While much talk in the video game community is surrounding major $60 releases, there is a thriving independent developer ecosystem that has some developers becoming household names. While titles like Minecraft have been known to be behemoths, other titles like Super Meat Boy have been humming along politely on platforms like the Xbox 360 and PC.

If you’re an ultra fan of the Super Meat Boy title then perhaps you want to show your love to the real world. How can you do this you ask? Well, but purchasing one of these Meat Boy vinyl figures, pictured above. Priced at $39.95 with an expected ship date of March, 2011, these figures stand 8-inches tall and will originally be released in limited quantities.

Unfortunately, they are not yet available for pre-order but once they are we will be sure to let you know.

via tomopop

Racing games come in all shapes and sized but Gran Turismo has long been regarded as the premiere franchise in terms of actual racing simulators. While it took virtually forever for the latest title, Gran Turismo 5, to actually hit store shelves, reception has been generally well received with consumers applauding the game for its realism.

However, with the forthcoming accessories that are set to drop for Gran Turismo 5, that realism is about to get knocked up yet another notch. What are you see above is a leaked photograph of the Thrustmaster TR500 official GT5 steering wheel. According to the game’s developers, this wheel will feature 3 pedals, a high powered motor and high speed processing with lowered latency.

However, seeing how this is an ultra advanced steering wheel, it should come as no surprise that it will go on sale for a whopping $500. Die hard racing fans only.

via kotaku

It seems that just about every day several new video game titles get announced but very few of them actually go on to become smash hits. However, for these smash hits popular retailers like GameStop have been known to hold midnight launch events giving hardcore gamers a chance to play before anyone else.

One such title that is massively popular is World of Warcraft amassing millions of monthly subscribers. Well, if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that the game has a new expansion dubbed Cataclysm coming out soon. Unsurprisingly enough, GameStop has come forth to announce that they will be holding a midnight release for the game where there were will be all sorts of WoW themed festivities.

Seeing how listing all 3,500+ stores would make for the longest post ever, we’re just going to tell you to call your local GameStop to figure out if they are holding such an event.

via gamestop

Platform games have come a long way since Super Mario Bros. Not for Super Meat Boy, which is a run of the mill platformer, with some nice originality and humor. Super Meat Boy originally began as Meat Boy, a flash game on Newsgrounds, which saw hundreds of thousands of people playing it, enough for Nintendo to request a port to WiiWare. Now Super Meat Boy has been released on WiiWare, Xbox Live and PC as well.

You play as Super Meat Boy, a slack of meat, who lives life happily when your girlfriend, a patch of gaze, is kidnapped by a fetus called, appropriately, Dr. Fetus — a baby in a jar. And just like in Super Mario Bros, you go on a quest of finding and rescuing your girlfriend. And that’s about all the story we get.

The gameplay of Super Meat Boy is nothing but a fast run and jump styled one, and you’ll be doing that through out the game’s levels (which there are aplenty of). Another thing you’ll be doing throughout the game is die, because Super Meat Boy is challenging to the point of frustrating, and the levels seem awkwardly balanced, where some are as easy as Super Mario, while others will have you die over and over again, prompting a quick “screw this” and starting another game (which happened to us quite a lot). But the nice style and levels drew us back, and we kept playing. Not only that, each level has a “dark world” counterpart, which is even more challenging.

The levels and art design of Super Meat Boy are wonderful, and bring back old memories of NES and Super NES, where platformers reigned supreme. The audio and soundtrack add to its nostalgic feel, but the difficulty level is certainly a notch higher than the old school ones. While the tough difficulty will make you swear after dying over and over again, most of the times when you do complete the level, it’s quite satisfying.

The Good:
Great nostalgia feel
Great value for money
Lots of levels
Challenging

The Bad:
Can be frustrating at times
Not much lasting appeal

Overall score: 8/10

GT Academy is back, as Sony has teamed up with Nissan to offer a series of online time trial tournaments in Gran Turismo 5 where the winners will then move on to compete for the grand prize of racing in the real world on a real Nissan racing team, in a real racing event, with real opponents. For real.

The registration for the tournaments begins on December 6.

Nintendo’s Wii Speak peripheral for the Wii, which gives players the ability to use audio inputs in games and for things like voice chat, has been pulled from the store shelves. Nintendo has reportedly stopped production of the microphone and the peripheral is now only available “at limited retail locations” However, Nintendo says if consumer demand increases, they’ll start production again.

Has anyone ever tried this Wii microphone? We haven’t see it on any store shelves, and it may be more popular in Japan, where games like Animal Crossing: City Folk are quite popular and support the device.

In Battlefield 1943, players were given a free map if they reached 43 million kills. Now they’re doing the same with the Vietnam DLC in Bad Company 2: if players reach 69 million kills, they’ll get a free map called “Operation Hastings”. It will be the fifth Vietnam map.

Considering that it took players only a few weeks to reach 43 million kills in 1943, and that Bad Company 2 has a lot more players, expect the free map to be released fairly quickly. Via Bad Company 2 Blog.

Microsoft is looking to get into the digital distribution game hard with their Games for Windows service. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that Microsoft recently held a deal on Age of Empires 3, offering it for just 99 cents. Well, it looks like they are continuing the tradition by offering Deus Ex: Game of the Year for just 99 cents.

For those not keeping track, Dues Ex: GotY normally retails for around $9.99 making this deal quite enticing.

Anyone looking to get down on it?

Read (Games for Windows)

Video game consoles give consumers the ability to participate in one of the most loved forms of entertainment; gaming. However, while most games feature expansive offline gameplay, that’s only have the fun. With the introduction of high speed broadband Internet came the phenomenon of online gaming with services like Xbox Live and the Playstation Network taking center stage.

While the Playstation Network is offered free of charge, Xbox Live is more popular with online numbers breaking records on the regular. Today, Microsoft has come forth to show off those numbers by saying about half of their 25 million Xbox Live members are Gold subscribers that pay $60 a year for the service. The company then elaborated by saying Gold members spend about 40% of their Xbox Live time on services like Netflix, Last.fm, and Zune making the platform a very valuable asset.

Are you an Xbox Live Gold subscrbier? If so, what do you live most about the service?

via thatvideogameblog

The Nintendo Wii introduced to us motion control in the form of a home game console. The success of the Wii is what many have said is the reason for Sony and Microsoft to develop the Playstation Move and Kinect, respectively.

Well, love it or hate it there is no denying the fact that the Nintendo Wii has a pretty hefty library of exclusive titles some classic and some not. One classic franchise that Nintendo holds is Metroid with the latest title being Metroid: Other M. While you would normally be forced to pay full price for this game, everyone’s favorite online retailer Amazon.com has put the game up for just $20.

However, there is a catch as the deal is only good until 6PM EST leaving about 1 hour 20 minutes since the time of this posting to get down on the deal.

Read (Amazon)