Screenshots

Going hand in hand with our look at the construction of Ico's castle in issue 233 of Edge, is this gallery of concept art from the very early stages of the game's development. Why not go back and read our review of Ico from December 2001 while you're at it? More >

Here's a gallery of screenshots for Soul Calibur V, the Namco Bandai fighter that's due for Xbox 360 and PS3 early next year. More >

Details on the 3DS RPG unveiled by Square Enix at last week's Tokyo Game Show remain scarce, and these screens reveal little beyond its charming aesthetic. More >

Level 5 CEO Akihiro Hino has confirmed at the Tokyo Game Show that Ni No Kuni, the striking collaboration between the Professor Layton developer and renowned animation house Studio Ghibli, will be released in the west. An English localisation of the game is already underway, with a North American release planned for early 2012. Ni No Kuni was released for DS last year, but the PS3 version - which will be released in Japan on November 17 - will feature additional story content, with Hino also revealing post-release DLC is in the works.

Keita Takahashi's series returns, and this Vita launch title promises a unique spin on the familiar formula: players can use the handheld's rear touch panel to stretch and flatten their Katamari to fit through small gaps. The below trailer is sadly bereft of gameplay footage, but Namco Bandai has also released a few screenshots showing the new-look Katamaris in action.

A nice touch from Siliconera: a downloadable ZIP file containing 20 3D screenshots of the upcoming Super Mario 3D Land. Extract the file to the DCIM folder on your 3DS SD card, behold, and continue frantically counting down the hours to the game's European release on November 18.

UTV Ignition's ethereal action-adventure El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron is headed to Android, Famitsu has revealed. A 2D side-scroller which retains the console version's visual flair, a version of the game will also be released for Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play.

This first look at the Capcom / Level 5 3DS collaboration comes courtesy of Famitsu, via Andriasang. Gameplay details are still thin on the ground, though one new gameplay system is referred to: Gunshuu Saiban, or Mob Judgement, sees Phoenix questioning crowds of witnesses. New characters include blonde girl Mahoney, Wright's defendant, and sword-wielding, red-head prosecutor Jeeken.

The publisher has announced Super Star Kartz, a kart racer starring characters from Dreamworks films including Shrek, Madagascar, How To Train Your Dragon and Monsters Vs Aliens. It will be released for DS, 3DS, Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 before the end of the year.

Atlus has put development duties into the capable hands of Arc System Works, an appropriate choice given its pedigree of anime-styled fighting games such as Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. Set two months after Persona 4, The Ultimate will feature characters from that game as well as Persona 3. It's due in Japanese arcades next spring, and on PS3 and Xbox 360 next summer.

After last week's debut trailer comes a first set of screenshots for Valve's Counter-Strike reboot, which is set for release on Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network early next year.

The PlayStation 3 version of Level 5's RPG, a collaboration with revered animation company Studio Ghibli, now has a Japanese release date of November 17, almost a year after its appearance on DS. There's still no word on a western release, but Level 5's games do tend to make it out over here eventually: DS football RPG Inazuma Eleven is out in the UK today, three years after its Japanese debut.

New fighting game IP doesn't come along very often, and with good reason: much has to be done to stand out from the established crowd. Developed by a competitive fighting game player, Skullgirls has been built from the ground up with the competitive scene in mind, with an in-depth, feature-filled training mode, the ability to take control of a character while viewing a replay to try and right past wrongs and plenty more besides. Our favourite feature? You have to hold down the start button for a full 15 frames to pause the action, a move designed to avoid accidental mid-match pauses which, in tournaments, mean forfeiting the round. Skullgirls is set for release this year on PSN and Live Arcade, and these screenshots, released at Gamescom, show the newly announced Parasoul in action.

Suda51's Grasshopper Manufacture is having a busy time of it, working on a PSP Evangelion game, a social game for Mobage, collaborating with Hungarian studio Digital Reality on Sine Mora and working on a radio drama inspired by Hideo Kojima's Snatcher. Its next full-scale console release is Lollipop Chainsaw, which tells of a cheerleader ridding her US high school of a zombie infestation. Warner Bros has already announced plans to publish the game in the west in 2012 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and has released the below screenshots to coincide with this week's Gamescom in Cologne.

Finnish developer Bugbear Entertainment's upcoming racer is a Ridge Racer spin-off in name and deed, with an emphasis on destruction and aggression rather than the series' trademark sweeping powerslides. Other firsts for the series include an in-world HUD, user-generated content and, astoundingly for an 18-year-old franchise, a PC release.

The Capcom legend has worked with Idea Factory before, lending his likeness to its subsidiary Compile Heart for Neptune MkII. As you'll see from the below screenshots, it was a rather leftfield project, and so is his apparent collaboration with Idea Factory on its new PSP love sim, Bakudan Handan. Revealed in the latest Famitsu and translated by Andriasang, the game is set in a theme park which has been taken over by someone in a bear suit and who is threatening to blow it up. Inafune's name is mentioned twice: as designer of the theme park, which is based on videogames; and as the protagonist's uncle, who pops up throughout the game to impart sage wisdom. Andriasang is unsure whether either of those will be the real Keiji Inafune; either way we're offering pretty long odds on Bakudan Handan getting localised for the west.

Jagex's browser-based game holds the Guinness World Record for most popular free MMOG, and that popularity seems set to further increase with today's release of an expansion which adds clan citadels to the game's sky. Any clan with five or more members can take ownership of a citadel, and the expansion also introduces the Battleground Editor, which lets clans devise their own multiplayer games, ranging from deathmatches to ball games. Jagex says interest in the update has prompted a rush of new players, with Runescape VP Daniel Clough saying: "Our ambitious plan has always been to make Runescape's clan support the envy of the MMOG world, and we are confident that clan citadels can do just that."

This futuristic racer is the first PlayStation Home game to take advantage of the new features introduced recently in Home v1.5, including improved visuals, better physics and realtime multiplayer. It's free to play, with upgrades available using XP earned while playing or through microtransactions, and will be available in Home this Thursday. SCEE, however, is still unable to confirm when European customers will receive the bundle of over 100 virtual items as part of the Welcome Back programme, though it says details are currently being finalised.