Proving that rebates are for suckers, Amazon has started a new promotion in which users vote for crazy deals. Whichever deal wins the vote will be officially offered by Amazon. The biggest deal on the ballot: a 360 Core system for $100. Now, listen closely, because the deal is not available, but it can be. All you have to do is vote for it at Amazon (you must have an account with Amazon to vote). Assuming the 360 wins the vote -- and it looks like it will -- the deal will be available Thanksgiving Day at 11:00AM PST, You'd better hurry, though, there will only be 1,000 units available.
Our friends at Joystiq have done the math and the total cost of this Core system plus all the premium accessories (wireless controller, HDD, HD cables) will run you $280. That's a huge savings off the Premium 360 and you'll have an extra wired controller, not bad. So, get voting and good luck.
If you sat down last night to watch ... The G-Hole (shudder), expecting to see the new Mass Effect trailer, you were sorely disappointed. We have received word that trailer had to be cut due to time constraints. If you feel slighted, then fear not, for the trailer is available on MTV's cavernous flash site. If you'd rather not traverse such fetid places -- even if it is the only place you'll find the trailer in hi-res -- you can watch the YouTubified version after the break.
We meant to post this deal yesterday, but the torrent of Halo info totally threw us off. Here's the scoop: Micro Center is offering a $100 dollar rebate on both the Xbox 360 Core and Premium systems. Of course, nothing this good is ever easy. If you want your discounted system, you're going to have to buy it in store, as the deal is unavailable online. Hopefully you live near one of Micro Center's 19 locations. Last we checked, there are 50 states, so some driving may be required. Not only that, but the rebate will take a minimum of 8 weeks to process, so the sweet satisfaction of saving money will take a while to kick in. Still, cheap is cheap. Get it while the gettin's good.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. The Xbox 360 Fanboy RoboBlitz T-shirt contest is over. Before we say goodbye, let's crown our final winner. And the winner one one extra special, extra large men's T-shirt is ... Tony, who will wisely use this brand new shirt to put off doing his laundry for one more day (what about pants?). Congratulations, Tony and all of our other winners. We'll be contacting all of you shortly for your shipping info.
So, how do we let go of a contest gone by? We're not really sure. Look at it this way, you may not have won a shirt, but soon everyone can actually play RoboBlitz. That's something to look forward to, right? We'd like to take a moment to thank Tian Mu of the RoboBlitz dev team, Naked Sky, for making this possible. Thanks, Tian. We'd also like to extend an invitation to other companies for game related swag. People love swag, you silly companies! Send us swag and we'll ceremoniously give it away in a fabulous, buzz generating contest. Seriously, drop us a line. Wait a minute ... do they make Small Arms T-shirts?
Admittedly, we know very little about Remedy's Alan Wake. Officially, all we have to go on is the trailer that was released at E3, some screenshots, and its designation as a "psychological action thriller." Do we have new information today? No, but we do have three more screenshots. In fact, if you look closely at the screenshot above, we can actually confirm one new feature in Alan Wake: driving! Yup, the above screen shows all the right signs that the main character is, in fact, driving a car. Oh the possibilities! Sarcasm aside, we're really curious about Alan Wake, so we'll take what we can get. See the new shots (and the old shots) at the official site.
We swear, we didn't wake up this morning intending to beatHalo to death, but the news just keeps coming. It looks like the always reliable foreign press has leaked lots of Halo 3 screenshots, concept sketches, and renders onto the internet. Most of you will recognize these from the recent EGM cover story, though many of them are brand new. It's nice to have them in hi-res digital form, but unfortunately they come with a nasty watermark from GameCity, the Swiss site that leaked released the images in the first place. Halo Base, a German Halo site, has broken the shots down into the proper categories, screenshots, concept art, and renders. The renders in particular are very nice, showing off lots of Spartan and weapon detail. It seems like Halo Base is getting hammered by internet traffic, because the images are loading very slowly -- in other words, you may want to grab these before Halo Base is completely snowed under. We expect that Bungie will make these public soon, either via Bungie.net, or through 1UP's coverage throughout the month. Still, why wait when you can check them out now?
Update: As expected, it looks like Halo Base has been flooded. Lucky for us, News4Gamers (who just happen to be linking this very post) have gone to the trouble of uploading the images themselves. It looks like they have most of them up now. Find them here (or click the image above).
Update 2: Halo Base has removed their shots at the request of GameCity, who claims to have released them legally in the first place. The shots are still on News4Gamers, and some of them have been released on 1UP as well.
We know, we know. We just won't shut up about Small Arms, but Mike from the Xbox Domain just sent us an interesting find. Check out this list of the official Live Arcade game forums at Xbox.com. Look closely, and you'll see that Small Arms is the only unreleased Arcade game with a forum. What's more, it looks like both the Defender and Small Arms forums were created last night. Is it possible that Microsoft had Small Arms on deck to release and hit a snafu? Was Defender on standby for just such an occasion? We don't know, but we suspect that MS has a pretty large catalog of old arcade titles that are ready to be published at a moment's notice, just in case a bigger game hasn't made it through certification (and of course there are the UNO decks to fall back on). The upshot of all this is that Small Arms just might be releasing next week -- or maybe even as another surprise Friday release à la UMK3. Will Small Arms see the light of day before Thanksgiving? We hope so, because it sounds like the perfect way to wind down after a turkey dinner.
The Playstation 3 and Wii are launching this week, and it looks like Microsoft wants to make damned sure that players remember why they love Xbox. We're talking about Halo, of course. The above piece of concept are showed up in our inbox a few minutes ago. It's a UNSC Shortsword bomber, one of the units available in Ensemble Studios upcoming 360 RTS, Halo Wars. We went over to the official Halo Wars site just to see if anything was new. Sure enough, Ensemble has posted an update on the game's progress. In truth, the update is really just there to let us know that they plan to do monthly updates from now on. Still, Ensemble takes the time to congratulate Bungie on Halo's fifth-iversary and welcomes gamers to share their ideas for Halo Wars. If you have an idea, or just want to share your enthusiasm, head over to the Halo Wars forums -- you can also download hi-res versions of the above concept art in their image gallery. Expect a real update in December. What would you like to see in a Halo RTS?
It's windy and cold outside Fanboy Towers today, and we're betting it's a cold day in Hell, too. First, EA's Superman Returns demo is actually good, and now an Xbox 360 game is in the top 5 on Famitsu's most wanted list. Blue Dragon has landed in 3rd place on the recent poll, outdoing both Metal Gear Solid 4 and the beloved Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We've blogged (probably too much) about Blue Dragon's importance before, but it now stands at an all time high. With the Playstation 3 launched (and sold out) and the Wii as well, Microsoft has their work cut out for them if they want to make a dent in the Land of the Rising Sun. Ironically, this is also their biggest opportunity. With the PS3 sold out, Microsoft has a big chance to take money away from those who were unable to get a PS3 (hell, with PS3 money you could buy the Blue Dragon bundle and have enough yen left for a sushi dinner).
Still, one game may help Microsoft gain a foothold, but it is not enough to sustain interest. If they don't keep rolling out the Japanese flavored content, Japan could quickly drop the 360. As our sister site, Joystiq, points out, the Japanese are not shy about buying a system for one game and then selling it. Then again, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 has managed to crack the number 15 spot. Maybe that will be enough to hold Japan until Lost Odyssey.
I just downloaded the Superman Returns demo and gave it a quick play through. In short, it's actually pretty good (I invite my fellow 360 Fanboy bloggers to disagree). It seems like for all the crap EA puts on the market, there's always one or two good games, too. It's the law of averages really. After all, if you put out 500* games a year, at least a few of them have to be good, right? Superman, however, is special, and not just because he's Superman either. No, the Son of Krypton has a sordid past in the videogame world. It's arguable that there has only ever been one Superman game that was actually fun, and that was the arcade game -- in fairness, I've never played the NES Superman and I somewhat enjoyed The Death and Return of Superman on Genesis/SNES. Read on for impressions (especially Live Silver members, who, we have just learned, cannot currently download the demo).
Another Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday is upon us, and this week's entry brings us yet another retro title, Defender. Yay, Defender. Granted, I'm all aboutContra and maybe I'm not old enough to have fond memories of Defender, but every week that XBLA gets another Atari/Pac-Man era game, I die a little inside. When I write the headline, all I want to write is: "This week isn't Small Arms" or "Still no RoboBlitz." Where are all these exciting, independent titles? We've only got six Wednesdays left MS! Are you expecting people to buy Arcade titles as Christmas presents?
Again, I apologize to all the Defender fans out there, but it's high time we got another indie release on XBLA.
This is it folks, your last chance to win a RoboBlitz T-shirt. As usual, before we get into today's contest, we must announce yesterday's winner. And the winner of yesterday's fine T-shirt is ... Cth, for a very creative weapon idea: the pen is mightier than the sword. It's kind of a complicated idea, so we suggest you read Cth's description for yourselves.
So, here we are ... the final day of our RoboBlitz contest extravaganza. Today is the day that many of you have been waiting for, a chance to win a men's XL RoboBlitz T-shirt. The other puny large men's shirts and the tiny women's shirts would never fit your manly girth. Well now is your chance, because today, we're making the contest easier than it's ever been. RoboBlitz is about tackling your objectives in any way you want. You can do it however you please. In the spirit of this freedom, today you can choose to leave a comment about anything. Just comment on this post. It doesn't matter what you say, you'll be entered to win this mythical T-shirt. So, leave a comment and make history.
General contest stuff: Only one entry per person. Winners will be contacted via email in order to obtain shipping information. This contest is open to residents of the United States only
Okay folks, the big news is here. It turns out that the "BIG" Halo announcement is neither a Halo 3 release date nor the long awaited Marathon Arcade. Is it actually worthy of the capitalized BIG (we all remember the BIGGOW announcement)? Maybe we're overstepping our bounds here, but we're going to say yes. Big yes. It's BIG. It turns out the BIG announcement is actually three announcements rolled into one megannouncement.
The first announcement: new maps are coming for Halo 2! These maps will only be available for Xbox 360 owners sometime in the Spring. Frankly, we're excited. We never would have anticipated something that could make us dust off Halo 2, but there it is. We'd also like to point out that it's a brilliant -- if somewhat dastardly -- move on Microsoft's part to release these maps exclusively on 360. Naturally, there are thousands (millions?) of Halo 2 players that are quite happy playing it on their original Xbox. Sure, they'll probably get a 360 when Halo 3 comes out, and Microsoft knows it. So, if you can't sell those people Halo 3 until next winter, just sell them Halo 2... again! We should note that Bungie hopes that Microsoft will eventually make this content available for original Xbox owners, but in the meantime it's a great incentive (for Halo 2 addicts) to upgrade to 360 right now. At any rate, we're excited as hell to play us some new maps. Here's hoping they can squeeze out some new graphical effects offered by the 360. Also worth noting, the new maps mean that MS is taking another look at Halo 2's backwards compatibility glitches, so some of those should be ironed out in the future.
It looks like Xbox Solution was right, as the Superman Returns demo is now available on Marketplace. Clocking in at just under a gig, it will take you some time to download. As we've said, we're cautiously optimistic about this game, so here's hoping the demo can fill those big red boots. We'll update you with impressions as soon as we get the chance.
(By the way, we're aware of the Halo news. We're working on it. I promise.)
Update: 360 Fanboy has just learned that this demo is currently unavailable to Silver members. Our condolences to you, because it's actually pretty good.
We spent some time earlier today describingCrackdown's gameplay. It's sort of a GTA meets RoboCop concept. But why bother with words when you can actually see it in action? As we noted, many people will not look past the graphics when it comes to Crackdown. It's a stylistic choice, and one that Crackdown may pay for when it finally gets reviewed, but you'd be hard-pressed to say the game doesn't look entertaining. With transforming super cars, rocket juggling, and more explosions than you can shake a stick at, Crackdown looks like it will be a nice fix for action fans. Check out the video after the break (grab the HD version here).
Proving that rebates are for suckers, Amazon has started a new promotion in which users vote for crazy deals. Whichever deal wins the vote will be officially offered by Amazon. The biggest deal on the ballot: a 360 Core system for $100. Now, listen closely, because the deal is not available, but it can be. All you have to do is vote for it at Amazon (you must have an account with Amazon to vote). Assuming the 360 wins the vote -- and it looks like it will -- the deal will be available Thanksgiving Day at 11:00AM PST, You'd better hurry, though, there will only be 1,000 units available.
We meant to post this deal yesterday, but the torrent of 
Another Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday is upon us, and this week's entry brings us yet another retro title, Defender. Yay, Defender. Granted, I'm all about Contra and maybe I'm not old enough to have fond memories of Defender, but every week that XBLA gets another Atari/Pac-Man era game, I die a little inside. When I write the headline, all I want to write is: "This week isn't 
