There are plenty of head-shaking remakes 
of retro games in the works (a modern-day BurgerTime? Really?), but another batch of bizarre games hearken back to equally nostalgic television shows and films. Not Citizen Kane, Casablanca and The Dick Van Dyke Show — we’re talking about pop culture staples from the 80s and 90s, of course.
Here are six of the strangest.
Hackers have managed to cut Sony off at 
the knees in several of the most competitive aspects of this generation of video games.
For the past five days, the PlayStation Network has been offline—making it impossible for PlayStation 3 owners to play multiplayer games, download updates to titles or use their PS3 to stream movies and music. This represents the most serious outage the service has faced since its start in 2006.
It’s official. Nintendo will have a 
new home console in stores next year.
The company confirmed the rumors Monday morning, saying it would have a playable version on display at this year’s E3 trade show in June. That’s also when the company plans to announce details on what will make the unnamed system notably different from its predecessor and competing systems.
Most companies ignore the rumor mill – 
sometimes to the point of it being embarrassing. Nintendo, however, is willing to admit when its secrets are spilled.
The company has confirmed the rumors that it plans to unveil a successor to the Wii at this year’s E3 (the annual trade show of the video game industry). The new system will be out in 2012.
Faced with rapidly declining sales and a less 
enthusiastic than expected reception to its newest handheld gaming device, Nintendo has confirmed that it will be releasing a successor to the Wii in 2012.
A prototype of the new device, which has been rumored for the past several weeks, will be unveiled at E3, the video game industry’s annual trade show in June.
Leave it to The History Channel to make 
any other history-oriented app seem paltry. The Civil War Today is a breathtaking undertaking, crammed with fascinating data and presented in such a way that it never overwhelms the user. Daily updates mirror the events of 150 years ago, with newspaper reports and summary information, but the app also underlines the growing tragedy of the war with casualty counts on both sides, letters and diaries from soliders (again, on both sides), photos, quotes of the day, maps, and an interactive quiz. History buffs will be in heaven, but even students who have a moderate interest in the Civil War will find themselves anxiously awaiting updates every day.
Everyone loves a good story. The problem 
is, some of the best ones are totally false.
That’s especially true in the prone-to-exaggeration world of video games, which is rife with kooky legends and inaccurate information. As it turns out, however, some of the tallest tales are perfectly legitimate. Read on as we confirm or bust some of the biggest myths in gaming.
When Nintendo announced Super Mario was on the
way to the 3DS in March, the company didn’t offer a lot of details.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s global president, tossed out a logo (which had a tail), showed a few screen shots and said we’d hear more at E3. It was a frustrating tease for fans.
Players hoping to play a multiplayer game on their 
PlayStation 3 haven’t been able to do so reliably for several days – and for the past three days, they haven’t been able to do so at all.
The PlayStation Network – the console’s online service – has gone down and at present, no one seems to know when it’s coming back. Sony, in a blog update about the outage yesterday, said it was investigating the cause, but “it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running.” Since then, the company has remained silent.
Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris questions 
Sony’s handling of recent events, including the confusion surrounding the production of the PSP Go, and the ongoing outages with its PlayStation Network.
One of the greatest things about the internet era is the ability to learn news faster than ever before. The downside to that is that partial truths sometimes get mixed in with facts.
Often times, that’s the fault of the media – especially the news corps of the video game world, which very often follows a herd mentality, echoing each other’s stories without doing their own investigation. But as the fate of the PSP Go has been bandied about this week, Sony only has itself to blame.
Chris Morris: Journalist 