The PS Vita does not use UMDs. Instead, it uses cartridges and digital downloads. The UMD is going extinct, putting current PSP owners in a bind should they want to play their PSP titles on the Vita.

Today, Sony announced its solution: UMD Passport.

Starting Dec. 6, the UMD Passport service will start in Japan. Here's how it works: Download a free app called "UMD Registration Application". After that, enter your UMD game disc into your PSP, and according to the on-screen prompts, register your UMD via your PSN Account. The UMD will then be available for purchase.

Once the PS Vita is released in Japan on Dec. 17, you can then download the title on your new Sony handheld. According to Sony, the games will be available at an "agreeable price".

Currently, 40 game companies are offering 200 UMD titles as part of Sony's UMD Passport program. The digital versions of the games are priced anywhere between ¥100 (US$1.29) to ¥2,400 ($31).

Here is a selection of titles to give you an idea of how much the downloads cost on UMD Passort: Patapon 3 (¥1,000 or $13), Gran Turismo (¥1,000 or $13), Hot Shots Golf Portable 2 PSP the Best (¥500 or $6.40), Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (¥1,000 or $13), Dynasty Warriors: PSP the Best (¥500 or $6.40), Persona 3 Portable: PSP the Best (¥1,500 or $19), and Guilty Gear: Judgment (¥500 or $6.40).

This is not a full list of titles, and other companies, such as Konami and Capcom, are participating. Expect pricing and titles at a later date. Obviously, Sony did not disclose U.S. pricing, but one could assume that games priced at, for example, ¥500 would be priced at $5 in the U.S.

As mentioned above, the PlayStation Vita goes on sale in Japan on Dec. 17. It launches in North America and in Europe next year on Feb. 22.

Earlier this year, Obsidian and Square Enix released Dungeon Siege III. The game had a big reveal trailer involving a raven flying towards the camera then exploding into a bunch of other ravens.

Fast forward to November, and the debut trailer for the new Snow White movie is shown. And...it features the exact same shot! Not something that looked sorta like it. It's almost identical.

The guys who made the original Dungeon Siege clip, Create Advertising, are surprisingly cool with this, telling Kotaku, "Imitation is the highest form of a compliment." Moreover, they think it's "a good example of when theatrical is using gaming as a direct influence."

You can see a comparison video below. What do you think?

There is a new Zelda game out for the Wii, a massive adventure for Link that begins in a village suspended in the clouds. The Wii is getting old and the Zelda series is even older. But, perhaps, saving Zelda would again be worth your time and rupees?

Stephen Totilo, who is 34 hours and 59 minutes into this thing: I'm trying to keep this game from ending. That enough to convince you?

Just about five years ago to this day, I was wishing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess would just end already. It went stale quickly. After that first Wii Zelda, I thought the whole series, now a quarter of a century old, needed of a break. And despite my love for the oddball DS Zelda game Spirit Tracks two Decembers ago, had I known that this new Wii one, Skyward Sword, was as formulaic as it is, I would have been advocating for that break in the lead up to today.

But as traditional as this Zelda game is—we have, yet again, the adventure of a young man who gains the tools, reflexes and puzzle-solving intelligence to traverse an exotic land, solving the traps of one monster-filled dungeon at a time—this game presents the Zelda formula at its sparkling best. The cleverness and novelty of its puzzle-filled environment, the beautiful moods of its soundtrack and its masterful art direction collectively shame contemporary competition. This is a top-tier adventure, one that requires a shade more manual dexterity than the average Zelda thanks to restrained yet interesting motion controls. I don't like this game's main mode of travel and it has my least favorite musical instrument of the series, but you just have to experience its impeccable, surprising level design. I want you to play this game to see how incredible every sequence of a video game can be, with nary any dull patches (other than the flying and a distressfully slow start) to interfere. As a bonus, it wil repeatedly make you feel clever. Should you buy it? Yes.

In Metal Gear Solid IV, Snake has a little robot companion called the Metal Gear Mk. II. And one day, you might have one of your own.

But, it might look an ostrich, and it won't be created by Otacon and Sunny.

This isn't the first real metal gear. As previously posted, the Cold War had the jump on that.

MIT's Dr. Russ Tedrake is currently working on a new robot project that, as website Plastic Pals pointed out, looks a lot like the small Metal Gear, the Mk. II.

Dubbed FastRunner, the bot is inspired by an ostrich. It should be 4'7" tall, it should weight over 60 pounds, and it could be able to run somewhere between 25 and 50 mph.

The robot is part of a Darpa challenge to create robots able to run over 25 mph. Shame researchers can't develop a snaaaaaake.

FastRunner: DARPA's Metal Gear? [Plastic Pals]

A new Elder Scrolls game does funny things to people. Reader Spenny, for example, in all seriousness tried to get his wife to agree to name their newborn son Dovahkiin, after the hero of Skyrim.

She, um, declined (maybe the fact it was for a competition helped), so Spenny went and did the next best thing: he built a custom PC dedicated to the game.

Modelled after the murals found in the game's early marketing and debut trailer, it's impressive stuff, doubly so since Spenny even went to the trouble of making a mock trailer for the rig.

Oh, and the stuff that looks like concrete? It's worth reading his workblog just to see how he got it done.

For those who care about the specs (even though this is all about the custom case), they are as follows:

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600k
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Pro
Memory: 8GB Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Storage: Crucial M4 SSD & 2x 1.5 TB WD Caviar Black HDD's
Cooling System: Corsair H80 Liquid Cooling
Video Card: 2x EVGA GTX 560 Ti 2GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Monitor and Peripherals: Asus 27" Monitor, BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard, Razer Naga Mouse & Logitech G35 Headset.
Diablotek EVO Case

You can see the trailer above, while the gallery contains pics of the system, including one of its dragon guts.

To see the larger pics in all their glory, right-click on the "expand" icon on the main image above and select "open in new tab".

There are tons of Halo fan films. Tons. Here's another, but what sets it apart is how the filmmakers were able to squeeze blood from stones.

Shot for only US$850, Halo: Faith is a short film that was born out of an "simple conversation" between filmmakers back in Oct. 2010.

The effects aren't as good as in a big Halo production, but big Hollywood productions cost a bajillion times more than this.

And I quite like the narrator.

"Faith" Trailer (Live Action Halo Film by Jared Pelletier) [YouTube]

Last month, a surprisingly large-scale hacking attack went down on Xbox Live, all centred around EA Sports' FIFA 11 and FIFA 12. Microsoft today acknowledged the intrusions, but is adamant they weren't the result of hacks.

Microsoft's online safety director Doug Park has told Eurogamer "It's not a hack, it's really just a different way to monetise stolen accounts."

"Any service has compromises. Facebook has compromises, WOW has compromises. What they're really doing is trying to make money off those compromises. So FIFA is a very popular title - it's just a new way for the bad guys to make money. It wasn't, based on our investigation... we didn't see anything new. It was just a different avenue."

Pushed for just what the attack actually was, Park would only say it was the result of a form of phishing.

I know that technically he's right, if it was phishing it's not a hack, but that doesn't stop "It's not a hack, it's really just a different way to monetise stolen accounts" from being my favourite publisher quote of 2011.

FIFA Ultimate Team XBL account hijacks were "not a hack" [Eurogamer]

The internet's got Skyrim fever today. That means everyone has it, from me to you to animator Harry Partridge, who is so excited he's made a second cartoon all about the RPG.

Like the first, it's a little hit-and-miss with its humour, but also like the first, the quality of the animation and the enthusiasm on show try and make up for it.

At least this one doesn't end with a boner.

Among many of those who like to label themselves as a "gamer", there is no franchise more reviled than Call of Duty. The merest mention of its name sends people flying to post anonymous comments blasting the game as the very model of everything that's wrong with video games today.

Take a look at any comments section on almost any video game site on Earth and you'll see the same thing. People wondering aloud why the series is so popular, complaining about its incremental updates, mocking its design and lambasting those who have the tenacity to actually enjoy it.

Those people are idiots.

There is nothing wrong with not liking Call of Duty. Everybody has different tastes in gaming, and what might compel one person to line up for hours in the middle of night might cause another to...stay at home and get a good night's sleep. Some people will like what the series offers, others won't, that's life.

But there's something wrong with hating Call of Duty, especially to the level many people bury themselves in at this time of year. I mean, what drives you to hate a video game? To work yourself up into such a state that you feel the need to project that hate, to continuously remind the world of how much you don't enjoy it?

It's a question that's often perplexed me, much like it did Lisa Simpson when she wondered "why would they come to our concert just to boo us?". But it's also a question I think I have an answer for.

You don't really hate Call of Duty. But you do enjoy being an obnoxious elitist.

Maybe you preferred it when video games were seen as "uncool". Maybe you feel the media attention and mainstream acceptance the series draws is somehow unfair. Maybe the people who enjoy the games aren't the kind of people you hang out with on vicious internet forums, so don't fit your myopic vision of what a true "gamer" constitutes.

It could be any one of those things, any combination of them, or many more, it doesn't matter. Hating Call of Duty is part of the identity you've created for yourself. You're not some mainstream thug who only buys Madden and Call of Duty once a year. Those people aren't "real gamers". You're a real gamer, someone who pre-ordered Dark Souls, who has been collecting JRPGs since childhood, who still visits arcades, who somehow has the ability to love one multinational corporation and hate another, even though their goals are exactly the same.

Running around the internet screaming about how much you hate Call of Duty is thus part of this identity. It's the enemy, the other, the yang to your yin. You wouldn't be the gamer you think you are if you didn't hate everything this series stood for.

The thing is, the identity you're clinging to is bullshit. You can't own a passion for a medium, or hope to dictate its tastes by whining about it. People don't walk around calling themselves "moviers", and pretend they're the only ones allowed to watch films. Everybody watches movies, some more than others, everyone with their own likes and dislikes. Same with books, same with TV, same with music.

So let it go, will you? You're not preserving anything. So what if millions of people enjoy a video game you don't? Let them! There are plenty of valid reasons to criticise the franchise, sure, but there are plenty of valid reasons to love it as well, and if people want to love it - and millions of them do, every November - you raining on their parade every chance you get isn't going to stop them.

It's just going to make you look like an asshole.

If you have last year's Halo: Reach and aren't interested in the Halo: Anniversary high-definition remastering of the original game, you still can get up the four classic multiplayer maps shipping with it.

The "Anniversary Map Pack" will include six multiplayer stages—Battle Canyon, Breakneck, High Noon, Penance, Ridgeline and Solitary—plus Installation 04, as a Firefight map, for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15). It will be available Nov. 15, with the release of Halo: Anniversary.