I Know Murder Isn't Funny - But This Actually Is

Love it:

A 43-year-old Japanese woman, whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona, has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

[...]

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.

Read it in full down at Yahoo! Games.

Sony Delays Game Over Qur'an Verses

I happened to catch this article over at islamonline.net, and three thoughts seemed to jump into my Asian brain right away:

1. I get it - the respect piece - but only to a certain extent. Why not spread the word through Nintento Mashups?

2. Do you think Nintendo would have tried this with say...I don't know - the Bible (I know I know...it was a mistake...accident...but you still have to wonder if someone would have caught this earlier if it would have been from something like the NT)?

3. I really want to hear that clip of the music and verses now.

Undercover: Maggie Q's Need For Speed

While everyone agrees that The Transporter may not be Oscar worthy material, using it as inspiration for a video game might not actually be that bad of an idea. Throw in some Maggie Q to be featured in live action sequences, and who knows - EA's "Need For Speed Undercover" might just turn out to be a bona fide hit.

Here's some of what Maggie Q had to say about working on the new game from Electronic Arts which is coming out later this year:

"Unlike a movie, when you're shooting something like this you're definitely taking a piece in a world and you're integrating it into another world. So because I didn't design the game, I don't know this world, and that's not my thing.... When you have a movie script, you know from A to Z where it's going," explained Q. "With this, we kind of had to really sit down and be very specific about where we are in the game, and what our motivation is, and what we're trying to say, and where we're trying to bring the player. It's very, very technical, so in that sense it is very difficult."

View the trailer below

Gamer: John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat, Stranglehold - sequel to Hard Boiled?

Whether or not a game can actually be a sequel to a movie, the game Stranglehold is being billed as the sequel to Hard Boiled - and agree or not on the sequel aspect - everyone seems to agree that this is an exceptional game which does in fact live up to the hype, as well as having the names John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat and Hard Boiled attached to it.

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The images are grabbed from the game’s official site where you can see images, play trailers, as well as demo the game created by Midway.

Here’s a clip from a review down at sfgate.com:

Stranglehold has been billed as the sequel to John Woo’s movie “Hard Boiled,” casting Chow Yun-Fat (or, rather, his likeness and voice work) as Tequila Yuen, the “hot-handed god of cops” who has a talent for stylishly shooting his way out of - and into - bad situations. There’s not much of a plot to work with here, but the game absolutely nails how it feels to have Chow walk into a room and destroy it with bullets.

Here’s another clip form a review down at signonsandiego.com:

Director John Woo and actor Chow Yun-Fat team up once again for what could be the most intense and stylish action game of the holiday, “Stranglehold.” As the official sequel to their popular movie collaboration, “Hard Boiled,” the game mirrors the awesome “gun ballet” sequences that made the movie such a hit.

Resident Evil 5 - Racist game playing or no cause to be concerned?

Just got wind of this a bit ago and I’m not sure what to think myself as I’m not a huge gamer of first person shooters so I can’t tell you about it in context of other REs or other games of that ilk - but there could be something to this - or maybe not:

• Resident Evil 5 trailer stirs up racism worries (Xbox.tv)
• Black Looks on RE 5 Racism (kotaku.com)