Trading standards officers in the UK are reporting the possible influx of unsafe chargers for handheld game consoles and various other gadgets, with one brand possibly causing overheating or electrocution. Learn more after the jump.

Go!View's up and running at the UK and Ireland right now folks! If you're from the area and you want to know if it's worth checking out, we tell you it is. But don't take our word for it. Go right now to our full article to read up on more nitty-gritties concerning this service.

Dr. Tanya Byron has raided airwaves again with her latest endeavor with video games. After her six-month review of game violence, she was able to write and front a BBC TV show wherein she linked playing video games to heroin addiction. More details can be found in the full article.

After the whole Manhunt 2 (PSP and Wii) fiasco and the controversy it spawned, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is now facing heavy scrutiny to see if it still remains a viable option for the classification of video games. More in the full article.

Here's your chance to vote for your favorite games for the past year! Now on it's 25th year, the Golden Joystick Awards is going stronger than ever, again, being broadcast live on the internet this year. With over half a million votes last year, the producers are aiming for a million votes to celebrate a quarter of a century's voting. There are 17 categories you can vote in this year:

Ultimate Game of the Year
The Sun Family Game of the Year
Bliss Girl's Choice Award
Nuts All Nighter Award
BBC 1Xtra & Rampage Soundtrack of the Year
Handheld Game of the Year
Innovation of the Year
The One To Watch Award
Mobile Game of the Year
Nintendo Game of the Year
Online Game of the Year
PC Game of the Year
Playstation Game of the Year
Xbox Game of the Year
Publisher of the Year
Retailer of the Year
UK Developer of the Year

We'd love to give you a complete list of all the games you can vote for, but that'd just be crazy. But to give a sampling, there's MotorStorm, Crackdown, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and even the Halo 3 beta. Go on over the list and look at the nominated titles for yourself. And while you're at it, vote for the games that made you spend so much time on your couch - which probably already has your butt-print on it.

To vote, you can visit Golden Joystick's official site behind the Read link below! You can also watch videos from last year's Awards and if you have the cash, buy your own tickets to the show. (Take us with you.)

With all the hubbub about Manhunt 2 being banned, it's not surprising that it's caught the attention of the people, particularly a certain Mr. Jack Thompson. In an email that also spoke of Take-Two's troubles with its admittedly ultra-violent title, the lawyer states that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) has given itself some much-needed credibility by slapping Manhunt 2 an Adults Only rating. He elaborates that by doing so, the ESRB has proven that its ratings actually mean something, and not just a fancy label.

Here's Mister Jack Thompson's email, verbatim:

This is all absolutely delicious. I warned Take-Two months ago that there would be huge problems if it went ahead with Manhunt 2. Who was right about that kiddies?

Secondly, the BBC and the world are now laughing at Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick for his idiotic statement yesterday that Manhunt 2 is "a fine piece of art." Find the BBC story on that! Right, and Jack the Ripper was his generation's Rembrandt. Please.

Take-Two has been hemorrhaging cash over the last few financial quarters, and this must makes it worse. I love it. If you all would stop and think about this for a minute, this development is a HUGE benefit to the video game industry.

It fits nicely with their argument that the ESRB ratings are real and actually mean something. Responsible people within the industry, even Doug Lowenstein, have been saying for quite sometime that Take-Two had become a problem for the entire industry because it was painting a bullseye on the back of the whole industry and making it more difficult for the industry to get US politicians off its back.

Now the ESRB does something that indicates is might be trustworthy, and you nitwits go bonkers because of that development. Grow up and smell the hot coffee. This is the best thing that could have happened to the industry. The isolation and ostracism of Take-Two by the industry was long overdue. Now that it has come, rejoice.

Certainly strong words coming from Mr. Jack Thompson, but they do carry water, specifically about the ESRB. The fact that the AO rating was enough to instigate such a reaction gives more credibility to the ratings system, which means parents will be able to trust the label on the games they're buying for their kids.

 

QJ.Net loyal reader Edward Johnson sent us an email concerning a PlayStation Portable (PSP) portal. Some of might have seen this before but if this sounds martian to you, it's actually called Digiplay and is currently on version 3.27.

Some of its noteworthy features include more than 70 flash games as well as around 10 useful applications. If you really want to know, the more important programs included in version 3.27 are messengers MSN, Yahoo, and AIM as well as application Pixel Fixer. It also has podcasts, most coming from BBC.

A portal, basically, is a website designed to be viewed on your PSP. most of the times, all you have to do is access a URL address through your handheld's Internet browser. In Digiplay's case, "http://www.digiplay.co.nr" is the address. Also, this same portal has an offline version and the file can be downloaded below.

The developer of Digiplay v3.27 mentioned that the file is compatible with PSP units running on FW 2.70 or higher and that version 3.79 will be coming soon.

Download: Digiplay v3.2

Pocket Gamer UK knows about the thin grey line we walk on with each and every homebrew and hack done by the dedicated programmers out there in the scene. To that end, they've put up a pretty good list of places to get free stuff for your PSP, and all of it's completely legal.

They've got a couple of haunts in mind in addition to the Sony freebies from their different stores. You can pick up movies and music from places such as BBC online and Atom Films. You can also grab some free comics in the form of PSP-formatted Ctrl-Alt-Del issues and the NYC2123.

There's also a host of emulators and homebrew you can grab that's completely legal, such as Zx-81's numerous homebrew projects, the map browser known as WorldView, and Java4PSP, "a cooperative project set on bringing the Java Micro Edition platform in its entirety to the PSP."

Of course, they missed a couple of fun things, like the free wallpapers and themes from Scion, and the hundreds of lovable podcasts out there for the listening public, but that's okay. We've got those covered for the PSP-packing public to read about, anyway.

 

While the PSP homebrew scene prides itself on being a huge multi-cultured community of people from all over the globe, the big majority of people who own a PSP have never tried out homebrew. Funny as it may sound, it is a fact that the homebrew community is nothing more than a niche area which generally doesn't receive much mainstream coverage apart from dedicated PSP homebrew sites.

Because of that very reason, we were pleasantly surprised to find a very nice article over at BBC covering the PSP homebrew scene. Now we'll be frank here. Generally, when any mainstream site/news agency decides to cover the homebrew scene, we tend to read it for entertainment purposes because reporters generally don't know what they're talking about. Either that, or they only have statements from the big corporations which means that their "research" is generally biased toward the bigwigs. This is precisely the reason why we found this article a pleasant surprise.

Now rather than trying to describe the article itself, we'll quote parts of it here:

Fanjita - real name David Court - is very different from the popular hacker stereotype of the socially inept teenaged geek working all night in his bedroom. A married man of 34, he is an accomplished professional programmer who writes server software for large telecommunications companies for a living. He spends an hour or two a night hacking PSP software in his Edinburgh home, and is also a martial arts enthusiast.

Dark Alex fits much more comfortably into the hacker mould. A student from Spain, his hacker moniker derives from his real name, Alejandro, and a liking for all things gothic, he says. His interests are Japanese Manga comics and cats, but PSP hacking is his main hobby.

The article is actually peppered around with statements from Fanjita and Dark_AleX, the two people who're the faces of the PSP homebrew scene right now. That reason alone is enough to force any homebrew lover to go over and check it out.

Thanks to Reggie for the heads up!

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Update: This morning at 07:50 GMT, the BBC World Service Radio had a chance to talk with Fanjita over the phone. The interview was telecast live on radio and the internet. At the bottom, we've linked the file so you can download it as an MP3. If you want to listen to the original stream, you can do so from the linked page.

Download: Fanjita's interview by the BBC (audio)

The cult comedy show Little Britain has undergone quite a number of transformations already. It actually started as a character-based BBC radio show. After it gained a huge following, it was then converted into a television sketch show and is set to return for a Christmas special this year. Also, it is no secret that American versions are coming out in 2007, both for HBO and film.

What the heck is Little Britain doing on QJ? Developer Blast Entertainment announced today that a game version of the show is currently in the works for the PC, PS2 and PSP. The first two versions are to appear in January 2007, while the PSP one is scheduled for a little later.

Details about the game are still scarce as of the moment. However, we understand that the game will simulate an episode of Little Britain with gamers having to complete several mini-games to advance. Levels are categorized by skits with the end credits being the last level (and most hardest?). We really have no idea as to how the game would go but  the mini-games will be based from the show's characters:

• Lou and Andy
• chav Vicky Pollard
• Mr. Mann
• transvestites Emily and Florence
• fat fighter Marjorie Dawes
• Daffyd Thomas (the "only gay in the village")
• Judy and Maggie
• Letty