Contributors: Chris Antista, Charlie Barratt, Brett Elston, Matthew Keast, Shane Patterson, Mikel Reparaz

Hundreds of games are released every year, then played and forgotten by the next. Only a dozen or so will be remembered a decade from now, and only a few of those will have any lasting impact on the medium as a whole.

Which upcoming titles stand the best chance of leaving that meaningful mark? ...

Ever wondered what it would be like to have video game characters in your Pokemon party? Why choose boring old Bulbasaur when you can choose a beautiful Kasumi? Or a level 50 Sackboy?

We've given 21 game characters the Pokemon treatment, with four moves to choose from and some evolutionary states too.

Who would you choose? ...

Comment etiquette dictates that the first commenter must tack the word “first” to the beginning or the end of any comment they make. ...

How this works: We randomly collected together 100 recent examples of video game box-art all completely unrelated with the exception of one common factor: they all featured a person or people as part of the design. We then looked long and hard at all the examples to find out what types of people are most commonly used on video game box-art. And by extension, we guess, in video games. This is what we discovered. Prepare to be partially amazed ...

Although most guys know Hollywood uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer for summer action flicks like Top Gun, The Rock, Con Air and Armageddon, Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, would love for Bruckheimer to take MTV Games out of its comfort zone of rhythmic gaming like The Beatles: Rock Band and attract more females. ...

Mandatory install. Red ring of death. Motion control. All terms that mean something in the current generation of gaming. But five years ago they meant a whole lot of nothing in the video game vernacular. Yes, things move at lightning-speed in gaming, and that includes the buzz-word obsessed language of gamer speak. The following collection are all forgotten words and phrases that have long-since slipped off the lips of gamers.

Arcade ...

Ever since Wii launched we’ve been cringing at trailers of families swinging their arms around in front of the TV like a bunch of primates.

So first up, here are this week’s embarrassingly awkward trailers from the world of Nintendo. ...

Have you ever seen Google Street View in action? It's incredible, and already coming up with some amazing images... it's a wonder the world survived without it. But we've spotted some more familiar faces in the passers by.

Can you spot them too?

...

Over the next three pages you're going to find some of the best and worst fake consoles to ever grace the ‘nets. Some have been rendered quite professionally by respectable publications. Others look like they've been knocked up by some kid in his room using Photoshop. While the most dedicated have gone that extra mental mile and physically built crude contraptions in an effort to fool folk.