A word of warning to users of R4 clones: the R4 team seems to make a move towards eradicating the clones of their best-selling R4DS flashcart, but in a fairly risky method that would put users in danger. If our favorite weblator correctly translated R4's statement, it seems that they are planning to brick Nintendo DS units that are running R4 clones.  Sounds okay? Not if you're not too sure if your R4 flashcart is the real deal or not. More on this in the full article.

Seems like Ninty doesn't want to wait till E3 to spill the beans about its new games. Nintendo has released details and release dates for several of its upcoming games for the Wii and the DS, including Mario Super Sluggers and Wario Land: Shake It! Details in the full article.

Business partners THQ and Nickelodeon have just released their planned lineup of games for this year. One title that's certainly worth a look is Avatar - The Last Airbender: Into the Inferno, which was previously announced Wii, DS, and PS3 platforms. Further details are available in the full article.

If you enjoyed Ben 10: Protector of Earth (Wii, PSP, NDS), then you'll be happy to know that D3Publisher has yet another game coming your way. The company revealed that Ben 10: Alien Force for the Nintendo Wii, DS, Sony PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 2 will be arriving in North America really soon. To find out more, check out the full article.

If you can't get enough of Madden NFL 08 (Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, DS, PC, and PS3), then you might want to know that Electronic Arts has revealed the launch date of Madden NFL 09 and that they will be releasing a Collector's Edition of the game. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

Homebrew developer Cid2Mizard has released Super Mario Galaxies v0.8. Not to be confused with the Wii game with a similar name, this top-down space shooter pits Mario against Goomba Jets.

For more information, head on over to the full article.

Download: Super Mario Galaxies v0.8

The Casual Games Association has announced that it will be hosting Casual Connect Europe. This event will run from February 6 to 8 in Amsterdam and is being held to gather industry leaders in the hope of promoting casual games as well as securing its future development.

Want to know more? Check out the full article via the "read more" link below.

It looks like another hit title in Japan is about to get the gamer treatment. Marvelous Entertainment has just opened up a site for To Love-Ru, an ongoing manga penned by Hasemi Saki, and illustrated by Kentaro Yabuki.  More details on the PSP and DS games are in the full article.

From sports games to irreverent parodies on platformers, the world of in-game advertising has pretty much grown since video games have been on the rise the past few years. Bernie Stolar, Google's "Dean of Games", talks about the role of advertising in today's gaming industry and how AdSense for Games - an ad serving program run by Google - is planning to take on the in-game advertising scene.

Read the full article right after the jump!

A quick look at the official site for Square Enix's Final Fantasy Tactics A2 reveals that they have two new profiles up for two more characters in the game: Cid and Hardy. Behold:

 

Yes, folks, the same Cid that was confirmed to be in the game a few weeks ago.

Anyhow, since their profiles are in Japanese in the official site, and you can't run Flash through Google Translate, we had to ask our trusty and ever so reliable interwebs news hamsters to dig us up some stuff. They lead us to this Famitsu report on the two new characters. Below are their descriptions (pardon the engrish).

For Cid (Shido): "Leader of small-scale clan' [garikuran]'. You discover [rutsuso] which is attacked in the monster, help. After that, in order to be able to return to the actual world [rutsuso], it cooperates. It is good as the guardian and [shido] which helps [rutsuso] the older brother whom it can depend. Presently it lives as a self-indulgent hunter, but there is organization and a connection which have belonged to the past, it seems."

For Hardy: "As a wandering minstrel, the [moguri] family which announces performance at the pub of every place. With younger brother of [monburan] and [nono], [gadei] sibling of twins. [mogushi] was done with [rabanasuta], but presently while to travel, it performs in the world, gathers the musical instrument. In encountering with [rutsuso], making tune because of that."

That's that. Oh, wait, we almost forgot, hit the Jump and get in-game screenshots of the two new characters.