What's that? Oh, well, we've missed you too. But let's not waste time with nostalgia, we've got some new podcasts to talk about.

Console Gypsies: This is a brand-spanking new podcast, but it's already making an impressive showing. This week, we're most touched by the early discussion of Pepsiman, one of the absolute best PSone games that you've probably never played.

1UP Show: We're recommending this video podcast this week solely because of the bit about Dead Space, which starts at about 2:45. Watch, and become a believer, both in the game and in Nick Suttner's complete inability to judge a game's scientific radness.

LucasArts has sent us a rather hefty excerpt from The Art and Making of The Force Unleashed book (itself a whopping 224 pages) that came out this week. We're guessing it doesn't end with a note on the dev team being cut.

Click above to peruse the gallery (Protip: Click on the Hi-res button on each gallery page to view a high-resolution version of the image). A demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed drops this Thursday, with the full game arriving mid-September.

With Sony shedding some new light on the sea of plastic instrument compatibility nonsense, we thought it was time to update our compatibility charts for the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, as well as newcomer Rock Revolution. Introducing the Instrument Compatibility Matrix, version 3.0. We'll keep updating this page as new information percolates out, hoping one day to fill in every square with a green "yes." Until that time, check out our chart skills.

Update: Now with more green care of Microsoft's compatibility commitment.

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure combines a block-matching, DS puzzle game--think Panel de Pon/Planet Puzzle League--with a side-scrolling platformer. This puzzling mash-up keeps the blocks on the bottom screen, Hatsworth jumping up top, and you toggling between each to maintain progress. We recently played this stylish title, due at the beginning of 2009. With so many small things to get right, we're uncertain that the puzzle-platformer will work, but we're impressed by its potential.

Five months ago we asked NIS America why its forthcoming turn-based strategy game, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, would make the next-gen leap to the PS3."It's simply because PS2 lacks the processing power and memory capacity to support Disgaea 3," commented marketing coordinator Jack Niida at the time, a response we didn't buy entirely back then and after pouring over the game in recent days we're even less convinced.

Not that the game isn't fun. The fact that this article is being penned at 4am after 9 hours spent playing and losing track of time should be a testament to Disgaea 3's addictive nature, a trait that the series has had in spades since its freshman effort.

Last night was the opening night shindig for the latest i am 8-bit show, and it was by far their biggest event yet. We arrived early as part of a press event to mill around and quietly take photos, but by 9PM the place was packed with people checking out the art, listening to the whomping sounds of Computer Jay, DJ R-Rated, and Leeni (check her out in the Pac-Man dress, along with her 8-bit tattoo). There was a massive line of people outside waiting to get in, and it had turned into the hottest ticket on Hollywood Blvd. Which, yes, is actually saying something.

They had turned the entire storefront of the World of Wonder (didn't they used to make Teddy Ruxpin?) into a huge display, featuring giant Piranha Plants from Super Mario Bros., and they had an old-school setup where you could play games ranging from an NES to a full-sized arcade cabinet, right there on full display to everyone passing by. It probably didn't hurt that some of the Nerdcore calendar girls took up residence here later and played Game Boys and quarter-eaters in their underwear.

Read more after the break, and be sure to take a spin through the huge gallery which shows off the more than 200 pieces in the show, and how crazy the whole scene became.

We headed into the wonderific CGI fray known as SIGGRAPH this year, and ultimately decided that we need to start checking this out more often. The technical conference just entered its 35th year, with the acronym being for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques. While it's evolved into a pretty glorified job fair, they still show off new and impressive technology, have a large section focusing on papers relating to innovation in the field of computer graphics (like this year's "Simulating Knitted Cloth at the Yarn Level") and feature a fun Computer Animation Festival component filled with dozens of short CGI films in competition.

The only gaming companies we noticed in attendance were Activision, LucasArts, and THQ, which mostly offered "we want to hire you!" booths, but a lot of the tech behind games was being shown as well. NVIDIA was demoing "the world's first fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer," and the Mova Contour system was showing off their futuristic looking rig. Plus, it now seems like everyone and their uncle is creating 3D printers that pump out plastic models, but that doesn't mean we don't want one.

Read on after the break to find out more, explore the gallery below, and be sure to watch the video that got the biggest laughs, just ahead.

It really feels like this week belongs to Xbox Live Arcade. The whole month really, considering a slew of AAA titles are on the way. This week we got Bionic Commando Rearmed, which is everything a Bionic Commando fan could hope for. If you haven't already, definitely give it a try. You can check out our latest XBLA in Brief episode to see what's new. And let's not forget that you can now start earning Fable II goodies with Fable II Pub Games, which is also featured in this week's episode.

Community

• Xbox 360 Fancast 079 -- Ah, Euphemisms
  Please, get our minds out of the gutter
• X3F TV -- XBLA in Brief: Fable II Pub Games and Bionic Commando Rearmed
  Bionic Commando Rearmed. 'Nuff said.
• Ask X3F: Backwards Incompatibility
  Short and sweet this week
• X3F Season Update: Madden NFL 09
  Boom!
• X3F Insight: Why should we care about Braid?
  Braid is good. SRSLY

News

• Fable 2 receives a visit from Master Chief himself
  Flintlock Pistol vs Plasma Pistol
• Analysts: Xbox 360 outsold PS3 in July
  See what cheap 360s can do?
• Gears 2 Lancer bundle selling like hot cakes
  Cliff Bleszinski imitations on the rise
• Red Faction: Guerilla beta drops
  Say "Guerilla beta" three times fast. It's fun.

Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq, a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:

We've be hearing a lot about the Thai cabbie killing lately and how it was (or wasn't) caused by Grand Theft Auto. In the wake of that tragic murder, there have been two major groups of outcries. The first has been the call to regulate games; one we have heard all too often. The other has been a call to revise criminal penalties; one which is not only new, but speaks to the core theory behind criminal law: the theory of punishment. Criminal law theory is something that is universal in all of our criminal codes, but isn't often discussed. It's this "theoretical" approach that we'll look at today. You may agree or disagree with my particular thoughts on the theory of criminal law, but it's more important for everyone to understand a theoretical approach to criminal law so that we can come to our own conclusions about true "justice."

The concept of criminal law starts with some basic political philosophy. In order to have a society, there has to be a set of rules by which that society operates. Whether you want to view this as the social contract in a Locke/Hobbes/Rousseau manner or through some other philosophical lens, the basic need for rules and order in a society is more or less the same. This need for rules gives rise to the concept of the law, and one of those concepts is the boundaries of behavior that stray into what we, as a society, feel need to be punished. This is the basis for all criminal law, be it a crime against a person or a crime against property.

One of the things we made sure to do at E3 this year was to spend a significant amount of time with the IndieCade folks. Then we sat on that info long enough for some of these games to get picked up, have a successful release, come out with sequels, spawn movies, novels, comic books, become part of the general pop culture bloodstream, and then fade into nostalgia, and for that we apologize. Actually, I'll apologize, I did it.

But in all seriousness, a lot of the more fun and innovative stuff we saw at E3 wasn't actually being churned out by big studios and publishers, but being worked on by small groups with tiny budgets and just a love of gaming. Read on to find out all about the IndieCade games that we saw on display, and why you'll want to be playing them now.

The Rose Bowl was Madden-ified yesterday to make way for the 20th anniversary of Madden games, as well as the new Madden NFL 09 game that went on sale at midnight last night... or 9 PM Pacific if you were lucky enough to be in the stadium in Pasadena. The upper deck was wrapped in gigantic Madden sail cloths promoting the game and featuring poster boy Brett Favre in his Packers gear. The playing turf featured autograph sessions with NFL legends, skill games, free Pepsi schwag (which we forgot to photograph, whoops), a Slurpee booth complete with Hooters-esque booth babes, a mini Wal-Mart store, and a giant gaming tent full of tons of Xbox 360s, and a scant few Wiis, PS3s, and PSPs.

Read on, dear gamer, to discover the rest, including a confab between rapper Busta Rhymes and EA's Peter Moore. Plus you can click on the gallery below for loads of photos.

I was lucky enough to be able to go up to George Lucas' ranch this Sunday to see a screening of The Clone Wars and to interview the man himself, along with director Dave Filoni and producer Catherine Winder. To top that off, they gave us an insider's tour of the inner working at Lucasfilm and LucasArts.

There's a gallery below filled with highlights from the tour, including the LucasArts gaming lounge, the playtester's room, and their mocap studio. However, the real highlight was... tons of concept art from the "so secret we won't even talk about it" Indiana Jones game that is still forthcoming. It was all dated 2005, so who knows if it'll still feature in the game, but the above image of Indy watching the Golden Gate Bridge being built gives us hope. Find out more after the break.

Yes, it's been more than a week since the foul jellies you call eyes have been graced by a Podcast Rodeo. But let's not waste time with pleasantries: We missed you, you missed us. Let's talk podcasts.

ButtonMashers: One of our favorite activities on the Rodeo is finding brand new podcasts that have some promise and helping them to take their first steps, like Forrest Gump-style cybernetic legs. After just its seventh episode, ButtonMashers has already found itself a good flow, as well as a nice rapport between its hosts. In this episode, there's an extensive discussion comparing the DS and PSP, and it reminds us how much we like it when podcasts slow down and have a really thorough discussion of the topic at hand.

1UP FM: We're still trying to expose those who haven't heard about it to 1UP's excellent new feature-heavy cast, 1UP FM. This week, in addition to the usual stuff, there's a discussion of Skate 2 with an EA staffer and a discussion of the next generation of consoles that we are so not ready to have.

Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq, a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:

GamePolitics recently posted a piece on Forbis, the makers of the weemote, and an issue that is all too familiar in Trademark law: trademark infringement. To summarize the GamePolitics piece, Forbis Technologies trademarked "weemote" in the year 2000 for a children's television remote. According to a Time piece on the weemote, sales have fallen considerably since the Nintendo Wii was released. The blog-o-sphere coined the term "Wiimote" soon after the Wii hardware was announced, and the term has stuck ever since. Nintendo, however, does not have a trademark on the term "wiimote," only on "wii."

Forbis is hoping to enter into a business arrangement by which it can re-brand its product and Nintendo can take control of "wiimote" and "weemote" (pronounced the same) because, as they put it, "the damage has been done here (whether intentional or not)." In fact, in cases of possible infringement between a significantly larger player and a smaller one such as this, a settlement of this nature would not be unusual. Even if Nintendo believes it would be successful in an infringement suit with Forbis, this may be the far cheaper option to resolve the issue. After all, the weemote brand had minimal value before the introduction of the Wiimote based on the company's self-described weak sales. Nintendo has thus far declined to purchase "weemote." But stopping at an out-of-court settlement wouldn't do much to illuminate the legal points that exist here, so let's take a look at this as if it were going to go to trial.

Here we are again, another month, and another 31 days of gaming possibility. August of 2008 is actually faring a bit better than stinky, unsatisfying predecessor July of 2008, with a handful of titles we can't wait to take for a spin, and a few that we might carve out a few minutes for.

So, what are we waiting for? Read on, savvy shopper! Read on!