Sure, you can't play Gears of War on your Wii, but you'll soon be able to go a few rounds in Gun Cogs, one of the eleven handheld LCD tributes to today's hottest titles coming to WiiWare as part of Alten8's Squibs Arcade. What is Squibs Arcade?

SQUIBS ARCADE takes inspiration from the current generation of AAA titles, distilling the game play to its most fundamental form, and re-imagining them with the style and passion of the classic LCD games.

As you can see in the gallery below, Alten8 has most of their bases covered. Assassin's Creed becomes Crowd Wader, Metal Gear Solid is channeled through Cardboard Axel Much, Wii Fit morphs into We're Fat, and Grand Theft Auto becomes Jack A Motor.

Other titles included in Squibs Arcade include Clown, Button Basher, Fantasy Turn Base, Call of Honour, Lots of Levelling, and Regret the Fist, most of which carry their inspirations in their names.

I absolutely love this idea. Companies often talk of distilling gameplay down to its purest form. It doesn't get much more pure than a handheld LCD game.

Alten8 To Develop "Luc Bernard's Eternity's Child" For DS And Wii

Alten8 has agreed with Luc Bernard on the creation and publication of Nintendo DS and Wii versions of the Eternity's Child game , bringing this delightful creation to an even wider audience. Luc will be working closely with Alten8 to bring his creations to life on these formats

The story of Eternitys Child and the orphan 'Angel' - the planet on which Eternity's Child is set on. The planet was once filled with many living creatures and vast forests, however due to the pollution created by the habitants the icebergs melted and the whole planet was flooded and most of the creatures became extinct. The creatures without wings that were left became jealous of the ones with wings (that allowed them to survive the flooding), so the land creatures started murdering all the winged creatures until there was none left. To repopulate the world, many mechanical robots were created so that the world would not seem as empty as before, but most of those creatures got out of control and started attacking and destroying what was left.

Eternity's Child Wii version details -

Angel was left at the door of a orphanage when he was a baby, to protect him from being murdered his wings were cut off. The years went by as he stayed in that orphanage, not accepted by the other children and being often tortured and picked on. Angel then escapes from the orphanage to try to find any remaining creatures of his species and hoping to be accepted by them despite him not having his wings.

Details about Wii version -

* The entire game is hand drawn
* the animations are done traditionally by hand frame by frame (like old disney films)
* the soundtrack is all orchestral
* the game is an Interactive Fairytale
* there will be songs in the game like old disney films
* 2 player co operative mode will be available

DS version -

* the game will be a 3D platform game
* will not have the same story as the Wii version

Regular updates and information will appear on the Alten8 and the Eternitys Child web site.

About Luc Bernard

Luc Bernard is a young 21 year old artist/dark fairytale creator, he is currently working with Alten8 on the Wii and DS versions of Eternity's Child. Eternity's Child is planned to be turned into a animated series, toys, and various merchandise. For each one of his tales he takes inspiration from his life. Apart from Eternity's Child he is also working on various other dark fairytales such as The Rose Princess, Samuel, Manufactured Beauty. www.myspace.com/lucbernard

Heck, we love zombies. Look at our April Fool's Day event. But can anyone explain why a game in which you shoot your co-workers in the face is less offensive than a game in which you're shooting your already dead co-workers in the face?

Massacre Returns from Dead
Previously: Office Massacre Game Canceled
Previously: Office Massacre Game for Mobile Phones

We are genuinely shocked by some of the press reactions to the game. Whilst most see the game as we did initially, which was some harmless cartoon fun , which was very , very mild graphically compared to many commercially released mainstream games.

This game was never seen as anything other than a harmless casual game. We cannot allow Alten8 to become the centre of a witch hunt , or allow individuals to further their causes at the expense of our fledgling company.

Glad to see that gamers are so quick to cave to the conceit that some subject matter for games is verboten. The fallacy we should all be arguing against is whether or not playing games leads to moral perversion and criminality, not whether some games offend moral sensibilities. In our minds, there's a really small distinction between the moral correctness of shooting sprites pretending to be office workers and the moral correctness of shooting sprites pretending to be demons from hell. Recognizing one as unacceptable while the other is encouraged just gives anti-gaming wingnuts the ammunition they need to call out our own inconsistency.

Alten8 Scraps Office Massacre [Next Generation]
Related: Office Massacre Game for Mobile Phones

This, of course, isn't terribly surprising — like Running With Scissors' Postal games, this is a company trying to turn a profit by way of the old "even bad publicity is good publicity" adage. Personally, I don't think I mind: although gamers tend to get frustrated when companies like this gleefully attempt to garner up yet another Senate hearing on the negative effects of video game violence, we don't really see much difference between playing a game where you shoot sprites that are supposed to represent co-workers and a game where you shoot polygons that are supposed to represent demons from hell or effeminate elves. In both games, your supposed acts of violence are imaginary, directed against imaginary targets far removed from life.

The crux of the issue should not be the content of a game, any more than the content of a film or novel should determine its value. The fact of the matter is that no matter what you shoot in a game, its imaginary, its escapism, it has no relevance to the way you behave in real life. So while it is slightly obnoxious that a company is attempting to sell a shitty game based upon notoriety that just gives more ammunition to those already against gaming, we hope that releasing these sorts of games will challenge the underlying erroneous assumption that games, no matter what the content, affect a gamer's own sense of morality.

Office Massacre Game Announced [Next Generation]