Moe Napoli writes "Using footage from the PC game True Crime: Streets of LA, a small collective of artists created a 'Vote or Don't Bitch' Machinima PSA with True Crime star Snoop Dogg as the center of the minute long spot. Premiering last evening at the start of New York Law School's State of Play II conference, the PSA is highly critical of the Bush Administration and even has Snoop run-over by a Bush-Cheney van at the end. While everyone may not agree with its message, I feel it's another clever use of machinima for creative expression."

jZnat wrote in to alert us to a BBC article discussing the role of video games in the classroom. The New York Times (registration required) has a more general article regarding young children and their relationship to video games. It's interesting to see the major news outlets refer to gaming in an academic light, and without the usual "the sky is falling" theatrics.

DarkSarin writes "Anandtech has a review of dual gpu's using nvidia's nforce4 SLI chipset. They are showing ~66 fps on doom3 at 1600x1200 with 4xAA turned on (a 75% increase in performance over a single gpu). It's not available yet, but it should be fairly soon."

drusoicy writes "Reuters is reporting that Sean Burke has filed suit against Microsoft because his XBox system stopped reading discs (games or otherwise) after less than one year of use. Many XBox owners can relate, as XBox hard drives are known for crashing. 'The defective XBox's stop working after minimal usage, after unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time,' the lawsuit said. The suit will probably become class action, and seeks to represent anyone who has purchased an XBOX since the 2001 launch."

JD-1027 writes "Blizzard is ending it's closed beta test of World of Warcraft Friday at 3pm PDT. Somewhat of an abrupt announcement, welcome by most, that means the release of the game is inching closer." In all likelihood this indicates the imminent arrival of the Open Beta Test.

As a follow up to the unfortunate incident on Wednesday, thanks to emfra (and others) who pointed out that BoingBoing has Nintendo's Apology Letter to the SuicideGirls site up. They even went so far as to offer up a free game system and game to the site owner. So alls well that end's well...but not before Penny Arcade had a chance to comment.

TerraNova is reporting that cooperative Virtual World creator Linden Labs has raised US$8 Million from a venture capital group. The Official Press Release is also available on the Second Life site.

Derek Rose writes "Grand Theftendo is a port of Grand Theft Auto III for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is Grand Theft Auto III running on an 8 bit, 256×240 resolution, 2 bit colour x 2 bit palette, 1.79 Mhz system, written entirely in 6502 Assembly Language! It includes the entire Portland city! More info here: Forever Geek on Grand Theftendo"

Holidays are always interesting times in the Massive Gaming market and this weekend is no exception. Spooks, trick or treating, interviews, anniversaries, and conferences are just some of the Halloween weekend news to share. Read on for the details.

The team behind the Dark Forces mod for the Jedi Academy engine have released another Demo. The newest demo contains the first three levels of play, new weapons, enemies, a new portion of the Dark Forces soundtrack, and some 5 minutes of fully rendered cutscenes. Amazing work.

Norg writes "Schadenfreude Interactive is still working on their momentous avian civilization simulator, but you can check out the info page of Age of Ornithology. From the site: From aXessfehler, creators of Age of Pseudopods(TM) and Age of Monotremes(TM), comes a real-time strategy game that is truly for the birds."

An anonymous reader writes "With any luck, Halo 2 will supplement hours of fragging and warthogging with some more good sci-fi story. In an interview with Bungie's studio manager Pete Parsons talks about the larger Halo world, the influence of fan fiction and Halo novels on Halo 2, and the widespread appeal of the game." Thanks also to GameConnect for the link to their article talking about Microsoft's heavy hand when it comes to pre-orders.

An anonymous reader writes "Suicidegirls (a not safe for work adult community) posted a nasty letter they received from Nintendo demanding they remove a member's page on their site because the member listed Metroid and Zelda as their favorite video games." Update: 10/28 02:49 GMT by Z : BoingBoing has an update to the story (probably where the reader saw it in the first place), saying the law firm that represents Nintendo Seattle is looking into it.

If you already play the Massively Multiplayer Game Star Wars Galaxies, you're undoubtedly already aware that the Jump to Lightspeed space expansion officially launched today. For the rest of us, there are some details on the developer side regarding the ramp up to release available on the official site. Details on the experience of the new expansion is available at Gamespot and PC.IGN. More ... colourful analysis can be found on Grimwell's boards, and N3rfed has a post discussing the fact that the rest of the world has to wait until November 5th for their space-goodies.

Daemon writes "Square Enix officially announced the fourth installment of Final Fantasy VII based media. The film Advent Children, the games Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus and now Crisis Core. This new RPG will for the Sony PSP and has been scheduled for release in 2006."

Everguide writes "Sony Online Entertainment recently announced that they would be releasing EverQuest 2 on November 8th, ahead of their main competition World of Warcraft (last predicted release date: Week of November 22). SOE is notorious for launching games with content that is not finished or buggy, and Blizzard is known for at times delaying a game just to work out minor bugs. Is it worth launching a game early, yet buggy, to grab market share from the competition? I know the Themis group thinks a poor launch can cost a company millions of dollars but will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?"

Drac8 writes "EA Games has released a demo of the highly anticipated Need For Speed Underground 2. The demo includes the Circuit, Free Roam, Downhill Drift, and Quick Race modes, and there are plenty of mirrors available."

Beginning this weekend is another chance for prospective players to check out Guild Wars, the upcoming free MMOG by ArenaNet and NCSoft. If you're interested you can download the client in preparation for this Friday's event kickoff. Gamerfeed has some details on what to expect in the preview, while Gamespy has details from the first preview and an update since then. Finally, reader Detritus wrote in to tell us about two Stratics guides to prepare you for the event, one on Player vs. Player strategy and the other on Player vs. Environment elements of the game.

Cloud Fangirl writes "Advent Children.net has updated with their complete report of the 20 minute preview of the film which was shown in Montreal over the weekend. The report covers the screening from beginning to end, with part 2 containing many spoilers. Advent Children is set two years after the events of the popular PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII. It is a CG movie sequel and is expected to be released in 2005." Great follow-up to the background material covered earlier.

zmcnulty writes "The day has finally come: Over at TechJapan, we've got a translation of a Japanese BB Watch article stating that Sony has announced the Playstation Portable will cost 20,790 yen (about $195 USD) and is to be released on December 12th. Also, the battery life is quoted as being 4 to 6 hours. Not exactly what I'd call fantastic, but at this price, looks like Nintendo is in for some serious competition. Free your doubts about software too, as Sony has announced 21 titles will be released in December as well. Here's the official Japanese PDF press release regarding the PSP's release."