Source: IGN

Activision is finally making good on its promise to expand the Guitar Hero franchise to handhelds with the announcement of Guitar Hero: On Tour, a DS version of the popular game. The game uses a special 4-fret addon that goes into the GBA slot of the DS, and a special stylus to strum. The game will feature around two dozen songs and Wifi multiplayer.

From 1up:

"If you thought the cook book software, eye training and common sense training were all bizarre, think again. Face Training DS is the latest release in the Touch Generation series from Nintendo.

The software will come with a stand for the DS and a Facening Scan camera that will display the player's face on screen. Players will follow the text and voice instructions accordingly and proceed to flex those facial muscles."

Perhaps the most important part of this story is the DS camera, which opens up the platform to even more interactivity. The game ships August 2 in Japan, and has an official website here.

On the OverClocked ReMix forums today, Jake "virt" Kaufman posted this little nugget of joy regarding the upcoming Nintendo DS game Contra 4:

Yep! I did music and sound design. I couldn't confirm it until Mr. Bozon outed me himself, and I'm REALLY glad he did. I was worried that they'd think I violated my NDA if word got to them that people knew I was involved, even though I didn't spill it.

(and yeah, it's a big reason VGMix 3 isn't done yet - my freelancing is sucking up TONS of time.. Gonna have to start snorting meth and/or build a flux capacitor. But this is a big chunk of time freed up, anyway.)

virt's music is influenced by that of old Konami games and shows powerfully in his chiptune works like FX3, so his soundtrack should fit the Contra feel very well. Even better news is that VGMix3 has not been abandoned. Hopefully he'll be able to devote more time to its development now that the Contra 4 soundtrack has been finished.

From GameSpot:

"Before Will Wright concocted the PC juggernaut The Sims, his previous masterpiece was the metropolis-building SimCity. The franchise has evolved onto several systems since its debut on the PC in 1989 and was recently announced for release in Japan for the DS under the very workman-like name SimCity DS."