Dan brought us the bad news last night, and all I could think about was this cover;

It’s from issue 235 of EGM. While 236 is the last issue that will ever see stands, I can’t help but see the ominous spelling on the stone — one issue before end with the words “THE END IS NIGH” emblazoned across the front.

RIP EGM. We had some good times. Looks like I won’t get to write for you after all.

Hey kids! Remember SmartCanucks? It’s the Canadian Deals blog that little ol’ me also writes for, and we’ve just come across a great deal on Gauntlet DS. We’ve found a reputable online outlet doing pre-orders of Gauntlet DS for only $14.99!

I know more than a few of us on the site have that on our ‘09 Titles to Watch list, so it was hard to not get excited at such solid savings right off the bat. We’ve posted it up over on the geeky sister site of SmartCanucks, SmartCanucks Tech Deals. There’s also some pretty good Canada-only deals listed on Xbox Live Gold memberships and other cool gaming and techy stuff. After you grab your pre-order, why not check out the whole site?

Now that the holidays have finally come to a close, I felt it was time to share with you all the lump of coal that Santa left in my stocking. It was black, shaped like a PS3 controller, and dripping with orange juice. That’s right — my children conspired against me to “accidentally” give my DualShock 3 an orange juice facial.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “but how can an 18 month old conspire to do anything?” The answer; she’s wily. As the 4 year old and I say at the kitchen table enjoying our lunch, the littler one decided to drag my DualShock 3 onto the kitchen floor and leave it beside her sisters chair. Not really thinking anything of it (kids do weird shit all the time, you get used to it), I continued about my lunch. Moments later the older child reached across the table for something, knocking her orange juice over in the process. Wanton destruction ensued.

The wife tried to use the old “put it in rice” method that had been peudo-successful with an iPod that had been destroyed months earlier, but no such luck. That thing was deader than a doornail.

The good news? The thought of bashing their heads with a VCS console never entered my mind. Not a year goes by where you don’t hear about some sociopath beating a kid to death because they were crying during a marathon Halo session or because they walked in front of the screen at a crucial moment. And while I’d like to think I’m not one of those people, you never really know until the situation presents itself. So the good news is I’m not a gaming-motivated child killer. The bad news? I’m down to one Sixaxis, no rumble. Ah-boo.

2008 has been a hell of a year for tower defense games. Things kicked off with the stellar PixelJunk Monsters, and then kept chugging along with titles like Ninjatown, FieldRunners, and everything in between.

To close out 2008, Steam recently saw the release of the bigger-than-usual-polish for a tower defense game title Defense Grid: The Awakening. But was it all flash and no substance, or did Defense Grid close out the year in style?

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Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPhone!  Some of you may scoff, but as a man that’s far too into gaming on my iPod Touch this is huge news in my camp.  Just take a look at those screens — if you can name even one title out there that looks better on the platform, I’ll FedEx you a cookie.

The teaser for the next Metal Gear only popped up a few weeks back, leaving me both surprised and delighted that we’ve gotten confirmation so soon.  And yes — this is definitely what was being teased.  If you visit the Japanese-language Touch Konami site, you’ll see that the green power image is the official logo for the game.  So what do we know so far?

• will take place in the MGS4 universe.
• “specifically designed to make full use of the iPhone’s unique touch screen capabilities.”  Hopefully this means no accelerometer bullshit.
• will launch with 8 mission with more available at a later date.
• available on the AppStore “Early 2009″

Also announced by Touch Konami for the iPhone; Silent Hill: The Escape, DDR S Lite and Frogger.  Hit the jump for screens of each, as well as the full press release from Konami Europe;

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We’re Peggle fanatics here at theBBPS.  The first title made our top ten lists last year.  The second took up countless hours of our lives this past summer.  Now, courtesy of Valve, the coveted Peggle Extreme is available free of charge on Steam. 

Originally a Steam pre-order bonus for The Orange Box, Peggle Extreme blends the cuteness of Peggle with the uber-violence of Valve (hence Team Fortress 2’s Pyro toasting up Jimmy Lightning pictured above).

If you don’t know the joy that is Peggle, now’s the time to find out. 

Now that December’s rolled around every gaming publication and their mother is putting together their year-end retrospectives.  While we’re working on ours behind the scenes, I thought it might be fun to let you, the reader, do some of the heavy lifting for us.  Over the next few days theBBPS will be asking your opinion on a number of year-end topics, and if we can find a way to make them fit we’ll be including some of your comments in our own year-end extravaganza!

So let’s kick things off with the question on everybody’s minds; what was the best game of 2008?