Brilliant! This LOLcats image reminded me of one of my favorite games growing up. Oregon Trail! One of my fondest memories in school was playing Oregon Trail on old PCs in the computer lab everyday. Oregon Trail opened many kids to the possibilities of learning through games, something I think has heavily influenced the serious games and educational games market over the years as these kids become adults. Don’t even get me started on Wall Street Kid for the NES, now there was an educational game!!

Memories: The Oregon Trail Shrine

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

Bored at work waiting for the next meeting to start? Pass the time by playing some of the greatest classic video games ever released. As part of their web expansion, Atari is offering registered users (it’s free) the chance to play classic video and board games online as part of it’s “Atari Play” section. From classic board games like Battleship, Monopoly and Sorry!, to classic arcade titles like Centipede, Lunar Lander and Asteroids, it’s free to enjoy the arcade games of your youth AND show those young interns at work a thing or two about retro gaming.

Read more: Play Atari classics online

Artist Rosemaria Fiore created a brilliant photo project, documenting her playing retro video games like Tempest, Gyuss and Quantum from Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photos are long exposure snaps, consisting of 1 second of gameplay per frame, resulting in excellent and complex patterns which normal players would never normally see. When I saw these photos for the first time, I instantly though “Geometry Wars”. My bad.

See more: Long exposure photos of gaming classics

Legendary dungeon crawling arcade gone console disappointment, Dragon’s Lair, is quietly being ported to the Nintendo DS hand held by a very talented fan who happens to have quite some time on his hands. Currently only in a very early preview release (0.1.4), those of you who’ve setup your DS for homebrew games or have emulation running on your PCs can grab an early peak featuring the first 4 levels from the original arcade release.

Read more: Dragon’s Lair being ported to Nintendo DS

It seems the rich and the hardcore always have a way of reliving their childhood gaming favorites in style. Available for the low low price of $1799.00, retro gaming fans can buy the arcade system in a box, a high-performance PC running Windows XP Home and presumably MAME, encased in a high-quality, professionally designed and constructed enclosure. Featuring competition-grade arcade joysticks, pushbuttons and trackballs, the Arcade in a box allows S-Video and VGA output and comes with 2 collections of official arcade titles from Midway (Paperboy, 720-degrees, Marble Madness, etc) and Atari (Asteroids, Centipede, etc).

Read more: Arcade in a Box

The great dreamsigners at Tiny Armour have created this great set of solid silver rings featuring characters from Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, which is for sale through the Stars and Infinite Darkness webshop. The Ms. Pac-Man ring is available in sterling silver or gold vermeil in a variety of sizes and goes extremely well with the ghost rings also available from Tiny Armour. Expect to drop a cool $68 bones plus shipping, but, for your guild sweetheart, nothing screams 2 month anniversary better.

Read more: Ms. Pac Man and Ghost rings

The almighty Dig Dug is now available on Xbox Live Arcade, sporting some enhanced new features which almost makes you not feel bad paying to play a 24 year old game on a next-generation gaming console. The game features enhanced graphics including HDTV support (480p & 720p), 12 Xbox Live Achievements and an online leaderboards, so you can compete against your friends and family for only 400 Xbox Live points.

Read more: Dig Dug on Xbox Live Arcade

The Icon Factory is offering a great little set of OS icons, featuring 8-bit style retro video game characters, from classic titles such as Pac Man, Dig Dug, Mario Brothers, and 17 others. Offering icon packs for both Windows XP and Mac OS X, as well as a Pixadex iContainer, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have your desktop overflowing with retro video game character icons. Oh, best of all, the price tag, free.

Read more: Arcade Daze - Retro video game icons for PC and OS X