Last week's game releases introduced a lot of fun games, such as Dr. Mario DX and Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. This week, however, is the week for game ports, with Mac getting its own conversion of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC, PS3, Xbox 360), the Nintendo DS getting the arcade classic Super Dodgeball Brawlers, and many others.

* Article originally posted May 26, 2008 at 12:37AM

Sometimes, it's better to leave some things alone, especially when you're faced with something like Pandora's Box. In Gamecock Media Group and Spark Unlimited's Legendary for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, we see just how much trouble one can get into just be opening a box. Check out the full article for the video.

It's been a while (more than year actually) since we've heard news about Sabotage, the new stealth action game for the PC from Replay Studios. Now we find out it's not only been renamed to Velvet Assassin, but now it's also making its way into the next gen consoles. Velvet Assassin follows the true story of British Agent Violette Szabo during World War II. More details in the full article.

Still waiting for the release date of Spark Unlimited's Legendary: The Box (PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3)? Well, your wait will end this summer, according to Atari and Gamecock Media Group.

To celebrate the announcement, the two companies also shared with us a couple of new screenshots for the game. Check them out after the jump!

After months of being silent about upcoming PC and Nintendo DS builds of video game Insecticide, developer Crackpot Entertainment and publisher Gamecock Media Group have finally announced its release date.

For those who haven't been paying attention to this one, Insecticide takes place in the world populated with bugs and your objective is to solve a murder mystery that happened in a company.. The release dates after the jump!

Independent works will always have a hard time finding its niche in an already established market, and video games are no exception. Usually the bottomline in creating a game is creativity versus profitability.

Steve Escalante, Business Development VP of the Gamecock Media Group, talked about this subject during the Texas' Independent Game Conference. Read more in the full article.

While a lot of details on Spark Unlimited's Legendary: The Box (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) are yet to be revealed, the developer has been sharing screenshots to give us a hint of things to come. Fresh off the release platter are these 17 nice images. Is the game promising to hold up in the congested and very competitive FPS scene in the Microsoft Xbox 360, PC, and Sony PlayStation 3 turfs? See for yourself with the images in the full article!

E3 came and went, and Gamecock Media Group saw it fitting to celebrate the end of the eventful affair with a bang. Well, sort of. A not-so-sombre funeral procession for the "death" of this year's E3 was held on the eve of the event's final day, spearheaded by the masters of anti-mainstream Gamecock.

A motley crew comprising of a Chinese dragon, masked stilt walkers accompanied the funeral march, with the dirge performed by drummers and a horn section with flourish.

Gamecock's Mike Wilson turned up in the procession donning a hospital gown - he was rushed to the ER the night before. The reason? "I think I got some E3 on me and I've gotten very sick for the last couple of days," Wilson said. "I had to be rushed to the hospital in the night after shaking in my bed for hours for the second day in a row."

Terrible? Quite so. But according to Wilson, he would have gone to the parade without wearing any pants if it weren't for the hospital gown that was given to him. Things would have gone worse otherwise.

Could the funeral procession, which marched from Santa Monica pier to Venice Beach, mean more than the end of E3 festivities? Or could it be meant for the rhetorical "death" of the festive, traditional E3 that gamers have known and loved?

Wilson sympathizes with the people who were badly affected by the sudden change of E3, which went from being free-for-all to attendance only. "'I've been meaning to go over to Barker Hanger' is what everybody's been saying, but nobody can go," Wilson said, referring to independent and aspiring game developers.

What is a dungeon? Is it an ominous treasure vault filled with lonely creatures waiting to be taken down by your trusty sword arm? Or is it a bustling society all its own? That, dear readers, is what Firefly Studios and Gamecock Media Group want you to find out in this new trailer for Dungeon Hero (PC and Xbox 360).

Take a trip into the world behind a dungeon, where the many clans of creatures trying to survive in this rough and tumble world are besieged by a force of darkness beyond their reckoning. Down in the dark, a world much like ours is in need of a hero. Someone like yourself, it seems.

Watch the video, take a trip, and remember: there's more to dungeons than monsters and spoils... though there's plenty of that to go around as well.

Even as the Entertainment Software Association's (ESA) E3 Media & Business Summit draws closer this week, the invite-only event may have scared off many publishers and developers, aside from consumers, due to extraneous costs and a smaller retail presence. Reports are coming in that companies have declined their invites, while others have wanted to go but never received an invite.

Tecmo (Ninja Gaiden Sigma) was one company that had turned down the invite to the E3 Media & Business Summit, following a history of impolite treatment from the organizers, lower retail presence and a pessimistic outlook on the part of Tecmo. "New show management didn't seem to know what they were doing," said John Inada, vice president.

A representative from GameStop had claimed that the company had "limited folks" who were going to attend the show, but it appeared to major publishers that no retail presence was going to show up at all. Retailers such as Best Buy have been reported to opt out entirely, prompting other publishers to high-tail it out of the event.

"Why should we bother dealing with the ESA's confusion when we can meet with our retail partners separately and then stage our own gamers' day event later on in the year where we set the rules? It just doesn't make any sense," said a source, coming from a publisher not going to E3.

In contrast, XSEED Games (Brave Story: New Traveler) didn't have a choice laid out for them. Even while the publisher decided to go to the event, they didn't receive an invite. "Assuming we had a chance to participate, the costs of securing a meeting area in one of the hotels, from what I've heard indirectly through third parties, would have been cost-prohibitive for us," added XSEED's Ken Berry, head of sales and marketing.

Money was another issue, forcing even some of the big name publishers to re-think their showcasing strategies and host their own events, rather than attend E3. GameCock Media Group (Sector 8) created their own little E3 in response to the new invite-only arrangement.

Publishers believe that E3 needs more tweaking if they're to attend the succeeding events - a possibility that's fast fading after many other companies anticipate 2007 as E3's final year. In an end-note, GameCock's co-founder Mike Wilson said:

We're going to have some fun on the beach and say good-bye to the magical beast of yore that was E3. I'd say there's a fair chance there won't be a show called E3 anything next year, which is why we're saying farewell to it on the beach. But I can't wait to see what emerges.