The obsession began as most obsessions do -- with a simple observation. Perhaps it was the perfectly arranged row of tulips, or the masterfully grown monkeynut trees. Perhaps it was the stunning flock of Chewnicorn that resided in that breathtaking place. One is never sure of how or why these feeling develop, but the end result is always the same -- your neighbor's piñata garden is too beautiful to exist, and has to be razed. It must be returned to the loam from whence it sprung, its candy-filled inhabitants scattered to the sweet-smelling wind.

Fortunately, word from Rare confirms that in addition to a slew of races and other contests, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise will indeed feature a four player co-op mode over Xbox Live, in which three players can enter and "edit" the host's garden. Players will have access to all the tools afforded them in the single-player mode, meaning you can use your trusty multi-purpose shovel to wreak a path of destruction through a friend's garden, carving a scar into its well-tended landscape.

Or you could help them out, we guess. We're not really sure why anyone would want to do that, though.

Last night was the opening night shindig for the latest i am 8-bit show, and it was by far their biggest event yet. We arrived early as part of a press event to mill around and quietly take photos, but by 9PM the place was packed with people checking out the art, listening to the whomping sounds of Computer Jay, DJ R-Rated, and Leeni (check her out in the Pac-Man dress, along with her 8-bit tattoo). There was a massive line of people outside waiting to get in, and it had turned into the hottest ticket on Hollywood Blvd. Which, yes, is actually saying something.

They had turned the entire storefront of the World of Wonder (didn't they used to make Teddy Ruxpin?) into a huge display, featuring giant Piranha Plants from Super Mario Bros., and they had an old-school setup where you could play games ranging from an NES to a full-sized arcade cabinet, right there on full display to everyone passing by. It probably didn't hurt that some of the Nerdcore calendar girls took up residence here later and played Game Boys and quarter-eaters in their underwear.

Read more after the break, and be sure to take a spin through the huge gallery which shows off the more than 200 pieces in the show, and how crazy the whole scene became.

We headed into the wonderific CGI fray known as SIGGRAPH this year, and ultimately decided that we need to start checking this out more often. The technical conference just entered its 35th year, with the acronym being for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques. While it's evolved into a pretty glorified job fair, they still show off new and impressive technology, have a large section focusing on papers relating to innovation in the field of computer graphics (like this year's "Simulating Knitted Cloth at the Yarn Level") and feature a fun Computer Animation Festival component filled with dozens of short CGI films in competition.

The only gaming companies we noticed in attendance were Activision, LucasArts, and THQ, which mostly offered "we want to hire you!" booths, but a lot of the tech behind games was being shown as well. NVIDIA was demoing "the world's first fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer," and the Mova Contour system was showing off their futuristic looking rig. Plus, it now seems like everyone and their uncle is creating 3D printers that pump out plastic models, but that doesn't mean we don't want one.

Read on after the break to find out more, explore the gallery below, and be sure to watch the video that got the biggest laughs, just ahead.

And then kill yourself immediately, please. We suggest taking your copy of Celebrity Sports Showdown, EA Canada's zeitgeist fart and 12-sport minigame miasma, and wedging it vertically between a few issues of Teeny Bopper Monthly before leaping into it, face first, using the mound of self-pity you've buried yourself in over the years as a diving platform. Trust us, it'll be less damaging to your dignity than spending this holiday cruising over icy bumps with the mistress of lady lumps.

Don't worry, there's still time to turn your life around. Snap that elastic band on your wrist every time you reach out to a second-rate celebrity in a Wii sports video game, even one that promises a who's who and a who cares of popular culture. If you see an unnervingly rendered Keith Urban, Nelly Furtado or LeAnn Rimes beckoning you to enjoy inner-tubing, wild water canoeing, curling or anything involving "the ultimate party experience," turn the other way and flee.

One of the things we made sure to do at E3 this year was to spend a significant amount of time with the IndieCade folks. Then we sat on that info long enough for some of these games to get picked up, have a successful release, come out with sequels, spawn movies, novels, comic books, become part of the general pop culture bloodstream, and then fade into nostalgia, and for that we apologize. Actually, I'll apologize, I did it.

But in all seriousness, a lot of the more fun and innovative stuff we saw at E3 wasn't actually being churned out by big studios and publishers, but being worked on by small groups with tiny budgets and just a love of gaming. Read on to find out all about the IndieCade games that we saw on display, and why you'll want to be playing them now.

After writing an open letter explaining his fiancée's frustrations with PixelJunk Monsters' difficulty, BPPS writer Ryan Hewson received a response back from Dylan Cuthbert, president of Q-Games, saying help was on the way. Cuthbert had alluded to a major PJM patch before, but now he explains some more details of what's coming to PJM and PixelJunk Eden.

The lord of PixelJunk says PJM will receive a free patch adding Trophies, along with Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert difficulties to the game. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level for fairness -- which we guess is hard? Eden will also receive an expansion pack and may receive a "namby pamby mode" for a more casual experience -- we'd settle for some control mapping functions to seperate silk and jump ... not to mention mapping the instra-drop to a button instead of waggle. No dates on any of this, but we're contacting Sony about some form of ETA.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

The festivities on Piñata Island won't get into full swing until Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise hits shelves on September 2, but that's not stopping Rare from handing out an early party favor. As we reported back in May, the game will use the Xbox Live Vision camera to "scan" physical cards – similar to Sony's Eye of Judgment – that unlock items, change the in-game weather, etc. The first of these cards is now up on MundoRare, featuring a curious critter created by VP2 designer Ray Stevenson.

Clicking on the card image above will take you to a full-sized version that can be printed out and tucked safely away until the game streets. The rest of the dev team is also crafting cards that will surely pop up online closer to launch. Speaking of making cards, you'll be able to do the same simply by snapping photos of items and piñatas in your garden via an in-game camera. They can then be emailed to friends, who can print them out and hold them up to their Vision cameras, thus completing the circle of life.

Electronic Arts announced this morning that it has launched a set of games with tips written in the style of the popular "For Dummies" book series. We've yet to try it, but our understanding is these titles are the regular games, but with enhanced help, and not just interactive For Dummies books. The first game, Poker For Dummies, is available now on EA's Pogo.com site for $20.

Pogo will add Solitaire For Dummies in September, Brain Training For Dummies in October, Sudoku For Dummies in November, and more in 2009. Poker For Dummies and Brain Training For Dummies will be in stores by October. There will also be a DS version, featuring the all-in-one game: Solitaire, Sudoku and crossword puzzles. Those who try it, let us know if this is a smrt* purchase.

*Freaking out over s-m-r-t? Grasp the reference after the break.

The God of War himself will soon find himself under new employment as Super Awesome Sackboy Superstar. The official US PlayStation blog has revealed that there are plans for five separate LittleBigPlanet pre-order bonuses in North America, depending upon where you reserve the game (a key detail that has yet to be revealed). Here are the bonuses:

• The Official "LittleBigPlanet Creator" MiniGuide by Brady Games
  
• A LittleBigStickerBook, which is -- shocker -- a sticker book
  
• LittleBigPouch, a burlap sack reportedly big enough to at least fit a copy of LBP
  
• An exclusive Nariko (of Heavenly Sword fame) SackGirl
• Exclusive Kratos (God of War) SackBoy

Sure, the exclusive SackPeople are nice, but we're willing to bet those will eventually arrive as premium downloadable content or recreated/shared via the LBP community. We'll take two pre-orders for the decidedly more tangible LittleBigPouch, wherever that reserve bonus may end up.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

While it may seem bizarre to think that Square Enix, developer of some of the deepest narratives to ever grace our video game libraries, would decide to travel the road less Peggled, the RPG juggernaut recently launched a new casual gaming brand named "Pure Dreams" in Japan. This joins their "DS Style" line of casual games, which offers players traveling tips as well as advice on choosing wine at a restaurant. We usually just ask the waiter, but they really love their DS Lites in Japan.

The first two blockbusters sliding down the Pure Dreams chute are both based off of popular licenses in Japan -- Snoopy DS: Let's Go Meet Snoopy and His Friends! lets the player create their own member of the Peanuts gallery and play minigames with their hydrocephalitic neighbors, and Pingu's Wonderful Carnival is also a minigame collection, based off of the popular Swiss stop-motion series. We absolutely cannot wait to see Peppermint Patty's limit break.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Big news: The Japanese part of the Planet is going to get a little Littler this October, as Sony's Japanese press site brings word that LittleBigPlanet is coming to the country on Oct. 30 for 5980 yen ($56). Still no word on when the game will come to other parts of the planet, but this official Japanese date seems to line up with the rumored 10/21 U.S. release date hinted at by a Target reservation card.

[Via MCV]

While the jury hasn't even begun to assemble to decide if gaming on the iPhone is going to set records and become an extremely viable platform, we already know some those time-wasting casual games are addictive and fun.

Zecil Software is jumping into the fray with iBreakout, now available for $4.99 in the iPhone App Store, and it promises "75 meticulously crafted levels, with striking graphics, featuring 50 different backgrounds!" Striking graphics? Well, if by striking they mean you can make the ball hit the bricks, then okay. However, you can submit your high scores to leaderboard right from your phone, which is fairly nifty. Try breaking out of it at your own risk.

Hopefully that's enough punctuation in one headline for you. Apparently an eager gamer had sent in some ideas on how to turn their Zombies!!! game, which pretty much keep them rolling in brains and entrails, into an Xbox Live Arcade title, and was told "that they were already underway with this very project." We decided this was something we needed to look into ourselves, given our love of tabletop gaming.

We caught up with Todd A. Breitenstein of Twilight Creations in the extremely slim booth congregation at Comic-Con's gaming portion and he said, "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a project... but do you think it would be cool?" A tile-flipping game was an escape from ravenous zombies plot? Heck yes, we would. While we enjoy getting our game on in Catan, Carcassonne, and even Ticket to Ride, we'd also love to see some good old-fashioned killing of the undead happening as well. Maybe they could even include their flipside game Humans!!! in the deal.

[Thanks, Barry!]