It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since that teaser was released. However, if the 600 days of silence hadn’t convinced you that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is dead, then the departure of series creator Michael Ancel from Ubisoft may. The publishing giant hasn’t officially canceled the project yet, but the game’s [...]

Rocketbirds Revolution! plays it straight. Between the deadpan retelling of cold war action flicks to the run and gun platforming, you could almost miss it when the game winks at you. Just remember that subtlety is a sign of refinement and you’ll find that Rocketbirds is an elegant and compact example of its genre.

Bonus news bit: Developer Sian Tan let us know that Ratloop Asia is hard at work on a port for Rocketbirds to PS3. They’re still early in the development process, but hopefully we’ll hear more details soon.

As Pixelsocks and Mario play with gravity wells in their second jaunt through space, I’m stealing the spotlight and doing today’s news. Now, it’s been long established that there is not an even sex split among gamers. There simply are more male gamers out there than female gamers. Yet between XBox Live voice chat, VoIP-enabled [...]

This is a little pornier than the usual site fare, but it’s entirely too fascinating to pass up. The ongoing mainstreaming of gaming has taken some unexpected turns over the years, but I just never get used to it. This week we have a new line of lingerie based on No More Heroes 2: Desperate [...]

Have you visited the front page of Google lately? If not, you may be surprised by this: To celebrate the granddaddy of modern video games on his 30th birthday, Google has posted a fully playable version of Pac-Man as their site banner. Through the end of tomorrow, clicking on the insert coin button will grant [...]

Every level 1 bank alt who dreams of trade war instead of that other kind is plagued by a common threat: griefers. That’s right: every auction house in Azeroth is positively teeming with opposite faction rogues. Before you can /spit, they’ve ambushed you and you miss that discount boar meat as you jog back to [...]

Visiting family this week, so it’s cop out post time. This concept video for a NES StarCraft game scores the Monday post because it honestly looks like it would have made a fun game circa 1985. It adapts a lot of RTS elements, like monitoring ongoing combat and time-limited building, to mechanics that would have [...]

Can I get a hell yes? Having already tried alternate reality games and perfectly ordinary media coverage, Valve is making the strongest imaginable argument for why you should buy Portal 2, and that argument is Portal, QED. The game is free via Steam until May 24, and has been recently updated for Mac gamers as [...]

The soundtrack to Um Jammer Lammy rotated through my iPod yesterday and it got me thinking: why hasn’t there been an iPhone port or, um, homage? If you’ve never played it before (or the seminal PaRappa the Rapper), these games are arguably the granddaddies of the rhythm genre. They predated fancy guitar controllers and significant music licensing in video games. What you got instead was a hallucinogenic blend of Simon Says and Salvador Dali. Ninja onions and chainsaw beavers first give you a musical phrase (read: a rhythmic set of button presses) and you repeat it a moment later to make music. So the gameplay is basically an uncomplicated Guitar Hero and the story shares needles with Katamari Damacy.

You’d have to pare down the number of buttons for an iPhone port, but it’s easy to imagine how it would work. In fact, it might be one of the only button-style interfaces that would seriously work without tactile feedback. You’d hold your iPhone in its landscape orientation, but grip it a la Guitar Hero: On Tour. That is, the iPhone rests in your palm and your fingers curl around to touch four buttons along the top edge of the screen. The phrase bar scrolls along the play area below your fingers, and your grip keeps your fingers from accidentally wandering off the buttons. The accelerometer turns the effects (like distortion and reverb) on and off–it’d also be a pretty good way to spike your iPhone into the sidewalk, but what does that matter in the face of gestural controls? After that, it’s just you, your insecure lamb guitarist, and all the wacky you can handle.

You there, smirking in the back. You think you have a better idea?

Interviewing Daniel Benmergui, sole developer of Today I Die, was ill-fated from the word go. I caught him leaving the expo hall on the last day, and when I got in touch by email, I caught him leaving for Europe. However, he has some fascinating thoughts on his game’s novel approach to exploration, how to teach players a new mechanic, and monetizing a free game without being crass. So just think how easy it is to click that link and read! We really do live in the future.