The Zone

Kids and their tantrums! What would you do if you've learnt that your Level 70 character was killed by the swipe (or signing) of a credit card? 

Video game box art back in the NES and Atari 2600 era may look simple and old school when placed next to the CG and 3D render artwork that dominates today's box art, but their mix of pixel art and clean layout did make for an iconic and memorable design. What happens then if games like Wii Sports, BioShock, and Halo 3 were to be repackaged in the same stylized manner?

Well, wonder no more and hop on straight to The -Minus World for the goods, courtesy of one talented B Miggs. Further recreation of "Atari Modern Classics" can be found here.

Ever wanted to be in Tim Schafer's shoes as he prepare himself to host the GDC Awards? Stuck in the backstage room, players will have to guide Mr. Schafer and embark on an epic quest to locate all 22 jokes (or less) in order to win over the audience at the GDC awards.

Presented in glorious (and pixelated) point-n-click format reminiscent of LucasArt's classic adventure games, players are given 12 verb commands (remember those?) and a large inventory space to aid in their quest for humor. Have fun!

Originally made for the press in conjunction with the launch of Street Fighter IV, Capcom has graciously made a PDF version of the Street Fighter IV Training Manual for download at their Capcom Unity blog here.

Featuring great character illustration plus tips and techniques for each fighter, the Training Manual is also printer-friendly if you prefer to read your own printed copy. A nice little gift for the fans!

Ensuring that workers in office cubicles do not die of boredom whenever there's a lull in their workload, Casual Collective has compiled a bunch of free games which makes multiplayer gaming fun and easy. Requiring no high-end graphics card, large amounts of memory and gaming-grade input devices, all you need to do is to register (for free), build up a network of like-minded people and play!

This is the closest we'll ever get to a Half-Life feature film. The brilliant folks at Purchase Brothers recently made the first chapter to their Half-Life: Escape From City-17 episodic series (we assume it's episodic seeing that Part One is firmly etched on the title, though the little teaser towards the end may just be a red herring) available on their official website and YouTube.

Truly a sight to behold. Amazing work, guys!

Lionhead Studios have reportedly received countless requests for a copy of the Fable II map of Albion on the community forums, and with the help of their in-house artists has came up with a 4000x4000 render of the Albion map, available for download at their official website here. It's a whopping 40MB file, so printing it out as a huge wall poster is no problemo!

PS3 users who logged into the PlayStation Network last night would have been prompt to update their PS3 system software to version 2.60. With this software update comes an optional 100MB+ download that will install the new Photo Gallery application to your Photo tab.

Also added to this release is the ability to browse the PlayStation Store without the need of a PSN account. Of course, if you wish to download content, then you'll have to sign up for an account to get started. Video files encoded using Divx 3.11 will now be playable on your PS3 console. Have fun!

Here's a small little indie game for you to kill time with. Just don't be fooled by Eversion's cute characters and colorful graphics, for nothing is as it seems in this platformer game.

Controls are relatively simple: Left and Right arrow to walk, Z to Jump, X to Everse, and ESC to Return to Main Screen. Eversion also comes with the following guideline: NOT INDICATED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION.

To say anything more would be to spoil the fun. Enjoy!

Burnout Paradise is easily one of the best racing games of 2008, and we're looking forward to its PC incarnation next month. Taiwanese motherboard company Elitegroup Computer Systems appears to be equally excited too, which may explain the rather obvious "homage" of the game on the box cover of one of their latest motherboards. The similarity is quite uncanny, don't you think?

Owners of the US or UK edition of Fallout 3 will be in for a surprise when they next boot up the game on their PlayStation 3 as the version 1.1 patch is now live! Aside from adding 51 trophies to the game, the 24MB patch will also fix several issues that plague the original release, such as freezing during the GOAT test and pausing whenever the XMB notifications occurs.

I'm sure many of you would have already completed Fallout 3 (second or third playthrough, perhaps?) by now. Some may breezed through the main game, dabbling in a couple of sidequests as distractions, while others went the long route of making sure they find each and every thing the game has to offer.

The Capital Wasteland section of Planet Fallout is an awesome way to discover scenarios and points of interest that you may have missed during your adventure. Many Fallout devotees had contributed to the wasteland map (powered by Google Maps, if you didn't already know) with more information added daily.

Why not contribute things that they might have missed to share your discovery with the rest of the community? I know I will.

Even though there are many of us who are able-bodied, let's not forget the people who have not been able to enjoy life such as we do, and in particular, the story of KitsuneYume on the US PS3 boards has warmed up the hearts of practically any gamer who still has a soul in him (or her). Bedridden with Muscular Dystrophy, a muscular desease which slowly withers your muscles away, his passion for gaming is still burning brightly, and he's still able to catch up with his favorite PS3 titles using a specially designed controller (with his inputs) from GimpGear. To all the other disabled persons out there, this really is hope at work.

Check out his video after the jump, and a link to the PS3 boards here.