Penny Arcade's Child's Play, a five-year-old fundraising outfit that started out dedicated only to the Seattle Children's Hospital, has now evolved into a full-time charity drive.

Child's Play is now extending its reach throughout North America and five countries. Major online retailer Amazon is also giving Child's Play a boost-up by letting participating hospitals create wishlists of items to give to children.

Read more about Child's Play at the full article link below!

(As promised, here's the second serving of our weekly feature, QuickJump QuickPeek! For the uninitiated, this space will be filled with the highlights of the past week in the gaming world. On to the second ish!)

Aside from Michael Bay not totally bastardizing our childhood memories of the Transformers, there are a few other great events that made this week quite memorable. There's Microsoft announcing a 3-year extension to their warranty service as an answer to the reported 33% failure rate of purchased Xbox 360s. There's also the rumbling webtalks of the looming PS3 price cut. And there's the Wii too, reportedly just a little over a million figures behind Xbox 360 in terms of consoles sold. Do bear in mind that we haven't even scratched the tip of the All Spark, err, iceberg yet; there's still a lot more great events that made this week, ahem, "more than meets the eye."

This weeks news', transform and roll out!

The full article article awaits after the jump!

Unless you're a completist who just needs to find all of the berries, Pickories, house parts, and Mui Muis, LocoRoco isn't all that hard to finish. All you've got to do is breeze through the levels (sometimes literally ride the winds). If you're up for a challenge though - and aren't too patient to be a completist - you can opt for speedruns. That's when you try to finish a level or the entire game as fast you can. Remember the recent Twilight Princess speedrun? Jiano finished the game in under 6 hours.

Now, speedruns aren't altogether new. I remember trying to do a number on Super Metroid a few years back - which failed miserably, mind you. So, via PSPimages, we fished out a YouTube video of kingreuben14 doing a Wally West through World 1 - Level 1 of LocoRoco. He finished it in 59 seconds (0:59:77, to be specific). Lookie, lookie:

So, you up for the challenge? Think you can beat this guy's record? We're betting our very own Mabie A. is up to the challenge.

While this list isn't exactly the most original of its kind, we wanted to offer our take on which mamas are the hottest in the virtual world. Everything here is subjective and any list is as good as ours. So without remorse, this is our top 10 hottest game babes to date:

10. Maria Renard (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)- The blonde hottie from Alucard's big night out may not have been seen in 3D glory and all, but the portrait was convincing enough. With her perfect complexion, killer brown eyebrows and the wavy, golden hair, she was a perfect leading lady to match with the vampiric charm of Dracula's son.

9. Mai Shiranui (King of Fighters)- Mai first appeared in the first half of the 90's in Fatal Fury 2. She immediately became one of the stars of the game for obvious reasons: She had the moves and the physique to match. Where rival bear 'em up Street Fighter II featured more conservative lady brawlers, SNK showed Mai's assets off with an innovative twist: Bouncing jubblies! Now imagine the testosterone levels in the old-school arcades more than a decade ago.

8. Aerith Gainsborough (Final Fantasy VII)- The gorgeous good girl of the legendary RPG Final Fantasy VII may have led a short and sweet character lifespan, but the fact remains that she's still one of the most beloved females in the business to date. Okay, the clothes she wore may not exactly be revealing, but we have to understand that it's how she was meant to be packaged in the first place. Imagine if she was a bit more fashion-trendy: She would have given the DoA girls a run for their money.

7. Morrigan Aensland (Dark Stalkers)- The naughty night warrior does that succubus lineage proud. She looked fantastic in 2D and had the ferocity to match. The anime spin-off of Capcom's popular Halloween fighter did her justice as she was just as charming there. Call her costume weird, but that only strengthens the convictions of her appeal. You gotta admit, not a lot of girls will look sexy in that!

More ladies follow at the full article.

The student body of Yale University will be getting smothered with some Video Games Live loving on March 31, in cooperation with the Yale Symphony Orchestra. VGL's on-going tour (with sold out tickets at its wake) hits the academic campus by 8 p.m., but not without some pre-concert festivities. Special events served on the side of the VGL performance include a video game industry educational panel scheduled a day before the concert.

Entitled "Video Games - Past, Present, and Future," the panel is open to the public without any charge. And dropping by for the said talk would be the industry's iconic composers like Lorne Lanning (OddWorld Inhabitants), Tommy Tallarico (Metroid Prime), and Jack Wall (Myst III, Mass Effect). Now, for the show's date itself, from 6 - 8 p.m., they will be hosting cosplay contests, playable games, and gaming competitions (Guitar Hero II and Halo 2).

Ok. On with the concert proper: the show starts at 8 p.m. at Woolsey Hall. One of the biggest numbers for this show would be VGL's Castlevania arrangement. It's going to be played by Martin Leung on Woolsey Hall's 104 year old 3-story pipe organ. Could you imagine hearing Castlevania on that?!

First of all, we're hoping you enjoyed your New Year's celebration. Secondly, we're hoping you've still got energy left for this bit of news we're bringing up.

Toys "R" Us is holding their End of the Year Game Clearance, and we're letting you in on part of the the titles list.

You might wanna hurry, though - the list's been picked up everywhere else, so we can't say what games are still on their shelves. For the guys who're trotting out to get their hands on these major deals, we wish you the best of luck.

DS

$ 4.98

Feel the Magic*

Polarium*

$ 9.98
Advance Wars DS
Castlevania DoS
Deep Labyrinth
Metroid Pinball
Point Blank*
Resident Evil DS
Rub Rabbits
Trace Memory
YuGiOh Nightmare Troubador*

$ 19.98
Lost Magic
Pokemon Dash

View the full list after this jump!

With the launch of two of the industry's most-awaited gaming consoles just around the corner, the general excitement that has been building up can be felt almost everywhere. While the rest of us are painfully counting the days, hours, and minutes for those shiny, new machines to finally be available, Robert Workman from GameDaily takes a step back to assess the video game consoles of our time, to see which companies have actually done their homework.

Basing his comments on the console's price, game library, and lifespan, Workman then proceeds to grading the various gaming systems and issues a small prediction for that particular console.

Playstation 2: B+
A solid gaming machine with a fair price, the PS2 has a good library of games, as well as one of the best controllers of its time, no thanks to the Dual Shock 2. Despite being cast in the shadow of its bigger relative, the Playstation3, many good games are still being published for this well-loved console, with titles including the types of Final Fantasy XII (I personally recommend this game, by the way), God of War, and Okami. However, this star may just lose the limelight because of the PS3's superior technology.

Xbox: D
Microsoft's first attempt to enter the gaming industry may not have been as successful as they wanted it to be. Though the Xbox has a good library of games, this good factor may have been neutralized by its bulky frame. At this time, Microsoft has also stopped publishing games for this platform, with only the occasional third-party title making a quiet appearance from time to time. It may have been doom for this console the moment the Xbox 360 was released.

Want to know how other consoles fared? Then read the rest at the full article!

If there's one thing the world of gaming never runs out of, it's our heroes. But what is it that truly makes someone hero-worthy? Is it the boostified coiling guns? Flashy magic spells, raw strength, or just plain old Sawyer smarts perhaps? Nah, we won't give you the "it's because of their pure heart and honest intentions" spin. We know the answer - it's the way our heroes shred the tiniest bits of the villains.

Ninja9393 probably had that in mind when he came up with the new features for his 'brew - Metroid: Return of the SA-X. Although it's a pretty long list and packs a heavier "punch" than its earlier versions, the most notable feature, and definitely one that has the best impact on the game's development however, is the addition of enemies.

Yep, a hero won't be kickass if it has no enemy to own. So in this version, Ninja9393 included a crouched alien thingy for our character to do every hero's favorite pastime - mess up the game with the villain's blood smears. Here's the changelog:

-Enemies(space pirate)
-Collision
-Ability to kill enemies(may take 10-20 shots)

To be added in the next release:
-The story
-Ability to play either as the SA-X or The Fusion Suit Samus.
-More rooms
-Cutscenes

For future releases, Ninja9393 said that a major enhancement could be the option to play either SA-X or Samus. We love our heroes but it's nice to feel "evil" sometimes right? He also added that he did this so the game could have two stories and richer gameplay later on.

Download: [Metroid: Return of the SA-X 2.75]

It was only a really short while ago that we released the beta test (v0.5) of Exophase's gpSP GBA emulator for our beloved PSPs. The response since then is overwhelming! Many of you guys have tried gpSP out on some of your favorite games. Some games you've tried ran like a dream at full speed; others managed to get through with a few hitches. And there were some games that didn't load, or crashed while attempting to load.

Thanks to MonkeyBoy1916, Kyubi Naruto, SeikenZ, and all the helpful people at the comments and forum pages for the gpSP release/compatibility, we do have a rather long list of games that worked perfectly, games that worked (more or less), and games that so far didn't work when tried with the beta gpSP.

Please remember that both gpSP and this compatibility list are still a work in progress. And both need your help, the help of the PSP homebrew community. If there is a game you know that isn't on this list, give it a try on our own copy of gpSP and tell us the results! Tell us how the game ran on our PSP - how fast or slow (and at what points in the game), framerates/frameskips, sound issues, load/saves, the whole works! Detailed explanations will help the development process on this emulator.

Post your responses and suggestions in the release compatibility forum thread, or here at the comments page. We're sure Exophase will appreciate them.

Discuss: [Forum Compatibility Thread]

The full list awaits after the jump!

Ninja9393 has released an updated version of his homebrew game for the PSP, Metroid: Return of the SA-X, updating it to version 2.0 today. This 2.0 update adds some great new animation, making an amazing difference to the overall quality of the graphics, as well as the addition of another room that you can enter amongst other features. Here's the changelog:

• New animation
• Ability to go into 2 rooms (walk through the blue door)
• Health bar
• Game over screen
• The ability to kill yourself using r trigger
• More organized scripts

You can also expect missiles (due to a few issues) and music in version 2.5 which will be released at a later date.

Download: [Metroid: Return of the SA-X v2.0]