Gotta love it when you see rumors leading up to the release of a big title, but without confirmation from the company that's releasing said title, and then they come out of nowhere and release it anyway, and the audience remains just as thrilled as they would be if it was announced.  Konami, you sneaky devils.  Anyway, after 21 years of being stuck strictly in arcades (we'll forget the crappy PC port exists), The Simpsons Arcade Game has finally gotten a home release for digital download.  And as expected, it's been worth the wait.

Consoles and PC's have had a slow month interms of new AAA quality games arriving for your respected platform. While January got off to a slow start, it quickly recovered to bring us high quality tittles through digital distribution. Plenty of great downloadable arcade tittles were made available through XBLA, PSN and Steam, giving us many hidden gems on the digital marketplace. Let's look back at the games we reviewed over the past month.  

Well over a year after its release on the market, the Kinect motion device is really growing into its own for Xbox 360 users, not only with a few family-related efforts (Kinect Sports, Dance Central) but also a decent amount of games dedicated to the "hardcore" crowd (Child of Eden, Rise of Nightmares).  But there's not too much of a market for downloadable Kinect games as of yet, though Fruit Ninja Kinect is doing fairly well.  Maybe that'll change once people see how good the haunted house adventure game Haunt is.  Maybe.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to design a platformer that appeals to the old school.  A lot of us grew up playing games on the NES, SNES or some older system, and fondly remember the good ol’ days where the likes of Mario and Sonic truly got their start.  But even with the boldest original idea, your platformer doesn’t stand a chance if the gameplay isn’t solid enough.  There are countless Genesis games we can easily point out that suffer from this issue.  And, sadly, Crocodile Entertainment’s Zack Zero is stuck right alongside them.

Know what we don't see too much of anymore?  2-D platformers.  Granted, we did just get Rayman Origins last year, which is absolutely fantastic (and $20 at Toys R' Us if you somehow missed out), but we mean like the classic platformer, the kind where you could go about your journey, collecting stuff and beating enemies with combos.  Well, Square Enix and TikGames have brought that feeling back with ScaryGirl, and while it's got its problems, it's still a haunting good time.

Every Tuesday, Sony brings its Playstation faithful new content, add-ons for your favorite games, Themes and avatars for your PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. For those who have the Playstation Plus, you can now get telltale's Back to The Future game for free. Ever wanted to find out what happened and wanted to continue your adventures with Marty Mcfly and Doc? Now is your chance, as you get all the six episodic for free. Another game you can get thanks to your PSN Plus membership is Sword & Soldiers. It's an enjoyable 2D sidescrolling strategy game that is highly replayable with a group of friends.

The holiday season is officially upon us at sundown tonight. Children will be gathered around their Channukah menorahs, spinning their dreidels, eating potato latkes--and inviting their gentile friends to partake in the traditions that were so foreign and interesting in elementary school--at least that's what the kids told me back then.Then, a few days later that naughty or nice list will be coming into play as kids all over the world run down the stairs to see if the red-sutied cookie monster aka Santa Claus has brought them some amazing gifts. Gamers though--what do we want for all the holidays? Isn't it obvious--GAMES. We're going to give you oblivious gift-seekers five games to run to the stores to sweep up for the gamer in your life featuring NBA 2K12, among others.