Back in high school, there was this guy. Older brother of a friend. We were all over their house for a birthday party or whatever, and he was back in his room playing Super Nintendo games using something none of us had ever seen before. It was a Doctor SF3, or a Multi Game Hunter, or maybe it was even a UFO Super Drive Pro 6 as illustrated above. Whatever: All we knew was that he was playing Super Nintendo games off of floppy disks, and that blew our minds. Backup devices like this were all ... Read Full Story

Gamers who want to try out Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning now have as long as they’d like to do so. Mythic has extended the duration of the MMO’s free trial period to “endless.” That means that curious players can futz around with the game’s 24 different careers to their hearts’ content. New recruits can play their characters up to level 10, explore the zones of Norland and Norsca, dig into the newly added Hunter’s Vale dungeon and fight other pl... Read Full Story

Reach For Your Wallet Dept.: On Wednesday, World of Warcraft began offering two virtual pets — the first in-game items sold for real-world money in Blizzard’s MMO. The Pandaren Monk (above left) and Lil’ KT cost $10 each from the Blizzard online store. When you buy them, they bind to your WoW account, meaning that you can equip them with any character you create. For every purchase of the Pandaren Monk made before December 31, Blizzard will donate $5 to the Make-a-Wish Foun... Read Full Story

Got milk? Okay, perhaps you do, but do you have secret 8-bit milk? No. The folks behind Battle For Milkquarious, the improbably funny rock opera based on hair band milk spokescharacter White Gold, have tipped us off to a secret hidden in the site. At the movie’s title screen, you can access a hidden mini-game that follows the plot of the movie, with classic 8-bit style graphics and music. How do you find it? As with so many hidden website Easter eggs: the Konami code, of course. The pr... Read Full Story

People who own older versions of Sony’s PSP have been playing Dissidia: Final Fantasy for months. I for one didn’t like Dissidia very much, so maybe it’s their loss. But early adopters who grabbed the PSP Go when it came out on October 1 have had to wait until Thursday to nab the Square Enix fighting game, which can be downloaded via the PlayStation Network for $40. Good, but not fast enough. It’s bad enough that hundreds of old PSP games can’t be played on the... Read Full Story

In the old days, kids had to rifle through their parents’ dusty record collection to discover new and dangerous music. Now, they’ve only got to play Lego Rock Band. The new family-friendly rhythm action game from Traveller’s Tales and Harmonix came out Tuesday for the Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3. And the game’s soundtrack comes stuffed with classic tunes that parents will dig, too: Iggy Pop, Queen, the Police and Elton John, for starters. But more interesting is t... Read Full Story

This week, the Independent Games Festival announced the list of entrants for the group’s 2010 competition. Judging will begin soon, and the winners will be announced at the Game Developers Conference in early March. I’ve been an IGF judge for a few years now, and it is consistently one of the most challenging and rewarding things I do all year. We’re tasked with critiquing and ranking a wide variety of games that can be extremely different — from little jokey Flash ga... Read Full Story

Final Fantasy Gaiden: Four Warriors of Light is billed as a role-playing game from the old school. And it is — but not in the way you’d expect. Released on October 29 in Japan, this Nintendo DS game is created by Matrix, the development house that did the 3-D remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV for DS. This is an original game, one that bears some surface resemblance to the Final Fantasy of old but plays quite differently. And the way it most resembles classic games is that it do... Read Full Story

College student Kyla Gorman has been awarded $10,000 by the Penny Arcade Scholarship Program, the site said Monday. Established in 2006, the Penny Arcade Scholarship is an academic grant that recognizes one student with the potential to positively affect the games industry. Gorman intends to use her money to pursue a degree in game design from The University of Southern California. “I’ll be forever thankful for the opportunity the PA Scholarship has given me to attend USC, one of the world’... Read Full Story

I hadn’t realized how attached I was to Bill, Zoe, Francis and Louis until I downloaded the demo for Left 4 Dead 2. As it turns out, the characters, settings and tone of the original Left 4 Dead have really gotten under my skin. The sequel will be available for PC and Xbox 360 on November 17, but there’s a demo out now. When I played it last night, I was overcome with a sensation I hadn’t truly felt since 1988, the year that Metallica released …And Justice For All, th... Read Full Story