Interviews

House of the Dead: Overkill launches pretty much everywhere next month, and looks set to be a mini-upheaval for Sega's venerable lightgun series.

While shooting zombies in the face still plays a major role, Brit developer Headstrong Games has introduced a '70s horror theme, time manipulation, new enemies, and a ton of extra content. We lined up Lead Designer Alastair Halsby in our shotgun reticles, and fired several rounds of questions his way. Join us after the break for a discussion on grindhouse, censorship, and the "ballistic ballet of zombie destruction." Heads up!

Fan stuff, Peripherals, Tech stuff, Controller

See that odd diagram above? That's Nintendo's original design for the Zapper. Aside from that, you'll find other gems such as the early prototype for R.O.B., along with some other non-Nintendo patents. It's an excellent gallery of diagrams that Technologizer has put together here, so don't waste any time and dive right in. You won't be disappointed.

Interviews

Gamasutra has an interview up with Capcom's Minoru Nakai, a producer on Dead Rising: Chop Till you Drop, about the development of the somewhat controversial Wii remake of the Xbox 360 title. It reveals external, game-related details worth noting as well as interesting behind-the-scenes stuff.

In terms of gameplay, we now know that photography is gone (cue a few disgusted "NOT BUYING IT" comments), but that the mall map is the same size as it was in the original, and even tuned a bit to be "a little bit more maneuverable, so that it's easier to get across the mall and things like that." Loading times haven't been compromised by the move to Wii. In addition, some of the zombies have been sped up.

Behind the scenes, Nakai discussed the process for converting the 360 models to Wii, and altering animations (from Resident Evil 4 and Dead Rising) to match player-controlled motions.

News

Wii Play has finally regained its spot at the top of the charts in the UK, as it has bested previous top-seller Mario Kart Wii this week. Not since February of last year has Wii Play been the top dog in the UK, which is just plain surprising, if you ask us. Sure, we may not all agree on the bundle's worth, but it's still a pretty tempting package, especially to someone who hasn't even tried the bundled software for 5 minutes, gotten bored, and wandered off to make a sandwich.

Fan stuff, Imports, Tech stuff

Looks like we have a new BFF, even if they don't know it yet. As you can see in the image to the right, the cabinet is set to play Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (running off a Wii), which is one of the games we'd most like to import but it costs like a bajillion dollars so we can't. Apparently, these cabinets are just sitting in somebody's kitchen, in Brooklyn. Uh, what does a blog need to do to get an invite? We're already making you famous to our 32 readers with this post. Hook a blog up, already! We totally own a car.

In all seriousness, though, we're really jealous of how awesome that kitchen is.