Sad times for the former King of Pop - he’s now so skint he’s even having to auction off his collection of arcade machines - and there’s some great stuff in there. I never really had Wacko down as a gamer, but he’s got a wide range of cabs, from the nostalgia-inducing to the ultra-rare.

Visit Julien’s Auctions and you can have a look at the items which are going under the hammer on April 24th. A Virtual Boy in its stand-up store display is one of the highlights, but there’s also an N64 unit, and several Nintendo-related arcade classics, like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. Plenty of other machines of interest there, too - and the starting prices are absurdly low considering some of these are genuine collector’s items.

Expect the prices to rise and rise as wealthy gamers start upping the ante, but for now, $100-$150 is the price for Gunpei Yokoi’s legendary cornea-scorcher - should you fancy giving yourself a permanent headache, that’s all the Virtual Boy will cost you. Bargain!

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Gamasutra has an interesting article about the disappointing sales for two portable rhythm-action games - the PSP’s Patapon and terrific touchscreen tapper Elite Beat Agents on the DS.

While the former was a niche title which arguably overperformed - partly thanks to a low price point - EBA (based on the Japanese game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan) was always expected to do better, with Reggie Fils-Aime having confessed that he’d hoped for roughly 300,000 sales - the game limped out of the charts with a comparatively paltry 179,000.

Yet the feature’s comparisons with Guitar Hero: On Tour seem a little unfair - the latter being an established franchise backed with officially licensed songs and a strong marketing push. While EBA theoretically had the might of Nintendo behind it, the big N was comparatively reluctant to heavily trail the game - any title without immediately obvious mainstream appeal tends to fall foul of Nintendo’s timidity when it comes to promoting new core IP.

Anyway, the cost for procuring the licenses to cover the songs featured in EBA would have been a not insubstantial amount, and thus - despite the success of Ouendan 2 in Japan - a western sequel seems very unlikely. Shame.

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Famitsu has new shots and information about the forthcoming DSiWare title based on Keita Takahashi’s brilliant roll-em-up, Katamari Damacy.

Named Katamari Damacy: Korogashi Puzzle, it’s released on the handheld’s download service, and will cost just 500 points. The DS is held in the book style, with the left screen showing the King of All Cosmos, while the touchscreen has a vertical puzzle display. It’s similar to Meteos in that you need to match tiles to blast items off the screen - in this case, combining specific items to make stars in the night sky, a concept familiar to fans of the series.

There are two main game modes - a self-explanatory Endless Mode, and the Challenge Mode which has differently-themed stages. It seems that the King will have specific requests for the types of items to be included in the stars - again, this mechanic is well-known to Katamari fans.

Whether the game can live up to the addictive nature of the originals remains to be seen, but the presentation is charming (if a little cluttered) and it’s a nice twist on familiar puzzle mechanics. Expect a western release later in the year. If you want to see more shots, click here.

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It’s a bit of a surprise to say the least (particularly given its low sales in Japan), but Yuji Naka’s Let’s Tap (which, you may recall, I rather liked) will be released in both Europe and the US, Sega announced today.

Perhaps Sega thinks its quirky control scheme will appeal more to western gamers. With the remote placed upside down on a cardboard box, the game reads the vibrations your finger-taps make and registers them as control inputs, such as making a wireframe man run and jump, or setting off ripples in a fish pond in one of the game’s several visualisers. Best of all, the rhythm mode will have you merrily tapping along to the beat with a series of incredibly catchy tunes (including the theme song featured in the YouTube video above).

It’s due for a release at some point this summer. A budget price would be sensible, as would a decent promotional campaign explaining why it’s such a hoot in multiplayer. Even with that, it’s difficult to see such an oddity performing well in the west, but then you could have said that about Wii itself, and now look at it.

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D3 has released the final boxart for Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, which should be arriving in Europe in the next few months. It’s been rated a 15 certificate by the BBFC, despite featuring non-stop violence and gore, presumably because the action is so fantastical that it couldn’t possibly be considered as offensive as an 18 cert, which - curiously enough - is what sister Xbox 360 title Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad has had slapped on its box. The difference between SD and HD? Possibly. Or perhaps the latter has some other more offensive content.

Early reports suggest Onechanbara could be a bit of a cult classic - UK mag NGamer suggests it might not have the big-budget polish of rival zombie-killer Dead Rising, but that the undead hordes are more plentiful in number, making the slicing and dicing that little bit more fun.

The current release date is down as ‘first half of 2009′ but I wouldn’t be surprised to see this before April’s out. Whether it’ll be positioned as an alternative to Dead Rising remains to be seen - it’ll certainly be interesting to see which does best. Will the trashy indie bloodbath triumph over the horror blockbuster? Judging by the evidence so far, it might just pull off a shock.

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Rising Star Games has announced the forthcoming release of 2D shooter XG Blast by releasing the above trailer.

Due out on February 6th, the blaster looks vaguely reminiscent of Geometry Wars or Super Stardust HD, though it appears to take place in smaller areas and features boss monsters which suck up plenty of bullets before shuffling off their mortal coil. The game also has several multiplayer modes, including co-op games and competitive deathmatches.

It’s nice to see more hardcore stuff on DS, and with Rising Star’s reputation for publishing quirky and interesting titles, I’m hopeful that this will be as interesting to play as it is to watch.

Oh, and the Lichtenstein-esque boxart is brilliant, which is a good start. See below.

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Atlus, publisher of quirky (and often brilliant) Japanese games in the US, has picked up another title to localise. This time it’s one of Marvelous Entertainment’s games, a strange puzzle-platform hybrid named Steal Princess.

It looks as gloriously niche as most Atlus titles tend to do, with the titular heroine swinging, jumping and scrapping her way through the game’s 150-plus isometric levels. The Wi-Fi logo on the box refers to the ability to create your own levels and share them with other players.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Steal Princess is that it comes from Climax Entertainment, who created rock-hard Genesis/MegaDrive platformer Landstalker - the sort of game which is spoken about in hushed tones by retro geeks, and which appeared on the Virtual Console in late 2007. This looks to feature even more intricate platforming, and should thus offer the kind of old-school challenge that people complain we don’t see enough of any more.

Steal Princess launches in North America on 24th March. No-one’s picked it up for a PAL release just yet, and this may well be one title us Europeans have to import if we want to experience its beautiful strangeness.

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In March of this year, Atlus will be publishing Tokyo Beat Down - an old-school beat-em-up for the DS which is either going to be terrible or an absolute camp classic. What’s clear from the screenshots and videos so far is that it’s had a superb localisation from a team absolutely aware of its inherent daftness, along with a press release so good, that I’m just going to reprint it in full here:

In Tokyo Beat Down, you shoot first, punch second, kick third, break for lunch, and then ask questions… if there’s time. Every sort of crook, hoodlum, thief, criminal, traitor, drug dealer, murderer, assassin, terrorist, arsonist-well, you get the idea-is scheming to take over the streets of Tokyo, and only one police unit has what it takes to stand in their way. The most vicious, merciless, unyielding team of enforcers: the Beast Cops.

This sordid tale of Tokyo’s criminal set unfolds through the eyes of three different cops with unique play styles. Story branches lead to multiple endings that determine whether you’ll get your shot to beat down the ultimate crime boss. That’s right, boys and girls, multiple characters and endings.

What do you do when thugs and hoodlums put peace and freedom in jeopardy? When the streets are overrun with the worst sort of scum? When the city’s most feared villains seek to rise to power? YOU BEAT THEM DOWN!

The emboldened part made me laugh for about a minute. With characters called Stuff-In-Common-With-You Guy and dialogue like “you’re so naive…fists can solve any problem”, Tokyo Beat Down might just be the most hilariously quotable thing since Anchorman. It’s out in March for just $29.99, and I immediately want it.

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