Thailand has removed all copies of GTA 4 from their game shops as a teenager is confesses to robbing and murdering a taxi driver.

On Monday, Thai police said that an 18 year-old Thai teenager confessed to the crimes of robbing and murdering a taxi driver. The teenager claims that he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life as it was in GTA4. Apparently, he showed ‘no signs of mental problems’. Whether this is due to over-eagerness to blame all society’s ills on video games, or a genuine clinical diagnosis remains to be seen. Personally, I would say that imitating a game in such a way is a sign of mental illness in itself. Whatever it is, Jack Thompson (and a lot of other people) is going to have a bloody field day.

One other thing of interest I noticed was this: “"Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."”, said the director of the Cultural Surveillance Centre, Ladda Thangsupachai. Haaaaaang on a minute. That sounds to me like “Well we got off lightly THIS time, because it was just a cab-driver, but imagine if a video-game shop owner were to be stabbed!” Uhhh….right.

Anyway, as a result, the Thai government has called for the game to be removed from shelves, and a huge lawsuit has been filed, worth billions of dollars. 

If you point your browsers to Play.com’s website, you will see that the Xbox 360 Premium model is currently selling for £169.99, which is £30 less than the RRP and £10 less than Amazon’s Wii-matching price!

Is this an indication of a price drop in light of the 60gb model coming our way? Nope! “It’s nothing to do with us.” according to Microsoft UK!

Maybe I should of waited an extra week before getting my 360… Nah, I wuvs it too much!

A mixture of things happened when Portal: Still Alive was released as an exclusive for the 360. For one, PC gamers were outraged and immediately started complaining to Valve on the Steam forums. When Valve said that PC gamers would not be missed out i thought that meant that they would also get a copy of Still Alive released over Steam. How wrong I was.

A new Sonic game is being developed for Wii and is said to be in the ‘storybook series’ which started in Sonic and the Secret Rings. The new title, called Sonic and the Black Knight, will take full use of both the Wii Remote and Nunchuk (as opposed to Secret Rings which just used the Remote) and will “combine Sonic’s legendary speed with frenetic swordplay action that makes full use of the unique Wii control system”. While Secret Rings was set in an Arabian nights type setting, Black Knight will be set in medieval times and will feature swordplay, as stated above.

When I heard of this I straight away thought of Wii MotionPlus being implemented into the swordplay aspect, however nothing has been confirmed.

Cheeky retailers have been naughty and have started selling Soul Calibur IV just a little bit early! Namco’s latest beat ‘em up offering was due to hit stores in the US on the 29th July, however there have been a number of reports of people who got their hands on the game yesterday, a mere 11 days too early!

Click through to view a video of the 360 version in action.

Were you one of the many that were disappointed with Nintendo’s E3 showing? This is because Nintendo weren’t talking to you. According to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo are no longer focusing on the core gamer when showing games at E3.

E3 is now “an opportunity for [them] to introduce new concepts and new types of play that [they] intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now.”

Interesting, does this mean we should expect better things at Leipzig?

Nintendo had their private developer meeting a few hours ago and while there Miyamoto confirmed the making of Pikmin. Afterwards, in an interview with IGN, Miyamoto went on to talk about a number of other things. Miyamoto spoke about a new Kid Icarus, Zelda and Wii storage.
More info inside.

Well, they’ve tried their hand at everything else, so I guess it wasn’t going to be long. Mario and the gang are back, but this time they’re playing.... baseball?

Get ready to hit some homers, Mushroom Kingdom style!

Admit it, you were disappointed, I was disappointed. Nintendo’s press conference was seriously lacking the hardcore side of things. This news has made its way back to the Reginator and its left him scratching his head!

More inside.

Word has it Nintendo could be unveiling a new game in a private press conference at some point during E3.

This could come as a much welcome boost for Nintendo’s hardcore fanbase as their hugely anticipated press conference left a lot to be desired. While I wouldn’t hold my breath about this, it may be worth being a tiny bit optimistic since a similar conference two years ago revealed the existance of Super Smash Bros Brawl.

We’ll have more on this if as it comes.

Capcom showed us a great play of Resident Evil 5 at the Microsoft press conference but before we had time to recover they dropped a video in our lap that showed off a hell of a lot more then the playthrough did.
I simply cannot tell you what the video is like without you having a look for yourself, so come on in for a look at the next game of the decade.

Activision has announced that a new game in the hugely popular Wolfenstein series will be heading to a system near you soon. At the moment it is being called Return to castle Wolfenstein 2, but this is just a tentative name and shall probably change.
All that is known is that this time the Nazies are trying to open up a portal between the Earth and a planet known as ‘Shrell’. More details will be revealed at Quakecon later this month, until then drool over the return of the franchise.
A trailer has just been released through E3. Come through to cheak it out.

During the E3 press conference, Nintendo announced that the Zelda and Mario teams were hared at work and that their games should please the ‘hardcore’ crowd. Now an interview between MTV and Miyamoto has confirmed that the Wii will be the first console for a while that has two Zelda and Mario games on it (by that i mean real Mario and Zelda games, not Four swords adventures of Mario party like games).
Information inside.

Duke Nukem is a cult PC classic. He is a blond action hero who used both dirty tactics and a dirty mouth, and he’s coming to the DS!
Apogee, the people behind the first Nukem game on PC, have announced that there is to be a set of three Nukem games for the DS. There are three games in the trilogy (obviously) which will be called Critical Mass, Chain Reaction and Proving Grounds and the first is said to be released in Summer 2009.
Only the names have been announced yet but these games should wet peoples appetites while they wait for Duke Nukem Forever.