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Nintendo has released the names of the legendary Pokemon spotted at the end of yesterday's announcement trailer.

If you like flyovers of modeled cityscapes, you are in for a treat with this SimCity intro trailer. Urban and industrial vistas are on display as the camera flies by buildings and uses convenient skyscrapers as edits. Enjoy!

In an interview to appear on this website at 1700 UK time today, inXile’s Brian Fargo reveals that a new Torment game is really definitely happening, and explains that it will be made in conjunction with RPG author and original Planescape Torment designer, Monte Cook, as well as a number of other key individuals from the original Planescape team. The game will be set in Cook’s ambitious pen and paper Numenera Universe, which was Kickstarted last year to the tune of half a million dollars. As well as explaining how this setting constitutes a new Planescape Torment game, without actually being a Planescape Torment game, Fargo says stuff like: “We won’t have faeries or devils, but we’ll have diabolical creatures from far dimensions with schemes beyond human imagination. We won’t have gods, but we’ll have creatures who have lived for millennia with the powers of creation and destruction at their fingertips, with abilities honed over countless lifetimes. We won’t have other planes per se, but we’ll have pathways to hostile worlds and bizarre landscapes and ancient machines that catapult the players into places where the ordinary laws of nature no longer apply.”

Come back at 5 for a lot more of that sort of thing.

#pokemon Spied at the end of the announcement trailer yesterday, two new Pokémon in the upcoming Pokémon X and Y have been confirmed as the game's Legendary Pokémon and named. The Pokémon company has included a handy pronunciation guide. More »

When I’d finished the excellent Half-Life remake mod Black Mesa I was a bit discombobulated. I looked at the clock and realised that my allotted ten hour slot for playing it had come up short. I was a full 53 minutes early. What was going on? The only explanation was there was a time slip while I was hopping around being Gordon. I put it down to a rogue CERN test and moved on with my life. But now I’ve been made aware of Surface Tension Uncut, a mod that restores the Surface Tension section from the original Half-Life to its full glory in Black Mesa.(more…)

#tera Guess it was only a matter of time, huh, Tera? En Masse Entertainment's online fantasy game joins Star Wars: The Old Republic and DC Universe Online on the roster of big-deal MMO titles that are ditching subscriptions. Starting in February, subscriptions will no longer be required to play Tera. More »

#xbox If you do customer support for Microsoft, don't post about it on this website. You'll probably lose your job. More »

I got a chance to go hands-on with Paradox’s Dungeonland some many firework-and-goblin-giblet-obscured moons ago, and I actually had quite a time with it. That said, I don’t think it’s made its way onto many radars, and that’s a shame. No, it didn’t strike me as particularly earth-shaking, but playing as the dungeon master (or maestro, as he’s now being called) against a hapless group of friends could at least rattle a mid-sized landmass or two, I think. So yes, you should keep an eye on it. Here, I will even help you – free of charge and everything. After the break, you’ll find a trailer. Now, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a magic mountain of Dungeonland footage, but when I note that it would make almost zero sense for it to be anything else, I might be implying it a little.

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Today, Wednesday, January 9th, O-Two introduces their much anticipated Peakvox Ninja Lounge, Home Tycoon gets a new expansion pack, Emo Ray vs. the Intergalactic Teddy Bears Vol. Two invades, and The Casino celebrates its first anniversary. Check out all this and more this week in PlayStation Home.

O-Two – Peakvox Ninja + Sneak Preview

O-Two’s Peakvox Ninja Lounge is making its North American debut! Dive into the world of silent and deadly ninjas all in a universe designed in the Japanese style “Wa (和).” Choose sides and play death matches with up to 8 players, or you can work alone if you prefer, and take on various challenges that are thrown at you. Be the last one to survive the matches, competing for the ultimate kill count.

Also as a very special treat, the developers from O-Two have shared a developer interview, giving insight on the creation of various and popular Peakvox worlds.

Coming soon, O-Two would like to present a sneak preview of Peakvox Labs. Check out this video:

HellFire Games – Home Tycoon Update

New from Hellfire Games: Home Tycoon’s latest expansion pack has arrived! Learn the secrets behind TransUtopia in Big Science, available now in the Home Tycoon store. This sci-fi-themed expansion comes loaded with more missions, new rewards, and numerous eco-friendly structures to unlock. Harness the power of the sun with the Orbital Satellite Solar Power Array, and discover the true purpose of TransUtopia’s mysterious Area 52!

Unleash your inner mad scientist with new rewards and game-enhancing virtual items, including the TransUtopia Science Suit, Science Gloves, Scientist Goggles, and Fizzy Beaker & Biohazard Gloves.

Expand your commercial empire in Home Tycoon with two new buildings released over the holiday break: the GloboSyn Plaza and GloboSyn Offices! You can find these financial marvels in the Commercial > GloboSyn category of your Build menu in Home Tycoon today.

Konami – Strike Force Outfits

Save the world with these amazing Strike Force outfits! Each outfit comes with a unique weapon and blaster. Strike a pose with your fellow heroes and send fear into the hearts of your enemies. Each hero comes with unique custom animations.

Available now in the Konami Store.

Heavy Water – Emo Ray, Volume Two + Hexalon Village + New Crystal Headgear Items Emo Ray, Volume Two

Continue with the epic Emo Saga by purchasing Volume Two! More weapons, more baddies, more rewards, and more fun! Find out what is really going on with this Evil Teddy Bears in Volume Two.

Visit the Radd&Son Garage Rooftop to gain access to Emo Ray Vs. The Intergalactic Teddy Bears, or take the teleporter to the Garage Rooftop via Mr. Radd in the D2O District.

Hexalon Village

Some of the community might have already noticed its arrival, but come venture into the Village of Hexalon and try your luck at their wildly popular game Hexx! The Village of Hexalon is a neutral tourist destination for everyone in the Avalon Kingdom. People come from all over to challenge each other in Hexx to gain leaderboard status, complete their tile collection or just win rewards! Since the Village is doing so well they have new VIP features under construction to be released in 2013: VIP Lounge and Dragon Riding!

Players of Hexx can always play for free, and they can even earn the first set of Elemental Tiles through Farlow and the Crystal Hunter game. If you want to increase your chances to win you can purchase random tiles, tile packs or the entire first set of tiles from the Hexx Store. So come see why the entire Kingdom of Avalon is a buzz with this new addicting social strategy game!
Side note: Owners of the Avalon Keep with get special bonus cards through Farlow, so come check it out!

Crystal Headgear

More Crystal headgear! These Crystal items are made from rare Avalonian crystals in the following new styles: Unicorn, Trihorn and (devil) Horns. Each version is blue for males and pink and purple for the ladies, except for the (devil) horns which are obviously red and orange!

For those really adventurous souls the Unicorn and Tricorn items come in rainbow. That’s right; they will pulse with the entire spectrum of the rainbow. And of course that means there are now male and female Rainbow Mohawks! So head to the Avalon store and pick up some unique and flashy headgear, only from Heavy Water.

Granzella – New Yukatas, Windbreakers + Capybara Companions

Autumn Foliage and Cosmos Yukata patterns are perfect for the deepening autumn.
For men, the Autumn Leaves pattern is available in red, orange, and brown.
For women, the Cosmos pattern is available in white, blue, and light blue.

The Windbreaker and the Dress and Jacket are now both available. For women, the textured leather jacket and dress, loose fit boots, and knit hat set is available in 3 patterns, gray and brown, orange and khaki, and pink and black. You can choose to wear each set with or without stockings.

For men, a zipped checked windbreaker, cargo pants, belt boots, and knit hat set is available in red and brown, green and white, and green and gray. With these three styles, you can choose to tuck the hem of the cargo pants into the boots or not.

Digital Leisure – High Rollers Lounge + Casino’s 1st Anniversary

Digital Leisure is expanding their Casino with the all-new High Roller’s Lounge, located just off the VIP room on the second floor. This area is for the people who want to go big or go home… or at least go back to the main casino area. The buy-ins and max bets have greatly increase for those who want to bet big and win bigger. This area will be accessible to those who have earned 2 million throughout their casino career. Alternatively, for those who have the courage to jump into these tables, you can gain access by purchasing a High Roller’s Vest.

This area comes with an exclusive leaderboard for the high rollers. If you want to swim with the whales of The Casino then dive right in when this update goes live. Deal yourself in, the waterís fine.

January 11th will be The Casino’s 1 Year Anniversary and Digital Leisure wants to party with you! Just make your way to the dance floor in the concourse and join in on the celebration. In its first year the casino has played host to about a million unique visitors, so they are giving away free cake to everyone who comes out. Digital Leisure will be celebrating this milestone for one week, so get this free reward while it lasts!

BOOM – Galaxy Express

From the world renowned manga artist Leiji Matsumoto and his masterpiece Galaxy Express 999, a classic piece of manga and Japanese animation that must be watched by all. These costumes and items from the movie version of the anime have been lovingly recreated for the Playstation Home service. Boom Corporation has created all the items with a commitment to the detail fans of Leiji Matsumoto and Galaxy Express 999 fans expect.

Why not step into the shoes of Tetsuro, Maetel, Captain Harlock and many other characters, and be reminded of this magical journey through the universe.

Community Theater Update

This week is another double feature in the Community Theater. Head there later today and see Gamer Indepth ring in the new year with Replay with Doc with a special interview as well as our favorite Luge share her thoughts on her favorite upcoming new PlayStation games. Find it all in Theater 1 this afternoon.

The Virtual Items Showcase

Magnus is taking a well-earned vacation, but he’ll be returning next week with his famous Virtual Item Showcase!

See you in PlayStation Home!

#bouncy! "Finally a beautiful, fun, frustratingly rewarding trampoline game for the iOS!" began the email from developer Joel Blanco Berg, at which point I stopped and thought about how the use of finally suggests someone was desperately waiting for a trampoline game to come out. Then I watched the trailer for Bouncy!, and realized that maybe I was and just never knew it. More »

A game where your first encounter is people playing D&D in a gas station. Then it gets weirder.

Hey everyone! SFB Games is comprised of two brothers, Adam and Tom Vian from London. We’ve been making games for many years (mostly for browsers, under the name “The Super Flash Bros.”) and this is our first opportunity to make a game that can be enjoyed on a real handheld console.

When we heard about PlayStation Mobile and thought about PS Vita as a platform, there was only one game we had in mind. The colourful graphics and simple controls of Haunt the House work perfectly in this context — it’s a really natural fit. The original Haunt the House was a browser game we made for Halloween back in 2010, and since then we’ve come a long way as designers.

The basic idea of Haunt the House: you float around as a ghost, possessing any objects you see and use them to perform spooky haunting actions to any humans who are nearby! The aim of the game is to scare every single human away from the town, but this game also has an extra objective…

The first thing we wanted to design was the town itself, exploring all the best tropes of spooky horror locations. Eventually we settled on a theatre, a hospital, a museum, cruise ship and a clock tower. Then we asked talented artist Catherine Unger to design the backgrounds for the game. She produced detailed digital paintings of each building and developed an amazing colour palette that gives the game a really unique atmosphere. In the end, we produced vector versions of Catherine’s backgrounds for the final game.

This was Tom’s first project using C#, and he was surprised by how quick and easy it was to switch over from Flash development. He also enjoyed writing a custom tool for exporting Flash animation for PlayStation Mobile, so we didn’t even have to use any new animation tools.

Meanwhile Adam began designing ghosts, people, menus, and hundreds of “possessable” objects to go into the buildings. It was fun thinking up the most interesting objects to go in each room — from chandeliers, telescopes and statues, to tubas, X-ray machines and roulette tables! We aimed for as much variety as possible.

We hired the incredibly talented composer Raphael Benjamin Meyer to produce an original soundtrack to the game. The music is made even more special by the presence of real instruments being played by real musicians. Next we asked Kimlinh Tran to act as voice director since we needed a range of voices for both the ghosts and the human characters. She did a great job and we have a wonderful range of vocal talent on board. Thanks to everyone who helped us out!

The final game is something we’re all incredibly proud of. It’s simple to learn, but offers endless possibilities to play around and discover new things and new situations. We don’t think we’ll ever get bored of it.

The game will be available to download today through the PlayStation Mobile service.

Need more information on PlayStation Mobile? Want to know more about supported tablets and phones? Head here.

A sizable selection of games and add-ons from publisher 2K Games are now on sale on Xbox Live Marketplace. The deals, which include half-off on the Mechromancer Pack from Borderlands 2 (400 MSP), the same discount for BioShock 2 on Games on Demand ($9.99), and a beefy 75 percent off XBLA games Axel & Pixel and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (200 MSP each), all come to an end on January 14.

The full list of on-sale games and add-ons awaits you after the break.

#metalgearsolid If it feels like we've been writing about ThreeA's Metal Gear Rex figure for years, that's because we have been. More »

The limited-edition Gold Nunchuk is back in stock at Club Nintendo, available now for 900 CN Coins. The limited in 'limited edition' really pertains here, as this shiny accessory sold out so quickly on its first two appearances you'd think it was made of solid gold.

In case you don't manage to get one this time, you can alleviate your woes by basking in the sheer golden, almost-as-if-it-were-in-your-hands glory of our Gold Nunchuk gallery. If that doesn't work, there are always other ways to get that gold-tinted fix.

#breaking 2K Sports surprised everyone with its announcement this morning that MLB 2K13 will release this year on Xbox 360. Pitcher David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays is the cover star. More details are developing. More »

A voice actor who appeared in Fallout 3 has teased that he may be reprising the role very soon.

I don’t think violence is necessarily bad. But I do think – especially in gaming – that it’s highly misunderstood, and I argued as much quite recently. But what can we do about that? As ever, I’m erring on the side of reflection and transparency. So here we are. I’m Nathan Grayson, and I was made by violence.

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#crime In what must be one of Japan's most unusual investigations ever, the alleged culprit behind a series of online threats continues to slip past Japanese police. This time, there's a cat involved. Yes, a cat. More »

After exploring Epic Citadel with the Oculus Rift, Engadget's strangely familiar Ben Gilbert got his hands on Archos's 7-inch Android gaming tablet. The Archos GamePad arrived in Europe late last year, and as the CES rep notes it's coming to retail North America this month, priced at $169.99.

Somewhat surprisingly (by which I mean completely unsurprisingly, given the era in which we live), Tomb Raider has multiplayer. Naturally, this has been a source of great outrage among even the least fly-harming-est of gamers, as it’s a distinct disruption of The Natural Order. Granted, it does have two things working in its favor: 1) Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light added co-op multi to pretty great effect and 2) the mode’s an entirely separate, presumably cybernetic leg of the game being attached by none other than Deus Ex: Human Revolution developer Eidos Montreal. Here, now, brown cow, is a video of some finely mustachioed men introducing it to the star of spy dramadey Chuck for some reason.

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A voice actor who appeared in Fallout 3 has teased that he may be reprising the role very soon.

#southkorea The newest Pocket Monster games, Pokémon X and Pokémon Y aren't even 24 hours old, but they're already making learning English in Korea fun—and heart-meltingly cute. More »

Sins of a Dark Age ain’t what it used to be. In spite of my totally sly, semi-misleading opening remark, I don’t necessarily mean it’s worse. However, I have no idea if it’s better either. It’s just, you know, different. In short, though, Ironclad’s decided to remove the RTS-like Commander role from its MOBA flagship, so now it’s hoping to weave between the toes of titans like DOTA 2 and League of Legends by emphasizing RPG aspects. “Realm Quests,” as they’re known, are triggered by a Left-4-Dead-ish Quest Director and introduce special conditions into otherwise standard MOBA matches. “Imagine dealing with the threat of a vermin carried deadly plague, welcoming the arrival of timely reinforcements, ordering your own personal troops, escorting a merchant convoy, hauling back stolen treasure, racing to gain favor of a powerful ally or even working cooperatively with your enemy against a deadly common threat,” says Ironclad. More details after the break.

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#japan Castration. Cutting off fingers. Photos of your genitals shown publicly forever. These aren't just idle threats. They're vending machine threats. It's like a ring of Hell Dante missed, but with fizzy drinks and canned coffee. More »

What do William H. Bonny and Craig T. Pearson have in common? Well, there are many things. Emilio Estevez has played us both in movies, we’re both wanted by 18th century law, Martin Sheen is our dad, and we were both killed by Pat Garret. But I have Billy The Kid beat, because I appear to have been mysteriously resurrected in the body of a pacifist games journalist, and can carry on the carnage in freebie multiplayer offline shooter Fistful Of Gun, while he is doomed to forever be remembered for starring in a terrible film about Dracula. Check mate, Kiddo.(more…)

#pokemon While you might come up short with badges to train Charizard, you probably have enough cashola to do that. More »

#windows8 He's rarely had kind words to say about Microsoft's latest operating system, but in the same interview with The Verge in which he spoke at length about his company's plans for a "Steam Box" PC, Valve boss Gabe Newell also talks about Windows 8. More »

#mario "This item is intended for use with legal tobacco products only." Hah. Of course it is. More »

#cosplay Zelda is more than a damsel in distress. She's more the namesake of The Legend of Zelda games. For fans, the magic-wielding princess is one of the most iconic Nintendo characters. Hence, all this cosplay! More »