It's no understatement when we say Nintendo is starting the year with a bang, and it will remain hot until Q2 ends. Great games are coming to the Wii and DS platforms, and Ninty released a list to let everyone know what the gaming giant has in store. Head over to the full article to see the titles.

Team USA has won the overall championship in the recently-concluded World Cyber Games (WCG) 2007 held in Seattle, Washington this weekend. The champs bagged a total of 6 medals, just one medal shy of a deadlock with South Korea's seven-medal record.

The Americans dominated in various platforms and came out on top in Gears of War, Dead or Alive 4, Project Gotham Racing, Tony Hawk's Project 8, and Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs

This year also saw the emergence of Germany in the RTS genre with 4 medals, topping powerhouse South Korea's three-medal performance. The United Kingdom also put on a stunner as they swept Starcraft with an unbeaten streak in the Singles game courtesy of star player Apollo.

When all was said and done, more than 700 players from 74 nations expressed their fulfillment in their participation throughout the event. Victory may not have been for everyone, but there was much happiness to be shared.

The World Cyber Games is the biggest e-sports gathering in the planet. It was founded in 2001 and has been one of the industry's most celebrated shindigs ever since, attracting fans and media from all over the world.

You can't play Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising without delving into the history and culture of Rome itself. It's part of the title after all, and you'll be spending a lot if time in the city once the game arrives so a quick look into the heart of the city won't hurt. Unless when you're fighting of course.

In Rome, you'll be able to align yourself with two gods (there are plenty to choose from, don't worry). Each class quarter in Roma has two temples, one for each god of that class. Each class quarter has its own Skills and Feats trainers where you can train for new abilities, moves and skills.

You can also give offerings to your gods in the temples to keep yourself in their favor. In fact, it's a must. Training your skills will be essential in fighting, but you must have the favor of the gods or you will not last long. Here's a brief overview of the gods you can find in Roma.

Caelius is the Scout quarter of Roma where you you can train for archery and hunting in the temples of Apollo and Diana. Capitolium is the Priest quarter, where the temples of Pluto and Juno reside. The Colosseum district houses the gladiators and you can train in weaponry at the temples of Fortuna and Jupiter.

In Palatinus lies the temples of Trevia and Bacchus. It is the district where the legendary Romulus and Remus were said to have first established the city. Vallis Murcia is the Soldier quarter, where the barracks of the city can be found. The temples of Minerva and Mars are in this district. In Viminalis, the Nomad quarter, you can find the darker side of the city. Within lies the temples of Mercury and Nemesis.

NASA has announced future plans of sending bigger chunks of the proposed base on the moon and better Rovers. These will be implemented in order to get more out of Space missions and hasten the development of Space Commerce.

The deputy associate administrator for exploration systems for NASA, Doug Cook, pointed out that their organization's new plan involves sending larger habitats to the moon instead of the smaller pieces that were initially planned.

These larger stations should theoretically allow the astronauts to learn more about the moon much faster than if they sent smaller habitat sections since the construction would take a longer time.

The rovers were called by astronaut Mike Gernhart as "habitats on wheels." He pointed out that it's like a sports car and spacesuit all in one. What makes this whole package even better is the fact that it retains the same size as the standard unpressurized Rovers used by astronauts during the Apollo landings.

This is a very exciting time for space-exploration as these innovations will allow us to learn so much more than conventional means being used today. Hopefully, the endeavors of the people at NASA pay off.

To prove that the land of the rising sun has the technology to reach for the moon, Japan recently launched the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), the biggest lunar mission since the Apollo landings. An orbiter named after the moon princess in a fairy tale, Kaguya, which weighs three metric tons was sent from Tanegashima island to explore uncharted polar areas of the moon.

The princess stripped 45 minutes into the flight, separating from its rocket near Chile's airspace. Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) planned for two successful orbits around the Earth before Kaguya reaches the moon to release two satellites equipped with high-definition cameras.

It took quite an effort before SELENE successfully took off, after previous failed attempts of rocket H-2 and H-2A which lost its path in 2003. Around US$ 479 million went to making the mission possible, but the Japanese scientists are quite proud with what they achieved.

Other countries are expected to follow suit in what seems to be a space race. China will launch its own craft later this year to do their own exploration, while India plans to join the scene by launching another rocket into space. The US has ideas for its own ventures, with a launch expected to kick off in 2008.

Google and the X-Prize Foundation have set up a high brow challenge to any private, non-government entity who can land a rover on the moon and send back at least a gigabyte of images, video and data back to Earth.

The Internet search giant is willing to invest over US$ 30 million to anyone willing to take up the herculean task.

The first prize of US$ 20 million will be given to the first private firm to reach the moon and then soft land a rover to travel at least 500m and gather a specific set of images, video, and data. The second prize winner will get up to US$ 5 million for being able to repeat the first placer's achievements.

Bonuses of US$ 5 million will be given to rovers which complete other objectives such as traveling further on the Moon, taking pictures of Apollo hardware, finding water-ice, and surviving an entire lunar night.

X-Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis explains the objective for such a competition: "We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration."

Challengers have until 2012 to complete the task. After that, the prize money will be lowered to US$ 15 million until 2014, when the competition will officially end. This is actually the third competition administered by the X-Prize Foundation.

The first one involved a similar "space race" while the second one was the sequencing of 100 human genomes in 10 days.

Capcom is reportedly working on a project called Apollo Justice. This is based on a patent recently filed with the Japanese patent office. No specific platform has been tied to the project yet.

So far, there has been no details on what kind of a game Apollo Justice will be, but speculation has marked it as a possible new entry in the Rival Schools fighting series. The first Rival Schools title released in Japan was Justice Gakuen, which translates to "Justice Academy", while the last was Project Justice.

The inclusion of the word "Justice" in the title of Capcom's new project doesn't necessarily give out much, but speculation can sometimes be fun, as would a new Rival Schools title. What about you guys? What do you think it is? Leave a comment and tell us your thoughts.

You sci-fi fans, or maybe even fantasy fans, must surely be aware that the Sci-Fi London Film Festival is coming up. Game developer/publisher JoWooD Productions has recently announced that they're going to be the festival's official video games partner. Sci-Fi London's organizers say that they're pleased to have secured JoWood as a sponsor for their event.

Sci-Fi London is a film festival for science fiction and fantasy films. It is held annually at the Apollo West End, and this year, the festival will be held from May 2 to May 6 2007. Sci-Fi festivals screeen world and UK film premieres, documentaries and a selection of classic Sci-Fi titles.

JoWooD Productions is known for producing PC titles such as Sam & Max, Genesis Rising, Spaceforce and Dawnspire. JoWooD believes, meanwhile, that the Sci-Fi London is an excellent opportunity for them to communicate directly with their patrons, and to promote their key brands.

This just goes to show that no matter how high and mighty we view astronauts, at the end of the day, they are human too. This image was taken from NASA and yup, it is the inside of the International Space Station. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Thomas Reiter (who'll be heading home soon), is going about with his work. Seems like a pretty ordinary picture, right?

So what do you do for fun while you're in space? You could listen to your favorite music tracks. This photo is getting popular over at Digg because of a fifth generation iPod sighting. The Apple creation is neatly attached to a Belkin external battery pack on the equipment rack in front of Thomas Reiter. (Reminds me of a scene in the movie Apollo 13 wherein Lovell and his crew brought a transistor radio on board, times have really changed).

Heck if I get sent to space, I would bring my mp3 player too. And a couple of other gaming thingamajigs of course.

Space.com reports that a whole batch of Vintage Apollo space mission tapes fount at a university in Western Australia aren't what they needed. In operation scientist John Sarkissian's own words: "These aren't the tapes we're looking for."

Apparently the one-inch magnetic tapes recorded at the Carnavaron station in Western Australia contain data from Apollo 11's Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP) – a set of scientific instruments placed at the Apollo 11 landing site by astronauts.

What Sarkissian and his team are looking for is the Apollo 11 Slow-Scan Television tapes. The lost tapes that could very well give the world a clearer crisper view of the first human explorers on the Moon from three decades back.

The SSTV recordings were of better quality than the scan-converted imagery that the global audience witnessed.

The search for the lost tapes hasn't proven easy. Budget cuts at NASA in the post-Apollo years entailed that a whole lot of day-to-day records were discarded. Jobs and entire divisions that dealt with data records were eliminated. Moreover, since there wasn't an official requirement to archive data, it is likely that the SSTV tape could have gone the same way that many old television programs did: TV stations degaussed the tapes and reused them.

Still the experts are determined and are hopeful that they will find the fabled tapes. Bill Wood, a retired Apollo tracking station engineer says: "we are running down every lead."

What is it about lost tapes that gets conspiracy theorists all a-twitter?