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OK, so, Good Old Games fooled me (and who knows how many others) a few weeks ago about shutting down. I'm still a little miffed about that... but they're getting back on my good list with their latest promotion.

All this week they are running a contest every day. So far, three contests have been posted. One was a creative contest, but the other two have been basically game trivia. One was a "Name That Game" contest with a bunch of screenshots from games on gog.com. The other was a crossword puzzle of game trivia. Each contest is open for a week and each one offers pretty nice prizes. You could win the entire gog.com Ubisoft catalog, the entire gog.com Strategy First catalog, etc. And from all the entrants from all the contests one grand prize winner will be chosen to receive every game in the gog.com catalog (about 250 games).

Official gog.com contest page

If you're familiar with the fascinating 2007 documentary, The King of Kong, about the battle for the world record high score in Donkey Kong, then you remember Steve Wiebe - the eternal underdog of the world of competitive classic video gaming.

** SPOILER ALERT **

By the end of the film Wiebe had claimed the world record for Donkey Kong which made for a perfect happy ending to a fairytale sort of story. Mere months after the film was released, however, Wiebe lost the record to Billy Mitchell, his arch-rival in the film. Wiebe has spent the intervening years trying to regain the record to no avail... until yesterday.

Twin Galaxies Press Release

Good Old Games (gog.com) rather unexpectedly shut its service down today. For those that don't know, gog.com sold digital download versions of lots of old PC games. These versions were DRM-free and even came with little extras like soundtracks for some of the games. They were also all modified or packaged with emulators such that they were guaranteed to run smoothly on modern OSes like Windows XP and later.

This is really unfortunate because it was one of very few (maybe the only? I can't think of another one) places where you could legally purchase these old games that are often classified as "abandonware".

They have noted that they are putting a system in place for all past customers to download their purchased games at least.

Official gog.com site

Part Two discusses narrative structure and immersive factors in older games, and begins to draw contrasts with the newer games.

Full editorial

Earlier this month, IGN published a list of awards given out to exhibits at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010 (E3) and the absurdist comedy themed puzzle-game Portal 2 wins Best PC Game, Best Xbox360 Game, Best PS3 Game, but curiously not Best Overall Game.

Full List at IGN

[Submitted by RedConversation]

Conservatives talk about the fifties, liberals talk about the sixties, Muslims talk about the late seventh century, and gamers talk about Quake, and the SNES.

So why is it so many people are convinced that "those days were better than these days?" What was so compelling about "those days?" Were those days really so great?

Full editorial

Two days ago, Volition, Inc. and THQ released this trailer for the next Red Faction. The latest game, entitled Red Faction: Armageddon is set for release in March 2011. This new addition to the series apparently has ties to the confusingly named SyFy Channel. It is said that SyFy is co-producing the game, and is laterally producing a two-hour made-for-TV Red Faction Movie which is intended to serve as a backdoor pilot for a possible television series of the same.

Original Story at Broadcasting & Cable

[Submitted by RedConversation]

[ Read the rest ... ]

I'd like to give a hearty welcome to RedConversation who has just joined our editorial staff. We all look forward to the insights he will be sharing with us in the near future.

The Humble Indie Bundle is a unique collection of well-received multi-platform DRM-free indie games packaged into a name-your-price bundle. That's right, you can decide how much you want to pay for these games. Not only that, there is no corporate middle man involved in the transaction and the proceeds are split between going directly to the developers and going to charity.

The games are: Gish, World of Goo, Penumbra Overture, Lugaru HD, and Aquaria.

I've seen this sales model tried in the music industry, but this is the first I've heard of anyone doing it in the game industry. We'll see how it goes. They are only offering the deal for about 4 more days.

Interesting related side note: they have displayed the current average sale price broken down by platform, and Linux customers are paying almost twice as much (about $13.50) as Windows customers (about $7).

Official Humble Indie Bundle website