Now, personally, my knowledge of Japan looking for aliens is basically limited to that line of toys which eventually gave birth to Optimus Prime and the rest of his Transformers crew. All that might change though, if Japan's little project bears any fruit. Don't look now, but a team of astronomers in Japan are actually planning to scan around the cosmos for aliens. [cue "You Got the Touch" theme song]

If you've enjoyed Jack's initial homebrew release of Transformers, then you will be happy to know that the French coder has just rolled out version 0.2. Aside from refining the sprites in the game, he also added a couple of new maps and polished the previous ones. Know more about this game after the jump!


Download: Transformers v0.2

Developer Jack has recently rolled out the initial build of a new homebrew game based on the Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay. Don't expect this game to make your PSP transform and roll out, though. You can check out the details of this neat game in our full article after the jump.

Download: Transform v0.1

One shall stand, one shall fall! (Why throw away your life so recklessly?) That's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron!

A couple of gamers have already noticed that strange little nook in Assassin's Creed's (PS3, Xbox 360) city of Damascus. It's Optimus Prime trying to pass off as a wooden building! An Easter egg from Ubisoft perhaps? And if so, we just have to ask... is Jade Raymond a Transformers fan too? Sigh... Read more to see the screenshot!

One hardcore Transformers fan has turned a 1994 Peterbilt truck into an exact replica of the Hollywood version of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

It comes with the whole paint job, a 17-inch LCD TV, custom interiors and a hell of a lot of chrome. It even has a voice-activated alarm that uses Optimus Prime's voice on lock and unlock mode and a whole bunch of other cool features.

The cost of this behemoth? US$ 55,200 and rising on eBay Canada. If you wanna put in a bid, you better hurry since the bidding is ending in just a little over four and a half hours.

You can check it out by clicking on the Via link below. Oh, and purists, please note that this is a replica of the Hollywood version of Prime's truck mode, not the cab over semi from the original cartoon. If the price is a little too high for you, you can always give Transformers: The Game (DS, PC, PSP, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360) a try.

 

While the Transformers movie buzz may have faded into warm, fuzzy memories for most of us, there are a dedicated few that have yet to do so - in fact, one could even say they're just getting into the swing of things. It's the same with Lego customizer Adrian Drake, more commonly known as Brick Frenzy, having recently constructed an actually-transformable replica of the Decepticon Blackout. Yes, it actually CAN transform.

Measuring over 16 inches in robot mode and over two feet in vehicle mode, the little devil not only looks the part of a Decepticon, but also the same look as the Blackout of the movie itself. This in itself is quite a feat, if you consider the fact that the medium used is nothing but Lego blocks. There's just one catch, though: Lego Blackout is a bit on the brittle side during mid-transformation, so it takes a bit of doing shifting the guy from helicopter mode to robot mode. It's still awesome, though.

With this little revelation made, yours truly can't help but wonder why Lego hasn't capitalized on something like this. After all, they've made sets out of famous movie franchises, right? And who wouldn't want to have their very own Lego Optimus Prime fighting a Lego Megatron? Yours truly certainly would.

For the past couple of weeks, all we ever heard about Grand Theft Auto 4 (PS3, Xbox 360) was news about its delayed release. Finally, we have some good news for all parties concerned! Some new details on Rockstar's upcoming game have just surfaced right out of Game Informer magazine.

We've taken the snippet from GameFront, and since our German translating madskillz are probably as convincingly perfect as a caterpillar trying pass off as Optimus Prime (wtf?), we'd have to resort to Google Translate. Game Informer lists the following details:

• The crowds are extremely realistic: you'd see pedestrians buying newspapers at a kiosk, smokers are loitering on corners - some of them might even ask you for a lighter as you pass by.
  
• Taxis won't immediately stop in front of you when you whistle or hail one down. Sitting at the back seat gives you an interior view of the vehicle from the first-person. ("With the Digikreuz one selects a driving goal. With the A-key one jumps over the travel and is immediately at the goal. With X one says to the driver to drive faster with Y steps out one. The right analog stick moves the camera.")
• The Jamaican weapons dealer, Little Jacob, must be coerced while going through your tasks. He's got a whole stash of fire power in his trunk and will do business once you establish a good relationship with him.
• For the first time ever, calendar days are going to be accounted for in the game; individual work days will also affect your gameplay.
• Protection from gun spray will vary depending on what type of material you hide behind.
  

So much for loose translations. In any case, we are now reassured that the delay isn't so bad after all. Polishing the game to perfection is always better than a premature release.

Buy: [Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)]

While everyone laughed at how the baby in Meet the Parents 2 learned how to name a rather unmentionable part of the human body - the term more commonly used as a derisive one - it may just be a warning to parents to watch what they say around their little tots.

This startling news come from Bob McMurray, PhD, of the University of Iowa, as he may just have found the reason as to how toddlers can learn words faster and easier.

Using a mathematical model that included 2000 of the most frequently used words of the English language, McMurray found out that by exposing children again and again to words, phrases and sentences that are on the more 'challenging' side of the baby vocabulary, they'll learn the words so fast it's described as a "word spurt".

This means that while they can easily remember that you have a pet "cat" rather than a "boo-boo-ga-ga", they can just as easily learn that their uncle, twice removed, is a "good-for-nothing git." McMurray's take on the whole matter:

They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy ones. Using computer simulations and a mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion.

Very handy information if you want your toddler to quote Optimus Prime and Darth Vader - a bad thing if you want him or her to keep to themselves why you don't invite their uncle to reunions anymore.

For years, sci-fi literature and movies have featured robots of every shape and size - from the shape-shifting Transformers to the weapon-laden Gundams. While it may still be quite far into the future before we can actually see such highly-advanced robots of towering sizes, it's not bad to start at the other end of the spectrum.

At least, that's what Robert Wood, professor and leader of Harvard's robotic-fly project thinks - as he's just succeeded in making the first ever robot fly, well, fly.

Weighing in at only 60 milligrams and having a wingspan of three centimeters, it's the first ever robot to achieve liftoff. Modeled after a fly - with Wood's impetus coming from the belief that nature makes the world's best fliers - the little robot that could may just be the future of stealth surveillance thanks to its small size (Wood's research is also being funded by the US Defense Agency).

The team responsible for the robot fly's existence had to come up with their own 'assembly line', so to speak, creating parts out of thin carbon fiber and polymer with a process called laser micromachining. This enabled them to not only make the parts in the scale they needed at an affordable price, but also in a much quicker pace. If a current design failed to hack it, they'd be able to start all over again without much hassle.

But of course, the robotic fly isn't flight-worthy just yet. It's still currently limited by a tether to keep it flying in a straight, upwards motion and is incapable of full 360º flight. The robotic fly also doesn't have an internal power source and is currently still externally-powered. They're working on both of those limitations, as well as the scaled-down equipment it needs to carry out its intended purposes.

Certainly very good news for those of us waiting for the day when we can actually pilot our own robots. While it's no Optimus Prime, Robert Wood's robot fly could just be the start of something extraordinary. Updates as we get them.

 

Someone in the Nintendo universe is pulling an Optimus Prime and doing her own kind of transforming (and we're not just talking about her transformation from Power Suit to Morph Ball). Samus Aran, by way of a press release, just did some sneaky transforming of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's release date. Not that it matters much, since it was pushed back just a week from its scheduled release.

A few weeks ago, everyone notched Metroid Prime 3 with an August 20 release. Even the scan from Play magazine said so. But, as some readers of GoNintendo point out, in the same press release where the US release of Phantom Hourglass was announced, a little portion at the bottom was included, indicating the delay of Metroid by a week.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass follows hot on the heels of another classic Nintendo franchise with amazing new controls. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the third installment of the hit trilogy, launches with motion-sensitive controls exclusively on Wii on Aug. 27.

Not too bad. What's seven days more of waiting for the "biggest revolution in FPS gaming since Halo?" Those seven days of waiting mean more time to have a refresher course on Metroid Prime's storyline - either by reading them online or playing the actual games themselves. Of course, we'd suggest the latter.