I'll be totally honest here, I'm not totally clear where in the Halo mythos this guy girl comes from. My best guess is Halo ODST era stuff.... but if I'm wrong please feel free to chastise me in the comments.

Anyways, this little dude dudette will be hitting virtual store shelves in March. If you wanna buy him her, I always recommend the classy Entertainment Earth.

[Edit: Thanks for the heads up Zac! Unless a Spartan is a character in a crappy Dead or Alive game... I just assume they're all dudes :) ]

Rhode Island - home to the snail salad, Peter Griffin, the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, and TempleCon.  TempleCon, now in its fifth year, is an all-inclusive convention that covers all types of gaming, such as tabletop RPGs, collectible card games, and of course, videogames.

This year, the convention is being partly sponsored by SNK Playmore.  There will be multiple MVS arcade cabinets and even King of Fighters and Samurai Showdown tournaments, among others.  SNK have provided the organizers with some special prizes, from capsule toys to the two Complete Box volumes.

So if you're in the area of Rhode Island between the 5th through the 7th, come hang out at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick.  Pre-registration is closed, but you can always buy your pass at the door.  Check out the pricing page for details.  Oh, and bring your brass pocket watches and monocle; this year's theme is steampunk.

A fun photoshop job, but also, totally plausible.  If this ever happens, I may finally admit that I actually sort of like her.

[via @gavinpurcell]

I'm a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that's really just consisted of the video variety. That's a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game's analog brethren... the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I'll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you'd like to try out for yourself.

Time Travel can be a sticky proposition. Actually, time travel isn't the problem so much as mucking around with the past is. As the great documentary "Back to the Future" taught us, is that it's impossible to go back and time and make out with your mother without your siblings disappearing off your family photos...Unless you know how to play guitar like Chuck Berry.

What would you do if you could bounce around in time? What events would you visit? What events would you change? Of course everyone kills Hitler their first time jumping through time, but where do you go from there? Chrononauts explores what would happen if you went back in time and started changing stuff around all willy-nilly. To what end you ask? Just like in Quantum Leap, to hopefully make that last leap home.

SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1, featuring a few great early Neo Geo games, came out in the middle of 2008.  I was hoping there would be a second compilation, but as time passed, my hope diminished.  But now it seems like SNK are creating a collection of their pre-Neo Geo games (Athena, Ikari Warriors).  They just keep making worse and worse decisions.  In protest to this "prequel", I've created a list of games that should have been on SNK Arcade Classics Volume 2.

Hit the link for the list.

Perhaps you're a fan of video games. Perhaps you're a fan of "art." Maybe you just like your video games a little more abstract than the rest. In all these cases then this weeks Threadless shirt should appeal to you. At first glance it's just a picture of the first level of Donkey Kong but looking a bit closer reveals it's just a collection of paint strokes of something so iconic that our brains just fill in the blanks. It's actually quite interesting. Yellow blobs become barrels, blue lines are ladders. I'm sure I could make some interesting comment about the uncanny valley.

Of course even if you don't dig this as a shirt, 5 seconds in photoshop and you've got yourself a pretty sweet computer desktop!

Even though the MSX standard had been dead since the early 1990s, a cult following lived on.  In the mid-2000s, Kazuhiko Nishi surprised a fan convention by announcing the 1ChipMSX, a compact version of the MSX2 that would work on modern TVs and PC monitors, as well as play ROMs from an SD card.  Shortly thereafter, the unit was released in Japan, and the company Bazix signed on to manufacture the unit for Western markets.  But, unwilling to pay $500+ for a Japanese unit on Ebay, I'm still sitting here without my 1Chip.  I want to play Penguin Adventure, dammit.

Hit the link for the full article.

In anticipation of Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, GameStop is offering an exclusive Pikachu-colored Pichu for players who bring their DS and a copy of Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum into a store.  First off, I'm super excited about the remakes of Gold & Silver.  I never played them back in the original GameBoy days, and seeing as how it comes with a pedometer and I live in NYC (we walk everywhere) I'm going to have super Pokemon!  Secondly, I didn't realize Pikachu and Pichu were different colors.  Maybe I'm just a noob.

The in-store Pichu download is only happening January 30-February 14, so don't forget.  You'd hate to be that guy, or girl,  having to make his valentine rush into GameStop with you before those impossible to get dinner reservations just because you need a Pichu that possibly unlocks hidden content in the newer Pokemon game.

Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver releases on March 14 for the Nintendo DS.

After a flubbed sync countdown and software crash brought an premature death to our first attempt at recording this episode we immediately rezzed, popped a couple of health and mana pots then stormed right back in to the dungeon that is our slightly meandering conversation. With the help of The Freelancers podcast guru, Joystiq contributor and former BBPS alum Xav De Matos (Internet Celebrity) we deliver one of the shortest What'cha Been Playing segments we've ever done as well as a look at the games that make up this crowded Q1. There's some News and chatter about New Releases as usual to round things out.

No enhanced edition this week. Blame it on Ryan's desire to play Mass Effect 2 instead of servicing you good people

Download Bitcast 81 (.mp3)

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