We recently sat down with Martin Wahlund (CEO, Fatshark) to talk about their upcoming downloadable title, Lead & Gold: Gangs of the Wild West – a third person multiplayer-oriented shooter aiming to give players “a chance to relive the thrills of a gunfight in classic western settings.”. Enjoy.

GCO: What’s the general idea behind Lead & Gold?

Martin Wahlund: To deliver a fun and good looking multi-player game with strong game modes that suits the western setting well. This, at a very good price for the players.

GCO: People have called Lead & Gold “Team Fortress meets the old west”, what do you have to say about that?

MW: It is not that far off. Team Fortress is great and there are many common elements in the games but also many differences.

GCO: Lead & Gold is a team based multi-player experience. Please describe some key elements in the game.

MW: Team play. You win as a team or lose as a team. Another key element is the class that you chose to play, it dictates the way you play in each scenario.

The in-game leveling system is also something that stands out; you get experience from completing mission objectives or killing enemies. The character then, evolves by gaining improved synergies.

GCO: Does Lead & Gold have some kind of perk system, much like that in the Call of Duty games?

MW: Not directly. The closest thing is the synergies that the characters get when you level up your character in each scenario.

GCO: We’ve noticed that Lead & Gold uses the same engine as GRIN’s Bionic Commando. Were there any setbacks caused by GRIN’s closing during development?

MW: Well, we worked close with GRIN and it was a shame to see the studio close down but we are still alive and kicking.

GCO: Is there support for dynamic (explosive) environment in the game?

MW: In some sense, yes. You can destroy certain objects with a well placed powder keg. It could be a wind mill or a door.

GCO: Going back to perks. Is there a class system?

MW: Yes. There are 4 main classes in the game at release, the trapper, the blaster, the deputy and the gunslinger. All of them have a special ability for example the trapper can set traps. We hope to release more characters as downloadable content in a near future.

GCO: When can we expect Lead & Gold to release?

MW: Q1 2010.

GCO: Thanks for your time.

We recently had the chance to speak with Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt, know for their health career in the video game industry, about their latest venture together “Tumbling After”.

GCO: For those that aren’t up to date with what you have done in the past, can you guys list some of your past works – both within the video gaming industry and on-screen?

Sure, Yuri might be best known for his work in video-games like The Prince of Persia series (as the Prince) in Sands of Time and Two Thrones. He also recently worked on Afro Samurai (Jinno/Kuma) – both the video games and series – opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Lucy Liu and Ron Perlman. He’s been in countless other game titles from .Hack// (Haseo), Saints Row, Persona 3 & 4 to Final Fantasy, as well as anime series Naruto (Sasuke), Gurren Lagaan (Simon) and more. He also does a lot of original animation work, having starred in Legion of Superheroes (Superman & Superman X), Ben Ten: Alien Force (Ben), Wolverine & The X-Men (IceMan) in addition to on-camera jobs. Most recently on TV he had a recurring role on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Christopher Garvin) as well as recurring on The Gilmore Girls (Carl).

And Tara is no stranger to video games, animation and television as well. In video games, some of Tara ’s credits include Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Red Queen), DC vs. MK (Wonder Woman), Persona 3 (Mitsuru) and Soulcalibur (Setsuka). In anime, she’s also on Naruto (Temari), Blue Dragon (Cynthia) and Buso Renkin (Tokiko). Tara also worked on Legion of Superheroes (DreamGirl). On-screen in film and TV she’s appeared in Gilmore Girls (Shelly), Charmed (Muse), recurring on Attack of the Show (Baronness & Spoiler Whore) as well as several indie films: Death’s Door, Time & Tide and Tumbling After, the feature film that we wrote, produced and completed this year under our production company Monkey Kingdom Productions. Clearly we don’t like to sit still…:)

GCO: How did you guys use your experiences with your recent venture “Tumbling After”?

Well, I think simply being in the entertainment industry as long as we have definitely helped us as we worked on Tumbling. It was its own unique process, which I don’t know that anyone could have been totally prepared for given the circumstances. And there were certainly moments when things got hairy, that we had to say, “This is just the way it’s gonna go!” and not take it personally or get bummed out, or we wouldn’t have finished the film at all. Yuri jokes that making Tumbling was our equivalent to going to film school; we had to learn on the spot and make things happen however we could just to get through the day.

We certainly called a few favors from people we know in all areas of the business. At every step of the process. It’s really the way things get done here, we’ve found. First it was calls to see if people could jump in as cast/crew, then it was to see if they could help in post-production. Those friend-favors are invaluable and we owe the caliber of the film in great part to the hard work and efforts of those people…which we couldn’t have accessed without having laid the groundwork in our personal careers up to that point. It’s such a huge undertaking, making a movie, that there’s a lot of trust involved, from start to finish, which is kind of funny, because trust is a major theme in the film.

GCO: When you hear the name “Tumbling After” you hear the ringing of the popular children song “Jack and Jill went up the hill”, was that you inspiration for the name of the movie? If yes, why?

Great! Then it’s working. Although the film is a psychological thriller, we like the eerie feel you get when you juxtapose children’s rhymes with scary ideas and images. Most of those fairy tales are pretty scary when you get right down to it, anyway. The main characters are named Jack and Jill for that reason, so that you are following the ‘tumbling after’ that befalls them. In fact, our tagline for the film is “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown and then began the slaughter…”

It’s funny really, since when we started filming we thought we might name the characters Jack and Diane, like the John Cougar Mellencamp song but fate stepped in and we ended up changing Diane to Jill just before shooting. And it all lined up perfectly. We couldn’t have planned it any better, really, since the character of Jack starts the film having just had a mental breakdown (he broke his crown) which sets all the events in motion (slaughter, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to watch and see.). So, yay! We’re glad that those images were conjured when you heard the name. Success!

GCO: Monkey Kingdom Productions. This has to be one of the most unique names I have heard in a long time, how did you guys come up with it? What’s the reason behind the name?

Why thank you! It actually stems from Asian myth and legend, by which we are both intrigued and inspired. In Eastern mythology, there is a Monkey King god. The Monkey King is a trickster god, always playing pranks on the bigger more powerful gods. We liked this image of the clever underdog, especially in the studio-powerful entertainment industry. So, we took that idea and our love of teamwork or a ‘kingdom’ of people, since in this business a successful project is never the work of a single person, and we created Monkey Kingdom Productions. ‘Cause when you’re having fun, its not really working, right? And if we don’t take ourselves too seriously and allow ourselves to play, then we’re just monkey-ing around. As we like to say, “C’mon monkey, let’s make a movie!”

Currently we’re shopping Tumbling After to several distributors and we are also in production and filming our next feature film, a documentary about the world of comic/cartoon/anime/video game conventions from the perspective of actors who travel there, since we live that firsthand. We are also co-authoring a book on voice-over due out this fall entitled Voice-Over Voice-Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic, so keep your eyes out for that. Like we said earlier, we’re always on the move!

Time is an aspect that passes throughout our minds even when we aren’t supposed to watch it. Speaking of time, I can’t remember how many video games I have played featuring ‘time travelling’, though I can tell you that seven times out of ten they seem to disappoint. But when we sat down with Aaron Schurman – CEO of Phantom EFX, the publishers of Darkest of Days, set for release on the PC and 360 – he gave us a new reason to believe.

GCO: Your game has recently gained some hype within the industry. Can you tell us about the setting for Darkest of Days and how it was originally conceived?

Aaron Schurman: Darkest of Days has been a dream in my head for about ten years now. Being such a huge gamer, I dreamt of a game that would allow me to visit different battles all within the same title. The game really started that simple. I wanted to visit various fantastic places, such as WWI, WWII, Little Big Horn etc. all in the same experience. Not only did I want to go to various places, I wanted to be in impossible situations: some of humanity’s darkest days in history. The places that immediately entered my mind were events like Little Big Horn, where no U.S. Cavalrymen survived the battle; places like Tannenburg where 80,000 Russians were lost; places like Antietam, the bloodiest day in American History. As I began to think of events like this, I realized there are hundreds of them from all over the world, in every culture, time, and place. Time travel was the evident way to make it happen, but knew it had to be pulled off 100% accurately. It had to make sense, it had to be engrossing, and it had to be realistic.

The exciting notion of Darkest of Days and the type of game it could become made it impossible to accomplish at that time. First of all, there was a severe lack of capital. The next biggest problem was that I envisioned a game where the events were incredibly realistic. If you are going to go back in time, I want the American Civil War to be chaotic, bloody, and terrible – not some vision where there were ten guys on the screen at once. For realism’s sake, there had to be hundreds and hundreds. This, again, made it impossible to even attempt at that time from a tech standpoint. Most importantly, I wanted to make the game myself and not sell the idea.

Years later, after we had established a working game company with great titles and a working knowledge of the development process, we set out to make our own engine, one that could support the lush, varying, detailed environments as well as the hundreds of soldiers. The engine also had to support both long-distance terrains as well as narrow cityscapes (to accurately pull off environments like Pompeii). After the amazingly talented folks at 8monkey Labs created the Marmoset engine, it was finally time to work on the most difficult era, the U.S. Civil War. We picked this area first since it was going to be the most complex to pull off; we wanted it as realistic as possible with so many men doing so many different things at the same time. Once we built it and pulled and pruned it to perfection, it was so harrowing that every time we played it everyone got goose bumps. There was no problem raising capital at that point.

GCO: With a story this interesting, who is the “bad” guy or guys within your title? Or is that a slowly uncovering fact of the game?

Schurman: You have picked up on one of the things readers of the story have been amazed by – the story itself! I have never played a game that has this engrossing or detailed a story. So many folks tout stories in their games, but in reality there is little there. This game will really get you thinking, and that’s what we set out to do.

Time travel is such an amazing thing, with so many possibilities. It’s really a fantasy place our minds like to go to. It’s been so poorly done so many times – it seemed that folks just begged for a story that was believable and “could come true,” as a lot of testers say.

The player gets a chance to “choose where they want to go” as they begin to save folks from history that were never meant to die. As they save these people, and begin to save history, the folks who screwed it up in the first place begin to take notice, and the fight is really on. Not only will people have to deal with being dropped into a fierce environment with death all around them, they will have to deal with other time travellers trying to fit in. It’s pretty wild! It’s awesome to watch how folks have to play that next level to see what happens. I honestly have not seen testers respond like this to a game, where they literally /had/ to get that next part done, or travel to that new time frame to see what happens. It really brings back the fantasy in games. It has been incredible to watch people’s reactions as the perceived “good” and “evil” forces battle.

GCO: I have played many games that have dealt with the time aspect. Can you tell me, since you play as a time traveller, if there are any powers within the game?

Schurman: One of the biggest “powers” a player can have is to possess a weapon in a time frame that does not belong there. You are quite powerful in 1865 with a fully automatic weapon. The tricky thing in developing the game was to give the player a roller-coaster ride of situations, and face them with different weapons. You fight with all the period weapons in all of the six times you travel to – however, in each era, you get your hands on things you shouldn’t.

There is also a matter of “clean up.” As you progress through the game and you begin to accomplish your objectives, there are always repercussions of your actions. As hard as you may try, you may accidentally kill someone that was supposed to have survived the battle, triggering some events. Or, you may be too accurate with your shoulder-mounted rocket launcher in an ancient battle, single-handedly changing the entire tide of the battle. You will need to correct some mistakes, and that always calls for heavy equipment.

GCO: How long have you guys been working Darkest of Days?

Schurman: We have been on the project for just about three years. The first half of that time was spent on building the Marmoset Engine while we wrote story, invented characters, and produced concepts of locations.

GCO: At what stage of development is the game now?

Schurman: The game is in the final stages of testing and is all but complete. NVIDIA has taken great appreciation of the PC version and has been working hard with us to add some pretty incredible special effects that will benefit users. The console version is in the final stages as well.

Winners: Hi guys, just so that you know the winners have been picked and packages have been sent. 

Contest: Here’s the deal people, we are holding a contest in were you can win a Wii. So… all you have to do is just click – they have to be legitimate clicks - on the boxing glove at the end of this post and post a comment telling us you did. And yes, if you tell a friend about this contest, and they click on the boxing glove, your chances will go up, but you’ll have to leave a comment telling us you did. By the way, the contest ends on March 10 so act fast, we will announced the winner via e-mail and that persons name will appear on this website. Also, all pre-orders of R2R from Amazon and GameSpot are $10 off.

For a game that has so little hype, it seems that Ready 2 Rumble Revolution has the chance to be one of the greatest Wii titles of this year. I know, I know. It isn’t as good looking as MadWorld, but if they don’t mess it up it can, at least, be good. And just so that we have a solid back story here’s a list of reasons why.

The family element: Okay, we all know that people in your family don’t know alot about video games, or atleast not as much as you do, and knowing them they will buy the game for you.

Larger list of playable characters: Being the third game in the series you know there isn’t going to be a short list of characters.

Funny looking people: I don’t mean to be mean, but who doesn’t want to mess up the face’s of funny looking characters? Let’s face it, you all want to pick on these characters because they look funny, just look at the picture I used for this article, doesn’t it make you want to beat him up?

The BIG Las Vegas Showdown: Personally, I have never been to Las Vegas so I’m thinking that when this game comes out I can make a character and take him, or her, all the way to ‘the BIG Las Vegas showdown’.

Controls: Being, what is one of the key parts of the game, this game can really be very strong on the controls area mainly because it uses the Wii control system from it’s a boxing game.

I know this list isn’t going to win you over, but if it doesn’t do good in all these areas along with the family fun factor it can’t be the on of the best Wii titles this year. So please don’t suck Ready 2 Rumble Revolution.

Personally, from our eyes it has been a truly amazing year, in both gaming and entertainment, and well some of us may of wished that it was better. We are still very happy that you guys come to visit the site, so to thank you all we are going to be doing something beyond your common expectations in the upcoming months, but you guys are just going to have to wait to figure out what it is.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank each and every one of you for being such faithful readers of  the site. It has been a year and a couple months and, to this date, we have severed over 3 million gamers and for that we Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

Also, before we go. I’ll like to take sometime and try an thank all the nice PR people that have connected us will the equipment for this site, so thank you very much.

Before we start the list I would just like to mention that this is the first month in what we would call the “Pocket Burning Months”. We call it this because in the following months you will start to feel a little hole in your pocket start to burn and by the end of this year you are going to need a tailor for your pants, but in an anti-homo way. I would also just like to mention that all the games releasing this months are mostly five star and four star games for all systems.

October 7-8, 2008:
BattleForge – PC
Bleach: Dark Souls – DS
Cooking Mama: World Kitchen – Wii
Crash: Mind Over Mutant – 360, PS2, DS, PSP
Everlight – PC
Exit – DS
Fallout 3 – PS3, 360, PC
Facture – PS3, 360
Imagine: Baddysitters/ Fashion Designer New York / Wedding Designer – DS
Kage Densetsu: The Legend of Kage 2 – DS
Monpoly – 360, Wii
Moto GP’08 – PS3, 360, PC
Motorstrom: Pacific Rift – PS3
NBA 09: The Inside – PS3, PS2, PSP
NBA 2K9 – PS3, 360, PS2
NBA Live 09 – PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP
Prey the Stars – DS
Six Flags: Fun Park – Wii, DS

October 14-16, 2008:
Avatar The Last Airbender: Into the Inferno – PS2, DS
Baja 1000 – PS3, 360, Wii, PS2
Blitz: The League II – PS3, 360
Boogie: Superstar – Wii
Bratz: Girls Really Rock – Wii, PS2, DS
Dance Dance Revolution: Universe 3 – 360
Deer Hunter Tournament – 360, PC
End War – PS3, 360, PC, DS
Fifa Soccer 2009 – PS3, 360, PS2, PC, DS, PSP
Golden Axe: Beast Rider – PS3, 360
Littlest Pet Shop – Wii, DS, PC
Mana Khemia – PSP
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi – DS
Naked Brothers Band – Wii, DS
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm – PS3
Robocalypse – DS
Rock Revolution – PS3, 360, Wii, DS
Saints Row 2 – PS3, 360, PC
Shaun White Snowboarding – PS3, 360, PS2, Wii, DS, PSP
SOCOM: Confrontation – PS3
Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals – DS
Spray – Wii
Syberia – DS

October 21-22, 2008:
All-Star Cheer Squad – Wii, DS
Bioshock-PS3
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia – DS
Dead Space – PS3, 360
Ener-G: Dance Squad – DS
Fable II – 360
Game Party II – Wii
Garfield Gets Real – Wii, DS
Ghostbusters – PS3, 360, Wii, PC, DS
LittleBIGPlanet – PS3
RockBand 2 – PS3
RockBand 2 Spacial Edition – PS3, 360
Spider Man: Web of Shadows – PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP
Spongbob: Gloob of Doom – Wii, DS
Star Ocean: First Departure – PSP
Tak: Mojo Mistake – DS
Think First – Wii

October 28-29, 2008:
Ben 10: Alien Force – Wii, DS, PSP
Bigfoot: Collsion Course – Wii, DS
Club Penquin: Elite Penguin Force – DS
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – 360, PC
Dancing with the Stars: Get Your Dance On – Wii, DS
Fallout 3-PS3,360
Guitar Hero: World Tour w/ Instruments – PS3, 360
High School Musical 3: Senior Year – 360, Wii, PS2, DS
Hunt for Black Beard’s Booty – Wii
Midnight Club: Los Angeles – PS3, 360
Monkey Mischief – Wii
My Sims Kingdom – Wii, DS
NHL 09 – PS3, 360, PS2, PC
Ninja Town – DS
Safecracker – Wii
Singstar Country/ Legends – PS2
Singstar Vol 2 – PS3
Skate City Heroes – Wii

With now ex-Project Gotham Racing developer, Bizarre Creations, falling into the arms of Activision we can assure you that Bizarre Creations will not be making the Project Gotham 5. Now, takes to this rumor it looks like Turn 10 will be Developing this game for the Xbox 360. According to Addict Gaming, earlier today a reliable source close to the Development Studio “Turn 10″ told them with some very reliable evidence that Turn 10 will be developing Project Gotham 5. The evidence that was shown to them that not only is proof they are developing the latest addition to the Project Gotham series, but not only that it also showed that they will be announcing it “Within the next two week’s, depending on next weeks NXE announcement”.

Project Gotham is a racing game that was developed by Bizarre Creations published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox gaming console only. The game made it’s first appearance on the original Xbox and was the second best to the original Halo, which was also on the original Xbox.

According to Sega Germany, neither the House of the Dead: Overkill or MadWorld will be shipping to retailers in Germany. This news comes after the idea of not showing Gears of War 2 at the upcoming Games Convention in Germany. The likelihood of the games not be shown at the Games Convention in Germany is very high, but it’s still unclear if it will be shown at the event. But, as you may know Germany gamers may have to go out of their way to get their hands on the game, they may even have to go to another country just to get their hands on a wii game.

While the fourth version, Street Fighter IV, has only just landed in the land of the Rising Sun, and that version does emerge at home until this winter. The producer of Street Fighter IV, Yoshinori Ono, already mentioned the next episode of the series in a brief interview.

In an interview with MTV’s Multiplayer Blog, he told them that “It’s really early to be thinking about that because “IV” just came out in the arcades,” he said. “I don’t really think anyone at Capcom is thinking about “V” just yet. What we might see happen, depending on feedback from the arcade and what players think of this version of “IV,” we may or may not see upgrades to “IV” before we ever take the next big step to “V.” It’s really is just too early to tell, to be honest.”

It may seem like common to get a game with this kind of hype over a movie, The Dark Knight, and with there being many rumors pointing to the game being reality there was still no official word about the game. But, yet still Joystick Radio seems to think that you “may see in the future” something about The Dark Knight video game, but they didn’t say it in that in that order. So keep your eyes peeled because you may see something about a new batman game.

Update 6/21/2008: You guys may want to take a look at this.
The Dark Knight Game Confirmed

Early this week Microsoft vindicated that Halo Wars was not ready to be shown to the public which shows that they are working very hard on this upcoming game although today with the released of one screenshot we where able to pull some strings with some very close sources to attract to you three new screenshots. Hope you like.

Halo Wars is set in 2531, prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved which is set in 2552. It follows the story of the UNSC’s discovery of a Forerunner artifact and the first battles with the Covenant after the fall of the first planet, Harvest, to the Covenant. It will allow the player to control the crew and vehicles of a UNSC ship, CFV-88 Spirit of Fire, and receive instructions and commands from its AI Serina.

{GamerCenterOnline 2.0. Coming Summer 2008}

If you are a owner of a Wii request for the success of House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return. According to Sega, if the title sell well around the world the editor would plan to offer to the console house of the Dead 4.

The arcade games House of the Dead 2 & 3 come packaged together on one Wii disc in a set. In the game players can target creeps and creatures easily with the Wii remote or Zapper. The two titles will feature more than six gameplay modes, including Arcade Mode and Time Attack.

 We have all heard the news that Sony will be soon droping the 80GB PS3 from there line-up to give us something bigger (Let’s say Over 100GB Hard Drive) and better (The rumble in the jungle Dual Shock 3). So what can we say is Sony pushing to give us the best in gaming we will just have to sit back and wait but when you look at it this could turn out to be true seeing that Gamestop and Best Buy both said or leaked that Sony is going to Disconutined the 80GB model and they had no future information on what was going on. When this was kicked to the Sony’s Camp (Sony’s HQ) they had nothing at this time to say about it which we think is very strange and normally when a company pulls something and does not say anything about it that means there is something very better or bigger coming so as i sit here about to go to bed I can rest peacefully knowing that Sony is at their best.

According to Gamestop DrangonBall Z: Burst Limit will be releasing on July 16, 2008.

I called my local GameStop and it turns out to be ture

Gameguru has posted some new details for Gear Of War 2. The details are as follow:

-Unreal 3.5 engine

-4 new weapons

-Twice as big as the previous game

-New methods of melee

-Controllable air vehicles

-New actions set prices

-The map is code name Silent Night

Now, this is just another rumor so don’t get you hopes up.

Surfer Girl has posted some new screens for Pince of Persia Alpha on here blog. Yeah it does look bad, but thats ok because has she had Said before the game is in it’s "early version" . She also gives some new information " The game, scheduled for release in the second half of next year (for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC), will feature younger prince than previous trilogy saw and will serve as a prequel to those titles and the start to a new trilogy (the second title scheduled to come out in summer 2009 to capitalize on the release of The Sands of Time feature film). Stylistically and gameplay-wise, the game has abandoned the dark edginess of the last two titles in favor a fantastical cross between The Sands of Time , Ico and Zelda".

And if you where wondering if the game was going to look like this theirs nothing a final. But,  we where comfired that "the Prince and a mysterious female character working together and being proximate".

This amazing dummer brings the 8-bit Mario Bros 2 theme song back to life with this 3 1/2 min  Youtube video. In the video you see young drummer beating to the the classic theme of the Mario Bros into the new ages. As he hits and smash’s the song into a high class drum beat…

Start up your broadband connections because Devil May Cry 4’s playable demo hits both the PLAYSTATION Store and Xbox LIVE Marketplace this Thursday, January 24. Devil May Cry 4 has been rated M for Mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) or in this case every kid in the U.S. can play the game.

The demo will introduces gamers to the gothic-inspired supernatural world of Devil May Cry. In the demo you play a protagonist named Nero who has the awesome power of his Devil Bringer. The demo consists of a sampling of sections from the full game, chosen to showcase Devil May Cry 4’s varied locales, allowing gamers to familiarize themselves with Nero’s unique abilities. I don’t know about you but i can’t wait slam creatures to the ground, cover great distances in a single bound and grab enemies while on the ground or in the air and clean the floor with their motion less bodys. O yeah theirs more you can also pull creatures  towards Nero to continue an attack combo if they get a way plus you can “rev up” his sword. This is great because you will need to master all these techniques before the end-of-demo showdown, I wonder with who? In order to find out who you are going to need to download the demo.