Hide and Geek

Banjo-Tooie, the second of the famed duo’s N64 outings, will be available on Xbox Live Arcade in April, says Rare Community Manager George Kelion.

“Banjo-Tooie will be a note-perfect migration of Banjo and Kazooie’s second adventure”

More important than a well orchestrated pun, is the allusion towards the next step for Stop n Swop.

“Without going into too much detail, the Stop ‘n’ Swop items collected in Banjo-Kazooie will ‘magically’ appear in Tooie, resulting in… well, you’ll just have to find out.”

The emphasis on ‘magically’ implies that there will be extra transformations available for Banjo and Kazooie, on top of the bog standard washing machine.

Also revealed by George K, was the impending arrival, or at least confirmation thereof, of DLC for Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Quite what this could consist of is anybody’s guess. Personally I think it would consist of some new wacky challenges and some fundamentally different vehicle parts. What we all really want, though, is an increase in the size and part limits for the vehicles. If those could ‘magically’ appear in the garage that would be smashing.

Woffls

Developers DICE today confirmed that the new DLC for Mirror’s Edge would be available on both Xbox 360 and PS3 on January 29th 2009, just over two weeks from now. The content will be based in familiar surroundings, but will be completely new to the game. It will be available for 800ms points and whatever $10 usually converts to on the PlayStation Network

Woffls

In a recent interview with videogamer, Xbox Live’s Europe product manager Robin Burrowes discussed how Avatars would be expanded on after they’re implemented this November 19th with the New Xbox Experience.

On the subject of branded clothing, Robin had this to say:

“The plan of record will be to launch a more extensive Avatar Store from spring time onwards next year, and that store in theory would have branded content in there, game publisher IP stuff in there as well.”

It sounds like we will be getting constant influxes of free content from various sources after Spring, as well as a lot of stuff to pay for. So you’ll probably get some ODST armour with the inevitable collectors edition of Halo 3: Recon, and we can only pray that Rare will make some amusing pinata based costumes for us to enjoy.

More importantly than the shocking revelation that some avatar content will be paid for and some will be free, we will apparantly be able to unlock various items by getting Achievements. Yes, now getting achievements might actually be of some value, like getting a guitar for your avatar by completing some ridiculous feat on Guitar Hero or Rock Band, as was hinted at by Robin.

Future versions of things like Guitar Hero or Rock Band or any other music game, if you win that particular Achievement everyone can see it within your friends list.”

This is great for achievement junkies like myself, because now I can provide concrete evidence that I really am a superior gamer. I mean, just look at the triple necked Ibanez that I got for beating Steve Vai’s Guitar Battle in Guitar Hero V.

Woffls \m/

I know, I know, music game news is usually Woffls’ territory, but I just couldn’t resist stealing this story out from under him.

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that MTV and Harmonix are preparing a whole batch of new downloadable full albums for the upcoming Rock Band 2. Releasing over “the coming months” will be:

• Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood, Sugar, Sex, Majik
• Jane’s Addiction - Nothing Shocking
• Megadeth - Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying
• Stevie Ray Vaughn - Texas Flood
• No Doubt - A specially compiled “Best of” compilation

With the traditional album format somewhat on the decline in recent years, it’s seeming more and more as if there’s a home for that kind of release in the world of music games. The success of Rock Band’s full album DLC is something that’s even came as a bit of a shock to the game’s creators, “We’re surprised by how many people opted to get full albums,” commented MTV Games’ Senior Vice President, Paul Degooyer, “But it’s a good value proposition. Talk about something that’s been lost and forgotten.”

Speaking personally, the news of The Colour And The Shape’s inclusion has me happier than Satoru Iwata at a “Who has the largest bank balance?” competition. All together now, “THERE GOES MY HERO, WATCH HIM AS HE GOES. THERE GOES MY HERO, HE’S ORDINARY!!!”

Grey

In an interview with Eurogamer at GC’08, Hideo Kojima revealed that a PSN version of Metal Gear Acid could appear at some point in the future. Although neither confirming or dismissing the idea, his comments would certainly suggest a PSN version of the PSP strategy game would be possible;

“I’ll say yes to that idea, but not because it is already running or anything,” Kojima told Eurogamer when asked about the possibility of porting the turn-based strategy titles to PSN.

“I’m just saying yes because it’s possible, I think it is possible. Sorry to say we don’t have specific plans at the moment, but it is possible, yes.”

Fingers crossed eh ‘Gear fans?

/Jamin dons a cardboard box a stealthily disappears into the shadows…