When I say there are slim pickings this week, I mean it. The home consoles only get two releases, and there are no new games at all for the Wii and PSP. There's also only one release on PC, but since it's The Sims 3, it's sure to sell a bucketload by its lonesome. The only console not experiencing a game drought this week in the Nintendo DS. There really are no slow release weeks for the DS in terms of quantity, really. Read on for a list of this week's game releases.

EGM's resident rumor specialist Quartermann has set his eyes on Capcom, who has recently enjoyed success via its massive catalog of classic games. According to Quartermann in the latest issue of EGM, Capcom may be reaching into that classic gaming bag again.

You may love 'em or hate 'em but let's face it, the contributions of bosses to gaming are almost as important as those of the good guys themselves. In this edition of the QuickList, we're honoring the cream of the crop among the bad guys. The criteria? We scrutinized each based on what he had to offer and what he does best. Whether it's style, toughness or infamy, we took them by what they had to offer and we found 10 left standing. Again, this is all subjective and your opinions are as good as ours. Here they are:

10. The Polar Bear (Ice Climber)- After hours of grueling debates on the subject of whether he's even a boss or not, the Ice Climber Polar Bear has eked his way to a cliff-hanging tenth spot on this list. There's not a lot to say about him in terms of difficulty, but gamers from the past know what time it is when they see the hot, red briefs over the off-white fur. It means you're taking too long to climb and he'll force-advance the level with a jumping fart.

Usually, there's no problem getting to his face and pounding his toes with a mallet, but when playing with a friend or sibling, it sparks an unfriendly war of who gets to nail him. The only way to make sure that you do the honors is to sabotage your partner with guerrilla tactics like unorthodox body checks and busting the floors where they stand. We won't be surprised to hear about domestic violence resulting from this scenario.

The rest of the bad-ass bosses await after the jump!

Here's an idea to end all publisher base ideas - a non-profit game publishing company which will devote its revenues for charities and causes that it advocates.

Rookie game publishing company OneBigGame intends to do just that by embarking on a mission never before attempted by any developer- existing or otherwise.

The game company stated through a press release that the video game industry is among the largest entertainment markets in the world and has a great resource of creative material. It also exercises great influence over popular culture and that's where the company comes in.

By capitalizing on the market opportunity, the game can advocate the causes that it believes in and at the same time, generate revenues to aid charities in line with its vision.

"Over the past months, we have been conducting informal talks with a wide variety of games industry people, and we are confident the development community is ready for a large scale industry wide charity initiative," says Martin de Ronde, founder of the OneBigGame initiative.

Mr. de Ronde is recognized for his role in co-founding game outfit Guerrilla games which released titles Killzone for the PS2 and Shellshock for the Xbox. It is still unclear how details will work out regarding finances and charity, but expect more light to be shed when the company officially goes public in Game Developer's Conference 2007 in San Francisco.

For some people, gaming isn't an escape. It's infiltration and warfare. In a recent article from the Escapist, we find out that this is the life of online guerrilla marketers, and you can bet that you've probably already met some of them online.

"Jack" is an expert in a unique kind of online fraud. Jack spends weeks trying to infiltrate online communities and gaining the trust of others. Maybe he's spent weeks giving fair, unbiased advice. Then he inserts a recommendation: buy this game. And everybody believes good old unbiased Jack. And nobody suspects that Jack has been hired by the game's publisher or developer to pimp the game. Nobody suspects that they are being controlled.

And "Jack" is good at what he does. If the community is mostly young 15-year olds, he blends in. He says that his personalities range from a 10-year-old girl to a 78-year-old man across different ethnicities, stereotypes, and ages. "It's evil," he says. "I'm evil."

"I will make you buy this commercial item or visit some site using any means necessary."

According to our official QJ Dictionary of Mental Health, escapism is avoiding reality by indulging in an entertaining or imaginative activities. So, whenever you don't do your errands because you are busy playing video games, Dr. Phil and Oprah would call that escapism.

So there's a very sick betrayal there: we enjoy video games because they let us escape reality; we become somebody else in another world where we have big guns or swords or muscles and it's perfectly healthy to blow up your enemies and it's easy to tell who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are (yes, we sometimes bring in reality and have huge arguments about consoles or whatever, but for the most part, we just live to play).

We are escapists. And in the end, we fall prey to the advice of people who are only pretending to be escapists like us; people who have studied us, pretended to be our friends, know too much about us, and know very well which products are paying them for real.

Remember when Rambo and Commando were big event movies? Hot damn, it used to be so easy to impress people! Stick a muscular guy in a Cambodian village and give him a big black gun and you've got top class entertainment for the whole family. But as with everything else these days the stakes have gotten higher, much higher. The big event games are coming, the epics of our time, games that will leave you breathless, eyes wide in wonder and mouths agape. What's your fancy?

       

Venture on dear reader, and find out what tasty morsels lie in store after the jump!