George "GeoHot" Hotz, famed for his hacking of the iPhone and PlayStation 3 (and subsequent court dramas), has apparently found gainful employment. At social networking behemoth Facebook.

A report on Tech Unwrapped, citing hackers who have been in contact with Hotz since his settlement with Sony, says Hotz has been turning down new hacking challenges/opportunities because he "doesn't want that much attention", and is instead now working at Facebook.

According to those with access to his site, Facebook messages left on Hotz's account say that he began working at the site in May, and revealed the move to his friends on June 17.

Where this leaves GeoHot's rap career is anyone's guess.

We've contacted Hotz for confirmation on the report, and will update if we hear back.

Geohot Working at Facebook, iPad App in the Works [tech unrwapped]

While Nintendo was a pioneer of video game light guns, first for its elaborate shooting parlours and then its Zapper for the NES, it didn't create the first home version of the technology.

That honour goes to the aptly-named Shooting Gallery, a hardware/software combo for the Magnavox Odyssey, the world's first home video game console.

Like the Magnavox Odyssey itself, Shooting Gallery was invented by video game pioneer Ralph Baer, who as we know, had quite a thing for guns. He first built a prototype of the technology in 1968, before Shooting Gallery's commercial release in 1972.

SG consisted of three main components: a large, faux-woodgrain shotgun (it was called a "rifle", but relied on pump-action operation) along with two game cartridges, given the snappy names "Game Cartridge 9" and "Game Cartridge 10".

Being the early 1970's, the unit's operation was quite primitive even by Nintendo's early standards. To play one of the four games bundled on the two cartridges, users had to place a paper overlay on top of their TV screen, into which small holes were cut (or shapes left lighter in shade) for light to pass through.

Shooting was then (for all but one of the games) a two-player affair: one person controlled the "target", moving a small light source around the various "holes" using the Magnavox's controller, while the other player used the rifle to try and shoot it. There were no "graphics", no alternating challenges (you had to manually write your score down) or health bars. Just shooting at dots of light through a piece of paper.

The four games included at least varied their theme and setting, if not their "gameplay", subjects ranging from shooting at dinosaurs to fighting the Red Baron to taking on a gang of outlaws.

Because of a number of reasons - the peripheral was large and expensive ($25!), the technology fussy with regards to room lighting and there was an incorrect rumour that a certain type of TV required to play the game - Shooting Gallery only sold around 20,000 units, a far fewer number than the Magnavox Odyssey itself (making it a more collectible item these days).

Still, it goes down in history as the first commercial application of light gun technology for a home video console, more than a decade before the Zapper. And you should always appreciate things coming in a fake woodgrain finish.

A cymbal flutters like a pancake after being struck in this video, taken at 1000 frames per second, by the Fluke Corporation, makers of sophisticated testing instruments. (via Neatorama)

Stick Jockey: Don't Hate the Game, Hate the Player

Even as sports games implement more deterministic controls, more realistic ratings and more authentic player performances, little of that translates to the player taking responsibility for success or failure, in singleplayer games anyway. Regardless of our real-life ability to read a cover-2 defense or the green of No. 17 at Augusta National, we expect to execute against such things successfully in a video game, every time. More »

---

Go-Karts? In Uncharted? It's More Likely Than You Think

What's next for Naughty Dog, makers of Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and Uncharted? Tim Moss, the director of technology at Sony's Santa Monica studio thinks he knows. More »

---

EA Sports Won't Say MMA's Dead, but Won't Say It's Getting a Sequel, Either

To many, the UFC's acquisition of the competing fight series Strikeforce in March spelled the end of EA Sports MMA. While EA Sports' chief of development did not say that a sequel is in development, he did not say the label was quitting the sport altogether. More »

---

Chrome Skins are Gears of War 3's Unlockable Reward for Loyal Gears Players

n December, Epic Games creative boss Cliff Bleszinski said Gears of War 3 would feature unlockables that fans can acquire by playing other Epic games, such as the first two Gears of War. Yesterday, Gears 3's executive producer let slip what some of them will be. More »

---

Some of Ocarina's Original Glitches Were Deliberately Kept in 3DS Version

In building the 3D remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the mandate for the developer Grezzo was to preserve fans' memories of the original as much as possible. That meant, where possible, that bugs from the original Nintendo 64 game were intentionally left in. More »

---

---

In building the 3D remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the mandate for the developer Grezzo was to preserve fans' memories of the original as much as possible. That meant, where possible, that bugs from the original Nintendo 64 game were intentionally left in.

"As programmers, we wanted to get rid of bugs," Grezzo's Shun Moriya said in the latest Iwata Asks roundtable discussion with the Nintendo president, "But the staff members who had played the old game said the bugs were fun!

"It wouldn't be fun if your friends couldn't say, 'Do you know about this?' So we left them in if they didn't cause any trouble and were beneficial," Moriya added.

Iwata asked if Grezzo "implemented them as you would specs, rather than treating them like bugs." Yes, Moriya said.

"If something simply could not be allowed to stand, we begrudgingly fixed it, so some bugs don't appear," he said. "But we left in as many as we could, so people will grin over that."

Iwata Asks: Ocarina of Time [Nintendo]

Does this look familiar? Aside from the wooden animations, of course. This is Unearthed: The Trail of Ibn Battuta by Saudi Arabia-based Semaphore, and even this Uncharted copy won't be playable on the Xbox 360.

Unearthed has versions on everything else it seems: PC/Mac, iPhone/iPad and Android, and PlayStation 3. The game follows fortune hunter Faris Jawad from Morocco to Damascus, Alexandria and Dubai, searching for the treasure of the famed Muslim explorer Ibn Battuta. Evil treasure hunters stand in Faris' way.

Yes, it's easy to bag on this. It may not be what folks in the west would buy (or what Saudi gamers themselves would choose to import), but the country is new to games development, and they've got to start somewhere.

Still, if it's going to be so ... inspired by Uncharted, couldn't it have picked a word with a different prefix for its title?

More screens at the jump; they look better than the video.

Saudi Arabia Debuts "Unearthed" an Uncharted Clone [RipTen]

The Arcade Edition of Super Street Fighter IV arrives for Xbox 360 and PS3 this week. Another anticipated drop is the "Annihilation" map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops; it delivers another five maps, one of them a zombie level. After that, you're looking at maybe Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3.

Tuesday

• Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition (360, PS3) — Evil Ryu and Oni are two more characters in this latest installemt of Capcom's landmark fighting series. The PC version arrives a week later.

• Resident Evil: The Mercenaries (3DS) — Capcom's zombie-hunting series comes to the 3DS as a combination of the Mercenaries mini-games from RE4 and RE5. The release features a demo of the upcoming Resident Evil Revelations

• Call of Duty: Black Ops: Annihilation Map Pack (360) — "Hangar 18", "Hazard", "Drive-In" and "Silo" are your new standard multiplayer maps; "Shangri La" is the new zombie board, which also adds five achievements for you to collect.

Also: UFC Trainer (PS3, Xbox 360); Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 (PS3, 360)

Looking Ahead

July 12: NCAA Football 12. July 19: Captain America: Super Soldier, Call of Juarez: The Cartel July 26: Catherine; El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.

What are you getting? What do you want? What are you looking forward to? Sound it off below, and at #twig.

Sources: Video Game Release Calendar; GameStop

What's next for Naughty Dog, makers of Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and Uncharted? Tim Moss, the director of technology at Sony's Santa Monica studio thinks he knows. [h/t 8bitjay]

---

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What's better? A list of those. Here's a roundup of the rundowns out there.

•Top 10 Outrageous Haircuts in Gaming [Gaming Bolt] How come I'm not on this list? Hell, how come Crecente isn't on this list?

•Top 10 Most Ungrateful Kids in Video Games [Ranker] I was gonna say Butch from Fallout 3 but then I remembered I let his mom get eaten by radroaches. And stole her vodka. And killed him and took his jacket. Sorry, Butchie.

•Top 10 Signs That You Played Too Much L.A. Noire [Planet Xbox 360] The deep distrust of anyone who wears size 8 shoes is probably a good indicator.

•Five of the Strangest Food Items in Video Games [OC Weekly] A Thanksgiving turkey served in a 55-gallon drum? What's so strange about that? My favorite was the XX-marked jug in Gauntlet. Is Elf starving? Get him liquored up instead.

•Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies [Calm Down Tom] Even though it was not a video game (clarification: It was adapted into one later), I'm gonna put Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever on here, simply because being mistaken for a video game movie is the greatest regret of those who made that turd.

Whether planned retirement (or, more likely, hounded into disbanding), Lulzsec, the unlovable clowns behind hack operations against BioWare, Sony, Nintendo, EVE Online and Minecraft, ended its brief reign of semi-terror today with its final dump of stolen data, highlighted by 550,000 user names and passwords for the Battlefield Heroes beta of 2009. Another 50,000 users' data from "random gaming forums" also were published. You can read their self-aggrandizing farewell at the link. [Gawker]

To many, the UFC's acquisition of the competing fight series Strikeforce in March spelled the end of EA Sports MMA. While EA Sports' chief of development did not say that a sequel is in development, he did not say the label was quitting the sport altogether.

"A world where we're not involved in fighting is a world I'd rather not think about," Andrew Wilson told Kotaku. "That said, what goes on in the sport, and what's gone on between the UFC and Strikeforce, certainly has an impact on what we can do in the space."

Strikeforce, as the principal licensor of EA Sports MMA brought some visibility and legitimacy to the project, although both were overshadowed by the dominant UFC brand and its THQ game, which had a breakout hit in 2009 and published a sequel before EA Sports MMA hit shelves.

UFC president Dana White has also publicly rebuked EA Sports and said his operation would never do business with it. (Indeed, THQ has the exclusive license on UFC games). With Strikeforce under UFC, an EA Sports MMA title loses not only the second-place (and a distant second) brand in MMA promotions, its ability to include real licensed fighters from that series becomes murkier. Certainly neither White nor the UFC would approve of any new deals.

Wilson, for his part, said mixed martial arts is a global sport, not a single league under one owner.

"I am, other than [EA Sports MMA executive producer] Dale Jackson, probably the biggest MMA fan here," Wilson said. "I used to watch the fights on pirate VHS tapes in black-and-white. I trained in jiu-jitsu with the Gracie family. I'm a huge fan of the sport.

"So it's not a 'no,' but it's also not a 'yes,'" Wilson said. "We'd love for there to be one because I'm a diehard fan of the sport. We have to figure out how to make that happen."

In November, EA Sports MMA producer Jeff Ecker said there would "definitely" be an EA Sports MMA 2, saying the publisher planned to release it and the boxing series Fight Night in alternating years. That, of course, was three months before the UFC picked up Strikeforce.

Staying in the MMA business could also mean something other than a console title; there is an EA Sports MMA version available for iOS devices.

Fight Night Champion oversees a weaker real-life sport—boxing—yet managed to break out this year with its introduction of a narrative, quasi-role playing career placing players in the shoes and gloves of a fictitious boxer fighting his way to redemption. That could form a basis for an MMA sequel, and the game was stronger in its created-player career mode. Neither of which require licensing.

But name brands are vital to simulation sports video games, and not just for the legitimacy they confer. They also represent marketing channels. One of E3 2010's glitziest events was a Strikeforce fight night held in the nearby Nokia Theater, promoted by EA Sports. Other events in Strikeforce's pre-UFC days heavily promoted the label and its game.