It's time to take a look back at Nintendo's first foray into handheld gaming, nine years before Game Boy (and three years before Famicon/NES). Researchers at DS Fanboy have compiled an exhaustive rertrospective on the Game & Watch, in addition to interviewing two dedicated collectors. As is commonly written, know your roots.

Sure, it's sad to see all those beautiful, Special Edition DS models in Japan never reach US or European soil. Fortunately for those with a bottomless wallet, the DS is region-free. If you're the kind to covet DS units like Pokemon, here's a collection of some of the best colors and designs from around the world.

After several days of conjecture, an evolving series of load screens, and more fanboy arguments than you can shake a mouse at, word has finally come down from on high that the newest Blizzard property will be Diablo III. With the announcement this morning, Blizzard has thrown open the floodgates with screen shots, concept art, video and more. If you're wondering about what this upcoming title has in store, check out coverage from around the network and beyond, or wander through the eye-candy goodness of the galleries!

• Liveblogging the Worldwide Invitational opening ceremony
• Splash page changes as WWI opening ceremony begins, announces Diablo 3
• Watch Diablo 3 teaser and gameplay footage
• First Diablo 3 screenshots
• Highlights from the Diablo 3 FAQ
• Diablo 3 shipping simultaneously on Mac
• Who's Jay Wilson?
• WWI streaming reliability disappoints

Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.

For nearly two years now, Off the Grid has introduced (and reintroduced) Joystiq's readers to some of the best board and card games on the market. The relationship between our modern video games and their non-digital counterparts is very clear-cut. As Gamelab CEO Eric Zimmerman puts it: "a game is a game is a game."

So for those readers who aspire to create games of their own, it should come as no surprise that non-digital games are a great starting place for honing the craft of game design. With no programming skills required, non-digital game design is an easy way to begin thinking creatively about interaction, without the complicated prerequisities of digital game development.

The best leaping-off point for non-digital game design is with the tools. Most gamers probably already have some fantastic equipment in their closets. So let's look at the basic tools of the trade.

Sure, Will Wright's Spore Creature Creator can let your imagination run wild ... but sometimes your imagination doesn't exactly go that far. Our friends at Nintendo Wii Fanboy have amassed a collection of Pokemon creatures from the Sporepedia. Each picture in the gallery can be added directly to your game by saving the picture into the Spore folder. Our Sporémons, let us show you them.

The latest World of Warcraft patch (2.4.3) has made it to the public test realm (PTR) and our friends at WoW Insider have already traveled far and wide in this strange, but oddly familiar territory. Check out their guided, visual tour of the new features in the update.

Activision invited us out to the House of Blues last week, which was a fitting place to give us a first look at Guitar Hero: World Tour in action. Though we didn't get to play it, we did watch the folks from RedOctane take a spin through all the new features. Suffice it to say, this isn't simply Guitar Hero: Rock Band ... which is what we thought it might turn out to be. Read on after the break to find out why you'll soon have a closet filled with enough peripherals to make your own one-man band.

In our quest to familiarize ourselves with the laws of nature (and subsequently defy them), this week we're going to share at least five abominations, one each day, that we've concocted in Spore Creature Creator. You can keep track of this our progress via our various profile pages:

• Justin McElroy
• Ross Miller
• Randy Nelson
• Alexander Sliwinski
• Kevin Kelly

For the final day, we tried to commit ourselves to pulling out all the stops, but a very long day of blogging left us with some epic failures that will never see the light of day (e.g. Big Bird). We do feel, however, that we have a much better understanding of Spore's limitations. (You can read about them in our gallery.) You can see all the creatures from the week starting here. Each page contains a link to the creature's respective Sporepedia page where you can download and edit our work.


Put your skills to the test and win some gear. BigDownload is offering BigPrizes to see your Spore creations.

Got an extra DS lying around? We're betting more than a few of you do. If you need some suggestions as to what you can do with your extra two (or four or eight) screens, our friends at DS Fanboy have you covered. From homebrew to charity to even sandwiches, check it out.

In our quest to familiarize ourselves with the laws of nature (and subsequently defy them), this week we're going to share at least five abominations, one each day, that we've concocted in Spore Creature Creator. You can keep track of this our progress via our various profile pages:

• Justin McElroy
• Ross Miller
• Randy Nelson
• Alexander Sliwinski

For day two (new entries start here), we've got an elated peppermint, an attentive dinosaur, and a hiphopapotamous with flows that glow like phosphorous. You can see all the creatures from the week starting here. Each page contains a link to the creature's respective Sporepedia page where you can download and edit our work.

Toasterhead and his pals on the Ishimura deathtrap took time out from their busy schedules to pose for a roll of fresh Dead Space screens (trust us, Isaac's smiling underneath all that glowing light). The gang did a fine job keeping the action looking candid. And by golly, all that blood sure looks real! How they do it ... we may never know.

This may seem like a raunchy story -- the kind of catfight tale ending with broken nails and torn clothing. We were sort of expecting such scuffles to happen as seven beautiful ladies tussled this past Thursday night over at a Manhattan bar & restaurant called Sutton Place. Alas, we didn't get to see anything underlyingly lewd, but there were certainly enough sweaty bods to drive the male crowd into a frenzy.

Taking part in a Nintendo publicity stunt called "Wii Box in the City," these women tested out their gaming aptitude and fighting skills in a Wii Sports boxing tourney to win a Wii system. The night was wild all night as crowds of supporters cheered and jeered. It came down to Mari (in blue) and Regina (in yellow) for the championship. We caught up with Mari before the big fight; she told us about her Wii experience: "I've played Wii before. It's like a workout." Regina on the other hand had never played the Wii before, while both ladies never had any gaming experience beyond that.

Soon, it was time for the final fight. The two fought bravely, but in the end Regina won with a knock out. "Oh my god, you won!" exclaimed May, Regina's best friend, whose excitement was like that of a kid on Christmas morning. Regina gave her winning prize over to May who continued to laud her bestest friend: "She really killed it! She's the bestest friend ever!" Who knew that gaming and bar fights could bring friends closer together?

In case you were thinking of skipping the approximately 8-minute install (which also translates to 4 or 5 cigarettes for our aged hero) and making a sandwich, consider the little bit of humor you'd be missing. If you're still undeterred and plan to ignore the game while it installs, check out our gallery for the sagacious and spoiler-free advice.

While some of it is a bit mundane, there are some rather humorous tidbits scattered about. For instance, how does one take a break every 15-minutes when cut-scenes run longer than that? [By pausing, you troll! - Ed]

Hideo Kojima stopped by New York City's Virgin Megastore in TImes Square to meet and greet fans at the Metal Gear Solid 4 launch. We got a number of signed copies ... maybe one will go to a lucky reader (if we feel generous enough!). Check out our gallery below, or some highlights, after the cut.

For those who didn't pick up the US Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition, we've got a gallery of what you're missing. It's not much, and it's certainly a downer to note that this edition doesn't include a Solid Snake figurine. We'll add those pics when our European correspondents put their controller down long enough to grab a camera.