B&M Retailer GameStop to Purchase Flash Game Site Kongregate

GameStop announced today that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Flash game website Kongregate, making the brick-and-mortar game retailer a major provider of free online games.
Kongregate, a social gaming site that launched in 2007, delivers free games to 10 million players each month. The purchase will make Kongregate a wholly-owned subsidiary of GameStop. [...]

Play Pac-Man in HTML5

Programmer Dale Harvey has created a playable version of Pac-Man using only web standards.
To rebuild the same gameplay found in the arcade classic using browser-native code, he’s relying on local storage, HTML5 audio, Canvas and @font-face. Harvey is sharing all the code on Github as well, so you can run it locally.
Reminiscent of Google’s recent [...]

Q&A: American McGee Returns to Alice’s Nightmare Wonderland

REDWOOD CITY, California — “I’ve kind of made a habit of taking children’s fairy tales and turning them into dark, twisted content,” says game designer American McGee.
He might be understating the case a bit. As creator of American McGee’s Alice and American McGee’s Grimm, he’s best known (and pointedly parodied) for dirtying up a story [...]

Rockstar Book Canceled, New Project in the Works

The massive book of Rockstar Games’ art has been canceled and a new project is underway, publishing representatives said to Wired.com.
Alexander Galen, vice president of Distributed Art Publishers, informed Wired.com last week that plans for the comprehensive $450 tome, called Digital + Analogue: The Art and Science of Rockstar Games, had been scrapped since it [...]

RPG Battle Maps Square Off: Paper or Gaming Paper?

I’m always on the lookout for something cool to bring to the gaming table. The one thing I’m never satisfied with? My battle map.
A few months back, I put the Battle Graph Dry Erase Boards to the test and they passed with flying colors. They remain a regular feature in my Game Master [...]

Review: DeathSpank Gleefully Tramples RPG Clichés

The RPG had it coming.
DeathSpank, a comedy role-playing game from Monkey Island vet Ron Gilbert, simultaneously skewers and streamlines the venerable videogame genre one quest at a time. Released earlier this month for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the downloadable game is one of the best of the summer thanks to its sublimely silly writing [...]

Atlus Won’t Shutter Demon’s Souls Servers Just Yet

One of the hardest and most satisfying online games will keep running until at least next year.
Game publisher Atlus said this week that it would continue to support online play of the PlayStation 3 game Demon’s Souls through at least March 2011.
With publishers looking to cut costs, gamers have suffered a spate of server closures [...]

Square Enix Revives Classic Strategy Game Tactics Ogre

Square Enix said this week that it would revive the classic Tactics Ogre series for the PSP.
The game will be a ground-up remake of the Super Famicom game Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. For the revamp Square Enix will bring together a dream team of designers including director Hiroshi Minagawa, character designer Akihiko [...]

New Halo: Reach Xbox to Sport 360 Design, Custom Sound

Microsoft will release a limited-edition Xbox 360 console themed around Halo: Reach this fall, it said Thursday night at Comic-Con International.
The Halo-inspired Xbox will be released on the same day as the new shooter, Sept. 14. It will have all the bells and whistles of the recently released Xbox 360 redesign, from built-in Wi-Fi to [...]

The Gamer’s Guide to Comic-Con 2010

Comic book superheroes and videogame characters will collide at Comic-Con International, the annual convention that gears up this week in San Diego.
The big game will undoubtedly be Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, the long-awaited return of one of the greatest crossovers in gaming. Set to be released next spring, it’s a coke-fueled [...]