Just when I had given up most hope of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea ever crossing the pond to theaters in America, a delightful bit of reassurance has surfaced. The American voice cast for Ponyo was recently announced and it appears to be the most star-studded affair yet for a localized Hayao Miyazaki film with Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett and Tina Fey headlining.

Now, normally most American dubs for, well, anything from foreign shores makes me cringe. Localizations of Miyazaki’s work, however, are often the exception. Sure, one or two voices might not jibe, but by and large they are often quite good. In fact, there’s been more than a couple instances where I much prefer the American voice to the original Japanese (Michael Keaton as Porco Rosso to be a little more specific). I have now cleaned out my e-mail inbox to prepare for your various proclamations of blasphemy and threats of violence and death.

Ponyo’s English Voice Talent Cast (via GhibliWorld)

By Stewart Smith

This past GNG event was a great way to kick off the Gears of War 2 release. This past Saturday, people came to play competitively for the GNG Tournament 2008. The gaming lasted all day, beginning with a late start at 3:00pm, and not stopping until around 10:00pm. Although the turnout wasn’t enormous, the aptitude and gaming intensity was sky high. With the first place prize being a replica gun controller called a “Lancer,” (see above) and the second place prize being a heap of store credit towards, well, maybe Gears of War 3 one day, people really showed off their skills and passion for this hard core game.

Pictured above is the first place team, including John “JePz OVERDoSED” Skretkowicz (left) and Tom “The PorKz” Wolfe (right).

Follow the jump for some post-tournament follow up questions from the winners.

There have been plenty of fan-made movie trailers for some beloved video game franchises. Some have been pretty good. Some have been pretty awful. And there’s those that just kind of defy criticism, be it good or bad. Which brings us to Eddie Lebron’s trailer for Mega Man. His isn’t the first to tease a fan-made Mega Man film, but it’s certainly the best. Oh sure, Roll comes off as a little creepy and Dr. Wily is missing his trademark Einstein-esque explosion of hair, but it’s pretty impressive for the no-budget affair these things tend to be.

Eddie Lebron’s Mega Man

By Stewart Smith

Are you tired of having your friends rub their expert-level playing abilities in Guitar Hero when you still can’t move past medium? Do you find yourself friendless and wish there was at least a robot out there who could do some Guitar Hero co-op with you? Do you find yourself becoming increasingly lazy and can’t even be bothered to play your own video games anymore? If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions then CythSystems‘ new plastic guitar-playing robot is just the thing you need!

Supposedly the ‘bot’s purpose is to demonstrate how adept CythSystems is at integrating various systems. I think they just got tired of having 12-year-olds beat them while playing online. Not that I blame them, really. Wanting to put some squeaky-voiced punk in his place is a perfectly justifiable reason for innovating some new robotic systems.

Guitar Hero Robot Plays With Electronic Precision (via Wired.com)

By Stewart Smith

The ESRB’s website updated with an E-Rating for this collection for the DS, which could mean that the United States might be seeing a release. Previously, the title was only available to members of Nintendo Club of Japan featuring three of the fifteen title that were originally Game & Watch games. Let’s hope the American version gets the bells and whistles, and gets both revamped and old school versions of the fifteen G&W games!

By Ben Bae

If you’ve ever played an RPG, you know the name Chrono Trigger. The title has had wild success in both Japan and the U.S. which is no surprise considering that it was a work by a Squaresoft all-star developer team consisting of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kazuhiko Aoki, composer Nobuo Uematsu, and freelance artist work/design by the creator of Dragonball, Akira Toriyama. The game created diehard fans, ones that demanded more from the CT series. With a loose sequel that didn’t sate the fans, they took it upon themselves to get more from CT. A small team of programmers, artist, and composers got together to work on an unofficial remake that would be on a 3D-Graphics engine for the PC. Square-Enix caught wind of this project known as Chrono Resurrection and called a cease and desist order. Could this mean that Square-Enix was planning a similar remake?

To our disappointment, no. A DS remake (more of a port) with touch-screen support, and some work on the translation was announced over the 2008 summer to be released Nov. 25th. However a port isn’t anything new out of the Chrono series as we’ve seen a Playstation port (with some added animated cut scenes) in the past. It’s a great idea to reintroduce this classic to the next generation of gamers, though many of us wonder what could have been if Square-Enix decided to pick up the project and team of Chrono Resurrection and continued.

By Ben Bae