Steaming straight into the weekend with straight-ahead intent, this GameSetLinkDump extravaganze is headlined by InfiniteLives' Jenn messing with a Lovecraftian Virtual Boy game that I, also, had no freakin' idea existed - and this comes from someone who bought (but has not yet affixed) a 'Miskatonic University' license plate frame.

Also hanging out in here - the LA Times on game schools, a good iPhone game store piece from Kim, a video series touches on the tortuous-ish history of games and IP/patents, Joust 3D rears its pretty head (I heard it got canned partly because it had glider-quality uber-physics insanity controls, I believe), and plenty more.

Rainbow connection:

Majoring in video games - Los Angeles Times
Super well-researched piece on game degrees from Alex Pham.

Finalists - joystick - E4.com
'In alphabetical order, these are the top ten games submitted into the Grand Master Flash competition, as selected by our expert judging panel.' All playable and pretty interesting.

Ascii Dreams: Review: World of Goo
Yep, as Riccitiello fanfic. The weirdo.

Xbox Live Arcade Sales, 2 Weeks Ending 10/11/08 | VG Chartz.com - Video Game Charts - Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS, PSP, PC
New update! Some interesting stats here (Braid still doing 5k a week?), and they are, at least potentially, much more reliable than VGChartz' WiiWare ones, as I've mentioned previously.

Mine!...Gaming and Copyright | ON Networks
History of patents and IP in games, from a pretty interesting web-only video game show I had no idea about - via Alex.

...on pampers, programming & pitching manure: iPhone Games Market: Promised Land or Cesspit?
'While at TGS, I had a lot of hallway & dinner conversations about iPhone games, with people weighing in on whether the iPhone Appstore was the promised land (a la XBLA circa 2005) or whether it was going to rapidly turn into something less than that.'

Infinite Lives » Games I’ve never played: Lovecraftian, stereoscopic FPSes
'The ill-fated Virtual Boy did, indeed, have exactly one 3D first-person shooter, and it took place in Innsmouth, and in it, you actually shot freaky fish people.'

brandonnn.com — RJDJ Takes Me Into The Rainbow Vein
Wow, amazing music-generating iPhone app.

gone is gone: Joust 3D
Is this the first video to surface of this online? (This and below via Brandonn too, just catching up!)

Media Molecule - we make games. » Blog Archive » LittleBigBang : The Evolution Of LittleBigPlanet
'Here is a video which gives some insight into how Little Big Planet ( and Media Molecule! ) evolved from next to nothing into what it is today! This was generated from our source control repository using a awesome tool called codeswarm.'