Buffy The Vampire Slayer

From Gamesindustry.biz

UK Charts: FIFA hangs on at the top

Kristan Reed 10:48 11/11/2003 EA pins down WWE and co...

FIFA 2004 fought off a posse of new releases this week to maintain its headlock on the nation’s top slot, making it three straight weeks at number one for EA and extending FIFA’s lead over Pro Evolution Soccer 3.

THQ’s fifth SmackDown! Title, Here Comes The Pain, was the highest new entry at number two, while Activision had a good week with its two main releases charting well in the Full Price chart - True Crime at number three, and Call Of Duty at number nine - and all the more creditable for being new franchises, even if they do follow in the footsteps of Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor respectively.

Affiliate label LucasArts fared less well with its two Star Wars releases, with the GameCube exclusive Rebel Strike only managing a debut at number 13 despite topping the Cube chart, and the PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided charting at number 38.

Ubisoft’s big Xbox hope Rainbow Six 3, meanwhile, entered at No.14 on the Full Price listings (ranking at number three in the Xbox chart), while EA’s Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup managed a relatively lowly debut at number 17. Although the game isn’t supported by the launch of a movie or book this Christmas, we’d expect it to be high on a lot of parents’ shopping lists as we get closed to he holiday season, and it’s likely to be a climber in the charts.

It was a big week for Xbox releases, and aside from those already mentioned, Microsoft’s out-of-season tennis title Top Spin made it to number 25 - a slightly disappointing start for a title which has been oft-compared to the seminal Virtua Tennis, a title which gave the Dreamcast a rare number one when it was launched in the UK. Meanwhile Capcom’s Xbox-exclusive Dino Crisis 3 just scraped into the Xbox chart at number 20, no doubt not helped by a critical panning from many reviewers - although interestingly, this is the only Xbox title to have managed a top ten chart position in Japan in the past six months or so.

Of the recent big new releases, Simpsons: Hit And Run climbed to number four, SSX 3 dropped to number five, Pro Evolution 3 slid to number seven (a superb showing this year, but still nowhere near enough to displace FIFA 2004 from the top spot), Worms 3D inched up to number 15, F-Zero GX plummeted to number 24, Jak II went down to number 28 (a pretty disappointing performance for the highly anticipated platformer), Max Payne 2 slid dramatically by 20 places to number 29, while Buffy: Chaos Bleeds similarly crashed to number 36.

This week’s Missing In Action awards go to: Codemasters’ Pop Idol, Eidos’ Backyard Wrestling (the PS2 version of which was held back until next week), Acclaim’s NBA Jam, EA’s NBA Live 2004, Nintendo/Kemco’s GBA title TG Rally, and a host of obscurities and unmentionables.

This week sees another slew of big new releases, notably the awesome Mario Kart: Double Dash!, LOTR: Return Of The King, Pokemon Pinball, Amped 2, Terminator 3, Beyond Good And Evil and Broken Sword: Sleeping Dragon, slippage permitting.

From Igm.com

More World Collection Games for Japan (chaos bleeds mention)

MS gives Japanese gamers more quick localizations.

November 06, 2003 - Following the release of the first wave of World Collection titles on 10/23, Microsoft Japan has announced a second batch to be released to Japan on 12/25. The new titles will include The Simpsons Hit & Run, Top Spin, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds, Wakeboarding Unleashed Featuring Shaun Murray and Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War.

Titles under the World Collection label are released to Japan with minimal localization in order to, according to Microsoft, get them to Japanese gamers as quickly as possible. The first batch of titles included Outlaw Golf, Outlaw Volleyball, Inside Pitch, NFL Fever 2004, and Tao Feng Fist of the Lotus. Of course, as these games are all already out in America, this information is probably of importance only to the crazy Buffy fanatics who need the Japanese version of Chaos Bleeds just to have the Japanese packaging.

From Gamespot.com

More English Xbox games for Japan (chaos bleeds mention)

Microsoft to release discounted, non-translated versions of Chaos Bleeds, The Simpsons Hit & Run, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Wakeboarding Unleashed across the Pacific.

TOKYO—Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing the second batch of games to its Xbox World Collection series in Japan. The collection consists of English-language titles packaged with a Japanese manual. While the games are have no Japanese dialogue or subtitles, they carry a price of only 4,800 yen ($43.89), some 1,000-2,000 yen ($9-18) less than average games sold in Japan.

From Cube-europe.com

Season Preview: Winter 2003 Nov 9th 2003 13:42 by Tim

We are taking the ‘Video Preview’ one step further and give you a ‘Season Preview’ containing footage of some of the games hitting the Cube during Winter 2003! So far some of Nintendo Gamecube’s HUGE games have got a European release, Billy, Joe F-Zero GX but there are loads more to come this year so we think it is time to give you a our second ‘Season Preview’.

This time it is bigger, better and loaded for 30% more games than before. Some of the games included in the 5 minutes of video are: Mario Kart, Buffy, Sonic Heros, Star Wars, and many more!

This movies is definitely worth the long wait to download it. As it is Christmas we have gone all out with new music and 17 games included.

The ‘Season Preview’ will become a ‘4 times a year’ feature, and hopefully with some extra specials at New Year and after press events. You can expect to see Spring 2004 at the start January 2004,Best Of 2003 at the end of December 2003 and Coming in 2004 at Start of January 2004.

Due to dates chopping and changing some games may/may not be featured.

Season Preview: Winter 2003 (8.2MB)

 by Dan Odgers