See, public clamor does work! Hothead Games has announced that Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One will now also be landing on the PS3, and that's all thanks to the fans who asked for it. Check out the details at the full article.

Nothing like a bit of good news to end the year with a bang, eh? The Child's Play charity movement run by Penny Arcade has reportedly exceeded its projected million-dollar mark for this December. Details on this big news are available in the full article.

Kotaku has put up an autographed Xbox 360 Guitar Hero guitar from Penny Arcade Expo on Ebay. The proceeds of this auction will be donated to Child's Play, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games. The guitar was signed by various people including Tycho, Gabe, and the makers of Guitar Hero.

More details and information about this in the Full Article.

 

You can't talk about web comics without mentioning Tycho and Gabe's Penny Arcade Adventures. With their off-beat, tongue-in-cheek style of comedy about the video gaming industry, gamers will finally get to experience this unique brand of humor in Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (I personally blame Tycho and Gabe for such a mouthful of a title for their game) developed by Hothead Games.

Suffice to say, the developers are having a lot of fun making the game, probably as much as players will have playing it. Don't take my word for it - in an interview with Joel DeYoung, the producer of Hothead, he gives the team at QJ.net the low-down on the upcoming game based, of course, on the Penny Arcade Adventures web comic. He talks about many interesting points regarding the game's mechanics, as well as the active involvement of the web comic's creators.

The game was originally unveiled during last year's Penny Arcade Expo. There's been no official release date set, however, you can expect it to come out by years end. Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is slated to come out on the PC, Mac, Linux, and Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade) platforms. Either way, fans everywhere will be waiting with baited breath for the game's release. Don't worry, though, we'll be sure to give you up-to-date reports on the game as we get them.

Check out the full interview right after the jump!

Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt, where large chunks of the 170 km wide Baptistina asteroid had strayed to our side of the Solar System and hit the Moon and the Earth. One of the galactic boulders that hit our world may be the one that caused a mass extinction 65 million years ago and had wiped out the dinosaurs.

Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague believe that the Baptistina asteroid was hit by another asteroid measuring 60 km in diameter, causing it to spew out about 140,000 smaller pieces measuring 1 km each, and 300 more measuring 10 km each. Some of the fragments eventually broke out of orbit from the main body, with 2% of them hitting the Earth.

Scientists put the huge galactic drama within Earth's timeline, and found that the Baptistina collision may have caused the huge amount of craters whose ages go back 100 to 150 million years ago. They surmise that 20% of asteroid impact may have been caused by asteroids that broke off from the larger Baptistina family.

The event also ties up with a 85 km crater (called Tycho) on the moon, which was formed 108 million years ago. Scientists are excited at the prospects of connecting up the Baptistina collision to events on the Earth, the Moon and even on other planets. They hope to find out the implications the impact had on the geological and biological history of Earth. Maybe even how it affected human evolution.

Earlier, Major Nelson announced some very good news from the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). Guess what? Tycho and Gabe is set to  invade Xbox Live Arcade next year in a Penny Arcade video game, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.

That's quite a mouthful. PAAOtRSPoD... Anyway, we got a trailer of the game and it introduces the dynamic duo, at least to those who don't know them: Tycho Erasmus Brahe (the maddening egotist) and Jonathan Gabriel (the whimsical brawler). Lots of crazy stuff are crammed in the trailer, including a giant Fruit F*cker! FTW!

Anyway, we'll leave you to check out the video. Expect more on Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness when the goodies become available.

Penny Arcade's Jerry "Tycho" Holkins has finally responded to Jack Thompson's statements regarding the canned PAX debate in which the outspoken lawyer was supposed to participate.

Thompson declined to show up for the debate due to Penny Arcade not wanting him to say anything about it to the media. In a recent interview by video game news site 1UP, Tycho revealed that the whole debate was a last-minute addition to PAX.

"PAX is almost entirely laid out by now, schedule-wise, but we've got wiggle room here and there," said Tycho. "We thought we could put some of this wiggle room to use in the form of a debate panel."

The moderator for the debate was supposed to be the administrator of GamePolitics.com. No opponent had been decided on yet, but within twenty-four hours, the PAX team had already communicated with Thompson.

As for the reason why Penny Arcade didn't want Thompson talking about the debate, here's Tycho's explanation:

Before any other concern, it is our deep desire that no person be trampled to death at PAX. Given the human density of last year's show, it seemed as though a Jack Thompson panel would create some dicey situations from a safety perspective.

We asked that Jack not discuss the event for these reasons. When he began to do so, publicly, with all major gaming news organizations, we determined that even an explosive, exciting debate wasn't worth trying to work with him.

Tycho also took the opportunity to respond to Thompson's statements regarding the situation:

I think he is lumping us in with his other opponents, some of whom are almost certainly imaginary. I'm not aware of any machinations that are currently ongoing.

As for the sale of "adult materials," by which I assume he means games rated M by the ESRB, we currently think that the best bet is retail enforcement and parent education. As parents ourselves, his assertion is scurrilous and insulting.

Penny Arcade has recently published a three-frame comic strip in its site based on their experiences finding a copy of the seemingly rare Puzzle Quest. The comic features Tycho and Gabe talking about the game with a dialogue that pokes fun at killing and games. The character talks in a way similar to a certain public figure infamous in the gaming world.

Need a clue? He's been suing people left and right for violent content in video games which he sees inappropriately rated by electronic media regulatory boards.

On a side note, there's been some buzz with people saying that the game is a little hard to find the past few weeks. Although the game has a PSP version, some gamers prefer the one on the PC because of the display size. Apparently, some don't enjoy the game fully when all the text crowds up in the PSP's screen. Blending RPG and puzzle elements, the game has hit a significant niche in the crowded game market.

Puzzle Quest is also available for the DS and mobile platforms.

Just recently, Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik (a.k.a., Gabe) has written a scathing commentary in response to a story that was published by CNN. In his commentary, he expresses his dissatisfaction at the fact that, once again, a murder happens and it all gets blamed on the under-aged suspect's gaming habits, and not on other factors which may have shaped the individual into a killer.

For those who don't frequent CNN's site too often, the article in question discusses the recent rise of the number of incidents which involves homeless individuals being murdered by teenagers "for sport."

As a primary example of such an incident, CNN uses the story of the 49-year-old homeless man, Rex Baum, who was killed in 2004 after he was beaten to death by Nathan Moore, Luis Oyola, and Andrew Ihrcke. At the time of the incident, the killers were 15, 16, and 17 years old respectively. After Baum's body was discovered two days after he was killed, the police were able to track down the teens and question them about what they've done. According to police reports, the eldest answered that Baum apparently "reminded him of playing a violent video game."

That statement from Ihrcke may actually be enough to raise more than a few eyebrows within both the gaming and the legislative community. However, what caught Krahulik's attention was the fact that even though the original article continued to present more facts and examples, and also mentions several other theories on what may have been prompting minors to go on killing sprees, it is inevitable that many would stop reading at the point where video games are mentioned. As Krahulik laments:

These kids have given the media their angle and just like all the other cases where games are mentioned no one will ever look any further. No one will ask what their family life was like, what their parents were like, what the kid was like before all this happened. Games did it and that’s the end of the story ... I'm perfectly aware that the reality of the situation was somewhere between the two extremes. I know full well that violent games did not create this killer and I also know that his parents did not make him a murderer ... The sad truth is that the reality we're talking about here would probably never actually see the light of day. The media will tell the story they want to tell regardless and that story will be about violent games. The parents of these kids will be lucky to get two lines in an article about the crime. If they tell a reporter that their son hardly played games or that he was f***ed up long before they bought a Playstation do you really think that will make it into the final article? You'd never see that side of the story, not in a million years. [Bold format not in original text. - QJ]

However, all that has now changed, as the stepmother of one of the suspects (they did not mention which one) has bravely come out in the open to let everyone know the truth about these teens. Who would have known that the parent of a so-called "video game killer" can actually be a gamer herself? Who would have thought that she was a regular Penny Arcade reader? Who would have expected that she would choose to trust the folks of Penny Arcade with the truth instead of handing it over to the mainstream media?

We'll never be as eloquent as Tycho or Gabe, so click on the "Read" link below, read on, and brace yourselves for what a lot of people in politics would probably hate to hear.

 

Regardless of what the semi-anonymous Mr. Tummy had to say about the PSP game list looking dry, the set of titles coming out for the PSP this year is still very, very compelling.

Given EBGames' recent dissing of the PSP, we felt that now would be an appropriate time to present that much tauted PSP upcoming list to you folks. But before we give you folks the list, we have to note that because this blogger is a bit lazy, a lot of games got left out of the list, meaning that the list of titles available for your PSP could still be potentially deeper than this.

What follows are the reasons why PSP owners are still loyal to the Sony handheld.

Get the list of must-wait-for games after the Jump.