Australians are getting a bunch of new titles for their Nintendo platforms this week. Gamers down under will be treated to three new games for the Nintendo Wii video game console as well as two new titles for Nintendo's DS handheld system.

First off for the Wii is Mercury Meltdown Revolution, a game that lets players use the Wiimote's tilt functionality to move a blob of mercury around. Next up is Eidos Interactive's Bionicle Heroes, an action game based on the popular Lego franchise. Finally, there'ys Metal Slug Anthology, the long-awaited Metal Slug compilation from SNK Playmore.

On the DS side of things, Australian gamers get Danny Phantom: The Urban Jungle and Pony Friends. The former is based on the Danny Phantom TV series and has players, playing as Danny Phantom, racing to save Amity Park from various ghosts. The latter is about ponies. Just normal ponies, not evil ones.

Big titles like Gears of War which sold a lot for its mother console are bound to get awards from all places. A good example is Entertainment Merchants Association's (EMA) Video Game Home Entertainment Awards 2007, in which Gears of War racked up four awards.

GoW bagged "Xbox 360 Game of the Year", "Shooter/Military Game of the Year", "Best Game Graphics of the Year", and the ultimate "Game of the Year" awards. All games released between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2007 were eligible, but GoW took the cake.

For handhelds, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories grabbed "DS Game of the Year" and "PSP Game of the Year" awards respectively. Lego Star Wars II' PS2 edition also took the win in its own category.

Resistance: Fall of Man dominated the PS3, while launch title Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was branded the best game on Wii. WoW: The Burning Crusade took both "PC Game of the Year" and "RPG/Strategy Game of the Year" awards.

Here's the rest of the list:

• Most Innovative Game of the Year - Guitar Hero II
• Casual Game of the Year: Guitar Hero II
• Fighting Game of the Year - WWE Smackdown! vs RAW 2007
• Racing Game of the Year - Need for Speed
• Sports Game of the Year - Madden NFL 07

Retailers and distributors from EMA's roster nominated and selected the winners. Their criteria on choosing, we would love to know. When Lego Star Wars II and WWE Smackdown! vs RAW 2007 are up there as creams of the crop, you know something special is going on.

LucasArts and Telltale Games announced today that they are collaborating once more to come up with a new installment to the LEGO Star Wars video game franchise. The new game will be called LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga and will be released Fall 2007 on platforms PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS.

Well, the game is not new in the traditional sense. The movie series' Episode 1 to 6 used to be divided into LEGO Star Wars I and II. LucasArts mentioned that this is not a simple re-compilation as it also includes new characters and features as well as revamped levels. TT Games Director Tom Stone commented,

LucasArts was an amazing partner on LEGO Star Wars II, and working with them on The Complete Saga continues to be a great experience. We're also thrilled to be focusing on next-generation consoles and creating content that plays to the strength of each system.

Speaking of which, the 360 and PS3 versions will both have online capabilities that will allow cooperative two-player, drop-in and drop-out gameplay. The DS and Wii versions, on the other hand, will be focused on the platforms' unique control schemes. All versions will feature 36 Story Mode levels.

Lastly, Telltale mentioned that the Prequel Trilogy characters can now be mixed and matched with those from the Original Trilogy. That means we will finally be seeing the ultimate chick from the mother-daughter tandem of Princess Leia and Amidala, albeit in Lego form.

Lego-philes, rejoice! After the huge success of Lego Star Wars and the sequel it spawned, Warner Bros. and Lego has signed a deal to produce a Lego Batman title. According to Variety, Warner Bros. also managed to nab TT Games, the studio that developed the two Lego Star Wars titles.

Lego Batman will follow the familiar Lego Star Wars template (picture Lego Batman sliding down the Lego Bat-pole and out of the Lego Batcave) and will be a family-friendly title. It is currently slated for a 2008 release date on multiple videogame platforms. If you guys remember, this title was announced for the Xbox 360 last year.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will finance and publish the game, while TT Games will reprise its Lego Star Wars role and develop Lego Batman. North American distribution will be handled by Warner Bros. as well.

Thanks in part to some pretty aggressive price-slashing, EA's FIFA 07 and Need For Speed: Carbon have once again worked their way to the top of the UK videogame charts, getting the number one and number two positions respectively. In third place is another football (soccer for us folks in the U.S.) title: Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 6.

THQ's recently released strategy title for the PC, Supreme Commander, has taken the number 4 slot, while THQ's Avatar: The Legend of Aang sits at number 5. For the rest of the top ten for the week ending February 17, check out the list below.

1. FIFA 07 (EA)
2. Need for Speed: Carbon (EA)
3. Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (Konami)
4. Supreme Commander (THQ)
5. Avatar: The Legend of Aang (THQ)
6. The Sims 2: Pets (EA)
7. Battlestations: Midway (Eidos)
8. Lost Planet (Capcom)
9. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
10. Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (LucasArts)
    

Lego Star Wars II (PC, Xbox360, PSP) really must have raked in tons of moolah for Traveller's Tales because the said company has just acquired Embryonic Studios for an undisclosed sum.

Embryonic Studios, which has titles like Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, Star Trek: Invasion, and Battlestar Galactica, was formed in 2005 and currently houses 20 employees at its Bollington offices in Cheshire.

Traveller's Tales' Jon Burton says of the acquisition, "We are delighted to have completed the acquisition. Embryonic possess a very talented workforce that will help drive Traveller's Tales on to further success."

Well, that's that. And as for us, let's just keep our fingers crossed that this new partnership would only lead to more and better games in the future. We'll keep you posted for more.

If you haven't heard of Line Rider, then (a) the link below takes you to the latest version by its creator, Bostjan Cadez, for you to waste some time on, plus a video demo below, and (2) you haven't been torturing bobsledders this holiday season, have you? Line Rider is a Flash-based, Etch-a-Sketch-like program that is rapidly becoming an Internet addiction. Probably because you get to torture a bobsledder in the process.

In Line Rider, you "draw" a simple landscape with your mouse, and when you click PLAY, a little bobsledder will ride the (often insane) territory you create. Simple premise, like LEGO, it unleashed the creativity of Internet surfers everywhere... not to mention become a productivity killer right up there with JezzBall and Internet pictures of Natalie Portman.

Let's get to the meat: the game's premise of "drawing" meant that it was only some time before someone thought of bringing it to the DS (ahem, the Stylus) and the Wii (ahem, the Wiimote). Which is what InXile Entertainment, which has acquired the rights to Line Rider, will be doing: make the "toy" available for Wiis and DS's this Spring 2007. These "ports" will feature more features that are not available in the flash-based Web application.

Which means that, for DS owners, productivity will die once again. Since the Wii is at home already, we don't expect any productivity casualties, but there may be one more torture the poor bobsledder will suffer: Wiimote-induced homicide. We kid.

Gotta say one thing about Britain - they love their soccer. And we're not just talking about the Manchester United fans - we're talking EA's FIFA 07, which takes the number one spot. This makes it the fourth year that EA's kept the lead at the UK charts.

Racing fans will be delighted to hear that Need for Speed: Carbon is tailing FIFA for the number two spot, another EA title...see a pattern? WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2007 in turn takes the number three slot, formerly owned by Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which has dropped down to fourth place.

And in the number five slot, we see Call of Duty 3 taking position, with yet-again another EA title taking sixth - The Sims 2 Pets. And for the guys who were beginning to wonder when we'd mention this title: Gears of War is at sixth place in the lineup, with Happy Feet tapping in at eight place.  Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy takes the ninth slot, with Cars at the 10th place.

Before the "wtf?! this is not news!" comments start, we're gonna jumpstart this post by saying that yes, we know this is not news, and this has absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of Lego Star Wars gameplay, but we just found this vid so funny that we had to post it here.

We know some of the *cough*older*cough* gamers out there are probably harboring "Princess Leia in the gold bikini" fantasies, so maybe this one's for the younger gamers out there who want to see Princess Leia gone wild. Check out this vid posted by mcre8ive over at YouTube which shows Lego Leia strutting her stuff and dancing on top of a table...all in front of the bewildered and mesmerized Han Solo. Heck, you'll even see Han bobbing his head to the beat of My Humps. Bwahaha.

Why don't you guys just check out the action yourself, here's the video of Leia shaking her booty to the Black Eyed Peas. Enjoy! (If the video doesn't load because YouTube's having some site whatever, then you can just use the "Via" link instead.)

Aaron Hill, a.k.a. Shadowghost21, has updated his homebrew project. The project is based on two simple LEGO virtual modelling program: Mike's LEGO Computer Aided Design (MLCad) - which is what you see above - and LDraw. The latest version is LegoCadDS Alpha v.02.

LegoCadDS Alpha v.02 has a few tweaks plus an overhauled GUI.

Now for the fun stuff. Shadowghost 21 is looking for people to help him improve the quality of his homebrew app. He says he's been working on the graphics just a tad longer than he planned and he wants to move on to coding some save/load features. We call this the fun part because you get to be part of developing this great project.

So if you want to help Shadowghost 21, the first thing you need to do is understand what the app is about. LegoCadDS Alpha v.02 draws different sized 3D boxes, called bricks. You can use these bricks to build walls and other structures with the following key controls:

• D-pad: move blocks around
• X: cement" block
• R': flip screen

Download: [LegoCadDS Alpha v.02]