Put aside whatever you’re doing for the next three minutes and play this ridiculous Flash game based on the once-popular television sitcom Perfect Strangers. The juxtaposition of the familiar* lyrics and on-screen action is clever.

*to old people, like me

Every videogame console manufacturer wants its system in the hands of as many people as possible. A larger install base means more people to sell games to, making it more attractive to publishers as a platform to bring games to, and both of those things equate to making more money. And with there now being many new ways of generating revenue — Xbox Live subscriptions, downloadable content sales, dashboard advertisements — it’s easy to see why Microsoft in particular would be keen on making the Xbox 360 as desirable of a purchase as possible.

A price cut is one way to open up the system to a new market, although there are limits to the extent the price can be dropped — not to mention a limit to how low Microsoft wants to take the price, given that it’s selling better than the competition at its current price point. The company seems to have found a way to have its cake and eat it too, so to speak. The Verge reports Microsoft will make a 4GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle available for only $ 99, albeit with a catch: It carries a two-year contract with a monthly fee of $ 15. Included with that fee would be a two-year warranty, a two-year Xbox Live Gold membership, “and possibly some additional streaming content from cable providers or sports package providers.”

Anyway. There’s a bunch of cool games coming tonight, if you’ve been waiting years for the continuation of the Harry Potter games, tonight is your night.

Like all Wednesdays, all of these games should be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern.

AbraWORDabrA, 99¢ – Forum Thread – A word game with levels, and some kind of… Angry magician?

Brainsss, $ 2.99 – Forum Thread – A slick looking game where you play as a gang of zombies infecting humans, looks awesome.

DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonDrop, $ 1.99 – Forum Thread – I’m glad the cat is finally out of the bag on this, don’t dismiss it because it’s a movie game, there’s some clever puzzle elements inside.

Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7, $ 4.99 – Forum Thread – After a very long summer break, Harry and his pals are back at Hogwarts. The first game was great, this one likely will be too.

MiniFlyer – Forum Thread – Another Mega Jump style vertical jumper? Sure! Why not!

My Little Hero, 99¢ – Forum Thread – The latest game from NC Soft has tons of character to it, hopefully it has the gameplay to match. (Fingers crossed.)

Robbery Bob, 99¢ – Forum Thread – A neat looking stealth-centric sneaking game from Chillingo.

Rocket Fox, Free – Forum Thread – This trailer is giving me really strong Jumping Flash! flashbacks, anyone else?

RPG Dragons Odyssey Frane, $ 11.99 – Forum Thread – According to the iTunes text, this is a “High quality Japan Action RPG”. We’ll give it a closer look.

THE KING OF FIGHTERS-i 2012, $ 6.99 – Forum Thread – An updated version of King of Fighters with all sorts of multiplayer. People on our forums are going crazy for it.

Tractor Trail, 99¢ – Forum Thread – A farming-centric puzzle games from the dudes at Origin8.

Zombie Travel, Free – Forum Thread – A free runner promising “great adventure?” Seems worth a try.

A serious menace has approached the peaceful garden and you must help defend it in Garden Rescue! As masses of voracious insects rush to fill their maws, the garden-inhabiting plants lay aside their everyday jobs to save their tiny motherland. Command the defenses, lead the green defenders into action and rescue the garden from impending doom! Earn coins, upgrade your garden, place more plants. It’s all in your hands!

Download free trial (97.35 Mb)

Download free trial (97.35 Mb)

With no player avatars,PixelJunk 4am devotes the entire screen to eye candy.
Image courtesy Sony

PixelJunk 4am, Q-Games’ Move-driven musical application, has entered semi-public beta this week in the United States and Europe. The is-it-a-game-or-isn’t-it program will launch on May 15 on PlayStation 3.

“We’re pushing it less as a game, more as an instrument, really,” lead designer Rowan Parker told me last year at Q-Games’ Kyoto office. As musical instruments go, it has one of the easiest learning curves this side of the triangle. Within minutes of my first attempt I was hearing what sounded like actual music rather than the random cacophony one might expect from a novice.

As difficultPixelJunk 4am is to classify, it is even harder to describe in action. You must imagine you are standing inside of a cube.

Using the PlayStation Move, you pull music from the edges of the cube and release the trigger, putting the sound onto the track where it repeats. Each of the four PlayStation buttons represents a different instrument, changing the musical options found in your cube. You can also strike the walls of cube for instant effects.

Players can stage musical events and rate the ones they attend.
Image courtesy Sony

The screen reacts to all of this with a kaleidoscope of colors reminiscent ofPixelJunk Eden, an earlier collaboration between Q-Games and artist Baiyon. Changing the visuals means changing the song, which opens up a new palette of musical choices. If that doesn’t make sense, it might be easier to just watch Parker demonstratePixelJunk 4am‘s controls.

Aside from creating music,PixelJunk 4am also serves as a conduit to listening to music. Players can tune in to watch others players and offer “kudos” on their performance via the PlayStation Network, or they can simply listen to their own music files and let the 4am visualizers go to town. The beta version of thePixelJunk 4am viewer is now available to all U.S. and European PlayStation Plus members, with select members being given access to the both the viewer and the music-making software.

One thing we don’t don’t know aboutPixelJunk 4am is the price. The viewer program will be free for all, but what will aspiring performers pay? Back in 2010 when it was calledPixelJunk Lifelike, Sony said the final version would cost 500 yen ($ 6), but with the added online functionality that seems unlikely now.

The fast growth of the population of gamers had pressured the developers quite somehow. The developers wanted to cope up the wants of their target market. So they have come up with revisions like making the environment a real-time 3D with enhanced graphics. As the player plays, the storyline was made responsive.

In 2009, month of August, the company had released a trailer. The video was consisted of a mixture of concept art in animation and also a game footage itself. The people who have seen the video was very much pleased with the design and the plan. An expansion of knowledge about the game world and information regarding the player’s races was much elaborated during the press interview.

Three months after the trailer’s release, the developers had informed the people that the game will not be accessible until 2011. The people behind it had instead offered a playable demo of the new edition. It could be accessed at Gamescom. A year after this statement, an available closed beta was shown to the public.

The combat system is most likely the same. Of course except for the fact that the developers had added three professions that could a player utilize. A healing character was not made due to the thought that it will cause restrictions with the other parties.

There would be ten skills that a profession could acquire. Every skill’s slot is based on the specificity of the basis on attaining it. Determining the skill will vary on the race and profession that the character belongs. In order for the player to complete all the skills, the game’s challenges and missions must be accomplished. From the seventh to the tenth skill it will stay locked not until the player had surpassed the necessary things to be done.

Player versus player is one major revision of this game. In this, all players will have the chance to combat to other players in the field. In every win there will be a corresponding reward to the player’s character.

Microsoft Windows is where the game is intended. The shipping of it is assumed to start by the month of February or March. A beta testing will be done with press who will examine and study the game. Beta testing will continue until it had reached all the target countries that will have access to the game. Dota 2 release date has not yet been made official, but one thing for sure it will be a lot better compared to the old one. Reading those articles online will provide you valuable information about this kind of game.

To find out more about this highly anticipated release date of Dota 2, please visit: http://Dota2ReleaseDate.com

Sincerely speaking, no one is aware of when that time will be. Apparently, this day remains to be a mystery even to the developers themselves. Therefore everyone is left to wonder and speculate on it. It is majorly because of the development process used. They use the iterative development process. It involves testing and trying every single constituent of the hyped game as early as they can.

Such kind of probing is done to find out the parts which do not function properly. Occasionally, redevelopment of the whole thing becomes necessary when especially for the poor performing areas. This remains to be the perfect way of developing the exceedingly high quality software. You can now see how slow it is and quite hard to be in a position of foresee the duration it is likely to take before completion.

Currently they say there are some of the elements which by now up to standard. They are even ready to talk about them. However, the main challenge still remains unsolved. It includes crafting and the guilds, which are still under processing procedures. It makes it even harder to tell when they will be done.

Despite all that cloud of uncertainty surrounding the launching date, it is still possible for you to make some right and intelligent guesses. You could be terribly wrong but also strikingly right if you have some resourceful information. If you were not aware then know that the beta of the awaited guild wars 2 were probably to begin in the second half of last year (2011).

The major challenge, however, is the several tests that are always conducted on these games. Instead of disguised memo like in other games, the closed beta test is undoubtedly an entire section of the test. To compound on to that, they do not want a clash on the dates with the speculated star wars, which was expected on the fourth quarter of last year (2011).

Considering other probable cause of contest is the wow. Looking at their three previous expansions, it becomes quite obvious that their next expansion is likely to be in the third and fourth quarter of this year. Carrying on with the collision is a spell for disaster for the brand new MMO.

Guild wars are probably targeting at releasing it when their rivals are not doing the same. This is a scheme aimed at building popularity with little compromise from their competitors. Considering all these factors, it leaves the expected date of guild wars 2 release date to be between the months of April and June.

GuildWars2-ReleaseDate.com features the latest information regarding the release date of this highly anticipated game!

Several moons ago, we at 1UP compiled a list of suggestions to improve the reliable-but-predictable course of Mario Kart, even if the series’ continuing colossal sales would likely have our advice fall on deaf ears. That’s okay, though; as Marty Sliva pointed out in his preview of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Mario might not hold the kart racing crown for long. While Nintendo’s made a habit of sticking with their successful tried-and-true formula, former competitors have shown that kart racing can still surprise us — like Crash Team Racing and Diddy Kong Racing, to name a few. While these games didn’t create a 20-year legacy, they managed to nip at the heels of their Mario Kart corollaries by taking a refreshingly different approach to the cartoonish motorsport.

United Front Games’ upcoming LittleBigPlanet Karting doesn’t divorce itself entirely from Mario Karting; the game still features drifting, boosting, and a collection of weapons remarkably similar to those wielded by members of The Mushroom Kingdom. But in applying the crowdsourced creativity of LittleBigPlanet to the karting genre, United Front Games might be able to defy expectations with a racer that promises to surprise, despite its very familiar trappings. Though Sony didn’t show enough of the game for me to for a definitive opinion, I can at least reach back five months into the past to determine if LBP: Karting will fulfill our karting-based desires.

The original Rock Band was usurped by the superior sequel Rock Band Reloaded [$ 4.99 / $ 9.99 (HD)] in December of 2010, so it’s not totally surprising that EA would want to focus on the newer version. However, for a game that many people have likely spent a good chunk of cash on by buying new songs through IAP, not to mention that it launched at $ 9.99 to begin with, it seems sort of crazy that EA would flat out make the game inoperable.

At the very least you would think that EA would be able to just leave the original Rock Band alone, so those who bought it and paid for IAP songs can continue to at least use it even if future updates aren’t in the cards. Perhaps there’s a reason for this, like a licensing issue with the music, but at any rate if you’re still a fan of the first Rock Band on iOS you’ll have until May 31st to continue enjoying it.

Servers being shut down and dropping support for games isn’t a new phenomenon, but in the increasingly more digital age of video games you’ll just have to keep in mind that the experience might be finite unlike physical copies of games which will last for eternity as long as you have the hardware to play it.

Note: I’m leaving the links for both Rock Band games in case you already own the original and want to re-download it for safe keeping, but obviously it won’t work after the end of the month. If you want a Rock Band game for iOS go with Rock Band Reloaded (for the time being, anyway).

[Via RockBandAide.com]

Ever wondered how many coffee cans you could fill at the urinal? Toylet knows.
Images courtesy Sega

Toylet, a urinal-mounted gaming device created by Sega, is now on the market for the general public according to the official Toylet twitter feed.

The equipment starts at 140,000 yen ($ 1,748) with games costing 10,000 yen ($ 125) apiece, according to Engadget Japan. An optional box that accepts 10-yen coins as payment is also available for 25,000 yen ($ 312).

Players interact with Toylet by urinating on a sensor placed inside the urinal that measures volume and pressure. That input controls the videogame, shown on a screen mounted at eye level. The games include filling coffee cans, squirting milk out of a tough guy’s nose and blowing wind up a girl’s skirt. Each game lasts less than a minute and can be followed by a advertisement placed by the operator.

Toylets are designed to operate only in urinals and will not work in a traditional sit-down toilet. Also, the listed fees only include the cost of the machine itself — you’ve got to buy your own porcelain.

The unorthodox game device turned heads last winter when Sega tested the machines in select Tokyo locations. Since then, it has placed them in establishments across the country.

According to the official Toylet website, the games’ positive testimonials have a variety of benefits for business owners: Customers make less of a mess at the urinals, Toylet-advertised products sell twice as much, and overall sales rise because customers stay longer.