vs. Raw series. THQ and developer Yuke’s are hoping that SvR 2009 has a superior reception than last year’s game, which garnered below-average reviews.

THQ PR reps were on hand at the 2008 Holiday Junket to demo the game’s exhibition matches (one-on-one and tag team), as well as its Create-A-Finisher mode. For more on how the game looks so far, head to the jump.

Via Destructoid

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It’s been a long time coming, but at last, one of classic rock’s greatest bands, The Who, will be making its way to Rock Band. Harmonix had long ago named the band’s seminal 1971 record Who’s Next as planned full-album DLC for Rock Band, but we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of songs like “Bargain” and “Baba O’Riley” (for the last time, people, it isn’t called “Teenage Wasteland”).

Now, alongside the official announcement of Rock Band 2, we’ve got confirmation from Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopolous that a bunch of Who tracks will soon be appearing in the Rock Band Music Store — and that they’ve had some difficulty in procuring what they originally promised:

Their music really comes alive when you’re playing it … We were trying to release ‘Who’s Next’ in its entirety, but we were unable to locate all the masters. So in the face of that, Pete (Townshend) and Roger (Daltrey) helped curate this best-of soundtrack of everything we were able to find.

On Tuesday, July 15th, Harmonix will deliver a grand total of twelve songs by The Who. Since it’s a Tuesday, the songs will presumably only hit Xbox Live Marketplace that day, and will probably come to the PlayStation Store two days later — even though there’s no affirmation of that in the Yahoo! News article in which this story was first broken. As for the songs themselves, only two have been revealed so far, and they’re great ones: “My Generation” and “Who Are You.”

The songs will go for $1.99 apiece, while the twelve-pack of master tracks will sell for $19.99. It may not be all of Who’s Next, but I’m sure that whatever it is, it’s going to rock. After all, the band’s only remaining founding members helped pick the tracks. Are you already opening your wallet, like I’m?

[Via Yahoo! News]

Via Destructoid

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It looks like Eric Lempel wasn’t kidding when he stated that Sony would “shortly” be posting part 2 of their video walkthrough of PS3 system software update v2.40. The second video was posted on the PlayStation.Blog around 8 AM EDT. Lempel starts off this five-minute segment by introducing the Trophy Collection under the Game tab of the XMB. First is a list of all the games you’ve earned Trophies in. The game title will be accompanied by a progress bar, which represents the percentage of trophies you’ve gotten in that particular game.

You can then go into each specific game, and you’ll be presented with a list of all the possible Trophies in that game. Each Trophy can be analyzed on its own; you can look at its title, level (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum), when it was earned, and its description. In conjunction with the new Trophy system, Sony has revamped PSN profiles. But this video provides confirmation of the leaked profile page images that we saw last week: new profiles will feature three pages.

The first page will show off your eight most recently earned Trophies, as well as your “level,” a progress bar showing how far you have to go until the next level, and the total number of Trophies you’ve received. Page two will show the breakdown of all your trophies by types of precious metals, and the last page contains the three fields of info from the current profile.

Even cooler is the capability to compare your Trophy Collection with a friend’s haul of digital ducats. This will line up your collections by game, and you can then go into individual games to evaluate how the two of you’re faring, Trophy-wise. As for the levels, they’re pretty self-explanatory: a Silver Trophy will add more to your progress than a Bronze one, and so on, and a Platinum Trophy is awarded only after you’ve earned all the other Trophies for a game. Also, the PSN friends list capacity has been doubled to 100.

The video ends by noting that “developers have the tools” to patch Trophies into existing games; for a list of games that’ll include them at launch or be patched, hit the jump. There, you’ll also find the official press release from Sony. Oh, by the way: firmware v2.40 will be available for download on July 2nd.

[Via PlayStation.Blog]

[Update after the jump.]

Via Destructoid

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While everybody in Japan and America have been enjoying their “last-gen” rumble, we in Europe have had to do without. Obviously, this is understandable, because just like Smash Brothers, there is simply so much translation involved. You need to change “DualShock” on the boxes to “L’DualShock,” and that takes forever!

Sony claims the DualShock 3 is the “first choice for gamers,” which is funny, because up until now we’ve not had that choice. Fear not, however, for we have now been graced with a release date, and that date is July 4th.

How amusing: it’s the only time a British person has had a reason to celebrate Independence Day.

[Update: It seems likely that the July 4 release date is for the UK & Ireland only. Europe, however, should be enjoying the DS3 as soon as July 2. Good going!]

Via Destructoid

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The time is at hand, fellow PS3 owners. First, we saw a purported list of the v2.40 update’s features, and a proposal of a release date: three weeks. The very next day, a tip arose from the murky depths of NeoGAF; it stated that we’d see an official announcement and a video walkthrough from Sony on June 30th. It’s funny just how true some rumors turn out to be. The forumite over at Le GAF was proven correct early this morning: shortly before 3 AM EDT, a five-and-a-half-minute video walkthrough of how in-game XMB will work was posted on the Official PlayStation Blog (see above). This is Part 1 of the walkthrough; the next video, which will demo the new Trophies feature, is coming “shortly.”

The walkthrough cautions that this isn’t necessarily the way it’s going to look or work in the release of the update, but the video was put up to give us “a good idea” of what to expect when the update hits. First, Lempel brings up the XMB while playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (an interesting note is that hitting the “Home” button to access the XMB doesn’t automatically pause the game, so you can have it running in the background). We’ll see the full XMB, as it would appear upon powering on the PS3. All the abilities — e.g., messaging/friends list, download manager, and settings — are available.

As I predicted, having the Game tab of the XMB available means that you’ll be able to launch games directly from the XMB without having to manually quit out of the game you’re currently playing. Pic thumbnails show up, but if you want to view them fullscreen (e.g., in a slideshow), the system will ask you to quit out to the XMB. The great thing about having the Settings tab accessible is the ability to set up your Bluetooth headset from within a game. Sony has also added a clock, with date, to the in-game XMB.

The last major feature is a long-awaited one: music that’s on your PS3’s hard drive can be played instead of the in-game soundtrack. The playback tool offers standard functions (change tracks, stop, repeat, shuffle, volume control). Finally, v2.40 will bring a Google Search function to the XMB’s Network tab, just as in the PSP v4.00 firmware. Curiously, Lempel says that in-game XMB will “support the majority of games available for PS3,” but frankly, I’m not worried about that right now. All I know is that seeing v2.40 in action was so beautiful that it nearly brought a tear to my eye…

[Via PlayStation.Blog]

Via Destructoid

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