circletimessquare writes "The QVC television shopping network has recently found a hit in its product the C64, which emulates the classic Commodore 64 in a small form factor, a joystick. But the story of the designer of the product is more interesting than the product. Meet Jeri Ellsworth [NYTimes. You know what that means], whose life story emulates the golden age of garage-based computer design. She is proof that the passion of the homebrew electronic hobbyist is still a viable force in an age when well-funded and well-staffed corporate design teams dominate chip design."

We're happy to bring you more work from Gabe and Tycho, the co-authors of Penny Arcade and organizers of the Child's Play charity. This week the Holiday strip series continues with Page 2 of the story.

Grimwell.com has an excellent piece on the past year in the MMORPG scene. It highlights the best, worst, and in-between as regards Massively Multiplayer Online Games. From the article: "I have never played so many different MMORPGs in one year before. This is one of the defining features of 2004: an abundance of choice in the MMORPG market like never before. While a few games, like Earth and Beyond and minor independent ones, closed their servers, most games from previous years are still available."

thebostonblogger wrote in to alert us that Everquest 2 experienced almost 24 hours of downtime this weekend. The development team eventually resorted to hourly updates to keep the players informed and to reduce the number of overturned cars. According to John Smedly's note there will be a period of accelerated xp gain this week to offset the downtime this weekend. Commentary available from usual suspects Terra Nova and Grimwell Online.

jujubees writes "What is going on with Electronic Arts these days? This morning it was revealed that EA is trying to acquire 19.9% of the Ubisoft shares owned by Dutch investment company Talpa Beheer B.V. If approved by the US Antitrust department, the buyout would instantly make EA the biggest shareholder, ahead of the Guillemot brothers. Whether this is a hostile takeover attempt is not clear at this point, no financial terms were disclosed." An anonymous reader also wrote in to mention a GamePro Editorial about the company, regarding its past as an honorable games-maker and its current reputation.

Torrey Clark writes "NitroOnline is a project that is currently being developed that will allow Nintendo DS owners to play Wireless enabled games via the internet. It will require a wireless router, and a wireless card in your PC or laptop to communicate with your Nintendo DS."

mikey573 writes "Eight years ago yesterday I founded the Videogame Music Archive. In a hostile copyright environment, its nice to see at least one slice of our digital heritage left intact." Hey, it's not the Minibosses, but the Wizards and Warriors theme is still excellent.

Ant writes "This SF Gate story says stacks of new releases for hungry video game enthusiasts mean it's boom time for an industry now even bigger than Hollywood. The $10 billion video game industry, which generates more revenue than Hollywood, has never released so many highly anticipated blockbuster titles in a single season. It started in August with the game title Doom 3, followed by The Sims 2 in September, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in October, then Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Half-Life 2 last month. In November, sales of video games rose to $849 million, an 11 percent increase from the same month last year and up 77 percent from October, according to the industry research firm NPD Funworld. The industry set a milestone last month when Microsoft's Halo 2 -- a sequel to a futuristic game with an elaborate plot that pits humans against invading aliens -- surpassed Hollywood's opening-weekend movie box office record in just one day of sales."

werjman asks: "I'm interested in switching completely to Linux but the only thing holding me back is the gaming. What I really want to know is what distro, graphical environment, Window Manager, and so forth are low on the system resources and play games great (and by games, I mean 3D accelerated memory hogs). Does anyone out there actually use Linux as a gaming platform?"

petrus4 writes "Terra Nova has posted my article about the possible impending death of Ultima Online. In it, I talk about why I think UO is in serious long-term trouble, and what can be done to possibly reverse the trend and rescue the game." From the article: "Admittedly when something is very large, its demise often takes a considerable period of time...The Titanic took something like four hours to sink after initially striking the iceberg. But there are a couple of reasons why I believe that from a long term market share perspective, the game could be in trouble."

Headcase88 writes "Gamespot has confirmed a rumour in which if you twist a PSP in the right (wrong?) way, the UMD will go flying out of the portable. To quote the article: "...we were brave enough to use one of our precious PSP units to test the theory. Amazingly, with just the right touch, out it popped". I guess you could do this on purpose and pull off some pretty unexpected pranks."

Bishop, Martin writes "Steam's latest client update on the 14th of December broke support under Transgaming's Cedega software, however, as stated on the transgaming forums the latest 4.2 build of cedega includes a fix for Steam."

The ever popular Make Something Unreal Contest is coming to an end, and the finalists have been posted on the official site. From the post: " Epic Games announces the finalists for the Mod category for Grand Finals of the NVIDIA $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest. To even make it to the Grand Finals is an amazing accomplishment for these dedicated and creative teams. To be selected as a finalist for the Grand Finals is to be the cream of the crop. "

By way of Voodoo Extreme comes the news that a movie adaptation of Splinter Cell is in the offing. From the blurb: "Paramount has acquired film rights to Tom Clancy's video game Splinter Cell and hired Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) to direct. Variety says Berg is writing the script along with Splinter Cell game writer J.T. Petty and John J. McLaughlin (Man of the House). Paramount said the movie is aimed at combining the game's blend of stealth action with a "dynamic, original" character."

Overanalyzed.com has an interesting (short) piece up on the Economy of World of Warcraft, discussing the way that goods and money flow into and out of player's hands. Commentary is available at Terra Nova. From the article: "Let me preface this by saying that I personally approach MMOs in a different way than most people. While most play for personal enjoyment, I come to them looking to make money. Obviously, while I do still enjoy the time I spend playing the games, I'm much more interested in crossing the boundary and selling my expertise and services in game for real life money."

While normally we don't do this sort of thing, recent charity work with Child's Play has substantially increased the bandwidth demands over at Penny Arcade. To assist Gabe & Tycho, and keep their site running slightly faster than a snails-pace, we're co-hosting their seasonal holiday strip series "The Last Christmas". The cover and the first page are attached to this story (future pages in coming days), so read on and enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits! (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)

An Anonymous Reader wrote in to mention that, according to an informational page about the venerable game Hack, today is Hack's 20th birthday. From the page: "In December 1984 I distributed Hack 1.0 in the newsgroup net.sources.... [T]here were 15 pieces, all sent out on 17-Dec-84." From the reader: "This was the first widespread distribution of the game, which was created by Jay Fenlason a couple of years previously. Nethack's history continues here. You can download this descendant of Rogue from its home page, or connect to a nethack server. Many nethack veterans try their hand at Slash'EM, a.k.a., "nethack on amphetamines". Here's to another 20 years of training your dog to rip off shopkeepers."

Take Two interactive is riding high this week, as Gamespot reports a sharp increase in their profits and reveals that GTA: San Andreas will be coming to the Xbox. During their profit earnings report, it was also revealed that they're purchasing the remains of Microsoft's sports studio, former makers of Amped and Links. From the article: "During today's call, Take-Two president Paul Eibeler confirmed that sometime during the August-September quarter, it purchased the Utah studio from Microsoft. He referred to the studio by its current name, Indie Built, and did not mention which of Take-Two's three subsidiaries--Rockstar Games, Gathering, or Global Star--would manage the studio."

grubber33 wonders: "With exciting MMO games like World of Warcraft and others existing, the current monthly fee plans that all MMO games that I'm aware of aren't necessarily worth it for people that don't have as much time to play games as others. For instance, I have about 3-5 hours to play games per week, if I'm lucky. On top of that, I like more than one game but I'm still interested in MMO games. I was wondering what Slashdot thinks about newer MMO games implementing some sort of pay-as-you-play system or at least having that option alongside the current monthly fees."

docdude316 writes "Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo has just announced a new media player add-on which is compatible with the Game Boy Advance SP and the Nintendo DS. The media player will let both the GBA SP and the DS play MPEG-4 and MP3 files off of a SD card. It will retail for 5,000 yen ($48 US), and will only be available off of Nintendo's website. There are currently no plans for a North American or European release."