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In an effort to make every one of William Gibson’s predictions come true,South Korea has instituted a taxon the sale of virtual goods. Companies like IGE have managed to promote virtual item and currency sales into a cottage industry with annual profits on par with many small countries, and many industry experts saw government sponspored taxation on such sales as an inevitability. The only question that remains now is how long it will be before the IRS creates its own Americanized version of this tax....

To me,Spare Partscould mean a bunch of different things. The stuff that falls off the back of a truck, the piled high electrical equipment in your creepy Uncle’s garage, or Frankenstein. To the untrained eye theseSpare Partscould have one thing in common, they don’t have souls. Thankfully, that’s exactly whereEA’s Spare Partsdraws the line. This game and brings things alive with….. life! Spare Partstells the tale of two robots, Mar-T and Chip, who find themselves stranded on a strange planet....

To us, the terms “Japanese” and “Western” when applied to videogames tend to be nothing more than quick indicators of a game’s style. However, Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has noted that the terms carry avery different meaningin Japan, with the term “Youge” being used to describe so-called Western games with derision and discrimination. “Even now, there have been people in Japan using the labelyouge-(Western games) with a terribly discriminatory meaning,” says Wada....

Tales of Monkey Islanddraws to a close this December with the release of the final episodic chapter on the 8th of next month. Dubbed “Rise of the Pirate God,” Telltale Games has said via a recent press release that the this last chapter will answer “many vexing questions,” foremost of which we hope is an answer as to the real fate of the mightiest pirate ever to wear a hook for a hand, Guybrush Threepwood....

Secret of Mana Ho, Ho, Ho! Welcome, everyone, to a very special Christmas edition of The Memory Card. Holidays and videogames are strange bedfellows. While Christmas is ahugeholiday and celebrated by millions of people all around the world, it is not featured in very many videogames. Sure, there are hundreds upon hundreds of traditional “snow” levels that may throw in a requisite present or two to jump on (I’m looking at you,Banjo-Kazooie), but in general Christmas — and all other holidays — are primarily ignored in videogames....

What? YES! Ladies and gentlemen, sit down, take a deep breath, then drink in the sweeping grandeur. The ridiculously awesome, awesomely ridiculous CG cartoon show,ReBoot, which entertained the masses back in 1994, isgetting a remakewith a series of three feature-length films. For those of you too young or pathetic to know the camp glory ofReBoot, it focused on a fantasy world contained within a computer, its characters and locations taken from actual computing components....

[Editor’s note:TheGoldenDonut is known for his amazing tip finding skills. In fact, he’s so good at it, some of us wonder if he even has a real life. There are times when we won’t touch a tip with a ten foot pool. Luckily for us, Donut subjected himself to the horrors of this disgusting game. It’s even worse thanSpanish For Everyone! — CTZ] 2K Boston’sBioShockhas received an untold amount of praise since its release in August of last year....

[Editor’s Note: We’re not just a (rad) news site — we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on ourcommunity blogs.] When the world is falling to ruin, it is very important to know which side you are on....

Publisher Deep Silver has revealed that the upcoming role-playing game,Risen, will rise on June 12, 2025. By “rise” we mean that’s when it comes out. See what we did there? That’s clever, right? The game is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PC by Piranha Bytes (also a clever pun!), the same folks who brought youGothic.Risenis currently it its beta phase, with game proper being completed, the dialogue recorded, and a whole bunch of quality assurance teams on the case to make sure any bugs haven’t risen up during the game’s development....

Valve has released itsPortal 2Authoring Tools, and if you have a PC, you can start building your own test chambers now. The software is free, and you locate them in the “Tools” section of your Steam account. It’s quite a sandbox to play in, too, with all of the game’s assets — including sounds and models — are available for use. The tools are currently in beta, so if you spend hours building something and the software crashes and you lose it all… let Valve know, and they’ll fix it....

It’s Monday, and that means it’s time to look into the three ghastly faces of disappointment: Going back to work, coming home from thegreatest weekend EVAR, and this week’s list of Virtual Console releases. Today you’ll be able to downloadExcitebike(NES, 500 points);Beyond Oasis(Genesis, 800 points); andSplatterhouse(TurboGrafx16, 600 points) to help get you ready for the rest of your week. By the way,Splatterhouseis something akin to a horror game, and not what youmight thinkit is....

There’s a reason why I tend to tell people I’m not big into simulation racing — those two words instantly make me think of harsh, realistic gameplay that requires me to know a hell of a lot about cars to perform well. When I want to play a videogameto have fun, which is the case 95% of the time, sim racing doesn’t come to mind. Forza Motorsport 3director Dan Greenawalt, while much more of a simulation fan than myself, tends to agree....

Since I left Britain, I’ve not been keeping up with its politics so much, but the news that there’s a proposal to actuallytaxbroadband Internet use absolutely disgusts me. I’m not the only one either, as the UK games industry hascome out to attackthe parasitic suggestion as well. Richard Wilson, CEO of industry representative Tiga, mocked the money-grubbing plans of Communications Minister Lord Carter, suggesting it was “the tax policy of Alice in Wonderland....