Bo Jackson. Jeremy Roenick. Even casual players know what those two mean to games like Tecmo Bowl and NHL '94. But Cliff Ronning? Old-school sports game cognoscenti remember he was NHL 93's fastest player, with an overall rating well north of what you'd expect for a 25-goal scorer.

Ronning finally revealed why today on a podcast with Yahoo! Sports' Puck Daddy; he was, naturally, good pals with someone involved in the game.

"I went to school with the guy that started EA Sports," Ronning said. "We were buddies. I think he thought it'd be comical if he made me 99 out of 100."

Ronning doesn't name the EA Sports figure-it's unlikely he's referring to EA Sports (and EA founder) Trip Hawkins, who is 10 years older than Ronning and grew up in California. Ronning, however, is from Burnaby, British Columbia, home of EA Canada, which opened in 1983. So perhaps he means someone from that studio's early days.

"Eventually he made me back to what I was," Ronning said. "As you know, when you get into a fight, I don't do too good. One punch and I'm usually down for the count."

Mystery solved: Cliff Ronning reveals why he ruled in NHL '93 [Yahoo! Sports, thanks sobjw]

Konami combines Gradius-style, side-scrolling shoot 'em up gameplay with anime fetishes in Otomedius Excellent, coming to the Xbox 360 in North America on July 19. Not content to simply release a video game, Konami will also release a pillowcase.

The special edition version of Otomedius Excellent comes with the standard goodies—an exclusive art book and game soundtrack—as well as a "2-sided pillowcase featuring the girls of Otomedius." That's not something we get very often on these shores, so we're thankful—even if we're decades behind Japan on girls-printed-on-pillowcase technology.

The standalone version of Otomedius Excellent will retail for $29.99 USD. The Special Edition will be available for $49.99 USD. Konami promises more details on the Special Edition at a later date.

Activision may be handling the official movie tie-in games for Transformers: Dark of the Moon as far as consoles and handhelds are concerned, but the iPhone, iPad, and Java/BREW version is all EA Mobile.

In the mobile version of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, players step into the giant metal feet of Optimus Prime or Bumblebee as they battle their way through 14 levels of misguided but lovable Decepticons. It sounds just like the movie! Ops and Bee can transform into their vehicle modes at will, taking advantage of what little stealth is afforded by being a giant blue and red truck or a gleaming yellow sports car. Along the way they'll upgrade their weapons, because it seems like the sort of thing a game like this should offer.

EA Mobile's Transformers: Dark of the Moon will hit app stores on May 29, the same day Michael Bay's giant-robot-insects-laying-eggs-on-the-moon movie hits theaters.

I finished Red Faction Armageddon on Monday. I finished it in a better mood than I was in when I started it a few days earlier. This is a game that gets much better as it goes along.

More importantly, it's a game that defied my expectations. Hell, it defied what I could have sworn its creators told me it was going to be.

So if you're thought about getting the new Red Faction, I think you should know a few things about the game, things some might consider light spoilers, but that I'd consider essential info about what you might be paying for...

It doesn't all take place underground. The video here, captured from the game's second level, shows the Red Faction Armageddon that we were advertised. It's a subterranean (submartian?) game that trades the big-sky expanse of 2009's open-world Red Faction Guerrilla and moves its shooting and building-destroying below the surface of Mars. I could have sworn this is how the game was pitched to reporters like me by the game's publisher THQ and its development studio Volition. Were they worried about spoilers? Why not tell people that, in the second half of the game, you're atop the Martian surface as often as you are below it?

The video here is an example of the above-ground, on-foot sections. Unlike Guerrilla, Armageddon never lets you roam free. It funnels you from battle area to battle area, rather than letting you choose, as its predecessor did, your next base full of buildings to blow up and bad guys to kill. But, as you can see, the new game is not as claustrophobic as it might have seemed from early videos and demos. In this video, I'm using the game's magnet gun, a device featured in Armageddon's downloadable demo. It's my favorite new game weapon in a long time. It basically makes you Darth Vader in that scene near the end of Empire Strikes Back where he's ripping stuff off walls and then tossing them at Luke Skywalker.

It does feel too much like an attempt to justify Red Faction movies. Anyone who enjoyed the expansive set-up of Guerrilla—you're a freedom fighter/terrorist with a whole open world to create mayhem in—will feel constrained in Armageddon's caves and will bristle at the narrative justification for squeezing you into them. Did the plot dictate this game design or the other way around? Either way, the logic of the plot crumbles like so much Red Faction debris and the characters, chatty as they are, feel like they're starring in an okay action movie. This all feels intentional and extraneous for those of us who were happy with a Guerrilla that lacked those elements.

There is virtue to fighting underground. As confined as the cave-fighting feels, it proves to be more intense than the skirmishes in the last game. It works best when you embrace the magnet gun, utilizing it to rip things off walls to hurt the enemies fighting in front of them. You won't have as many structures to wreck underground as you did on the surface in Guerrilla, but that's okay, because...

The vehicle levels are spectacular. There are several vehicle levels in Armageddon, all of them as action-packed as the one I'm showing in the video here. They all evoke the sense of empowered destruction that emerged during Guerrilla's best moments. They're a fundamental part of the game that was, I believe, absent from any of the promotion for it. A pity, since they shine. Maybe it was because they're tucked in the back half of the game and you don't show the back halves of games before you release them?

One other key detail: when you beat the game, you get this.

I got through Armageddon's solo campaign in eight hours on my game clock, probably about 11 if you factor in deaths and re-starts. I played some of the game's handful of above-ground score-attack destruction levels and dabbled lightly with its version of the waves-of-enemies mode that riffs off of Gears of War's Horde mode. My least favorite part of the game? The intro level. Its a clumsy showpiece that seems as if it was designed to show what this game has to offer in 10 minutes or less. It feels choppy and only serves to set expectations low before the game slowly, progressively exceeds them.

I don't know if this whole package is what fans will be looking for, but it was much different than what I thought I was going to be playing. I didn't want to keep that surprise to myself. I expect this to be a divisive game, so I wanted to arm you with more information. I hope that helps.

Red Faction Armageddon will be out for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 7.

I finished Red Faction Armageddon on Monday. I finished it in a better mood than I was in when I started it a few days earlier. This is a game that gets much better as it goes along.

More importantly, it's a game that defied my expectations. Hell, it defied what I could have sworn its creators told me it was going to be.

So if you're thought about getting the new Red Faction, I think you should know a few things about the game, things some might consider light spoilers, but that I'd consider essential info about what you might be paying for...

It doesn't all take place underground. The video here, captured from the game's second level, shows the Red Faction Armageddon that we were advertised. It's a subterranean (submartian?) game that trades the big-sky expanse of 2009's open-world Red Faction Guerrilla and moves its shooting and building-destroying below the surface of Mars. I could have sworn this is how the game was pitched to reporters like me by the game's publisher THQ and its development studio Volition. Were they worried about spoilers? Why not tell people that, in the second half of the game, you're atop the Martian surface as often as you are below it?

The video here is an example of the above-ground, on-foot sections. Unlike Guerrilla, Armageddon never lets you roam free. It funnels you from battle area to battle area, rather than letting you choose, as its predecessor did, your next base full of buildings to blow up and bad guys to kill. But, as you can see, the new game is not as claustrophobic as it might have seemed from early videos and demos. In this video, I'm using the game's magnet gun, a device featured in Armageddon's downloadable demo. It's my favorite new game weapon in a long time. It basically makes you Darth Vader in that scene near the end of Empire Strikes Back where he's ripping stuff off walls and then tossing them at Luke Skywalker.

It does feel too much like an attempt to justify Red Faction movies. Anyone who enjoyed the expansive set-up of Guerrilla—you're a freedom fighter/terrorist with a whole open world to create mayhem in—will feel constrained in Armageddon's caves and will bristle at the narrative justification for squeezing you into them. Did the plot dictate this game design or the other way around? Either way, the logic of the plot crumbles like so much Red Faction debris and the characters, chatty as they are, feel like they're starring in an okay action movie. This all feels intentional and extraneous for those of us who were happy with a Guerrilla that lacked those elements.

There is virtue to fighting underground. As confined as the cave-fighting feels, it proves to be more intense than the skirmishes in the last game. It works best when you embrace the magnet gun, utilizing it to rip things off walls to hurt the enemies fighting in front of them. You won't have as many structures to wreck underground as you did on the surface in Guerrilla, but that's okay, because...

The vehicle levels are spectacular. There are several vehicle levels in Armageddon, all of them as action-packed as the one I'm showing in the video here. They all evoke the sense of empowered destruction that emerged during Guerrilla's best moments. They're a fundamental part of the game that was, I believe, absent from any of the promotion for it. A pity, since they shine. Maybe it was because they're tucked in the back half of the game and you don't show the back halves of games before you release them?

One other key detail: when you beat the game, you get this.

I got through Armageddon's solo campaign in eight hours on my game clock, probably about 11 if you factor in deaths and re-starts. I played some of the game's handful of above-ground score-attack destruction levels and dabbled lightly with its version of the waves-of-enemies mode that riffs off of Gears of War's Horde mode. My least favorite part of the game? The intro level. Its a clumsy showpiece that seems as if it was designed to show what this game has to offer in 10 minutes or less. It feels choppy and only serves to set expectations low before the game slowly, progressively exceeds them.

I don't know if this whole package is what fans will be looking for, but it was much different than what I thought I was going to be playing. I didn't want to keep that surprise to myself. I expect this to be a divisive game, so I wanted to arm you with more information. I hope that helps.

Red Faction Armageddon will be out for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 7.

Strong evidence that Sony's Next Generation Portable would actually be called PS Vita emerged earlier this week. That's still unconfirmed, but Vita is now looking more likely, thanks to a new source: Sony itself.

After Sony launched an E3 2011 teaser page, nosy NeoGAF user gofreak dug through the source code of that page, seeing PS Vita listed alongside the company's other platforms, PlayStation 3, PSP, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Network. None of those links are active, but the source of that page is still stuffed with HTML that points to a PS Vita.

A quick Google Search also shows PS Vita as a registered trademark of Sony's. It could still be a codename for the next PlayStation Portable—which already has a codename in NGP—but don't be surprised if Sony mentions those words at E3 next week (or sooner).

So. Vita? What do you think? I'm not attached to the existing three letter acronym, but I do love a good, contentious name for video game hardware.

Update: Sony has since removed mention of PS Vita from its source code, but here's a screen grab for posterity.

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E3 Teaser [PlayStation.com]

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark's door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. "If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't have even noticed," Mark told us in a phone interview.

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit "check out." He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins—untraceable digital currency—worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house.

"It kind of felt like I was in the future," Mark said.

Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users' purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics—and seemingly as safe. It's Amazon—if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8th ounce of "sour 13" weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 grams tar heroin. A listing for "Avatar" LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it. The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the U.S. and Canada.

But even Silk Road has limits: You won't find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of "anything who's purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction."

Getting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don't point your browser there yet. It's only accessible through the anonymizing network TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.

Once you're there, it's hard to believe that Silk Road isn't simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake "online pharmacies" that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There's no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark's acid worked as advertised. "It was quite enjoyable, to be honest," he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some "silver haze" pot purchased off Silk Road. "It was legit," he said. "It was better than anything I've seen."

Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who's used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: "Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described." They gave the transaction five points out of five.

"Our community is amazing," Silk Road's anonymous administrator, known on forums as "Silk Road," told us in an email. "They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other."

Sellers feel comfortable openly trading hardcore drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road's users with computer forensics, they'd have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user's tracks on the site. The site urges sellers to "creatively disguise" their shipments and vacuum seal any drugs that could be detected through smell. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn't accept credit cards, PayPal , or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.

Bitcoins have been called a "crypto-currency," the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders' computers. (The name "Bitcoin" is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.

To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8th of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That's probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.

Since it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin's utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road's administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. "The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion," Silk Road wrote to us. "Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market."

Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. "I'm a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that's not violent should not be criminalized," he said.

But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. "The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade," a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. "Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens."

Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur.

Update: Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users.

"Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb," he says.

Where would we be if there were no roles to play, no experience points to earn, and no levels to gain? Well we certainly wouldn't be here, looking over the biggest role-playing games of E3 2011.

While not nearly as prolific as the first-person shooter this year, the role-playing games of E3 2011 make up for their lack of quantity with what we sincerely hope is a high level of quality. Underneath these highly polished exteriors there will be numbers crunching, dice tumbling, and arbitrary statistics measured, giving weight to the slice of your sword and the blast of your bullets.

Let's roll for initiative...

Epic Campaigns

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): It may look like a shooter, but lurking beneath the first-person firefights beats the heart of a cyberpunk RPG, with enough character choice and skill development to send even the most stalwart shooting fan scurrying back to his foxhole for references materials. Security officer Adam Jensen finds himself riled up in a conspiracy that strikes at the heart of his employer, the biomechanical augmentation giant Sarif Industries. If you need proof that Eidos Montreal's latest and greatest is a role-playing game, check out McWhertor getting into character in his hands-on from earlier this year.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): Why so fast, Skyrim? Folks are still keeping themselves occupied with Bethesda's 2006 fourth entry in The Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion. Hell, there are still modders working feverishly on fresh content for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and that's been around for nearly a decade! Set hundreds of years in the future of the franchise at a time when the Nordic dragon god of destruction has risen and only the player in the role of The Dragonborn can save the day, Skyrim promises many years of open-world adventure, both developer-made and player-crafted. Take a look at Skyrim's first gameplay trailer for a glimpse at what we'll be playing at E3.

Mass Effect 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): BioWare's science fiction triolgy comes to its grand conclusion in Mass Effect 3. When a hyper-advanced machine race from the edge of the universe decides to invade Earth, only Commander Shepard and her allies can possibly hope to save the day. Yes, I said she. With further focused placed on the third-person shooting elements introduced in the second game in the series, this might be the last Mass Effect game I'm comfortable placing in the role-playing category. I'm only kidding; as long as we can still have hot alien sex, it's still an RPG.

New Beginnings

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): A new fantasy universe springs forth from the fertile minds of author R.A. Salvatore, artist Todd McFarlane, and Elder Scrolls designer Ken Rolston. A colorful action role-playing game with a strong focus on the action, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is so tightly crafted that Brian Crecente of Kotaku fame suggested it could be the sleeper hit of 2012.

Heroes of Ruin (3DS): Recently announced for Nintendo's latest dual-screened handheld, Heroes of Ruin is a strategy role-playing game that banks heavily on the 3DS's connectivity to extend role-playing into the social realm. Players will buy and trade items with each other, receive rare prizes through the 3DS SpotPass, download new adventures via the game's website, and battle together with friends using the title's drop-in/drop-out multiplayer. It could end up being the definitive RPG experience on the 3DS.

Never-ending Stories

Dark Souls (PS3, Xbox 360): If the sequel to one of Michael McWhertor's most beloved games of all time didn't make it into this list, there'd be hell to pay. According to his recent report, the follow up to one of the most difficult titles of 2009 is harsher, deadlier, and more beautiful than ever before. If we're not careful he'll nominate this one for Game of the Year as well, and we'll all be forced to battle through it in order to debate.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3, Xbox 360): Was Final Fantasy XIII too bright and linear for your tastes? Square Enix tries again with the darker, deeper Final Fantasy XIII-2, a direct sequel to the 2010 role-playing game that split fandom straight down the middle. Pink-haired Lightning is the protagonist in the sequel, which will plumb even deeper into the mythology of the Fabula Nova Crystallis. I'm just disappointed this one won't be a wardrobe-changing girl-power adventure like Final Fantasy X-2. Still, it's Final Fantasy, so you know it's going to be...oh, I guess that doesn't hold true anymore. Stupid Final Fantasy XIV.

White Knight Chronicles 2 (PS3): Why should players that weren't particularly fond of Level-5's PlayStation 3 exclusive White Knight Chronicles be excited about the sequel? It comes packed with a remastered version of the original game, tweaking the battle system to make it possible to take on wandering monsters without spending a half-hour between each encounter tweaking the complicated combo system. It's their way of saying okay, that first one was a little screwed up. Here's a do-over.

Tales of Graces F (PS3): The 12th flagship title in Namco Bandai's Tales series is coming to North America next year in the form of Tales of Graces F, the enhanced PlayStation 3 port of Tales of Graces for the Wii. Expect colorful anime-styled characters fighting colorful creatures in a colorful world filled with color. If I hadn't included this game on the list, the ensuing petition would have been filled with unkind words. It's bad enough I didn't mention the Tales of the Abyss port for the 3DS.

A Cast of Thousands

Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC): How can the combination of BioWare and Star Wars possibly go wrong? After years of relentlessly teasing players with trailers and tidbits, Star Wars: The Old Republic is targeted for release later this year, which means we can expect tons of fresh info to come pouring forth from the developers at this year's E3. What secret Jedi tricks lurk up their sleeves?

TERA Online (PC): What's so special about Korean developer Bluehole Studio and En Masse Entertainment's upcoming massively-multiplayer role-playing game TERA Online? It's the action-packed real-time combat that got my attention. That, and the gigantic creatures players will be facing down as early as level one. I'm calling it one to watch. We might be watching it fail, but we'll be watching it.

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Role-playing games tend to pounce unexpectedly at passing game journalists during E3, so expect to see more for the dungeon crawling crowd during next week's show.

We'll be previewing more expected E3 games throughout the week...

These are the Big Shooters of E3 2011, We Think

Prediction! There will be a lot of shooters (first-person and third-person) at E3 next week.
Yes, indeed. As crazy as it sounds, games that involve the rapid transferral of bullets (or lasers) from gun barrel to bad guy's head will be as ubiquitous at next week's E3 showcase of upcoming video... More »

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Paradox Interactive drops a dollar's worth of downloadable content today with Magicka: Nippon, three Japanese-flavored items (and a Team Fortress 2 Demoman cowl!) to aid your wizard's quest, with 50 percent of revenue going towards the Japan Relief Support program.

The first trailer for Croteam and Devolver Digital's Serious Sam 3: BFE has exactly what you'd expect from a Serious Sam game: guns a-blazin', alien invaders, screen splattering gore and a total disregard for taking cover.

And while it doesn't spell out exactly what the BFE stands for, who really cares? The important information is "summer 2011," when Serious Sam 3: BFE is expected to hit the PC. Other platforms will follow according to Croteam, who gives IGN the scoop on its upcoming first-person shooter.

We're hoping to get our hands on Serious Sam 3 soon, but if that doesn't happen, we won't be wanting for shooters at E3 2011 next week.

Serious Sam 3 BFE: Reveal Trailer [YouTube]