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[Editor’s note: Brilliam takes a look back at the Atari 2600 Jr. for hisMonthly Musing piece. — CTZ] Like most kids my age, I wanted a Nintendo. With all of my heart, I yearned to shoot ducks and stomp Goombas and introduce Dodongo to smoke, despite his known dislike for the substance. Even as a five-year-old rambunctious tyke, I would run to the electronics section of our local department store (every month or two when we drove an hour to the Big City) and watch or even play the demonstration Nintendo from the moment we hit the store until my mother dragged me away....

It’s E3 time! The Destructoid crew is all up in Los Angeles and we’re ready to rock the show like we always do! Expect a ton of coverage including previews, interviews, first-looks and topless pictures of Chad Concelmo! Be sure to go answer our question for this week and let us know your one most anticipated game of E3. Destructoid Original:Forums, we have them: June 2011The Question: Your ONE most anticipated game of E3?...

As seen on Weekend Destructainment: Cats love the iPad! Some community blogs got promoted, Tony looked back atRobopon,Monster HunterinvadesLost Planet 2and more happened over the weekend! Destructoid Originals:Weekend Destructainment: World dominationOff-Brand Games: RoboponThis Week in the Community: Forum AdventuresCommunity:E for Effort: One million tiny screamsE for Effort: The Mass Effect series so farA Critical Ear #1: Villain themes and leitmotifsE for Effort: ForsoothCommunity blogs of 04/18 & 04/19Forum of the day:The Adorableness Thread!...

In what can only be described as a monumental (yet not unexpected) disappointment, Valve has toldEurogamerthat the cooperative zombie hunting ofLeft 4 Deadis off of the plate for this year. Valve’s Chet Faliszek says that Xbox 360 and PC gamers’ brains are safe until early 2008, when the game should ship. “Really,” Faliszek told Eurogamer, “we just want to make sure that when it’s released it’s great.” Well that’s fantastic and all, but what I don’t think he realizes is thatLeft 4 Deadwas to serve as a training tool for mankind....

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3will be arriving on the PlayStation Vita as one of themany launch gamesfor Sony’s new handheld. I went hands-on in a couple of matches and, shocker,UMvC3is pretty identical to the console versions. The huge fighting roster will remain the same and there will be both local and online multiplayer. So what’s different? Well the obvious addition is in touch screen controls. The touch screen stuff wasn’t available in the demo I went hands-on with, but basically you’ll just touch your character a series of times to get him to perform a variety of attacks....

Tim Langdell, founder of EDGE Games and former IDGA board member, is evidently not a big believer in freedom of speech — at least, not in respect to the word “edge.” After managing to remove Mobigames’EDGEfrom the iPhone app store for a few months under the pretense of copyright infringement, Langdell is now going after PuzzleKings’Killer Edge Racing, yet another app to have committed the unforgivable sin of using a word Tim Langdell thinks he has a monopoly on....

Today is Memorial Day, which in the United States is a federal holiday. In many ways, it marks a true first day of summer — pools open, we cook out, and many people even have off from work. Such is not the case with Nintendo (or myself, it appears), as they’re busy launching three titles onto the Virtual Console today:ActRaiser(SNES, 800 points),Kid Chameleon(Genesis, 800 points), andJJ and JEFF(Turbografx-16, 600 points)....

Steampunk is all the rage these days and a couple of people have shown off their custom steampunk mods this past week on the Internets. First up is this DS Lite case mod by Dtoider steampunk10. He dropped his DS Lite and decided to salvage the thing by putting it into a Cuban Cigar box. The D-pad and buttons have also been replaced making this a pretty slick DS Lite. Check out steampunk10’sCommunity Blog for morepictures....

When not conveying Naughty Dog’s production process in intricate detail,Uncharted 2co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand also talked about the team’s larger design goals during his postmortem today. At least one of those goals was to further increase the scale and intensity ofUncharted‘s cinematic experience: this meant focusing on huge cinematic setpieces that occur mostly in the course of regular gameplay, like he hotel collapse and the much-beloved train level. “Moving away from so-called quick-time events was definitely the way to go,” Lemarchand said....

As much as I loveDead Space 2—and I certainly loved it— I find myself having to disagree with a recent statement made by Visceral art director Ian Milham. He has claimed there’s nothing likeDead Space 2‘s multiplayer component, thanks to its humans vs. monsters dynamic. That’s kind of untrue. “When we kicked off the idea of aDead Spacemultiplayer some people were like ‘Wait, what?’, because games likeBattlefieldandMedal of Honorexist and have great multiplayer andDead Spaceas a franchise isn’t known for that,” he stated....

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that Ubisoft’s Wii game,Monkey Madness, is not for you. The fact sheet for the game states that the target audience for the game is kids ages six to eight years; considering I’m about to use the word “f**k,” I’d hope you are not of that age. F**k. See, there I go. But you guys need to see this. Because from what I can tell,Monkey Madnesstakes the popularNintendogsformula, throws in some monkeys, and runs with it....

Its no secret thatSonic Colorsis a game to watch out for when it finally launches.  Our own Jim Sterling had a chance to preview it at PAX and hadtons of good thingsto say about it. If you were lucky enough to go to PAX or even NYCC, you might have had a chance to see it for yourself. If not, we have a treat for you! During the Destructoid Extra Life 24 hour marathon, we are proud to announce that the Comic-con demo will be on hand and our friends at Sega have allowed us to stream our play time to everyone watching!...

You know the NPD. They track how well things sell in the business of gaming, but we haven’t been so consistent on telling you about their monthly numbers. Then I thought of a clever headline for them (you can read it above) and decided that from now on monthly NPD numbers would come on the weekends so I could use said headline. So here they are with commentary and full numbers below: Console sales surged over last year by 12 percent to $313....