Gamerdeals.net writes:

"Highlights this week include Skate 2 (360/PS3), Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP), SimAnimals (Wii/DS), plus the only game where a drunk, overweight smoker can be the featured athlete on the cover, PDC Championship Darts 2008 (360/Wii/PS2/PSP).

Check out the full list of new video game releases (USA) for the week of January 18, 2009 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Sony PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS, and PC!"
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To celebrate the beginning of the 2009 Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship, Oxygen Interactive are pleased to announce a partnership with award winning Developers Rebellion and Abdução to produce the forthcoming PDC World Championship Darts 2009.
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Anoop Gantayat: There was a bit of confusion yesterday from box art released for Phantasy Star Portable's budget version. The package appeared to say that Phantasy Star Portable 2 could inherit the save data from just the budget version of the game.
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All the review scores and the details of the cover feature in EDGE's June 2009 issue.
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Ever since the PS3 integrated Trophy support into its firmware with version 2.40, people have been keeping an eye on Sony's other platform: the PSP. It isn't hard to believe that people have been looking for Trophy support to move onto the PSP - it's proven a great success on the handheld's big daddy, the PS3, and taken plenty of cues from the highly addictive Achievement system created on XBox Live. While everything mentioned here is but speculation, Infinite-Bits believes there is enough evidence to favor the idea of trophies coming to the PSP in the near future.
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Executive Officer of SEGA Japan, Kawagoe Takayuki, has announced that Sega were encouraged by Yakuza 3 sales.
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411mania gives a rundown on this week's game releases. Highlights include Phantasy Star Portable, The King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match, and Sukashishipanman DS: Shokotak Koto Nakagawa Shouko Produce!

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Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
With Phantasy Star Portable, Sega basically took Phantasy Star Universe, fixed a lot of the problems people had with it, tweaked it to be more single-player friendly, and added more story elements. Some of those who hated PSU are actually saying that they like this version of the game. I find that hard to believe, but it's possible. If anything, this will at least give us something to do while waiting for Phantasy Star Zero.

Here is what you can expect from PSP:

- New story missions that take place between the original Phantasy Star Universe and Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus
In Phantasy Star Portable you will team up with a Cast named Vivienne as she investigates recent terrorist attacks on the colony as well as animal outbreaks on the surface of some of the planets. Space adventure and mayhem follow. I thought that PSU's story was ok; it wasn't groundbreaking or very memorable but it was still decent. So, if Sega was able to craft a story that is at least on par with the first game's, these missions could be worth plaything through at least once.

- Local as well as online play (with the help of a PS3 or your PC)
As expected, you can play with three other friends locally using the PSP's ad hoc mode. Those wishing to play over the Internet have two options - one that requires a PS3 and another that requires a computer. To use your PS3 you have to download the Ad-Hoc Party application from the Japanese PSN store and do a little tinkering. You can find instructions on how to do this at the PSO-World forums here. If you want to use your PC there's XLink Kai. Note that these two options work for the Japanese and English dem...
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There's a nice variety of games to select from in the week ahead. Halo Wars will be the biggest release this week and will open the RTS (real time strategy) genre to more players. With the Halo crossover, probably more gamers will experience a home console RTS game than ever before on the Xbox 360. Baseball fans have MLB '09 on the PS3 and PSP as well as Major League Baseball 2K9 for just about every platform. Tom Clancy's HAWX brings some nice air combat gameplay. Make sure to try the downloadable demo if you haven't yet. The demo is available from Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network. Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) debuts on the PlayStation Portable. There's a demo for that too, but Phantasy Star fans will probably be eager to pick up SEGA's RPG anyway. For the Wii, Sonic returns in another one of his storybook games, Sonic and the Black Knight.
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Sega announced today that the release date for Phantasy Star Portable for the PSP has been moved up to March 3rd. As reported on earlier, the game takes place after the story in Phantasy Star Universe, so we can probably expect all the classes and races from PSU.
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PSPHyper: "A new Multiplayer Mode mission was made available for Phantasy Star Portable yesterday. Nazokaimei Mission (literally Mystery Unfolded Mission) requires players to solve the mysterious virus that has infected VR, a training program for the Guardian. I'm definitely getting the US version of this, which will be out March 24, will it gets as many DLCs?"
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