Bioware released this newest game cinematic trailer for their upcoming game Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 2011 and we have to say it makes us all giddy for more Star Wars.

Make sure you expand the video about to full size and crank up your speakers – you’ll get a chill.

What it’s about: Protected by the legendary Jedi Order, the Galactic Republic stood as a bastion of peace in the galaxy for a thousand generations. Several centuries ago, the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known emerged in the form of the dark Sith Empire. After a volatile war, the Republic emerged victorious and the Sith were assumed to be extinct. Nonetheless, the Jedi have maintained a constant vigil over the ancient Sith homeworld, to protect the galaxy from the darkness that still resides in the planet’s tombs.

Racing onto local PC’s is a MMO that will have you racing on courses all over the world and a possible competitor could even be local celebrity model Chrissie Chau.

Over a hundred audience members witnessed the officially launch of INTERUSH’s “Asian Proxy of iRacing Press Conference” in Hong Kong. Mr. Martin J. Matthews, the Chairman and CRO and Mr. Todd Mitsuishi, the President and CEO of INTERUSH Inc introduced and demonstrated iRacing to the local media and online game enthusiasts.

A demo by someone else is fine and all, but the total lack of any other stations for us gaming reporters to try out was very disappointing. The whole thing was akin to watching an adult slowly eating a softie ice-cream cone (with a Cadbury’s Flake). While that’s fine if it was Chrissie outside in the heat eating that ice-cream cone but alas it was not.

But don’t think for a minute we didn’t bring out the eye candy for you:

iRacing is an online racing game that features NASCAR, IndyCar, sports cars and Grand Prix racing, iRacing has it all. All you need is a PC, a gaming wheel or game pad and Internet connection. iRacing organizes all of the racing for you, or you can choose to host your own race. Either way the competition is as real as it gets – you will be racing against motorsports fans who share the same passion for racing.

For membership info gamers can go to www.iracing.com for full details. We took a quick look and the site is running a US$5 membership promotion with over 20,000 members targeting the US, China, Taiwan, Japan and now Hong Kong. Interesting! And the gimmick here is that you not only race other people around Asia – you can actually test your leadfoot against the pro’s like Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Alex Gurney and Marcos Ambrose.

iRacing offers:

• On-line racing simulation and service in the world with brilliant features and functionality
• Head-to-head competition – racing against real people
• Constant free automatic updates and improvements to the service
• Officially licensed cars that are engineered from the ground up in cooperation with real world race teams and using real-world physics
• Officially-licensed, exact replicas of the world’s greatest race tracks
• Officially-sanctioned racing organized by iRacing including the iRacing Pro Series (Road & Oval) and World Cup of iRacing
• An online community of racing enthusiasts over 20,000 strong
• Ability to host your own private sessions or create your own private racing leagues

There are 3 things inherent with any tech company that brings Chrissie out to their launch event:

1. They have lots of money to get the #1 Leng Mo in Hong Kong.
2. They are slightly insecure of their product or else they wouldn’t need to do the bait and switch.
3. They just want to meet Chrissie themselves.

We’re still going through all the photos snapped at the recent Asian Game Show X Online Game Show a couple weeks back, and today we’re bringing you a bunch of photos from a party of Chinese Amazons at the World of Warcraft booth.

If you think the hottest Chinese models are only from Hong Kong, check out this bevy of beauties hailing from Taiwan and, rightly so, was quite the attention getter at the show. The four models were also accompanied by a very leggy “Mistress of Ceremonies” whose long slender legs were quite bewitching. Luckily Neonpunch was able to get some one-on-one and group shots of the lovely vixens for all our readers to thumb through at their leisure.

While the girls drew a substantial crowd at the front of the booth at the opposite end stood a hulking Lich King with his ominous sword. Unfortunately the Lich King didn’t attract as many amateur photographers as the girls, although if he was willing to show some leg or ripped abs he might have done a bit better.

World of Warcraft Taiwan is the main Chinese language provider for Blizzard’s popular MMORPG. Hong Kong and Mainland players also subscribe to their service to make their never ending questing little easier. Although the Taiwan World of Warcraft delegation was here on a mission of good will they were also here to sell some merchandise like T-shirts, hoodies and even ale tankards.

Neonpunch hopes to see the World of Warcraft beauties back in Hong Kong again next year for some more intimate one-on-one and group photo sessions. You know, for the reason of bringing you more Warcraft news, right?

Even though we’ve passed Christmas, we’re still unwrapping more photos and coverage from the annual Asian Game Show X Online Game Show (December 24-26).

At the yearly event, tens of thousands of local gamers descend upon the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre to play and buy games. Due to last year’s poor attendance, AGS organizers decided to team up with the Online Game Show in the hope that more people would be drawn to the double bill event.

Canto Pop idol and spokesmodel for the event, Joey Yung (容祖兒), was on hand at the AGS X OGS to start proceedings, in what looked like a cyber samurai outfit! Weilding a katanna, Joey posed for the paparrazi while screaming fans swooned behind the metal barricades.

Sony rolled out a few models of their own to add to the festivities:

As usual, Sony dominated the hall by roughly taking up nearly a quarter of the convention space, with numerous console stations for gamers to try out new and soon-to-be-released video games. The Sony area was separated into a number of booths that included a MTR PSPgo booth, Gran Tourismo 5 area, 18+ games room and a Winning Eleven Football area.

The industry giant also put on a number of shows and competitions that drew huge crowds to its main stage, where gamers got to watch game producer interviews along with the Asian Tekken 6 championship finals and Winning Eleven competitions.

Their horde of Playstation Game girls, like the sirens of Greek mythology, lured plenty of gamers to the shores of Sony’s booths; however, the online gaming companies weren’t going to be outdone by Sony and, flashing a lot of leg and cleavage, the online gaming girls lured their own crowds of gamers and amateur/wannabe “gravure” photographers to their booths! Dressed in various seductive outfits from Miss Santa to Naughty School Girl to a World of Warcraft sorceress, there was definitely plenty to see and little needed to be left to the imagination.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for this show, so come back this week to see more stories and yummy photos from the Asian Game Show X Online Game Show.

Everyone loves gangster movies, music and television, sometimes we here at Neonpunch need to blow off some steam and live our secret gangster life…through video games.

Unfortunately, Xinhua announced that the Chinese Ministry of Culture has banned websites that host, distribute or feature gangsters or glorify mafia-like activity such as gambling which can “undermine morality and Chinese traditional culture…!” We’re no historians ourselves, but how long have gangs traditionally been on the Mainland?

We don’t know if this mandate is only for Massive Multiplayer Online games or any game featuring online content (or how far this will extend) and while the U.S. created Grand Theft Auto comes to mind immediately or the accredited Japanese import Yakuza, the only games who have been ordered to shut down are Chinese-language MMO’s.

This makes sense as most gamers in China are still net-bar based and even though there is an 18+ age limit to these, it’s often ignored completely. Some notable online sites affected include Kaixin.com’s Godfather, Mop.com’s Jianghu (‘gangster community’), and Xiaonei.com’s Guhuozai. Further violators face undefined “severe punishment” from the government. Several of the listed games have voluntarily closed for probable obvious reasons.

“Severe punishment” definitely doesn’t sound like brunch with Zhang ZiYi.

World of Warcraft players can stay connected and updated anywhere they go, with the help of Blizzard’s new free iPhone application: World Warcraft Mobile Armory. Information that once could only be accessed by the official website can now be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time. This massive multiplayer world now lets you leave the trapping of your computer without losing the ability to stay in contact to the game. You can download the application here.

Some of the major features include:

• Character information, including gear, achievements, and specs
• PvP leader boards
• Talent calculators
• Official Blizzard news
• An integrated item browser
• In-game calendar

The app requires version 2.2 or later of the iPhone OS:

• There are some good animations with the app. When you move to a new page, the current page flips away, like a book page.
• You have a button to immediately return to one of your characters.
• You can easily bookmark other characters for quick viewing.
• ear viewing and calendar viewing is very cool.
• Talent calculators are a little sluggish

Bioware is really staking their territory at E3 this year with both, Mass Effect 2 footage and this amazing trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, which to us looks better than the last 3 films combined:

Sony shows-off its Wii-killer with its new PS3 Motion Controller – motion capture tools to make your gaming go to the next level. You just have to watch the 10-minute demo to see:

And how can any true gamer not feel a tingle of nostalgia when you see Telltale Games bringing back Monkey Island for a 5-episode game for PC and WiiWare starting on July 7th: