There's no better way to flaunt your mastery of the art of having $55 than with the Kingdom Hearts 3D "Mark of Mastery" edition. The newly announced special edition comes with a clear 3DS case and a set of art cards that look like they can be slipped into said case, and five AR cards to unlock in-game Dream Eaters. All of this comes in a big box with a magnetic clasp.

This edition shows one of the advantages of portable games: the limited edition boxes don't cost quite as much as those for console games.

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We certainly didn't expect a 3DS spinoff of Lost Planet ... and we definitely didn't expect a 3DS-slash-PS3 spinoff. EX Troopers, revealed in this week's Famitsu magazine, is also unexpectedly anime styled, featuring manga panel cutscenes and a theme by Jpop star May'n.

EX Troopers takes place on EDN-3rd, in some kind of academy. Bren Turner is new in school, and seems to jump right into the Akrid fighting in what producer Shintaro Kojima describes as a beginners' action shooter.

No official images have been released yet (above is Lost Planet 3), but expect to see a lot of this, as Capcom indicated plans to use this IP outside of games, like its other "Single Content Multiple Usage" initiatives.

Along with a 3DS firmware update (which doesn't do anything interesting), a new patch sent to 3DSes yesterday closes up the Maka Wuhu shortcut, in Mario Kart 7. The patch is required for online play, so you will no longer see miraculous leaps forward on that particular course. The glitch still shows up in time trials.

Now you have only your own driving skill to rely on in Mario Kart. Well, that and blue shells. Actually, mostly blue shells. Now, you have only the random chance that you'll get a blue shell and not be hit by a blue shell to rely on.

New screenshots released today introduce the new starting point in Pokemon Black Version 2 and White Version 2. Aspertia City is a location new to the series, though of course "new" is relative in the world of Pokemon. From that location, you'll begin your investigation of how the Unova setting has changed since the events of two years ago. And you'll catch lots of Pokemon and fight gym leaders and stuff.

Nintendo also sent out the new box arts, allowing you to see Black Kyurem and White Kyurem facing each other down just as they will on retail shelves. Unless they're shelved in a different order, in which case they'll be defiantly facing away from each other.

The two eShop-based Pokemon games announced during the last Nintendo Direct are coming to 3DSes in North America this fall. Pokemon Dream Radar is a pseudo-shooting game in which players move their 3DSes around to find Pokemon hiding in augmented-reality environments, then catch them by shooting. Pokemon caught in this game, including "some hard-to-get Pokemon," can be transferred into Black 2 and White 2.

Pokedex 3D Pro is an upgraded version of the free Pokedex 3D app, with "detailed information about the more than 600 Pokémon featured in the history of the Pokémon video game series." Unlike Pokedex 3D, which hid many of its contents behind AR markers, everyone is unlocked from the start.

Pricing information was not announced for North America, but Dream Radar and Pokedex 3D Pro sell for 300 yen ($3.75) and 1,500 yen ($18.77) in Japan respectively. Is ultimate Pokemon knowledge worth $18 to you?

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Activision has paid out $42 million to the "Infinity Ward Employee Group," which sued Activision in 2010 seeking profits from Modern Warfare 2. A source speaking to Polygon said that the payment was not a settlement; rather, Activision's discovery phase (for its own lawsuit against former Infinity Ward leads Jason West and Vince Zampella) found no evidence that the Employee Group members were complicit in the breach-of-contract issues for which Activision is suing, and so Bobby Kotick and Activision agreed to pay them.

That group sought $75 million to $125 million, plus punitive damages. IWEG attorney Bruce Isaacs told Polygon that "although it is a meaningful payment it is only a small portion of what we are seeking in litigation." And it is still going forward with said litigation. Isaacs said the payment was a "cynical attempt to look good before the jury trial."

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Sega's earnings are down in the year ended March 31, 2012, which shouldn't come as a surprise given the company's recent extreme restructuring measures. Sega reported net sales of 395.5 billion yen ($5 billion), down 0.3 percent from 2011; net income dropped 47.4 percent to 21 billion yen.

In the "consumer business" division (the one that deals with home video games), Sega reported a year-over-year drop in unit sales. Its best-performing game was Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, of course, at 3.28 million copies. Sonic Generations followed at 1.85 million; Virtua Tennis 4 sold 1.04 million across five platforms. Sega listed sales for Football Manager 2012 (710,000) and Yakuza: Dead Souls (550,000), but nothing else -- so we don't know how well Binary Domain did, except to guess that it probably didn't do very well.

The Aqua Blue 3DS, one of two launch colors for the handheld, is going out of production, according to a tiny note on Nintendo's Japanese site. That leaves five variants in that region, including a different blue.

Nintendo of America senior director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta told Joystiq that "We have nothing to announce about the Aqua Blue Nintendo 3DS in our territory at this time." Still, we can't help but worry for the future of what is clearly the best 3DS variation to put a Slime sticker on.

Kingdom Hearts 3D is taking a page from Kid Icarus: Uprising's book ... or a card from its album, maybe? Square Enix is handing out a semi-random selection of AR cards with pre-orders in North America.

Every pre-order gets the card that unlocks the "R&R Seal Dream Eater" and the card that unlocks a viewing stand for 3D Dream Eater images. A third card will unlock one of three other Dream Eaters: Ursa Circus, Sudo Neku, or Meowjesty. These characters can be recruited to join you in battle.

You can see the Dream Eaters for yourself in the gallery below (they're the cute monster things), along with character art of The World Ends With You's Neku and others, and some shots of Traverse Town.

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Despite strong sales and positive reception, it seems a Kid Icarus: Uprising sequel just isn't in the cards right now. Masahiro Sakurai, the game's director, has said that it's possible we could see another Kid Icarus game in the next 25 years, but not from his studio, Project Sora.

"If by 'lasting universe' you mean to ask if there's a sequel, the answer is no," Sakurai told IGN, "because we pushed a lot into the game in order to let people have this short yet deep experience, but the novelty of that would likely grow thin in the next game. For now, my thought is that perhaps we'll see someone else besides me make another Kid Icarus in another 25 years."

25 years is a long time, but we're sure Kid Icarus: Rerising will really rock the 8DS when it drops in 2037.

While we wait for Sega's "Monster World Collection" to debut the previously Japan-only (and acclaimed!) Monster World IV on PSN and XBLA, Sega went ahead and deposited the game on Wii Virtual Console today, causing even more surprise than other, increasingly rare, VC releases.

If you have the Wii Points kicking around, you can build a pseudo-complete Wonder Boy collection now – bolstered by Sega's simultaneous release of the arcade version of Wonder Boy in Monster Land. At least one version of each game in the series is available.

In non-interactive news, Dinosaur Office returns to Nintendo Video tomorrow.

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Jason Rohrer's DS board game, now known as Jason Rohrer With Music By Tom Bailey: Diamond Trust of London, was finally officially approved for publishing as of last week. With Nintendo no longer a hurdle, Rohrer is now seeking Kickstarter-based pre-orders to actually manufacture the game, a first for a retail DS game.

"As I faced Nintendo's large manufacturing minimum, a serious question arose: how many people in the world would want to play it?" Rohrer said in the explanation of his Kickstarter drive. "Kickstarter is a perfect way to answer that question."

To get the game, you must contribute at least $35. At $55, you get one of 1,000 limited-edition copies, with mysterious special items included. "I've decided to keep the nature of these special inclusions secret as a surprise," Rohrer said, "since every package will have a unique collection of special items in it." As always, the bonuses get ever more extravagant from there.

All you need, though, is one copy of the game. You can play multiplayer from a single cartridge using Download Play. "There is one minor benefit to playing with two cartridges," Rohrer noted: "both players can hear their own, separate, generated music (the music is too big to send to the downloading player during DS Download Play)."

The DSi line of handhelds is about to get cheaper. Starting May 20, Nintendo is dropping the MSRP of the DSi to $99.99 (from $150), and the DSi XL to $129.99 (from $170). Finally, the DSi XL will be cheaper than the 3DS – which launches in a new color the same day!

If you don't have a device that can play DSiWare, a $100 DSi opens you up to a variety of great games – especially now that the platform has had a few years to slowly build a library. Yes, there are worthwhile games on DSiWare – like Shantae: Risky's Revenge, Cave Story, Pictobits, and Antipole, to name a few.

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Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: Ketzal's Corridors.

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Ketzal's Corridors is an unusual puzzle game, in that the task you're asked to perform is pretty simple – you rotate a single 3D shape to fit through matching shapes cut out of walls. No big deal, right? You just rotate it until all the blocks form the correct profile.

The difficulty, at least for me, is entirely in the controls. Normally, that wouldn't be a good thing, but it forms the entire basis of the challenge, forcing you to think quickly about what you're doing in order to navigate a 3D space. You're flying toward those walls at a high speed, and trying to rotate the block in three dimensions in time. Translating three-dimensional movement into presses of the d-pad and R button is as hard as it sounds. It is not intuitive at all, forcing you to practice before you can acquire the skill.

Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I have bad spatial skills. I can imagine the kind of person who rotates Tetris pieces in both directions, instead of hitting a single button over and over again every time, picking this up. I'm certain even those geniuses will find something to like here, as there are challenges beyond the basic fitting-in. Often, a hole will have heart-shaped items in it, which you collect by touching it with the block, further influencing your movements and giving you another rapid-fire decision to make. In addition, there are moving obstacles to deal with.

Oh, and you're timed. A timer counts down constantly, encouraging you to hold the L button to speed through each consecutive wall, and adding another layer of pressure.

A game very much like this one, also developed by accessory maker Keys Factory (baffling!), came out on WiiWare under the title ThruSpace, but it works better as a portable game. Not because it's divided into bite-sized challenges, though it is – simply because it's a lot more effort to put down a Wii game in a hurry and pick it back up when you've calmed down. You have to turn the TV back on and everything, instead of just opening the 3DS up again.

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Ketzal's Corridors is available on the 3DS eShop for $6.99. We're always looking for new distractions. Want to submit your game for Portabliss consideration? You can reach us at portabliss aat joystiq dawt com.

Activision Blizzard has released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2012, posting total net revenue (pre-tax income) of $1.17 billion for the period ending on March 31, 2012. This is a 23 percent drop over the same period in 2011, where Activision Blizzard posted a net revenue of $1.44 billion. Net income (post-tax/expenses profit) was also down year over year, with the pub/dev reporting a remainder of $384 million for Q1 2012, as compared with $503 million in Q1 2011.

Breaking that down a little more specifically, Activision itself was responsible for 23 percent ($271 million) of segment net revenues, down 19 percent form the $323 million it was responsible for in 2011. Blizzard accounted for 21 percent ($251 million) of segmented net revenues, down 42 percent year-over-year vs. the $357 million it posted for Q1 2011.

Many of Activision and Blizzard's major releases are still pending, including Diablo 3, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Looking forward, Activision Blizzard expects to report a "record" non-GAAP Q2 net revenue of $805 million due to Prototype 2, Amazing Spider Man and Diablo 3. As for the rest of the year, the company expects to end fiscal 2012 to the tune of $4.2 billion in net revenue.

Before there was, uh, that other game called Alien Hominid (and Castle Crashers), there was the original Alien Hominid, a free browser run-and-gun game that debuted on Newgrounds. And that original game has now surpassed 20 million play sessions, The Behemoth has announced.

The brain child of Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin, Alien Hominid was built in Flash and released on Newgrounds way back in 2002. It would eventually be ported to the GameCube and PS2 in 2004 (and Europe would see Xbox and GameBoy Advance ports), then to Xbox Live Arcade in 2007. Currently, The Behemoth is working on Battleblock Theater.

Tecmo Koei's revenues for the fiscal year, ended March 31, were 35.5 billion yen ($443.8 million), up 10.7 percent year over year. The company reported strong sales of its games from the last year, including Samurai Warriors 3 Empires, Winning Post 7 2012, and games it co-developed for other publishers, including One Piece Pirate Musou and Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition.

Specifically, Tecmo said it shipped 630,000 copies of Ninja Gaiden 3 worldwide. In addition, Tecmo reported that it completed acquisition of Gust in December, a developer that should expand its mobile and online business. The company also plans to grow its revenues in this fiscal year by releasing launch games for unspecified hardware (likely the Wii U if it's something launching this year).

Despite their occasional protests to the contrary, both Nintendo and Sony have seen the pervasive mobile market take chunks of the portable gaming industry. The mobile app space burgeoned as game developers undercut each other constantly, in a race toward 99 cents that set a buck as the de facto price point for the new marketplace. This, in turn, made a massive price disparity between mobile games and their handheld competition, which tends to retail for much more. Why buy a $30 DS game, when you can buy 30 games for the same price?

However, we're now seeing yet another race all the way to the bottom: free. Even as the PC space is largely adopting a free-to-play, microtransaction-driven business model, the shift is similarly occurring in the mobile market. Recent F2P hits have started a run of similar titles, with some paid apps adopting a free-to-play option.

The change began subtly. Rovio's breakout hit Angry Birds may have stuck near the top of the Top Paid Apps charts, but the Top Grossing arena was ruled by little blue men early last year. Smurfs Village spent months as the Top Grossing app, no doubt bolstered by co-marketing for the then-upcoming film. Still, the free app had an inviting price point, and even a few 99 cent purchases per user would easily push it above the revenue for a one-time dollar fee. Then, Tiny Tower became the talk of the iOS App Store blogosphere, using a similar model inspired by social gaming on Facebook, even garnering recognition as Apple's official Game of the Year.

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