TouchArcade has found evidence of two upcoming iPhone control pads that add, at the very least, an SNES amount of buttons to the iPhone. iControl pad is the first, and has four face buttons, a D pad, Start/Select and an LED to show when it's in use. It may be ugly now, but it's just a prototype.

Another game pad design (below) was received anonymously and looks like a patent application. It has an analog stick instead of a D pad, and places the Start/Select buttons over on the left. Both seem incredibly useful for games that require precise control—something the tilt sensor is not good for.

Having spent considerable time with the Terran and Protoss at BlizzCon last year -- and no access to the Zerg at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational -- I thought it might be fun to take out my old favorite class for a spin.

As you might expect, there was a wait, one that gave me ample opportunity to watch the Zerg in action. Most noticeable was the lovely look of the Creep, the purplish goo that the hivemind race builds upon. It has a constant visual pulse to it, not something that distracts when one actually gets one's hands on the keyboard and mouse.

That said, the Zerg were probably the hardest race to easily distinguish from their surroundings. Hopefully that's just due to inexperience and unfamiliarity with the new models, but the move to 3D and a higher resolution does make it a bit more difficult to pick out units.

While the demo was playing, Carmack spent some time talking about multi-threaded aspects of id Tech 5, where the entire rendering system is offloaded onto one core. he said this was a “natural progression” from the multi-core support it had included in previous generation titles. “That balances pretty nicely for most games, where you can run your game logic and simulation in one thread, and your rendering system in another thread,” he explained.

He explained that there was much more than just this going on in id Tech 5 though. He said that there’s a separate thread devoted entirely to “running analysis over what’s being rendered, managing the streaming of information from DVDs and hard drives, decompressing all of it, transcoding the formats that are useful for GPUs, and so on.”

“That sucks up a pretty good amount of processing power just to do that, but that's one of the key things that lets us do this level of detail that really is beyond anything that you've seen before,” he added.

The premise of the game is that you have to battle for survival among millions of asteroids in space, following a dramatic Moon mining disaster near the Earth, which has spewed billions of tons of rocks into the arena. The battlefield will include remains of the International Space Station, as well as the asteroids. Futuremark promises that the game will feature simple controls, as well as complete freedom of movement. The company also says that gamers will be rewarded for using tactics appropriate to the zero-gravity setting, which would be otherwise impossible.

Lead game designer Antti Summala explains that ‘In zero gravity the player is set free to play in new ways. Complete freedom of movement and unique level design create an experience that is at once familiar to anyone who loves the FPS style, and yet strikingly different to any game they’ve played before.’

After seeing the same few minutes of Mirror's Edge footage ad nauseam, EA has seen fit to release three minutes of new parkour goodness from the game for Leipzig. In the newly released video found after the break, Faith works her traceur magic and attempts to escape from snipers inside some kind of warehouse/hydroelectric plant. Yup, we're still excited about this game and we can't wait to play it again.

Does the success of GTA IV goes to show that you don’t need to make games for ‘casual’ audiences in order to reach the mass-market?

"The division doesn’t make sense to us; good games will usually sell and be popular, bad games will struggle – of any type or genre or style. But we still believe big, high impact games will help the industry evolve and further surpass the movie industry as the next mass-market story telling medium.
...
"We always tried to make games that anyone could pick up and play. They may, over time, reveal a lot of structural and mechanical complexity, but the first mission of more or less any Rockstar game is very easy and engaging for a reason – because new people playing the game have to be gently led into the world of 3D action games, or open world racing games or whatever. This is the way we try to cater for a mass market ­– but we are focused on making digital worlds that are fun to explore and interlaced with rich narratives, that even the most casual player can become a part of, if they want to."

Windows is like a real-time strategy game. You can do everything with the mouse, but you'll be so much better at it if you learn the keyboard shortcuts.

We all know the basic keyboard shortcut for Windows. It's often referred to as the three-fingered-salute, and it's supposed to have some sort of positive effect when a program hangs. It's the combination of CTRL+ALT+DEL, and it rarely does anything useful.

Invoke it when all is well, however, and it gives you a bunch of options. In Vista, it lets you start the Task Manager, lock the computer, log off, change a password, and more. In fact, some people think the three-fingered-salute is the only way to call up the Task Manager, but that's not the case; just hold CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and, lo and behold—the task manager appears.

In surfing forums around the Web, I'm surprised by how many people aren't hip to the sheer number of Windows keyboard shortcuts that let you accomplish common tasks and perform basic windows manipulation without grabbing the ever-present mouse. So surprised, in fact, that I now present a primer on the most useful Windows keyboard shortcuts.

Braid is an absolutely brilliant game and quite possibly a work of genius. I don't like it one bit.

First, a disclaimer: I haven't finished Braid, and I have no intention of doing so. I ambled through to the end of the fifth world, and along the way, I grabbed some of the puzzle pieces you need to finish the game. I've gone back and worked through a few more of the puzzle pieces, and I've talked to others about the solutions to even more. Perhaps most importantly, I've heard developer Jonathan Blow give a talk in which he explained the ending, which is one of the most brilliant computer game endings I've ever seen. I guess you could say I've experienced most of Braid's content, just not the way Braid intended.

I want to like Braid. I really do. I envy the people who like it. Partly because I think people who like Braid enough to finish it are pretty smart (this isn't necessarily true of people who finished Portal, a similarly brilliant and economic work of genius, but one that so leads its players by the nose that any retard can finish it and think he's pretty smart and then go online to make "the cake is a lie" references).

The sounds were coming from the basement: a rapid, staccato clicking of plastic against plastic, hundreds of times a minute, too quick and orderly to be described as a rattle and too rhythmic to be considered noise.

In the downstairs den of his family’s home, Chris Chike was sitting in an easy chair with a toy guitar across his lap. While his eyes were trained on a big-screen television inches away, his hands were frantically working the bruised plastic instrument held together with masking tape. His left hand was tapping manically at five colored buttons on the guitar’s neck, while his right hand made graceful leaps between the neck and a large black button on the guitar’s body, where a real musician would be strumming at strings.

His movements were precisely choreographed to the action on his television set, where color-coded musical notes stampeded down the neck of a simulated guitar in time to a relentlessly bombastic heavy-metal ballad called “Through the Fire and Flames.� Some 1,191 notes would whiz by before Chris missed a single one.

One of the topics discussed at our roundtable with Sony at E3 (besides their dislike for paying for features and their 20/20 hindsight as to what went wrong with the PS3's development) was piracy. Piracy was half the reason SCEA's Jack Tretton gave to why the PSP is not living up to its promise as a powerhouse portable console, with the other half being the straight-shooting admission that PSP owners didn't want to pay for ports of PS2 games. So what can you loyal fans do when developers aren't putting out the type of content worth playing? Homebrew, the magical world of quasi-legal third-party PSP software including web apps, radio apps, Super Nintendo/NES emulators and ripped PS1 games. I'm going to show you how to get your PSP to do all this and more.

As the creative tandem behind popular online comic Penny Arcade, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins have made a living by condensing often offbeat commentary on games and gamer culture into a handful of panels and word balloons every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Krahulik provides the art and the inspiration for the impulsive and manic Gabe, whereas Holkins writes the comic and allows sardonic alter-ego Tycho to serve as the somewhat warped straight man of the duo.

Along the way, Krahulik and Holkins have established a notoriously loyal fan base, a rapidly growing open-to-the-public game convention, and a multimillion-dollar charity benefiting children's hospitals. Earlier this year, Penny Arcade expanded yet again, this time into the world of game development. Teaming up with Hothead Games, the pair produced Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1 for the Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux. (The game was also recently announced for a fall release on the PlayStation 3.)

Having had some time to reflect on the creation of the game and its critical reception, the pair spoke with GameSpot about negotiating the Precipice, working with other people, what worked in the game, and what didn't.

Although the Eee is my favorite laptop for traveling, its Xandros-based Linux distribution is getting crufty and beginning to show its age. I was unable to install Firefox 3 on it, for instance, because it lacks a current version of the GTK+ toolkit. In preparation for OSCON, I decided to infuse my Eee with new life by installing Ubuntu 8.04. I used a community-driven derivative called Ubuntu Eee that is designed specifically for Eee laptops. It has nearly full hardware compatibility right out of the box, including support for suspend/resume, sound, and the built-in webcam.

EA and BioWare have officially announced a new Star War: Knights of the Old Republic game at E3 2008. A third KOTOR game has long been rumoured but this is the first confirmation that EA has given on the subject.

The mega-publisher didn't just stop there though, going so far as to confirm that the next KOTOR game will also be a massively multiplayer online RPG - making it the first Star Wars MMO since the ill-fated Galaxies.

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

"Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

ACCORDING TO CVG, WIPEOUT HD'S DELAY CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO MORE THAN JUST TECHNICAL ISSUES AND "EXTRA FEATURES." THE GAME HAS REPORTEDLY FAILED EPILEPSY TESTING, REQUIRING IT TO BE "RE-ENGINEERED" BEFORE BEING RELEASED. IF ONLY THERE WAS SOMETHING WE COULD DO TO HELP SPEED UP THE PROCESS.

Shortly after hearing a sad tale of a 7-year old cancer patient having his medication and PSP stolen whilst en route to treatment comes yet another story of the world's meanest preying on the innocent. This go 'round, a group of griefers (which appear to be members of Anonymous) managed to invade a support forum established by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation and use JavaScript code and messages littered with flashing animations to effectively assault dozens of visitors who suffer from the disorder.

In a rare Blu-ray-videogame tie-in, Anchor Bay has announced an October Blu-ray bow for the animated direct-to-video game prequel 'Dead Space: Downfall'.

A full-length animated movie, 'Dead Space: Downfall' will debut on Blu-ray October 28 (day-and-date with the standard DVD), a week after the PlayStation 3 game it supports, 'Dead Space,' hits stores from Electronic Arts.
...
Exclusive to the Blu-ray will be a pair of cheat codes for the EA game, and a Digital Copy (standard def) on a second disc.

Suggested list price for the Blu-ray has been set at $34.95.

Lets just say Square-Enix recognizes how much meat there is on the carcass that is Final Fantasy VII. This title has received more direct sequels, prequels, side stories and general fansterbation than any other title in the series. I won't go into the quality of these titles, but they are out there. Now there is a rumor that says the Squeenix may be bringing the title to XBL and the PSN.

This all likely started as the result of the statement hinting at a "big FFVII-related announcement" that will come at next month's DKΣ3713 event. 'Inside sources' (I love how important that makes someone sound) stated that not only will the original be available through the Playstation store as a PS1 original download there will "definitely" be a remake or spin-off announced. I don't know where the XBLA release fits into this but that's the rumor anyway.

Games for Windows - Live multiplayer features are free, effective today, Microsoft announced at today's GameFest 2008 conference in Seattle.
...
In other news from GameFest, DirectX 11 was unveiled [and adds the ability for] compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor.

Microsoft today announced that its Games for Windows initiative is set to expand with the launch an online PC gaming marketplace this fall. The service will deliver free and paid downloadable game content, along with trailers, demos, and other content comparable to the company's Xbox Live offerings.

In addition to the added features, the Games for Windows Live interface will also be redesigned to be "much more PC friendly." Microsoft has not yet specified whether full games will be made available for purchase on the network.

Nintendo is flying high. Rather than examine the nature of this flight, the birdmen are mesmerized by the feathers. The analysts and executives do not see the concepts of disruption and don’t even understand the Blue Ocean principles (though they think they do). The feathers they see on Nintendo’s ascent are casual games. Therefore, they surmise, if they make casual games then they will be flying high with Nintendo.

There is nothing new here. Years ago, when Grand Theft Auto 3 hit big, all the birdmen began putting out Grand Theft Auto 3 clones. Years before that, it was first person shooters. More years before that, it was bloody fighters. One can find the birdmen back in the 8-bit generation making platformers. They would look at Super Mario Brothers and go, “Oh, I get it! We just need to make a game with cute music, colorful world, and upgrades like the magic mushroom!� Slapping wings on their arms, these games flopped. Amazingly, despite how many times the birdmen fall down, each generation they are ready to put on feathers and jump off a cliff.

As one of the few Microsoft games confirmed to play a big role at E3 next week, Halo Wars is one we still have a lot of questions about. And while we expect many of those to disappear in a few days, we were able to talk with Ensemble lead designer Dave Pottinger ahead of time to get an update on what's new with the game since it showed its head at E3 last year. We asked about everything from release dates to the difficulty of pulling together an E3 demo to specifics on exactly how the gameplay works, and -- apart from him calling the Warthog "he" a few times -- he responded with pretty impressive answers. So we decided to post the entire thing. Here's almost 7,000 words of Halo Wars info.

Fans demanded it, and Square Enix saw the potential to rake in big fat dollars with it: Chrono Trigger is returning on DS. Not with a sequel, mind you, but with a fairly straightforward port of the classic Super NES role-playing game. Pretty lousy, right? What nerve do they have, asking us to pay full price for a game that's more than 10 years old?!