Hopper, now 73, is being treated at the University of Southern California. His manager says the actor is canceling all travel plans to focus on getting better.

Hopper also voiced a couple of other video game characters in games I've never heard of, like Walter Pensky in something called Black Dahlia. Bad video games or not, though, the cancer diagnosis is a real bummer. Especially since I happen to like the Super Mario Bros. movie — and Waterworld, but I'll deny that if you confront me about it in public.

And as a side note, remember that October is National Breast Cancer month. For those of you tempted not to care, 2,000 MEN are expected to be diagnosed with it this year. Scary, huh?

Dennis Hopper has prostate cancer [The Hollywood Reporter]
Image Cred

Extra Life's super huge gaming marathon started at 8 AM on October 17 in participants' local time zones. Gamers were allowed to play literally any game they wanted starting from that time until 8 AM the following morning to honor their commitment. A make-up day went down on October 24, which brought in almost $8,000 more to the cause.

Between the two marathons and all of the participants' sponsors, Extra Life raised a little over $150,000 for charity — $30,000 more than they made last year. The proceeds go to pediatric cancer research and treatment.

"It was a huge success," Sarcastic Gamer publicist Lesley Adams said. To make it even more so, they're keeping the Extra Life website open to donations through November 8 — although no more marathon gaming sessions are required at this point.

So who here answered the call to arms and played for the whole 24 hour period?

Extra Life, as the gig is called, generated $120,000 last year with their 24-hour gaming marathon event. This year, they're kicking it off a little early and asking all participants to score four sponsors at $1 an hour each to break last year's total.

The event starts at 8 AM on October 17 in participants' local time zones. Gamers can play literally any games they want (Windows solitaire, Batman: Arkham Asylum, even an emulation of Oregon Trail, if you've got it) starting from that time until 8 AM the following morning to honor their commitment. Sponsors' donations are naturally tax-deductible. Oh, and you get a free t-shirt if you break the $129 mark.

Check it out here.

Note: This image is a piece of art from the Making a Mark exhibit currently on display at Texas Children's Hospital through a sponsorship from Texas Children's Cancer Center and The Periwinkle Foundation.

Stanford University's Folding@Home program has gotten a lot of play this week, and so it should. The program harnesses the power of idling PC's and PS3's to calculate data that will eventually help find cures for Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's, various types of Cancer and other diseases.

This is all well and good and I'm sure we all want to do something to help the cause, but how does this program really work? What exactly is protein folding and what will be the eventual outcome? GameVideos producer Kathleen Sanders finds out in this sit down interview with Sony's r&d manager, Dr. Richard Marks.

This is a program all owners of the PS3 should try and opt into if they can. I know I would if I actually had a PS3, but I will be downloading the PC version to use on my computer here at home. If you are interested in joining a team for the experiment, why not join our own newly formed Team Kotaku. And as Kathleen so eloquently puts it at the end of the interview, "If you don't download it, then you're kind of automatically an asshole."

I will warn you: this is a very scientifical and techie interview with lots of big words, so if it's early where you are, you might want to down a couple cups of coffee before taking this one on.

This is super cool. Sony Computer Entertainment is teaming up with Stanford University to create a distributed computing network of PS3s to help study the causes of a number of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

The next software update for the PS3, expected to hit at the end of the month, will include a new Folding@home icon for the cross media bar. To join the program you just click on the icon. You can also set up your PS3 to work on the application whenever the console is idle. This second option will require leaving the console powered on and connected to the Internet. Not sure if that could create a heat issue.

The Cell-powered PS3s will tap into Stanford's Folding@home program which has been in use on home computers since 2000 to work on studying disease by simulating the process of folding proteins. When performed on a single computer this simulation can tak up to 30 years, but Folding@home allows thousands of computers, and now thousands of PS3s, to work on the same simulation through distributed computing.

Sony says the Cell process inside the PS is about 10 times faster than a standard chip in a computer, so this will be quite a boon to researchers.

"Millions of users have experienced the power of PS3 entertainment. Now they can utilize that exceptional computing power to help fight diseases," said Masayuki Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO Computer, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "In order to study protein folding, researchers need more than just one super computer, but the massive processing power of thousands of networked computers. Previously, PCs have been the only option for scientists, but now, they have a new, more powerful tool — PS3." "We're thrilled to have SCE be part of the Folding@home project," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. "With PS3 now part of our network, we will be able to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases."

This is just the first use of the PS3 for distributive computing, according to Sony. The company said they will continue to support " a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences and environmental studies."

This is a very admirable thing that Sony is doing. Good for them. Brian Crecente

So what good could come out of a basketball career ending illness and a home robbery? The kindness of strangers (duh)!

When his parents broke the news about the theft, in the same breath they were able to say somebody has already donated an Xbox to you with enough money to replace all the games.

Man, that kid is SO lucky. Just kidding. That's not funny at all.

Thanks for the tip, Michael. Michael McWhertor

2 arrested in theft of Xbox from cancer patient [Boston Globe]

Finally, some good PlayStation 3 news! New Hampshire high school student Nathan Burditt camped out a total of 34 hours to get his hands on a PlayStation 3—only to turn around and donate it to a raffle to benefit teenage brother and sister cancer victims Stephanie and Kevin Hudon.

The winner of that PS3 raffle? Original buyer Nathan Burditt, who had an advantage due to an estimated 25% of raffle ticket buyers submitting their tickets under his name.

Then Adam Sandler, raised in Manchester, New Hampshire, got PS3 generous, too. He fired off "a PlayStation 3 loaded with games, signed DVDs, jerseys, an autographed 'Longest Yard' poster...kind of cheer-up package" to the Hudons. Let's hope Sandler didn't include a copy of The Longest Yard on DVD. That would crush anyone's spirit!

So what's Burditt going to do with the PS3 now? Doesn't sound like he'll be keeping it. Maybe he flip it on eBay for even more cash. Michael McWhertor

Adam Sandler gets into act to help brother, sister fighting cancer [Union Leader]

Aw, isn't that swell? Target is donating 100% of its profits on the Coral DS Lite to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Why the pink one? Pink is synonymous with girls, girls are synonymous with breasts. Except Ashcraft actually owns a pink DS Lite. Ergo, this is essentially a charity to help save Brian Ashcraft. And if anyone needs saving, it's him. Frankly, we all knew that there was something wrong with him the first time he put "LOL!" in a headline, but we didn't know it was cancer.

Anyway, there's no point in spending any money to save Ashcraft. But the millions of women suffering from or at risk of breast cancer? A good enough reason to go pink at Target, if you were already inclined. Florian Eckhardt

Help Cure Cancer, Buy a DS Lite [GoNintendo]

I told you a few weeks ago that I was charmed by the art associated with cancer-themed Serious Game, "Re-Mission", and I had bought a copy for review. And I stand before you today wondering about the moral imperative I have here...is it bad for the cause, to trash on a charitable game?

I have decided that no, this is necessary. With any luck, poor reviews will help guide the next instance of educational or charitable software, and we'll get less crappy indie games. And here we go.

Overall, this game represents a noble effort, an admirable failure that deserves a pat on the back and some corrective encouragement. And maybe it really does help cancer-afflicted children. But is it a good game? Absolutely not. It is, in fact, extremely bad.

Immediately upon installation I noticed problems. First of all, the full install is a whopping 3 and a half gigs. And even with that, the irritating and occasionally unskippable opening logos for the various studios were running around 2 FPS. You are made to select your language every time the game runs, it doesn't remember.

Complete review after the jump.

After being subjected to a screeching slideshow (theme music was likewise horrible for all these logos) I finally got to the main menu, which also looked like crap. A very jumpy, pixilated loop of red blood cells and cancer cells floating through tubes.

Once in the actual missions, you are given a brief lecture pertaining to the particular teenage cancer patient you're inside. What kind of cells you're looking for, objectives, etc. Then you get an unskippable and poorly-animated cutscene featuring the two irritating main characters: ROXXI the nanobabe and her accent-slinging robot helper.

ROXXI looked cute in the game packaging but in the game itself she is horrible. Screechy, ugly, uncanny and repetitive.

The gameplay is all about zooming through various tubes of the human body and shooting gummi-looking cancer cells with your chemo gun. Which is actually pretty fun until you start running into the nonsensical limitations of the control scheme. You can only aim so far up or down, so in many cases if you're far enough above or below a target, you're just SOL.

Every level looks approximately the same, and every level is extremely time-consuming. The main feature of the little cancer baddies is that they replicate quickly, so most of the gameplay is flying back and forth between ammo spawns and clusters of cancer cells. I cheated and skipped around to different levels for research purposes (I do it all for you, you jerks), and the whole thing is like this.

I'm going to treat Re-Mission as if it was a rough draft for indie and/or serious games of the future. So here's your To-Do list, Hopelab:

• Shorten and tighten. This could be a very entertaining hour-long tromp, if you used all the resources wasted on making it a timesink, for developing the actual game mechanics and variety in levels.
• More character, less gloss. Spend less resources on attempting to create cutting-edge, realistic graphics, because you will always fail. You, charity game studio, are the fat kid in the summer camp caper movie of the games industry. Instead, focus on character and cartooning. This will win you more hearts than realism, because "realistic graphics" become obsolete in a matter of years and all people can remember is that it was "cutting-edge, at the time". Cartoons are forever. Look at Sam and Max.
• Save function should be available throughout the level, not just between levels.
• 
  
• For the love of god and all that is holy, let me skip cutscenes! This is the video game equivalent of tl;dr. It is a bannable offense. And since Halflife came out, having cutscenes at all is highly suspicious.
• 
  
• Smaller HUD. My ammo indicator was bigger than my character onscreen.
• 
  
• More textures. Seeing the same pink, pulsing donut walls through the ordeal just made everything worse.

You know what this game should have been? There's an episode of Invader ZIM called Nanozim that would have made a perfect basis for a game of this type. A balls-out robot fight through the corridors of the human body.

That's it. I am done staring at this game. If anyone reading this is, or knows, a cancer patient between the ages of 10 and 19, and would like a free copy of Re-Mission, I will happily mail them mine. Just hit me up with an address and I'll send it your way, and in return you can tell me if I'm way out of line here. Eliza gauger

Re-Mission Official Site

Previously on Kotaku: Sending Cancer Patients into Re-Mission

This is a remarkable story in every way. And it serves to point out that communities is what's changing gaming, not next-gen graphics.
The naysayers do not realize that while, yes, these active netplayers do spend all of their time online, they also form real communities in there, which can in every way be as valuable as the bonds you form in face to face life.

Don't forget to post away today for your chance to win. I will be randomly selecting a post tonight, as I will every day this month, and then deciding which comment about the post was the funniest, most insightful or interesting and hand out a prize to the poster.

Today's prize is copies of Auto Assault, Guild Wars Factions and Lineage II Second Anniversary Edition with a 60 day prepaid card and a Tabula Rasa skullcap and Auto Assault T-shirt. Prizes cannot be changed. Brian Crecente

Note: If you're having trouble logging in to post comments. Try this: Login as usual, and then when it brings up the same login boxes hit the refresh key. Think of it as Kotaku's own secret handshake.

This is one of those stories that will surely warm the cockles of your heart, so much so that no jokes about playing croquet with a freshly eviscerated lymphoma from Florian could possibly make you angry. This World of Warcraft forum post chronicles the charity shown by one guild who came to the aid of one of its members, literally helping to keep a roof over a family's heads.

Last December, before Christmas, I was diagnosed with a very rare and very lethal form of cancer known as Burkitts Lymphoma (www.burkitts.org).

I underwent surgery to remove a mass the size of a softball from my neck that if left in one, maybe two more weeks, would have killed me. I was admitted to the hospital just after the first of the year to undergo three rounds, three months of some of the most intensive chemotherapy done in the industry.

With the possibility of death while being treated, and becoming violently ill and losing the ability to even walk, write or hold a gallon of milk because it was too heavy, I underwent a 9 month dose of chemo in about 3, complete with 9 spinal taps (fricken hurt!), and chemicals so toxic, if not met with an antidote I would have died from the poison.

Third week of March came, the time to retest and make sure the treatments were successful, the news was in I won the fight against not just an elite mob red spawn, but something many have died from And no, an epic didnt drop. Instead, I received legendary support!

3 months out of chemo I type to you all here and now, 3 months I have tried to heal as fast as I could, learn to walk and type, and get a new job which I just started today making a good salary. But I could not have done this without the support of many people, here in World of Warcraft.

When the state, charities, governor, news agencies, senators and even the president of the united states did not respond to my familys pleas for help to keep a roof over our head, help to keep the power company from shutting us off from a $1,500 power bill and keep food on the table for my kids while we incurred expenses of me missing work, my Guild stepped up.

Sedren 60 human priest formed a fund via paypal and was able to get donations from guild members to aid my fight to live.

Redlit 60 human warlock and his lovely wife (grats on the news of the baby!), Brindange 60 human paladin donated a large sum of money to help pay our bills.

Mystify and his lovely lady, Luvforlorn (60 warlock and 56 priestess) donated a large sum of money to help our fight as well

Krete, Jeeden, Shinyou, Havokskiss, Frsotedtears, and everyone else in our guild, Guardians of Malingon, have total raised almost $4,000

There are many many more in our guild who supported my family in this fight, but they wont tell me who all donated because they wanted to help and not want it back You have our love.

This post is one of hope, dreams and about living and loving the ones you hold dearest to you. When the real world turned its back on my family, the tanks, healers, and all that kind of good stuff in a video game, in a community where we all trust and love one another came through and put together a miracle.

The fight continues, as now I am working and will try to catch things up as soon as possible. We are not out of the fire yet, but each day the light grows brighter at the end of the tunnel. Should I live the next 5 years being cancer free, I would have truly beaten it, if not, I will die knowing those who cared and those who loved me more than any epic or loot item, and those who cared about the human spirit when all they know of me is what they hear about over Ventrilo.

Please take a moment in your busy day to notice our guild members for their outstanding support and their love for their fellow man, you dont have to let them win that epic out from under you, but a big Feathermoon pat on the back will do just fine.

Impressive stuff. This got me a little choked up, not to mention a bit jealous of this so-called "selflessness" that I'm in desperate need of. Something's gotta shatter this cold black shell encasing my calloused heart. Maybe spending more on portable video games and shoes will help! Michael McWhertor

Thanks for the heads up, Jason. We definitely appreciate some positive news now and then.

Original Forum Post At WoW Forums

I heard about Re-Mission, a cancer-themed shooter, on watchblog Gamepolitics. I was so impressed, especially after yesterday's post on a similar topic, that I put my money where my tacoslot is and actually bought the game in question.

The game is available for free on the website, but they request a donation from those who are not actually cancer patients. And you actually have to mail order the thing, you can't just download it, which is highly inconvenient. But it's a minor gripe.

GamePolitics describes Re-Mission thusly:

Created by Hope Lab in collaboration with several game developers, biologists, and young cancer patients, the somewhat whimsically titled Re-Mission is one of those serious games we love to write about because they show he positive potential of video game tech. Re-Mission is a third-person shooter starring a microscopic nanobot named Roxxi whose mission is to enter the bodies of patients and fight cancer and bacteria on the cellular level.

They go on to compliment the production values, the artwork and design, and the overall blend of science with good gameplay.

More after the ol' jumparoo.

As revealed in their little interview video, Re-Mission was the brainchild of cancer researcher Pam Omidyar, who was working in an immunology lab growing cancer cells. Every night she would go home and play video games. Years later she finally got her chance, and by all accounts Re-Mission is a success.

A study done after the release of the game showed that patients who played it "showed statistically significant improvements in cancer-related self-efficacy, social quality of life, cancer-specific knowledge, and adherence to prescribed medication."

To be fair, I was unable to find any actual reviews of the game, but I'll take care of that in a few weeks when the thing actually gets here. I'm already impressed with the music, the gameplay vid I saw in the trailer at the site, and especially with the design of the main character, who is intensely charming. I mean just look at her. Eliza Gauger

Shooter Game Helps Young Cancer Patients [GamePolitics]
Re-Mission Official Website [Re-Mission]

Previously on Kotaku: Ben's Game

1Up has confirmed that Ubisoft dropped malware copyright company Starforce like a bad habit. While Ubi was willing to admit they dumped Starforce, again, like a bad habit, they weren't really willing to say why.

When questioned Ubisoft representatives told 1UP, "Right now, Ubisoft has decided to use an alternative copy protection system to Starforce for upcoming releases and we are investigating other possible steps at this time." But why the change now? ... "Ubisoft takes its customer concerns very seriously and is investigating the complaints about alleged problems with Starforce's software. Ubisoft's goal is to find solutions for its customers if there are problems with Ubisoft products."

Now if only everyone else on the planet would follow suit the world would be a happier place and, I suspect, the cure for cancer would be found.

Ubisoft Dumps Starforce [1Up]

GamePolitics links to a CBS report on a young man fighting leukemia in an unconventional way. His method? "Swords and all that stuff." See, in addition to the real life horror of fighting cancer, 11-year-old Ben Duskin has taken his fight with cancer to the virtual space - and he did it by designing a game all his own. The game is downloadable via the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Video Games Help Sick Kids Deal With Pain [GamePolitics]
Playing the Pain Away [CBSNews]
Ben's Game [Make-A-Wish]