Keeping up with the GameSetMicroLinks, here's a few interesting tidbits I plucked off the plucky RSSes of the world's game bloggers at some point several days ago, and am now spitting angrily in your general direction:

- Excellent tabletop gaming blog OgreCave has been discussing the new ARG company Six to Start, currently helping out with a design contest to create a fundraising ARG for Cancer Research UK, and staffed by the Hon brothers (last of Perplex City fame) and offline/online gaming dilettante James Wallis. Is interesting!

- Obsidian's Chris Avellone draws funny cartoons on his MySpace blog. A recent one discusses recruitment in the game biz: "I hate hiring season at Obsidian, for the simple reason it reminds of all the worst ways folks back at Interplay used to "apply" for jobs in the design department. Don't get me wrong - applying is fine... it's just how you do it."

- Matteo Bittanti has been discussing 'Afghanistan, the videogame': "Think of 9th Company: Roots of Terror as the Russian equivalent of America's Army. Almost. Also, the publisher is ND Games (Noviy Disk), the official and exclusive distributor of Nintendo in the Russian market."

- Last week, 1UP's Jeremy Parish completed a handy round-up of retro-related XBLA games so far, complete with thumbs-up and thumbs-down for each. I forgot to link it until now. And now I am, although where's my favorite joypad-mangler, Track 'N Field, huh? [EDIT: Oops, it's just the games they haven't rated before. I r idiot.]

- SCEA Santa Monica designer Jason De Heras has a really fun analysis of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out up on his blog: "This partial game analysis isn’t necessarily trying to pinpoint and explain what actually makes Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out so much darn fun to play. The actual goal is to expose the core elements that seem to virtually eliminate player frustration." (Via Low Fierce)

- Atman Binstock, who is one of those secret Jon Blow-style 'such a ninja coder that he stays under the radar' types, has posted a list of his latest projects on his Electric Sheep Games site, and his recent history is notable - he went straight from the Spielberg Wii game at EALA to co-designing PixelJunk Racers for PSN. He also has info on a cancelled N64 title that sounds awesome-o: "Inspired by Umihara Kawase, I set about creating a 3D 3rd person grappling hook game."

- Gamezebo has a fun interview with Carbonated Games' Ellen Beeman, discussing producing casual games, and some of the challenges of being a female in the still male-dominated game biz. Oh, wait: "I can't really say that I've had any challenges working in a male-dominated field. In casual games, it can be an advantage." Yay!

- DS Fanboy has a reasonably silly discussion of what DS remakes people would like to see, and our very own Brandon Sheffield contributes - while rapping lazy remakes, he grins hugely: "The thing I'd most like to see would be some Data East compilations. Some Magical Drop, Cliffhanger Edward Randy, Windjammers, etc., etc. But that's pretty unlikely!" Unless we're in Brandonia!

- The creator of this mod mailed me the other day and I promptly forgot to post it, but TIGSource reminded me - Adam Foster has released the latest instalment of his 'Minerva' mod for Half-Life 2, and it's epic single-player story-based goodness, as opposed to the majority of obvious multiplayer blasters: "The story takes place in the Half-Life universe, on a tiny island somewhere in the Baltic Sea that has been burrowed out by the Combine."

- Ah yes, and we have to mention it - the official PlayStation Blog trumpets: 'From IGF to PS3: Everyday Shooter’s Backstory', and Jon Mak himself turns up to explain his wacky indie ways visually. The game is out on PSN now, so please go play it if you like that kind of thing. Which we do. Go on, you know you like it too.