Kotaku

In a rare leak for a Nintendo game, it appears scans of the Super Mario Galaxy strategy guide reveal a second, as yet unknown playable character. No, it's not the penguin shown above, but someone familiar. The secret character won't be available from the outset of the game and will, in fact, require a fairly high amount of item collecting to unlock.

While the alternate playable character probably won't come as a whopping surprise to longtime Nintendo fans, in the interest of helping some of our more sensitive readers spoiler-free, details on the secret are after the jump.

Prepare for a rant. Not against the ESA in particular, though they are most certainly part of the problem, but against the legion of freelance "internet investigators" who make it their job to not only harass the media, but to try and slowly dismantle the First Amendment.

The ESA today sent us a copyright infringement notice. Really not that big a deal because, besides referring to us as Jalopnik, the image in question is of a screenshot of a Wii service update for a story that ran in August about some routine update hitting the Wii.

My issue isn't with the stupidity of the notice, or the amount of my time it wastes. My issue is with all of the other sites that the Intellectual Property Enforcement folks at the Entertainment Software Association strong-arm into taking down legitimate news stories because they don't have the understanding of the law or the time to deal with bogus complaints.

I'm certain that someone at the ESA didn't send this out on their own, but the fact their IPE people do that on a daily basis most certainly has a chilling effect on a free and independent media. What I suggest that folks like the ESA and Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo and everyone else who uses these freelancers do is to stop using them, or perhaps hire people who both know the law and the subject they are supposed to be dealing with.

A war is brewing. Just as Man fights over the superiority of various football teams, cars, female hair colors and brand of fiber supplement, so too will Man fight over whether Guitar Hero is a better series than Rock Band.

While Rock Band won't be on store shelves for a few weeks, we do have at least 50% of the equation to ignite the flame wars. So hit the jump for our Frankenreview of the Harmonixless Guitar Hero III—all the answers to all of life's problems in five short paragraphs.

By: Mark Wilson

There are some of you out there who love the way writers and publishers handle video game reviews. This article is not for you. As far as the author and his sympathizers are concerned, you are the saps stuck as janitors cleaning dirty toilets in The Matrix, the suckers who sit around drinking Diet Coke convinced that it tastes like real Coke, the unfortunate few who were never able to see the rhinos and race cars in those Magic Eye images.

But after reading countless video game reviews over the years, and more recently editing Frankenreviews for both games and gadgets, it's become more and more obvious that the video game review system is dated, limiting and even, at times, unintentionally condescending.

But there's a ton of talent in the game review industry, really. So where are we going wrong?

Yesterday I posted a feature called "Video Game Reviews Are Broken, Please Fix." I received quite a few emails on my arguments, but wanted to share this one that I received from Brendon Lindsey, Editor-in-Chief of GamerNode. He offers the interesting perspective of an established review site that finds itself conforming to norms set by industry heavyweights.

Hey, Marky Mark. (Alright, got that out of the way early.)

Anyway, just wanted to shoot you a line saying I agree with most of what you said. I've said it in the past, people from sites I can't stand...have said it in the past, and we'll all say it in the future: gaming reviews are just not done correctly.

Halo 3 is a good time. So is this video that's making the internet rounds. We laughed. Out loud, even.

Super Mario Galaxy went on sale today in Japan. Here is the instruction booklet — which has kept the Mario falling on his arse picture art. Same goes for the actual game disc, but the box art is the better version. We've taken pics of the instruction book, which is, not surprisingly, in Japanese. Some pics after the jump! Click through if you're excited about Mario, the Japanese language or instruction books.

Next thing we knew, they wanted to remove all religious references from the book. I guess the Crusades were about shoe size or something. Then they hired an expert to vet the book. Curious that they hadn't thought about that before, eh? And finally, they wanted to send the book to the Agha Khan's people for their suggestions. By this time, Marco was thoroughly disenchanted. The book was turning into puree of bat shit, and I was no longer amused. The whole three-book project died.

The games are here, the price point is now $399 and we wanted to make the news loud and clear. But we need to deliver that in a way that befits the PlayStation brand. And so, beyond the brilliant HD games that the PS3 delivers, you'll also see a big focus behind the PS3's Blu-ray movie capability and, for the first time, you'll see a major focus behind the PLAYSTATION Network (did I mention online gaming is free on PS3??) and the exclusive gaming content available on the PLAYSTATION Store, as well as breakthrough services like Home.