trailers

A trailer for Pixar's next animated film, "Brave," was finally released online today after being imprisoned in theaters as a preview that displayed before "Cars 2."

The trailer reveals a hero, many generations ago, surviving larger-than-life challenges in the beautifully portrayed highlands of Scotland. Scenery and tone feel like a fairy tale, and as always, the main protagonist is an unexpected one: a girl named Merida, who has long curly red hair and a side serving of extra panache as she shoots arrows around Scotland.

Environments shown in the trailer look amazingly lush, reminiscent of realms one would see in MMORPGs. The official Web site reveals more about the story: … Read more

Back in 1959 "Ben-Hur" won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. You'd figure a movie like that would be out on Blu-ray, but it has remained on our "Top 30 movies not out on Blu-ray" list for the last couple of years.

That's about to change, as Warner Bros. has announced that "Ben-Hur" will make its debut on Blu-ray on September 27 as the "Ben-Hur 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition."

… Read more

As we reported earlier this month, Activision has confirmed in the form of a reveal trailer that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will ship November 8, 2011.

While it doesn't show actual gameplay footage, there is plenty of eye candy to drool over. Modern Warfare 3 will be set in various locales including New York City, London, Paris, and more. In addition to the action-packed single-player campaign, Modern Warfare 3 will also bring an update to what's considered the best online multiplayer experience on consoles.

Infinity Ward, the team behind the previous two Modern Warfare games, is … Read more

The first Batman: Arkham City trailer featuring actual gameplay just debuted for mass public consumption and we can't stop replaying it. Arkham City is the follow-up to Arkham Asylum, which many critics called one of the best games of 2009 and a shoe-in as the best Batman video game ever made.

Easily earning a spot in our 40 most anticipated games of 2011, Arkham City ventures out of the prison walls and into the streets where players will need to navigate the Dark Knight through an area of Gotham City that has been sectioned off to house the inmates.

Back in Arkham City are the combat and stealth mechanics we fell in love with the first time around, as well as more of a focus on puzzle and exploration elements.

Unfortunately those eager to get their hands on the game will have to wait until October 18, when Batman: Arkham City is set to release for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. It's not all bad news, though; make sure to watch the trailer all the way through for a message from a "friendly" face.… Read more

We're keeping Japan in our collective thoughts today as the country continues to suffer from the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit this morning. Be sure to visit RedCross.org for how you can help with the relief effort.

As usual, Google is doing its part to help on the tech side with a Person Finder to help locate displaced family and friends in Japan. Google launched a similar project in February of last year amid the Chilean earthquake disaster.

It's hard to think about anything but our friends in the East, but today also happens to be iPad 2 day, and there are already people in line for the release at 5 p.m. tonight.

And after spending almost 41 hours in line (all the way through last night's torrents), college student Amanda Foote just sold her first-place spot in line for $900. She plans to use the money to buy Lady Gaga tickets.

This morning also marked the release of the trailer for JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg's new sci-fi thriller "Super 8." The Twitter-exclusive full-length trailer finally gives context to the teaser we first saw in last year's Super Bowl ad, although we still don't know exactly what escaped from the train crash.

In typical Bad Robot fashion, JJ Abrams and his crew add to the mystery of the film with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) alongside viral marketing that creates an entire world to discover around the film.

There's already a product page in place for Rocket Poppeteers that lets you sign up and create your own member certificate, as well as an easter egg editing room whose URL is seen in this frozen screenshot from the trailer.

After an extended chat about the origin of ARGs, Jeff and I both have stories to talk about that deal with our beats--video games and printers, respectively.… Read more

Our guest on today's episode of The 404 Podcast is Russ Frushtick, the games and tech editor for MTV Multiplayer, but the ESRB has assigned him an AO rating for Adults Only, so he won't be visiting Australia anytime soon. Similarly, Australia also refuses to welcome the latest Mortal Kombat game due to excessive violence.

The real story, however, is Australia's outdated rules for video game classification that currently only accommodate a maximum MA15+ rating, so video games that surpass these limitations are automatically banned in the country.

Since Australian adults still have access to mature media in its other myriad forms, it doesn't make sense that local gamers can't also enjoy video games with similarly "explicit" content.

And speaking of risque video games, a U.K.-only Nintendo Wii title is promising "flirty fun for all" with its latest adult-friendly release, called We Dare. The trailer for We Dare illustrates gameplay in the form of four consenting adults using the Wii remote to control virtual versions of party games like Spin The Bottle, Kiss Under the Mistletoe, and the ever-popular Take Off Your Clothes.

The We Dare trailer is a perfect example of vendors using viral marketing to hype up the release of video games that may not be as fun as the videos suggest.

The Dead Island trailer is making similar waves for two reasons: because of its graphic nature that makes sensitive babies like Wilson and me squirm, but also because it doesn't show footage of actual gameplay in Dead Island.

Game previews often show cut scenes or, worse, videos exclusively created for the trailers, which leaves plenty of gamers feeling cheated when the gameplay doesn't even come close… Read more

Last week we rounded up our thoughts and impressions of Nintendo's 3D portable, the 3DS. Not to be outdone, Sony revealed the follow-up to the PSP last week in the form of the NGP (Next Generation Portable). Today we'll wrap up all of the news from last week's announcements and say what we think the NGP will cost.

Before our NGP discussion, we're debuting a cinematic trailer for one of our most-anticipated games of 2011, InFamous 2. Then, we'll get a sneak peek at First Strike, the Xbox 360-exclusive DLC for Call of Duty: Black … Read more

It's our last episode of 2010 today on preGame and we end a great year of gaming by wrapping up some of the debut trailers from this weekend's Video Game Awards show. Tune in for some high-quality cinematics from Uncharted 3, Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3, and SSX Deadly Descents.

Next we'll talk a bit about a new iPhone and Android app from the ESRB that allows customers to take a photo of a game box with their smartphones and retrieve valuable ratings information within a matter of seconds. It makes a great holiday-buying companion and … Read more

Though it's not as blasphemous as talk of Justin Bieber supposedly playing Marty McFly in some ill-conceived "Back to the Future" remake, the fully licensed video game does seem like a promising extension to the classic story of Marty and Doc Brown.

Developer Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island) plans to episodically release five chapters of Back to the Future: The Game, the first of which is titled "It's About Time." Not much regarding the game's actual gameplay has been disclosed, but the debut trailer does hint that Marty will … Read more