the little battlers w characters return for level-5 s strategy game

The Little Battlers Wars has an all new cast of characters and different gameplay from the other Little Battlers eXperience games, but fans of the series will see a few familiar faces from The Little Battlers W. Remember Ban Yamano and Hiro Oozora?

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The two protagonists from The Little Battlers W return for The Little Battlers Wars, older and wiser. How will you meet these characters is a secret, but if you fulfill certain conditions you can meet these LBX legends plus other W characters.

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The Little Battlers Wars comes out on October 31 for Nintendo 3DS.

Read more stories about Nintendo 3DS & The Little Battlers Wars on Siliconera.

BioShock les deux premiers épisodes à moins de 5 euros

Si vous n'avez encore jamais posé les mains sur un épisode de BioShock, que vous disposez d'une bécane (comprendre un PC) pas trop dégueu et que vous souhaitez dépenser quelques deniers dans de bons jeux, alors cette news est pour vous. En effet, la plateforme de téléchargement anglo-saxonne GameFly propose un bundle comprenant BioShock 1 et 2 pour la modique somme de 3 livres, soit moins de 5 euros ! A ce prix-là, bon, on ne se pose pas longtemps la question. Cependant, nos amis propriétaires de Mac ne bénéficient pas de cette promotion... Dommage. En attendant, vous pouvez relire notre test de BioShock Infinite !

 

Doujin Game Deals War of the Human Tanks ($2), 99 Spirits ($9)

Today we've got a solid deal on two indie Japanese games localized by Fruitbat Factory: War of the Human Tanks is now only $2 for the Standard Edition and $2.40 for the Deluxe Edition (contains the OST), while 99 Spirits is at $9 for the Standard Edition and $12 for the Deluxe Edition (contains the OST plus the original Japanese edition of the game).

Astute readers will remember that both titles were mentioned back in June at their full prices of  $10 and $15, respectively ' so these are decent savings. For those still hoping to get War of the Human Tanks on Steam, keep your fingers crossed. GMG is currently giving a special offer where buying War of the Human Tanks (either edition) nets you a free Steam key if the game is successfully accepted through the Steam Greenlight process.

Given how Steam Greenlight can be sometimes, this seems like a crapshoot to me personally, but here's hoping for the best for fans of the title! Use coupon code GMG20-8MUTY-M21VN to get the price listed. Deal will expire come Monday, September 16 at 11AM ET.

Game TitleMSRP% OffSale Price99 Spirits Deluxe Edition$19.9940%$12.0099 Spirits$14.9940%$9.00War of the Human Tanks Deluxe Edition$11.9980%$2.40War of the Human Tanks$9.9980%$2.00

If you like to keep your wallet fat, check in every Wednesday and Saturday at 11AM Pacific for the latest deals, brought to you by the crew at Dealzon. We’re here to help Siliconera readers find the best gaming deals online. To be clear, Siliconera will sometimes make money if you buy a game. Feedback? Let us know in the comments.

Read more stories about 99 Spirits & Deals & PC & War of the Human Tanks on Siliconera.

BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma Limited Edition Comes With Rachel Figurine, Visual Book

As reported last night, as part of their ongoing 25th anniversary celebration, Arc System Works will debut a new arcade stick alongside the launch of BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma in Japan. Retailer Ebten is taking pre-orders for the stick now.

Additionally, Ebten are also offering an exclusive limited edition of BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, which will come with a Nendoroid Puchi figurine of Rachel Alucard (above), a B2-sized tapestry (below), a BlazBlue visual book featuring art by guest artists, and a special soundtrack by Daisuke Ishiwatari.

The entire package will come in a special box designed by BlazBlue series producer Toshimichi Mori, and will cost 10,290 yen. That’s the box below, and it will be available on October 24th—the same day that BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma launches.

Read more stories about BlazBlue: Chronophantasma & PlayStation 3 on Siliconera.

ICO amp; Shadow of Colossus For $15, Plus Resident Evil 6 for $10

Lots of solid console game deals this week thanks to Best Buy and GameStop. If you're not in the US and you don't have a Best Buy near you, apologies in advance. The excellent ICO and Shadow of Colossus Collection is on sale again at Best Buy, available in-store only for $15. If your local Best Buy is out of stock (my area only has 3 out of 9 available), you can get it price-matched at Target.

Best Buy is also knocking the price down on Resident Evil 6, another noteworthy game. Personally I think Revelations is better, but at $10 for RE6, you really can't complain.

On the recently released front, Disney Infinity came out this Sunday in an attempt by Disney Interactive to get in on the cash-cow that is Activision's Skylander. The Disney Infinity Starter Pack is available for 20% off across all platforms, going for $59.99 (vs the $75 MSRP). While the premise is similar, supposedly Infinity caters to a broader age group. Time will tell if it can be a successful franchise.

StartEndGame TitleMSRP% OffSale PriceAug 19Sep 3Disney Infinity Starter Pack (All Platforms)$74.9920%$59.99Aug 20Sep 3Pikmin 3 (Wii U)$59.9925%$44.99Aug 16Sep 3Payday 2 (360, PS3)$39.9913%$34.99Aug 19N/AWarriors Orochi 3 Hyper (Wii U)$39.9950%$19.99Aug 19N/AICO & Shadow of Colossus Collection$19.9925%$14.99Aug 19Aug 24LittleBigPlanet: Karting (PS3)$19.9925%$14.99Aug 19Aug 24God of War Origins Collection (PS3)$19.9925%$14.99Aug 19Aug 24Playstation All Stars Battle Royale (PS3)$19.9925%$14.99Aug 19Aug 24Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS3)$19.9925%$14.99Aug 19Aug 24Twisted Metal (PS3)$19.9925%$14.99Aug 15Aug 24Resident Evil 6 (360, PS3)$19.9950%$9.99

Titles released yesterday (Tuesday):

StartEndGame TitleMSRP% OffSale PriceAug 20Sep 3Saints Row IV (360, PS3)$59.9925%$44.99Aug 20Sep 3The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (360, PS3)$59.9925%$44.99Aug 20Sep 3Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (360, PS3)$59.9925%$44.99

If you like to keep your wallet fat, check in every Wednesday and Saturday at 11AM Pacific for the latest deals, brought to you by the crew at Dealzon. We’re here to help Siliconera readers find the best gaming deals online, whether for the PC or console. To be clear, Siliconera will sometimes make money if you buy a game. Feedback? Let us know in the comments.

Read more stories about PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360 on Siliconera.

PlayStation Plus In Japan Gives Access To rain's Tokyo Game Show Demo

PlayStation Plus got off to a slow start in Japan. Sure, you get a library of PsOne games, but unlike PlayStation Plus in the West the service was light on recent games. Japan is starting to get unique titles like Miku Miku Hockey.

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On September 19, the same day Tokyo Game Show starts, PlayStation Plus members in Japan will be able to download the TGS demo for rain. Since the first two days are for business, PlayStation Plus members actually get to play the demo before the general public can try it. The rain demo contains the first chapter of the game and will be available until September 25.

Read more stories about PlayStation 3 & Rain on Siliconera.

Rockstar's Agent Might Not Be Dead, Take-Two Interactive Files New Trademarks

First revealed in 2009, Agent was announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive from Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games. Agent was described as an espionage game set during the Cold War. After the initial announcement, Rockstar and Take-Two haven't said much about the title, but confirmed it was in development two years ago.

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Perhaps, Agent is making progress because Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, registered two trademarks for Agent. Both trademarks are for use with video games, computer games, online video games, and various printed materials such as manuals and guide books.

Read more stories about Agent & PlayStation 3 & Trademark on Siliconera.

Monster Hunter 4 Has Persistent Challenges In The Unknown Forest

Monster Hunter 4 has a built in quest maker. When you're hunting solo you can use a search feature while exploring the Unknown Forest. This makes the game create a random quest by selecting monsters, the field area, and material points.

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After you clear the quest it can become a Guild Quest, which means you can share it with other players and complete it together. Players can register up to ten types of Guild Quests which can be exchanged through StreetPass. Each time you clear a Guild Quest it levels up. This ups the difficulty level and the quality of items you can earn.

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These kinds of quests have a new equipment you can collect called Excavation Equipment. Parameters and designs for Excavation Equipment is different than you will find in regular quests. Players can only collect Excavation Equipment from the Sea of Trees and Capcom hints there are some monsters players will only see in these extra quests.

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Monster Hunter 4 comes out on September 14 for Nintendo 3DS.

Read more stories about Monster Hunter 4 & Nintendo 3DS on Siliconera.

This Week In Sales Mario and Luigi Return In Their Latest RPG

Period: The week of July 15th – July 21st (2013)

Top-seller: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team – 99,972

Nintendo 3DS sales: 15,703 | Total sales: 8,431,105

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 41,322 | Total sales: 3,428,706

PlayStation Vita sales: 14,392 | Total sales: 1,72,1921

Wii U sales: 14,280 | Total sales: 1,005,018

<< Last week’s software sales chart

Last week, Nintendo released Mario & Luigi: Dream Team in Japan, and the game sold nearly 100,000 copies in its first week.

For comparison, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS, sold 192,945 copies in its first week. Perhaps sales tracker Media Create will provide some insight regarding the drop in sales in their follow-up report later in the week.

Meanwhile, it bears mentioning that the budget version of Danganronpa continues to sell surprisingly well, for what is a simple budget re-release of an existing game. Also worth noting is that Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode is continuing to sell reasonably well, too, given its first week sales and the sales of the original game.

The top-20 chart for the week was as follows:

LwTwTitleWeekly SalesTotal SalesSys.PublisherNew01.Mario & Luigi: Dream Team99,972New3DSNintendo02.02.Youkai Watch29,10282,7563DSLevel 501.03.Pikmin 328,513121,233WiiUNintendoNew04.The Little Battlers W: Super Custom27,242New3DSLevel 504.05.Tomodachi Collection: New Life26,7991,286,6463DSNintendo03.06.Earth Defense Force 202520,255211,968PS3D3 Publisher06.07.Toukiden12,953199,916PSVTecmo Koei05.08.New Super Luigi U12,13237,014WiiUNintendo07.09.Toukiden11,008129,412PSPTecmo Koei10i .10.Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D10,826217,1483DSNintendo12.11.Animal Crossing: New Leaf10,0753,335,1983DSNintendo13.12.Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon9,366834,3923DSNintendo08.13.Dead Island: Riptide6,96225,423PS3Spike Chunsoft16.14.Danganronpa (PSP the Best)6,44797,651PSPSpike14.15.The Last of Us6,413179,594PS3Sony22.16.Kuma Tomo6,01928,0553DSNamco Bandai19.17.Taiko no Tatsujin: Super Splendid Edition5,630522,496WiiNamco Bandai11.18.Gundam Breaker5,279248,098PS3Namco BandaiNew19.Final Fantasy XIII-2 Digital Contents Selection4,890NewPS3Square Enix17.20.Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode4,15555,1073DSNamco Bandai

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer, Media Create and Geimin.net.

Read more stories about Danganronpa & Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode & Mario & Luigi: Dream Team & Pikmin 3 & The Little Battlers W Super Custom & This Week In Sales & Toukiden on Siliconera.

SiS965L Southbridge

SiS today announced the market leading position of its latest southbridge supporting the new PCI-E standard, the SiS965L. Motherboards incorporated with SiS PCI-E chipsets are ahead of competitors to be provided to the market in June.The SiS965L can be paired with either a mature or current SiS northbridge to keep overall costs lower. SiS customers can choose to have PCI-E in the southbridge, while going with a proven and reliable solution for the northbridge. The SiS965L features a robust feature set for todays demanding and varied PC applications, including support for 2 PCI-Express x 1 ports, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 8 channel sound, 10/100 LAN, 2 SATA (supporting hot plug functionality) and 4 PATA.

RV370 Officially Known As Radeon X1050

AMD plans to name RV370 as Radeon X1050, the only one without Direct X9.0c and Shader Model 3.0 in x1000 family. Manufactured by TSMC in 110nm process, RV370 contains 75 million transistors and native PCI-E interface. RV370 provides support for Direct X 9.0b and Shader Model 2.0, and has 4 Pixel Shader pinelines, 2 Vertex Shader engine, 2 ROP and 128Bit memory bandwidth. Radeon X300, X550 and X600, the most value product of ATI, in fact, they are all RV370. Radeon X1050 is set at 400MHz with memory clock 400MHz soon be available at Christmas.

MSI's A75A-G35 motherboard nears launch

So far MSI has only announced a single socket FM1 motherboard for AMDs Llano APUs, the A75MA-G55, but weve managed to score some pictures of the final version of MSIs upcoming A75A-G35 motherboard. Its not MSIs most exciting motherboard ever, but its an entry level model so take it for what it is.

This is so far MSIs first ATX board for AMDs FM1 APUs and as far as we know, this is its entry level ATX model. It should be followed by the A75A-G45 and A75A-G55, as well as the mATX A75M-P35 and A75MA-35. As such the features are fairly basic, in fact, some are outright cost savings.

The slot layout isnt too bad, if a bit unusual with a x16 PCI Express slot at the top, three x1 PCI Express slots, a x4 PCI Express slot and two PCI slots. The board only has two DIMM slots, but considering the target market, we dont see this as too much of an issue.

The AMD A75 chipset provides six SATA 6Gbps ports and MSI has fitted them all, alongside pin-headers for two front USB 3.0 ports (again provided by the chipset), four USB 2.0 ports, a serial and parallel port and a couple of things were not quite sure what the pin-headers are for, but one of them appears to be for a TPM module.

Whats not so sexy is the two jumper blocks at the rear for manual switching between the display connectors, as only two of the three can be used at the same time. This screams low cost and its something weve only seen on Chinese motherboards for the past couple of years now. On the plus side MSI have used heatsinks that are screwed on rather than relying on push-pins.

The rear I/O consists of two PS/2 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, 7.1-channel audio and a D-sub, DVI and HDMI port. Overall theres very little to get excited about, but its up for pre-order in Europe for as little as €71.50 (S$125) which makes it the cheapest ATX size A75 motherboard so far.

USB-IF announces USB audio video device class

The USB-IF has been none too happy about the various standards that have been pushing other signals than USB down its ports and cables with solutions such as MHL (Mobile High-definition Link) or MYDP (Mobility DisplayPort) being severely frowned upon as they dont conform to the USB standard. It seems like the USB-IF has finally come clean as to why, as it has announced a new USB audio/video device class that will allow for A/V signals to be transported over USB.

Its quite a sneaky move by an organization that has been quite harsh towards any solution that has pushed anything but USB data over the USB interface, especially as the USB standard will now start to compete with MHL and MYDP (even though the latter havent been implemented in any retail hardware were aware of). The details are scarce on the USB-IF website with regards to the new A/V device class, in fact we could find none beyond the press release. We presume its relying on USB 3.0, simply because of the bandwidth high definition video requires, but even this isnt mentioned.

By all intents and purposes it appears that the USB A/V device class will be a major competitor to HDMI as a means of displaying video content on larger screens, be it an HDTV or a projector. The USB-IF is suggesting that the standard is ideal for phones and cameras which is quite easy to understand as these devices already have USB connectivity. Theyre also suggesting it as a means of getting what we presume is uncompressed video from a webcam to a PC for processing before showing it across the internets. The selling point is of course the single interface for data, audio and video, something MHL also offers, at least until you attach the dongle that splits the USB and HDMI signals.

What isnt so clear is if third party chips are needed to be able to push the A/V information from one device to another, something we presume is the case. On top of that theres nary a mention of any interested device partners and without interest from at least a few major industry players, its likely that this is a standard that wont take off. Its also going to require some kind of adapter which will have to contain at least an additional chip or two if you want to connect a USB A/V enabled device to an HDMI port, as we have a feeling this wont be support on the host side with the help of a simple passive adapter.

The good news is that the USB A/V device class licensing is given on a "reciprocal, zero-royalty basis" although we have a feeling that at least a few companies are going to try to get a slice of the cake here, least not Digital Content Protection LLC, the organization behind the HDCP copy protection standard, as theres no way the USB A/V standard is going to be without content copy protection. In as much as the USB A/V device class sounds like a great idea, theres far too little information currently available to draw any conclusions, but were going to try to find out more about it to see what is actually being offered here.

Source: USB-IF (pdf link)

Samsung Craft Is First LTE Phone To Launch In Vegas

U.S carrier, MetroPCS Communications, has announced the launch of Samsung Craft (model: SCH-r900) in Las Vegas. The new phone may well bethe first to support LTE, multi-mode andCDMA networks (and perhaps the only LTE phone for this year).

Long Term Evolution, or LTE,offers faster data connections for video streaming and Internet applications. Las Vegas hasbecome the testbed for 4G services and it is not surprising that MetroPCS decides to launch the Samsung Craft here.

The Samsung Craft features a 3.3-inch AMOLED WVGA touchscreen display, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB.

The Craft is selling atUS$299 after US$50 instant rebate.

Source: Wall Street Journal, SamsungHub

Verbatim Unveils New eSATA USB 2.0 500Gb Combo Drive

Verbatim eSATA/USB 2.0 Combo HDD 500GB

Verbatim has launched the eSATA/USB 2.0 Combo HDD 500GB, adding on to its line-up of external storages.


USB 2.0 and eSATA Interfaces

Measuring 130 x 80 x 17mm and weighing 205g, the aluminum portable HDDfeatures both USB 2.0 and eSATA ports to deliver transfer rates up to3Gbit/sec. It is bundled with Nero BackitUp4 for data backup and fullycompatible with Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista/ Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.1 orhigher and Linux. Backed by a two year warranty, the eSATA/USB ComboHDD can be purchased from authorized resellers and e-tailers at a MSRPof £89.99.


Features:

Ultra fast eSATA data transfer speeds up to 3Gbit/secPowered eSATA cable eliminates the need for a separate power supplyRugged aluminium enclosureIncludes Nero BackItUp 4 Essentials SoftwareWorks with Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.1 or higher, Linux
News via [Tweaktown]