Videogames Lead to Behavioral Addiction Mike Tyson’s Paparazzi Punch-Out!! Video GameStop Buys Majority Stake in Video Game Digital Distributor Jolt Miyamoto: 3D Isn’t Everything Are You A Video Game Junkie With Mad Writing Skills? Write For Ripten NFL Super Bowl Champion Steelers Connect with Soldiers in Iraq for Guitar Hero Competition

More news from Tokyo Game Show: Microsoft announced the recently teased new Halo 3 expansion, now titled Halo 3: Recon.  The game’s campaign will be a prequel to the story of Halo 3 and will not feature the Master Chief.  Instead, you play as an ODST grunt (well, slightly better than the cannon-fodder “allies” that got in the way in Halo 3, but not quite a Spartan either) and will apparently “require you to employ more elements of stealth and cunning than ever before.” Read on for full details. Read more…

The elusive Hayabusa armor from Halo 3.

If you’re a big fan of playing with dolls– ahem, sorry, “action figures”– then you’d probably love to litter your workspace with these Halo 3 figures from Todd McFarlane’s workshop. Some of the more interesting toys from the upcoming series 3, due out in September, are shown below, including the famous Hayabusa armor. The series 1 and 2 figures are available now, but they might be a little hard to find. Read more…

Major Nelson posted the LIVE activity for the week of January 14^th, and guess what took the top spot? Well, I guess I already gave it away. Infinity Ward’s awesome military shooter finally de-throned Master Chief and his rascally gang of Spartans. Read more…

Halo 3’s crashes have resulted in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft and Bungie Studios. Read more…

Halo 3 is still the topic of controversy weeks after its release, and this time it has nothing to do with the Bungie and Microsoft split.

According to the numbers published on rottentomatoes.com, Octobers ticket sales are at one of the lowest points in recent box office history. What does that mean? Well, according to a short list of film executives and researchers, it means that the general movie going audience is staying home playing Halo 3 instead of spending $24.50 for popcorn, soda, and a glimpse at Mr. Woodcock, Ben’s half hearted attempt at finding true love, or Dwayne’s game plan.

Mike Hickey, analyst at Janco Partners, a Denver based research firm states “The audience on this game is the 18-to-34 demographic, similar to what you’d see in cinemas,” he goes on to state that “this could last for several weeks.”

This is an absolutely ridiculous assumption, as every gamer knows Ben Stiller hasn’t made a decent movie in years, and the Rock — sorry, “Dwayne Johnson” is better off sticking to action movies, as long as they aren’t video game related (see DOOM). On a positive note though, maybe this will finally convince a studio to get the wheels rolling on a Halo movie.

Source: Advertising Age, Rotten Tomatoes

“That’s it, I quit. This is so not worth sixty bucks.”

Ok, so we came across this little bit of heaven while browsing reddit.com and just had to share the find with our readers. Granted, not everyone here at ripten was completely in love with Bungie’s latest Halo release in terms of the campaign mode, but the multiplayer aspect of Halo 3 can hardly be called a disappointment.

That said, below are a few highlights from an “open letter to Bungie” we discovered which was posted anonymously on craigslist.org. In it the writer discusses their dislike for the latest release in the Halo series as well as some ideas and suggestions for Bungie in the future. Read more…

Halo 3’s multiplayer mode, along with Microsoft’s entire strategy for domination in the console wars, can be summed up in two beautiful words: Endless replayability.

This is a desert island game–assuming you had an HDTV and Internet connection on the island, and didn’t use team chat to send out an SOS. It’s a game that you could easily spend weeks, months, and years perfecting without getting bored. The online matchmaking system ramps up the challenge so smoothly that after you learn the ropes “powning noobs” you’ll be experiencing a much greater difficulty playing against Halo experts. Read more…

Halo’s storyline finally comes full circle, and not the good kind of circle I used to draw in math class with a compass — the bad kind of circle I used to draw on the asphalt when I was five!

If Bungie’s mission was to make us feel like pigeons, preordering the game, waiting three months, and ultimately paying $60 for a game that doesn’t deliver anything that remotely resembles a decent story, then CONGRATULATIONS!

If I didn’t preorder it, wait three months, and drop $60, I would throw the Halo 3 game disk into my bathroom sink and set it on fire, then use it to line Pirate’s (my cat) cat box. Read more…

It’s official. Bungie is now a privately held independent company, meaning they are no longer owned by Microsoft. Although Bungie is not owned by Microsoft anymore, Microsoft still owns a minority equity interest in Bungie. Read more…

Pressure from Microsoft … unbearable!! Shield … can’t take … much more!

Halo 3 sales figures have been announced and Microsoft states that it has made $300 million dollars worldwide and sales of the Xbox 360 console have doubled. The Halo phenomenon has hit its online play as well, with Xbox Live totaling close to a million users playing. Read more…

Winning bidder “directsalesprice” is definitely going to be winning the office Halloween costume contest this year. His winning bid of 21,149.00 on Ebay for a one of a kind Master Chief custom featured on Spike TV, G4 TV, and in a Dell commercial, may not make him famous but it will definitely get him looks. More pictures after the jump. Read more…

The Halo 3 Beta has come and gone but the guys and gals over at Bungie Studios are still feeding their Halo hungry fans.

If the breathtaking new “Finish The Fight” artwork doesn’t satisfy your craving for the chief, then take a look behind the scenes of what we here at ripten have in store for our readers in the coming weeks.

After you sort through the Halo art from Bungie you will find the comic style artwork of artists Jonathan Lo and Kristoffer who are brining to life a battle between Metriod’s Samus Aran and Halo’s Master Chief. All of this is a part of our exclusive “King Of The Game” series which will be hitting the site in the next few weeks. Read more…

This is what we have all been waiting for … a battle for the ages, and the time is now. We have assembled 32 of the finest video game characters that have ever called a console home, and a five round single elimination tournament of speed, skill, strength, and determination stands between them and being named pixel for pixel the baddest that ever was, the “King of the Game”.

Can Marcus Fenix roadie run his way through a bullet blazing, one liner laden, no holds barred battle with the one and only Duke Nukem? Will Metal Gear’s main man Snake slither his way to victory against the Splinter Cells triclops, Sam Fisher? Metriod’s Samus Aran, or the combat evolved Master Chief? The king of cold: Sub Zero or the queen of hot: Lara Croft?

We here at ripten have been working for over two months, researching, arguing, and eating lots of junk food, all in the name of bringing you an accurate account of each characters quest for video game immortality. Read more…