Shigeru Miyamoto was over just now, and we watched the new God Hand trailer (embedded below). He left the following statement as he skipped away grinning his unique and disturbing grin:

God Hand is the ultimate expression of the joy of humanity, specifically the punching part of the joy of humanity. We all like to punch, but some of us do not like to hit, maybe because we do not want to get hit, or maybe because we think it isn’t nice. Some of us don’t mind so much and enjoy both punching and hitting. Whether that is true for you or not, God Hand is true punching.

Quite an international effort! AKA Capcom’s other survival horror series, Clock Tower was never quite the big deal here as it was in Japan, where the franchise is a million-seller. There, the twin market crackers— brutal slasher violence and girls in school uniforms— overcome the dense and twisty trial-and-error, multiple-ending gameplay. Here, we care even less than the translators and voice actors that did the localizations.

But maybe that’s being a little harsh. The cutscenes do frequently pull off some good horror. Despite that, a movie isn’t really going to feel a whole lot like playing Clock Tower. It’s supposed to be about you finding hiding places to escape the killers, whose only weakness is thinking that there’s no way you’d be hiding in a closet in the room they just saw you go into. If you can ignore the gameplay contrivance, though, it can pull you in and be suspenseful. The music cues help a lot. Watching a person on a movie screen doing the same thing, however, will just encourage you to point out how dumb it is and the music will come off as hammy.

Regardless of what I think though, good luck to this Jorge Olguin fellow directing the movie, as I’ve never met a Jorge I didn’t like. You’ve got until production begins this fall to find a way to make it work.

This “Guitar Performance” guitar looks all Malmsteen-y, and while it certainly looks suitable for unleashing the fury, who knows if it’s even capable of activating Star Power? It also looks like it probably comes with a pirated copy of Guitar Hero. Made in China, but then again so is Red Octane’s controller packaged with the real Guitar Hero.

Not in stock yet, but due to be this month. Buyer beware, and try not to wonder about why Red Octane aren’t themselves releasing different body styles. All they’ve ever had was a limited edition that was the same body with the classic Gibson Cherry color instead of black. Why? It is a mystery and— as Dio would amend— always a mystery, just like you and me.

Guitar Performance w/”Shredder” controller [Lik Sang, via Kotaku]

Somehow Sony felt like a survival horror game about eerily calm psychopathic pre-pubescent proto-lesbian schoolgirls wouldn’t have the same appeal in North America as it would in Japan. I don’t know why— if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could adjective its way to millions, surely this could?

Anyway, Sony is publishing Rule of Rose in Japan, but declined to do so here as well. Luckily for all you “loli” pervs, Atlus decided to pick up the hot, hot slack.

Read - Press Release [Atlus]

From the eternal compiler they rise/creating shelf clutter on either shore/ turning man against his gamepad/until he trades them in for $7-$24.

Here are the games arriving in stores over the course of this week. Mostly today.

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You can see the awards here. Good choices all around, given the glaring omission of the actual game of show, God Hand— which didn’t even get a nomination, not even as a fighting game. I mean, just look at it: