Just like cats, man's best friend is a returning character in every genre. We've selected those video game dogs—from games both old and new—which are usually portrayed as companions; sidekicks who can both help us with minor tasks and save our asses in difficult situations.

Rush (Mega Man series)

Angelo (Final Fantasy VIII)

The Not-So-Awesome Dog in Duck Hunt

K.K. Slider (Animal Crossing series)

Dogmeat (Fallout 1-3)

Bladewolf (Metal Gear Rising)

Sam (Sam & Max)

Poppy (Samurai Shodown series)

Boney (Mother 3)

Our Dog in Fable II and III

Which other dog companion would you choose as the coolest? You should post your picks with visual support in the comments below.

sources: lucasta's fanart on Deviantart, Metal Gear Wiki, FF Wiki, TASVideos, CuteFloor's LP, NintyWorld, Fallout Wiki, gametrax, batman9502's LP, TehVGG's LP

Emrah Elmasli is a Turkish concept artist who now resides in the UK, where he's done a ton of concept art for the last few games in the Fable series.

Here's a selection of his contributions, mostly taken from Fable III.

I've also thrown a few more in from some of Elmasli's other work, for trading card game companies. So if you see a giant man with an axe and think, "that doesn't look like someone from Fable", that's why.

To see more of Elmasli's work, head to his personal site.

[via Concept Root]

Starting today, and for a limited time, an Xbox 360 bundle will go on sale in Canada that is, well, better than any other I've ever seen for the console.

For $300 consumers will be able to grab a 250GB Xbox 360 S along with download coupons for five full games. And those games are, for the most part, pretty damn good.

The coupons are for digital copies of Alan Wake, Gears of War 2, Halo 3, Fable III and Halo Wars. You won't get a box or a tangible manual with any of them, but considering the price of the bundle, you can probably do without.

Xbox 360 250GB bundle includes five games in Canada for $299 [Shacknews]

Mike McCarthy, of Lionhead Studios, has for many a year now been working on the Fable series, bringing us some of the weirdest and most wonderful characters going around.

In a world where angry bald space marines are the norm, and brown and grey the extent of most colour palettes, Fable's bright, comical character designs have been a welcome reprieve from the seriousness of most other big-budget role-playing games.

In the gallery above, you'll find many of McCarthy's sketches and paintings for Fables II & III, including character concepts, environmental pieces and advertising material.

To see the larger pics in all their glory, either click the "expand" icon on the gallery screen or right click and "open link in new tab".

With experience on both the PC and Xbox 360, Fable studio Lionhead is well aware of the pitfalls of both platforms. And feels one pitfall is deeper than the other.

"Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox," Lionhead's Mike West told Eurogamer. "I've been working on PC games for many years and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game they'll buy it."

Saying that any sales Lionhead makes on the PC version of the 2010 role-playing game are a "bonus", West adds "For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is. But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days."

That's an easy one to calculate. A game pirated does not automatically equate to a game stolen, because there's no guarantee the culprit would ever have bought it in the first place. But a pre-owned sale? That's a definite purchase, where money changed hands and a physical copy of a game went home with somebody. And not a cent of that makes its way back to a developer or publisher.

Lionhead: Pre-owned worse than PC piracy [Eurogamer]