When Spirit Tracks was first announced, you could feel the wave of fanboy revulsion reverberate throughout the internet. “Link on a train?!” was a subject line in about a billion emails, texts and forum posts, and we have to say even the GR office was abuzz with incredulous fervor. Today, having essentially seen the first 90 minutes of the game (and played through the first dungeon), we can safely say Spirit Tracks is every damn bit as good as Plantom Hourglass ...

Phantasy Star’s more recent legacy is one built on multiplayer. Although it’s fair to say that most Dreamcast owners live in a perpetual state of teary-eyed nostalgia, there’s a particularly special glint in their eye that’s reserved solely for the frantic monster-gutting expeditions that were a staple of Phantasy Star Online. ...

As we sat down to see Smackdown vs Raw 2010 for the first time in L.A. during Summerslam weekend, we were skeptical. This had been the longest we could remember going without seeing a given year’s Smackdown before its release, which will be on Oct. 20. ...

Forget AWOL, here’s AWOI – Absent Without Intent, the art of accidental fleeing. In a game that’s rammed with Japanese text, it’s a mis-prod of the run-away button that irritates most. Story, job classes, skills, spells and item conditions – you can muddle through without them, but showing a boss your back to stab is suicidal. ...

Rally car racing is a sport in transition. Like mixed martial arts, it’s spent the last several years carving out a slice of mindshare from sports fans eager for new spectacles. Rally has long been popular in Europe and Asia, and now has growing mainstream acceptance in America thanks to the late Colin McRae’s efforts to hitch the sport to the X Games. ...

See Keyboard Cat, teh ROFLCOPTER and watch a Giant Enemy Crab wreak havok in our video, and check out our hands-on preview of this extraordinary DS game ...

The key to making retro games work – as Space Invaders Extreme 2 and its predecessor realise – is to revel in nostalgia, while at the same time bringing the gameplay up to more modern standards. As with the first title, Extreme 2 is a chunky pixel soup made from equal parts Space Invaders and Rez; it’s half shoot-’em-up and half rhythm game, making the (obvious, when you think about it) connection between the two. ...

Being the most successful RPG series of all time – spawning a dozen movies, stacks of merchandise and enough cash to bail out a bank – surely there’s no surprise that lots of games want to be Pokemon. Monster Racers takes the imitation/flattery a little further than most, to a point where at first glance it could be mistaken for the real thing. ...

What's the result when you mix a Jerry Bruckheimer live-action extravaganza, a bit of CG magic, and adorable rodents? A bizarre question to be sure, but Disney will answer it this summer with G-Force, a family-friendly action flick starring a series of guinea pig secret agents. Smirk if you'd like, but kids love guinea pigs, and where there's scent of a new franchise that kids might go crazy over, you'd better believe Disney has a video game ...

Kids like collecting things. Just ask any rabid Pokémon fan if you don't believe us. Publisher Aspyr hopes to tap into this compulsion with Treasure World. Designed to appeal to the seven to 12 year-old crowd (but interesting enough to hook us hard-noses too), this unique simulation title attempts to marry three worlds – virtual, real and online—together. ...