After Square Enix's FF13 cross-platform announcement yesterday, some people have learned to not count all their exclusive chicks before the eggs hatch. Here's something, however, that we can all be sure is pretty much already in the basket: God of War 3 finally showed itself during Sony's press conference at E3 via a teaser trailer, and man, we can't wait! And it isn't much of a long wait either! Catch that rampaging Titan and head to the full article to watch the trailer and for more details.

 

Perpetual Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing some beta codes for Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. The keys are being given out to help facilitate the stability test that will be happening over the weekend.

Before you go rushing off to get a beta key though, you might want to know what the game is about first. Players will be placed in a very problematic time in the history of Rome. A race of beings that the Olympian gods imprisoned has returned from exile seeking vengeance. They start their assault by kidnapping all of Rome's heroes and inciting beasts, creatures, and rival cultures to attack the city.

If that got you interested in trying the game, click on our Read Link for more details on how you can get a beta code for Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising.

(Developers Corner will serve as a tribute to the pillars of the PSP homebrew community. Basically, we'll be running a series of posts highlighting the achievements of a particular hero of homebrew. It'll be rundown of their major contributions to the PSP homebrew scene, think of it as our online hall of fame for the guys that make PSP a true multi-media device.)

Since this is the very first Developer's Corner post we might as well greet the PSP scene with a bang, and nobody gives a louder bang than hero of homebrew Dark AleX. If I'm to liken DaX to a popular video game character, it has to be God of War's Kratos. Granted he's no Zeus (that's got to be Sony, they made the PlayStation Portable after all), but Kratos has no qualms smiting the mighty God of Gods when he feels like it. That's exactly what Dark Alex is to the homebrew community, the lone force that occasionally kicks Sony between the legs with his PSP firmware hacks. Yes he's a badass, but he's our badass.

So just who Dark AleX really is? He's the guy that sired golden custom firmwares, the very same dude that rescued us from the dark days of various official firmwares, and the man responsible for playable PS1 backups in our PSPs. And yes, he's also the cool guy that's got a marijuana leaf url icon (can't get any more badass than that) plastered in his website.

The chronicle of Dark Alex awaits after the jump!

 

If you like star gazing and mythology (like this writer), then you're going to enjoy this one. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, have been captured in infrared by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Take out your telescopes and binoculars.

If you're not so into the heavenly bodies geekiness, a bit of a primer. In mythology, the Pleiades are the seven daughters of Pleione and Atlas, the titan: Alcyone, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta, Celaeno and Asterope. Now, when Atlas was asked to carry the sky on his shoulders, the hunter Orion started pursuing the Pleiades. King of the gods Zeus stepped in and turned them into doves - when that didn't work, he turned them into a cluster of stars.

That cluster of stars is on the constellation Taurus and they're going to be very visible in the night sky, both for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. A couple of days back, they shone just above Venus (it's like they're having a photoshoot). On April 19, the crescent moon will join them and cut in between the Pleiades and Venus. The heavenly show will also be visible to the naked eye on clear nights.

The picture on the left is the one taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The yellow, green and red in the background of the stars is made up of dust. The star cluster travels through cloud that may explain the dust. The parent star Atlas is also visible in the picture along with other stars in blue.

The Spitzer also gathered some data on "brown dwarfs" or failed stars plus some planetary debris. The telescope gives astronomers a better view of cooler, smaller stars and lets them study the faint stars better. (Of course if the star has lower mass and cooler, it is less visible.) According to John Stauffer of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission, the Pleiades are perfect for the study of the evolution of stars.

Altered Beast is another Virtual Console offering from Nintendo. For this game, you are brought back to life by Zeus. In exchange, you are then sent on a mission to save his daughter, Athena, from the underworld. The task is certainly not easy, and the road to the underworld is just as treacherous as the underworld itself.

Along the way, it would be best if you collect the Spirit balls dropped by the enemies so that your strength will be increased. With this, you may also transform int a variety of mythical creatures with powerful attacks. Check out these screenshots to see more what you'll be getting yourself into.

More after the jump!