Armchair Arcade TV is now in high definition (720p) and available at a wide range of locations, with a wide range of subscription options, and in a wide range of formats, including YouTube, iTunes, RSS, and many more via blip.tv!

Ciro Continisio of ENHANCED PRE$$ group has asked us to pass along the following press release for this interesting initiative for the iPhone and iPod Touch that needs English-speaking beta testers:

From April onwards Mac-users will be able to use Valve's Steam platform natively on OS X. Using Steam on OS X was possible before by using Wine but compatibility was varying. Wine is a set of open source Windows Libraries ported over to Linux/OS X allowing Windows applications and games to run natively within the Linux/OS X environment. Together with the appearance of a Native OS X Steam variant the recently announced Portal-2 will appear on Steam simultaneously in both PC- and OS X flavors.

Wii Fitness for Dummies, available from booksellers everywhere, as well as online discounters like Amazon.com, focuses on three of the top Wii fitness programs, Wii Fit Plus, EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer, and Jillian Michaels Fitness Utimatum 2010, as well as provides additional coverage of the entire Wii fitness phenomena and general exercise theory. As is always the case when writing a book, there is inevitably content that doesn't fit either due to subject matter, cost, or space constraints, which is where this regularly published bonus tips and content comes in. Each week, for an indeterminate number of weeks, Christina and I will be posting items that will both add to your enjoyment of the book and provide good fitness information in general.

This week, we're running the fourth in an eight part series of Classic Body Weight Exercises You Can Perform When You're Away From Your Wii* (*also great for warming up or cooling down, as discussed in book Chapter 1):

Hi, all. This week, I return to my extensive Romero footage to bring out the story of one of my favorite first-person shooters, Wolfenstein 3D. Many historians argue that this game was the first "modern" first-person shooter, though there were of course plenty of precedents. Romero points out that it was the first texture-mapped 3D game with a guy holding a gun (earlier ones tended to be tank turrets or flight sim-style games). We also talk here about Silar Warner's Apple II masterpiece Castle Wolfenstein, which inspired Romero and Carmack's game.

Game Developers using Visual Studio are able to create games that can be made cross compatible between Windows (Microsoft) Operating Systems, including Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox 360. 90% of the generated code is the same between the various target platforms, leaving about 10% for platform specific stuff. Perhaps one could look at it as some sort of SDL-layer?

In this article, Microsoft demos a cross-platform game that can be run on a computer with Windows 7, a mobile phone 7, and the Xbox 360 console. A video shows how a Microsoft employee starts the game on one device, continues it and finishes it on others. The progress made within the game is automatically transferred from one platform to the other - probably by use of the Windows Live platform.

Windows Phone 7 development is mostly done with Silverlight and XNA.

Cross platform gaming between PC and Xbox 360 was possible before, just take a look at the game Shadowrun.

Pigs VS Wolves (2010), featured on the iPho Game Development Website, is Digiarty Software's recently released tower defense game, available on iTunes, for the iPod Touch/iPhone. Pigs VS Wolves comes out hot on the heels of powerhouse PopCap Games strikingly similar, but higher profile, Plants vs Zombies, which, besides being available on the iPod Touch/iPhone, also has versions available for the PC, Mac, and Web. Not having played Plants vs Zombies, besides the obvious visual differences, the only other major distinction that I can see is the price. Plants vs Zombies runs $2.99, while Pigs VS Wolves is just $.99--at least for a limited time. Therefore, without a true basis for comparison, I will only review Pigs VS Wolves on its own merits, keeping in mind the existence of the prior product from a much larger developer/publisher.

Tower defense games are considered a sub-genre of real-time strategy games, with the most basic goal to stop enemies from reaching a particular point. Wikipedia points to Atari's Rampart, a 1990 arcade game from Atari, as forming the foundation of this sub-genre's roots. While I think that simplifies history a bit and minimizes the truly hybrid nature of Rampart - which I argue is part Tetris - it's ultimately a fair assertion. One of my personal favorites in this sub-genre is PixelJunk Monsters (Q-Games, 2008; Sony PlayStation 3 (PSN)), though I've certainly played my share of others, including South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! (Doublesix, 2009; Microsoft Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)), that I've tended to like much less. Major distinctions between the tower defense games include how much real-time elements there are and of course the overall imagination and cohesiveness that goes into all of the defensive and board designs. The vast majority of these games feature levels that start out simple but progressively add more playing pieces to the mix, requiring an increasing amount of thought in both defensive selection and asset allocation, as well as an increasing amount of trial and error to both learn new capabilities and properly utilize them to fight off the hoards of enemies.

The developer describes Pigs VS Wolves as follows (and we must at least partially forgive their non-native English):

Sir Clive - world famous in at least the UK and Europe - has recently told reporters that he doesn't use any computer in his day to day life. The current generation of computers suffer from bad design flaws and are the absolute opposite of being conservative in their use of internal memory - according to Sir Clive. And he's the man who knows what he is talking about as he is the designer of the Timex1000/ZX80/ZX81 series of machines that came out in 1980 featuring a whopping 1Kb of RAM and a basic interpreter.

All this and more can all be read in a recent interview in the UK paper the Guardian. It seems that even all email correspondence is all printed out by his secretary and handled by him on paper. That would actually cause the bald red-bearded Sir to be somewhat of an environmental hazard, wouldn't it? Oh, by the look of the photograph in the article he actually lost the beard. Well Sir Clive will be celebrating is 70th birthday this year and perhaps it does make him look a little younger. One does tend to get this Gandalfian/Dumbledorian look when sporting a grey/white beard... Sir Clive has an extensive track record when it comes to the ZX Spectrum line of microcomputers that did shape a large part of computer history - at least in Europe, Brazil and Russia.

He's currently devoting his energy to design yet another energy efficient electric car. Let it be noted that his last attempt called the ' C 5 ' bombed! Perhaps he'll be more fortunate this time around. Go Sir Clive!

While normally we shy away from posting about discounts and other deals, since our latest book, Wii Fitness for Dummies, is part of Dummies Month 2010 (all of March), we couldn't pass up sharing this information. Save $5 via mail-in rebate on any Dummies purchase of $6.99 and above, valid in the US and Canada. In addition, a wide range of stores are running various discount programs, listed here. Been holding off on that purchase of Wii Fitness for Dummies or other Dummies book? Now is your chance to stop waiting and save some extra money in the process!