An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo won a court case Monday which "prohibits retailers from selling products that look like Nintendo's game controllers from its older Nintendo 64 game console, which can be plugged directly into televisions to play games."" These were apparently being sold nation-wide in mall kiosks. Shady.

jok writes "According to a story on GameDaily, law firm McKool Smith is suing several publishers for infringing their patent on a "Method and Apparatus for Spherical Planning", filed in 1988. Among the companies being sued are several big names, such as Square Enix, Electronic Arts, Vivendi Universal, Sega."

Phill Proud writes "Arcade board manufacturer Taito is set to begin sales of an arcade version of Halflife 2, including a multiplayer mode, in the Summer of 2005 (Japan) "Taito will develop an arcade version for their original "Type X" circuit board. The Type X is an arcade game circuit board running Windows XP Embedded that can use the Windows game development environment. The arcade game will be a customised version of the Windows software and will allow 3 game modes - a "Story mode" for single-player play, a "Battle mode" for players country-wide to compete in real-time and a "Mission mode" for players to collaborate tactically.""

floop writes "Vendetta Online, a MMORPG trader/shooter with decent PvP action, came out of beta on Nov. 1st for Linux, Mac and Windows. I've found pirating hapless n00bs and hunting other pirates being the 2 most fun aspects of the game so far. It has an engrossing back story and pretty screenshots. The guys putting this out are a small operation, and this is their first project. "

grag writes "People may recall that earlier this year, Wideload Games licensed the Halo engine for a project. Recently they announced the plot line of the game, a reversal of the roles in the zombie shooting game. According to the article, you play a zombie named Stubbs, working your way through the game eating brains and wreaking havoc in a comical 1950's inspired game setting."

FreyarHunter writes "According to Gamespot, Nobuo Uematsu and Square will be separating. Nobuo was the person responsible for the mostly awe-inspiring music for the Final Fantasy games. The report indicates that he will be moving to a company called "Smile Please". While this was first thought to be a rumor it was later announced on Uematsu 's fansite that it is true. He states that it isn't "quitting", but more of a graduation. There are hints in this article saying he will still do work for Square, but at his own pace. The good news is that he still plans to write more music for video games, perform more concerts, and produce the second Black Mages Album."

Drac8 writes "Blizzard and Fileplanet have announced that the World of Warcraft open beta will start at the beginning of next week. Fileplanet subscribers and current Beta testers are invited to start now. Fileplanet subscribers may find it slow going, as servers are overloaded and requests for signups/keys are going very slow."

Player issues this query: "Since the holiday season is rolling around, I've been contemplating shelling out the big bucks for a nice LCD display. I'm a die-hard gamer, with several choices of monitors in the market today, it can get a little confusing. Ghosting seemed to be a problem with intense games, but with displays reaching 8ms-16ms response time, is it really an issue anymore? Is it time for this gamer to move on to greener pastures, or stay the course with my trusty CRT?"

Massively Multiplayer games have grown increasingly popular in the last few years, and one of the hottest products out there today is NCSoft and Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes. City of Heroes is currently hovering around the 180,000 player population mark, with a European launch for the game coming up fast. The lead designer of the online super hero game is Jack Emmert, veteran of the video game and roleplaying game industries. He has written gaming supplements for Deadlands and All Flesh Must Be Eaten, reads several dozen comics a month, and saves the world on a regular basis. Jack has kindly agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers about game design, massive games, and what it's like to be a superhero, so go ahead and let em' fly. One question per post, please, but as many questions as you'd like. We'll forward the best on to Jack to answer and post his responses when we've got them.

Gamespot has a piece discussing the signing of the original Matrix cast members for voice roles in the MMOG. Actors returning to their trilogy roles include Lawrence Fishburne, Monica Bellucci, Mary Alice, Lambert Wilson, Harold Perrineau Jr., Harry Lennix, Nona Gaye, Collin Chou, and Tanveer Atwal.

slumpy writes "An article Gamespot is running states that Resident Evil 4, the highly anticipated exclusive from Capcom, will no longer be for Gamecube only, breaking the deal they had with Nintendo. Does this show Nintendo's third-party support dwindling even more?"

themuffinking writes "IBM (the manufacturers of some of the parts for the PS3 and Xbox 2) told Alex Albrecht that the processors they are putting in the new PS3 and Xbox2 are going to be the same processor, with the parts around it arranged slightly differently. Alex pried this information out of an IBM employee, likely while interviewing him for the show on which Alex is a cohost, The Screen Savers. Alex equivocates by saying "Now again, this is a rumor... so no Slashdotting". Too late for that, but keep in mind this is just hearsay at this point.

bakunin writes "With Haloween here and gone, the fall NetHack season is open. The 6th annual /dev/null/nethack Tournament started at midnight, and will last through the rest of the month. You may wish to read the instructions and see what trophies are available this year before registering to compete."

DanTheMan writes "For every great game there is for Mac OS X, there are at least two for Windows. It's sad, but it's a fact. This article proposes a solution, and it's for Apple to port games. By the way, since the XBox 2 will use the PowerPC G5, it shouldn't be that difficult to port future XBox games to the Power Mac G5 and the iMac, both of which are 64-bit now. Would you buy a Mac if you could play Counterstrike Source and Half-Life 2? What other games are missing from Mac OS X?"

Bruno_me writes "Some of the folks at the GameCube Linux project have gotten KDE to run on a GameCube. There's a screenshot of what it actually looks like and what it should look like. This is the first real 'GameKube.' And of course, here is the original frame buffer (dd if=/dev/fb0 of=./kde.fbdump)."

pershino writes "Augmented reality is gaining real world application to take us backwards. The BBC has a story about a European Union-funded project providing tourists with computer-augmented versions of archaeological attractions like Pompeii."

elhaf writes "There is an article running in the Chronicle on Higher Education about the new trend of creating political-message video games for the next round of campaigns. TechNews has commentary on the situation as well. The article mentions that there are actually a few available already, but they mainly just allow opposition-bashing. This is not, I think, to be confused with Serious games, even though both groups seem interested in health care policy."

ynohoo writes "The BBC is reporting that Argonaut Games, which went into administration last week, has been bought back by it's founder Jez San. A good sign in such a volatile industry."

jasoncart writes "With the launch of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas this week, Ferrago has taken a look back at everyone's favorite non-linear series."

VirtualUK writes "Back in 1974 the first 3D networked multiplayer first person shooter game Maze War set the ball rolling for todays games like Quake and Doom. Initially written on a Imlac PDS-1 players represented as an eyeball fought it out inside what could be considered a minimalistic graphical adventure in comparison to the texture mapped, hi-res extravaganzas on the shelves today. On November 6-7 at the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 held at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) there's a special 30th anniversary special event for Maze War. Brude Damer's digibarn site has a great article about it here."