WTF Story of the Week Already... Itagaki leaves Team Ninja / Tecmo

This is sort of BREAKING news in the gaming world with Tomonobu Itagaki confirming to 1up in this news story that he is leaving Team Ninja / Tecmo under bad terms. The bad terms is pretty bad when he is suing Tecmo's president for not being paid for completing DOA4, who was promised by the prez. Who knows how will Tecmo recover from losing such guy like Itagaki with all his work on the Dead or Alive and new Ninja Gaiden games (NG2 is officially his last game with them now). There is so much background on Itagaki's departure from Tecmo, so read the NeoGAF thread about this for more. With Itagaki gone, it is a major blow to the company and maybe future DOA and NG games won't be as good anymore (Tecmo Bowl and Rygar are the two major properties left for Tecmo now). All of this mess is pretty crazy. Looks like Ninja Gaiden 2 is Itagaki's swan song to the franchise after all.

Clip of the Day (6/2/08) - A Skateboarding Commercial with Lots of Effects!!!

Thanks to Kanye West's Blog, this Girl Skateboarding commercial directed by Spike Jonze is pretty sick. Looks like he "Michael-Bay-ed" this commercial up with all those exploding effects and awesome music. Some of those skaters felt those pops pretty bad, but it is pretty cool.

Enter Sandman on the Other Side.... Guitar Hero: Metallica announced

The big story in the gaming world (other than the MGS4 reviews fiasco) is Activision silently announcing Guitar Hero: Metallica for Q1 2009 as if Aerosmith, On Tour (DS), and World Tour are enough to whore out the franchise. Yeah, I get it... Its Guitar Hero and it is makes u money, but please stop whoring the brand out and eventually it will bite u in the ass Activision if the hardcore fans have enough. At least, this Metallica edition will likely have the World Tour features meaning it is a full band game with drums and vocals. (imagine the bundles for this game = Aaahhh!!!) Like Aerosmith (coming out later this month - Debating to buy this, DBZ Burst Limit, or Race Driver GRID this month along with Ninja Gaiden 2), this whole separate version would have been better as DLC than a full-on retail purchase, but nooooo.... Activision wants more money and the Guitar Hero name is good enough to sell copies. Another big concern among the gaming community regarding this announcement is whether or not Activision have now grabbed exclusive rights for Metallica songs to be only in GH games, which will be lame (look at Metallica's success on Rock Band with "Enter Sandman" and that DLC pack that was out the first week of its release). This whole exclusivity war of getting certain bands is getting out of hand and for gamers and fans of these games, it is pretty lame that certain record labels are likely to side with one game or the other (Then again, MTV Games hopefully has power to get whatever songs they want because they're freaking MTV) which is Activision and Neversoft are keeping GH World Tour's soundtrack secret for now so the competition can't use it for their game. This whole fiasco is just another example of rhythm games possibly losing it (refer to a previous blog post for more on that).

At least Guitar Hero: Metallica is a better idea than Aerosmith with all those hard songs (yeah, this game is going to be pretty hard on Expert if I'm expecting GH3-like difficulty). I'm pretty sure Neversoft is to going make "Enter Sandman" harder than what it is in Rock Band and people are clamoring for more old-school Metallica in GH3 and RB, so this separate game might be good for them after all (Imagine the supportive bands if Neversoft is including some like in Aerosmith).