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For those of you who have yet to decide to boycott Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sega has released some new media of the downloadable rodent-racing platformer. Including ... the second known character to appear in the game. Okay, before more of you start boycotting, it's just Eggman (or Dr. Robotnik, or whatever). And he's shown in one of his spheroid flying vehicles, implying that he's in the game in boss capacity only.

The site also features a few screens, music and a description of Splash Hill Zone, which can be summed up as "Green Hill Zone in HD." And that's a good thing, right?

We've been waiting patiently for Capcom to release Final Fight yet again, this time in the form of the PSN/XBLA Final Fight: Double Impact set (which also includes Magic Sword). Capcom just let us know that the magical combination of classic brawling and online play will be available on Xbox Live April 14, and on the PlayStation Store April 15.

In case you haven't been keeping up with old game news, Double Impact features optional graphical filters, remixed soundtracks, and, most importantly, drop-in co-op. Capcom doesn't explicitly mention this, but each purchase also contributes to the Mike Haggar mayoral campaign fund.

Multiplayer first-person shooters are a dime a dozen lately, meaning Lead & Gold: Gangs of the Wild West has a lot to prove for itself. The gameplay is definitely fun, but it's clear that its main selling point is the format. As a downloadable game (confirmed for PC, planned for XBLA and PSN), it's one of the most polished multiplayer shooter experiences available in the space.

Priced at $15, Paradox Interactive's shooter is competing against the likes of Battlefield 1943. Like DICE's shooter, the production values are impressive and highlight by colorful, animated visuals. The style is reminiscent of Team Fortress 2, with the characters donning an almost psuedo-cel shaded look. Combined with the Wild West theme, it can oftentimes look identical to Valve's shooter.

Of course, there are far worse places to look for inspiration. In many ways, the gameplay is also similar to Team Fortress 2. There are four classes for players to choose from, and each features distinct and valuable traits. The primary difference between the four classes is their range: some classes are equipped with shotguns, best for short range fighting, while the requisite sniper is obviously equipped to handle long distances. Beyond their weapons, each class is equipped with a special ability. One can throw dynamite, while another can "mark" an enemy. (Marked enemies take twice the normal rate of damage.)

It's been a long time coming, and today Perfect Dark is finally available for download on XBLA. Sporting some new Xbox Live functionality and a sparkly new coat of paint, we'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better way to drop 800 ($10) on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game is a classic and the closest you'll get to having GoldenEye on Xbox Live. Check it out in the latest episode of XBLA in Brief above!

Shortcut: Download the trial version of Perfect Dark [via Xbox.com]

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After having to endure concept videos and shaky-cam gameplay, we finally have some real, honest-to-goodness screens of Twisted Pixel's upcoming Comic Jumper for you to rest your weary eyes upon. They're all lifted from the first "comic" of the game, "The Adventures of Captain Smiley," which Twisted Pixel has described jokingly as "kind of a crappy comic." Perhaps that explains why the titular hero will be busting out?

If your thirst for funny book action still hasn't been slaked, we hear you'll be able to see a demo of the game next week at PAX East. Can't make it to PAX East? We've got that very same demo in video format (direct feed this time!) after the break, along with a gallery of concept art for the game.

"Remastered" is the appropriate term for 4J Studios' Perfect Dark port, which takes Rare's classic console FPS and remodels it with high-resolution assets and tactful tweaks to better suit its new Xbox Live Arcade format. Perfect Dark is the third N64-generation Rare title that 4J Studios has remastered, following XBLA ports of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and it's likely the most anticipated. Perfect Dark is a historical landmark, after all, and it's one that should be visited from time to time by anyone interested in games.

Originally released in mid-2000, Perfect Dark arrived as I was staggering forth from my freshman year of college. I picked it up because, back in high school, we played GoldenEye until the sun came up. I never grew to worship Perfect Dark as I had Rare's acclaimed Bond shooter, but my memory recalls it as a "slightly superior" game (if not as personally beloved). As one of the more prominent entries on my "I woulda, coulda, shoulda played it more" list, I've been looking forward to this reunion -- a chance to get to know Perfect Dark better.

That's "This Wednesday," like, this Wednesday -- today. Sorry we waited so long to bring you this regular installment of "This Wednesday," it's just that we kind of figured this particular release would be a little hard to forget. But for those of you not paying attention, here it is: FPS classic Perfect Dark arrives on Xbox Live today for 800 ($10). If you're on the fence, check out our full review of the game.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go buy some Surge and Tato Skins off eBay and hit Felicity for some King of the Bathroom.

Giant spiders. Why'd it have to be giant spiders?

Mind you, seeing Lara Croft gun down squealing, eight-legged monstrosities doesn't bring with it the tinge of regret that I've come to associate with her tendency to permanently cross off creatures from the endangered species list. Had Crystal Dynamics opted to switch out the spiders with tigers, there'd be enough fur coats left over to give everyone in the world a warm winter.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is heavy on the action, with territorial enemies swarming the eponymous explorer and a newfound partner, the Mayan warrior Totec, from all directions. Thankfully, the guy knows how to fire a gun and toss a spear -- though I pray he doesn't mix the two up when the situation gets out of hand. If you're playing the game with a co-op partner, either online or on couch, you'll have someone to yell at should that happen.

The game's isometric camera angle and twin-stick shooting mechanics bring to mind Assault Heroes (or Geometry Wars, at a basic level), but the pacing here is different. A more apt comparison -- that takes into account the lulls in action -- would be Left 4 Dead, especially when one player is tasked with manipulating a puzzle object while the other defends the rear.

I have an admission to make: I haven't played the original Risk board game. For hardcore fans of the game, that fact alone may discredit my opinion. However, after playing the upcoming XBLA adaptation, I wish I had discovered the board game sooner.

Risk Factions looks and feels like a Penny Arcade game: the art style is similar, and the writing is just as irreverent. As evidenced by the shorts released by EA so far, the world of Factions is animated (in more ways than one). The Colonel, who's fully aware that he's in a game, is one of the funniest characters I've seen in recent memory. Knowing his audience well, he promised that if I kept playing, I'd see tons of nudity in the game. (An EA representative hurriedly reminded me that it was just a joke, though.)

While Factions will allow players to play classic style Risk, newcomers will undoubtedly want to play through the main campaign first. The campaign does a good job of easing players into the basic rules of the game, and offers shorter, focused, objective-based challenges to conquer. The level I played didn't take place all over the globe: instead, it was a rather small map comprised of about a dozen tiles. One tile offered occupation of a missile silo, allowing you to launch a devastating area-wide attack against enemies.

While Metroid director Yoshio Sakamoto may not have played Shadow Complex, the XBLA darling's creators definitely played Metroid. During a panel titled "Designing Shadow Complex," Chair Entertainment Creative Director Donald Mustard encouraged the audience of prospective downloadable game makers to embrace genre limitations. "So, genre is one of your limitations because you aren't just competing against other games that are released in the downloadable space," Mustard said, pacing across the stage. "You really are competing against Gears of War, Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2. That is the real competition and you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from those kinds of games. And that is an awesome opportunity."

For Mustard, that meant moving "orthogonally" from what the "big $60 retail games" are doing. Mustard said, "For us, what that ultimately meant is target an old and abandoned genre. Which to us was kind of this Metroidvania side scroller adventure genre that had been abandoned. No one was making games in this genre. And we said, 'What if we took that genre and fused that with some of the modern sensibilities that had come out; some of the modern ideas of AI and physics and graphics? That would be a really cool combination.'

Very few games manage to instill a pure kind of terror such as Limbo, an aptly-titled puzzle-platformer in development for the past four years. Winner of multiple IGF awards, Limbo is a beautiful and haunting journey, one that must be experienced to be understood -- and thankfully, you'll be able to experience it on Xbox Live Arcade this summer. Like Braid and Shadow Complex before it, Limbo is likely to become the headlining downloadable game of the year.

To describe Limbo in great detail would be a huge disservice to gamers. What makes Limbo so mesmerizing is its mysterious quality: the game simply begins, and continues. The abstract narrative is told simply through the journey; don't expect long Jonathan Blow-esque prose throughout. Presented in black and white and silence, Limbo's simplistic style carries a foreboding atmosphere unlike any other game. It's gorgeous, with detailed animations giving life to every object in the world. Were it not for its interactivity, one might be hard pressed not to think it's a painting.

Limbo offers players little direction, nor does it need to. A GUI would ruin the simple beauty of developer Playdead's project. The controls will be immediately familiar to most gamers: A to jump and X to grab. It may seem a bit too simplistic, but Limbo offers some rather unique puzzles that take advantage of the environment in unusual and unexpected ways. Timing and precision is a necessity -- as is repetition, with death an unavoidable part of the gameplay. Traps, enemies, and pitfalls will make this a perilous journey, and the graphic depictions of death will keep you uncomfortable and on edge for hours.

It was hard to resist the urge to continue playing through the entire adventure. While I found myself stuck at a few devilish puzzles, I never found myself too frustrated to go on. Limbo is a gorgeous game that explores emotions so rarely found in games: not just terror, but a distinct sense of helplessness and longing.

What a treat! Tucked away amongst the South by Southwest Screenburn Arcade was a humble booth for Twisted Pixel Games. Sure, they were demoing The Maw and 'Splosion Man (one of Joystiq's top ten games of 2009!) for curious passers-by, but at 4pm CEO Mike Wilford demoed the first ten minutes of the heretofore unseen Comic Jumper. The price for this early look at the video: shaky cam footage! Wilford promised us some direct feed video this week; but, in the interim, enjoy this first look at Comic Jumper.

EA DICE has been a fairly prolific developer during the current console generation, churning out both a high-profile title based on original IP (Mirror's Edge), as well as ones based on established franchises like Battlefield. EA was searching for a way to capitalize on the downtime between these blockbuster releases -- a game which would be relatively quick and painless to create, while still standing up to the quality standards set by their previous releases. Thus, the idea for Battlefield 1943 was born.

Battlefield 1943 producer Patrick Liu explained the studio's unique design philosophy while making the game, which boiled down to "make the game as long as resources last." They maximized the amount of content they produced under this strategy by settling on the somewhat smaller scope of the game early, and focusing on recreating the Battlefield experience to adhere to that scope.

Some decisions made under this philosophy include making ammunition and health auto-regenerate, cutting down on tiresome resource runs back to your home base. This decision led to others, including the removal of the medic and engineer classes. It also let them focus on perfecting a handful of maps and gametypes, which, while iterated from previous installments in the franchise, also saw major adjustments in 1943.

The result was a project developed by 15 series veterans at once, at one-tenth of the cost of a full DICE game, which broke day one, week one and month one downloadable sales records. It's no surprise that Liu expressed interest in developing more "games of this size and scope" -- when handled correctly, it sounds like a miniature entry in a major franchise can be quite the profitable cash cow.

Okay, honesty time. Most of the preparation for my GDC appointment to check out Pipework Foundation's TV-to-game adaptation Deadliest Warrior was spent thinking up jokes about the game's cast of anachronistic characters. "So, what are we looking at," I would snidely remark, "Templars? Cavemen? Wizards? Robots? Robot Cavemen? Grizzly bears?" To which Pipework would politely laugh, as I would insist, "No, seriously. What's the grizzly bear situation?"

I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the game, so I'd attempt to cajole an entire preview out of this line of questioning. Fortunately, this precaution wasn't necessary, as Deadliest Warrior looks to be a surprisingly competent, enjoyable fighting game, and a welcome addition to the Xbox Live Arcade lineup. Here's the takeaway: Think Bushido Blade; but instead of being stuck with controlling boring ol' samurai, there are ninjas, Spartans, Apache, knights and four other yet-to-be-announced warriors (Including, hopefully, wizards).

"Very aggressive" is the phrase THQ executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson used to describe his company's plans for downloadable titles across the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC platforms during a GDC 2010 interview with Joystiq. With two studios dedicated to the downloadable space -- THQ Digital Studios Phoenix (formerly Rainbow Studios) and THQ Digital Studios UK (formerly Juice Games) -- Bilson told us THQ plans to release "up to six" downloadable titles within the next year, some based on the company's biggest brands.

"We're going to be building stuff on some of our core brands," Bilson said, noting the plan is to create downloadable titles within the same universe as THQ's major franchises in order to improve brand awareness. Surprisingly, Bilson's plans include "giving away" some of the upcoming downloadable games, although he did not specify how this idea would be executed.

Bilson's theory is that by getting players "involved" in its franchises via downloadable titles, THQ can help drive pre-orders and awareness for their big-budget (in relation) retail counterparts. While he would not specify which THQ franchises would get downloadable titles, we were told the plan is to roll out this strategy on "two or three" of THQ's biggest franchises (à la Square Enix's upcoming Lara Croft game from developer Crystal Dynamics).

But the plan doesn't end there: Similar to the approach taken by Microsoft's Fable II: Pub Games experiment, downloadable releases based on THQ's major brands will unlock content within the retail releases, teasing players with potential advantages to purchasing related retail titles; retail games will also unlock content in downloadable titles, to help drive players to explore more content within that franchise's universe. "You're going to see some of our core brands built out in different kinds of gameplay to get people involved in the brands and drive awareness towards a launch."