Koch Media have today announced that they have secured the license to release a game based on the classic German boardgame Carcassonne for the Nintendo DS later this year.  Carcassonne for the DS contains just the main game, which in turn includes the ‘River’ expansion, and will see a new innovation brought to the game with three added new locations: the Asian, Arabic, and Nordic worlds.

The game will include 3 different game modes: Story mode, featuring numerous levels and a ‘gripping’ storyline.  In the so-called Quick game, of which there is no such thing in Carcassonne, where you can choose the number and strength of AI opponents for the each match, and finally the Multiplayer mode, which will allow up to 4 players with single card play and 5 players wirelessly if you each have your own copy.

Expect more information on Carcassonne in the coming weeks, and until then you can read the full press release after the break.

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Gamers love little more than seeing a popular genre absolutely pummelled to death and Codemasters, a company with a history of giving the people what they want, are only too happy to drown us in racing games.  Codies have bombarded us with no less than five racing games in the past two years, DiRT, Grid, SBK 09, Superstar V8 Racing, and Fuel, with DiRT 2 and F1 2009 (Wii and PSP, with a bizarre 2010 release on the other platforms) also coming our way in a few months.  The problem with overloading a genre in this way is that a company must then compete with their own recent catalogue on top of countless titles from their rivals.  The big question is whether or not Codemasters have succeeded in making Fuel stand out in one of the most competitive genres in gaming.

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This could easily be one of the shortest reviews of all time with the comment of “Guitar Hero: Metallica is Guitar Hero: World Tour plus lots of Metallica tracks”. This is a little unfair, although not entirely inaccurate, and the fact this does contain many tracks from one of my favourite bands of all time makes this worthwhile.

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Did you enjoy Korg’s DS synth program Korg DS-10?  Did you go out and buy a brand new Nintendo DSi?  Well, you’ll be pleased to know that a new DSi enhanced version is due for release September 17^th in Japan, entitled Korg DS-10 Plus.

The new version will utilise the additional processing power of the DSi to increase the number of analog synthesizers to four and drum synthesizers to eight, it will allow you to use up to twelve tracks and features real-time editing.  No word as to when or if this version will see an eastern release, but if DS-10 was anything to go by it will all be in English and region free anyway.

See the (Japanese) announcement video after the break.

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The first part of the announced Warped Tour 09 DLC for Rock Band was released last week showcasing 5 of the acts on this years tour, and this week we get the final part of the package containing another 3 songs.  The artists this time round are Dear and the Headlights, The Devil Wears Prada and Thrice.

This week will also see a 3 track pack from Foreigner making its way to the game, and while I’m sure fans may recognise these songs I don’t…  That means no ‘Hot Blooded‘ and no ‘I Wanna Know What Love Is‘, and without either of those songs it’s a no sale for me!

Finally, this week will also mark the Rock Band debut of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with ‘Weapon of Choice’ from the bands 3^rd album being released as a solo track.

The usual pricing structure applies with this weeks releases, 440/$5.50 each for the Warped Tour and the Foreigner packs or 160/$2 each for any of the tracks individually when they are released on Tuesday via XBox Live and Thursday on PSN.

Full tracklisting with video links after the break.

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The game that started the collectible card game craze of the mid 90′s, Magic: The Gathering, has been entertaining geeks around the world for 15 years now and in that time there has been many attempts to make a computer game based on the game, but with the exception of Magic: The Gathering Online none of them have focused simply on bringing the card game to home computers and have all ultimately flopped.  Enter Isle of Wight based developer Stainless Games (of Carmageddon fame), who have finally released Duels of the Planeswalkers for XBLA after the initial announcement was made back in 2007.

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Downloading SNES ROMs (that you otherwise legally own, naturally) can be a bit of a pain, and is probably also illegal. I also think that something’s lost… I mean, they’re the same games you remember, but not the exact same copies. Perhaps it’s just me.

So, for picky people like me there’s this USB adapter, known as the Snega2USB, which lets you play SNES games directly through your favourite emulator, and is built with inexpensive parts by a genius modder known only as Matthias.

Matthias informs us that a Sega Genesis version is on the way, and after that an all-in-one solution which can support mutliple consoles by means of extra connectors and firmware updates. He’s also looking into adding support for savegames. Is this guy a genius or what!?

Major Nelson has shown the world a sneaky shot of the special Xbox 360′s that the 4 newly announced Xbox partners, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm & Sky TV,will be getting to celebrate the new partnership.

Before you decide which one you want, you’ll be saddened to know that these little beauties are not going on sale, there is a limited supply of each being given to each of the companies.  So unless you have friends in high places or are very good at getting a 5 finger discount you’ll have to keep on dreaming.

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Pop legend Michael Jackson has died from suspected cardiac arrest at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles today.  Despite being dogged with claims of child abuse for the last few years of his life nobody can deny that MJ has done more for pop music than anybody since The Beatles and that a true talent has been lost to the world.

Michael did have a foray into the videogame world during his career, with Sega producing a side scrolling beat-em up based on the Moonwalker film for the arcade, Megadrive and Master System, and it was actually quite a good game at the time.  What most people didn’t know however, and has been revealed by renowned games journalist Geoff Keighley’s twitter feed, was that the king of pop had the top brass of EA come over to his Neverland ranch a few years ago to pitch Thriller 2 to them as a videogame, which EA, probably very wisely at the time considering what happened in those following years, decided to pass on.

So next time you play Guitar Hero: World Tour, be sure to fire up Beat It! and have a blast in MJ’s memory.

In the current console generation, I think it’s fair to say that the Wii is probably the winner as far as sheer variety is concerned. Thanks to the system’s motion controls, fitness games, party games, darts games, and many, many other genres nestle in quite nicely on the system with all the usual shooters, racers and the like.

This is where Let’s Tap comes in. From the name alone, you’d be forgiven that this was a tap dancing game (I certainly did) but in reality it’s actually perhaps even a little stranger than that. The game is controlled by placing the Wii Remote face down on a cardboard box and… tapping on it. Don’t worry if you don’t own any spare cardboard boxes, however, as the limited edition version comes with two boxes fully assembled and ready to go.

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