According to Yahoo Sports and Sports Illustrated (now former) welterweight contender Jon Fitch and his fellow American Kickboxing Academy members where banned from the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) after Fitch refused to sign over a lifetime agreement to THQ in a new group of UFC games.

UFC president, Dana White, officially released him after the disagreement, Fitch was quoted as saying "I'm more than willing to work with them, but I don't see why we have to give up our whole lives for this," Why not a time limit? If we did a 10-year deal with them, is that that unreasonable? I don't understand how this happened, honestly. It's tough.".

At this time THQ has not released any press release about the incident, but the complete article can be found here and also here.

Aggressive animal rights group PETA recently released the Flash-based parody Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals of the Cooking Mama series of games on its website. The objective of the game is to prepare a turkey for Thanksgiving by doing the whole process of plucking its feathers and removing its intestines. This gruesome game can be played here.

A post in PETA's official blog explains why they do it: "If you're wondering why we're picking on poor Mama, it's probably because you've never played the original games. They are so heavy on dishes made from dead animals that the only things missing are the blood and the slaughterhouse. So in the name of accuracy and honesty, PETA decided to introduce a little horror into Mama's kitchen!"

Majesco, the publisher of the Cooking Mama games, responded with a post on its site: "Food lover and culinary cutie Cooking Mama is a virtual chef who believes that good home cooked food, properly prepared from the best ingredients, can bring people together around the table and make the world a happier place. That's why Mama is taking a stand with oven mitts raised high against the latest PETA objection targeting her freshly released videogame, Cooking Mama World Kitchen.

Sony has been ruled to pay $18.5 million dollars to Agere Systems over a patent infringement case that was filed two years ago in regards to Sony's PSP.

The article claims that Sony violated the patent with some of the technology that it is using with the PSP and the way that the PSP stores pre-recorded music.

Full Article

It has been announced that by April of 2009, that Tecmo and Koei will hope to merge together to form a new holding company (Tecmo Koei Holdings) with Koei share holders owning 3/4 of Tecmo. The deal is valued around 20 billion yen (or $207 million U.S. dollars). Tecmo has recently turned down a buy out offer from Square Enix.

Complete info of the merger can be found here

Development companies ZootFly and 7 Studios have taken publisher Brash Entertainment to court over what they claim is unpaid compensation for developing games for Brash.

Zootfly is suing for $748,000 that Brash contracted them for adapting the Fox TV show Prison Break while 7 Studios is suing for $581,000 for a DS & Wii game, Six Flags Fun Park, and a game based off the upcoming 9 movie.

Brash is known for adapting movies into video games, most notably Jumper: Griffin's Story, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Space Chimps.

Complete info can be found here.

According to Bethesda, their 2009 Japanese release of Fallout 3 will be tweaked and removed the ability to detonate a nuclear blast in the game as well as the NPC Mr. Burke, the antagonist that urges the main character to detonate it.

Bethesda removed this due to the touchy subject that still exists after the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also they have renamed the "Fat Man" grenade launcher due to the fact that this was also the name of the bomb that hit Nagasaki.

They have also edited certain human and ghoul animations to conform to the CERO system, but a majority of animations from the U.S. release will still be present in the Japanese version.

Complete info can be found here.

Back in September, a group of ex-NFL players brought a lawsuit against the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), citing that their likeness was undersold for $200,000 per-year and was well under millions of dollars in market prices. They claimed that the NFLPA showed preferential treatment to Electronic Arts for their NFL Madden games and that the players were not represented in the proper way.

A jury sided with the ex-players and as a result 2,000 retired players will now receive $28.1 million from the Union ($7.1 for compensation and $21 for punitive damages). According to a source a Union lawyer asked for minimal damages, fearing that it will impact the NFLPA in representing its own players.

To view the whole story check here.

Our quiet Russian contributor Klaster_1 has recently breached the intimidating 10,000 points barrier and broke himself into Top 50 with a bang. With so little of that score belonging to screenshot contributions also known as "easy to get points", it's really a marvel that he achieved such a high rating in such a short period of time. But here he is! Having joined in 2007, he already has 4,236 points in cover art and 3,311 in company release info!

Well done and "keep up the good work"!

We officially have a page on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account and want to show support then visit our MobyGames page on Facebook and become a fan.

Brazilian veteran gaming company Tec Toy today announced its new console called Zeebo, produced in a joint venture with Qualcomm. The new console's main characteristic is its gaming media distribution: all games are downloaded "over-the-air" via a 3G network called ZeeboNet3G directly to Zeebo's internal disk. Games are expected to cost about R$ 19,00 (less than US$ 10,00) and can be bought directly through the console's interface.

See a picture of the console here.

Among the games already announced are Quake, Crash Nitro Kart and Fifa 08, Need for Speed: Carbon and Prey. Besides ports from platforms including the PC, PSP and even Gizmondo, Tec Toy mentioned the interest of big companies like EA to develop specific games for the new platform. Graphic-wise, the console is somewhere between the PSOne and PS2. Tec Toy also promised a motion sensitive controller.

The console is primarily aimed at the Brazilian market (estimated release date is October 2009), but the company intends to release it abroad if it proves its worth. In a piracy-ridden country, the download distribution scheme aims to prevent great losses, but the console's initial cost doesn't seem very attractive: R$ 599,00 (circa US$ 260,00), about the same one could pay for a PS2, a much more well established platform.

Tim Schafer made available his original puzzle design document for the game on the Double Fine site, commemorating ten years of its original release. The PDF file can be downloaded here, and obviously contains spoilers and other details about the puzzles, including ones that were cut from the final game.

Ten years of color ! This year is the tenth anniversary of the Game Boy Color. Released in 1998, it was the long anticipated successor to the Game Boy Pocket and the original Game Boy. It was the first Game Boy to be backwards compatible with past Game Boy games. This gave it a larger game library than any other handheld at the time. It came in six colors: red, purple, kiwi green, yellow, teal, and Atomic Purple. Game Boy Color was perhaps the shortest live Game Boy of them all. It was only around three years before Game Boy Advanced was released. As of March 31, 2005, combined sales of Game Boy and Game Boy Color reached 118.69 million worldwide.

Happy anniversary Game Boy Color !

For a few weeks now, Barrack Obama's campaign ads have appeared in Xbox 360 versions of Burnout Paradise, Madden 09, NASCAR 09 and 15 other games (mostly sports related). These ads began on October 6 and will conclude on the eve of the National Election. According to GameSpot, they have gotten information from the Federal Election Commission that the Illinois senator has spent $44,465.78 for these in game ads.

What are your thoughts of real-life politics in video games?