With special thanks to my lovely friend Jenna Busch (check out her work on SciFi Wire, UGO, and much more), I was directed to the UK Watchmen movie site. Little did I know there would be a wonderful surprise there. Veidt Enterprises is saving the world, one Arcade at a time. The game is called Minutemen Arcade, and it is in the vein of the old-school beat ‘em ups, like The Simpsons Game, X-Men, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After choosing Nite Owl or Silk Spectre, you go on an adventure, kicking and punching a parade of generic thugs.

There are even some nice Easter Eggs for comic book fans. In the Subway, for example, there is a “towards street sign” labled “Charlton Street,” which you end up exiting onto. Famously, Alan Moore was originally planning to use the Charlton characters DC had acquired, and instead (thanks to some pushing from the folks in charge) wound up using analogues of those characters (The Question = Rorschach, Captain Atom = Dr. Manhattan, etc). It’s a fun, quick little 3 level game, and a great distraction to kill time until the movie premieres March 6th. Click on through for a crack at the game, and see if you can get the high score!

We’ve expressed our love for custom PCs and consoles in the past, and typically we only showcase the manly themed mods. However, there does exist a secret race of female gamers out there that want their game gear to look just as awesome as the boys, and while trying to find one of these girls is like finding a unicorn, we’re fairly confident they exist. So today we’re appealing to that .1% of IGN readers (and half of the IGN Wii team) that prefer cuddly animals and pink palettes over killer aliens and gunmetal grey. Behold the ultimate in girlish gaming, the Hello Kitty Xbox 360.

Now while most of us wouldn’t be caught dead with this in our living room (though possibly in a secluded second bedroom), we will admit that its adorable factor is off the chart. But come on, no Keroppi? The Hello Kitty custom 360 is the work of Robert from BleedingViolin.com, a pro artist and photographer, who also typically color matches peripherals like controllers and Guitar Hero guitars to go with a certain theme.

Unlike some of the more elaborate modded consoles we’ve shown in the past that include props and set pieces, the Hello Kitty 360 is just a straight up paint job. Like most pro painted cases, the graphics look so vibrant that it looks like the unit was built with those specific colors in the first place. It also gives us the weird urge to go buy matching wallpaper for some reason.

Robert also offers his services for those looking to have their own personal gear customized, and you can see other examples of his work inside his portfolio. For more info, visit the Bleeding Violin website.

Streaming video and other media to your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 is a lot easier than you might think. You’ll want to start weighing your options with the help of a very detailed feature from CNET sister-site Gamespot, which lays out all of your video streaming choices. Things may get a bit dicey during the configuration of these programs, so don’t forget Google is your friend.

When you stream content to a console, you’ll need to use a network-connected computer to serve the media. For best results, we really recommend a wired connection as you’ll need as much bandwidth as you can get your hands on. In terms of software, there are a few applications you can choose from–some free, some not so free. We’ve had a lot of success using TVersity with both consoles, but we’d recommend XBMC if you’re more of an advanced user for its customization capabilities. There’s even ways to get YouTube and other online content directly on your console.

Whichever setup you choose, serving video to your console just might get you a step closer to throwing away that satellite or cable box. For now, check out our slide show for an idea of how these media-serving programs operate and how your console will look once you’ve set everything up correctly.

Sales for Sony Corp.’s Playstation 3 were stable in the latest retail data from Japan.

Media Create Co. on Fri. reported that the PS3 sold 17,405 units between Jan. 26 and Feb. 1.

By comparison, the hardware sold 17,708 units the week prior.

The PS3 did not rank any titles in the top 10 game sales.

Sony in Jan. said that third quarter net profit fell 95 percent between Oct. and Dec.

The Playstation division held a $4 million profit, despite a nine percent decline in PS3 sales to 4.46 million sold.

Sony in Nov. released the 160GB PS3 SKU. The bundle includes a new 160GB PS3, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, PAIN downloadable game voucher, and a Dualshock 3 controller for $499. A

Additionally, it sells an 80GB model for $399.99.

This pricey new reference board for graphics cards delivers on speed as promised, but also stumbles in a couple of games due to early driver issues.

PC graphics hardware manufacturers nVidia and ATI have been locked in a graphics card cold war for ages.

The latest salvo gets delivered in the form of a 480-core, 1.79-teraflop bombshell: the nVidia GTX 295 graphics platform. For this platform, nVidia has released its reference board, upon which graphics card manufacturers will design new cards; it is basically two GTX 290 boards sandwiched together, but it has the potential to provide a ludicrous degree of power, especially if you span two of these cards together into SLI mode.

And that’s saying nothing of recent developments with incorporating PhysX calculations onto the GPU and CUDA (nongaming) applications built to run off the GPU. Obviously, this monstrosity is targeted at hard-core enthusiasts, but is it worth its $500 asking price?
The Specs

Created using a 55nm fabrication process, the GTX 295 boasts a 576-MHz core clock , 1.79GB of memory, and a PCI-E 2.0 interface. (Need more specs? Try here.) Translation: You’ll have plenty of horsepower pumping under the hood. But this card is big and power-hungry. While it technically requires only a single PCI Express slot, it is still two cards in a double-decker, 10.5-inch-long sandwich, which effectively takes up two slots, anyway. Also bear in mind that it’ll require a good deal of juice (680 watts) from an eight-pin and six-pin supplementary power connector.
Cold, Hard Facts

What the final numbers show in PC WorldBench 6 tests is that the GTX 295 scores incrementally better than ATI’s current high-end product, the Radeon HD 4780 X2. One example: The GTX 295 managed to run Crysis at 42 frames per second on High settings with 4xAA at 1920 by 1200 resolution, which is pretty impressive considering how demanding that game can be. For comparison’s sake, the Diamond Multimedia ATI 4870 X2 that we have in-house managed an equally respectable 32 fps at the same settings.

Here’s where it starts getting weird: Older graphics cards ran faster at different resolutions. When ratcheting the resolution to 2560 by 1600, the new GTX 295 sputtered out. It scored just 15 fps on our Crysis tests; heck, our GTX 280 reference board ran 2 fps faster while the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 kept a steady pace at 29. It was the same story in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, with the GTX 295 falling below what we’d expect. Our best guess is that these problems reflect early driver issues that can hopefully be ironed out.

In everything else (games ranging from FarCry 2 to Supreme Commander), the GTX 295 was faster across the board–sometimes by a few frames, and other times by as much as 10 percent, depending on the settings used. Also, a peek at the numbers shows that the 295 is faster than the card that preceded it, the GTX 280; but again, the difference is marginal.

Still, it’s pretty obvious that the GTX 295 is one of the most powerful cards you can get right now–even if some driver hiccups hold it back at the moment. Just bear in mind that the gulf between it and its closest competitors isn’t that great. It did prove itself to be blisteringly fast, though, and it will pretty much run every game that’s available right now at most resolutions and settings, especially if you can afford to run two in SLI mode; it’s also fairly future-proof, as it’ll be good to go for the next crop of must-have PC games.
Final Verdict

So, is the GTX 295 the video card for you? Well, because of the driver issues we encountered in our tests, the answer appears a little murky right now. But the short answer seems to be “yes,” if any of the following is true: You are a hard-core PC gamer looking for the latest and greatest video card; you have a system with high-end components that can handle the GTX 295; you’re going to build a new high-end system from scratch; or you have 500 bucks just itching to lay claim to the latest and greatest. If you’re a gamer who’s trying to live a just littleleaner, the GTX 285 is available, and while not quite as beefy, it costs $100 less.

But if none of those statements apply to you, then you’re probably better off going for a midrange card (or you can go crazy and get two low-end cards, and strap them together in an SLI configuration for a more cost-effective power boost). Sure, you won’t be able to run every game at ultra-high resolutions–but you also won’t have a hole in your bank account the size of Montana.

If you are still considering this card, here’s one bonus: It’s compatible with the nVidia 3D Vision Goggles. Assuming you’re made of money, grab the card, the goggles, and a compatible 120-Hz LCD monitor, and then pat yourself on the back–because you’d literally own the ultimate PC gaming setup.

Is extreme government censorship about to rob British comic book fans of their monthly fix of ultra-violence? That’s what some paranoid fans are expecting, thanks to a new (and vague) anti-pornography law in the UK.

The new law - given the extremely vague name “The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act” - makes possessing any “extreme image” produced “solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal” illegal, and some British comic fans are so nervous that we’re wondering whether they’re reading different issues of Batman than we are. A statement from the fansite Comic Shop Voice reads:

Do you own any of the following:
Wanted (Top Cow)
Batman: The Killing Joke (DC)
Watchmen (DC)
Punisher (Marvel)
Lost Girls (Top Shelf Productions)
Manga (pick a title)
Cerebus (Aardvark Vanaheim)
(The list continues)

Congratulations you are a comic book fan and the government would like to arrest you, fine you, confiscate your comic collection and ask you to sign the sex offenders’ list.

The specific subsections of the law that worry the site are mentions of:

· an act which threatens a person’s life (Hold on! Isn’t that how Batman, Punisher, Judge Dredd get anything done?)

· an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals. (A kick in the balls or arse would constitute this, and a kick in the balls is a well trodden part of humour)

Of course, I still don’t think anyone would necessarily mistake The Punisher with something designed “solely for the act of sexual arousal,” but admittedly and unfortunately, comics have a history of being mistaken for pornography in the eyes of the law. We’d like to think that the British police have more important things to do than crack down on comics, but the truth is that the law doesn’t have any exception for media outside of cinema, leaving the medium unjustly threatened. Maybe the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund should look into opening a British branch, just in case…