ringbarer writes "The disappointingly mismanaged MMO Star Wars Galaxies has hit another low. The Japanese translation of the game has barely managed to reach its first Birthday, and now it's been canceled. A Rough translation is available, but the original untranslated news can be found here." I'm not entirely sure, but it seems as though players who've paid beyond the end of December will have their accounts transferred to a US/EU server if they're so inclined. Otherwise they'll have their money refunded. Apparently money isn't something SOE is smarting for, at the AGC this past week President John Smedley announced that they'll be releasing what is essentially a free MMOG, with no monthly fee. Speaking of free, the always excellent Puzzle Pirates is essentially doing the same thing. They're also doing some crackerjack Halloween Events tonight, if you're interested in some swashing and some buckling. Dark Age of Camelot's events for today's holiday sound pretty neat too.

Elitist Snob writes "Registrations for the 7th Annual /dev/null nethack tournament are now open. Time to start cursing at how unfair the Random Number Generator has been to you today. (Or you can just start another holy war about which interface is the best.)" All you folks who shake your canes and say that these new fangled threedee graphics aren't needed, this is your chance to shine. Update: 10/31 16:13 GMT by Z : Thanks to HanClinto for pointing out that if you're new to the tourney you need to wait until Midnight tonight to sign up. Previous year's players can sign up now.

Craig Miller writes "What better way to end the weekend than by playing a game of Brewster Jennings Protects America? This new game is a Google Maps mashup with the classic 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego' style of game. Run around the world trying to stop a terrorist from carrying an attack. Pretty amusing game and it shows what you can do with the Google Maps API and a little imagination." Despite the jingoistic title and concept it's a lot of fun, and quite challenging on hard.

josath writes "The DS Wifi Bounty Milestone 1 has been completed! (previously on /.) The hardware registers to use the wifi built into the Nintendo DS has been documented. This is a huge step, as this was done with absolutely no documentation on the hardware. Stephen Stair has received ~$1400 for this milestone, and is working towards getting the other half by creating a tcp/ip stack. Once a TCP/IP stack is implemented on top of the hardware layer, homebrew NDS developers can start using the wifi in their own apps/games! This comes before Nintendo has officially released any wifi-capable games."

The Chicago Tribune reports on efforts from the PC gaming sector to revive what many have considered to be a failing part of the industry. From the article: "Many [Gamespot] stores have demo kiosks for consoles such as the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo DS so gamers can try before they buy. Testing a PC game has been impossible. Not anymore. In a trial collaboration announced a few weeks ago, GameStop and Round Rock, Texas-based Dell have rolled out computer game kiosks in 25 GameStop stores. Customers can test a handful of the best PC games the same way they test-drive the latest PS2 release. The kiosks will be powered by Dell's revamped and supercharged XPS computers, coupled with 42-inch Dell high-definition plasma monitors."

Besides the Burning Crusade announcement, there's lots of interesting stuff going on out in California. Gamespot reports from the scene and has a first look at the Blood Elf starting area. Meanwhile, Next Generation has the lay of the land from the first day of Blizzard's games get-together. From the Gamespot article: "As for the scene, Morhaime announced that slightly fewer than 8,000 attendees would be at Blizzcon, and there seemed to be about that many people crowding in Hall A of the Anaheim Convention Center. The line for showgoers to pick up their free goody bags seemed to snake as long as a line for a ride at nearby Disneyland, looking to be easily more than an hour's wait. Though there were dozens of computer stations, lines for Blizzcon attendees looking to play the new expansion pack were also quite long. Two GameSpot editors stood in line for about an hour to get 30 minutes of play time with the content."

bacterial_pus writes "Tom's Hardware has a very interesting article on how to build a $500 gaming rig. 'Instead of the newest killer rig from Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Voodoo, etc... how about a system for the rest of us with a realistic budget starting from scratch? We set out to build a reasonable gaming system that will get you through today's game titles without breaking the bank for around $500.'"

Halloween is a great nerd holiday, and it extends into Massively Multiplayer Game space. Everquest Live is offering up a series of events from the Kithicor Forest to the Hafling village of Rivervale. EQ2 has trick or treating in the two major cities, as well as smaller quests elsewhere. World of Warcraft players can also trick or treat with Innkeepers to honor the holiday of Hallow's End. Fashion seems to be the primary motivator in Anarchy Online's holiday event, which allows you the chance to snag Halloween themed t-shirts. Guild Wars has the winners from a Halloween art contest, as well as some theming in-game. Finally, Final Fantasy XI's always terrific seasonal events continue with The Harvest Festival. FFXI and World of Warcraft specifically allows you the opportunity to dress your character as various monsters and characters. My priest made a great pirate. Arr!

The yearly Austin Games Conference, the largest MMOG-focused industry event in the country, is taking place this weekend and a variety of places have coverage of the first day. For specific events, we have Gamasutra on MMOG economics and The Game Writer's Conference, a sister event to the AGC. Both Raph Koster (who has a blog now) and Next Generation have pieces on Damion Schubert's "What Vegas Can Teach the MMO" talk. For general color, Greg Costikyan has a feel for what it is like on the ground, and MMORPG.com has a Thursday wrapup. From the MMORPG.com piece: "The Austin Game Conference (AGC) looks and feels like a high school reunion. Dominated by the MMORPG industry, it allows developers to get together and compare their ideological toys. Unlike E3, this is not a commercial event. For example, EA's booth here is actually a booth, rather than some kind of football stadium. This allows for more of a community feel and serious discussion of issues facing the game industry without the need for marketing individual products to any great degree."

Gamespot is running an article in which crazy man Ken Kutaragi boasts that the PS3 may be capable of running games at 120 fps. From the article: "Never mind that even newer TVs aren't capable of refreshing the screen 120 times in a single second. Kutaragi said that when new technology comes to market, he hopes to have the PS3 ready to take advantage of it. As for the Cell chip at the heart of the PS3, Kutaragi also had high hopes for its future beyond gaming. Using high-definition TV as an example, he said that the Cell chip could take advantage of the technology in many ways, such as displaying newspapers in their actual size, showing multiple high-definition channels on the screen at once, and video conferencing. He emphasized that the Cell can be used to decode more than 10 HDTV channels simultaneously, and it can also be used to apply effects such as rotating and zooming."

Gamasutra is reporting that low volume of 360 consoles will result in a somewhat gradual ramp up for the launch. From the article: "'The analysts were expecting more of a launch spike than we were... [we expect a] more gradual ramp toward' meeting revenue targets, presumably due to a lower volume of available Xbox 360 consoles than some analysts were previously estimating, and perhaps indicating there may be more severe Xbox 360 shortages than some have predicted this holiday season."

Halloween is almost upon us, and today we've got a pair of games unnaturally interested with blood. If that sounds like a feeble attempt at theming this dual review, you'd be right. October has seen an avalanche of game releases, and two titles for the DS seemed somehow appropriate for this weekend. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow carries the flag of side-scrolling excellence, and despite being on Nintendo's newest handheld brings back fond memories of days gone by. Trauma Center: Under the Knife utilizes the DS's touch screen to provide a wickedly challenging, more modern, and thoroughly different gameplay experience. Both games have their quirks and copious amounts of blood, and you can read on for my reactions to these sanguine titles.

The official site for the first World of Warcraft expansion: The Burning Crusade has been launched as BlizzCon kicks off. There you'll find screens, movies, and information about the upcoming expansion to one of the most popular MMOGs on the market. The site confirms several of the rumours currently on the internet about the game, including the fact that the Horde will be gaining the Blood Elves as a playable race. The new Alliance race is still up in the air. From the FAQ: "Q: What does the title of the World of Warcraft expansion refer to? A: "The Burning Crusade" refers to the Burning Legion's ongoing efforts to destroy life on Azeroth. To date, the Burning Legion's exploits have been documented in Warcraft III and in our War of the Ancients novel trilogy. As part of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, players will now be able to travel through the Dark Portal to confront the Legion on otherworldly battlefields." ScuttleMonkey is on the ground at Blizzcon, and should have some firsthand info for us this weekend about the happenings in California. Update: 10/28 20:44 GMT by Z : IGN has a rundown on the features and screens. Good stuff.

Next Generation has a piece up examining Sun's claim that they develop the worlds largest Massive game: the stock market. They also go into some detail about Sun's actual MMOG middleware, Sun Gaming Server. From the article: "I argue that we've been the principle architect of the largest massively multiplayer online game in the world. It's Wall Street. If you took a look at all of the mechanics that go in to building an online trading system, they're almost one-for-one, the same functions needed to build an MMOG. Except we've done it with more redundancy, reliability and scalability than pretty much anyone else."

Hatedlegion writes "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast has been released on Steam." Gamespot has details, and a hands-on look as well. From that article: "If you've played through Half-Life 2, the gameplay in Lost Coast isn't going to set the world on fire. You fight your way up a sheer cliff face, trading fire with those pesky Combine soldiers every step of the way. You'll occasionally have to deal with some of the more vicious sorts of headcrabs, and at the end you'll have to bring down a Combine gunship with Gordon Freeman's trusty rocket launcher. You'll have to solve a couple of light physics puzzles as well, which we won't detail for the sake of preserving at least a little of the surprise. You'll even get to talk to an old man at the beginning of the level, who provides you with the impetus to head up into the hills and engage the Combine in the first place."

Sadkey writes "In light of the release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP, UGO has posted a retrospective around the GTA games. "Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation, and made open-ended gameplay a buzzword of the early 21st century. It's a long, bumpy ride, but at the end, Grand Theft Auto stands tall as the game that changed everything.' ." I remember playing the top down GTAs and just loving it. Great games.

av_2_0 writes "Microsoft has released a web accessible Game Advisor for Windows. This will check your system's configuration, compare it with a knowledge base of around 360 games and tell you if your system is compatible." Requires the use of IE and the install of an ActiveX thingie. My system is apparently faster than 58% of systems checked.

Scott Gualco wrote to mention a report at The Inquirer indicating that, despite the 360 itself being capable of multi-threading, first generation 360 titles will be single-threaded. From the article: "Every new machine has a nasty first set of games as the programmers work up to speed on the hardware. In this case, the up side is that there is about 6x the CPU power available and coming to a console near you in the second generation of games. The scary part is that everyone tells me that the PS3 is harder to program for than the Xbox360, and the tools are nowhere near the quality of Microsoft's. That means that even with an extra six months of design time, the initial PS3 games may be worse." Commentary available at Joystiq.

The New York Times reports in an article about the King Kong movie based game that director Peter Jackson wasn't entirely happy with his EA dealings. From the article: "Mr. Jackson, said close associates, chafed at his dealings with the industry heavyweight, Electronic Arts, during the making of the Lord of the Rings games. 'Electronic Arts was not interested in input from the filmmaker,' but later marketed the games as if he were closely involved, said Ken Kamins, Mr. Jackson's manager."

nb caffeine writes "Epic's Mark Rein is shooting his mouth off again, this time bashing the Revolution controller and EA's management style. This seems to be a recurring theme with him." From the article: "I guarantee you there's going to be lots of people who say the whole reason for this game is this controller, we made the perfect game for the controller. And all it'll be is about the controller, and not necessarily a great game...I've heard EA and Activision make absolutely ridiculous statements about, 'Oh, it's going to take 30 million dollars to make a game and we need 300 people' - that's just a bunch of bullsh... They're just covering up for their own management and incompetence. Or mismanagement I should say."