When Sega released the first episode of its Production I.G/Gonzo-animated Infinite Space video series in Japan, we were quite pleased to look at it, but our rudimentary understanding of the language prevented us from gleaning anything substantive from the story.

Luckily, Sega has started translating the videos into English, with voice acting and everything, and we can now enjoy both looking at them and knowing what's going on. The voice acting is pretty much what you'd expect from American anime releases, but it's a small price to pay for comprehension. In this trailer, we see that a crash-landed "Watcher" gives protagonist Yuri the opportunity to build his own spaceship.

This trailer comes along with Sega's announcement of a spring 2010 release date in North America. We can only hope it continues releasing translated videos to tide us over.

We loved the mother[expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] out of Sega's recent mature pair of Wii titles, House of the Dead: Overkill and MadWorld -- unfortunately, the same can't be said for the game purchasing population of the world. The two games' sales were far from stellar, but Sega isn't ready to give up on developing family unfriendly titles for Nintendo's home console.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Sega MD of European development, Gary Dunn, explained that the company's outlook on its two grown-up outings is far from grim -- he even claimed that "House of the Dead: Overkill was a profitable title." He went on to explain, "Whilst MadWorld commercially didn't sell what we were expecting I wouldn't say it's game over for mature Wii titles from Sega." Hopefully the company's persistence will be rewarded, if only to ensure a few dozen sequels to Overkill. (Overkill 2: Superfluous Murder, Overkill 3: The Overkillinest, etc.)

Platinum Games' first release may not have been a sales phenomenon, but the company has found (relative) success with its second, the DS sci-fi roleplaying game Mugen Kouro (Infinite Space). It was a slow week for Japanese software sales, which allowed Infinite Space's 38,394 copies to put it at the top of the Media Create sales chart for last week, its first week in stores.

The three spots below that on the chart also belong to DS games: last week's top seller, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days sits at #2, followed by Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Sloane and Machale's Mysterious Story. The #5 position is held by Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires on PS3.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

So we're Bayonetta in this city and we're kicking monsters and shooting things with our boot guns and all of a sudden this giant statue comes to life we're dodging and our clothes are disappearing and then there's lava everywhere so we run on the skyscrapers and fight angels and we're chased by a tsunami and then we're in a cathedral and there's a dragon coming through the window and we're fighting it and then it lifts off and it's flying and the cathedral is flying and everybody's flying and fighting and shooting and what is going on.

While Joystiq sends bloggers to E3 for teh newz, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon sends Jason Sudeikis for teh lawls, as the latest episode of the late-night program shows. Available to watch right now on Hulu, highlights include Jason's brief stop by the Bayonetta area at Sega's booth, and a rather hilarious exchange with Infinity Ward about Modern Warfare 2. It's quality entertainment, and Sudeikis does a good job of making lighthearted fun of a show that we worked so hard to cover super seriously this week. Enjoy.

[Thanks, Wesley!]

We can barely follow all of the crazy-fast action going on in this Bayonetta trailer. We know it's an action game, but we didn't know it was an action game fueled by crack cocaine. Hmm, maybe the suplexing of dragons should have given away the drug-addled puppetmaster pulling at the title's strings?

Regardless, if you find yourself able to keep up with all of the crazy action going on here, then you should probably check to see if you're Sonic the Hedgehog.

What do monsters made entirely of hair, gratuitous poses and flaming middle fingers all have in common? They can all be found in the latest trailer for Bayonetta. It seems that every time we get a brand-new glimpse of Platinum Games' action title, it always manages to up the ante on the craziness. Last time, it was all about giving dragons suplexes. Now? Our leading lady uses her flaming purple middle finger to power up her motorcycle.

But it's not all about the absurd; there's also key info on Bayonetta's story to absorb ... which is, okay, rather absurd as well. A new blonde baddie was revealed in the trailer and it looks like she'll be our heroine's main rival. Check all of it out in the clip after the break. But please, try to maintain your sanity.

Source: Eurogamer
Source: Buttonbasher

Over on the Platinum Games website, an animator by the name of Eijiro has posted a short article concerning the development of animations for the enemies in Bayonetta. The article discusses the ways that enemy animations help engage players in the action and also the role that animations play in a game's difficulty. Using some sample animations, Eijiro states that enemies often have a tell that is used prior to an attack, which gives players a small window to decide how to react, whether it be by countering or dodging the impending strike.

As Eijiro notes, if this window is too long, the engagement is lost because the player feels no danger. If it's too short, the game becomes too difficult for the average player. Most gamers probably have an intrinsic understanding of the principles mentioned in the article, but it's worth reading for a more detailed understanding of a game design aspect that's easy to overlook. After all, if it's done right, you shouldn't notice it at all.

Sega's MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill are currently being sold at $20 off at Amazon. It doesn't appear to be a flat-out price drop for the two games, which have sold ... well, that's up for interpretation. We've also noticed that MadWorld is currently $30 in-store at GameStop.

Remember: Purchasing these titles will get more M-rated games on Wii and further research into splicing wings on pigs.

Source - Amazon-MadWorld Price Drop [GoNintendo]
Source - MadWorld, Overkill $30 on Amazon [CAG]

This is the perfect week for Platinum Games and Sega to show off the first ship-to-ship battle footage from Infinite Space, visible after the post break. The Star Trek reboot movie comes out this week, and this game might as well be the JRPG take on Trek. The bottom screen shows the view from the captain's chair, and the top screen is basically a feed of your ship's viewscreen, providing a look at the enemy ship facing you down.

A few other quick battle clips are available in the "Star Ship" section of the official site. The game comes out next month in Japan, so we expect to start having more footage show up on screen soon!

[Via Siliconera]

The Bayonetta blog in Japan posted something pretty interesting recently: A prototype video showing the game's heroine in her earliest days, fighting generic baddies in a sealed room. The blog post says this video comes from the game's first month of development, which says a lot for the title because oh man we would totally play this early build like crazy. If you think she looks graceful in the latest trailers, then you're sure to enjoy watching her first few kills ever.

[Via GameSetWatch]

Analytics firm OTX Research seems to already be making a name for itself after announcing intentions last month to track game sales. Speaking at the LA Games Conference, OTX's Nick Williams explained the surprisingly weak connection between strong online awareness of a game versus actual, hard sales numbers, citing Sega's recently released MadWorld as a striking example.

Noting the game's top position among IGN.com's games with the "highest level of unique interest," MadWorld came in at a paltry number 41 using OTX's "GamePlan" metric, a system that measures "1,000 gamers on a weekly basis, tracking 400 games at any given time." This translates to a bleak eight percent of Wii owners having even heard of the title, much less purchasing it (that's .32 percent according to April's MadWorld sales data compared with the 20 million Wii owners in the US currently). Hmm, we wonder what that data would look like for Grand Theft Auto's recent foray onto Nintendo's massively popular handheld!

It took an awful lot of numbers right there to explain an idea we've all quietly agreed upon for so long now -- hype and marketing in the "hardcore" gaming world doesn't necessarily equal copies moving at retail. Now, if you'll excuse us, we'll be over here playing BlazBlue.

By his own account, Platinum Games modeler Kenichiro "Yoshi" Yoshimura poured in just the right amount of "blood and sweat" into the Bayonetta character model (sparing his tears, apparently). The end result has been described by the ESRB as "suggestive," contributing to the game's M-rating (of course, let's not overlook the part that "torture attacks," impaling, decapitating, dismembering, and demonic summoning play in that rating too). Specifically, Yoshi paid particular attention to perfecting Bayonetta's "backside," which, along with her breasts, can be ogled (or snickered at) during brief, in-game exposure -- oddly, in the midst of battle, according to the ESRB. "I guess I am into that sort of thing," Yoshi observes of his posterior fixation.

While popular culture long ago OD'ed on anatomically eye-popping fabrications ("there are people actually proportioned like Bayonetta" ... just not any of us), video games have been traditionally confined to more adolescent incarnations of this theme, tiptoeing into the "adult" world every now and then. But if everything else is "jiggling" and "gyrating" and spreading its legs in our faces, shouldn't we allow games to taunt us too? Wait. Don't answer that. Answer this: Do we really want them to?