The people over at SpeedGamers.com are holding a 72 Hour Metroid Marathon.

The 72 Hour Metroid Marathon starts on Augusts 15th @6pm cst. We will be raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The marathon will be streamed live via webcam on our website. The webcam feed will give you both a view of the games we will be playing and also a view of the action going on in the room. We will give out prizes following each game to viewers regardless of where they live.

The Game list is : (Not in any specific order)
Metroid, Metroid Zero mission, Metroid II: Return of Samus, Super Metroid, Metroid Prime1, Metroid Prime Hunters, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3, Metroid Fusion

For more info go to SpeedGamers.com

PreVa’s price has dropped to $9.95 so if you haven’t already acquired a copy do so now.

GameTunnel has published the July Independent Video Game round-up, the latest in their long-running Famitsu-styled panels that review all the latest Indie games. The 10 games reviewed this month include the physics-based puzzle game Obulis, the PuzzleQuest made easier Puzzle Hero and the appropriately titled Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble.

read more | digg story

I just stumbled across this site Lance of Machine they have a nice list of free mech games. A very nice find indeed. Because anyone that knows me can tell you that I only have one hand, I gave the other for a mech game. Lets not talk about the other things I only have one of now because of mech games…

This is not really a spotlight it’s just something I came across on tigsource.com
It’s a free japanese indie mecha game.

“Wire Robo is a unique shoot ‘em up where you control a robot with a grappling hook for a head (powered by the brainwaves of a sleeping girl). The robot moves through space by flinging itself off of asteroids and other objects, and enemy targets are destroyed by hooking onto them and changing directions to fire homing shots from the robot’s hands.” -db.tigsource.com

PSN is “a perfect learning opportunity” for developers, says Yoshida

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, has said he believes the PlayStation Network serves as “a perfect learning opportunity” for young and independent minded developers.

Speaking to Kotaku at the E3 event in Los Angeles, Yoshida said he believed PSN was the antidote to increasing development cost, time and complexity, which often doesn’t provide the best learning experience to newcomers into the industry.

“This is great for the industry as a whole because games development has become bigger and bigger and lots of people coming into the industry have to start by taking part as a very small part in a large development and the games take three years to develop – that doesn’t help people to get experience on making games,” Yoshida explained.

“The network is a perfect learning opportunity for the young developers as well as very entrepreneurial, independent minded creators to try out new concepts and release it globally… and get the reaction from consumers.”

“That’s a huge learning opportunity for these young developers as well as an industry being able to try new concepts… It’s a great opportunity for those creators to show what they can do and also to try out new ideas that perhaps induce a larger development,” he added.

Source: gamesindustry.biz

“As GamePolitics reported earlier this year, the state of Georgia rolled out a program of tax incentives for movie, TV and video game production.

Gamasutra now reports that Wisconsin has followed suit, offering tax breaks of up to 30% for game developers and other media producers.

Of the incentives, Raven Software exec Mike Crowns said:

‘I truly believe that the tax incentive will greatly assist the growth of game development in the State of Wisconsin.’”

Source: Game Politics

According to Dejobaan Games CEO, Ichiro: “I am very pleased to announce that Valve has published The Wonderful End of the World. As of this evening, it’s become available via their Steam digital distribution network. I believe it’s one of the first (if not the first) Gamestudio title they’ve published.

This game took about 9 months to complete, with 6 people (1 Ichiro, 1 gameplay consultant, and 4 artists) on the team.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped — some of you guys don’t even know you did, but I’ve spent many hours searching through these forums to find solutions to our technical issues. We wouldn’t have been able to finish the game without your shared expertise.

And now… Now, I think it’s time to make another game. But first: sleep.”

This is the first known 3D Gamestudio game to be published on Steam, which is nice for Conitec and Dejobaan Games. We share your enthusiasm Ichiro, good luck!

Source: Conitec (Gamestudio) Forum

PreVa has recently been added to FileFront.com’s official game list. The demo, trailer, and a few screenshots of PreVa are available via FileFront’s website.

Check out the page
Trailer
Demo
Screenshots

It’s nice to see that sometimes originality beats out the norm. The Nintendo Wii has finally outsold the Xbox 360 here in the states and it’s about time to. The Wii is a throw back to the good’ol dayz when games were more about collecting dots and avoiding enemies then switching to the right gun and shooting them, I’m going to stop before I start ranting.

Here’s the report:
“Nintendo has announced that, according to sales tracking information released today by the NPD Group, the Wii has now become the best-selling videogame console in the United States.

The NPD Group reported more than 666,000 Wii consoles sold for the month of June, with nearly 10.9 million Wii consoles sold in the US since its November 2006 launch twenty months ago.

“Wii was created with the goal of expanding the gaming universe through its intuitive motion-sensing controller,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive VP of sales & marketing.

“As we have demonstrated this week during the E3 Media & Business Summit, Wii continues to pioneer new ways for people to interact with their video games and with one another.”

Nintendo also noted that its DS was the top-selling system in June in the US, with more than 783,000 units sold. To date, more than 20.8 million Nintendo DS handhelds have been sold in the United States.

Six of June’s top ten best-selling games were made for Nintendo systems – Guitar Hero On Tour, Wii Fit, Wii Play, Mario Kart Wii, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (Wii) and LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (DS).”

Source: gamesindustry.biz