If you have any affinity for '80s movies, you've most likely seen the John Hughes classic "Pretty in Pink."

The "Brat Pack" film starred Molly Ringwald as a fashionable yet poverty-stricken teen who falls for a rich kid outside her social circle. All the while, her best guy friend is in love with her -- naturally, drama ensues. In the end (you should have seen this by now, sorry), she still ends up with the rich guy, but many fans wanted her to go with the best friend.

And if you're one of those fans, well, the "Pretty in Pink" game from Legacy Interactive will give you the ending you've always wanted, as well as... another one? Read more...

I didn't think "Lindsay Lohan" and "Puzzle Quest" could ever be used in the same sentence.

So when Legacy Interactive president Ariella Lehrer told us last month that their "Mean Girls" video game will play like "Puzzle Quest," I had to know more.

Producer Don Marshall went into detail about how the game will work, and it seems a little more complex than any other typical match-three game aimed at girls. So will it appeal to "Puzzle Quest" fans? Read more...

First there was "Dirty Dancing." Then there was "Princess Bride." The trend of female-favorite movies-turned-games continues with Legacy Interactive's "OMG High School" series of "Mean Girls," "Clueless" and "Pretty in Pink."

Last month, Legacy president Ariella Lehrer told MTV Multiplayer that "Mean Girls" plays like "Puzzle Quest," "Clueless" was inspired by "JoJo's Fashion Show" and that players could choose an alternate ending for "Pretty In Pink." With our curiosities aroused, I caught up with producer Don Marshall to give us more details on just how these games will work.

But first, I wanted to know how Legacy's movie games would be different than other games aimed at girls. "I am afraid that a lot of people who make games for girls emphasize the wrong part of that sentence-- for girls -- and leave the games part out a little bit," Marshall said. "I think what we're trying to do is make solid games with strong, fun and well-developed gameplay, rather than a smorgasboard or smaller, lesser-developed game elements... just making a game pink doesn't make it for girls."

So what else can we expect from "Mean Girls," "Clueless" and "Pretty in Pink" -- besides the color pink?

First, we take a look at "Clueless" (with "Mean Girls" and "Pretty in Pink" coming later today)... Read more...

No game design concept is too bizarre for the PlayStation 3's downloadable game service, PSN, it seems. Today Sony has revealed to Multiplayer full details for the U.S. version of another strange one: "The Last Guy."

Word broke several weeks ago about a mad concept being hatched by developers at Sony's Japan Studio about a game that uses real aerial maps of major cities as its levels. "The Last Guy" populates those maps with digital characters -- a hero, people to be rescued, and rampaging spider and blob monsters. The goal is to run the hero past the people who need rescuing, absorb those people into a parade of followers and then lead that trail of people to safety zones without getting attacked by monsters. It's a melding of the mechanics of old-school games "Choplifter" and "Snake" -- sort of.

A demo version of the game was released today in Japan, according to a Sony rep who gave me a heads-up about the title

What's going to be in the full game, which is "coming soon" to the U.S.? There will be 14 different cities, including L.A. and Tokyo for starters…

The full fact sheet is below. Read more...

If "Puzzle Quest" was a little too medieval for you or anyone you know, take heart. The December-slated "Mean Girls" downloadable PC game, based on the 2004 Lindsay Lohan movie will take the match-three gem gameplay of "Bejeweled," but doesn't add a story about swords, magic and dragons to it. It adds a story of high school girls, slackers, jocks, nerds. There won't be magic spells. Instead, according to press materials the game's publisher handed me today, there will be "rumors, pranks and putdowns." The game's ultimately a battle of cliques.

Are we excited or terrified?

More details about "Mean Girls" and a "Pretty In Pink" game follow. Read more...

"Watchmen" The Video Game. I saw it at E3. It's downloadable. It's a prequel. It's written by the editor of the comic. Collectible sugar cubes not confirmed.

Read more in my "Watchmen" Video Game Preview at MTVNews.com.

Piracy continues to hurt PC gaming, and no one has a clear answer to the problem.

Development studio Crytek has proposed abandoning PC-exclusive game releases. BioWare, however, is less radical. They're looking at downloadable content, access to multiplayer and -- here's a new one -- simply encouraging consumer loyalty.

"We're doing a lot of post-release downloadable content on all of our PC titles going forward," said BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka to me last week. "We think it's a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title. That's ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy -- to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they're high-quality and realize they're going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards."

Muzyka said "Dragon Age" -- to be revealed tomorrow -- will join "Mass Effect" as a BioWare game supported long after launch with new content.

It won't be long before we find out how BioWare's hypothesis pans out.

In just under two weeks, Nintendo will launch their WiiWare service in the U.S. Yet with 13 days to go, Nnooo creative director Nic Watt still doesn't know how much his WiiWare title, "Pop," will cost.

He does have a range for his multiplayer, bubble-based shooter: 500 to 800 Wii Points (translated: between $5 and $8).

"For a new company like ourselves, pricing is a really tough issue particularly on something like a downloadable service where there are games at a variety of prices," said Watt in an e-mail interview with MTV Multiplayer last week. "Disc-based games are somewhat easier as they all generally retail for about the same price."

Gamers have price and value expectations for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. For now, Watt uses Virtual Console as a yard stick for perceived value. "We feel we are somewhere between a NES and SNES game in price," he said.

One thing that WiiWare won't have, though, is demos. Demos are a requirement for XBL Arcade but merely an option on PSN. For Watt, the difference is moot; he doesn't think a demo would help "Pop" out.

Read more...

Over the last few weeks I've been asking top people at Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony about game demos for the downloadable games offered via Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PlayStation Network.

I can't get the same answer twice.

Microsoft -- yes, demos are a must
Nintendo -- no, demos are not required
Sony -- sometimes demos are good, sometimes bad.

Keep reading to find out why they feel differently.

Read more...

Gamers, don't worry if you regret a purchase of Derek Smart's latest space sequel, "Galactic Command: Echo Squad." You can get your money back.

Smart is, to put it mildly, an outspoken developer of space simulation games who loudly walks the line between passionately defending his creative works and at times outright attacking his own audience. Smart's own personal biography describes himself as "an eccentric and vocal personality."

But he's okay if you don't like "Galactic Command." Smart commented on popular PC news site Blue's News that he'd refund gamers who purchased "Galactic Command" ahead of its release and weren't satisfied. Not only that, but Smart won't even disable your license key, just in case you want to come back and play again.

Isn't he afraid people will purchase with every intent to complain for a free version? "I'm quite certain that there may be other takers. Who knows. But regardless, people know who they're dealing with, so its not like they're going to try and pull a fast one. After all, this is Derek Smart we're talking about :D," he told Multiplayer in an e-mail exchange.

Encouraging apprehensive players to check out his games without a currency exchange isn't really new to Smart. In 2001, he released the original "Battlecruiser 3000AD." The follow-up, 2005's "Battlecruiser Millennium," has been downloaded 34,689 times, according to Fileplanet. And just last month, Smart uploaded the four-year-old "Universal Combat" online for gamers to download free-of-charge.

"Most of my legacy games, even the barely four-year-old original 'Universal Combat (UC) ' game, I release for free on the Internet when their shelf life expires," Smart said. "I own all my IP. As soon as a publisher's license rights expires, the game goes online for free."

You can download his games at Fileplanet.

Even if you're not a fan of Smart, it's hard to argue with free, right?