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Red Fly Studio has big goals. In the words of the company's CEO, Dan Borth, they want to be "the world's premiere third-party Wii developer." They're aiming high on the DS, as well. It may sound a little presumptuous, but their inaugural effort, Mushroom Men, shows significant promise on both the Wii and DS, with a unique, detailed visual style, bizarre challenges and an expansive junk-based inventory.

At the EIEIO event, I spoke with Chad Barron, external producer for the DS side-scroller, and Dan Borth, CEO and creative director, about both games, as well as the experience of working for a big publisher on a big license.

Red Fly Studio has big goals. In the words of the company's CEO, Dan Borth, they want to be "the world's premiere third-party Wii developer." They're aiming high on the DS, as well. It may sound a little presumptuous, but their inaugural effort, Mushroom Men, shows significant promise on both the Wii and DS, with a unique, detailed visual style, bizarre challenges and an expansive junk-based inventory.

At the EIEIO event, I spoke with Chad Barron, external producer for the DS side-scroller, and Dan Borth, CEO and creative director, about both games, as well as the experience of working for a big publisher on a big license.

Wideload Games' Hail to the Chimp consistently delivered laughs to its audience of journalists at EIEIO. Being that the event was a large party, it was the perfect venue to try out a party game. The crowd got almost as boisterous during the gameplay sessions as they did later that evening, when the event metamorphosed from a video game press event into a concert.

The "concert" portion of the event was also the first chance I had to talk about the game with Wideload's Senior Producer Jon Krusell. He was kind enough to yell over the din in order to discuss the thought process that led naturally into a party combat game about animal presidential elections, his theories about the lack of comedy in games, and his revolutionary Robot Jox-based political platform.

I met with Crackpot Entertainment's Larry Ahern, creative director of Insecticide, at this year's EIEIO event after he had finished demonstrating his game over and over again for successive groups of journalists and other attendees. Even after all of that time spent staring at Insecticide and introducing it to the few people in each group who weren't familiar with it, he seemed enthusiastic about his game.

He was also happy to reminisce -- fondly or otherwise -- about his time at LucasArts, during which he served as art director for Day of the Tentacle, lead animator for Full Throttle, and co-project lead on The Curse of Monkey Island, just to name a few classics.

Hit the break to find out about Insecticide's alternate history as a TV show, to read the most about BioShock you'll ever see on DS Fanboy, and more!

It looks like the crew over at Joystiq has been spending some time at GameCock's EIEIO show in Texas this week. Rather than bring you bits and pieces of their coverage, we thought we'd round up everything we could in a single post for your clicking convenience. They've got the latest on Dungeon Hero, Velvet Assassin, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball and more. Check out Joystiq's cavalcade of coverage below:

• Dungeon Hero inverts the dungeon genre
• Hands-on with Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball
• Hail to the Chimp impressions
• Velvet Assassin actually dressed in leather
• Section 8 details fall from the sky
• Hands-on with Legendary

I was thrilled to watch a gameplay demo of Red Fly Studio's Mushroom Men at EIEIO. The concept art for this game is gorgeous enough to sell the game all on its own. The company agreed, evidently, as their stage area was decorated with huge, striking prints of the art on canvas.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is the story of mushrooms made sentient by some kind of green dust left by a comet. These mushrooms then break off into tribes and start fighting each other. The DS prequel, Rise of the Fungi, tells of one tribe's conflict with some annoying insects, but The Spore Wars deals directly with the fighting between the Amanitas and the Morels. The mushrooms also have to contend with the other newly aware, mutated creatures that have emerged. In the demo level shown, these included kudzu and rabbits.

I was only able to see a couple of minutes of Red Fly Studio's Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi, but I learned some interesting details about the game. Rise of the Fungi on the DS, codeveloped with Zen Studios, is designed as a prequel to the Wii game, telling two stories in the same world. In both games, a meteor has somehow caused mushrooms to gain awareness and intelligence, along with other organisms. In Rise of the Fungi, one tribe of mushrooms must drive interloping insects out of their village.

Mushroom Men is a (really nice-looking) 2.5D platformer set in a world that looks very big to a mushroom. Multiple characters are available: "heavy" characters with good melee combat skills, "sages" with excellent spore powers (special magic-type abilities) and "scouts" with ranged combat abilities. These characters will traverse 10 levels, each divided into two scenes, solving environmental puzzles and, well, collecting garbage. In fact, garbage is kind of important to the game.

The environmental puzzle we were shown involved using items found in the stage to reach a higher platform. The player had to knock a soda can into a buzzsaw, which turned the buzzsaw on, causing it to fall down. It could then be used to climb up to that platform.

As for the garbage: both the DS and Wii games feature the "scav" system, which allows you to pick up junk and combine it into weapons. And there are a lot of choices -- a quick look at the menu screen showed at least 20 available weapons. A 2D platformer with a lot of weapons? Yes. Yes.

I was very impressed overall with the demo, except for the part in which I didn't play the game. Luckily, Red Fly expects to release Rise of the Fungi late this year, with The Spore Wars to follow soon after. Hit the gallery for new screens and even more delightful concept art!

As Firefly Studios explained it, most dungeon games put the player in the role of a psychopath who enters a dungeon to slaughter thousands of subterranean creatures and steal their gold. Dungeon Hero is totally different. In Dungeon Hero, your character is -- well, okay, a psychopath who enters a dungeon to slaughter thousands of subterranean creatures and steal their gold. But those subterranean creatures have their own stuff going on, and that jerk hero is neither the shining exemplar of humanity nor some brooding antihero. He's mostly just a big dumb guy who fights a lot. And as such, he is manipulated into becoming the hero of some of the dungeon's inhabitants.

I'm a big fan of the Super Dodgeball games, and of the Kunio series in general. I played tons of dodgeball on the NES and GBA, and I've been watching the development of the DS game with more than enthusiasm. So when I first heard about the Xbox Live Arcade Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, I was very curious about a non-Technos take on the sport; what would Blazing Lizard do to distinguish their game from what seems like the final word in dodgeball games? Besides filling it full of Internet memes, of course.

Surprisingly, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball has very little in common with Technos' masterpiece. Aside from the fact that pudgy characters throw balls at each other, the two games play almost totally differently. They might as well represent two totally different sports.

Not being much of a "next-gen" follower (sorry!) I had a vague belief that Wideload's Hail to the Chimp was a downloadable game. I was, then, surprised to find it a full-sized (but budget-priced) release. Developer Wideload Games used the retail-game budget to create not only a unique party game, but also a hilarious audiovisual experience that doesn't really have an analogue on modern systems.

Hail to the Chimp's menu interface is the GRR News Network, with pompous anchor Woodchuck Chumley (seen above enjoying some... hot coffee ... with Bean the Sloth) onscreen authoritatively intoning ridiculous stories, while the menu options take the place of all the ubiquitous TV news infoboxes and text clutter. Wrapping the game inside this TV-station premise allows Hail to the Chimp to have something resembling a storyline, and also provides the opportunity for the funniest aspect of the game, which I'll get to shortly.

It's true. The game's title character may be velvet in some way, but the luxurious fabric does not figure into Violette Summers' ensemble. Instead, she alternates between skin-tight leather and a diaphanous, lingerie-like hospital gown. It's definitely more of a video game in that respect than a solemn tribute to Violette Szabo.

Why the hospital gown? The events of Velvet Assassin are framed as flashbacks remembered by a dying Summers, who is lying in a hospital bed as the game starts. She recounts her former missions behind enemy lines. This method of storytelling actually ties into the gameplay in a rather bizarre way.

It's been a long time since we first heard about TimeGate Studios' Section 8. Based on the "not even pre-alpha" game on display at this year's EIEIO, it's going to be even longer before we see a final game. It's currently slated for the third quarter of next year on Xbox 360 and PC. But developer TimeGate Studios – they did the F.E.A.R. expansions, if you'll recall – did give a short gameplay demonstration, and revealed one of the major facets of the Section 8 experience.

The game's name comes from the nickname given to the future 8th Armored Infantry, of which your character is a member. This group consists of soldiers who have volunteered to wear a super-powerful armored suit (awesome!) and be launched into combat from space. The joke is that you would have to be crazy to volunteer for that, so the squad is informally called "Section 8" after the military code for a psychologically-motivated discharge.

What stands out more than anything about my experience with Legendary at EIEIO was that it was the game during whose demo I got to be warm. I had waited outside in brutal cold and rain for the demo session to start, and the Legendary demo took place inside a Games4U "Mobile Game Theater" -- essentially a trailer full of seating, TVs, and, most importantly, heat. It was great. That's not even a snide way of saying that the game wasn't any good -- it was just really, really cold outside.

Legendary puts the player in the middle not only of a war between the White Council and the Black Order, but also an invasion of fantasy creatures triggered by the player character's own inadvertent opening of Pandora's Box. The only weapon against these monsters: the signet that once locked the box, now merged into protagonist Charles Deckard's hand. Oh, and also a bunch of guns and stuff.

Last year, Gamecock held their "E3 alternative" EIEIO event in Santa Monica during E3. This year, they moved the party to Austin, and in true Gamecock (read: bizarre) fashion, they elected to hold the event at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. Well, it's not as bizarre as it sounds. Stubb's is a large establishment that serves as a live music venue as well as a barbecue restaurant. Still, it was quite a different environment from, say, the Moscone Center, where GDC was held last month. The only problem with the venue: we were outside a lot, and today was unseasonably cold. And rainy. And also cold.

The morning started off with a breakfast at Jaime's Spanish Village across the street. After that, we were rounded up and sent over to Stubb's, where we broke into groups and rotated through presentations and demos. Descriptions and impressions of actual game content are coming later (Wednesday, to be specific, when I am allowed to post those), but here's what I saw: the downloadable meme-off Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, the PC/DS action-adventure game Insecticide, the sentient-mushroom tale Mushroom Men (Wii and DS), the newly-christened WWII stealth game Velvet Assassin, the RTS expansion Stronghold Crusader Extreme, the hacking, slashing Dungeon Hero, the fantasy-monster FPS Legendary, the sci-fi FPS Section 8, and the animal-based political-satire party fighting game Hail to the Chimp. They were in various stages of playability, from "not even pre-alpha" to "shipping." Be sure to visit our gallery and enjoy some of the strangeness of the scene for yourself!

Self-described campaigner for independent titles and apologetic speech crasher, Gamecock Media Group, has detailed plans for its second annual and awkwardly worded Expo For Interactive Entertainment, Independent and Original. This year's E.I.E.I.O. is scheduled to take place on March 6 at the prestigious Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas. Gamecock's upcoming lineup will be on show and in the company of developers, "music, mayhem and good ol' fashioned Texas hospitality."

The all-day event will lead into South by Southwest's (SXSW) Interactive Festival and culminate in a concert which hopes to feature "bands with members of the gaming press in them." Umm, does Rock Band count?