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Speaking exclusively with IGN, The Conduit developer High Voltage Studios has revealed its upcoming game The Grinder to be heading to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, as well as the Nintendo Wii. Previously announced as another of HVS' exclusive games for the Wii aimed at teh hardcorez, the game will now end up on every console, which "allows us [High Voltage] to show off what our company can really do and get it into the hands of the most gamers."

While we're inclined to argue that most gamers' hands are in possession of a Wiimote and Nunchuk (at least that's what the numbers tell us), moving to the other consoles is a fairly understandable choice given the relatively low sales of HVS' previous Wiisclusive title. "We are extremely proud of the sales for The Conduit, with over 350,000 copies sold, numerous 'best-of 2009' nods, and over a million hours played according to the Nintendo Channel," noted CEO Kerry Ganofsky. From the interview, it appears that the studio's proprietary game engine ("Quantum 3") will also be heading to the other consoles. Does that mean a Conduit port to the 360 and PS3 is in the cards? Hopefully we'll find out when we next see HVS at the Game Developer's Conference this March. In the meantime, we've embedded a new trailer after the break.

As you might expect, several larger-than-life figures ("some of the biggest playable characters on Wii," in fact) from world mythology are embroiled in the titular tournament, including a minotaur, gladiator, Valkyrie and Gorgon. Up to two players can enter the arena and have at each other with different weapons, magic and supported Classic Controllers. You can also summon "a man-eating lion," which scientists have repeatedly shown to be the only useful variant of the lion.

Gallery: Tournament of Legends (Wii)

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If you own more than one console, there's a sizable chance that you found The Conduit underwhelming. A commendable effort, sure, but not the world-rending behemoth we were all hoping for. That said, if you own multiple consoles, you probably also have enough money to afford a sweet custom rig. Thus we present a custom Wii dedicated to High Voltage's good ol' college try.

While it might appear to be little more than a Wii with a face painted one side and a logo plastered on the other, the real magic happens when you turn it on, causing it to light up so very prettily. See it all in the detailed (and vaguely sensual) video after the break.

[Thanks, John]

You'll remember Kristen Bell from her less-than-endearing performance as Lucy in Assassin's Creed a couple years ago (and you should remember her from TV's Veronica Mars). Bell's back in the sound booth to record another game voice, playing Cora in Astro Boy, the upcoming movie-based adaptation. According to the video interview above, her character is a "17-year-old, edgy girl," immediately demonstrated by her declaration, "Sorry, we don't need any newbies." Good to know! (We were worried.)

In addition to the Wii Astro Boy game, High Voltage Software is making a Secret Saturdays game for D3 Publisher. Like Astro Boy, which is inspired by Treasure's Astro Boy: The Omega Factor, High Voltage took cues from an excellent game when designing this children's game: Bionic Commando. The good one, that is, not the new one.

"Yes, we were playing Bionic Commando Rearmed when we were initially pitching the concept for the game to D3Publisher," producer Josh VanVeld told Siliconera. The Claw allows Zak Saturday to grapple (amongst other things), so that kind of mechanic seemed like a perfect fit and gave us the opportunity to try out a new 2D/3D hybrid camera system in our engine."

While Zak's grappling-based gameplay seems to be most prevalent, VanVeld said that there are "literally dozens of other characters, all of which have unique play styles." The mere mention of grappling was enough to get us to try a game based on a cartoon we've never watched.

[Thanks, Ed!]

In announcing its Q1 2010 earnings last week, Sega also presented a sales figure of 150,000 units for The Conduit during its first week on sale (June 23 through June 30). Just a little more than a week earlier, figures released by NPD put sales of the game for June 23 through July 4 at just 72,000 copies -- not a small discrepancy by any means. We contacted Sega to find out which report was the most accurate. Turns out they both were.

Sega's 150k figure, the publisher told us, was based on copies of the game shipped to retailers during that first week. Although a rep explained that this figure was "global," the only part of the globe the game was available in before July 10 (the UK launch) was North America. Those 72,000 units reported by NPD, then? Those were how many of the 150,000 copies shipped were sold-through to consumers (a.k.a. actually sold), according to Sega.

While this certainly makes the game's first week less impressive, we'll need to see how The Conduit did for all of July before delivering a fair verdict. We'll have those numbers as soon as the next NPD report hits.

A hacker by the name of "hetoan2" claims that it is relatively simple to alter variables in High Voltage's Wii FPS, The Conduit, allowing cheaters to attain infinite ammo, health, invisibility from radar, and other beneficial but unfair advantages -- even online. You can see some of the hacks in action in a video on hetoan2's site.

"Everything is virtually unprotected," hetoan2 discovered when he dumped the game's data and opened it up in a remote debugging program. "All values can be edited fairly easily, and there's virtually no sign of an attempt at hiding values, fixing bugs, or preventing online hackers." hetoan2 said that hacking the online version is as easy as hacking the offline version, because the code is completely identical. "The only difference is in the online mode the game sends the variables in real-time to their server."

hetoan2 released some patch codes for The Conduit, but initially altered them to corrupt the save files of anyone using them. Now, he told The Wiire, he's working with High Voltage to identify cheaters, whose MAC addresses are currently being sent to Nintendo for banning.

The problem with reviewing High Voltage's The Conduit is that it's impossible to do in a vacuum. Depending on where you're coming from, you're going to have vastly different reactions to this game, so I'm going to do my best to talk to everyone.

While you're patiently waiting for the end of the week so you can cash that paycheck and pick up High Voltage Software's The Conduit for your Nintendo Wii, why not take a gander at what the rest of the interweb had to say about the game? Considering the lack of correlation between Metacritic scores and the sales numbers of Wii games, though -- at least according to Peter Moore -- you probably shouldn't let these numbers get to you too much.

• GamePro (70): "The Conduit is the closest you will get to recapturing the magic of Goldeneye ... To be blunt, The Conduit is a by the numbers shooter that offers a couple of thrills but ultimately doesn't make much of an impact ... anyone who loved Goldeneye will want to give a look as well if only to get a nice dose of nostalgia, but the rest of you shouldn't feel a need to abandon your favorite next-gen shooter for this one."
• GamesRadar (80): "The Conduit is fun, controls well, and is, at times, quite beautiful ... Both humans and alien drones are animated with competent physics and personality that puts High Voltage Software's Quantum3 engine outside the realm of the "GameCube 1.5" criticisms ... The truth is you probably wouldn't bat an eye at The Conduit had it appeared on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 ... The solid, yet unremarkable single-player won't win any awards, but The Conduit still features the most finely honed online outings available on Wii."
  
• IGN (86): "The Conduit is not a revolutionary first-person shooter, but it's a damned good one ... the title features the tightest, most comfortable control scheme of any console-based first-person shooter to date ... The Conduit features a robust list of modes and maps to play online and nearly 20 weapons to use as you rip through arenas blasting foes ... it's not revolutionary, but The Conduit is a great first-person shooter designed just for Wii owners."

This week, the Nintendo Channel has been flooded with a variety of interviews about big upcoming Wii titles. There are interviews with the folks behind FFCC: The Crystal Bearers, Red Steel 2, Cave Story, and, as you can see above, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. So, hit up the video above, then if you want more E3 interview goodness, be sure to boot up your Wii and check out what's on the Nintendo Channel.

[Update: Sega has confirmed that the US release date remains June 23.]

Sega has announced that the European release of The Conduit has been delayed from its original June 26 date to July 10. According to CVG, unspecified issues with the game's multi-language European localization are responsible for the holdup.

VOOKS has also confirmed a delay for the Australian release of High Voltage's FPS. Once given a June 25 release date, the game has been pushed back to July 16. Neither Sega nor VOOKS offered any reason for this version's delay, and the Australian release shouldn't be affected by the same localization problems. At this point, your best shot at playing The Conduit next week remains the "living in North America" strategy, or the slightly less drastic "importing from North America" strategy.

Gallery: The Conduit

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The second title that High Voltage showed off behind closed doors at this year's E3 was none other than Gladiator A.D., its aptly titled gladiatorial combat game. We were able to witness several battles take place across two different stages. The High Voltage rep that demoed the game for us said the company was really going for that stylized 300 look and feel. While we can't comment on the latter, we will say the former was pretty evident.

Many of you likely remember the punishing gameplay of Astro Boy: Omega Factor. In fact, our first question to the High Voltage rep that demoed the game at the D3 Publisher booth was just that, if they played the game and whether they planned to follow in its footsteps. The good news is that High Voltage indeed did play through Omega Factor and took inspiration from the game, evident in the 2.5D approach of the Wii game and simplistic combat. The bad news is that this seemed less like a game inspired by Omega Factor and more a watered down version of one of the better GBA games out there.

The Grinder is the first of the two new Wii projects from High Voltage that were revealed just prior to E3, and we got to check it out at the company's booth. It's a game that takes the cheesy grindhouse pictures of old and converts them into an FPS experience. The result is a game full of frenetic monsters and tension.

We know that it's not fair to pass judgment on a game when its at an early stage of development, but we're having a problem with this first trailer for High Voltage's new Gladiator A.D. Namely: It doesn't look very good. It's not that it doesn't look fun, there's no way of knowing that, but it just looks really ... homely.

We're going to cross out fingers and hope that this is just a super-early clip and the finished product is going to knock our sandals off in Q1 of 2010. Agreed?