Following its release in February of 2007, Peggle Deluxe for the PC was not a game that a self-respecting hardcore gamer wanted to be caught playing. The game is colorful, it’s made by PopCap (the guys who make those jewel games that your sister plays), and it has cute anthropomorphic animals that you don’t even get to kill. Although Peggle rose in popularity throughout the year, it wouldn’t pique the interest of the hardcore crowd until just before the release of Valve’s Orange Box in October of 2007. At this time, someone with the business acumen of, at the very least, Warren Buffett’s tie, decided that taking a special version of Peggle — a game where you shoot a ball at pegs and then watch stars and rainbows happen — should have Valve game characters tacked on to it and be released on Steam for free under the name Peggle Extreme. This move paid off for PopCap in spades: sales of Peggle Deluxe skyrocketed, and PopCap went on to port it to the iPod classic, iPhone, World of Warcraft, and Xbox Live Arcade. In 2008, a full sequel titled Peggle Nights was released for the PC; this sequel would later be bundled with Peggle Deluxe and ported to the Nintendo DS. The version I prefer to play, and will recommend here, is Peggle Nights for the PC.
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Torley Wong of Japan, besides being a Second Life resident, blogger, evangelist, and community ambassador, is (among other things) an improvisational pianist. Using Archive.org’s Open Source Audio repository, Torley has made nearly four hundred recordings of his original solo piano improvisations available for free. Below is a ride through Civilization Survives from solo piano 6: RRPM (Really Repetitive Piano Music). The image used for the skysphere in this video is Shadows of Pompeii by Flickr user Stuck in Customs.

Well played.

Just in case you don’t have enough reasons to not buy Guitar Hero, here’s another one.

Right on, Capcom: this may well be the first decent PC port of a Resident Evil game. It has mouselook and everything, though that doesn’t seem to be doing Brad Shoemaker any favors in this video.

Ah, oops. It’s Brad Shoemaker, again. Well, this video is too important for me to worry about the Brad-to-not-Brad ratio of this post. Knowledge is power.

Writer: Mike Carey
Illustrator: Peter Gross
Genre: Fantasy, Thriller
Publisher: Vertigo (DC Comics)

Wilson Taylor has fathered two people in his life: Tommy Taylor, the boy wizard protagonist of his popular series of fantasy novels, and Tom Taylor, his flesh-and-blood son upon whom his books’ protagonist is based. Thirteen books and a despondent son later, Wilson Taylor disappeared.

The Unwritten’s story begins over ten years later; Wilson’s son Tom is now a grown man and has become a minor celebrity. Tom has made a living by running the Tommy Taylor convention circuit under the guidance of Rupert Swoop, his father’s former manager. Although being paid to smile, sign his name, and answer some questions may sound like he’s living on easy street, Tom feels like a sellout. His absentee father and the fame he never asked for are objects of regret and resentment; living in Tommy Taylor’s shadow has robbed him of an identity. Then there’s the ravenous fans, conspiracy websites, and attempts at his life by stalkers dressed as villains from the Tommy Taylor books. It’s all become too much for him to handle now that his legal identity has fallen under scrutiny. With the seed of doubt planted, Tom has begun to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself, about Tommy Taylor, and above all, about his father Wilson. These doubts, coupled with a cryptic trail of literary breadcrumbs left by his father, incite Tom to embark on a personal quest for truth. But the truth may be better left unknown, for each nugget Tom uncovers further obfuscates his perception of what is reality and what is fiction.

I mean to compliment Peter Gross’ ability as an artist when I say that I don’t notice his art. Likewise, I don’t notice Mike Carey’s script, and this is to be commended as well. Their work, as a whole, is exceptional; Carey and Gross have coalesced their crafts to achieve what I believe all comic creators aspire to: storytelling harmony.

This isn’t news, just in case anybody was confused.

This is not okay. It’s uncalled for and it’s setting a bad precedent. They’re going to get away with it, but that doesn’t make it okay.

I very much enjoyed getting a look at Randy Pitchford’s office; he seems like a really cool guy. I can’t wait to get at a Borderlands demo, but Gearbox has recently said there won’t be one until after the game releases in October.

This may be my favorite trailer since the World in Conflict: Soviet Assault trailer from earlier this year. ArenaNet gives us a background on Guild Wars 2′s story, the races, some fantastic looking animated concept art, and finally, several minutes of in-game footage; those city designs are bananas. Also, BEARS! There are links to 720p and 1080p versions of the trailer at GuildWars2.com.

There was a time when it was acceptable for a game’s sprites and animations to be crude, its fonts illegible, and its puzzles and plot absurd. That was the best anyone could do at the time, and now these games are looked back on as charming, but also as products of a bygone era: something lost in the wake of big budgets, polygons, and bump-mapping. Enter: Zombie Cow Studios with Ben There, Dan That!, a free comedic adventure game designed in the classic Lucas Arts style that gamers have grown to miss.

The British stars of Ben There, Dan That! are its own creators, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall. In the real world, Dan handles the coding, the art, and co-writes along with Ben. Within the game, Ben does almost all the heavy lifting while Dan keeps him company, offers funny asides, and stands by for when such erudite tasks as flipping light switches need managing. The latter of which, admittedly, is infrequent; in this particular adventure, Ben and Dan visit a number of parallel realities, most of which are well-lit. What these realities lack in their demand for light fixture manipulation, they make up for in such anomalies as an ever-displaced London skyline, soccer hooligans, zombies, and tolerance for wanton murder.
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Alchemical 9 (A.K.A. Roland Barker) is an electronica artist from Kauai Hawaii. Unlike most artists featured in Audiosurfing, not all of Alchemical 9′s music is available for free, but an appreciable grip of sample songs — including the one featured below, “Lonely Satellites” — is available from his Opsound page. The skysphere used in this video was created by Audiosurf forum user steeldevil.