So a little over a week ago, the site NoHopeLeft popped up, and began spreading like wild fire. Pretty much everyone knew that it’s goofy “WE’RE DOOMED!!!” shtick was just a marketing stunt; the real question was for who.

But once certain connections were made, like how the logo had a resemblance to the biohazard logo, which is the Japanese name for Resident Evil, and how videos starring a terror stricken Chinese woman began popping up, given that a Chinese voice actress had put “Resident Evil 6″ on her resume online not too long ago, everyone began to have an idea as to what was being pimped.

Eventually the imagery presented listed a date, which was yesterday, and thus the rabbit was finally let out of the hat…

So this is what we know thus far, based upon the trailer alone:

- The President’s a zombie? Cool.
- So the game stars Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield, together at long last. That’s also neat.
- But no Claire Redfield? What a crock. At the very least, Jill Valentine had better make some kind of appearance.
- There’s also a new, third playable character, who has a girlfriend. But more importantly, it looks like his blood is the key to stopping whatever the hell is going on.
- Game looks a lot like 4 and 5, which is a very good thing! I loved those games. Yes, even 5, which lots of folks hated for some reason.
- And yup, it does take place in China, or a significant portion at least. Can’t wait for them to sneak in references about Foxconn, and the ensuing protests.

The following has been making the rounds like crazy, for perhaps obvious reasons. Not only is it a brazen Chinese clone of Mario Kart, but it looks like a really damn good one as well (at least for its kind, imho)…

Everyone is up in arms, but you know how Nintendo fans tend to be. Again, I’m grading on a curve here; whereas most Super Mario rip offs are functionally retarded, this one looks pretty competent. Sure the handling looks super loose, but name me an iOS racer that doesn’t have the same problem. I actually tried purchasing a copy, but couldn’t find it in the App Store, so either it’s already been yanked or is simply only available in China.

Moving on, another notable clone that I didn’t get the chance to pass along the first time, and which I had totally forgotten about, until Kotaku brought it up again, is China’s take on Team Fortress 2…

Again, looks really good! Well, the cinematics at least. Though both of those efforts pale in comparison to the eeDoo iSec, which resembles the PS3, but mostly apes the Xbox 360′s Kinect and its games. Like the following, which is damn near indistinguishable from the official offerings from MS. Any diehard Kinect fans that would like to refute are more than welcome to…

Still, nothing beats the king of Chinese game consoles, the Super Megason…

Via Destructoid: first off, some guy in China spent $16,000 (yes, that’s the numbers one and six, followed by three zeroes) on a virtual sword, for an MMO called Age of Wulin. So right off the back, pretty nuts. But it gets better…

You see, the game isn’t even out yet. Basically, the makers of the game, Snail Games, held a pre-release auction that was featured all sorts of game enhancing goodies. So basically, they’re giving keys to cheaters right on day one. Wonderful marketing! I’m sure the game will do super well. Actually, it probably will.

Other items include some hook that went for $1,600 and a spear that fetched $2,500. Man, I sorta want to play this game just so I can steal these idiot’s loots. And I’m pretty sure others feel the same way! I take back what I said about piss poor promotions on the part of Snail Games.

Well in other MMO news, and in Korea, another new game is set to launch soon called Queen’s Blade. Via Siliconera…

For those that follow anime (and I’m sure a decent number of folks out there reading this, also downloading To Aru Majutsu no Index in the background) should recognize the name as that one show starring nothing a band of exclusively female warriors that lose almost every article of clothing when simply unsheathing a sword.

Which sounds awesome if you’re into such things, but is so bad that even the most pathetic of animu dorks feels ashamed for knowing that it exists. Well, so here we have the official game. The quandary that comes up in every MMO, i.e. is that virtual hottie being controlled by an actual woman or not, will not be an issue here. I’m willing to bet NO women will be touching this one.

For all the bellyaching about how dangerous China is this will inevitably produce, here’s why we’re not too concerned about it, and also why when Beidou receivers start hitting the US that you shouldn’t buy one: it was made by the Chinese.

For all the paranoia about China, one thing that has been overlooked is that the reason they turn out so many knockoffs and reverse engineer everything is that, as a society, they’re pretty terrible about actually coming up with and executing their own ideas.

The Chinese educational system does not exactly encourage creativity and following your dreams, and the net result are “engineers” who might, might, be able to compete with your auto mechanic in terms of technical knowledge. Their engineering is so terrible, a bunch of electronics engineers on a nuclear sub caused a massive and dangerous radiation leak, despite the fact they shouldn’t have even been handling anything radioactive. We’re not talking about world-shaking geniuses here.

Similarly, we don’t have great information about the actual quality of Beidou. Shockingly, the state-run media claim it’s absolutely awesome and way, way better than GPS…and since it’s only used in China right now, reports on how it actually works are thin on the ground.

It is true that a military needs a satnav system to be more effective at fighting. And Beidou is taken seriously by the U.S. military. But don’t worry: the satellites will probably all be falling out of the sky in about five years.

China GPS Rival Starts Offering Navigation Data [BBC]

Poor Christian Bale. All he wants to do is hang out with some guy under house arrest and he can’t do that? Don’t they know he’s from Hollywood? Show some respect.

Either way, if I’m one of these Chinese guards and I hear an incoherent unnecessarily guttural voice having trouble breathing through a latex mask, I’m definitely shitting myself.

Christian Bale And China Are Fucking Done, Professionally [Dlisted]

Behold the “Arcade Box”. What a generic name for such a magical creation, which dares to merge the Xbox 360 and PS3…

About 54 games are built in, though it also supports GBA, Neo Geo, and even CPS1 plus CPS2 games (that’s the hardware that Capcom used to run their arcade offerings in the early 90s, including stuff like the original Street Fighter) via SD card. And just for $69.60 American, what a steal! Made in China of course; granted, everything’s made over there, but this really screams “dude, I’m MADE IN CHINA!!!” if you catch my drift. Nab yours here!

Meanwhile, guess what’s the hottest thing over in India of all places? Also according to Kotaku, this unholy union of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation Vita…

The reason is rather simple: the real deals are super expensive, whereas knock-offs are dirt-cheap, and in nations where money is scare, what are gamers there to do? Even though HD gaming is king in North America, Japan, and most of Europe, other parts of the world are still sticking to older platforms. Brazil, for example, still enjoy the Genesis so much that there’s actually been new games produced for the platform as recently as a year or two ago!

Back to the place where one can pick up a Arcade Box, be sure to check out their wide assortment of similar knock-offs! Though the one actually work checking out is the Dingoo. It’s a stupid name, and kinda pricey at 90+ bucks, but it’s actually worth it…

A buddy of mine actually has one and it can do tons of stuff; in addition to supporting GBA games (which still kick ass today, even in the post DS and especially iPhone world, sorry) and Neo Geo as well, it can also play old SNES games, plus Genesis, and old school NES naturally. All quite well, though you need to update the firmware or find some unofficial variants to get everything working 100%. Unfortunately, you sorta need to know what you’re doing, but if you don’t mind checking out some of the darker corners of the internet, you’d be surprised by the pay-off. It also having the form factor of the Game Boy Micro is a bonus in my book. Definitely worth checking out!

This “Console” is The Bastard Son of an Xbox 360 and a PS3 [Kotaku]

In America, when prisoners have nothing better to do, you put them to good use. Either making license plates or being customer services representatives for Delta. Meanwhile in China, they force prisoners to be gold farmers for MMOs.

Liu Dali is a prisoner at Jixi labor camp. Currently 54 years old, he was thrown in the clink for three years in 2004 for raising a ruckus about corruption in his hometown. Unfortunately, his story is hardly unique in his homeland. Anyhow, in addition to performing manual labor, he also had to endure the virtual kind.

In an interview, Liu states: “Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour… There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

It gets even better: “If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things.”

Gold faming is a very big business in China; statistics state that 80-90% takes place there. It’s one thing to consider citizens slowly killing themselves in the real world so some kid doesn’t have to grin in World of Warcraft as a living, but political dissidents who are doing so completely against their will is a whole different level of f’d up.

[The Guardian]