Ah, yes, a fresh week and a fresh set of GameSetLinks, from the whimsical to the development-hungry to the positively wonderful.

Oh, and since I'm mentioning Guilty Gear for Wii below, which is published by Aksys Games in the States - I've been wondering for a while how Aksys and Arc System Works are related, given that Aksys is publishing _all_ the same games that the Arc folks are publishing in Japan, and Aksys appears to be some kind of concatenation of the Japanese company's name?

[UPDATE: A handy commenter reveals: "The similarity in names leads people to make the obvious assumption, but Aksys is actually an abbreviation of Akibo Systems, named after founder Akibo Shieh." So I guess it's just a business relationship and a coincidental name? Blimey.]

Akihabara Channel » New Generation of Fighting Games
2D fighters will never die (Akatsuki Blitzkampf pictured) - talking of which, I just picked up Guilty Gear Accent Core for Wii, it's excellent.

8bitrocket.com: Mid-Core Gamer Manifesto
10 things that midcore games want.

How to Damage the Morale of Your Staff | .mischief.mayhem.soap.
A game development management faux-pas primer.

Yehuda: A Guide to Board and Card Games Based on Video Games (1971 to 2007)
Neat! Via Raph.

Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars: Hensleigh
'Guitar Hero Aerosmith will rock this way in July.' And other fun rumors.

Zen of Design»Blog Archive » Shadowbane Nukes It From Orbit
'There seem to be a lot of people shocked at the news that Shadowbane has decided to press the reset button with their next patch, resetting all characters, items and player-built cities. They are almost equally shocked that the player-base is almost unif

Nintendo DS mixed-reality treasure hunt ::: Pink Tentacle
'On a small island near Tokyo, people armed with Nintendo DS portable game consoles are scouring the terrain in search of clues that will lead them to a secret treasure.'

ASCII by Jason Scott: Zero Stars
Scott on the zero-star, emulator/save-state enabled Mario 64 speedrun, which is almost a work of art in itself.

Geek Entertainment TV : Blog Archive : ANSI Art for the Masses
Coverage of that ANSI art show in SF I mentioned a while back.

NO MORE HEROES : SPECIAL
These desktop wallpapers (on the Japanese NMH site) are pretty adorable.