Well, he’s not quite Clyde Radcliffe but he’s a definitely up there!

Yep, ‘Mayhem in Monsterland’ returns as one of the greatest C64 achievements wangles its way onto the Wii by way of the Virtual Console.

How John and Steve Rowlands managed to create this slick NES-style platformer on the Commodore 64 is anybody’s guess, but it served as a fitting tribute to the machine which was, by 1993, wobbling on its last legs. But now, thanks to the Wii, for a meagre 500 points (roughly £3.50) you can once again enjoy this little gem on a telly where it belongs.

Read the original Commodore Force (Zzap! 64) review here!

TIGSource have announced the winners of their Bootleg Demake game-in-a-month competition. The idea was to take a well-known recent game, and present it as if it were a bootleg on older hardware.

Congratulations to Superflat with his NES demake of Silent Hill 2, Soundless Mountain II:

Top #10 Entries:

1. Soundless Mountain II (superflat)
2. Gang Garrison II (mrfredman, MedO)
3. Aquarium (Oracle)
4. Little Girl in Underland (The Ivy)
5. House Globe (Oxeye Games)
6. S.T.A.C.K.E.R. (Pishtaco)
7. Squish (Terry)
8. Fillauth (Oxeye Games) / Macarena of the Missing (Noyb)
9. Sexy Seaside Beachball (lemmy&binky)
10. Advanced Set the Rope on Fire Cartridge (Blueberry)

There were a whopping 68 entries in total. Other notable entries include Overscan, a side on 2D version of Rez and Large-Scale Vehicular Stealing, a NES-style version of GTA IV.

All 68 games can be found and downloaded here!

Source: TIGSource

Fabulous news, everyone. At some point during 2009, we can expect to be playing the sequel to one of the most controversially polarising games of all time. Its reviews ranged from reasonably high…

Okay, so it doesn’t win the award for most action-packed adventure on Wii, but it is a beautiful, innovative and very different kettle of fish. A breathtaking experience.

…to embarassingly low…

soothing and relaxing but it lacks a crucial element: fun.

…but frankly, the low reviews were all wrong. It’s completely amazing, the sequel is definitely going to be amazing, it is (of course) Endless Ocean 2!

Swim with whales in Endless Ocean! Wow!

Check out Nintendo’s forthcoming line-up on Eurogamer here!

Well, we’ve been rather looking forward to this game ever since we found out about the pet dog. And then there was the lovely sunset screenshot that all looked rather spiffing. But all those things are looking set to be eclipsed by the magnificence of this town pub:

Introducing…

The Cow and Corset!

Truth be told, I’m not certain whether it’s amazing or slightly alarming in the same way that the Orangina advert with the erotically dancing deer and octopus was.

In other news, Fable 2 also offically has slightly scary monsters…

…so I’ll be sticking to the towns and playing with my dog, thanks!

Well, we’ve all had plenty of time to play with the Spore Creature Creator and determine that it is, as expected, completely brilliant.

Of course, there’s a limit to how long you can sit there making cute little critters when there’s no actual game to shove them into, before you get a bit bored.

But rest easy, there’s not long to go now until the thing’s finally out (5th of September, says Eurogamer) and we can start manipulating our creatures from primordial goo to galactic civilisation.

The trouble is, there’s always a danger that when you anticipate something too much, that it ends up being a smidge of a disappointment - after all, there’s no way that a game can possibly live up to fans’ wild speculations… or can it?

After all, Will Wright is not without a track record of pulling something completely amazing out of the bag. And he seems awfully nice too!

Anyhow, it would appear that Eurogamer can confirm that the game’s going to be a little bit special in their Hands On preview. And, more importantly, they confirm that Will Wright is lovely.

What a marvellous plan - release the creature editor now, so that by the time the full version of Spore is released there’s already an enormous library of creatures to populate the worlds with!

And blimey - what a joy the editor is to play with - if only all 3D packages were as effortless and intuitive as this. Draw the shape of the spine, and then tweak by dragging the verterbrae around. Scale various body sections by rolling the mouse wheel on each bone (although this is actually quite cumbersome because of my rubbish sticky mouse wheel).

And after literally minutes of not at all laborious fiddling you end up with something like my amazing Eleplump!

Although there’s not a lot you can do with your creatures once you’ve made them (aside from upload them and make YouTube videos of them dancing), it’s well worth the measly £5 they’re asking for it.

It’s just astounding (or maybe not, I suppose) how many people are making willies with it.

Get it here!

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival showcases the continued popularity, growth and influence of video games and brings together the games industry’s key decision makers.

Games publishing, hardware and development alongside Government, TV, film, press and other entertainment industries as well as students seeking to work within the creative industries are all represented.

David Yarnton, Managing Director/General Manager of Nintendo UK, said: “We’re very proud to continue our support of EIF for the third year running. Edinburgh Interactive Festival raises our industry’s profile into the wider cultural arena and celebrates the input, talent and creativity from all with a common interest in video games.”

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2008 will take place from Sunday 10th to Tuesday 12th August in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Registrations are open at the EIF2008 Website.

Register before Tuesday 1st July 2008 - £120 (ex VAT)
Register on or after Tuesday 1st July 2008 - £149 (ex VAT)
Scottish based developers and companies - £99 (ex VAT)
Students - £75 (ex VAT)

Shocking news everybody! According to some guy called John Mayer who, according to Wikipedia, is some sort of American rock musician (yep, we’re in touch and up-to-date here at CGEmpire), pushing plastic buttons and waggling your arms around in Guitar Hero is not really very similar to playing an actual guitar.

Lies. Real guitars don’t have coloured buttons, apparently

Amazing. Congratulations John Mayer for that astounding insight.

Source: Rolling Stone

Aside from having an utterly specacular intro (produced by the awesome Blur Studios), Dawn of War was a pretty fabby RTS.

Now, four years on, Relic Entertainment have announced the sequel set for release in 2009 featuring, amongst other things, a rather nifty sounding co-operative multi-player campaign. Wooo, indeed! And quite frankly, when the screenshots look like this:

…it all looks set to be rather special.

Check out the latest screenshots on Eurogamer.

On tuesday 17th June 2008, NMK are running a Writing for Games event in central London (exact venue to be confirmed).

As NMK say on their site, “Writing for games is an often-overlooked career path, but it’s a great opportunity for writers who want to flex their creative muscles. It can involve plot development, script-writing, copywriting, dialogue creation, project documentation, humour writing, characterisation and character development and a load of other elements that exercise a writer’s abilities.”

Featuring a line up of impressive speakers including Steve Ince of Broken Sword fame, the event should be fascinating for anyone interested in pursuing a career in games writing.

Tickets are currently priced at £25, although a discounted price of £15 is available to freelancers, students, unemployed, companies with fewer than 10 employees and not-for-profit organisations.

More information can be found at NMK’s website.