This year's marathon of gaming masochism aims to raise even more money for the Child's Play charity.

For the past few years, we've tried to raise awareness of Penny Arcade's charity organization, Child's Play. In addition to directly donating money and toys for hospitalized children around the world, there are various opportunities to get involved through side-events supporting the charity. For instance, Funde Razor is a multi-city gaming party in the United States featuring food, drinks, door prizes, and the chance to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band on a real stage.

Cubello, Cue Sports, Strong Bad Episode 3, and Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam make for an unusually substantial update to the PAL Wii Shop Channel.

This week's update to the PAL Wii Shop Channel brings four new WiiWare games for gamers across Europe and Australia to download:

CUBELLO (600 Wii Points) is the first in the series of Art Style games to launch in PAL territories, with ROTOHEX and ORBIENT set to release over the next two weeks. This visually minimalist puzzler involves using the Wii Remote pointer to fire cubes at a spinning structure in order to match colours in a mix of skill and strategy.

CueSports – Snooker Vs Billiards (800 Wii Points) is a collection of table game simulations from Hudson, including Snooker, 9 Ball, 8 Ball, and Rotation. Multiplayer options allow for four player local competition as well as worldwide online play via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Kirby proves he’s still a Super Star in his native country, while the DSi kills the DS Lite.

Animal Crossing: City Folk is yet to be released in Japan and Konami are taking full advantage releasing their own life simulation game. Tongari Boushi (which roughly translates to The Pointy Hat and The Witch) made a decent entry at No.3 on the weekly Japanese software charts, probably a lot higher than it would have been battling a Nintendo first-party title. Meanwhile, Pokemon Platinum strides confidently towards the two-million mark, rounding off the charts this week at No.10.

Weekly Sales / Total Sales

The Chicago-based game company lost over 70 million dollars last quarter and now faces the risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Long time video game publisher Midway Games is currently in a terrible financial situation. Since being bought out CBS and Viacom chairman, Summer Redstone, four years ago, Midway has fallen deeper and deeper into debt. With big releases being delayed, like 2007's Stranglehold (developed with John Woo), and others either rushed out the door (Blacksite: Area 51) or cancelled (Career Criminal), Midway's games have begun to cost more and more money. All of this has been accentuated by the fact that Midway has not been able to keep their stock above the New York Stock Exchange's minimum average closing price of $1 per share for over 30 straight trading days.

Bouncing onto WiiWare this week is RealMedia's first console title ever, a sure-to-be challenging Sudoku title, and a snotty adventure for the Virtual Console.

This week's update brings us two original titles for WiiWare alongside a truly disgusting platformer adventure title from the 16-bit era for the Virtual Console.

Boingz from RealArcade is this week's first WiiWare title and it tasks players with stretching, flexing, and flicking the titular characters around an alien world. Finding the magical gate will enable the Boingz to progress through the next thirty levels in this puzzle platformer. Players will be able to use the Boingz to work together to wake sleepy friends, explore surreal landscapes, and collect Twinklies along the sea floor. Boingz is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB and is available now through the Wii Shop Channel for 1,000 Wii Points ($10).

Mama was none too happy with her portrayal as an animal murderer.

Recently, PETA released a flash imitation of Majesco's popular title, Cooking Mama, portraying Mama as a ruthless turkey slayer.

According to PETA, Cooking Mama condones the slaughtering of animals for food, and thus the manner in which animals bred for consumption are kept. PETA states the game is "no longer…quite so innocent" when a person stops to think about the "horrific abuses" animals being used for meals are subjected to.

Regardless of the presented similarities, George A. Romero's company lost the copyright suit that claims Dead Rising as an infringement on their Dawn of the Dead property.

Last month, a lawsuit was filed against Capcom over their Dead Rising property by the MKR Group, George A. Romero's company, for copyright infringement of their 1979 film, Dawn of the Dead. Capcom motioned to dismiss the suit because the group had not presented any "protected element" of the movie that was infringed on.

In response to that, MKR Group presented the following list of items to the court:

Both works are set in a bi-level shopping mall.

Every feature that may or may not ever come to DS or DSi is now safely trademarked.

Earlier this week, Nintendo's newest additions to the Japanese trademark database were made publically available, and within it are forty new copyrights pertaining to the DS and DSi.

Reportedly, right before Nintendo announced the existence of the DSi they began their barrage of trademarks in order to assure the safety of any creation already in production or for future use. There have been no reports confirming the existence of any of the trademarked items as of yet.

Trademarks Filed:

The wireless controller is a viable new option for players who enjoy the oldies on Virtual Console.

For the last twelve years Nyko Technologies has been creating third-party accessories for video game systems. Earlier this year, Nyko released the Kama wireless Nunchuk for the Wii. Nintendo sued Nyko because of extreme similarities between the Kama Nunchuk and the official Nunchuk. Nyko recently shipped to stores their newest accessory for Wii, the Wing wireless controller. Shaped very differently from Nintendo's Classic Controller, the Wing allows gamers to play through any Virtual Console game without the hassle of wires.

Following the decline of the Square Enix offer, Tecmo and Koei are now ready to merge.

In a stock deal worth approximately 20 billion yen ($207 million), Koei and Tecmo agreed to merge under a holding company in April 2009. Tecmo will exchange 1 of each of their shares for 0.9 shares in the new company, Tecmo Koei Holdings, while Koei would have a one to one exchange for their current shares.

Both companies agreed to the merger after Tecmo declined the takeover bid from the larger company, Square Enix earlier this year. According to Tecmo, Koei will "give [them] a greater chance of boosting corporate value."