The PlayStation Blog just posted a FAQ for the upcoming v2.40 update aka the awesomness trophy upgrade. It’s full of interesting and though provoking questions and answers like this:

Can you use the web browser in game?

No, you must exit the game before browsing the internet.

I loved Cooking Mama on the Nintendo DS, but when the epicurian title moved to the Wii. I was put off by the fact that the same concept didn’t work so well in 3D space using the Wii remote.

Now Majesco is taking another stab at bringing the franchise to the Wii with Cooking Mama World Kitchen. By far the biggest visible change is the switch from sprites to polygons.

It also sounds like they’re tweaking the gameplay with minigames that help you fix your mistakes and a renewed focus on rhythm gameplay. Will it work? It’ll be interesting.

More delicious screenshots on the jump

*Update: According to Kotaku, this whole fiasco with Mega Man 9 coming to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade is not true. Mega Man 9 is a WiiWare exclusive. Sorry Microsoft and Sony fans, you’ll have to fight Splash Woman on the Wii.

It’s apparently Theme Day for my posts. First I got two Rock Band related items, now it’s two items correcting incorrect info I got last week about downloadable games.

Contradicting a Nintendo Power report that Mega Man 9 would be a WiiWare exclusive, Ars Technica reports it will be the very first game to come out for WiiWare, Live Arcade and PlayStation Network at the same time. Mega Man for everybody!

We should learn more about the game at E3 (I plan on hunting down everything I can get.) but for now all we know for sure is that everyone will have access to it, it’s using retro gameplay and even retro sprites and it’s Mega Man. And in the end what more do you need to know?

Turns out the release date reported to me by Namco was a little off. Soul Calibur is actually going up on Live Arcade this Wednesday, July 2.

Looks like I know what I’ll be doing with my long weekend, in addition to volunteering and blowing things up and other traditional Independence Day activities.

In-game XMB? Check. Putting your own soundtrack in a game? You can do it. Trophies? Yup, it’s there. Well, it seems some rumors were true and others weren’t, but the important news is that the trophy update is coming to the PlayStation 3 on July 2.

On the PlayStation blog, Sony set up some walkthroughs of the upcoming v2.40 update. The new software thankfully lets players navigate the XMB in-game. It adds some features that the Xbox 360 could do right out of the box like adding your own soundtrack and messaging friends. I’m just happy that Sony finally decided to implement these elements.

Along withe XMB, Sony is also adding a trophy system, which is the the PS3’s Gamerscore equivalent. The video above details everything. But the short of it is that the feature works a lot like the Gamerscore. Playes get bronze, silver and gold trophies based on certain goals. The all-powerful platinum trophy is obtained by getting all the trophies in a game.

These trophies all go toward your level, which appears on your Gamercard-like interface. Hmm, now all Sony need to do is allow you to check your trophies and Gamercard-like thing online and we’re set.

Lastly, Kotaku is reporting that these trophies won’t be retroactive. That news just elicited the biggest collective “Nooooooooooooooooooo!” since Darth Vader learned that Padme died. Players won’t be credited with work they’ve already done.

Whatever trophies you were expecting from beating Resistance: Fall of Man or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune will have to be earned again. This is infinite sadness.

With an art style that’s reminiscent of The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers or Alien Hominid, Pandemonium! is easy on the eyes. It’s also a pretty good game.

Players take on the role of an adventurer who finds a golden cupcake. When he gets his hands on the treasure, it unfortunately warps him to this odd netherworld where he has to collect gold cupcakes and dodge falling blocks on a diamond-shaped field.

I know it’s weird. But it’s also strangely addictive. If you play, it’s OK to do it with the sound off in the office. Pandemonium! has the thumping techno track that’s in a zillion other indie games. You’re not missing anything.

Rock Band 2, possibly the worst-kept secret in gaming, has been officially announced. It’s coming with the requisite new songs but the exciting part is that Rock Band DLC will work in Rock Band 2 as well, they use the same files so the game itself can’t even tell the difference. This, gaming industry, is how you should do it.

Also announced is that the bundle includes new instruments, which are reportedly “quieter, more realistic, and more reliable.” Which presumably means playing the drums won’t sound like a performance of Stomp. That’s worth the price of admission alone.

Finally the Rock Band 2 disc might include all the existing DLC, which could theoretically bring the song total out of the box near 300.

It’s due for release on the Xbox 360 in, you guessed it, September. We can play it in all the time we have between Force Unleashed, Spore, Mercenaries 2 and every other game I’m looking forward to. Would it kill them to space these things out a little?

(From IGN, Kotaku and IGN again)

Seriously, after being promised Who’s Next what seems like a decade ago, we’re actually getting The Who in Rock Band. Not Who’s Next per se since reportedly they lost some of the master recordings (Smooth, guys.) but a 12-song pack “curated” by Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey themselves.

Full pack is $20 on July 15, individual songs at the standard $2. The wait is drawing to an end.

(From Kotaku)

If King of Kong proved anything, it’s that competitive gaming is as old as the industry itself. As long as gamers are out racking up high scores, there’s always a contest to top the the leaderboard. And when it comes to head-to-head matches, there’s eventually going to be a tournament to determine the best.

Over the years, the formula for competition has evolved. Top scores at the 7-eleven or beating opponents at the arcade no longer matter. Competitive gaming, or e-sports, has developed into something that resembles mainstream sports.

There are gamers on the Internet that play certain titles for a living. They practice for hours on end. They have playbooks and strategy. They compete for money, win, lose, get frustrated with teammates, argue, retire for a few months and later unretire to take up the mouse and keyboard again.

By far, it’s best, most mature example — well other than Starcraft– is Counter-Strike. The popular mod has become the team sport for gamers.

In Game Boys, the New York Post’s Michael Kane delves into this world and comes up with a fascinating history. It’s a book about legitimacy and validation of the game and the people who play it.

Kane’s story starts out with a simple LAN tournament and grows into a layered story of how video games and its players are constantly trying to justify its existence to a larger American audience.

More on fragging and gett pwned on the jump

With a feature in the pipes and Danny busy, there wasn’t much original content this week. We had the weekly stuff like the Time Waster and an occasional series called Grading the Box Art, but other than that, this is the best of odd ball video game news we could find on the Web.

Danny found a hiliarious World of Warcraft machinima about what WoW characters do when they aren’t slaying dragons. It’s one of the funnier videos I’ve seen.

Meanwhile, there was some Wii Fit news. Blogger Mickey DeLorenzo lost 15 pounds over the 41 days that he was on his Wii Fit Experiment. This is the same guy who lost some weight on his Wii Sports workout. On the completely unnecessary side, someone made the girls’ answer to the Wii Fit girl video*.

On the e-sports/sports side, there was big Madden news. First off, the San Francisco Optx clinched a playoff spot in the North American division of the Championship Gaming Series. Meanwhile, Madden NFL 09 just went gold so fans should rejoice and wait until Aug. 12 for it to go on sale.

As for the most interesting posts this week, we have the New York Times reporting that the “Hot Coffee” lawsuit isn’t as lucrative for the plaintiffs or the lawyers. Apparently, they sued Take-Two and Rockstar North expecting everyone to jump on the case. Instead, they had a 2,676 folks sign up for their class action lawsuit, which comes up to less than $30,000.

Maybe they can try to win that million dollars from Clay Mathematics Institute challenge on “Minesweeper” to cover that $1.3 million tab.

We didn’t post on this, but it’s important we do. The New York legislature is advancing a bill that would put more regulations on video games, according to GamePolitics. It seems fairly strict, requiring “new console systems to be equipped with parental controls.” (some already do.)

*Warning, you risk blindness by watching this.