Got some spare time and a talent for designing wallpapers? This is you chance to shine! PlayStation.com is sponsoring a contest for the best Lemmings wallpaper. They call it the Lemmings Wallpaper Contest (like, how else would they call it?). The contest is based on Lemmings, the PSP game. If you don't have the game on your PSP, Lemmings are green-haired workaholic rodents with limited IQ. Their limited brainpower makes them do the same thing over and over.

Now your mission, should you accept the challenge, is to design an original Lemmings-inspired wallpaper for the PSP. The judges will choose the Top 10 designs from all the entries and post them on the official Playstation site. All 10 wallpaper finalists will also be posted on www.SaveTheLemmings.com, the Official Game Site. From the 10 finalists, the winner will be chosen by PlayStation Underground members.

The Lemmings Wallpaper Contest's general rules are:

• No purchase necessary
• Promotion ends 7/31/06
• Open to U.S. residents 13 years and older registered PlayStation Underground members
• Void where prohibited

The prizes? All 10 finalists will receive an inflatable Lemming doll (see below, left) and game poster. The winner gets a package (below, right) that includes a brand new PSP system , a copy of Lemmings and other assorted Lemmings goodies! Not bad at all! For details and everything to get your creative juices going, get them here. Thanks for the tip, Alexlook!

How about some "grade A", premium level downloadable content for your PSP? Got your attention now haven't I? Good, because QJ.net and Wind-Up Records have joined forces to bring you just that. The release of Seether's upcoming CD/DVD package, One Cold Night, which features hits from their debut albums Disclaimer and Disclaimer II and their current release, Karma & Effect, as well as smash hits “Remedy” and “Broken,” is just around the corner on July 11th. To celebrate, we've got some behind the scenes audio and video, just for you.

Find out where to download the goods and how to enter the contest after the jump!

As Ryan Seacrest would say, the lines are now open and time to vote for your favorite. No singing stars here, only novice car designers vying for the $2,500 prize as Atari opens the online polls this weekend for the “Be A Car Designer” contest. The  competition aims to create an image of a dream concept car and the winning design (aside from the money) will have the privilege of driving alongside motor legends Lamborghini, Ferrari and Aston Martin as a fully functioning 3D vehicle in Test Drive Unlimited.

Voting started last July 1 and will end on July 10. The winning entry will be determined by the number of valid votes from the public and by checking which one satisfies all of the rules.  We've seen some of them (including the two images above) and picking the best design won't be easy!

Test Drive Unlimited provides a lifestyle and automotive gaming experience with the hottest things on four wheels (and two wheels) to hit the world's roads. It has more than 1000 miles of photo-realistic Hawaiian terrain, a challenging single player game and a a number of online options. The Massively Open Online Racing (MOOR) enables gamers to interact with thousands simultaneously.

There are more than 100 licensed cars and bikes from exclusive manufacturers, each one fully customizable with interior and exterior details and functions to suit every gamer's fantasy. Test Drive Unlimited will be available in September 2006 for the Xbox 360.

Cast your vote for the 'Be A Car Designer' contest here.

TeamOverload from our forums has started a 2.70 Flash Competition (for the Playstation Portable). This is much like Hardrive's competition earlier this month, but the reward has been improved, and hopefully more contestants will enter. I, as FrozenIpaq, am fully supporting this competition and hope that you will all enter who have knowledge of flash producing. We will be grateful for all entries received.

 

So, I'm proud to announce our forums first "official" flash competition. This competition will not only include applications and games, but also flash portals. Although, these will be split into two categories of Flash Portals and Flash Games/Applications. The contest was originally for portals, but we have extended it for all flash applications, but separated portals from games/apps to ensure a "fair" fight. So, now that you know there are two flash categories, you are probably wondering what the prizes are.

 

There are small prizes for each category which include -

 

Flash Portals -

1st Place - 25,000 forum points + Free Premium Membership + Free Custom User Title

2nd Place - 10,000 forum points + Free Custom User Title

3rd - 5,000 forum points OR Free Custom User Title.

 

Flash Applications/Games

1st Place - 25,000 forum points + Free Premium Membership + Free Custom User Title

2nd Place - 10,000 forum points + Free Custom User Title

3rd - 5,000 forum points OR Free Custom User Title.

 

Now, you are probably wondering how the voting/choosing is operated. This of course, will be where you come in. At the end of the competition we will have a forum poll that will allow all of our users to vote for who they think should win. So, the winners of the competition are not chosen by us, but you!

 

If you are interested in this contest, all of the requirements are listed after the jump or in the forum thread. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments or the thread, I will do my best to answer them.

[UPDATE] The deadline is now July 29th, this should be enough to make some good flash applications/games.

Hardhat (thanks for the heads up!) wanted to make it to PS2Dev's Fourth Creation 2006 contest; hence, he went on and submitted his unfinished game, Jump Gunnar, Jump. Yet as he said, he has this "I could do it better after the deadline" attitude and you just have to try out the latest version of the game to know that he is not kidding.

V1.0 and v1.10 are as different as "night and day", says the author and I couldn't agree more. Working sleepless night to make an improved game, hardhat was finally convinced by Wilhel to stop fixing the bugs and start sharing the definitely better version of the game.

Jump Gunnar, Jump v1.10 not only has new levels, the old levels have been improved as well. New graphics and a new physics graphics - which results to less embedding in ground and nicer gravity - are also included in this version. The scrolling in this latest version has been smoothed plus the enemies bug has been fixed so you can already shoot them.

The slew of new things in hardhat's game does not end there. Also in the latest release are new enemies (evil duck and shooting cow), weapon (bomb), terrain (exploding ground, bombable wall, ceiling or floor, new slopes, invisible ground), and chests (opens with bomb).

Other better things to look out for in v1.10 of Jump Gunnar, Jump are:

• Variable height jumping
• Sound effects and music
• SELECT now allow you to replay the current level
• START now quits
• Updated level editor with new ground types, new attributes
• New tips file with advice for new players.
• Cut screens: get ready, level complete, game over
• Updated status bar, with number of rings collected (??? -> OOO), amount of bombs ("Ammo")

Yet the game is far from perfection as there are still issues to deal with; like the occasional hillwalking sinkhole, walls ignoring the fruits from chest, and mess in wordwrapping in cut screens. Hardhat also points out that level 6 is hard (but solveable), plus there are other issues with the level editor as well - can't make bombable wall and invisible wall, doesn't load or save attributes, and buttons are not in the new skin.

Despite these issues, I still recommend that you guys pick up this game from hardhat. It's still loads of fun controlling that running, jumping, gun-trotting sheep Gunnar as he tries to collect as many fruits as he can to escape the evil Shephard's gauntlet.

Download: [Jump Gunnar, Jump v1.10]

I know they've announced it the other day, but it's still worth talking about as this "contest" will not end until July 23. Yup, I'm talking about the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Voice-Over Contest.

You can be part of this game when Activision finally adds a new character to the Marvel game intended for different consoles. The company is planning to add Namor (a.k.a. Sub-Mariner) and Jean Grey to their roster of playable characters. As a consequence, Activision is now calling for enthusiasts to audition to be the voice of these two Marvel characters (the Bruce Banner voice-over promo has been closed already).

Winners will get a copy of the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game, an Xbox 360, a poster of the game with Stan Lee's signature, a pack of Ultimate Alliance playing cards and a Los Angeles trip for two to meet the producers and to record their lines.

The contest will run until the 23rd of July. So, what are you waiting for?

One of my favorite games in the arcade is the Taiko Master, or in Japanese, "Taiko no Tatsujin." At my end of the world, PSPs are packaged with Taiko Master Portable. With the popularity of the game, these cute traditional drums are making its way to the Playstation Portable again!

This time, the game has a whopping number of 62 songs. It is not said whether the game contains some of its old songs, nonetheless, a variety of songs are available for play. From Anime theme songs, to J-Pop and Classical songs, Taiko Master is set to get you playing your PSP for a good long time. Thank god, it's not as tiring as the arcade, nonetheless, you can expect your thumbs wearing out in the difficult mode.

One thing quite interesting with the Taiko Master for the PSP is that other than the taiko game, it also has a round of mini-games for everyone! First, it has an adventure that plays like macross wherein you do your best to avoid obstacles, at the same time, you have to manage to get your power ups. Another game lets you stack up some items dropped by a giant taiko balloon. You should stack the items properly else, your stack will be off balance and you will lose the game. There is also a balloon art contest as well as a mini-game called "Sweet Panic!"

Taiko Master Portable 2 is a fun game which teaches you rhythm and hand eye coordination. Rarely do games get to be as fun as the Taiko Master. The game will be sold in stores on September, 2006.

Thinking of giving your PSP a new look? Before you part with your cash, you might want to try your luck in getting a PSP Ghost Case for free! ClearXbox.com is giving away 10 PSP Ghost Cases to randomly selected individuals who join their mailing list. You could be one of the 10 lucky winners if you head on to their site and sign-up for the mailing list. Should your lucky charm fail to work, you'd still get ClearXbox's Monthly Insider Info and Discounts Newsletter. What have you got to lose?

It's time for PS2Dev's Fourth Creation 2006 contest and the PSPSMM coder team presents us with their entry: Jump Gunnar, Jump.

This 2D platform game let's you control of what hardhat describes as your "seemingly average every day sheep". But believe me, Gunnar the sheep is no 'average everyday sheep'! He does run and jump as well as the ordinary sheep but he walks with his two hind legs (an image reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm) and has a gun to protect himself.

Finding himself in the evil Shephard's gauntlet, Gunnar needs to make it to the end. But Shephard will not make it easy for our sheep. Before making it to the next level, gun-armed Gunnar needs to collect 505 of the fruits. Walking and flying enemies will make this seemingly simple task hard for you. When hit by these enemies, your health status will be reduced. Being injured by an enemy will cause Gunnar to flash for a moment. There will be flags that appear in the levels, make sure to touch them if you die so you can prevent Gunnar from having to start all over again. Save Gunnar via the following controls:

• left, right arrow - move Gunnar
• X - jump Gunnar
• O - shoot in the direction that Gunnar is facing

Of course there are special power ups to help Gunnar in his quest to exit the gauntlet. There will be power-ups for free life, mini-health, and full health. To add to to Gunnar's special abilities is his being time-conscious, so make sure to also collect as much clocks and rings as possible.

You might need the latest version of Stefano Russello's PSPBrew to make the installion of this game easier (download link provided below).

The PSPSMM team has made Jump Gunnar, Jump a "mega modable supergame" and comes with a level editor and spritesheet. Also in the download of the game are the source and documentation. For info on how to mod this game, just go over the README text. There are currently eight levels in this PSPSMM release.

Thanks to Wilhel1812 for the tip!

Download: [Jump Gunnar, Jump]
Download: [PSPBrew v0.70]

Over at our forums, we had an exclusive 2.7 flash competition rolling around, and the winners have finally been announced! This contest was started on May 28th of this year and the deadline for submissions was June 10th. Throughout this time period, we saw a total of 6 entries, all different in quality and presentation. Although we didn't announce the competition here, we still got great support from our forum users, and it has turned out great! There was no reward besides 10,000 forum points, but everyone was eager to enter!

Now, the winner (drum roll please!) of the QJ.net Forum's 2.7 Flash Competition held by Hardrive is - Snake! Even though this game was a clone of a very popular game, it still dropped our jaws when we played it. It was very smooth, clean, and addictive! Aside from Snake, we had some very good entries, and all the entries are listed below (download of all of them can be found at bottom of article) -

1) Snake - PatrikStar (31 votes)
Snake, a game that we have all learned to love, has been recreated for the PSP in Flash format, and took the competition by storm! You can download it (with the other entries) below the article, or you can play the online version.

2) Bowsers World - Maniakc (13 votes)
This is a short film made in a couple of hours and the author's hard work paid off, winning second in the competition. As far as what the movie is about, you will have to download it to find out (I don't like giving spoilers!). Like Snake, you can download it in the download package at the bottom of the article and no online version is available for this game (sorry).

3) Creatures PSP - Shallan (11 votes)
Coming close to second place, Creatures PSP snagged third place. Creatures is a flash port of the game Creatures, and it's very impressive on the PSP! This game should've earned second in my opinion, but the people have spoken, and third place is what it received. You can download the file for your PSP below, or you can play the online version.

4) Proton Star - Nahkranoth (8 votes)
Proton Star is a space strategy game created in Flash Player 6 and features great strategic gameplay. Although, a mouse is required to play this game, it's very polished and fun! You can download it below, or you can play the online version.

5) Bouncy Ball - Nevercominghome (3 votes)
Bouncy Ball is a very basic "game" in which you move a ball around the screen. This game was not made expecting to win, but at least the author entered (props!). There is no online version, but you can download it below with the other flash games.

6) PSP Poem - Pyro_person6493 (1 vote)
Coming in last place is not a game at all, but rather a poem of the PSP, made for the PSP. The poem was constructed of a few lines and some nice transition effects. The poem is rather fast when viewed on your PC, but it is much slower on the PSP (readable on the PSP). You can download it below with the other entries, or you can view the online version - Copy and paste link's url into a new window for it to work.

Download: [Hardrive's 2.7 Flash Competition - Entries (All)]