I just love TD games. Developer Prince Gohan made just that, bringing us his entry for the NeoFlash compo - Balloon Pop! Defend your base from waves and waves of ..err... balloons. With that many balloons, there's gotta be a sugar-rushed clown with a helium tank on the other side of that queue.


Download: Balloon Pop!

I'm sure more than a handful of you remember Balloon Fight back in the NES era. Here's something that took inspiration from the classic Nintendo game and brought it to the 3D platforming arena - Helium Boy, complete with pesky crows and flying ninjas (what more can you ask for?)! It's a professionally done game too, with a nomination from a games award committee under its belt!

Download: Helium Boy v0.9

Imagine a star venturing a little too close to a black hole's event horizon and getting caught in an inescapable death trap. What do you see? Most of us would probably think of the star spiraling its hydrogen and helium into the abyss of space, but scientists say that it might be more violent than that.

According to astronomers in the Observatoire de Paris, violent explosions resulting from immense gravitational turbulence could happen when a star is drawn in, making way from some truly astounding stellar fireworks.

While some theorists have argued that the differing pulls in the gravitational field of a black hole may flatten a star's material like a pancake, this may not be entirely true. Some scientists suggest that while the pancake stage may happen, there are definitely a lot of indications that say that explosions will eventually rip the star apart from within.

What results after the gravity tears the pancake apart is a mass of glowing matter falling into the vortex never to escape again. NASA's GALEX spacecraft may have already seen such an event which was originally suspected to be a supernova. What it actually saw might have been an invisible black hole which is feeding on a star and blew it up in the process.

Some experts, however, find these theories and observations inconclusive. Supernova specialist Chris Fryer of the Los Alamos National Observatory says that  simulating deaths of celestial bodies is hard work. The full grasp of how it happens is not at hand at this time, making for a puzzle with plenty of missing pieces.

The Nintendo Wii is being packaged with a squeaky clean image, in the sense that it's family-friendly and its games would cater to the wants of every member. But video gaming, just like real life, isn't all bright and sunshiny or nice and sweet - and that's where the game Sadness enters the picture.

Too bad that its developer, Nibris, has not been divulging more details about it. But to compensate for the lack of info to this hauntingly mysterious title for the Wii, the Polish game developer opened up about another game that they're brewing for the Nintendo DS and the Wii.

The new game they're developing is called Double Pang. From the title itself, you may already have an idea that this is not as dark and disturbing as Sadness. What is it all about? Well, the game is actually a new version of Pang (or Buster Bros. in the U.S.A), it is a one or two player arcade game which is the brainchild of Mitchell Corporations. It first saw the light of mass production in 1989 and was produced for various home systems such as ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST among many others.

Basically, the goal of the game is for you to go through 16 countries with each of 'em having three levels. What you do is destroy a series of balloons using a harpoon gun. When you have eliminated the Helium-filled thingamajigs, they will progressively divide into two wherein the smallest bubbles will go kaput when shot. Power-ups such as vulcan missile, free time clock, and double harpoon are present in the game.

Nibris is planning on unveiling the DS version on April 2007, while the Wii version is planned to come out on September. And basing from our last report, this game would be released earlier than Sadness (Q4 2007 or Q1 2008) and Raid Over the River (Wii release Q3 2008, DS release Q2-Q3 2007). Let's hope that Nibris keeps their word this time around and for goodness sake, talk about how Sadness is shaping up!

While most folks think of the era of flight as starting in 1903 with the Wright Brothers, they forget that humans have been flying in lighter-than-air craft for over two hundred years. For the first several decades, these were confined to hot-air balloons, but by 1850, a Frenchman named Pierre Jullien devised the first powered dirigible using a wound-spring clock work motor. Fifty years after that, the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin built his first rigid-frame airship of a type that would bomb London during the First World War and go on to carry passengers until 1937.

The age of the commercial, passenger-carrying airship came to an end when the Hindenburg exploded while docking at Hazelhurst, New Jersey. The cause was the gas used for lift - extremely flammable hydrogen. Meanwhile, the U.S. military - fortunate in having a nearly inexhaustible supply of an inert alternative, helium - continued using airships for a time. Such craft are still used for commercial promotions by a certain tire company, who flies their famous blimp over major sporting events.

Today, with the fossil fuel source of jet fuel quickly running out and highways so jammed with vehicles no-one can move, both the military and commercial enterprise are taking a new look at an old concept.

While incapable of the speeds achieved by powered, heavier-than-air craft, blimps and dirigibles are far more stable in bad weather. Among other applications under consideration are the uses of high-altitude (40,000 meters/120,000 ft.) airships as platforms for space telescopes, observatories and surveillance equipment. At least one "hybrid" design that uses stubby wings for lift is being tested as a freight carrying alternative to trucks, while at least one company - Aeros - is planning to bring back the era of airship travel with an 850 foot-long luxury liner capable of ferrying 200 passengers. One enterprising Frenchman has come up with a single-passenger model, and NASA has even proposed one design that can be carried to other planets, inflated, and piloted  remotely for exploration

Below are several proposed designs we may be seeing in the skies before too much longer.

  

Read the Full Article for more airship images and concepts!