The second annual Penny Arcade Expo came and went this weekend and after reading this writeup on Slashdot I have to say that it sounded like a lot of fun. The guys at PA have always impressed me by both being really nice guys and doing a lot for the fans (not to mention sick children), really doing their part to show that gamers aren’t all the murderous loners that some seem to think, and PAX seems to be the community-orientated thing that is a great foil to the commercialism behind the bigger shows. It may not have the sheer amount of new stuff that E3 brings, but E3 doesn’t have constant LAN parties.

In fact after reading that I’m really tempted to fly over and go to the next show, especially if they hold one on the East Coast as the rumours seem to be suggesting. The first one sounded great and this one seems to be a vast improvement that will only get better next year. It’s never going to break the hold on the industry that E3 has but as more developers see its growth and popularity this could be the perfect show for consumers to see the latest games.

I think I’m really late to the party on this one, but I’ve just discovered Mega64 (more info on their Wikipedia entry) which is absolutely worth a look. I’m a huge fan of the hidden camera stuff like Trigger Happy TV so one that involves video games is always going to grab my attention, especially when they do a hilarious Shenmue spoof, which oddly seems to downplay the “I’m looking for some sailors” line which always seems to be an easy target. You have to love the QTE and the “I’m looking for the man who killed my father”/”Wow, that’s pretty deep” exchange.

If you enjoy that by all means download the rest of their videos, but my personal favourites were Tetris, Metal Gear Solid, and Ghosts ‘n Goblins. I can’t wait for some more.

Just to confirm what I thought in my initial impressions, it does get better when you’ve played it a bit more. Now I’ve trained Poppy with a few tricks (sit, lay down, roll over, spin, and shake) and won a couple of the obedience trials I’ve got some money to play with, and that opens up more things you can do. I have enough to get a second dog but I’m not going to do that until I’ve pretty much exhausted my opportunies to do things with one.

It’s definitely still no deep and long game but I’m having fun with it. It continues to impress me with how lifelike the dogs are, both in terms of animation and in reactions to whatever you’re doing. If nothing else it’s a very impressive technical showcase for what the DS can do with what could be considered fairly limited hardware – the PSP might have power pushing that of the PS2, but it can’t make dogs that yelp if you poke them up the arse.

Not that I’d do that, of course.

I’m an atheist, but if this turns out to be true and not more mindless rumour mongering then I promise to at least consider going to church. Once. With a Game Boy to play.

Seriously, the number of rumours about a Shenmue sequel seem to be so numerous that it’s hard not to believe them. You’d better believe that Sega knows how rabid the fanbase for the series is and the rumours from different sources seem to be building into a crescendo that isn’t helped by the fact that Sega don’t deny it, assuming of course that it isn’t true. Either way getting Shenmue III onto your console makes it a guaranteed purchase on my end; even more so than any number of Halo 3s, Resident Evil 5s, and Grand Theft Autos.

Funny how things happen, isn’t it? I’ve been looking forward to getting my PSP in Japan – I have a US copy of Wipeout Pure sitting on my desk and next week I’ll have Virtua Tennis and Transformers The Movie on UMD – and my DS has been collecting dust pretty much since I got Wario Ware for Christmas last year.

I felt an urge out of the blue to play it a couple of days ago and have been playing around with the minigames in Super Mario 64 on and off since. When I somehow managed to spend almost an hour playing Luigi’s card memory game and another hour on that weird shell bowling game I knew that I really needed a new DS game, and the VGC was selling Yoshi Touch & Go new for £20 which is less than any of the major online retailers.

It’s one of them that I’d been meaning to pick up for a while (along with Kirby Canvas Curse and Meteos, which I’ll probably pick up in Japan) and although it’s pretty basic, almost to the point of being a tech demo, I’ve been enjoying it. I’m always up for a high score attack and although this one could do with a bit more variety it’s good fun and I might review it when I get some time.

I’ve also got my name down for a US copy of Nintendogs when the VGC gets it in late this week and should be buying Dachshund & Friends. I’m intrigued to try it after all the hype so I’ll write some impressions when I get my hands on it, hopefully on Friday.

Four months and one day since my last review, I’ve posted a review of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s PSP puzzle title Lumines which can be accessed directly here or, as always, through my review index. I don’t own it yet (difficult when I don’t even have a PSP) but I spent the best part of six hours across two days playing it and absolutely loved it. I’m definitely picking it up in Japan since the import is in English anyway.

I know it’s another five star review and I find the review section slightly dull because of that, but it’s actually kind of difficult to play bad games to the extent where you can give them a fair crack in a review when I’m an incredibly picky buyer anyway. I’ll try to play something utterly shit so that I can tear into it and show you the other end of my spectrum.