After David Jaffe posted a shot of an internal email he sent, details leaked about a new car game he's working on. He may have blurred the pertinent details, but there's always someone with mad photoshop skills out there who could work around it - to some extent at least. What they managed to unfog leads to a car game, now speculated to be a new Twisted Metal game.

Wad Studio v0.0.0.2b14 is a Windows application from Wilsoff, aimed at helping the user edit animated WADs (Banner and Icon). What it does is to automate the extraction of images from a WAD file provided by the user. It then converts these images to TGA format, and from there you can edit it in Photoshop or GIMP 2.0.

Download: Wad Studio v0.0.0.2b14
Discuss: QJ.NET's Wii Developers Forum

I think most gamers know that screenshots are often doctored to make them snazzier, even if they don't readily admit it to themselves. It was always just a kind of open secret, but that was until Activision posted this particular job listing on Gamasutra.

There are very few Wiibrew games that make me go "wow." I have to say that this new one from Scognito is one of those games. This game is called Piero's Wiicross, a Picross game for the Wii with customizable themes and background music. Details and a bunch of screenshots in the full article.

Download: Piero's Wiicross v0.1

2007 has been kind to Nintendo, but it wasn't all peaches and cream either. With just as many ups and downs - including a particularly bloody incident with a certain mass-murdering game - as its other competitors, we're thankful that the Nintendo Wii was able to keep up and make it through to the New Year. So, to recount all the smiles and frowns is this Year in Review article of the console that could, the Nintendo Wii.

Check out all the details in the full article.

The first time we heard that our dear old friend Sonic is coming to Super Smash Bros. Brawl because of a marketing ad from certain retail stores, we easily dismissed them as either hype or a simple foul up. However, a similar thing appeared just now and we're starting to have second thoughts on whether it's another marketing foul up or something else entirely.

The picture above was sent in by one of Kotaku's readers. Apparently it's an ad from Best Buy Canada. When you really think about it, Sonic being in Brawl is not entirely impossible especially now that Sega and Nintendo are both working on a video game title featuring Sonic and Mario together.

What do you think guys, is Sonic really coming to Brawl? Tell us your thoughts through the comments section below. And on a last note, the Photoshop time stamp that shows up in the image belongs to Kotaku.

Nintendo fans out there will probably be disappointed that Camp Hyrule has been cancelled this summer. In lieu of this, they have decided to hold a sweepstakes where the winner walks off with a life-sized statue of none other than Link himself.

Camp Hyrule started back in 1995, and is essentially an online camp normally held in August. In the event, players could chat, play online games, and win prizes under the supervision of Nintendo employees and Nintendo Power columnists.

This online simulation has everything you'd expect from a summer camp: campfires, water sports, and archery. Participants are assigned to cabins, where they work with other participants to earn points through various games, a Photoshop contest, and other events.

So is this the end of Camp Hyrule? Well, there was no specific mention about it closing for good, so there's still hope for next year. If you're interested in joining the sweepstakes, head on over to the Camp Hyrule site through our read link to get some details.

The PSPBoy? The Apple iGame? Like many a video game myth we know, names like these went down in the annals of gaming history as some of the more hyped consoles we almost expected to launch. For today's April festivities, the folks from 99lives have provided a top five list of hoax video game consoles that includes other names that many of you may have heard from before. For our first system:

Sega Phoenix:
A rumor started back in 2005, the Sega Phoenix promised, among other things, the computing power of four AMD processors, a 120GB hard-disk drive, and backwards compatibility for all previous Sega gaming systems titles. Rundown: It had the PS3's specs, a Wii-like retro gaming library, and the Xbox 360's looks (with liberal amounts of blue) - imagine the phrase "Looks like pork, smells like fish, tastes like chicken..."

Sony PSPBoy:
The name says it all - a cross between the PSP and a Nintendo Gameboy portable consoles. As it turns out, this faux-portable gaming system was crafted by our very own MaDSouL, who pulled off this project using his computer's trusty Photoshop application. Among other features the PSPBoy was rumored to carry were 2GB memory sticks, LCD screens and dual analog controllers (the PSP's thumb analog, to be accurate).

The complete console hoax list is available at the Full Article

 

A Reuters report indicate that Japanese electronics parts producer Mitsumi Electric Co. has recently raised its group net forecast for this business year by 59 percent. They say that this is due to strong sales of Nintendo's Wii game consoles.

Mitsumi, which supplies the controller and other parts for Wii, said it now expects to post a net profit of ¥ 10.2 billion, up from its previous estimate of ¥ 6.4 billion.

The company raised its group sales forecast by 5.7 percent to ¥ 276 billion. The report also informs that Mitsumi's profits have also been boosted in part by the steps taken by the company to rationalize its production and design practices.

We'd like to include that "look it prints money!" image macro right now, but we're a bit to lazy to photoshop out the DS and put in a Wiimote.

We all know modifications or mods are not unheard of within the gaming community. Not to say that companies need to hire more artistic designers, but the owners sometimes do a better job. To be quite frank, we believe that the Wii's already looking sleek and pretty when it was released. But we also felt, like all other systems before it, that it won't be too long before the public gives it a make over.

But the thing with mods is that there are sometimes no proof that they really work. Pictures can be edited now via Photoshop. The community maintains that pictures and videos are not enough to be considered proof. They want to see directions and try to do the modification themselves.

However, some claim that the how-to of specific mods are not released because owners feel that it belongs to them. The others, on the other hand, do not mind at all and share every trick they know. Take this rather pretty Wiimote mod we stumbled upon today. It didn't come with a note, a video or whatsoever. It's just pictures.

We're not saying its fake, nothing like that. We were just thinking that a guide on how to do this will be better appreciated. Or for all we know, other members of the community could improve on this. At the end, modding has been divided into two opposing schools of thought. What do you think, guys?