Finally your dreams have come true - it's Canabalt... with robot unicorns!

OK, so technically Robot Unicorn Attack is a 2-button game, but the whole experience is just as beautifully polished as the Balt. The unicorn can double jump, and also rush then jump to allow for making big gaps. Score goes up as you run, and extra points are obtained for collecting fairies and smashing stars.

It looks lovely, it has an awesome name, and that music... Fantastic stuff. Give it a play over at Adult Swim.

[Originally published on Mod DB, these interviews from Leo Jaitley of Dejobaan Games explores the neat nooks and crannies in indie gaming. This week the spotlight's on Rob Jagnow, founder and CEO of Lazy 8 Studios.]

What do Lazy 8 Studios of San Francisco, CA and Dejobaan Games of Watertown, MA have in common? Both studios are Independent Game Festival (IGF) Finalists in the "Excellence in Design" category. In this, the latest in Dejobaan's interview series titled "Half a Million Seconds with and Indie Developer," Leo finds out why Rob went Indie and gives you some insights into what it takes to be an IGF Finalist.

They say your name is Rob....tell us more...

RJ: Hey, folks. I'm Rob, Founder and CEO of Lazy 8 Studios in San Francisco. In a way, I feel like I stumbled into game development. I interned at Pixar for a couple summers while I was getting my Ph.D. and I fully expected that when I finished school, I'd travel around the world for a year and go back to Pixar. But when graduation finally came, I found myself in an accidental relationship -- one of those, "when you're least expecting it" relationships. So I went ahead with my plans to travel the world for a year and then ended up back in Boston to be with my boyfriend. The job hunt led me to Demiurge, a small game studio in Cambridge, and I fell in love with game development. When my boyfriend graduated, his job hunt led him to Google, so we moved together to San Francisco and I decided to try my hand at starting a company of my own. And thus, Lazy 8 Studios was born.

What did you friends and fam say when you said you were "going indie"?

RJ: My family puts a lot of emphasis on independence and self-reliance, so there was no freaking out when I said I was going to leave a steady job to start a new company. My boyfriend of five years has supported me 100% of the way, even when I went into debt, just before I released Cogs.

Tell us about your workspace - are you a "work from home while watching Oprah" kinda dev, a "get out of bed and trudge through the snow to the office" kind, or something else?

RJ: My office looks a lot like a guest bedroom. Maybe that's because it's the guest bedroom. So the commute is awesome, but the reality is that working from home isn't for everyone and takes a lot of discipline. When I started, I made sure to set up good habits like never ever turning on the TV during the workday. Brendan, the artist for Cogs, comes in about 20 hours a week and sits at a second workstation in the "office." I think we're both probably more productive when we have someone else around, so that works out well.

You wake up on a Wednesday morning. Congratulations -- you have a full day's work ahead of you! What do you get done in the first hour?

RJ: Nothing. Or at least that's what it feels like. While I sip on an Earl Grey, I catch up on email and Twitter, check the latest headlines (and kitten videos) on Reddit and peek into Facebook. Getting through my email and keeping up with the gaming news are actually important aspects of my job, but for some reason, unless I'm designing game features or writing code, I don't quite feel like I'm really "working." I really need to get over that.

Okay, go on and tell us about the subsequent 10 hours.

RJ: I usually have a list of "to dos" that I put together the previous day to remind me where I left off. So once I'm caught up on email (Disclaimer: I'm never actually totally caught up on email), it's time for programming. New game features, bug fixes, prototyping. I love it. It's hard to imagine a job where I don't write code. To me, games are art and the keyboard is my paintbrush.

Would you classify yourself as more of an artist or a tech wiz? Master of biz? Maybe you do it all, tell us about it Jack...

RJ: I'm definitely a tech guy. It even comes through in my writing, which tends to be very stoic and formal (And for that, I apologize to the readers of this article). It pains my obsessive compulsive nature to write things like "sup- how r u?" My complete and utter inability to emulate the writing of a prepubescent girl makes me a terrible candidate to maintain our Twitter feed, so thankfully Brendan helps out a lot there.

On one hand, I consider myself relatively artistic as programmers go, but real artists put my work to shame. I like to think that puzzle design is one of the places where my artistic and technical sides dovetail nicely.

We have a few favorite moments in our studio's history -- care to share one of yours?

RJ: Our Christmas Day sale on Steam this year completely defied my wildest expectations. When we sold more than 13,000 copies of the game in one day, I finally felt like, "I can do this. I can earn a living making games. OMG, I'm actually going to make money working at every 16-year-old boy's dream job."

Tell us about a game that inspired you to MAKE games.

RJ: I have so many fond memories that revolve around video games -- The first time I played Pac-Man on the Atari, the first time I played Zelda, playing Dark Castle with my brother on the first-generation Mac, Lemmings, The Incredible Machine... But with so many great games in my past, the real irony is that it was some of the mediocre games that really inspired me to make games. I remember playing Minesweeper for the gajillionth time and thinking, "Why am I playing this? People waste millions of hours on this game every year. I could make something that's way more fun."

A picture's worth a thousand words. Got any photos you'd like to share of...

RJ: In the image below, he guy in the middle is Alexey Pajitnov, creator of Tetris.

What advice would you give to people who are just getting started as indie game developers?

RJ: We've all read the articles about how video games are a multi-billion-dollar industry, so a lot of people have fallen victim to this notion that games are easy money. They aren't. Making a living as an independent game developer is a lot of hard work. According to one article I read, only 4% of games that start production ever turn a profit. In that climate, it takes a lot of optimism to start a company, but you also need to have realistic expectations. You probably don't want to stake the future of your home and family on a 4% gamble. And if you're serious about following through, you should be prepared to not just create a game but also promote it. I wrote the Cogs postmortem to help give realistic expectations to new developers, so it's worth reading if you're in that boat.

As Seen On Ilafox(Thanks Ricardo)

You've seen the ancient gods fight in video games before. You may have seen them use giant hammers. But have you seen a fighting game on Wii that allows for two-handed combat, shot from an unusual camera angle?

Tournament of Legends is the next Wii game from High Voltage Software, makers of last year's Wii first-person shooter The Conduit. Two developers from High Voltage were in New York City earlier this week to show the press how their game plays and how it differs from both its earlier incarnation and the many other fighting games out there. The developers mentioned enough ideas that a reporter might need to stand there stoically, taking it all in — before using a minotaur's giant hammers to pound the developer's gladiator to defeat.

The game's set-up involves the departure of the god Jupiter from the world and the scrum that erupts among other mythological beings left behind. Players can enter the fray by fighting as a minotaur, a Medusa-type character, a gladiator or others. The game is colorful and fantastical, a far cry from the bloody grit of its previously-shown incarnation, when it was called Gladiator A.D.

You play the game with two hands, Nunchuk in the left and Wii Remote in the right. A shake of the left hand triggers a character's left-hand strike. Vertical and horizontal swings of the Remote result in different right-arm attacks. Combat involves weapons, armor and magic. The weapons are held in either or both hands. In my case, that meant my minotaur held a hammer in each, and the swing of my left hand or right hand was essentially the swing of one hammer or the other. The armor is comprised of a helmet, a chest piece and protection on each arm. All of it can be damaged or broken off. Magic enchantments are chosen before a fight — I chose to be able to make my hammers slow the enemy down on contact. They're triggered with a button press and cost some of the player's magic energy that is accrued during battle. Characters also have specific special moves. My minotaur could cause a tree to spike out of the ground beneath the enemy. The gladiator I was fighting could send a lion (or was it a tiger?) after me.

Combat is divided into timed rounds. Between rounds, players can shake the Wii controls and twirl the analog stick on the Nunchuk to repair their armor.

The two-handed fighting feels unusual but satisfying, liberating one's hands from being bolted to a single controller and offering more of the feel one gets from swinging freely while playing Wii Sports boxing. But while playing Wii Sports boxing can become a mess of perpetual motion, the variety of actions at your disposal in Tournament of Legends calms the elbows and lets you flick more strategically.

One of the unusual things about the game is the camera angle. The developers have taken the traditional sideways view of a one-on-one 3D fighting game and shifted it to the side by 30 or 45 degrees. That puts more of the back of one character to the screen, bringing them to the foreground, while pushing the other character to the distance, more chest-facing. The High Voltage guys said they did this to help the players better associate the characters' left and right arms with their own.

The game's unusual camera angle would seem to make a fair player vs. player fight unfair. It could imbalance the combat and favor the player whose character gets to stand more in the foreground, back more to the camera, arms on the real left and right. The High Voltage solution is a sudden shift in camera angles. If the background player lands a special power strike, the camera shifts and puts the background character toward the front and the foreground character toward the back. A colored ring emanating from the feet of each character helps the players determine how far away the two characters are standing. As soon as the rings overlap, you're in striking distance.

The High Voltage developers were proud of their weapons system, which they say owes some inspiration to PlayStation fighting series Bushido Blade. I hadn't played that series, but understand that Tournament of Legends will allow players to not just choose their weapons before battle but obtain weapons from their vanquished enemies. Characters are offered in three size classes. Defeating an enemy in the same class gets you their weapon. Defeating any enemy get you their weapon enchantment, one of which can be brought into battle.

The game begins with six characters unlocked. Two are made available later. The single-player campaign, High Voltage's developers told me, involves a fight through the ranks: bookending character-specific cutscenes, a fight against all the other characters, a fight against against your doppelganger and a boss battle. That's an altogether simpler affair than the quest-based campaign mixed with morality system that High Voltage promised for the Gladiator version of the game when Kotaku checked it out in June.

Tournament of Legends appears to be designed, like many fighting games, mainly to be enjoyed as a multiplayer experience. It is strictly offline, the better to support the accuracy of controls and the shared experience they developers told me they want to provide. The game will not support MotionPlus despite earlier reports that it would. The High Voltage guys told me that's because it didn't make sense to offer more precise motion control for the right hand, while leaving the player's left hand with the default motion sensitivity of the Nunchuk.

There won't be any Conduit reference in this new High Voltage game, but the developers are bringing over some of that title's talking points. If you don't like the breakdown of the game's controls reported in this post, High Voltage will allow you to change them, mapping other buttons or motions as you see fit. The game also will push the graphical capabilities of the Wii, improving, the studio says, on what it accomplished with The Conduit.

Tournament of Legends is set for release in May.

The National Institute of Health is granting Yale associate professor Dr. Lynn Fielin $3.9 million over five years to develop a game aimed at helping children aged 9 through 14 say no to sex, drugs, and other HIV-transmitting behaviors.

In my day, topics like sex and drug abuse were generally relegated to high school health classes, but today's children are growing up faster than ever before. That's why The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is shelling out nearly $4 million, in the hopes that Dr. Fielin's game can make a difference.

It's a bit shocking that the game, Retro-Warriors, which puts children into dangerous situations involving sex, drugs, and alcohol using virtual avatars, is being tested by children from 9-14. According to Peggy McCardle, chief of the NICHD's Child Development and Behavior Branch, the young test subjects are necessary to determine the game's effectiveness.

"According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey: 7.1 percent of high school students say they have had sexual intercourse before the age of 13. That figure is higher for certain groups, with 26.2 percent of black males and 11.9 percent of Hispanic male students reporting having had intercourse before age 13. Similarly, rates for other risky behaviors are also high, with 23.8 percent of high school students saying they had drunk alcohol and 8.3 percent saying they had tried marijuana before age 13. The rationale for the current project is to teach younger children the negotiation and refusal skills that they will need to resist pressures for risky behaviors, before those behaviors become established, or before they even begin."

The statistics are frightening, really, but do they justify exposing young children who otherwise might have avoided such subjects altogether to the sort of testing procedure outlined in the abstract for the government grant?

"Subjects will play two sessions/week of their assigned game for four weeks. The primary outcome will be initiation of sexual activity, defined as the initiation of either vaginal or anal intercourse. Secondary outcomes include HIV risk behavior knowledge, social competency, self-efficacy, drug/alcohol use behaviors and overall risk-taking behaviors. We hypothesize that the experimental group will have lower rates of initiation of sexual activity and have higher knowledge scores at 1, 6, 12, and 24 months compared with the control group."

You can read all about the testing and development of Retro-Warriors at CNSNews.com, where they've posted a lengthy article dealing with the development and implementation of the game.

Remember back when all we needed was kids in colorful costumes dancing around, telling us not to do drugs? Now we are warning children about the dangers of anal sex. I'm not sure I like the direction the world is heading in. Can we rewind a little please?

Yale Gets $3.9-Million Federal Grant to Develop ‘Avatar' Video Game to Teach ‘Sex, Drug and Alcohol Negotiation and Refusal Skills' to 9-to-14 Year Olds
[CNSNews.com]

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of waiting for the perpetually delayed Plants Vs. Zombies to make its way onto the iPhone. Fortunately, Trenches has been satisfying my itch for side-scrolling tower defense gaming.

Trenches drops you smack dab on top of enemy lines during World War I's gas, artillery... and yes, zombie ground warfare as you command troops desperate to defeat the refreshingly non-Nazi Germans.

Loved
Trench Warfare: In the game you use a slowly rising budget to call out one of four British troop types or order attacks by gas and shell. Instead of waiting for enemies to come to you, you tap and swipe the screen to urge your troops to advance or retreat across the scrolling battlefield. The goal is to make your way past the barbwire, the trenches and the Germans to the opposing bunker to blow it up and advance to the next level.

Skirmish: The campaign mode of the game, recently tweaked with the addition of special levels that have you assassinating or protecting special units, is a lengthy and fun experience. But it ends. The Skirmish modes don't. These modes let you choose your map, the difficulty and whether it ends for limitless fun. The most recent update also added some new ways to plays, like making you take out a set number of enemies with artillery only. Or protecting a limited number of troops until they make it to the other side.

ZOMBIES!!!: The zombie infection, it appears, has spread from World War II to World War I. In this mode your brave soldiers, (riflemen, snipers, machine gunners, and mortars) try to stave off an ambling mass of the undead. You can't win, but you can certainly take a bunch of the rotting bastards with you.

I loved playing Trenches when it first hit, but I had a few minor reservations. All of those have been resolved with the latest patch which added new types of play to the campaign, tweaked the look of the goal and starting point for troops and added the ability to command an entire screen of troops with one gesture.

Upcoming updates to the game promise to deliver cooperative and competitive multiplayer, more units and factions and extra skirmish mode, which is fantastic, but not necessary. Trenches is already an amazing game.

Trenches was developed and published by Thunder Game Works for the iPod Touch and iPhone on Jan 28. Retails for $.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in both campaign and skirmish modes.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Not all Sith are created equally. In a post on the Star Wars: The Old Republic website, BioWare writer Rebecca Harwick discusses the reasons behind the creation of the Sith Inquisitor, the Emperor Palpatine to the Sith Warrior's Darth Vader.

As Rebecca points out, that comparison is apt, but it does sell the class short. "It's not the destination, or the road we take to get there, but the guide. The Sith Inquisitor is Raistlin. The Sith Inquisitor is Lucifer. The Sith Inquisitor is Julius Caesar. The Sith Inquisitor is what you make him."

But why did BioWare make him?

When we set out to build our game, we knew we needed more than one Sith class. The original trilogy only has two Sith in it, but they couldn't be more different: the heavily armored brutal physicality of Darth Vader compared to the frail but immensely powerful Emperor Palpatine. When we extend our inspiration to Episodes I-III and The Clone Wars cartoons, Count Dooku, Darth Maul, and Asajj Ventress further expand our concept of what a Sith can be. Is a Sith a lithe quick fighter who uses the Force to enhance his/her physical combat prowess, a calculating deceiver adept at Lightsaber duels, or a master manipulator and amasser of dark side secrets? Does a Sith use one lightsaber, two Lightsabers, or a dual-bladed Lightsaber? Having multiple Sith classes allows us to embrace all of those Sith inspirations, instead of having one Sith class that was the jack-of-all-trades and the master of none.

It's also about exploring the Sith order from two different perspectives. While the Sith Warrior is groomed from birth to become a dark master of the Force, pampered and spoiled, the Inquisitor starts life as a slave, taken by the Empire because of his Force-sensitivity, given the choice of becoming an Inquisitor or dying.

The Inquisitor quickly learns that the opportunity the Sith promises if he passes his trials comes with its own set of rules and masters. The so-called freedom of the Sith is reined in by deep traditions and a society where the powerful do their utmost to keep their inferiors under control.

Suddenly the Raistlin comment becomes much more appropriate.

You can read the entire entry at the link below. It's an interesting look into the story-driven process behind the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic, direct from someone responsible for crafting that story.

Composing the Sith Inquisitor [Star Wars: The Old Republic]

Current opportunities include, but are not limited to:

• Tools Programmer
• Mid-level AI Programmer
• Senior Generalist Programmer
• Quality Assurance Testers
  

Please submit resumes to AustinJobs@totimm.com. 

If we do not have a position available, we will keep resumes on file for consideration should a position open up in 6 months.

• Austin

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/_gjMbawjZ4E&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); No amount of heavy techno music can make life better for the Colonial Marines in Aliens Vs. Predator.

As an Alien player, I feel sorry for the Colonial Marines. After all, the game is called Aliens Vs. Predator, not Aliens Vs. Predator Vs. Colonial Marines. Aside from being far too long a title, they simply aren't the stars of this show, existing as the control group in this giant, deadly experiment. One race gets stealth, one can run over walls and ceilings, and the third? Hell, we'll give him a gun and a human voice to scream with. That should do nicely.

Poor Colonial Marines. Look on the bright side! I wouldn't kill you if you weren't so damn tasty!

Richard Knaak's World of Warcraft Stormrage is getting the audio book treatment, BlizzPlanet points out.

Simon & Schuster will be releasing the novel as eAudio on Feb. 23, meaning that you'll be able to play World of Warcraft and read World of Warcraft at the same time. Track down some World of Warcraft Game Fuel and you've got a trifecta.

Over the years, I listened to quite a few books while driving across country or waiting at crime scenes. I've always felt weird later saying I "read" the book. What do you think? Does it count?

World of Warcraft: Stormrage [Simon & Schuster]

Like LittleBigPlanet before it, ModNation Racers, the next game in Sony's "Play Create Share" arsenal is headed to the PlayStation Portable, with the PSP version launching alongside its PlayStation 3 counterpart.

With all of the same creative tools found in the PS3 version, the only thing scaled-down about ModNation PSP is the graphics. Players will still be able to create their own rides, racers, and race tracks, sharing them with the ModNation PSP community. Once their creations are complete, they can take them online, pitting their racers against up to six other player creations in an all-out battle to the death.

Well, perhaps not the death, but it'll be a pretty fierce battle.

So which version should you pick up? I'm sure the PS3 will have a more robust community, but my PSP needs to be filled with pretty games. They're going to make me buy this twice, aren't they?

South Australia 's opposition calls for the firing of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, the primary reason the country can't give games a R18+ mature rating, after he suggested that a West Croydon citizen was an imaginary plant for the Liberal Party.

In December, Luke Plunkett clarified the R18+ video game ratings mess in Australia for us, explaining that while five of the six Attorneys-General of the country agree that video games should be allowed mature ratings, the required sixth, Michael Atkinson, did not, fearing that it would make it too easy for children to purchase mature video games.

Now we're given a better idea of what the games industry in Australia is dealing with.

Earlier this week Atkinson made news after repealing controversial internet censorship laws, enacted to ensure that comments on the March 20th election could not be made anonymously or through the use of assumed names. The laws required such comments to include their real name and postcode in such comments, in order to verify their veracity. Non-compliance would result in fines of $1250 for individuals and $5,000 for businesses.

As you can imagine, this didn't go over well.

So the law was repealed, which is good, but then Atkinson went on DMG Radio to explain why the laws were necessary.

"I'll give you an example; repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn't exist," he said.

"That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary."

Aaron Fornarino, it turns out, is a real person, living only a couple hundred meters from Atkinson's office.

Paranoid much?

So now South Australia's Opposition is calling for his removal from office, asking that Premier Mike Rann terminate the Attorney-General for breach of the ministerial code of conduct.

"It is unacceptable for a minister to diminish the reputation of a member of the public, indeed anyone, recklessly or deliberately," Ms Chapman said. "It is not acceptable that the Premier do nothing about this."

Now the actual chances of Michael Atkinson being sacked over this are slim. It's pretty much one of the functions of Australia's Opposition, calling for the termination of elected officials at every turn, but it does give us a clearer picture of the sort of man standing in the way of Australia's R18+ video game ratings, doesn't it?

Opposition calls for the sacking of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson [News.Com.Au - Thanks Alex!]

Perfect Dark, remastered for the Xbox 360's Live Arcade with a 60 framers-per-a-second framerate, is making an appearance at next week's Xbox 360 X10 gaming summit in San Francisco.

Rare tells us that the game will be playable at the event, and that we can expect to "find out some more tidbits" concerning Perfect Dark's unveiling next week on Rare's Twitter feed.

You can also follow the news as it happens on my Twitter feed next week... and read about what I'm currently drinking, eating, thinking because I have a serious Twitter problem.

Now, then. What would you like to see come packaged in a remastered version of Perfect Dark?

The average amount of time a person plays New Super Mario Bros. is climbing quickly and could catch Super Mario Galaxy. Call of Duty is surging. But Wii Sports Resort is flattening. Here are three key Wii comparisons of satisfaction.

(Click the charts to enlarge them)

Each month Kotaku tracks the average playing time of games on the Wii. This is what I call the "measure of pleasure," the amount of hours people play these games. The numbers are cumulative since the game launched. Today I've pulled some older data to look at how some of these games and their sequels compare over time.

Up top is a comparison of the two biggest Mario games on the Wii. We've got 2007's Super Mario Galaxy vs. 2009's New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Galaxy's been out longer, and its climb from launch isn't included in the chart. Instead, what we can see is that it's average playing time has been growing slowly since last summer. That;s a sign that most people seem to be playing it a bit more each month and that new sales aren't dragging down playing times. Below it, we see the post-launch surge of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The climb is impressive, but it's hard to say whether NSMB Wii can catch Galaxy or it will flatten.

Remember, this isn't a comparison of sales. New Super Mario Bros. Wii may outsell Galaxy without ever attaining a higher per-player average.

A better comparison would be one that compares two games for their entire history. I've got the data to do that for 2008's Call of Duty World at War and 2009's Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex Edition. In this case, we can see that Reflex's first three months show a sharper ascent than the early months of World at War. Are World at War players going to abandon that game, which has online play, for Reflex, which also does? World at War's playing time did drop in the past month but one month is not a trend. If that continues to drop as the other game rises, we could see a sign of a player base shifting from one to the other.

And here's 2006's Wii Sports vs. 2009's Wii Sports Resort. The older game has been around a lot longer and has a huge average playing time despite the fact that every Wii owner has the game — and therefore has a chance to pop the game in just once and pull down those average playing times. Wii Sports Resort has healthy numbers, but appears to be flattening already, making it hard to imagine it's going to gain the heavy-rotation playing numbers of Wii Sports.

What other comparisons would you like to see?

All data for these charts was pulled by Kotaku from Nintendo's Wii Channel. For more on the methodology, check out this post.

New moral choice for you. To comment about video games in TAY or not? If you do, you get more Adam.

Confused about commenting on Kotaku? Read our FAQ.

We need more mash-ups in video games.

You know, like when a DJ takes two great songs, or two awful songs, and turns them into something all together different, but still recognizable.

Take for instance G-Switch. It plays an awful lot like the bastard child of forever-runner Canabalt and gravity-flipper VVVVVV. And it's pretty great fun.

The developers also added the ability to play the game on one keyboard with up to six players, which is insanely confusing, but still fun.

G-Switch</> [Newgrounds, thanks Vasco]

To: Crecente
From: Bashcraft
RE: Get Lost With Your Lost

Got a English tea set today. Any know why they call it china? To the internet!

What you missed last night
Death of A Wii
Commander Shepard's Toughest Choice Yet
Microsoft: No More Original Xbox Games Over Xbox Live
Want The Heavy Rain Demo Right Now? Here's How...
We Shall Mourn The Following Xbox Live Originals

February 5, 2010 (TORONTO, Canada) TSX Venture Exchange today announced that TransGaming, Inc. has been named as one of the TSX Venture 50, a ranking of strong performers listed on TSX Venture Exchange. TSX Venture 50 is comprised of 10 emerging companies in five industry sectors that have been identified as leaders in Canada's public venture market.

• Ottawa

The developer behind the Disgaea series, announced its financial earnings. You may want to sit down.

In the first nine months of this financial year, the company's operating profit is down 97.5 percent.

During 2009, the company released several titles in Japan, including Makai Senki Disgaea 2 Portable, Disgaea Infinite, A Witch's Tale, Let's Hitchhike and Phantom Brave: We Meet Again.

日本一ソフトウェアのコンシューマ事業がヤバイ！？営業利益97.5％減 [オレ的ゲーム速報＠刃]

Six weeks after it arrived on the North American PlayStation Store, PAL users can finally relive what I, at least, think is the best Final Fantasy game of the lot: FFVIII.

It's the standout addition to this week's store update, though there's plenty of other good stuff to tempt you, from the Aliens vs Predator multiplayer demo (having been playing it, I hope singleplayer is the game's strong point) to the Battlefield Bad Company 2 demo, which I've also been playing (albeit on PC) with a little more joy to be had.

PS3 STORE

Special Offers

* Comet Crash (was – £6.29/€7.99 now – £4.79/€5.99)
* UNO (was – £6.29/€7.99 now – £3.99/€4.99)
* Tank Battles (was – was £6.99/3.99 now £5.49/€3.19)
* Nucleus (was – £6.29/€7.99 now – £3.99/€4.99)
* Snakeball (was – £6.29/€7.99 now – £3.99/€4.99
* Buzz! Brainbender (PSP) (was – £19.99/€29.99 now – £11.99/€14.99)
* Ape Quest (PSP) (was – £7.99/€9.99 now – £4.79/€5.99)
* Go! Sudoku (PSP) (was – £11.99/€14.99 now – £6.29/€7.99)
* Lilo and Stitch: Trouble in Paradise (PSone) (Available until the 4th of March) (was – £3.99/€4.99 now – £3.19/€3.99)
* Bug's Life (PSone) (Available until the 4th of March) (was – £3.99/€4.99 now – £3.19/€3.99)
* Fieldrunners (was – £3.99/€4.99 now – £3.49/€3.99)
* Kahoots (was – £2.49/€2.99 now – £1.74/€1.99)
* Vempire (was – £2.49/€2.99 now – £1.74/€1.99)
* Breakquest (was – £2.49/€2.99 now – £1.74/€1.99)
* Pinball Fantasies (was – £3.99/€4.99 now – £3.49/€3.99)
* Bloons (was – £3.49/€3.99 now – £1.99/€2.49)
* Mahjongg Atifacts: Chapter 2 (was – £3.49/€3.99 now – £2.49/€2.99)
* Dracula – Undead Awakening (was – £3.99/€4.99 now – £2.49/€2.99)

PS1 Classic

* Final Fantasy VIII (£7.99/€9.99)

Demos

* Battlefield Bad Company 2
* Alien vs. Predator (Multiplayer)

minis

* Spaceball: Revolution (£3.99/€4.99)

Add-On Game Content

* Dante's Inferno
o Free Souls Pack (free)
o Small Soul Pack (£0.79/€0.99)
o Medium Soul Pack (£1.59/€1.99)
o Large Soul Pack (£3.19/€3.99)

* inFamous – Gigawatt Blades Pack (free)
* Topatoi – Pillar of the Skies (£4.79/€5.99)
* Dragon Ball: Raging Blast – Revived Warriors Pack (free)
* EyePet – Lucky Dip Pack 11 (free)
* Age of Booty
o Map Pack 1 (free)
o Map Pack 2 (free)
o Map Pack 3 (free)
o Map Pack 4 (free)
o Map Pack 5 (free)
o Map Pack 6 (free)
o Map Pack 7 (free)
o Map Pack 8 (free)
o Map Pack 9 (free)

* Rock Band
o Going Country Pack 03 (£4.99/€7.99)
o Gone by Montgomery Gentry (£0.99/€1.49)
o Me and My Gang by Rascal Flatts (£0.99/€1.49)
o On The Road Again by Willie Nelson (£0.99/€1.49)
o She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy by Kenny Chesney (£0.99/€1.49)
o Suds in the Bucket by Sara Evans (£0.99/€1.49)
o Swing by Trace Adkins (£0.99/€1.49)

* Guitar Hero 5
o 30 Seconds To Mars Track Pack (£4.39/€5.49)
o Attack (£1.59/€1.99)
o From Yesterday (£1.59/€1.99)
o Kings and Queens (£1.59/€1.99)

Videos

* After Burner Climax Trailer
* Army of Two: The 40th Day Mask Creator Trailer
* Dante's Inferno Fraud Dev Diary
* Hasbro Family Game Night Trailer

Theme

* Army of Two: The 40th Day Theme 2

PSP Store

Downloadable Games

* Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks (£15.99/€19.99)

Demo

* Half-Minute Hero

minis

* Spaceball: Revolution (£3.99/€4.99)

Add-On Game Content

* LittleBigPlanet
* Savannah Level Kit (£2.39/€2.99)
* Savannah Costume Pack (free)
* The Gardens Costume Pack (free)