The lead composer on World of Warcraft announced his video game tribute band Critical Hit today, along with the band’s debut album, which includes covers of the main themes from Tetris, Pokémon, Halo 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2.
Jason Hayes is an in-house composer for Blizzard Entertainment. He has contributed to the soundtracks of video games like Dota 2, StarCraft, Warcraft 3, Diablo 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. For Critical Hit, he brings together professional violinists, guitarists, pianists, flautists and percussionists to perform original arrangements from some of the world’s most well-known video games.
The band’s debut album, Critical Hit: Volume One, is now available for pre-order for $14.99. Hayes will sign copies of the album that are pre-ordered between now and Oct. 31.
Critical Hit will perform its first live show on Nov. 9 at BlizzCon at the Anaheim Convention Center. The performance will take place during the convention’s Sound Panel.
X and Y sells 1.8 million, handily beating Rockstar’s opus with less than 400,000 units.
Pokemon X and Y comfortably beat Grand Theft Auto 5 to the number one spot in Japan last week, selling more than 1.8 million units in the process.
Japan will be one of the few major markets where Rockstar’s record-breaking hit won’t trounce the competition, and it sold fewer than 400,000 units in its first week on sale across all platforms – the lion’s share on PlayStation 3.
The somewhat inevitable success of Pokemon X and Y also boosted sales of the 3DS, with both models roughly doubling the previous week’s total – the original model sold 72,000 units, while the dominant 3DS XL sold 141,000.
However, the real success story on the hardware chart was the PlayStation Vita, which received a proportionally astounding boost thanks to the release of a new model. Sony’s resurgent handheld more than 60,000 units, an impressive 1600 per cent increase over the prior week’s 3,500 units.
The software top ten is below, with lifetime sales in parentheses:
1. [3DS] Pokemon X and Y (Nintendo, 10/12/13) – 1,866,570 (New)
2. [PS3] Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 10/10/13) – 360,115 (New)
Nintendo series’ first simultaneous worldwide launch becomes fastest-selling 3DS title to date.
Some 17 years after the series debuted, Pokemon is still going strong. Nintendo today announced that the weekend launch of Pokemon X and Pokemon Y in Japan, Europe, and the Americas–the first simultaneous worldwide launch for the series–saw the 3DS games rack up sales of more than 4 million units. If one were to consider the two games as one title, it would be the fastest-selling 3DS game to date.
“The early response to Pokemon X and Pokemon Y not only reaffirms the ongoing passion of Pokemon fans, but also indicates that an entirely new generation of gamers are eager to experience the franchise for themselves,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in a statement.
Nintendo said X and Y are tracking ahead of last year’s Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 by more than 70 percent. Despite the strong start, X and Y have a long way to go before they match the sales figures of their predecessors on the Nintendo DS. The 2007 release Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, the best-selling DS installment, posted total worldwide sales of 17.63 million. To date, the Pokemon franchise has sold a total of 245 million games.
Whilst the world eagerly awaits the arrival of Pokémon X & Y in just over a week’s time, retailers in Canada and Italy have reportedly broken the street date of the Nintendo 3DS exclusives.
One lucky purchaser is steadily documenting their playthrough by sharing snaps of their progression, although not wishing to promote the leaks we understandably won’t be pointing you in the right direction. Having provided no comment as to how they were able to source a retail copy so early, it’s run the risk of ruining a rather energetic run of news up until launch.
Such a situation is distressing to Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, who have been rigid in their attempts to thwart leaks.
NIS America held a press meeting just outside of the Tokyo Game Show. Wasting no time, the company started by reminding us all of upcoming games Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (watch for our interview about this game soon!), The Guided Fate Paradox, The Witch and the Hundred Knights, and Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness.
PS3′s Disgaea Dimension 2 was introduced as a dungeon crawler with Disgaea characters and setting, and one with a little more snap to it. Nippon Ichi and NISA President Souhei Niikawa said, “I love Disgaea, but those games take so long! I am getting older. I just recently turned 40. I don’t have much time left! I need Disgaea to be faster!” The game will be out on October 8 in North America. Video:
The Guided Fate Paradox is a Roguelike for PS3 (see the Shiren series, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, or Nippon Ichi’s own ZHP for good modern-day examples of the genre). It tells the story of an unlucky boy who is moping around a shopping mall and stumbles into, well, godhood. Yeah, he just won godhood from a prize drawing at a mall. It’s classic Nippon Ichi hilarity, and it’s on shelves November 5th. Trailer time:
Niikawa revealed that localization — and even development — of The Witch and the Hundred Knights took longer than expected. With a sad look, he reflected that there were times when he thought the game wouldn’t see completion. He was very proud of the team that managed to pull it off, and in turn, and is happy to be bringing it to North America in early 2014. It had previously been announced for the first quarter of 2013.
After Niikawa’s Nippon Ichi pep rally was done, Yoshinori Terasawa took the podium and shared that Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc was designed with absolutely no intention of being shipped anywhere outside of Japan. The Japanese media, however, played a pivotal roll in getting the word out and helping it stand out from the veritable sea of visual novels that flood store shelves. Interest and demand exceeded expectations, and as a result, international publishers took notice. All of a sudden, here we are with NIS America set to publish Danganronpa for PS Vita in early 2014.
We’ll have a lot more on the crazy Danganronpa in an interview with developer Spike Chunsoft, soon to be posted right here on PlayStation LifeStyle. (Transcribing audio recordings takes a heck of a long time!)
It was lastly reiterated that Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory will soon arrive on the PSN in North America and Europe this fall.
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