Audigy writes "The 2004 Playstation Underground demo disc (that includes a playable demo of Viewtiful Joe 2) apparently may contain a fatal bug that destroys all data on the memory card inserted into the system when the first save point is passed."

rpdillon writes "According to Half-Life Fallout, Transgaming Technologies has announced that they will be releasing version 4.2 of Cedega, their Wine based software allowing some DirectX games to be played under Linux. The new version will be released Dec 7th with official support included for Valve Software's Half-Life 2 and Steam, Valve's online software store and distribution system, and a required component of Half-Life 2."

still_sick writes "Although it was reported last week that Gran Turismo 4 had Gone Gold, the long awaited title will again be delayed. "Natural challenges with finalizing all the key features and localization issues across worldwide territories have led to the difficult choice of pushing back the release date in order to ensure that Gran Turismo 4 lives up to the exacting standards of the 36 million-plus fans worldwide that have purchased previous versions""

*no comment* writes "Some clever bloke has come up with his own chess set using a standard chess board and RF connectors." This sort of thing pleases me greatly.

Matt Mihaly writes "Iron Realms Entertainment's fourth text MMO, Lusternia: Age of Ascension, went out of open beta into full release this week. John Romero may not be looking to kick your ass anymore, but the-culture-that-Bartle-began is. Text lives on!"

robbarrett writes "CNN reports that the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore is "taking Pacman out of the arcade hall of fame and setting him loose on the streets." With Human Pacman, just strap on a computer and you too can eat virtual cookies while being chased by (real) ghosts."

Drull writes "It's claimed by a poster on filefront.com that Valve might have released a "Warez" version of Half-Life 2 to monitor and ban those who attempt to use it. This is the news from some guy with a filefront account, so take it with a grain of salt.

Today the Beta servers will be shut down, and by next week when the game ships all character information will be wiped from the system. After over six months, the World of Warcraft Beta Test is coming to an end. The test's final days are not without problems. Shiptar writes "Seems that some of the World of Warcraft Forum Moderator accounts were hijacked, and some posts were made deriding the latest patch. There's a discussion on WoW Vault Boards. It's not clear if the Moderator accounts were compromised, or a vulnerability in the forum software was used. The WoW boards have been down since last night."

The Official PSP Website has launched with details on the system and games. GamesIndustry.biz has a list of the PSP Japanese Launch Titles we can expect when the system hits retailers. From the Article: With just over three weeks to go until the PlayStation Portable launches in Japan, Sony has revealed that buyers will have six games to choose from on day one, with around 20 games total due out before the end of December."

BatonRogue writes "Apparently ATI provided a few Half Life 2 benchmarks to the press and some websites are actually using the benchmarks for their Half Life 2 performance reviews. AnandTech and HardOCP seem to be the only reputable sources of Half Life 2 performance data as they both put together their own benchmarks representative of Half Life 2 gameplay. AnandTech apparently went through every Half Life 2 level and put together a list of the 11 most stressful levels and then created 5 demos, while HardOCP put together two long benchmarks for their review. AnandTech and HardOCP's results appear to agree with each other, while the ATI-backed benchmarks show ATI with a huge performance lead in Half Life 2. Apparently (according to the AnandTech article), ATI was allowed to make their demos while at Valve before Half Life 2 was released, while Valve would not let NVIDIA remove any data from their time at Valve until the game was released. Politics at work as usual."

Thanks to Penny Arcade for the heads up about the Child's Play Charity Dinner and Auction, which is going to take place Thursday December 9th in Bellvue, WA to benefit the ongoing Child's Play Children's Charity Drive. Gabe has a rundown on the event up, and a list of some of the auction prizes, including "a Tour of Wizards of the Coast, a Tour of Bungie's studio, Half-Life 2 and a lifetime subscription Steam, a Tour and gaming with Penny Arcade, a week-long Workshop at Digipen, a Lifetime subscription to Dark Age of Camelot, and a 1 year subscription to Gamefly."

Voodoo Extreme has the word that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has launched today. From the article: "Players will assume the role of Snake, a US-sent agent, embarking on a dangerous solo mission to uncover and destroy a newly created weapon of mass destruction." Relatedly, GameDaily states that Metal Gear Solid 4 is a go. From the article: "During a financial report Motoyuki Yoshioka, head of Konami JPN, confirmed that there will be a Metal Gear Solid 4. Rumored since last week, this news casts the 'Final Episode of the Metal Gear Solid Trilogy', Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, in a new light."

duckle writes "The Inquirer reports that "The World has come crashing down around Half-Life 2 players today, as Steam's authentication servers in Europe have died.", and deemzzzz_k writes "It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity. HL2 requires registration to unlock the game and although the Valve/Steam homepage claims that it fixed registration issues the servers are still overloaded. Registration is "delayed" and temporarily unlocking the game takes 20-30 minutes over a 1.5MB DSL line." This seems to primarily be an issue for folks who bought the game from a store; I purchased the game via Steam and was playing at 12:15 am PST on launch day.

zenrender writes "With all the craziness regarding EA_Spouse's blog entry, it looks like some more organized groups are starting to chime in: Open Letter from the IGDA (International Game Developers Association). See Also Quality of Life White Paper, also from the IGDA."

An anonymous reader writes "Stuffo has an interesting interview with Bungie's lead AI developer, Chris Butcher. Butcher explains in detail how the enemies in Halo 2 think and exactly why they do the things they do."

parasew writes "Nanoloop 2.0 for GameBoy Advance is Out! The GBA-Cartridge features a 8-voice Synthesizer an 8-Track Sequencer, a Song Editor and a HD-Recording Option, rendering the GBA one of the most cool digital gadgets for musicians that travel a lot. Extra-gear is a GameBoy-MIDI-Adapter and a Lowpass Filter Cable. Some Reviews of Nanoloop are available in the Web from samplepoolz, HarmonyCentral, nanoloop.de and a German one from Parasew. Demo sounds in MP3 format can be downloaded from the site."

bhtooefr writes "The Tech Report got their hands on a reference board of the nV 6600GT AGP, and did some benchmarks. Interestingly, even with a slower memory clock on the AGP card, it was FASTER in some benchmarks than the PCI-E card. Tests performed were: Doom 3, CS:Source, Far Cry, 3DMark05, Rome: Total War, and Xpand Rally (the last two tested with FRAPS)." pacmanfan contributes links to more reviews at Extreme Tech, Hard OCP and PC Perspective.

An interesting feature of Halo 2 was mentioned in a post on personal site davextreme.com - Multiplayer Stat RSS Feeds. His post (quoted with permission): "Really cool thing I discovered today about Bungie.net's stat tracking: RSS feeds. Not only do they track every single kill in every single multiplayer game (along with who did it, how it was done, and where it was done), but they put all this data into a feed you can subscribe to and never miss out on post-game scrutiny. Of course, to get to all of it you have to go through a really obnoxious sign-up process (which involves -- shudder -- getting a Microsoft Passport account), but once you've finally gotten signed in, associated your gamertag with your Passport, and found the stats page, there should be an orange XML button. Pop that into your favorite newsreader, and you're ready to obsessively review every single frag."

swaptastic writes "In what seems like the year of fantastic sequels, Popcap Games has released the follow up to their flagship game Bejeweled. I am amazed that they continue to create such fun games, without relying on spyware to make money. In conjunction with the launch of Bejeweled 2, Popcap has decided to donate 1 dollar for every game they sell until x-mas to the Child's Play Charity."

An anonymous reader writes "CNN's Chris Morris takes a look at the increased animosity of late between game developers and publishers in the latest installment of Game Over. The column examines this weekend's catfight between Valve and Vivendi, where Vivendi threatened to sue Valve for authenticating copies of Half-Life 2 that had been sold before the retail embargo date; the misery that is crunch time and the recent campaigns against Electronic Arts miserable working conditions."