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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the first in a long-running series of legal adventure games, will be released as a WiiWare download on Monday, January 11.

The Nintendo DS versions of the three Ace Attorney games have been out of print for some time. Some collectors have been asking an arm and a leg for the rare cart, making it a hard game to recommend to anyone but the serious collector¹.

On Wii the game will only set you back $10, for which you get the first four cases with the fifth bonus case coming in May as DLC. At that sane price, know that the game comes with my highest praise.

For too long, the Ace Attorney series has been gaming’s best-kept storytelling secret. The writing in this series is among the best in the medium; the characters, made all the more expressive by lively animation, are funny and extremely likable (even the jerks). And the music is downright awesome.

My only fear is that the games are best suited to handhelds. Ace Attorney games are about language, lies and semantics — they’re reading-intensive. There’s a chance that these verbose games may play out a little differently on the couch where distractions could put a crowbar between the player and the text. Also, you’d have to not mind looking at a DS game blown up onto your TV screen for 20 hours at a stretch.

¹Kohler says: This would be a great time for me to recommend Amazon’s “Warehouse Deals,” which can ship via Amazon Prime — I bought a used game from there over Christmas and it was in perfect condition. They currently have the first game for $30.

Image courtesy Capcom

See Also:

• Phoenix Wright Manga Comes to America
• Phoenix Wright: Justice For All Impressions
• Capcom: Phoenix Wright-Style Game Starring Harvey Birdman …
• Trailer: Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations
• Phoenix Wright Television Shorts To Air In Japan
• TGS Cosplay #1: Phoenix Wright

The Scottish Sun – “Scottish Newspaper of the Year” mind you – reports that a woman gave her 42-year-old husband an ultimatum: Ditch that six-foot-tall World of Warcraft orc statue, or I move to Canada. Who did he choose?

Surprise! This is actually a story about rational people. He put the orc, which he’d owned for six years, up for adoption. “Dee means more to me, so he had to go,” said Robert Cushnie, a 42-year-old telecommunications manager.

Seems Cushnie had acquired the statue when a games store shut down. He married his wife in February, but she, standing 5-3 was mildly repulsed, if not intimidated, by the six-foot orc. The statue is now with an elderly couple, whose 16-year-old granddaughter adores it.

Oh by the way, the Cushnies are still moving to Canada, Dee’s country of origin. See? Happily ever after. We can do that here, too.

It’s Him Orc Me [The Scottish Sun, via HBG]

[Image via GizmoWatch; it's not the statue in question, but close.]

Pat Laffaye of Westport, Connecticut has beaten the high score for the arcade game Frogger — the real one, and also the fictional one set by George Costanza on a famous episode of Seinfeld, scorekeepers at Twin Galaxies announced on Monday.

The fictional record of 860,630 points was set on April 23, 1998 — that’s when the episode of Seinfeld titled “The Frogger” originally aired. Laffaye’s score of 896,980 is a new world record, at least until the next fictional character comes along and bests it (we’re watching you, Sheldon Cooper).

“Even though it was imagined by television writers, Pat has broken one of the most famous scores in pop culture,” said a Twin Galaxies representative in a statement. “Pat’s amazing score will now forever be attached to not only Twin Galaxies history, but pop culture trivia as well.”

Pat Laffaye also holds a record score for Paperboy. He and rival gamer Donald Hayes have been embroiled in a King of Kong-style duel for the top Frogger ranking for some time.

Image courtesy Twin Galaxies

See Also:

• Battlestar Babe Lights Up Green Lantern, Sucks at Frogger …
• July 3, 1999: Gobbling Up a ‘Pac-Man‘ Record
• Donkey Kong Challenge: This Is What $10001 in Quarters Looks Like …
• Nov. 13, 1982: Teen Sets ‘Asteroids‘ Record in 3-Day Marathon
• Guitar Hero Champ Perfects GH3’s Most Difficult Song

In Japan’s bargain bins, you can get a lot of gaming for the equivalent of $10.

Over the past two years of trips to Tokyo Game Show, I set out into Akihabara with yen in hand, looking to buy (roughly) 10 games for 10 bucks. At first I picked up games like D and Burn: Cycle, then found more obscure titles like Götzendiener and Soukaigi in 2009.

In a thread on the gaming message board NeoGAF, I attempted to rally the message board’s many Japan-based posters to take the 1000 Yen Challenge, and three did, going for maximum quantity over obscure curiosity. Here’s what they came up with.

BudokaiMR2: Spent ¥1,091 in Osaka’s “Den Den Town” district and came up with 13 games (pictured top). “I tried to 0nly buy games that I had never played before,” he wrote. Of the 9-yen (about 10 cents) copy of the Dreamcast adventure game Sakura Taisen, he says the store “just had a box of 50 at the cash register, all for the same price so I said what the hell.”

1. Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn) – ¥10
2. Biohazard: Code Veronica (Dreamcast) – ¥100
3. Ehrgeiz (PS1) – ¥100
4. Wave Race 64 (N64) – ¥20
5. OverDrivin’ GT-R (PS1) – ¥50
6. Seaman (Dreamcast) – ¥100
7. Counter Revolution War (PS1) – ¥100
8. King of Fighters ‘96 (Saturn) – ¥50
9. Samurai Spirits (PS1) – ¥50
10. CyberBots (Saturn) – ¥252
11. Sakura Taisen (Saturn) – ¥9
12. SD Gundam X (Super Famicom) – ¥50
13. Valken 2 (PS1) – ¥200

Kohler’s take: I’d never have spent $2.50 on Cyberbots, myself. But Sakura Taisen for one thin dime is probably the single cheapest game I’ve ever heard tale of in Japan (aside from the free copies of N64 shogi games that Super Potato was giving out last year).

WhiteAce: Bought 15 games for 960 yen in Akihabara. “I did buy stuff here that I already own, but either in poor condition or missing the box,” he wrote.

Not content to simply come in under the 1000-yen limit, WhiteAce also attempted to get the best games for his buck: He added up the average scores that the games received on the aggregation site GameRankings, then divided by yen spent. (Unrated games defaulted to 50/100 points.)

1. Rallisport Challenge (Xbox) ¥100 – 87 pts
2. Nectaris (PC Engine) ¥100 – 50 pts (n/a)
3. Legendary Axe (PC Engine) – ¥100 – 50 pts (n/a)
4. Super Family Circuit (SNES) – ¥100 – 50 pts (n/a)
5. Biohazard : Code Veronica (DC) – ¥100 – 93pts
6. Enemy Zero (Sat) – ¥50 – 69 pts
7. Decathelete (Sat) – ¥50 – 76 pts
8. Virtua Cop 2 (Sat) – ¥50 – 83 pts
9. Tobal No. 1 (PS1) – ¥50 – 82 pts
10. World Wide Soccer ‘98 (Sat) – ¥50 – 55 pts
11. D2 (DC) – ¥50 – 64 pts
12. Anarchy in the Nippon (Sat) – ¥20 – 50 pts (n/a)
13. Winter Heat (Sat) – ¥20 – 78 pts
14. Street Fighter Zero 2 – ¥50 – 50 pts (n/a)
15. Dynamite Duke (Mega Drive)- ¥100 – 50 pts (n/a)

Total spend: 960 yen
Gameranking total points: 985
Ratio: 1 yen = 1.02 points

Kohler’s take: An excellent haul full of super-cheap games with lots of play value. I don’t know if I’d try to maximize my review-score return this fall when I go back to Japan, though: part of the fun for me is buying hilariously bad games.

cvxfreak: Went for the highest ratio of games-to-money, spending only ¥690 (about $7) on 13 games. This, plus choosin mostly good-to-excellent titles, helped him obliterate WhiteAce’s games-to-score ratio.

1. Dead or Alive 3 (Xbox) – ¥100 – 85 pts
2. Sonic Adventure (DC)- ¥100 – 87 pts
3. Sega Rally Championship 2 (DC) – ¥50 – 82 pts
4. Sega GT Homologation Special (DC) – ¥50 – 81 pts
5. Soul Calibur (DC) – ¥50 – 96 pts
6. Ready 2 Rumble (DC) – ¥50 – 84 pts
7. Fighter’s Megamix (Sat) – ¥20 – 50 pts (n/a)
8. Fighting Vipers (Sat) – ¥20 – 50 pts (n/a)
9. Virtua Fighter (Sat) – ¥50 – 89 pts
10. Virtua Fighter Kids (Sat) – ¥50 – 73 pts
11. Virtua Cop (Sat) – ¥50 – 75 pts
12. Virtua Cop 2 (Sat) – ¥50- 83 pts
13. Shinseki Evangelion (Sat) – ¥50 – 50 pts (n/a)

Total spend: 690
Gameranking total points: 985
Ratio: 1 yen = 1.43 points

Kohler’s take: Somebody sure likes Sega, and fighting games. These are two categories into which much of Japan’s stock of almost completely unwanted games tends to fall. This is also why game stores must love to see vacationing foreigners milling about — if tourists didn’t take these back to their home countries, Japan would be buried in Fighting Vipers.

Besides the Japan residents who decided to take the challenge, Kyle Orland at Crispy Gamer attempted it in the U.S., bumping the maximum spending limit up to $20 because older games are much more expensive here. He still managed to find some great bargains on 14 games across a variety of systems by scouring all the used-games stores in Pittsburgh.

“Was raiding the ultra-bargain bins worth it? For me, I’d have to say it was,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to really dive into any of these 14 games yet, but I can’t imagine that the combined experience of all of them won’t be worth $20.”

Want to try something similar? Give it the hash tag #1kyengamer on Twitter and post your findings.

See Also:

• Broke in Tokyo: Excavating 10 Weird Games for $10
• Classic Game|Death: The $10 Pile of Tokyo Shame
• Weekend Thrifting: A Symphony, a Soldier Blade
• Weekend Thrifting: Hitting the Vectrex Jackpot
• Weekend Thrifting: The Perils of Vintage Piracy

Eskil Steenburg’s lovely and ambitious game Love will enter open beta testing January 7th.

Steenburg said via Twitter on Friday that he’d be opening his game to the public in less than a week, “barring major disaster.” He’s already made the download available, but right now only testers with prior access to the alpha test can play.

Love hit the radar in a big way last year at GDC when Steenburg demoed the impressionistic, procedurally generated game. The crowds around his impromptu sessions, frequently held at a random lunch table, were often large and always rapt.

Eskil’s warning to interested parties says much about the game’s ambition. “Love is a very different game, and not one that is easy to get in to,” he said via his blog. “There is no hand-holding, no glowing arrows, no female voice telling you what to do, and no quests.”

Our interest is piqued. Be warned, though: The beta won’t be free. Just as with the alpha, Steenburg will be asking testers to help cover the costs of hosting by paying 3 Euros for 30 days.

Image courtesy Eskil Steenburg

See Also:

• Gallery: 'Love'
• Indie Game Developers Enlist Algorithms to Do the World-Building
• Interview: Indie MMO Lila Dreams' Designer
• Indie Dungeon Is a Low-Fi Tragedy
• 2010 Indie Games Fest: A Different Color of Horror

A new line of clothing created by DJ Teki Latex uses the iconic imagery from Pac-Man to create shirts that feel like they belong to both the past and the present.

“The Pac-Man is a symbol of my generation,” Teki said in a recent interview. “Classic yet modern.”

His new line, a collaboration with Japanese brand Phenomenon, is built around the iconic sliced-pie imagery of Pac-Man. “When you wear the cardigan on top of the tee shirt,” Latex says, “the Pac-Man is hidden but the triangular shape still appears.”

Games aren’t the only geeky point of reference for the designer’s new line. A cardigan sweater embellished with polar bears references the TV show Lost.

The “Teki Latex x Phenomenon” collection will be available online starting January 5. As with most bleeding-edge Japanese fashion, the designs won’t come cheap. The T-shirts are 7140 yen (about $77), the polar cardigan the equivalent of $417.

See Also:

• Sure Sellout: Wicked Brütal Legend T-Shirts by Mishka
• Triumvir Unveils Street Fighter Attire
• Meatbun's Awesome Gamer Shirts
• Meat Bun Unleashes Another Capcom Tee
• Target Selling Indie Game T-Shirts

It’s only a matter of time before Ubisoft decides to combine some of the popular “Imagine” series …

When rapper Ice-T plays Call of Duty multi-player, he’s rollin’, comin’ through buildings, you gonna die. Oh really?

Sure as snot seems that way! Ice-T (gamertag “Lord 187X”) posted an image of the after action report for a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multi-player round. The report details the player’s score and Accolades — awards for completing a session with a specific set of requirements.

Ice-T’s top three Accolades for the session:

The Show
10 kills/No deaths

Supernatural
Kill/Death ration over 10

Immortal
Highest kill/death ratio

None of which are easy Accolades in the slightest. Yep, you gonna die!

Ice T Demonstrates His ‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′ Gaming Skills In Today’s Daily TwitPic [MTV Movies Blog]

It may not have the lasting historical significance of “1066 and all that”, but that doesn’t stop Elsa’s tapestry of Mario’s iconic 1-1 level from being just as impressive as anything the Normans could come up with.

Currently a work in progress, the tapestry will come in at an incredible 620×40cm (or 250×15 inches) when completed, which is amazing not only for its scale as a work of art, but also as a means of visualising game worlds in literal terms.

Super mario projektet [Elsa's Broderier, thanks Vebjørn!]