Odin Sphere

Today Sony via the PlayStation Blog announced its new PlayStation Network promotion. Titled “Only on PSN,” the blog post highlighted multiple downloadable offerings like this week’s Eufloria and Rochard, plus the Infamous 2 DLC Festival of Blood. And tucked away at the bottom, given barely a mention was the real big news: Starting tomorrow a handful of underrated PS2 games will be available for download, including staff favorites like Odin Sphere and God Hand...

1UP: Cult favorites from Vanillaware may soon be available for download on high-definition consoles.

Spencer reports: After so many reprints of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness I'm surprised it isn't already Greatest Hits game. In September it probably will be.

Square Enix's PS2-exclusive RPG Odin Sphere arrives in the UK - and other PAL territories - on March 14. Odin Sphere features a visually sumptuous 2D art style and follows the tale of Odin's daughter - Gwendowlyn - and she has to uncover the secrets of a prophecy that could lead to the end of the world.

Game Front has a list of Q1 release dates for Ubisoft titles in Europe. The list includes titles for PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii and DS. It also has price information in Euro. The list is dated 18 January, 2008.

Square Enix has today announced details of its schedule for the fresh end of 2008, with Final Fantasy I and II on the PSP and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings on the DS both being given firm street dates. Details of the release dates for other UK-bound Square Enix titles are somewhat more vague, with DS titles Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates and The World Ends With You due as the leaves begin to sprout, while we can expect Odin Sphere on PS2 and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on DS sometime before said leaves turn brown.

Kotaku's Brian Crecente writes: Our first-ever Game of the Year awards was a pretty straight forward deal. I asked all of the writers to submit a list of three games for each category and the three that showed up most in each category made it as a finalist. Once we had the list of finalists I asked each writer to go through and order the finalists and then tallied the vote. The one with the most points was named Game of the Year, the runner-up was named Not Quite Game of the Year. The game with the most votes for Worst Game of the Year received that dubious honor. Super Mario Galaxy won Kotaku's Overall Game of the Year award. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came as second, it won the Not Quite Game of the Year award. (Kotaku posted the overall results as a separate post, see the link at the Alternative Sources below for more details.)

Atlus' awesome PS2 action RPG, Odin Sphere, looked like it may never have seen the light of day over here. But Square Enix has confirmed otherwise today, pencilling it in for an early 2008 release.

September 4, 2007 An arcade game called Arm Spirit has been recalled in Japan after three people suffered a broken arm while playing it - with further unreported cases likely. The game is supposed to be quite easy to beat and its makers Atlus Co. (the company who brought the world Princess Crown and Odin Sphere) can't see how people could manage to sustain such an injury while playing it. All 150 machines have been recalled and will be investigated for possible malfunction. "The machine isn't

The newest issue of the British magazine EDGE is in stores as of today and its always interesting to see which games were reviewed and what scores they got. This month some interesting titles have been reviewed, such as: Blue Dragon, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Transformers and GRAW2 for the PS3. Apparently EDGE didn't really like Transformers and Hour of Victory as both games got 2/10 from EDGE. The British don't really like Blue Dragon and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 as well as both games 'only' got 6/10. Zelda: Phantom Hourglass did really well as it scored 9/10. Check out all of this months reviewscores below. Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (NDS, Nintendo): 9 Blue Dragon (Xbox 360, Microsoft): 6 Transformers (Xbox 360/PS3/Wii/PS2, Activision): 2 Odin Sphere (PS2, Atlus): 6 Ouendan 2 (NDS, Nintendo): 8 Monster Madness (Xbox 360, Southpeak): 5 Exit 2 (PSP, Taito): 7 Hour of Victory (Xbox 360, Midway): 2 Tenchu Z (Xbox 360, From Software): 6 Calling all cars (PS3, Sony): 6 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (PS3, Ubisoft): 6 More Brain Training (NDS, Nintendo): 7 Anno 1701 (NDS, Disney): 8