Fashion-concious Sega Dreamcast fans take note and whip out your credit card. Coming September 2006 will be this lovely diecast Sega Dreamcast branded watch, featuring the shape of the console which pops open to reveal an analog timepiece. The item will no doubt be extremely limited edition and much cheaper in the Asian market. Those who can afford such trinkets can place a pre-order over at importers Play-Asia for a limited time and $130us plus shipping.

Read more: Sega Dreamcast watch @ Play Asia (Via 2day Blog)

The long-awaited and somewhat troubled MMORPG set in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth appears to finally be close to completion. Announced back in 1998 by Sierra, the game has had a troubled development history before Turbine signed-on to continue development, and eventually buying the publishing rights from Vivendi (the will co-publish this title actually). As of June 2006, Turbine has been accepting applications for their alpha testing phase, which has recently begun. The game will be based in the Lord of the Rings universe, which takes references from Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King and The hobbit, but unfortunately nothing from The Silmarillion. Gameplay is primarily PvE, with few details on the PvP features being announced. Will this be the WoW killer everyone has been waiting for? I have my doubts, but as is usual with the industry, there’s a surprise around every corner.

Watch the gameplay footage after the jump…

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Wikiepedia needs no introduction, so I’ll skip all that mess and get down to the dirt. Over at Wikipedia, there is an ever disputed page of worst video games ever, featuring the bad and the ugly of our favorite past-time here at Nerds-central. A bit light on culprits, I think there have to be more horrible games than just those listed. What do you think were the worst video games ever made and why? If you can answer those two questions, you can add those up to the list of worst video games ever made.

For example:

KISS Pinball (2001, PlayStation, PC) is a pinball game based on the rock band KISS. Many reviewers claimed that it wasn’t even worth its $10 budget price. Most notably, it contains none of KISS’s music. Electronic Gaming Monthly put the game (which received a 1.0 / 10 in Issue 144) at #6 in its “Top 10 Worst Reviewed Games” countdown and wrote in their review, “…we want our $10 back.” GameSpot, which gave the game a 1.3 / 10 (abysmal), said that “KISS fans will be disappointed by the distinct lack of KISS, and pinball fans will be disappointed by the distinct lack of pinball.”

Read more: List of worst games ever made @ Wikipedia

The future is now thanks to IO2 Technologies, a technology firm developing next-generation video displays and interfaces for medical, consumer and (unfortunately) military applications. Most of their products aren’t even available to us little people and one those is called the Heliodisplay. With the Heliodisplay, the user sees a floating image, projected against a nearly invisible plane of air, however these aren’t holographic images. These are pure 2D planar images which appear 3D due to there being no true physical depth reference. The displayed image can also be interactive, meaning a user will eventually be able to use the Helio as a touchscreen display, making this the perfect addition to any evil lair. It’s even built-in to a coffee table, so this fits right at home in any spaceage bachelor’s living room. The quality of the image isn’t quite there yet, with the air causing a slight swaying of the image, but damn if this doesn’t look like the technology I would see in 80′s science fiction films and wish they were real.

Watch a video demonstration of Ritual Entertainment’s SiN Episodes 1 running on the Heliodisplay after the jump..

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Well, this is the big one. If no-one hears from us over the next few days, it’s because of Street Fighter II. As of today, anyone in the Western World (not Asia yet from what I hear) can now download Street Fighter II via the Xbox Live Arcade service for a whopping 800 points which is around $10usd. Features are packed with online muliplayer featuring 4 different player vs. player match modes as well as leaderboards, achievements, custom controller options, and get this, you ready, 720p HDTV. Yup, Street Fighter II in HDTV, can it get any better? (Well I mean, of course it CAN get better, but humor me here)

Read more: Street Fighter II on Xbox Live Arcade

Jay Moore, marketing director for Garage Games announced via his blog today that he’ll be leaving the Garage to pursue other opportunities, no doubt within the gaming industry (we can only hope). Jay was seen by many as the one of the driving forces behind the success of Garage Games, the Torque Games Engine and the success of Marble Blast on the Xbox 360. He’ll surely be missed and I wonder how he possibly could be replaced in a company which is still struggling to establish itself outside of the hobbyist indie games market.

Read more: Jay Moore leaving Garage Games | Torque Game Engine

The ever so lovable Ichiro and Mimi from Indie Superstar have graced us once again with a new episode of their quickly maturing video cast covering indie games, developers and fans. Seriously, I want to pinch the cheeks of these two everytime I see them on-screen. So yeah, I apologize for completely breezing over episode 2, but I wanted to get back on the ball and talk a bit about episode 3. The crew have made a few small changes, giving games a bit more screen-time and a little less banter during the in-game scenes. There’s also YouTube and Google Video hosted videos, which I’m sure is pleasing their growing fanbase and easing up a bit on their web hosting bills. But on with the show, first up, we hear and see a little bit about Dark Horizons Lore, the mech-shooter, which was one of last year’s hot contenders at the IGF. Looking good, even for a Torque-powered title. Next up we have a bit of wackiness, with a little Japanese sing-along which actually got me to thinking. What is the Japanese indie gaming scene like and why do I hear so little about it? If there IS a Japanese indie scene, what are their marketing and distribution systems like, how successful are Japanese indie games titles, and who are the ones making them? I envision a large and profitable market full of broadband-enabled customers, demanding high quality and innovative games they can easily buy, download and play, but, what do I know?

Watch Indie Superstar Episode 3 after the jump..!

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Indie superstars Introversion Software have confirmed their next title, Defcon, will finally see the light in September 2006. After missing their previously announced deadline for April, and having a problematic Alpha/Beta testing phase, it’s good to finally see the War Games inspired title coming out! I know a group of dudes waiting for some online multi-player thermonucleur destruction (of the virtual, digital kind of course).

[Defcon | Introversion confirms Defcom September release]

Arenanet, the ex-Blizzard developers who went on to create Guild Wars, arguably one of the few successful games NCsoft publishes, has announced the next game in the series, named Nightfall. Little information on what the game will actually feature is present, but Arenanet and NCsoft are planning an upcoming PvP event for current players to get a taste of the current beta-level features of the game July 28 — 30, 2006. From the few screenshots released from Nightfall, really only a few character renderings, nothing much seems to have changed, but I’ll be interested to see where Arenanet plans on taking the Guild Wars world.

[Guild Wars Nightfall press release]

NCsoft has announced an odd promotional event this weekend for both CoH and CoV players. This weekend (July 21-23) players of both titles will earn double the usual experience points for all acts that involve XP gains. This is giving players the opportunity to quickly level up their characters in order to reach the many new features for higher-level players recently introduced in the “Destiny Manifest” expansions. As dear as I hold CoH and CoV to my heart, NCsoft is having some major problems keeping players interested in the game as it ages and moves forward in it’s story lines. With some of the most recent news out of NCsoft, I hope they can pull things back together, I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Tabula Rasa performs (though I’m not holding my breath).

[Coh / CoV double XP weekend event] (via MMORPG.com)