From time to time the oversaturated genre of Shoot 'em ups recieves some great astonishing titles with incredible graphics, gameplay, or soundtrack. and this is one that combines all of 'em. Chalk by Joakim Sandberg, its one of these. It has managed to wholly reclaim the side-scrolling shoot ‘em up genre with unique graphics, innovative game play and bold individualism.

No, its not a speedrun, but its the kind of fanservice we love.

Needless to say, don't watch it if you don't want to get spoilers.

(German version avaliable here).

the awesome people at OCremix is proudly relasing their 13th album, Summoning of Spirits: An Arrangement of Music from Tales of Phantasia(Snes) and Tales of Symphonia(Gamecube) made by the collab works of several talented artist.

"From disco to symphonic rock, it features over fifty musical arrangements from over thirty five artists, each interpreting the works of composers Motoi Sakuraba, Shinji Tamura, Ryota Furuya, Takashi Arai, and Akio Shimizu in their own unique style."

The album can be downloaded via Bit Torrent, or by HTTP, as either a full zip file or individual tracks.

Starting March 1, In the spirit of a 'non-competitive-free-to-participate-in-almost-wannabe-fad event', Metaru wants you to wear different colored versions of your avatar, for every week in March.

You can either upload a new version of your avatar, edit your current avatar's preview to avoid uploading another one (if it's yours of course) or find an avatar in the gallery that fits the mood of your character.

 Example:
would be

the dates for each color scheme are as follows:

March 1-7: Yellow
March 8-14: Blue
March 15-21: Green
March 22~31: Red

Evil forces lurk in the shadows... Pixel Joint is in danger!

Starting April 25th, two enemies are about to face each other in an epic battle of High Definition proportions. The power to protect the innocents or to feast upon them is in the hands of the few brave pixel pushers who want to be the decisive unit in this battle!

In the spirit of a 'maybe-competitive-free-to-participate-in-almost-wannabe-fad event', Metaru wants you to choose your destiny as part of the St George Knights Force and theme your avatar in a Knight-esque way to protect PJ or join the Evil Dragon Horde and theme your avatar in a Dragon-esque way to destroy it!

For example, if you happen to be

Then becoming a Knight turns you into

Or if you decided to be a Dragon instead

The prophecy tells that the battle will last until April 30th, when the side with the biggest army will prevail. The destiny of PJ is in your hands!

Sirens could be heard in the distance. Explosions could be heard all over the battlefied. An unnecesary challenge of wits has been set into two equally different factions for the lighthearted (yet brutally competitive) clash of hues. This is the decisive battle until the end of the month.

Only 10 days remain in the July avvy war! So far our scouts report that the BLUE army leads with 22 units in their ranks against the currently overpowered RED with a puny 18 units as of this status report.

RED 24 BLUE 22
It was a close call, but in the end, RED rose as supreme winner of this completely-unnecesary-yet-fruitfully-creative-non-ribbon-fueled-challenge.