The Shark

Synchronicity. From XBox-Scene News comes a story about Microsoft Seeking Acquisions. Apparently, Microsoft's executives are now actively looking for other companies to absorb.

Might Nintendo still be on their list? Trip Hawkins predicts that Microsoft will assimilate Nintendo within five years.

And so the corporate games continue.

Great new arcade emulator released

Modded Xboxes RULE for for playing emulated games. The Xbox controller is so perfect for them. And MAMEdOX, which looks to be the very best arcade emulator for that platform, has just been released. I'm extremely excited.

It's based on Bendermameox. Bendermameox focuses on playing newer arcade games (it won't run the older ones) and therefore fills the same niche as fba-xxx. MAMEdOX is much more useful because...

I've ran its DAT file through clrmamepro and I'm extremely pleased to see that it runs tens of thousands of games from throughout history. Obviously, you're not going to burn them all to DVD-R along with the emulator. If you've added a second hard drive to your Xbox then you can put them all there, but not everyone with a modded xbox decides to do that. No, it's best to put this emulator the Xbox hard drive and add your favourite games as you decide to play them. And that, of course, is the way emulation should be.

The Best Things Are Free

| insert credit | has been linking to some brilliant free games these days. There's EveryExtend and Dan! Da! Dan!, the latter a Super Star Soldier type and the former a genre-bender where you pilot kamikaze ships against a wall of scrolling puzzle blocks; Torus Trooper, a drive-down-a-tube-and-shoot game reminiscent of S.T.U.N. Runner; the English Translation of Planetarian, a haunting storytelling game whose sole stylistic equal in the West is Broken Saints. All of these games are free (the trial edition of Planetarian, anyway). All are by Japanese developers, and I know that some gamers will see that as extra coolness.

From The Ludologist we get web-based Lemmings and an AI to play it. Yes, that's Lemmings: one of the best games ever made.

Finally, Kotaku brings us both the world's greatest Nintendo DS ad and a very beautiful cosplay art exhibit that poses and juxtaposes cosplayers against all types of landscapes.

If you haven't seen any of these before, you're going to have a good day.