Ziff Davis announced today that it has sold 1up.com, GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, GameTab.com, and print magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly to UGO Entertainment. Rumors have been flying to this effect as speculators noted that the electronic gaming network has lost money over its 5 year run.

Said the 1up network director Sam Kennedy, “We are extremely excited to join the UGO team. Relying on UGO’s publishing platform will allow us to focus on what we do best — creating great content and ‘owning the conversation’ among gamers through our unique, authentic and definitive voice and community.”

Although much of the official press surrounding the buyout has been positive (Ziff Davis for example, will be able to use this transaction to pay off some of its debt) and focused on the growth opportunity this represents for UGO, the buyout was born of money troubles in a tough economy and there have been casualties. The most visible to consumers will be the closure of EGM magazine after its January issue, with corresponding layoffs. Furthermore, much of the podcasting and video podcasting staff from 1up have also been terminated. All told, approximately 30 gaming journalists and related staff are on the streets today as a result of the buyout.

Kennedy defended UGO’s downsizing, saying, “UGO did what they could to, what I consider, ‘save’ 1UP. Obviously, all of us would have wanted to see things go differently . . . If any company out there would have been willing to support us as we were, they certainly didn’t step up.”

It’s difficult to blame Kennedy for making the best of the situation and looking to the future, but those journalists on the street tonight are entering an unfavorable job market. Best wishes to those affected.

Once upon a time there was a little company called Working Designs. Before indie developers came to the limelight and before community development became a packaged commodity, they were the closest thing to nerds like us delivering games. Perhaps most famous for adapting the Lunar Series, Working Designs localized games as a labor of love (love steeped in fart jokes and ephemeral political humor perhaps, but love nonetheless).

When Working designs eventually folded, founding father Victor Ireland didn’t give up the dream. Instead he founded a newer, leaner company by the name of Gaijinworks to fill the legacy that Working Designs left.

There, um, hasn’t been much filling in the intervening years, but the localization giant has just stirred. Ireland himself has announced an upcoming announcement (meta-announced?) for a game Gaijinworks will release around the summer. The announcement is due in a month or two, so if you’re the speculating type, now’s your chance. Otherwise, if you yearn hard enough, perhaps your pet game will be the project announced.

Ok, so the holidays have started to wane, and it has come time to reflect on the past year: your achievements (and related gamer score), and more immediately, whether you got the gifts you wanted. The importance of this question cannot be overstated–you’re probably broke after your shopping and you won’t be paid until January. If you didn’t get a game you really wanted to play, you’ll need something cheap to tide you over to the new year.

Fortunately 1up has come to the rescue with a cheap holiday buyer’s guide. It’s organized by console, which is handy, but here’s a subset of those games we’ve actually played, organized more practically. Go check out 1up for the complete list.

For the Hardcore:
Kameo: Elements of Power
Resident Evil 4
GTA 3: Liberty City Stories
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

For the Genre Fan:
Resident Evil 4 (Survival Horror)
Trauma Center: Under the Knife (Portable Sim)
Cooking Mama: Cook Off (Sim)
GTA 3: Liberty City Stories (Action Adventure)
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (Strategy)

For the Casual:
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Viva Piñata
Cooking Mama
Trauma Center: Under the Knife

Seminal 2D multiplayer fighting game Street Fighter 2 has finally emerged from its remake cocoon and emerged as a beautiful HD butterfly. Despite initial skepticism from fans and journalists alike, the game has enjoyed thus far universal praise.

The updated soundtrack has gone largely unsung until now, however. 1up is reporting that OC ReMix, a website dedicated to hosting fan arrangements of video game soundtracks, has published all the tracks for free. Better still, the tracks were written by OC ReMix’s own community. According to the website:

HD Remix is the first major video game with a completely fan-made soundtrack. More than twenty gamers from around the world contributed remixes of the original Street Fighter games’ music for inclusion in the updated game, in styles including jazz, hip-hop, reggaeton, spaghetti western, garage rock, big beat and electronica.

The last time the fan community contributed this much to the final release of a game was probably the professional adaptation of the Counter-Strike mod. Our congratulations go out to the OC EeMix community for the new milestone in gamer community deveopment.

If you grab the soundtrack and like what you hear, go check out the rest of OC ReMix. There’s a lot more where that came from.

It looks like Nintendo has no intention of shutting out the used games market after all. Although the Wii Speak peripheral will come with the previously reported activation code, evidently you can get a replacement by contacting consumer service.

This news comes on the heels of impassioned rhetoric from both sides of the used games debate. Developers have contended that used games sales hurt developers by locking them out of the purchasing process, while retailers point out that consumers expect their games to have residual value and store credit can be turned toward new games.

So where do you fall? Is the $5 you save at Gamestop worth cutting out the people who made it in the first place, or does the $60 price tag make you less sympathetic for the developers’ plight?

Seriously, there’s a bunch of black friday gaming deals. 1up has the scoop: go check it out.

Persistent readers may recall that we reported on David Braben’s declaration of war against the used-games market. In case it’s just too hard to click the link, the short version was that he recommended tying purchases to particular consumers so they couldn’t be passed from person to person.

Although Baben hasn’t been heard from since then in gaming news, Nintendo seems to have listened. The upcoming Wii Speak peripheral will come with a “Wii download ticket number.” The peripheral amounts to a glorified speaker phone, but will at last bring voice chat to the Wii. The catch is that the peripheral won’t interact with most games except through the new Wii Speak Channel.

The more cynical among you will already have worked out that, without this number, Wii Speak owners won’t be able to download the Wii Speak channel for free. However you may not have guessed that the channel won’t be for sale at all, so that download number is your only access to the essential software.

Even if the download number doesn’t tie itself to a particular console once used, secondhand buyers will need to ensure that they’re getting the number with the peripheral. Otherwise it’ll be a useless hunk of plastic.

Just when you thought consoles were safe from intrusive DRM.

Edit: Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that the code is consumed by a single use.

Although the DSi may not be the revolutionary leap that investors or gamers could hope, 1up has posted a hands-on evaluation of the Japan release of the new handheld. It’s pretty long as a 30-minute video, but we’ve detailed the novel highlights below (check here for the old stuff).

Smoothing out the experience: Owners of the original DS and the DS Lite make constant use of the power switch. Any time you change settings, swap game cartridges, or use the download play function, you have to power the system down to return to the main menu. The DSi will function more like the Xbox 360 dashboard, and rarely requires a restart. Functions are hot-swappable, and the power button now functions as a reset button as well. It’s not a huge change, but it makes the device more useable overall.

Real-time Camera Work: The DSi’s camera might not be particularly impressive as an image capture tool, but it’s a surprisingly smart image distortion tool. The DSi’s image manipulation software operates on the digital information stream before you capture any images. Unlike, say, Photoshop, where you edit static information to correct artifacts, the DSi’s image manipulation software lets you do your tweaking so that you start with the best image possible. Of course, the tools aren’t terribly powerful, but it’s a spiffy inversion of the way things are normally done.

Face Facts: The camera is also good at picking out faces and facial features. Even in poor light and unfavorable angles, the camera can accurately tack a pair of cartoon sunglasses over your eyes or a pair of wax lips over your mouth. Although that’ll be interesting for about seven seconds, it does mean the the DSi stands a good chance of being a successful EyeToy clone. Better still, its portability may make it the life of the public-embarrassment party!

The Incredible Shrinking DS: Losing the GBA slot seems to have made a difference, because the DSi appears to be even lighter than the Lite. This is good news for your carpal tunnel, but bad news in case of a strong breeze.

It’s still not looking like it’ll be worth swapping your existing lite for a new DSi (unless you’re made of disposable income), but the improved usability and possible new gameplay may well justify it as the preferred alternative for fresh purchases.

Edit: Oof, it looks like the battery life has taken a hit that’s measured in hours, though. There’s a portable caveat for you.

The Prince of Persia brand has become synonymous with parkour and time travel, but it wasn’t always so. Once upon a time it was a devious sprite-based platformer where the hero was limited to merely human abilities, but set against supernatural obstacles on a strict timer.

Beyond the bitter taste of reality, the game was also known and praised for its extraordinarily high animation standards, and it boasted hand-crafted sprites that were outright human in both proportions and motion. Prince of Persia set the gold standard for realism in video games for years and is still remembered as seminal for it.

It’s long been said that developer Jordan Mechner actually videotaped his little brother to model his sprite work, and that this was the reason the animation worked so well. For the curious, 1up has actually found a copy of this footage, so go take a look and be surprised when you instantly recognize a kid you’ve never seen in your life.

If you haven’t ever played the original, this is as good an excuse to check it out as any. Just remember that some guy hacked it all together with a video camera and a 1980s computer.

Tired of lugging a 7 pound board game or a 15 pound Xbox just so you can crush your friends with your spatial reasoning and financial acumen? 1up is reporting that Catan will be hitting the DS.

Details are virtually nonexistent at this point, but the game’s title will be Catan: The First Island. Nintendo’s little handheld hasn’t really been noted for its voice chat functionality, so you’re probably still safe from accidentally shouting about your wood for sheep on the bus. Still, try to be careful as details emerge.