click for Super Pac-Man sizeNamco Bandai has just released its fourth Pac-Man game to the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store -- but it's Pac-Man Championship Edition, so it's somewhat more interesting than the usual lineup of classic ports that flood every platform. And it's only $3!

The iPhone version of the revamped XBLA hit includes a time-limited Championship Mode with 5 courses, and a Mission Mode with 20 missions. DLC expands this to 15 Championship courses and 120 missions, and adds a third Challenge Mode. If you're interested in trying it out, we suggest picking it up with the kind of haste reserved for running from ghosts -- the $3 starting price is a limited-time sale. Might as well save your money for the DLC you know you'll be dipping into.

Pac-Man Championship Edition ($2.99):

[Via AppShopper]

Blizzard's Frank Pearce has been with the company since co-founding it in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, along with Michael Morhaime and Allen Adham. Today, he's the senior vice president and serves as the executive producer of World of Warcraft, which probably includes the duty of swimming in pools filled with gold coins, a la Scrooge McDuck.

We talked to Frank about the milestones that Warcraft recently hit: 15 years for Warcraft and five for World of Warcraft, and how those games have changed the company. Read on beyond the break for the details and find out what he thinks the developer has failed at, why another company might be able to do it better and when you can expect a Blizzard theme park to open.

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With a second year of major layoffs at publisher Electronic Arts, questions about morale and investor perception surround the company. EA CEO John Riccitiello told IndustryGamers that in the case of morale, those who survived "understand the logic, they agree with it and support it and think we're a stronger company for the moves." The exec stresses that those who remain are "all excited about [EA's] move into digital and direct-to-consumer" -- something that may not have been true when he brought up the strategy two years ago.

Riccitiello also feels that there was a lot of bad press relating to EA's Q2 results -- the one with all the layoffs -- and that "a lot of negative articles were written that entirely missed the point that [EA] felt [it] had a great first half ... sometimes people almost believe more what they read in a newspaper than what they hear from their own company." In fairness, that seems rather understandable, given recent events in corporate America.

An ESRB rating has revealed a new Wii game published by Disgaea creator NIS America, with the catchy title of "Viral Survival." The ratings board describes a game "in which players direct small 'cartoony' DNA-strand creatures around a game board," collecting other DNA strands and avoiding viruses.

This sounds like peakvox escape virus, an obscure WiiWare title that snuck into Japan in June. That game involved chaining DNA creatures and navigating them between virus blobs, occasionally gaining the ability to destroy them with "immunity" missiles. NIS America seems to simply have an interest in picking up games about viruses, like the hilariously localized Puchi Puchi Virus.

Popcap Games, developer and publisher of broken homes, recently filed a trademark for Robodojo. The trademark, dug up by Superannuation, doesn't sound as intriguing as YetiTrain, but mixing robots and dojos sounds almost as intriguing as zombies and -- erm, plants?

When contacted for comment, a Popcap representative told Joystiq, "We don't comment on such things, sorry. As you know, our games take years to build, so this one, if indeed it ends up using that [trademarked] name, is still quite a ways away." Yes, yes, that's all fine and good, but as a public service we need to let the Drug Enforcement Agency know whether it should be keeping an eye out for YetiTrain or Robodojo.

Looking to try out that PSP Mini on your preposterously sized high definition television? Though we can't promise the results will be particularly gorgeous, we're pleased to announce that the option is now available to you. Sony just launched PS3 Firmware Update 3.15, which allows you to play PSP Minis on your decidedly un-Mini console. In addition, the patch makes it easier to transfer files between PS3s using only a LAN cable. Read here to learn more about this functionality, and simply go to the System Update option on the XMB to get the patch!

Opening its rationalization with the arguable statement that Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 has "something intelligent to say about contemporary military conflicts," Time Magazine's "Top 10 Games" of 2009 list recently declared the title its "Game of the Year." MW2 was closely followed by Batman: Arkham Asylum and DJ Hero, while the recent Uncharted 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 landed on the bottom of the list.

The seemingly annual Flash/iPhone game choice this year turned out to be Geo Defense Swarm, while Link's latest adventure sat out the ubiquitous DS spot -- a spot filled by Scribblenauts, it would seem. As always, Joystiq will have our own Game of the Year awards going live just after the new year, so be sure to keep it locked!

In case you were wondering what Dante's Inferno would be like if it were made into a book, EA has just announced that the first issue of the Wildstorm comic book based on Visceral's upcoming action game has shipped to retailers. The first installment of the six-issue miniseries, for which the full cover art can be seen after the break, provides the background for Dante's demon-slayin': the murder of Beatrice, and Dante's subsequent trip into the abyss to rescue her soul.

If the concept is something you're into, and if the cover art captures your attention, why not swing by your local comic shop on the way to Hell?

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According to information obtained by GameSpot from the United States Army, the America's Army series has cost $32.8 million across the 10 years of the franchise's existence. Development costs have risen and fallen over the years – starting with a first year budget of $3.5 million and a 2009 budget of approximately $3.4 million – though we can't imagine that the America's Army program will be spending as much in 2010 considering the developers of America's Army 3 were summarily canned after completing the last game.

Over the course of the 10 years that the franchise has existed, the US Army has never released any statistics on recruitment efficacy, profitability of the franchise, or results of the programs efforts, among other things. It has equally drawn support and contempt from critics, with some saying the "recruitment centers" target underage youth and others saying they offer insight into real war. One idea we think most Joystiq readers will agree on, regardless of politics: a gaggle of much better (though admittedly not free!) FPS games are out there right now, just waiting to be played.

Nintendo's focus on "evergreen" titles has been a staple of the publisher for years now, with marketing support lasting longer than ever with this generation's major releases. So it surprised us last April when the company said it hoped "word of mouth" would help push GTA: Chinatown Wars' lackluster initial sales higher as the months progressed. However, when executive vice president Cammie Dunaway recently spoke with MTV Multiplayer, Nintendo's traditional message quickly returned. "Part of what's needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles."

She also called sales "frustrating, quite frankly," but declined to comment on Rockstar's marketing surrounding the release of the game. Dunaway remained diplomatic through the conversation though, only offering, "The old dynamic of 'throw it on television for a few weeks and then move on and forget it' just doesn't work," giving us little more than a taste of her real feelings behind the release's marketing push. Check out the whole clip after the break.

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Seriously, Cryptic Studios and Atari -- you are drowning us in screenshots for Star Trek Online. We had to go out and purchase another external hard drive just so we could keep tabs on our ever-burgeoning "STO Assets" folder. We feel like, if scanned through quickly enough, we could accurately recreate gameplay segments from the title. Really, really disjointed gameplay segments.

Check out the latest batch in the gallery below, then check out all 104 images we've received to date and dropped in this gallery. Then, try to approximate how many more we'll receive before the game's February 2 release date. We're guessing somewhere within the vicinity of 3,000, but that's a fairly conservative estimate.

Get your weapons ready! The latest issue of Nintendo Power features some mega news -- specifically, the upcoming release of Mega Man 10 on WiiWare.

The new installment, like the brilliant Mega Man 9, uses an NES-style aesthetic, and features wacky new bosses like Sheep Man. Sheep Man! Proto Man returns as a playable character (this time immediately, and not as time-delayed DLC), along with a third mystery character! The extra character's identity: just one of the details, like the release date or whether or not it's on other platforms, that we're just going to have to wait to find out.

An image in the writeup also reveals an Easy Mode for the game, which we can imagine being welcome for a lot of people not accustomed to the uniquely painful experience of trying to complete an NES Mega Man title.

I'm a big fan of Silent Hill. I've played every game in the series and a few years ago you might even have caught me defending the Silent Hill movie. When I first heard that Climax was re-imagining the first game in the Silent Hill series, and putting it on the Wii, I was a bit nervous. When the company revealed the logo and announced that the rust laden, nightmarish Otherworld was being brushed aside for an ice world, I was downright scared. After gathering some more info and trying the game at E3, all fears were assuaged. This was to be the great hope of the Silent Hill series.

Having spent two evenings with the game and completing the story for the first time, I'm conflicted. Was it good? Yes. I'm just not sure it's Silent Hill.

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