Finally, the day has come that gamers everywhere have been looking forward to for many years. Gamer Enemy #1 Jack Thompson is no longer allowed to practice law, ever. Yes, the Florida Bar has permanently disbarred the crazed attorney.

Unfortunately there is still a small chance that he could have the decision overturned, but somehow I just don’t see that happening. Already people across the nation are celebration this momentous occasion. Just check out the cake that a certain developer (I wonder who?) had made in celebration.

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If there was any doubt that The Force Unleashed was going to be a big seller, those can be put to rest. In the first week alone the title sold 1.5 copies worldwide. This makes it the fastest-selling Star Wars game of all time. LucasArts is reporting that they are having to manufacture more copies to keep up with demand.

Check back soon for our in-depth review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Xbox 360.

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Countless hours of my childhood were spent helping the Blue Bomber foil the evil plans of Dr. Wiley. Seeing this exclusive packaging for Mega Man 9 brings back all of those memories. While I don’t think that the box art is quite as bad as the original game, it is still hilarious.

Unfortunately as of now, you can’t get your hands on this. Capcom only released a handful of these to members of the press. They are pondering the release of a limited run of around 200 to the public via their online store, so you might keep your eye out for them.

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In a world of giant corporations, its always refreshing to see a smaller company stand up to the big guys. I’ve been watching the attempted hostile takeover of Take-Two for the last six months or so, and it has been a trip. I can’t recall the number of times that EA gave them a “final” date for their offer, only to see it expire and give them a new one. Don’t they understand the meaning of the word “no”?

Well it seems that they may in fact now understand it. That, or they’ve just grown impatient and want to move onto their next takeover. Either way, EA has decided that thy are no longer interested in the company.

Electronic Arts… today announced that while EA continues to have a high regard for Take-Two’s creative teams and products, after careful consideration, including a management presentation and review of other due diligence materials provided by Take-Two… EA has decided not to make a proposal to acquire Take-Two and has terminated discussions with Take-Two.

All I have to say is that it’s about damn time. Sure, Take-Two has taken a beating on the stock market, but as a gamer I’m happy to see that EA won’t be taking over yet another company.

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Next week will see the release of two very awesome games, which will no doubt have gamers in a fit trying to decide which one to dedicate their time to. I’m of course talking about Rock Band 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I haven’t been this excited about a Star Wars title since Jedi Academy came out a few years ago. Apparently I’m not the only one looking forward to it, as the demo is already breaking download records.

According to a press release from LucasArts, the demo was downloaded over a million times in only eight days, making it the most-downloaded demo on XBL. When you add in all of the downloads from both PSN and XBL, the current number of downloads has reached 2.3 million worldwide. If you haven’t gotten in on the action, download it now.

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I think I’m one of the few people in the world that hasn’t jumped on the Spore bandwagon. I’m sure it’s a fun game and all, it’s just really not my style. Perhaps it is best that I haven’t gone out of my way to obtain a copy, because I hate DRM, and EA is notorious for their terrible DRM.

So what’s the big deal with this DRM? First, it phones home to EA when you install it. That’s not a big deal, right? It wouldn’t be, except that it does this every time you install, and if you’ve already installed it three times, you’ve got to get on the horn to EA’s (wonderful) support line. I seem to remember a big stink being raised last year when this same DRM was found in Bioshock. They upped the limit on re-installs, however, they apparently didn’t learn their lesson.

Is this DRM going to affect sales? Possibly. If you head over to Amazon, you’ll see that it has earned itself a measly 1-star rating. There have been 1,258 customer reviews, and of those, 1,171 people gave the game a single star. If you go through and read the actual reviews, almost every single one of them mentions a distaste for the DRM.

There are plenty of people that put a lot of weight into the rating systems on Amazon, and this influx of negative reviews will certainly make people think twice before making their purchase.

What’s sad is that the game has already been pirated, and can be found pretty easily if you know where to look. Since the game itself is seems to be getting positive feedback, this DRM issue will no doubt encourage people to simply download the game, rather than deal with the issues of a retail copy. We don’t promote piracy, but EA is almost asking for it. My advice? Buy the game, then download the pirated version. This way you get the nice, clean DRM-free version, but you’re making sure that the developers get their cut.

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The list of artists to make an appearance in the next Guitar Hero title continues to grow as we make our way towards the game’s launch next month. Activision has announced that Sting will show up as a playable character (only playable if you’re in the career mode for vocals) and will come out to sing along with your band when you play “Demolition Man”.

The recent announcement also included some interesting contributions by Tool. While none of the band’s members will be included in the game, they have designed their own custom performance venue. In addition to the venue, they have also provided three tracks for your rocking pleasure. “Parabola” “Vicarious” and “Schism” will all definitely make great additions to the current setlist.

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Have you been waiting around, hoping to score a 360 for cheap, then you’ll need only wait another day. It was announced earlier in the week that Japan was getting a price cut, and now one has been issued here in the US. The new prices for all three current models will be as follows:

Xbox 360 Arcade - $199
Xbox 360 60GB - $299
Xbox 360 Elite - $399
For those keeping track, that’s $50 off the 60GB and Elite models, while the Arcade was chopped by $80. It’s still pretty early in the year to talk about holiday sales, but it’s a lot easier to talk people into a $200 video game console than a $400 one.

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What were you doing 13 years ago? I can’t honestly remember either, but I can bet that some of you were being introduced to the Command and Conquer series. If RTS games are your thing, then you probably went on to play the C&C prequel dubbed Red Alert. In celebration of Red Alert 3 being released later this year, EA has offered up the original game for free.

You can head over to EA’s download page here and get your old-school fix. You can also get yourself the second game for free by putting down the full $50 to pre-order Red Alert 3. Kudos to EA for this promotion, everyone loves free stuff!

If you haven’t watched the trailer for Red Alert 3, you can see it on the download page. There are a lot of big names in there like Jenny McCarthy, Tim Curry and George Takei. It’s a pretty cool trailer, and definitely worth checking out.

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Rock Band is awesome, partly because it’s the first game that lets us play drums, sing along with and shred to some of our favorite tracks, and partly because the amount of downloadable tracks seems never-ending. Rock Band 2 is poised to be an improvement on both areas, with new instruments already revealed and a slew of music just announced. We know that Harmonix is planning on continuing their tradition of weekly DLC, but they’ve given us a peek at 6 full albums that we can expect to download in the future.

• Foo Fighters “The Colour and the Shape”
• Red Hot Chili Peppers “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”
• Jane’s Addiction “Nothing’s Shocking”
• Megadeth “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying”
• Stevie Ray Vaughn “Texas Flood”

Damn, that’s a lot of good music. But wait, unless my count is off we only have five albums. The sixth announced album isn’t technically a real album per se, but rather a special “best of” compilation of No Doubt tracks. Here’s to hoping that there’s plenty of old-school stuff on there.

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