Video game advertising needs to get back to the good old days of "You know what's fun? Murder."

Industry and multi-console news

New media: Highlander trailer

• THQ has acquired Big Huge Games, developers of the Rise of Nations series and the Live Arcade edition of Catan.
• New UK sales charts are out.
• Uwe Boll won't be making any more big budget movies any time soon, as his $70 million Dungeon Siege movie made $3 million its opening weekend. It doesn't help that the German tax shelters he was using to fund his movies are now illegal.
• Gamasutra has an interview with the general manager of Disney Interactive.
• Midway Austin has explained away recent layoffs as "routine."
• Next Generation has an interview with Atsushi Inaba, formerly of Clover and now with Seeds (which is itself now PlatinumGames).
• MTV's Multiplayer blog asks some game industry veterans about their first video game experiences.
• Elsewhere in MTV's Multiplayer blog, they're listing the greatest horses in video game history.
• A newly proposed South Dakota bill could institute taxes on downloadable content.
• The Writer's Guild of America has announced the nominees for their video game writing award.
• Atari claims recent reports of Alone in the Dark 5's delays are just rumors.
• 200 signed copies of Devil May Cry 4, 100 for the 360 and 100 for the PS3, will be distributed randomly across the US along with the regular editions. It will just be a matter of finding them.
• GameDaily, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of (except perhaps to make them look like asses), talks to porn stars about video games. But Jenna Haze's answer was genuinely surprising.
• If moving your fingers is proving too strenuous for you, control games with thoughts and slight facial twitches with the Neural Impulse Actuator.
• The Entertainment Software Association is gearing up to start writing checks to political campaigns.
• Micro Center is running ads with a March date for GTAIV printed on them, though that's obviously not in any way official.
• The only thing worse than watching a clip of Ellen Degeneres play through the entirety of Baracuda in Guitar Hero III is watching her do it on easy.
• Professor Layton/Dragon Quest 8 developer Level 5 is putting its name on a soccer stadium in Japan.
• Harmonix's Kasson Crooker says they would love to bring custom tracks into Rock Band if they could find a way.
• A recent survey in Japan finds out what Japanese people think are the signs of an otaku.
• What They Play is a new site aiming to be a objective video game content guide for parents, describing game content without preaching about morals or labeling who should and shouldn't play it.

PC and mobile news

New content: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars 1.4 patch

• Shacknews has a preview of the upcoming Team Fortress 2 map Badlands.
• A Mac edition of Call of Duty 4 is in the works, due out in May.
• Will Wright's simulation game Spore is also coming to Macs.
• Crytek intends to team up with PunkBuster to stop cheaters in Crysis.
• An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released that adds a couple options and fixes bugs.
• Infinity Ward has commented on the "disturbing" number of people playing pirated copies of Call of Duty 4.

Nintendo news

New media: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney trailer

• Goddammit: Smash Bros. Brawl is delayed again. Also, Nintendo UK is not commenting on a European release date.
• Goichi Suda says that he wants to make a sequel to No More Heroes. "There's no other action game like it for the Wii. If it was a band, it would be really energetic, like the Arctic Monkeys."
• Nintendo has announced the Wii Fit Mat, to absorb the heavy impact of all your hardcore fitness training.
• Ubisoft has officially announced the Assassin's Creed DS game that we all knew about anyway.
• Several Nintendo focused sessions at GDC have been announced, including a talk on the project lifecycle of the WiiWare title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King, and a postmortem on Super Smash Bros Brawl.
• There is now an online form one can fill out to get replacement Wii Guitar Hero III discs, if using a phone triggers panic attacks.
• Nintendo will be holding an Advance Wars: Days of Ruin launch party at the Nintendo World Store in New York City on the 20th.
• Amazon's deal of the day is Backyard Basketball for $14.99. They also have Thrillville on the Wii for $32.99.

Sony news

• Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G has been delayed by two weeks in Japan.
• The PS3 is continuing to look like the best choice for a Blu-ray player, as other players will be left out of content down the line because they are not upgradeable.
• 2K Boston, the team behind Bioshock, is looking for PS3 developers.
• There's a video guide up on how to stream PC games to your PS3.
• Amazon has Virtua Fighter 5 for $29.99.

Microsoft news

New content: Rock Band tracks, Turok demo for many regions that aren't the US

• Live boss Chris Satchell will be keynoting GDC this year.
• "According to sources close to 3D Realms," a Live Arcade version of Duke Nukem 3D is coming in the next few months.
• In a video interview, Tomonobu Itagaki explains why Ninja Gaiden II has a regenerating health bar.
• Yet another Halo 3 suicide video. See this one is totally different because it has two people in it.
• Apparently that retard talking about all the horrible homo sex in Mass Effect wasn't a fake after all. Now he's written a response to all the people trying to correct him on the gaping inaccuracies of his article. He doesn't correct much of anything, it seems, even after watching video of the scene in question. "In the lesbian version one woman's hand appears to stimulate the crotch of the other passing between the legs." No, I take it back, I'm still not convinced this isn't all an elaborate ruse.
• Amazon has the 360 HD-DVD player for $159.99.