The Wonder Festival is long over, but our memories of it live on. In the gallery below, there are upcoming retail garage kits of Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Zero, Street Fighter III, Street Fighter Online, Melty Blood, Guilty Gear, Persona 3, Quiz Magic Academy, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, Trigger Heart Exelica and moar. Take a look! They're neato.

WF 2008 [Akiba Hobby]

Hey, have you ever had one of those friends that says something really racist against black people but stupidly tries to placate everyone by assuring, "Dude it's ok...I have friends who are black." ....or maybe you have a friend that hits woman but eases your fears because you know his mom is a woman so it's all good? Well along those same lines, Nintendo throws in Piston Honda as a red herring to allay any suspicions that Punch Out is racist. I recommend that you intentionally go two rounds with Piston just so you can read him nonsensically utter "Sushi, Kamikaze, Fujiyama, Nipponichi." Yeah. Japan basically kicks itself in the nuts here.

Our team and the community as a whole is rallying to help fix this unfortunate situation. It's been awesome to see such an outpouring of sympathy and support from our community. We can't replace the exact item that was lost but, but we should come very close.

...it won't be a straight conversion of the PC game. We understand PS3 Crysis will be an almost 50% new game, with many of the original games staff taken off PC Crysis months before release to begin to work on Crysis 2 and a port to PS3 that will include aspects of the sequel - but a new structure, environments, weapons and enemies will feature on PS3.

In retrospect I wish Microsoft had made the choice to have [mandatory] hard drives like Sony did with the PS3... They did it with the original Xbox. I'm not sure why they decided to not require a hard drive on the 360. From what I understand they don't move many [Core/Arcade] units... Developers certainly benefit [from a hard drive]," he went on to explain, adding: "if you have a hard drive, the whole game loads faster. Obviously you'll be facing a short install time, but the developer benefits from it and you definitely benefit from it as a player... So I think that was one of the mistakes that Microsoft made with the 360.

To: Ashcraft
From: McWhertor
Re: Does Anyone Besides Mark Wilson Know Mark Wilson's Middle Name?

Apologies. I know I have a bad habit of teasing things in the Day Note. Readers hate it, but I love it! The only down side to being mysterious is when things don't come to fruition and you can't admit to what you were talking about. But I suppose that's better than announcing something super cool and then having it turn to dust. When you get into the regular habit of signing NDAs, it makes keeping a secret much, much easier.

Today was spent working on something pretty cool for Kotaku, a regular feature that we hope to implement soon and something that we've been slighted for in the past, despite those slams being based in ignorance. Exciting? Oh totally, but also a bit daunting when I'm the one proposing the new standard for it. People will either love it or hate it, but I'm formatting this new feature on how I'd want them to read.

What you missed today
Atari says the future is online
Meet Atari's future man, Phil Harrison
Canadians enjoy Super Smash Bros. Brawl in parkas
Ray Maguire opens mouth, PlayStation news falls out
Games are raping our women (or something)!
Tron to destroy MCP, Saark again
PlayStation Video Store shown to publishers and retailers

The minimalist stylings of Echochrome are certainly welcome, but seeing the game play in a photorealistic environment with a man in an all-white suit and stunning afro makes me wonder what might have been...

Say, this is only a fortnight away! I might have to import.

Video game baseball fans will be belting out "What the hell is this crap?" to the tunes of 2K Sports' Major League Baseball 2K8, as the publisher has announced an agreement with Pitchfork Media to select half of the game's soundtrack. Indie rock fans and wannabe indie rock fans will delight at some of Pitchfork's choices, which include chart-bottomers like Blitzen Trapper, The Cool Kids, Battles and Jay Reatard, alongside more mainstream stuff like The Strokes and The Flaming Lips.

To everyone involved, we say kudos. While they may have looked to Sub Pop in the past for left-field style musical picks, we're just pleased as punch that they haven't regressed to throwing in John Fogerty's "Centerfield" or Dire Straits' "Walk of Life."

Full tracklisting and annual odd pairing after this.

The current PlayStation Store is a bit of a clunker. It's functionally sound, but a bit rough around the edges from a usability standpoint. Compared to the rest of the PlayStation 3's visual design, it's certainly lacking—but that's reportedly going to change come Springtime, as the Store is said to get a new coat of paint. One aspect of the Store that's been hinted about by reliable publications, like the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, is Sony's download service, one that president Howard Stringer may be talking about when he refers to the "expansion" of the PlayStation Network.

It may be Sony's best bet in fending off Apple's iTunes for movie and television distribution. And it may be closer than we thought.

Sega Superstars Tennis gives us the most conflicted early feelings of any game we know of in development. On the one hand, it's Sega. On the other, Sumo Digital is actually doing the work. On the original hand, it's going to prominently feature Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog. On that other hand again, it has Ulala and Gum and Beat. But back on the negative hand, this is certainly not how we expected to hear from Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio's main players. Returning to the positive hand, we are pleasantly surprised to see how well Chu Chu Rocket mini-gameplay seems to be integrated.

My brain is about to be ripped in half as I struggle to come to terms with Sega's answer to Mario Tennis. Do we hate it to death or smother it into oblivion? Someone! Do the thinking for us!

If you're the type who decided that the Gradius II version of the Vic Viper starfighter should represent but a fraction of your PVC space armada, you may want to hunt down an import retailer for the follow up. The Gradius III version of the Vic Viper doesn't deviate too far from the design path, but comes in a classy off-white and with a sleeker chassis.

This model kit from Atelier Sai is similarly priced to its predecessor at 4500 yen (or $42 US). It ships in May, after the the previously posted Vic hits hobbyist shelves. The backside of the ship is after this.

That Videogame Blog points out that concept artist Ben Mauro recently put up a nice collection of concept images for a "proposed sequel to BioShock.

Mauro told the site that these are just personal images he created for an art class he was taking. The assignment, he says, was to design a sequel for a video game or movie.

Too bad, because it's some pretty amazing stuff. I liked it so much I sent a link to Ken Levine to see what he thought. Haven't heard back yet.

It almost looks as if Mauro was thinking prequel when he did this art. Perhaps this shows the making of Rapture? Check out the link for images of his tram system.

Mid-Term Update... [Perpetual Motion, via That Videogame Blog]