A mere thirteen years after its original release on the Sega Saturn, the two-player shmup Ikaruga blazes an alternating black and white trail onto Steam today for $9.99. Now, those underprivileged folks who never knew the magic of the Saturn can squeal with glee at the high flying, polarity-based gameplay Ikaruga offers up. "What's a Sega Saturn?" is also an acceptable response.

Sales are a great time to give uglier games a chance. You know, games you weren't dying to buy at launch, but always kind of wanted to play.  With that in mind, now's a great time to try Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon. The Xbox Live Arcade version has just gone on sale for 400 MS Points (its first discount) as part of Microsoft's Shocktober promotion. Also on sale are a handful of other horror-themed games, including co-op zombie slaughterfest Dead Rising 2.

Good Co-Op, Bad Co-Op - a tale of two friends who love playing games together.  The man who gives the best upsidedown hugs, Sunflower4000 and the love wizard Locke have put their differences aside and teamed up cooperatively in a battle against fate.  Season 1 is about to kick off for Co-Optimus' first video series, but for now, we thought we'd give you a little teaser with a special showing of everyone's favorite SHMUP.

I am not sure if I’m noticing my own habits of buying games that are similar all at once, or if the world is conspiring to release an onslaught of similar games one after another. This is where you decide. Do you see handfuls of games that appear to be coincidentally similar?

For anyone who's seen Zombieland you understand that there are certain rules one has to follow in different situations in order to survive - or, at least make the best of a situation. For our purposes today, we'll lay out a few rules for download gameplay with others in order to survive.

Another classic video game console celebrates a milestone this week.  Sega's Dreamcast was released in North America ten years ago this past week, on 9/9/99.  Though the console was short lived, it has developed quite a following, even a decade later.  Many features of the Dreamcast were ahead of its time, most notably a standard modem and internet support allowing online co-op for the first time on a home console.  To celebrate the 10th birthday of Sega's final console, we'll take a look at some of the best co-op games the system had to offer, as submitted by staff and readers. The Shoot 'Em Ups

Fans of Ikaruga, which we reviewed here, will find this news interesting.  It appears that Ikaruga is not the only acclaimed shooter from Treasure that Microsoft wants on Xbox Live Arcade.  Radiant Silvergun, which many feel is the best shoot em up of all time, is on Microsoft's wish list.  (Ours too, for that matter; copies of the game are quite pricey on Ebay.)  MS approached Treasure CEO Masato Maegawa about porting the Arcade/Sega Saturn title over to their service.