Like playing Ms. Splosion Man, but have an intractable grudge against your Xbox 360? Twisted Pixel is bringing its concussive platformer to several new platforms, including PC (on both Steam and Games for Windows Live), iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone 7. The porting process is a multi-studio endeavor, requiring the talents of not only Twisted Pixel, but Iron Galaxy, Fire Hose Games, and Panic Button Games as well.

The PC version appears identical to the XBLA release, but the mobile game is a "unique experience" designed specifically for touchscreens -- using a virtual d-pad. You'll be able to find out how well these new containers withstand explosive force this summer.

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New York will be removing the state's registered sex offenders from several online gaming services, NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced. As part of "Operation: Game Over," over 3,500 of accounts have been removed from various gaming services run by "Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Disney, Warner Bros. and Sony."

The purge was done with the consent of each company. Xbox Live is the only service explicitly mentioned in the press release, though each company certainly has recognized services, including PlayStation Network, Origin, Game Center, Battle.net, etc.

The press release notes that New York law requires sex offenders to provide the state with email addresses and screen names, which can then "be made available to certain websites so they can purge potential predators from their online networks." This marks the first time the law has been applied to gaming services. Vice president and deputy general counsel Rich Wallis noted that the company is "supportive of Attorney General Schneiderman's efforts to make the Internet, including online gaming environments like Xbox LIVE, safer for everyone."

This isn't the first time that A.G. Schneiderman has delved into the world of video games. He also subpoenaed Sony regarding the PlayStation Network security breach last year.

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Draw Something has become the fastest selling mobile title in history, moving 50 million proverbial units since its launch last February -- 13 million of which were accumulated in just the last week. The pictionary-plus-'splosions app from OMGPOP is currently the number one paid app on the iOS App Store, dethroning Rovio's flagship rocket ship Angry Birds Space.

Broken down into impressive-yet-meaningless marketing figures, Draw Something has yielded six billion drawings in total, at a rate of 3,000 per second. We'd imagine that a large percentage of those drawings are boners, but new-owners Zynga have yet to release information that specific.

Activision's kid friendly cash cow has arrived on the App Store. Skylanders Cloud Patrol is a new title in the explosively popular Skylanders franchise optimized for Apple's iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch, featuring over 30 different Skylanders to unlock in "arcade shooting gallery-style gameplay." By putting in the code that comes with their skylanders figure, players can unlock them in Cloud Patrol -- just like in Skylanders proper.

We've got a pair of galleries below you can check out, one for the iPad and the other for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Skylanders Cloud Patrol is currently available for download in the Apple App store for $.99.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Charley Price: Bag It! is a Tetris-style grocery-bagging puzzle game with a fragility twist.

What's the coolest aspect of Bag It!?

David Marino: The groceries are the coolest thing about Bag It! They started out as colored blocks and gradually grew to become pirate watermelons and flirtatious baguettes. And who doesn't like crushing aristocratic eggs?

CP: One of the coolest things I love about watching people play Bag It! is how the game resonates with different players. Bag It! presents a wide variety of unique modes (from Standard to Multi-Bag to Rampage to Puzzle), which helps the game feel fresh and ensures that there's something in there for everyone.

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John Romero's social dev studio, Loot Drop, has signed a deal with Ubisoft to produce a tie-in game for Facebook and, eventually, mobile platforms. Ghost Recon Commander is set to launch on Facebook, allowing players to unlock items in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier -- which launches on May 22 -- and Ghost Recon Online, due sometime later this year.

The announcement trailer, screens, and press release past the break all suggest a hardcore experience, which allows you to customize your own Ghosts and deploy them in missions to earn upgrades and gear. There will also be asynchronous co-op play, though exact details on how that will work have yet to be revealed.

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The latest in the ever-growing line of Kickstarter-funded games is Shadowrun Returns, a sequel to the original game which hit PC back in 1989. Jordan Weisman, the creator of Shadowrun, secured the license for a sequel on the PC and iOS and Android tablets, and is hoping to raise $400,000 for the project.

Shadowrun Returns is planned to be a "graphically rich 2D turn-based single player game" in the vein of classic Shadowrun. Harebrained Schemes will also release the PC level editor alongside the game, so players can craft their own stories and missions within the universe and share them online -- either with all players or only your friends.

As of right now, Harebrained Schemes is pretty much halfway to the desired goal with 24 days left to go.

[Thanks, Chad.]

It's not often we hear about near-concurrent DSiWare/iPhone releases, so any such game automatically gets an element of novelty. Intrinsic Games, creator of DSiWare's Divergent Shift, is doing just that.

Amoebattle is a simple RTS in which you control a group of amoebas in a microscopic campaign. Originally designed as a DS game, the iPhone version made it to market first -- it's available from the App Store today for $5. The DSiWare version has been approved by Nintendo and will be released soon, though there's no specific date yet.

Intrinsic seems to be developing "iOS/DSiWare" into a full-on business model; a previous App Store release, Penguin Patrol, is due for release on DSiWare tomorrow. All are published by Grab Games, who recently acquired Intrinsic.

Today marks another resounding success for the gaming industry! Be proud, everyone; call your parents, have a glass of fancy wine and kiss your spouse: We've won the Golden Poo.

EA was voted the "absolute worst company in America" in The Consumerist's 2012 poll, defeating Bank of America with 64 percent of the vote. EA and Bank of America fought through four bracket rounds against companies such as Sony, Apple, Walmart, PayPal, Comcast, GameStop and others from a wide range of industries to make the final round. The CEOs of both companies must be thrilled.

EA provided Joystiq with a statement on its solid win: "We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year. We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."

This is Bank of America's second loss in the final round, following last year's battle against BP. Perhaps if Bank of America was also discovered as the main investor in Soylent Green, rather than a major player behind America's housing crisis that left thousands of people homeless and in poverty for flimsy legal reasons, it would have won the title this year or last. As it stands, EA's win suggests online voters find poor customer service a more egregious sin than destroying lives.

250,000 votes were cast in The Consumerist's poll and the people online have spoken. The people in reality, however, may disagree.

[Thanks, Andy.]

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Figaro Wig is a physics-based puzzle-platform game about Wig, a sentient fashion item created to overcome baldness by barber-turned-mad-inventor Figaro. Of course, things don't go as planned for Figaro, as Wig escapes to live a bald-sweat-free life.

Physicz is a Venezuelan development studio -- how does a Venezuelan perspective help shape the games you make?

Venezuela has a very unique idiosyncrasy. Its socialist stand on politics and economy are definitely not the best climate for a game-development studio. Video games are a luxury item, and therefore they get no attention and much less support from the state or financial institutions. This means we have no access to international currency, our tools are very expensive and hard to come by, and there is no local video game industry to speak of (or to speak to).

This, of course, is an oversimplification of our situation, but we're here to talk games, not politics. So here's the challenge we faced: How to make a competitive game with the same perceived production value that is expected from our audience, while keeping our budget in sync with our reality. Hence the old-school development approach. It's easier here to find craftsmen and artisans trained in the more conventional mediums of illustration, animation and music, than to find professionals in the cutting edge of technology, so we might as well harness that.

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Carrigg said Nintendo's eShop is "far behind" the XBLA and PSN competition, but Retro Affect has been talking to Nintendo and would "really like to work with them. I would not be surprised to see a Retro Affect game on a Nintendo platform sometime in the future."

James Silva of Ska Studios addressed the lack of deadly dishwasher games on PC, saying he wants to make PC titles, but for now that would be a problematic process. The AMA is ongoing (as of this posting) so head on over and uncover some you-specific bits of information from this mega-group of indies.

"Actually ... I don't know where I'm going with this."

At a 48-hour game jam, where time is more precious than money, a brief lack of direction isn't the disaster it would be at an Activision or an EA. It might even be a good thing, allowing just enough room and respite for that one idea that makes a fragmented game come together.

The participants of "What Would Molydeux?", a multi-city design event that derives game concepts from the whimsical, semi-sincere mind of Peter Molyneux's Twitter-bound doppelgänger, have the weekend to turn an inherently silly premise into something innovative and playable. And, you know, to figure out where they're going with this.

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For $50,000, you can alter the "Ken sent me" password in Leisure Suit Larry, which is used to gain access to a room even seedier than the bar to which it's connected. You can forever change it to your own name. This profane act is the most tempting, most outrageous reward tier for a new Kickstarter by Replay Games, to fund continued development of the HD remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

Replay wants to localize the game into more languages and put it on more devices -- and it has plans for Larrys 2-7 as well -- so it's joined the Kickstarter gravy train to seek $500,000. Other reward tiers offer digital or physical copies of the game, posters, and even Larry-branded condoms.

How much do we have to pay in for an updated Laffer Utilities?

Every Friday, the team at Pendulo Studios gathers in "Sala 2," a conference room covered floor-to-ceiling in posters, cut-outs and screenshots from the games it's created over the past 18 years as one of Spain's first independent game studios. For two hours or so, everyone in Sala 2 discusses ideas for new games, ways to fund ongoing development, fixes for current titles and what games they're playing on their own; they call this process "brunchstorming," and it's a vital part of Pendulo's operations.

Last Friday, March 16, Pendulo's brunchstorming meeting also served as a celebration: Yesterday, its seventh graphic-adventure title, had just gone gold, and after working on it for a year, the team took that time to celebrate and reminisce about its development with a handful of questions from Joystiq, all in true Spanish style.

"Pendulo is not your usual game developer," Josué, Pendulo's writer, said. "Maybe because we're Spanish and we put some fiesta in everything we do, or maybe because we're more than workmates and we've become friends along the years. Or maybe it's because everyone has a say."

Around a table piled high with "jamón, chorizo, a Madrid specialty called 'callos,' cheese, chips, empanada gallega (a sort of tuna-and-pepper pie), and something to drink," as Josué described it, the following Pendulo team members sat down to relax and candidly answer our questions about indie living in Spain.

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The story behind the third episode of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is almost as long as its title. Following disappointing sales of Episode 2, Penny Arcade kicked off its first PAX East conference by informing Joystiq that the series had been discontinued altogether. At the time, Penny Arcade stated that developer Hothead Games left the project in order to focus on developing DeathSpank, as working on both projects would have impacted the quality of Episode 3. Hothead would later claim that Penny Arcade wordsmith Jerry "Tycho" Holkins had trouble keeping up with the development cycle.

Now, two years later, Episode 3 is not only back in development, but is being taken in an entirely new direction by indie developer Zeboyd Games, creators of cheeky role-playing throwbacks Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII. Along with a new developer, the game has also received a slightly shorter title: Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3. It's slated to launch this summer on PC, Mac, Xbox Live Indie Games, iOS and Android. The price hasn't been announced, though I've been told it should be in line with Zeboyd's previous games or, in other words, cheap. Eager fans will get a chance to see a first look at PAX East in Boston later this week.

The project began, Zeboyd's Robert Boyd told Joystiq exclusively, in a single forum thread on Penny Arcade's website.

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As if there wasn't already enough Angry Birds in your life, Rovio has announced a weekly cartoon series will debut later this year. The news comes from a media conference in Cannes, France, as reported by the BBC, where Rovio animation head Nick Dorra revealed the 52 episode series will be coming to "all possible platforms."

Dorra noted that the cartoon would provide fans with a new way to take part and would also draw newcomers to the franchise. Furthermore, Dorra stated that "Angry Birds is not just about the gameplay," elaborating that the franchise will evolve to be "less and less about the slingshot and more about the characters and their adventures and all different kinds of games in different forms." That's good news, because we've always felt that the blue bird's motivation is unclear.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

TwinKomplex. It's about you and me -- and what happens to us when we partake in the DIA, a Decentral Intelligence Agency. It is also about conspiracy theories, how we try to understand our reality.

What's the coolest aspect of TwinKomplex?

The performance of our actors. The fact that we blur reality and fiction, that we use the Internet as a background for our fantasies. This reflects in the way our interface looks like and in the fact that we run a multitude of fake websites. One of these is a clinic for plastic surgery in Switzerland -- and it looks so real that we have received a few inquiries for silicon implants, etc.

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Gnilley was originally designed for the 2010 Global Game Jam in Sydney. The idea was, at first, to design a game that used the pitch of your voice to alter the environment. However, developer Radix said, it "ended up being about YELLING AT EVERYTHING."

Radix wants to turn that prototype into a full, top-down, Zelda-plus-screaming game for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has turned to Kickstarter to make that happen. There are 28 days left for Radix to raise the modest $10,000 in development costs sought.

Rewards include copies of the game, posters, t-shirts, and even the opportunity to design a minigame level. "You'll get access to an easy-to-use level editor and a special beta build for testing your creation, then submit it once it's awesome." For $250, you even get a customized microphone to yell into.

Cave's iPhone ports are always of a high quality, to the point that it's kind of unsettling to see so much craziness happening on your phone's little screen. They're also populous -- and to that point, here's news of another one.

Cave will release a port of the 2006 arcade sequel Mushihimesama Futari to the App Store on April 5. In keeping with its no-nonsense (or no crazy Japanese titles, which is equivalent to nonsense for many of us) iOS naming policy, it's called "Bug Princess 2." Easy!

The game will be available for a promotional price of $4.99 for 4 days; it'll be $6.99 after that.