G4 is counting down the top 100 video games of all time with five 1-hour specials all week long starting Monday, June 11 at 8/7c.

What began in arcades, pizza parlors and shag carpeted living rooms has grown into a multi-billion dollar business that dominates the entertainment landscape. Whether it’s addictive Facebook games, iPad apps, MMOs, or console blockbusters, everyone is a gamer. 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin can’t put down Words with Friends, and the New York Jets’ Tim Tebow is the master of Madden.

Don’t miss G4’s highly anticipated, and sure to be controversial, countdown of gaming’s most defining moments. Celebrities, athletes, rock stars and game designers will join the X-Play experts to weigh in on which video games broke the mold and ultimately crown one landmark title the greatest of all time. 

From Mario to Master Chief, 8-bit to hi-def, Angry Birds to Zelda - the battle is on to count down the top 100 video games of all time... will your favorite make the list?

Find out when G4 airs The Top 100 Video Games of All Time - June 11-15, all week at 8/7c!

Now that you know when it airs on G4, check out our full length trailer of highlights featuring Aisha Tyler, Jake Johnson, Daequan Cook, Kumail Nanjiani, Soulja Boy, Jack Black, Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Tony Hawk, Andrew Luck, Morgan Webb, Richard Hammond, Janina Gavankar, Slash, Brian Posehn, Chris Parnell, Danny Pudi, Paul Scheer, Cliff Bleszinski, Felicia Day, Geoff Johns, Matthew Perry and Scott Porter!

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes comes out this summer, and will feature some of you favorite costumed crusaders: Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and more will be along for the ride, in Lego form. To help get you in the mood, Warner Bros. has sent us a bunch of renders of Lego villains meant to parody the characters in Batman: Arkham City.

That's Bane above, giving Robin a hard time. There's a full size picture of Bane under the "Read More" tag, along with Robin, Catwoman and The Joker.

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PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is official. The light-hearted multiplayer fighting game features a whos-who roster of famous Sony characters battling it out on levels from all over the PlayStation Universe.

The four-player brawler features Kratos, Sweet Tooth, Parappa, Fat Princess, Colonel Radec, and Sly Cooper among others. Additionally, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will include a line-up of special characters from some of the game industry's top third party developers and publishers.

• NEWS: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Registered By Sony

With a host of playable characters, special attacks, themed stages, and mash up music, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale aims to pits players in a "deep fighting game that draws inspiration throughout the colorful PlayStation universe."

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It's not really surprising that Capcom is working on another Monster Hunter game for a Sony console. What is surprising though, is that this title, Airu de Puzuruu, isn't for the PS Vita, it's for the PSP. And maybe even more surprising than that; it's a puzzle game!

• NEWS: Monster Hunter 3G Gameplay And 3DS Controls Shown In New Video

The Monster Hunter puzzle game was revealed via an early copy of Famitsu. The game is said to build off of Felyne, a character from the Monster Hunter series.

The PSP game will be released on July 19th in Japan. An American release has not been announced.

Source: Andriasang

Sony today announced it is axing 10,000 jobs as part of a plan to pull out of a historically dismal financial spiral. The good news for gamers: Sony name-checked its gaming division as a key part of its strategy for recovery.

• NEWS: Sony Predicts Huge Losses

"As CEO, I take this very seriously. But at the same time, it strengthened my resolve to transform Sony," Kaz Hirai told  journalists at a press event. "Employees too want to restore Sony to its former glory and go beyond."

• VIDEO: Sessler's Soapbox: Sony's Financial Troubles

That glory will be restored by the company focusing on the company's electronics division, which included game systems, cameras and phones. Sony will be concentrating investment and technological development in its electronics division.

Personally, I'm curious what Sony's plans are for future handheld gaming systems. I wonder if that entire market isn't going to shrink drastically as smart phones become better and better gaming platforms.

Source: USA Today

Making sure video games are fun is the envious job of a producer. But to get to that point, the producer must oversee the studio’s various departments, acting as a liaison between the artists, programmers, testers and so forth. That being said, the exact day-to-day work can vary from company to company, as the title of “video game producer” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more than tightening up the graphics on level 3.

“The producer’s job,” explains Universal Interactive Executive Producer Pete Wanat, “is to shepherd a product from the conceptual stage until the game code ships to the manufacturer (or is uploaded digitally). The position is about anything you need to do to get the game made - so if you have to clean the office or move boxes or spend 12 hours on the phone working something out, you do what you need to do.”

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The goal of playing video games for a living often begins with becoming a game tester, whether you want to end up being a designer, programmer or executive producer. This is the best way to get your foot in the door and demonstrate that you can not only play games, but have a knack for attention to detail.

That’s exactly the advice of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 QA Project Lead Jeff Roper. “The basic characteristics managers look for would be a fundamental love and passion for video games,” he says. “Other important characteristics would be an eye for detail, critical thinking and the ability to stay focused throughout. Of course, being a team player and getting along with your fellow co-workers is also important.”

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Want to get a video game job? I'm sure you do. All week long G4 University has been bringing you feature stories and video about landing your dream job in the gaming industry. Now, it's time for you to put all of that knowledge to work and start applying for jobs. To make it easier, we've put together a list of links to the career pages of many top video game companies These include everything from publishers to developers, all the way up to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

Take the time to craft a brief but well-written cover letter, make sure your resume is in order, and start applying! We're hoping you land your dream career at some point, and if you get a job somewhere please let us know. Who knows, we might be interviewing you about your upcoming game right here on G4!

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We've got a preview of Lego Batman 2 for you enjoy! Once you've finished checking out the new Lego Batman 2 gameplay video, you've gotta read up on the game. The great Kevin "Minifig" Kelly got to check out the game recently, and was impressed not just with the Batman, but with the variety of other super-hero pals he'll have in the game.

Check out this taste of our Lego Batman 2 preview:

"Superman is just one of the new heroes coming to LEGO Batman 2, and although we only saw Batman, Robin, and Superman in the demo, in the menu screens we caught a glimpse of the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and others, and develop Traveller’s Tales promises that there will be over 50 DC Comic characters in the final game, though it’s not clear how many of those you’ll actually be able to play."

Read the rest of our Lego Batman 2 preview.

This LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes gameplay video features all sorts of sweet details about the upcoming LEGO adventure. Rather than sticking to just Batman and friends this time around, in LEGO Batman 2 you can expect to play as other heroes from the DC Universe, including the man of steel himself, Superman. Watch the interview between Blair Herter and Jonathan Smith, head of production on LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, to learn all about LEGO Superman, the introduction of voice acting to the LEGO series, and more. 

If you aren't up to date on your LEGO games, check out our LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 review. 

CheapyD at CheapAssGamer.com scours both the online and offline world for the best deals on video games, and to help out your wallets, we're bringing his weekly recap to you!

Best Buy offers a $10 gift card with Mass Effect 3 pre-orders to Gamer Club members or a $20 gift card to Unlocked members. Saints Row: The Third and Soul Calibur V are $39.99 each.

GameStop throws in an extra $25 credit on PSP, DS, 3DS trade-ins toward a PS Vita.

Target discounts the Xbox 360 4GB console to $179.99 and includes a $25 gift card.

Toys R Us includes a $25 gift card with the Xbox 360 4GB Kinect Bundle and discounts 1 year of Xbox Live to $39.99 and the Kinect Sensor to $99.99.

Amazon has 1 year of Xbox Live for $35.99, a $10 credit with Mass Effect 3, Soul Calibur V & Saints Row: The Third for $39.99 each and more.

Visit CAG for more details and the rest of this week's Sunday ad deals.

Best of the Rest
Gears of War 3 DLC Discounted
Tales of Grace F $47.99 at Newegg (code EMCYTZT1244)

Follow Cheap Ass Gamer on Twitter at videogamedeals and ukgamedeals.

The PlayStation Vita releases today with one of the strongest launch lineups in recent memory for any console, handheld or otherwise. For all of the new features packed into handhelds these days, without a steady stream of games to play, your shiny new toy can quickly turn into an expensive paperweight. Come with us as we look at launch games of handhelds gone by and see what games helped highlight the novel features of the platform and which ones were nothing but a Band-Aid on a doomed console.

Console: Nintendo Game Boy

North American Launch: August 1989

There may have been handhelds that launched prior to the Game Boy, but this was the machine that started it all. Created by Gunpei Yokio, the creator of Nintendo’s Game and Watch series, the Game Boy came bundled with Tetris and launched with just four other games: Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land, and Tennis. Super Mario Land went on to spawn two more sequels and introduce Wario to the world, and continued the tradition of launching a new Nintendo console with a Mario title. As successful Super Mario Land was, the real star of this launch was Tetris. By the time that the Game Boy launched, Tetris had been out for five years and had snared many in its addictive, shape-dropping grip. Tetris was accessible to both kids and adults and was shaped based, thereby sidestepping the Game Boy’s color-less display and, best of all, it was free.

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It's time to get way in-depth about the PlayStation Vita, people. G4's feature editor Rob Manuel and reviews editor Dana Leahy take a long, hard look at the Vita in the video below, showing off the portable's interesting new features, including its dual-cameras, dual touch-screens, dual thumb-sticks and more. That's a lot of "duals" eh?

Along the way, Rob and Dana discuss the machine's price and launch catalog, then answer the big question: Is it worth the price? Check out the video below:

You might have read yesterday that the PlayStation Vita's PS Store is now officially online and ready to accept your money. The current offering of actual Vita games is relatively light, but there are hundreds of PSP and Minis titles available for purchase and/or download. The exact number is 275, Sony reveals in a new PlayStation Blog post.

The update explains the various options users have for getting a PSP onto your Vita's memory card. It's pretty simple, really: either download them straight to the Vita via the built-in PS Store app or download them to your PS3 and then transfer them over using the Content Manager. You can find the full list of games at the source link below, though I can also confirm that LittleBigPlanet PSP, Killzone: Liberation and Echochrome can all be transferred from your PS3 to the Vita as well, and that they all seem to run just fine.

Sony promises to add more PSP titles to the store "in the coming weeks."

Source: PlayStation Blog

We've talked a lot here about Sony's UMD Passport program, which provides cheap digital PSP purchases in the PSN -- now SEN -- Store for those who register their old UMD games. It's the hardware maker's solution to the PlayStation Vita's lack of backwards compatible support for the PSP's UMD-based titles.

Unfortunately, PS Vita owners in the U.S. won't have access to those cheaper prices. Sony officially confirms in a statement to GiantBomb that the UMD Passport program will not be available in North America, with the confirmation coming shortly after Kotaku first reported the news yesterday. No reason is given for the move; instead, the paragraph-long statement shifts gears after the first sentence to talk about how awesome it is that the PS Vita can play upscaled PSP games.

Read the full statement after the jump. I warn you though: it's just going to make you angrier.

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