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Famed mobile device emulator maker ZodTTD has announced his next project: A PlayStation emulator for Android. After a 1,800+ person petition was signed to get him to port his iPhone project, he accepted He’s working with the author of NESoid and GameBoid on this new project, so there’s lots of talent going into this new one.

What you see above is not the final control layout, but controls can use the touchscreen, hard buttons ande ven the track ball. Fullscreen is supported, but it won’t be running at a high frame rate.

As for what phone is required, you’ll need Android 2.x, and they’re saying that you’ll need at least a Cortex A8 or Snapdragon (any EVO 4G peeps out there?) to rock this. ZodTTD says the emu is already running faster on the Nexus One that it is on the iPhone, and they’re still tweaking as we speak.

There’s no release date yet, but DigitalDisbeliever has some images from an early sneak peek to hold you over.

What the hell is “Nerkas” anyway? AllGamesBeta looks to have been peeking around Los Angeles, particularly around the Staples Center and convention center area, where all the E3 madness is set to go down in about a week. There, in front of the Staples Center, on one of those huge screens, a trailer I’ve never seen before played. AllGames got it all on tape YouTube.

It’s a strange game trailer with normal civilians and armed people and things that look like Bluetooth headsets but have some kind of mind control or altering power. It looks like a third-person shooter where civilians are doing the ass kicking. Weird.

At the end of the trailer is the name “Nerkas.” Check out the Who.Is for Nerkas: It’s Square Enix Europe. Is this Nerkas a Square Enix game?

Again, what the hell is a Nerkas?

I wish that my upcoming review could just feature this video in place of the game’s battle system explanation. It really does a good job of telling you how Hexyz Force’s gameplay aspects work in a quick, efficient matter.

It’s not the most complex battle system out there, but it’ll definitely keep you working to make sure that youre using correctly affiliated attacks and weapons. And let’s face it: An RPG that you can mindlessly attack in is boring. If you try to plow through the battles in Hexyz Force by mashing the X button, you’re going to find that you die often.

As I said before, we hope to bring you the full review for Hexyz Force next week. What’s the hold up? This game is long! It’s basically two RPGs in one, each with their own separate story. And each story is over 20 hours long. Bear with me on this.

If you find yourself at the game store (or on the PlayStation Network) sometime before our review goes up, know that it’s a “buy,” and is a solid, fully enjoyable PSP RPG. This one’s safe to throw down on.

I usually hate but appreciate those emails coming from retailers that remind you about those gift-tied holidays like Father’s Day. Usually I have an “oh crap” reaction, and then curse the mail for being a reminder that I have to buy a gift (I love you, Dad!). But then I’m grateful that it reminded me, as I probably would have forgotten (I love you, Dad!).

Along with some standard Father’s Day gift ideas, Target sends along some game specific sales and deals that you may be interested in…for you or your father. You’ll get a $50 Target gift card if you purchase an Xbox 360 Elite 120GB, starting June 6th. Really, that could mean that there’s a gift for both you and dad. And for those dad games, like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, or Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 (with gun!), there a free $10 gift card involved.

And for you, there’s a few games going on sale: Bioshock 2, Skate 3, Prince of Persia, Just Cause 2 and FIFA World Cup South Africa will all be priced at $47.

A new study by University of Delaware Associate Professor Elizabeth Orsega-Smith looked into overweight seniors that were playing Wii Sports. Could they lose weight like their younger, whippersnapper counterparts were?

Yep. Fat, old gamers can get some benefit out of Wii gaming. In the study, which gauged calorie burn of a group aged 66 to 78, 30-minute play sessions of Wii Sports games had them burning between 20 and 176 calories a session. Mind you, some of these subjects had body mass indexes of up to 39 (over 30 indicates obesity). But it Wii games seemed to do the trick: Baseball sessions burned up to 144 calories and Wii Tennis get them up to 72 calories burnt a session.

Orsega-Smit said, “Given that 40 percent of older-adult females and 30 of males ages 70 and above do not participate in any significant physical activity, this population faces growing health challenges. For otherwise sedentary people, games like the Wii offer an enjoyable way to become more active and more healthy.”

She notes that while the Wii games burn less calories than the IRL versions, they’re still a good vehicle for getting old fatties off the couch and into a healthier lifestyle.

Study: Fat, Old People Can Burn Calories Using Wii [gamepolitics]

We really dug last year’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10. It was one of the first games that used Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus controller addition. It added an increased control sensibility that really made you feel like you had some realistic control over your virtual golf club. In our review we said that this game made it seem like they invented Wii Motion Plus just for golf!

For PGA Tour 11, EA Sports took the whole realism thing and ran with it. For me, it seems like increased realism usually leads to increased difficulty. That’s not to say that PGA Tour 11 is impossible to play, though. Just know that in the game’s most realistic control modes, you can actually miss the ball on your swing. And you will sometimes.

The new control mode they’ve added to PGA Tour 11 is called True View. It’s a first-person view of your club and the ball. Imagine yourself looking down towards your feet and that’s exactly what you’ll see. This makes the experience even more interactive, and it made me a bit more nervous. Along with this view, the swing mechanics have been beefed up to be even more realistic, which means that you’ll need to follow through with something close to what a real golf swing would be like.

In this mode you’ll have to be mindful of the point of contact on the ball, which EA tells me is as close as they could get it to 1:1 motion. It certainly feels like it — it feels authentic, though I’m no golf pro. In the game’s Advanced and Tour Pro modes, you’ll be looking at the ball and lining up your club for a real swing that makes you feel like a pro when it connects nicely, and like an amateur when it barely clips and veers off to the left, into the sand. It really seems to follow the path of your club swing, which makes it feel much more like you’re playing a golf game, and less like you’re triggering an automatic golf swing. And if that’s not hard enough, in the most difficult mode, even the on-screen cues are removed, forcing you to play solely by feel.

So how did PGA Tour 11 get easier? They added minigolf to the game. That’s not to say that the minigolf is too easy, but they did include a completely different physics engine, and it’s more geared toward family fun than it is to realistic golf. There’s four courses in the game, including a racing speedway, an ice land, and the one I tried, called Mini Predator. All of the windmills and waterfalls and fun scenery you’d expect make it into the minigolf, as does all the teeth-gritting and fist shaking from just missing the hole. It’s a lot of fun, and makes for a nice break after some tense holes in the standard game.

As for the rest of the game, there’s a new Ryder Cup Challenge on the Celtic Manor resort in Wales in this version. The fantastic disc golf mode is also back, and now it’s fully online compatible. They’ve beefed this year’s version up quite a bit. We’ll go into further detail next week, when we’ll run our full review of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 for the Wii.

Company of Heroes Online is a free-to-play multiplayer real-time strategy game from the people at Relic, which are the same guys that made Dawn of War and the original Company of Heroes, of course. It is coming out this September (it was originally announced for Asian territories), but I had a chance to play this WWII-era RTS a couple of weeks ago from an early English-language version. When I played it, the game was running an open beta in Korea, and we saw people online, having a blast. I didn’t feel up to going against those seasoned players, so I took on a fellow games writer at the event. I still lost.

In CoH Online you’ll command your company to gradually move across Europe in the second World War. You’ll choose from six divisions, each with their own powers, and then go up against up to eight players on the map. You’ll drop in your division’s own heroes, plop down crazy war abilities, and scramble to build your side up with upgrades, working frantically to make sure you aren’t caught with your pants down when the enemies roll into your camp.

Read on for our preview of Company of Heroes Online.

First off, let’s get to the whole free-to-play thing. From what I could tell, this is not a gimped game that is looking to microtransaction you to death. Game director Tim Holman told us that the game is fully playable as it comes, and you’ll only need to dip into the pay side if you want to buy items to help you even the odds more quickly. All of the abilities you can purchase can also be unlocked eventually through normal game progression. Beyond this, the game features smart matchmaking that won’t leave you feeling inadequate when you go up against Mr. Pay-and-Win. I can’t speak to the balance yet, but it sounds like Relic is working to make sure this is fair for everyone. And, more importantly, fun for those who choose to go free all the way.

Speaking of game progression, you’ll hold on to your earned upgrades as you continue to play CoH Online, a new aspect that players of the original game will surely appreciate. No more building up a massive force to just lose it all once the match is over. You start out as a commander that can follow different upgrade paths, each with their own special abilities, upgrades and special attacks. As you play, you’ll eventually find someone that sucks enough to win against (I didn’t!) and earn points that you can spend to slowly pull your army out of suckage. You’ll work your way through your own ability tree, unlocking each in a path until you’re so stupidly strong that no one is going to go up against you.

Speaking of stupidly strong, THQ was nice enough to give us an ungodly amount of points to put into our first game. With this I blazed through my chosen commander’s path, unlocking everything. Honestly, it was daunting once I got into the game. I was probably less focused on building up my defenses and more focused on seeing what all of my abilities looked liked. Yeah, that’s totally why I lost. Even items have upgrade trees, and I was able to point-plow my way through them to see with their highest form looked like. For example, my commander’s Bombing Run ability could be leveled up to increase the number of bombs dropped. The game’s Hero units are like regular units, but they level up from match to match, and gain additional abilities along the way. Given more time, I would have enjoyed a gentle escalation into chaos, with a gradual upgrade-and-see progression, but blowing everything up with max firepower is fun too. 

The game looks great, or at least it did on the higher end gaming PC I was previewing it on. It sports a nice, dark look, with small but highly detailed buildings, vehicles, and locales. While I was busying creating and then toying with each new troop or vehicle, my opponent was taking his time, slowly building up his side so that he could create tanks. I was mindlessly frolicking across the lower right side of the map, thinking I may finally have enough resources built up to try some fun stuff. Suddenly I noticed that a massive tank waas on my front doorstep. It was sad. THQ staff and other onlookers winced as my army slowly crumbled. I did have enough to use some of my Commander Abilities, but it wasn’t enough. The airstrikes were slow and pointless. Everything was on fire. I laughed a nervous laugh.

Company of Heroes Online is giving you a perfect excuse to start playing and ever stop. If you liked the original’s multiplayer, this is revamped in a way that rewards you for continual play. Oh, and totally free. And if you’re worried about the whole pay-to-play thing, look back at my play experience in this preview. I had access to everything, but just like in any good RTS, wining and losing has less to do with what powers you have and much more to do with solid tactics.

As far as the games press goes, we really can’t choose. We need to be there or we miss out. But the industry can, technically, and especially when two events are so close together. E3 is about a week away, but Gamescom is in August. To make matters worse, Tokyo Game Show is in September.

Namco Bandai Partners VP, Olivier Comte, says that E3’s return to the old days is bringing the industry back, but feels that they’re going to have to choose between the two events.

“I really wonder how E3 is going to be this year because we seem to have come back on track,” he tells CVG. “I wonder if this year it will be E3 like three or four years ago – a very big event. This is how I feel.

“If this is a case then it’s clear that the industry will have to choose between E3 and GamesCom, because two events within three months that cost a lot of money for all of the publishers will be too much.”

He also says that the US-based show is important enough that some publishers could abandon the German one.

Note that Gamescom had the highest attendance of any game show ever last year (see above image) with over 245,000 visitors and 458 exhibitors, beating out E3’s 203k last year. So maybe this is just Namco not wanting to shell out for multiple events. I can’t say that I blame him. I don’t even know how our company gets all of us out to these events, and we’re just talking about hotels and flights.

E3 vs. GamesCom: Industry must choose, says Namco [CVG]

XSEED sent along word that Ys Seven, the upcoming PSP game, will come in a Limited Collector’s Edition. For your $49.99 you’ll get the game, a soundtrack CD containing 20 songs, a 60-page artbook that features Ys Seven and Ys 1 & II Chronicles, and a 12.5 x 34″ cloth map highlighting the world of Ys. Nice!

They are also announcing a “Name in Game” promotion that will get you get your name into the Ys series of games. If you win, you’ll become one of the special quest-giving characters in Ys Seven. To win, simply join their new official Ys fanpage on Facebook. Those that enter between now and June 11th will be eligible to win one of the 14 name spots. There’s no link to the Facebook page yet, so you’ll have to watch XSEED’s general Facebook page for now.

I want my name in the game! I’d die happy being a character in Ys Seven.

There’s not a solid release date for the game yet, but we’re hearing “late summer.”