Insomniac Games, creators of Playstation standbys Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet and Clank, and Resistance, have just signed a deal with EA for their next franchise. The new, unnamed franchise will break Insomniac’s long string of Playstation exclusives with a PS3 and Xbox 360 simultaneous release. IGN had heard rumors of them going multi-platform way back in March during the Game Devolopers Conference, and this is the first real confirmation.

IGN broke the news and were able to talk to Ted Price, the founderand CEO of Insomniac. He had this to say:  ”We definitely take a measured approach to what we do at Insomniac. We’ve never made overnight decisions about things and we’ve been thinking about going multiplatform for a while and planning it, and we’re now at the point where we can do that, as well as continue our relationship with Sony that we’ve maintained for the last 14 years.” Price continued on, noting that Insomniac is “just as dedicated to Ratchet and Clank and Resistance as [it] ever [has] been.”

IGN was also able to talk to a Sony spokesperson who stated, “Sony Computer Entertainment and Insomniac Games will continue to build upon a strong, successful, 14-year partnership that has led to more than 35 million games sold and enjoyed by fans around the world. We look forward to unveiling Insomniac’s next PS3 exclusive properties in the near future.”

Kotaku (via Play3) has noticed Nathan Drake’s profile page on meinVZ (a German language social networking site) has some interesting status updates. Since May 8, the profile has been updating with some interesting, yet cryptic status messages. The status messages were as follows:

May 8:

Amundsens Buch gelesen. Klingt wie Wahnfantasien oder ein Science Fiction Roman. Weiß nicht recht, was ich davon halten soll.

Translated: Amundsen’s book read. Sounds like Wahnfantasien or a science fiction novel. Really know not what to think.

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Some video game levels are so fun that you have to play them over and over again. In every installment of the game’s series. They’re classic environments, so emblematic of the franchise that developers love to reference or outright recreate them in new games. These are Nostalgia Levels, the levels that you keep coming back to whether you want to or not.

Examples of nostalgia levels include:

A while back, I came across The Gameover Thinker, an avid video game fan and amateur filmmaker also known as Movie Bob. He recently partnered with ScrewAttack.com after winning their “My Videos Don’t Suck” contest, and has been reviewing movies for the Escapist for some time. Before this recent partnership with ScrewAttack, Movie Bob made a video two part commentary about Sonic The Hedgehog called, “Sonic In Crisis“.

Wait, wait, I know what you’re thinking “What does this clown have to say about Sonic that hasn’t already been said by a 100 other people?“ What was sure to be nothing more than a ten minute YouTube fanboy rant turned out to be a very clever and well thought-out retrospective on the Sonic franchise as a whole. In part two of the video, he even provides solutions on how to save Sonic and turn the situation around.

The ideas he suggest are excellent. Many of the story idea coming form classic mythology, or Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. These basic story elements could be implemented by Sega, at very time and cost. None of which would interfere with Sega’s current plans to bring back a 2D Sonic.

If Sega cares about Sonic, it will make those changes and see them through. I’d love to see Sonic The Hedgehog back on top again, instead of his current position of being cracked-out in the gutter.

Sonic In Crisis, part 1
Sonic In Crisis, part 2

Well, Lost is over now. Whether you loved or hated the series finale, it certainly wrapped up the 6-year-long story of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. I won’t say a thing about it because I’m still not sure whether I loved it or hated it, but feel free to discuss it below.

After so long, Lost is finally hitting Rock Band. Drive Shaft’s “You All Everybody” and Geronimo Jackson’s “Dharma Lady” will be coming to the Rock Band Network soon, first appearing on the Xbox 360 and later the Playstation 3 and Wii. If you’ve watched Lost, then you’ve already heard “You All Everybody,” but “Dharma Lady” is just obscure. Geronimo Jackson was popular in the 70′s of the Lost world, so it played a subtle but ubiquitous part in season 5 of the show.

Drive Shaft’s hit single is easily the catchiest song to come from a fake band in the last decade, and the producers of Lost made a surprisingly compelling mellow 70′s rock ballad with Geronimo Jackson’s song. As television tie-in songs go, these should be pretty solid downloads for Rock Band players and Lost fans.

You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, but you can always bring a sword to a Nerf fight. Foam darts are always fun, but there’s just something unmistakably satisfying about hitting your friends with a padded stick.

You can use pretty much anything for melee cube warfare. Your weapons can be as cheap and simple as foam pool noodles, or as expensive and ornate as replica lightsabers and latex LARP swords. As long as it’s rigid enough to keep its shape and soft enough to not hurt anyone, it can be a good melee weapon.

Google has being caught with their pants down, again. In less than one month, I have had my gmail account twice hacked into by the same unknown persons, with IP Address residing some where in China. I am not very happy and I’m sure Google isn’t either.

What is going on over at Google Headquartes? Do the hackers have some sort of *magical doorway* that leads them straight on to the Google servers? Mmmm… well, one can only speculate? But, if I didn’t know better, it almost seems to be a personal attack aimed directly at Google. I wonder what Google could have done to warrant this type of divine retribution? The hackers seem to know exactly when to strike. Over the weekend on a Saturday Night. Brilliant. That way I, like so many others, can spend our Sunday afternoons cleaning up Google’s mess. Excellent.

I’ve had to move email accounts, change login account for various othet sites, update new passwords in a mad rush, all because Google has been asleep at the switch. I’ve used Gmail for about 6 years without incident, but I’m jumping ship. Having this happen once is bad luck, but twice in a month…. is a huge error on the part of Google. They are going to lose massive amounts of credibility over this. “Unknown persons managed to hack several of your user’s accounts, which are located on your servers. Twice, in the same month”. Not good.

Account temporarily disabled

Have you got nothing to wear, but are looking for the perfect outfit? How about this $75 dollar sexy Gameboy Tube Dress. Show your true gamer roots by sporting this fashion-forward frock.

Made by SewOeno a young lady from Cleaveland, Ohio. These hand made knit fabric dresses are very cute. A garment like this will make a bold statement. Walking into a room wearing it, people will turn and say,”What the hell have you got on?” But to those of us in the know, she would be the belle of the ball at PAX this September. Take a look at her site, where she also makes these dresses in Pink.

It’s been a big month for Mac users. First the iPad sold 1 million units, just weeks after its April release. Then Valve released Steam for the Mac with a sizable number of games already ported and ready through Steamplay. Now Apple is killing the smarmy “I’m a Mac” ads.

It’s funny. The “I’m a Mac” ads have focused around the Mac being able to do what PCs can, better than PCs. Now, with Steam available on the Mac, Apple’s fancy white box is starting to get a respectable game library. Yes, many PC games have been ported to the Mac over the years, but Steam is the first real push to put games on the Mac across the board. Valve’s fully behind it, and since Steam is one of the biggest online game stores on the Internet, many other publishers/developers have a strong incentive to make their games available on both PC and Mac.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out tomorrow, and the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center is getting ready for it with plenty of partying. The store held an exclusive Club Nintendo gathering yesterday evening, drawing in hundreds of hardcore Mario fans (many of which wore the Platinum-level Club Nintendo reward from last year, Mario’s hat).