Those waiting for the family-friendly Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest will have to wait some more now that Warner Bros. has announced that the king won't be returning on October as originally planned.

The PlayStation Network update for Europe this week has gone live. The new PSN title, Magic Ball, goes live, as do free demos for Skate 2 and Dead Space. The PSP Store is a bit skimpy though, with just one solitary theme being made available.

Due to unfavorable business circumstances, Stormfront Studios was forced to shut down, leaving its 33 employees wandering about looking for new work. It's always sad to hear news like this, especially when the studio already worked on notable franchises such as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Eragon (Xbox 360, PSP, PC) and other games. More in the full article.

Sony's God of War II game director Cory Balrog has dropped a few words on his role as the creative director in the much awaited PSP game God of War: Chains of Olympus. It's been noted that he will be more involved in this venture than he was in God of War II.

Balrog on his new role and how he will be handling his creative directorship: "I'll be working on it kind of in the way Dave oversaw God of War II, being a sounding board for [developer] Ready at Dawn. My main focus is to try and make sure it's within the God of War universe."

He stated that he doesn't want to give too much information because he doesn't want a repeat of the fact that players knew "way too much" about God of War II before it was released. It was mentioned though that this prequel is expected to flesh out Kratos (which he described in one word: angry), giving us more details about the Spartan when he was still under the service of the gods. He compared the series to Lord of the Rings with regards to the fact that small details will interconnect the entire storyline.

In parting, he told GoW fans to watch out for this game, and he hinted that they may do another GoW game after this. Hmm, God of War III on the PS3 perhaps?

For the girl gamers out there looking for ways to let your voice be heard, we're announcing a poll just for you. Gamergirlsradio.com, Gameinatrix.com and the KRT Ladies have just announced the opening of their Girl Gamer Awards poll, which is your chance to say which your favorite game is, be it for the console (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii), portable (DS, PSP), or PC.

Winners of this poll will be granted the "Girl Gamer Approved" seal, with this poll hopefully increasing awareness among publishers and developers regarding what sort of products women involved in the gaming industry want.

The polls begin this March 28, and will run until April 29. Voting will be conducted at the Gameinatrix site, although the ladies are also suggested to check out the awards nominees in the list below:

Platformer

• New Super Mario Brothers
• Loco Roco
• Elebits
• Yoshi’s Island
• Rayman Raving Rabbids

RPG/Action/Adventure

• Zelda:Twilight Princess
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
• Oblivion:Elder Scrolls

FPS

• Gears of War
• Rainbow 6: Vegas
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
• Call of Duty 3

Game of the Year

• Viva Pinata
• The Sims 2
• Gears of War
• Rainbow 6:Vegas
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

The full list awaits after the jump!

Today, New Zealand. Tomorrow, the world?

Just in case you're a bit lost on what we're talking about, Japan may be DS territory, but in the land made famous by director Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the Pop culture arena, that's not the case. Apparently, the PSP and the aging console, PS2 top the New Zealand market, in terms of the October 30 - December 31, 2006 sales.

Gameplanet reports that according to the GFK sales tracking, the PS2 has 70.9% of the console market at their side while the PSP pocketed 73% of the handheld market. Hey, wherever it occurs, success is still success. General manager of sales and marketing of Sony Computer Entertainment, New Zealand, Warwick Light said:

With new platforms on the market, we stand by our belief that the gaming category is a long-haul race. The continued support and innovation of the PlayStation 2 platform shows that a console can enjoy a long lifespan and continue to grow its appeal to new audiences. Don't think that with the launch of our next generation console we will be forgetting about PlayStation 2 - far from it.

No surprise there, the PS2 has always been an overachiever of sorts. Hopefully, the PSP could follow the sales reputation of the PS2, not only in New Zealand but in other countries as well.

Clover was born with a mission: to produce creative, innovative games. Two years ago, Capcom claimed that the industry had grown stale on a diet of recycled sequels and genres and that the time was right to look past muscles, cars, football, and guns and introduce some truly original (obscure) content and ideas into the scene. So starts Clover.

There were some hits on Clover's part: Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and Okami were all artistically original and were amazingly fresh. The problem is that they were only critical hits. The hardcore and the appreciative loved them. They "got it" because they were fresh, bold, and at times satirical. Nobody else did.

Capcom is after all in the business of making money. It's only logical that they drop a venture that isn't profitable anymore. We as gamers can't really blame them and zealously (fan-boy-ish-ly) call them evil. So what exactly can you blame on Capcom?

The full article awaits after the jump!

When do you know if it's too much? How do you know if you've gone too far? What if you found out that it might just be beyond you? Sometimes, it's better to let others continue your work.

This is what Yoyofr and Laxer3a have decided. Letting someone else's hands develop your creation takes a lot of willpower. They have layered down the integral foundations for other homebrew developers to build on.

According to Laxer3a, "I am not sure neither yoyo and I want to go that far in tuning. If any good coder is interested to join in... May be worth sending a bottle to the sea actually. As the source matches the latest binary."

So what does this mean for the SnesTYL9x? According to the developers, they have done all that they can regarding the speed of the emulator. A 10% increase in performance may be achieved if there was a near-complete overhaul of the code to incorporate a dynamic recompiler/JIT and if the graphics code was rewritten. It seems majorly difficult, but feasible. However, time is not on their side.

They have a life beyond game emulators, and decided that doing the modifications above would take a major chunk of health points out of them. Let's hope that others will carry on the torch these people have helped light.

Yoyofr and Laxer3a, thanks for the great SnesTYL9x. It will be one of the better emulators out there for a long time. For the next generation of developers, the ball is in your court.

Activision announced today that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Raven Software's highly anticipated action/RPG, has just been scored by a trio of award-winning composers.

Chance Thomas (Peter Jackson's King Kong, Lord of the Rings series), Cris Velasco (God of War) and Mark Griskey (Best of LucasArts Original Soundtrack) produced over 50 minutes of original music for the game, including the superhero and boss battle themes, multiple game level themes, and in-game cinematics.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will be the first superhero game available this fall for all next-gen gaming systems. If you're interested in knowing about musical scores for other games, you might find this previous article interesting. Check it out.