Portions of the Hail to the Chimp website to promote Wideload's upcoming party game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that were previously "coming soon" have just opened. "Meet the Candidates" takes a look at five of the characters, "The Campaign Trail" is a screenshot gallery, and "Campaign Videos" shows the game's first trailer. The entire site is in Flash, so I can't direct link to those pages, so just visit chimplove.com and find your own way from there.

The first trailer for Hail to the Chimp, Wideload's upcoming political party beat-'em-up, is available now at 1Up, and it shows actual gameplay, including the creation of a temporary player alliance. 1Up has also done a preview.

Alexander "The Man" Seropian, cofounder of Bungie and later Wideload Games, currently working on Hail to the Chimp to be published by Gamecock next year, gave an interview to Armchair Empire this week.

Keeping a company light on its toes by keeping the core creative staff small and outsourcing the fiddly bits is how Wideload Games is approaching the problem of rising game development costs.

Alexander "The Man" Seropian (or should it be "The Chimp" from now on?) throws poop at GameSpot today about Wideload's upcoming party game for the Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3.

Is there going to be political satire? Yes, says Seropian. The Bush:Chimp comparisons are obviously unavoidable, but am I the only one who thinks the hippo looks like Steve Ballmer?

Hail to the Chimp has now been officially announced as a humorous beat 'em up to be released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 spring next year; more information is available from the game's official site (flash required).

The Austin-American Statesman has an story on its site today that's mostly about Austin area game developers; However, it also includes an image that purports to be from Hail To The Chimp, an upcoming console party game from Wideload Games, developers of Stubbs the Zombie and home to at least seven Bungie alumni.