Why play as Indiana Jones if you can go racing through jungles and ruins as rogue pilot Han Solo himself? Yes, LucasArts has revealed that Han Solo - or, at least, a costume/skin for Indy - will be crossing over to Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings as a playable character. Looks weird seeing the Star Wars space man swing about with a whip, but hey, at least it's not a Lego Han Solo. Check out the trailer in the full article. Sorry, furry friends, no Chewbacca. *gwwwaarrrggglle*

Dungeon crawling just got even more intense in the latest build of the rogue-like homebrew game for the PSP and DS, Powder. The latest version clocks itself as release 107 and adds a lot of new features taken directly from the users' feedback. Check out the hefty list of changes since our previous coverage of Powder in our full article.

Download: Powder release 107 for PSP
Download: Powder release 107 for DS

Square Enix has two new surprises for DS users everywhere. They're coming up with two new games starring the ever lovable Chocobo of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales fame! Learn more about these two upcoming games after the jump!

More details about Capcom's upcoming Mega Man Star Force 2 for the Nintendo DS have finally been released. If you want to find out more about the different game versions and the various features found in the game, head on over to the full article. Just click on the "read more" link below to do so.

Anybody up for a classic bit of dungeon-crawling on their DS? We're happy to report that DevTeam has recently released a new update for NetHackDS, pushing the game up to version 1.11. This latest release hosts several new changes to this DS port of this classic dungeon-crawler, all of which you can view via the full article.

Download: NetHackDS v1.11

Coder Jeff Lait has "half-released" a newer version of POWDER, a homebrew game for the Nintendo DS. With custom-made, extended tile sets, a revamped tutorial mode, and a couple more bug fixes and typo-corrections, homebrew game POWDER Release 089 also comes with a new artpack in addition to the classic look and feel.

Not familiar with Roguelikes? Rogue was an all-time classic that took role-play and hack-and-slash and combined them together into an addictive adventure. No doubt Rogue was an arrangement of ASCII characters on screen, but the hack-and-slash dungeon crawl inspired much imagination and spawned tons of similar games, known as Roguelikes (think Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, for instance).

Aside from correcting typos and sorting out graphics issues (monsters actually looking like floor tiles, for instance), gameplay mechanic bugs were sorted out. Soul Suckers (nasty spellcasters) no longer utter spells if they don't know you're nearby, and Jeff Lait has also added new critters to sink your blades into: gold beetles. But between you and me, cave spider training is still a good idea, though.

Head to the full article for the full change list from Release 088.

Download: POWDER Release 089 for Nintendo DS

One of the more known rogue-like computer games is Linley's Dungeon Crawl. Originally released in 1997, the game attributes its popularity to persistent maps and the much varied systems (religion, magic and skill).

Now homebrew coder Sasq is porting it over to the DS. And this independent developer assures that DSCrawl v1.0 BETA2 is an enjoyable handheld experience. All in all, it contains close to 400 monster types and over 200 spells.

Sasq suggests to have a libfat compatible memory card. Accordingly, the game loads and saves itself from here. Playing from a GBA cart is just as fine as it will use the SRAM anyway but its capacity is rather small. To install, select one of the two NDS files. The "rein" file seems to be most compatible with SD-cards, not to mention it also works on MP2. Furthermore, three versions (blue, gray, green) of libfatdragon were included, so you might want to search first what each supports.

The gameplay and controls are good and Sasq claims to have exerted much effort to give the game a natural feel by utilizing the buttons available on the NDS. The controls are as follows:

Left and right shoulder buttons acts as SHIFT (the same as pressing the up-arrow at the lower left of the keyboard matrix).

 
General
    SELECT = Inventory ('i', or '?' if at a prompt)
    Shift-SELECT = Escape
    START = Fullscreen map ('X')
    Shift-START Quit ('Q')
    Dirpad+A = Move in that direction
    DirPad+B,X,Y = Shortcuts

In Menus
    A = Select
    B = Cancel
    Y = SPACE ("More" - when menu doesn't fit one screen)

Download: [DSCrawl v1.0 BETA2]