EA really wants Take-Two to hope aboard the mother-ship. So much so, they’ve extended their takeover offer deadline for the third time, this time giving Take-Two and their board until June 16th become one and plug in to the hive. Though EA still refuses to raise their offer of $25.74 a share for the Rockstar Games parent, many analysts are dropping the word that EA needs to suck it up and pony up a little bit more per share, in order to entice some of the more uncertain Take-Two stockholders. Take-Two recently hit paydirt again with the release of GTA IV, their trusty cash cow which seems to roll around every few years and a hundred million or so dollars later. (Via Gamasutra)

Created as a Master of Science thesis by a Computer Science student in Umeå University, Phun is an amazing little educational game giving players a rich physics playground where they can easily build and tear apart environments, creating havoc upon squiggly line blocks, water, bits and so much more. Great for teaching a young class about the concepts of physics or just a fun little toy to waste your time at work. Originally posted by our nerdy cousins over at Bunch of Nerds.

Download it at Phun.at

A 10 year old school boy in Moscow jumped to his death after his parents banned him from playing computer games. The boy, Andrei Smirnov (?) ended his life after receiving his punishment for bad conduct and poor performance at school. Local Russian experts naturally are expressing concern over the unhealthy dependence of children on computers and games in particular.

Playfully addressing issues such as intellectual property rights, file-sharing and domestic surveillance, Torrent Raiders creates a fun new look at the fight against piracy. By building a real-time game on top of live bit-torrent swarms, Torrent Raiders creates an arcade-style shooter within the net it’s self. Players are placed in the role of a mercenary copyright enforcer, capturing evidence against peers sharing files via bit-torrent trackers worldwide, in real-time.

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System3 CEO Mark Cale recently sat down with PALGN to talk a little about their upcoming DS, Wii and PSP titles Leaderboard, California Games and Ferrari Challenge. Essentially remakes of retro Commodore 64 titles, System3 is enhancing the visuals and game play of these classic titles and bringing them to everyones favorite handheld, the Nintendo DS (and not everyones favorite, the Sony PSP). Some of the enhancements to California Games, one of my most favorite games EVAR, is the addition of online multiplayer! A long-desired feature of the arcade elite of yesterday. The DS version will have four player multiplayer, with up to 8 players being able to shred head to head on the PSP

PALGN: You touched on California Games, which was such a massive hit back in the day, can you tell us a little bit about how the modern day remake is going to be handled?

Mark Cale: We’re re-skinning the game, bringing it up to date having the original available to play, which is the total 64 version, not emulated but totally redone from scratch, but using the exact 64 animations and positions as well as generally re-skinning, bringing it totally up to date with the look, the feel and the sound and then to merge we’ve got the original character in the new re-skinned background, that withstands the test of time. California Games however withstands the test of time in terms of being a sports title and a great, fun title to play against your friends. Unfortunately, the one disadvantage it has is that it that it only ever had six events. So, how do we get over that? Well, the simple answer for us is that, what you do is you have your six events, which if you recall were the surfing, the BMX, the Frisbee, the Keepy Uppy, half pipe and rollerblading. Once you compete in these events, if you get a gold medal in one of the events, it unlocks Summer Games 1 and 2, and you are then chosen the represent your country, and then you represent your country playing Summer Games 1 and 2, so what it does is that it actually unlocks a whole sort of a game series, instead of giving you just six events, you’ve now got twenty two events.

Read more: Mark Cale talks California Games

A bit late, but still worth it. Call of Duty still goes on, with the trailer for Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare burning up the internets a few weeks ago. In it, we saw lots of explosions, some tanks tearing things apart and heard a little Russian language speech talking about one less nation. World War 3 FTW!

Sweet baby Jesus I hope this is true. As the Star Wars license wallowed away under the steaming pile that was the prequels and the horrible mess that Star Wars Galaxies became, Knight of the Old Republic was a bright shining star of the Force. Even the sequel, “Sith Lords”, though rushed and extremely buggy, was of higher quality than Galaxies. I remember thinking, self, this needs to be an MMO. Well, it seems that dream will come true. Rumors are flying around the gaming press about a recent news report from CVG stating that BioWare has recently begun forming an online team to work on a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO. Though no true details have emerged, just the fact that it appears BioWare is behind the development can only mean it will be perfection.

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The world of mods and games hacking knows no bounds and I for one am a huge supporter of fan-made conversions. Beyond the Red Line is such a mod, developed by a talented group of game artists, developers and fans of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series. Based entirely on Freespace 2 by Volition, Beyond the Red Line is a total conversion package which will be free to download and play upon release. Supporting online multiplayer, Beyond the Read line promises to allow players to perform some of the interesting space maneuvers which appear in the series during various gameplay modes, such as deathmatch, team deathmatch and possibly even coop missions. Demo versions of the upcoming game are available in PC, MAC and Linux flavors for those of us who wish our last name was Adama.

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9dragons, the martial arts MMO from (the new) Acclaim is currently running their open beta phase and have finally added a European server for us on the motherland. 9dragons is a massive-multiplayer martial arts title, re-creating the ancient myths of early Asian, allowing you to explore, learn and battle rival fighters along with your friends, mentors and fellow disciples.

Chop more: 9Dragons

Having played around with developing on the Torque Engine in the past, I still like to pop in and see what’s going on with the enhancement of the engine and related tools from time to time. That’s how I came upon Dreamlords and whoa was I surprised. The power of Torque is starting to really shine and Dreamlords looks to be an extremely interesting title. Combining an MMORPG with traditional RTS battled and long-term tactical strategy, Dreamlords looks to be a must for any indie games and MMO fan.

Hit the jump to watch an introduction to Dreamlords gameplay..

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