Days before Apple is expected to reveal details of an iPad Mini, a new video has appeared on the Web showing a mock-up of the device. Meanwhile, it's being reported that the Cupertino company is looking at the idea of launching a widescreen iPad.

With the iPhone 5 launch well and truly behind us, attention among Apple watchers is now turning to the expected unveiling of the iPad Mini.

There’s been talk for a while now about Apple releasing a smaller version of its hugely popular iPad device, with most people expecting an October launch.

As with any Apple product coming to market, rumors have been doing the rounds, with many claiming the tablet will have a 7.85-inch screen and a thinner bezel than the one found on the existing iPad.

A new video showing a dummy iPad Mini from various angles was posted on the Web on Friday by the Japan-based Mac Otakara blog (via Apple Insider). Unfortunately, much of  the 60-second video is slightly out of focus, though it’s still watchable (check it out below), and gives us some idea of how the expected tablet will look in the hand/s (answer: comfortable).

Apple Insider says that if the mock-up is close to the real thing then the absence of the black plastic insert on the back of the device that serves as a window for cellular signals suggests that if this is the only device unveiled by Tim Cook next month, it’ll be Wi-Fi only. But would Apple really hold back from offering consumers a cellular version too?

There’s little known about what’s under the hood of the expected iPad Mini, though to keep it competitively priced alongside Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HD tablets, Google’s Nexus 7 and Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD devices, it’s bound to lack the power of the 9.7-inch version. Many predict it’ll sell for around $250, a price which is bound to interest many consumers looking for a more portable version of the Cupertino company’s big-selling iPad. Details of a ‘special event’ to unveil the iPad Mini are expected to be announced in the coming days, with the device set to hit stores in plenty of time for the holiday season.

Widescreen iPad?

Meanwhile, following the recent launch of the widescreen iPhone 5, one analyst has said that according to sources “close to Apple”, the iPad is also about to get the stretched-screen treatment. Cult of Mac reported industry analyst Paul Mueller as saying that “at least three people close to Apple” told him the company is prototyping a widescreen version of the iPad.

It’s easy to believe the claim, with Apple known to test out many variations of a device before deciding whether to develop it further. It’s not known whether it would replace the current version or be sold alongside it. Do you think a widescreen iPad would go down well with consumers? Or should Apple simply stick with the current 4:3 aspect ratio?     

Alongside announcements of personnel acquisitions, the creators of the Android-based Ouya console have revealed massive developer support.

Even after the relatively cheap, Android-based Ouya console proved a massive success on Kickstarter (the console was able to pull in nearly $8.6 million from investors despite having an initial goal of only $960,000), pundits and prospective owners of the new gaming machine loudly wondered how well it would be able to attract developers who would otherwise be making games for the Xbox 360, iPhone or PC. Assuming you believe official statements made by the people behind the Ouya console, there is nothing to worry about on that front.

“Over a thousand” developers have contacted the Ouya creators since the end of their Kickstarter campaign, according to a statement published as part of a recent announcement on who will be filling out the company’s leadership roles now that it is properly established. Likewise, the statement claims that “more than 50″ companies “from all around the world” have approached the people behind Ouya to distribute the console once it is ready for its consumer debut at some as-yet-undetermined point in 2013.

While this is undoubtedly good news for anyone who’s been crossing their fingers, hoping that the Ouya can make inroads into the normally insular world of console gaming, it should be noted that while these thousand-plus developers may have attempted to reach the Ouya’s creators, the company offers no solid figures on how many of them are officially committed to bringing games to the platform. That “over a thousand” figure means little if every last developer examined the terms of developing for the Ouya and quickly declined the opportunity in favor of more lucrative options. We have no official information on how these developer conversations actually went, so until we hear a more official assessment of how many gaming firms are solidly pledging support to the Ouya platform, we’ll continue to harbor a bit of cynicism over how successful this machine might possibly be.

As for the aforementioned personnel acquisitions, though they’re less impressive than the possibility that thousands of firms are already tentatively working on games for the Ouya, they should offer a bit more hope that the company making the console will remain stable, guided by people intimately familiar with the gaming biz. According to the announcement, Ouya has attracted former IGN president (and the first investor in the Ouya project) Roy Bahat to serve as chairman of the Ouya board. Additionally, the company has enlisted former EA development director and senior development director for Trion Worlds’ MMO Rift, Steve Chamberlin, to serve as the company’s head of engineering. Finally, Raffi Bagdasarian, former vice president of product development and operations at Sony Pictures Television has been tapped to lead Ouya’s platform service and software product development division. Though you may be unfamiliar with these three men, trust that they’ve all proven their chops as leaders in their respective gaming-centric fields.

Expect to hear more solid information on the Ouya and its games line up as we inch closer to its nebulous 2013 release. Hopefully for the system’s numerous potential buyers, that quip about the massive developer interest the console has attracted proves more tangible than not.

Debtors of Curt Schilling's 38 Studios hope a liquidation auction will help them retrieve their money. Microsoft however, wants its hardware back.

If you’ve been following the gaming industry over the past year, you’ll likely recognize the name “38 Studios.” The games developer, formerly known as “Green Monster Games,” was initially notable for being founded by former Major League Baseball star Curt Schilling (seen in the image above at right), but stumbled on more recent fame due to its spectacular public collapse. While we still await the results of official investigations launched into the firm by the state of Rhode Island and the FBI (the Rhode Island attorney general’s office recently announced that it would not pursue criminal charges against 38 Studios or its founders), the company’s assets are being sent to the auction block in an effort to raise money to pay off the $75 million loan the company received from the good people of Rhode Island.

According to this listing on the website of industrial liquidation specialist SJ Corio Company, the vast majority of hardware used in 38 Studios’ day to day operations, as well as its games development plans, will be available for purchase. This will be carried out over the course of two sales (one on October 16 in Timonium, MD, and one on October 23 in Providence, RI), and prospective buyers will be given access to huge lots of office equipment, computer accessories and, most crucially for this story, an unspecified number of “Xbox 360 XDK consoles.”

Though little information is publicly available on these items, intelligent speculation holds that these were the same Xbox 360 development kits used by 38 Studios in the creation of 2012′s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and possibly any unannounced projects that 38 Studios may have had in the development pipeline. If you’re an average gamer, you might never have seen one of these development kits, as Microsoft tends to closely guard this technology. After all, owning one of these things means that a person is able to run unsigned code on the machine, thus opening up all kinds of opportunities for piracy or the creation of Xbox 360 software that makes the console behave in ways that Microsoft would really rather it didn’t. Thus, when news broke that these kits would be going on sale to what is effectively the general public, Microsoft jumped into action to retrieve the machines.

“Xbox 360 Development Kits (XDK) are the property of Microsoft and are only licensed to authorized studios and may not be assigned or sold to any third party without the written consent of Microsoft,” reads Microsoft’s official statement on the situation. ”We will be contacting the appropriate parties involved in the auction of 38 Studios’ assets to remove the XDK units from the auction listing and to secure the return of the consoles to Microsoft.”

Whether or not Microsoft has legal recourse to retrieve the kits is currently up in the air, but it seems quite likely that due to the trade secrecy of the information inherently contained within an Xbox 360 development kit, that the company could claim, in court, that the sale of such a machine to an unknown third party could theoretically impugn the company’s ability to continue doing business as it has been since the console’s launch. Of course, that’s for the lawyers to hash out, and regardless of the outcome, those of you living in Maryland or Rhode Island suddenly have a chance to score some cut-rate office equipment that was once used by a famous pitcher. Good luck.

Thinking about buying a Samsung Galaxy S3 soon? You might want to wait until Black Friday if you live in the United States. It seems that a leaked flyer has arrived suggesting that Sprint plans to offer the S3 for just $50 with a two-year contract as a special Black Friday promotion. How much are you saving? About $150, which is no small chunk of change.

For those that need a reminder, the North American version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 is no weakling. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm S4 and has a 2GB of RAM. This isn’t quite as good as the Quad-core in the international version, but that’s the price of LTE integration.

For those in Canada, you don’t have to wait nearly as long to get a great deal on the Samsung Galaxy S3. Rogers, Bell, Telus and Virgin Mobile are all running a promotion this weekend that gives you a free Galaxy S3 with a three-year commitment. This is a VERY good deal for those that like Samsung smartphones. It’s also worth noting that Bell, Telus and Virgin Mobile are also slashing the OG Note to $0 with a three year commitment during this special sale.

PopCap's zombies are coming yet again, but this time they're after your teeth instead of your brains.

Though Plants Vs Zombies has appeared on nearly every gaming platform in existence and developer PopCap Games is hard at work on delivering the PvZ sequel that came to light in August, there is no rest for the company’s legions of shambling undead. Instead of merely allowing these ambulatory corpses a chance to enjoy their afterlives, PopCap has enlisted its gruesome creations in the fight against tooth decay.

As part of the “Stop Zombie Mouth” campaign, PopCap has joined forces with the American Dental Association to promote good dental hygiene. As you can see from the official Stop Zombie Mouth website (or the trailer/music video for the campaign embedded below) this is obviously aimed at kids. While the overall goal is to teach youngsters how to properly maintain their teeth and gums, the campaign also has a lesser, but no less crucial motive of instilling in kids the basics of dental hygiene before Halloween festivities ruin all that hard work in a shower of delicious, sugar-riddled candies.

So, how does a video game company aid in the battle against tooth decay? By getting kids hooked on its games, of course. Under the Stop Zombie Mouth campaign, PopCap will be issuing a number of collectible cards and special coupons based on Plants Vs Zombies. The cards, as you might expect, feature the game’s titular walking dead (as well as five original characters created just for this campaign and a number of zombies not seen in any iteration of Plants Vs Zombies to date), while the coupons are actually free vouchers for full copies of either the PC or Mac version of the game. These goodies are designed to be given away by dentists to their customers, much in the same way that dental professionals have been handing kids toothbrushes and toothpaste at the end of check-ups for as long as anyone can remember.

While we can’t fault the potential benefits of teaching kids how to care for their oral cavities, this whole scheme seemed a bit “out of left field” on first glance. Thus, we sent off a message to PopCap asking why the company would ever want to join forces with America’s dentists. In sum, the company wants to use its games to promote positive change in the world.

“We at PopCap have been interested in the potential for video games to provide benefits beyond entertainment for many years,” PopCap co-founder John Vechey told us. “We’re passionate about the very important cause behind the ‘Stop Zombie Mouth’ campaign and proud to be highlighting yet another positive effect that games can have on society.”

Margo Wootan, Director of Nutrition Policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, praises the initiative, saying that PopCap and the ADA have come up with a very novel solution to this eternal problem. “Changing eating habits among children is one of the most important yet difficult challenges that parents face today,” Wootan said. “The ADA and PopCap Games have come up with a fun, clever, and compelling approach that should appeal to young trick-or-treaters this Halloween. This campaign will help children recognize the relationship between healthy eating and healthy teeth, and provide one of the coolest alternatives to sugary snacks yet.”

It should be noted that this is not the first time PopCap has demonstrated an unexpectedly high level of corporate kindness. In late 2011, when a PopCap employee named Lisa was diagnosed with and began treatment for cancer, her office was literally flood with tiny origami cranes courtesy of her “co-workers” at PopCap’s then-new Shanghai wing. Likewise, in June of that same year, PopCap began selling a number of original Plants Vs Zombies art assets to benefit the Starlight Children’s Foundation and the UK’s SpecialEffect charity group.

Motorola's Razr i is a good start for Intel's attack on the mobile chip market, but it'll need a few more big-name partners if it wants to succeed.

Recently, Motorola announced its first smartphone powered by Intel’s Medfield processor, the Razr i, and it’s an important device for both companies. For Intel, it represents the very first Atom-powered phone to come from a “big-name” manufacturer, and for Motorola it marks a return to Europe, a market it has neglected in recent years. Motorola signed a “multi-year, multi-device” partnership with Intel in early January and so far it has the best end of the deal, as the Razr i is not only good-looking, but it’s capable too.

Intel however, doesn’t seem to be making in-roads into the ARM-controlled mobile chipset market, and thanks to the Razr i’s limited initial release — it’s out in the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico next month — the only Intel phone that people might actually want to buy may not be available where they live.

What Intel needs is a new best friend — someone who is also trying to break into a market with which it has lost touch. Right now, that company is Research in Motion, which is doing a decent job of talking up BlackBerry 10, but neatly avoiding the subject of the accompanying hardware. Both it and Intel have challenging times ahead and a partnership could be mutually beneficial.

A huge mountain to climb

One could argue that it’s still early days for Intel, but is it? Intel shouldn’t have missed the smartphone boat. We’re talking about the best known PC chip manufacturer on the planet, with decades of experience here. Medfield wasn’t announced yesterday either. Intel has been chatting about its Lenovo and Motorola partnership as far back as CES in January and MWC in February.

If Intel wants its processors to challenge the dominant ARM mobile chips, then it needs to get its act together, because the mountain it needs to climb is huge. ARM controls 95-percent of the mobile market and more than 270 companies are licensed to use its architecture. Its performance reflects this, and its 2011 revenue climbed 24-percent over 2010 to $785 million, exceeding expectations.

To make matters worse for Intel, ARM is slowly but surely pushing its way into the PC market too, thanks in no small part to Microsoft’s decision to support ARM architecture with Windows 8 RT. ARM’s CEO has stated he wants to own between 10 and 20-percent of the notebook market by 2015.

Unsurprisingly, ARM has played down Intel’s move into its primary business, saying it expects the company to take only about 5 to 10-percent of the smartphone market share “within a few years.” Intel has remained tight-lipped concerning its own expectations, but as forecasters are predicting a downturn in its PC business over the coming years, mobile is only going to become more important.

Intel dominates the PC processor market in the same way ARM does with mobile, with estimates putting Intel’s share at around 80 percent; however, analysts are predicting tough times ahead, with an Endpoint Technologies researcher quoted as saying “the outlook looks grim right now through the new year.” Smartphone and tablets though, are experiencing considerable growth.

So, it’s clear that one device from one manufacturer, plus a few others scattered around the globe, probably won’t bring the success Intel desires. Motorola is a great partner to have, especially because of its new owner, but Intel needs to split the Atom between a few other big companies too.

Samsung and LG were linked with Intel last year, but nothing has come of it, and HTC has remained quiet as well. Research in Motion has always used a variety of processor manufacturers, so why not Intel? After all, it needs all the help it can get right now.

Could Intel save RIM, and vice versa?

Research in Motion is nervously treading water ahead of BlackBerry 10’s eventual release. If it’s not in talks with Intel, or at the very least considering a switch, then it should be.

A long time ago, RIM used Intel 386 chips in its early BlackBerry 950 and 957 handsets, then in 2005 trumpeted another deal with Intel, where it would use its XScale architecture (which is ARM-based anyway) and “Herman” chips in future BlackBerry devices. BlackBerry 10 phones are expected to use ARM architecture and chips from Texas Instruments or Qualcomm, but imagine for a moment the impact of the news that RIM had switched to Intel.

The relationship is there, it just needs to be reinvigorated. The mobile industry thrives on partnerships, from Sony and Ericsson to Microsoft and Nokia. Right now, a new friend would go a long way to helping Research in Motion overcome public perception, and Intel to add another big name to its list.

It makes good sense for Intel too, as RIM is placed third — and rising — in terms of market share in India — an important emerging market — behind Nokia and Samsung. It also made it very clear during BlackBerry 10 Jam that emerging markets were high on its list of priorities, and as Intel has already partnered with Lava to produce the Xolo Android phone in India, we’re assuming it is for Intel too. The combination of both Atom-powered BlackBerrys and Android phones could see them on their way to a significant slice of the market.

RIM on the other hand, needs a differentiator, something to make its BlackBerry 10 phones standout in amongst iPhone 5s, Jelly Beans and Windows Phone 8. Packing in a 2GHz Atom chip could do exactly that. Plus, with Texas Instruments taking a step back from the mobile market, a gap has opened up at RIM into which Intel could neatly slip.

Yes it would be a risk for both parties, and would require plenty of adjustment on RIM’s side, but that could be exactly what’s needed to push forward in today’s fiercely competitive mobile market.

Microsoft's Achievement points just acquired some actual, real-world value.

Throughout the history of the Xbox 360, the console’s Achievement system has always seemed a bit hollow. Sure, it tracks your gaming prowess over every game you play on Microsoft’s machine, but beyond bragging rights the gamerscore system has never really offered players a tangible, useful reward. However, that changes now, as Microsoft has unveiled a program to reward gamers for their dedication to earning ever-higher piles of largely meaningless numbers.

Dubbed “MyAchievements,” this latest Microsoft initiative offers three tiers of rewards, depending on how massive your gamerscore has become over the past handful of years. Those of you with 3,000 to 9,999 Achievement points can earn an unnamed “Special Gift” to be delivered during your birthday month. Gamers with between 10,000 and 24,999 points are eligible for that aforementioned Gift, as well as a “1% Rebate on your Xbox LIVE Marketplace purchases EVERY MONTH.” Finally, those of you who have been working really, really hard to pick up Achievements and are currently sitting on a pile of more than 25,000 points will earn the omnipresent Gift, and be eligible for a 2% rebate on Xbox Live purchases.

There are two important, if largely minor, cavets here though: First, you need to have an Xbox Live Gold account to pick up any of these rewards, and second, you’ll need to sign up for Microsoft’s MyRewards program. That’s a simple enough process (visit this site and follow the short, easy instructions to sign up), which while allowing Microsoft to periodically bombard your email inbox with advertisements also makes your Gold account eligible for free bonus Microsoft Points based on a number of things you’re likely to do anyway (like renewing your Gold account). Bottom line: Sign up and you’ll be trading a bit of privacy for points that can be redeemed for Xbox Live Marketplace items.

Back to the MyAchievements deal for a moment: Try as we might, we’re unable to find any mention of what that “Special Gift” actually is. This just happens to be my birthday month, and my Xbox Live Gold account has been signed up for any and all Microsoft promotions for years now, and yet I’ve not received any Gift, nor can I find any information on what the Gift might be. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for some sort of clarification on this issue, but have yet to hear a response.

Assuming that doesn’t totally quell your interest in the MyAchievements program, you should know that Microsoft’s site is running a bit wonky at the moment. We’re having trouble getting pages to load in a timely manner, though when they eventually appear everything seems copacetic. Unless you’re adamant about joining the new initiative as soon as possible, maybe wait a few hours before attempting to link your Xbox Live account with any of Microsoft’s customer loyalty programs.

We find that survival in the animal kingdom can be as boring as it is powerful in our Tokyo Jungle Review.

When Tokyo Jungle director, Yohei Kataoka, pitched his post-apocalyptic action game to Sony Japan Studio, it didn’t go well. “It was bad!” said Kataoka in a recent interview. 

“It wasn’t received so well at the very beginning. I think there weren’t so many people that thought this game could would sell just based on the concept.” The premise sounds like a sure thing in today’s gaming landscape: Survive in the ruins of Tokyo after human civilization has crumbled. That describes pretty much every single game that’s come out in the past five years. From Dead Island to Rage, the wasteland is currently one of gaming’s most popular settings.

So why didn’t Sony like Kataoka’s game? Well, house cats aren’t exactly the most popular protagonists in post-apocalyptic games. That’s how you roll in Tokyo Jungle.

No bald space marines, no rough-hewn machine guns. You get tooth, claw, and cunning as you guide the animal kingdom through what remains of Japan’s capital city when the humans have gone away. If it sounds like it might be a little dull playing as a tabby trying to cut it in a dog-eat-alligator metropolis, you’d be right. Tokyo Jungle can be exceedingly dull, every bit as banal as actually trying to forage for food and find a place to rest. But beneath some grueling game design lies a wholly unique, smart action game that balances survival and strategy to an impressive, tense degree.

The rules in Tokyo Jungle are more or less the same as when you wake up in the morning. You need to find food, shelter, and a mate to breed with all while avoiding things that want to kill you. Here you aren’t a biped with opposable thumbs and an enormous brain, just a beast whose only job is to make it through the day. The various animals you can take control of in Tokyo Jungle come in two types, even though the range goes from baby chick to slavering dinosaur: Grazers and predators.

Predators need to take on other critters by either fighting or stalking them. Crawling through a bush will conceal your feisty Pomeranian from an unwitting rabbit, and the perfect time to strike is represented by glowing red jaws on your target. Click the right trigger, pounce and feast with the circle button. The process is accompanied with the sort of visual flash that comes with a well-timed combo in Street Fighter, but it can be even more affecting, especially when you take out a larger animal that’s felled you before. You’d think since it was passive that grazing would lack the same satisfaction, but the process of tracking down edible grass and fruits on rooftops and alleys is just as compulsively enjoyable.

Eating food raises your animal’s rank, going from rookie to veteran, and peeking with boss. If you’re a boss, you can attract the best female of your species. (Tokyo Jungle, sadly, doesn’t offer much for those seeking gender equality). Before you can get potential mates to appear you have to secure a territory by marking four spots in the specific district you’re in. Do so, and you get access to a nest for mating and saving your game in the core Survival mode. A timer is constantly ticking years away though, so if you don’t mate before you hit 15-years-old, you’ll die. Mate before that, and you take control of your kids, who have beefed up health, stamina, and hunger stats.

As with life, Tokyo Jungle is all about balance. You need to weigh taking risks to secure territory or find food as you push forward and try to survive. There are mitigating factors — some areas are poisoned, tainted by the apocalypse’s fallout, but you can find equipment and items to keep yourself going, for example — but the center of the game is the push and pull of needing to find resources and racing against the clock. Survival in the real world is tedious, an exhausting, never-ending search for the things you need to keep going.

If you’re reading this though, you also know that the mundane nature of life can lead to ecstatic revelation. There’s nothing quite like having a good day. Tokyo Jungle, in its most inspired moments, captures that essential feeling. Playing as a fourth-generation gazelle, running from mountain lions across train tracks at night headed for another city district where the map says there’s food, watching your hunger meter drop away, then finally reaching your destination and finding safety for just a little while longer is a pleasure no other game will give.

But revelation is rare. Most of the time in Tokyo Jungle, you’re just slogging through the motions, trying to achieve a specific animal’s secondary goals beyond survival — reach this area, eat this many calories, find this animal in this set amount of time — raising points so you can unlock new animals to play with. Since that’s the only way to play as the coolest animals—lions, tigers, and bears, etc., that means hours of playing as a baby chick, which is as slow and cumbersome as it sounds.

Conclusion

Tokyo Jungle’s highs are so high that the game gets an automatic recommendation. For anyone looking for time value, there’s a ton here as well. In addition to all the many unlockable animals for lengthy survival mode campaigns, collecting data items slowly unlocks a mission-based story mode as well. It’s important to go in knowing, however, that there’s a mountain of grind standing between you and the best parts of the game. Jungle can be moving. It also happens to be hilarious (try not to laugh the first time you equip an a pig with cat’s paws to raise its attack power). Is it as satisfying as survival? No, not really. It offers a world and experience that no other game can though, and that makes all the difference.

Score: 7.5 out of 10

(This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3 using a retail version of the game)

AT&T today detailed four new LTE-equipped Samsung devices will be available on its network including the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.

The list of 4G LTE devices that AT&T offers just got longer. Thanks to the equally exponentially expanding Samsung’s Galaxy line, AT&T is adding four new Android devices to its portfolio. The three new handsets and one tablet will be available over the coming months and will give consumers that many more decisions to have to make when trying to pick out their new Android device. Here’s a quick look at all four new AT&T devices.

Samsung Galaxy Express

The Samsung Galaxy Express fills the void on the middle-to-upper tier offerings in the AT&T line up. That’s right, they have so many phones that there are now tiers between tiers. The 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display will give users a great view of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and images captured on the 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. The 1.5GHz dual-core processor have the phone running fast and the 2000mAh battery will keep it going.

Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro

Designed for people with a more rugged outer shell while maintaining its smarts, the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro is designed to take a beating. It’s probably best for people with a rough-and-tumble jobs. So on-site engineers or tax auditors or something along those lines, we’d imagine. We’re not really sure as we spend our days typing on keyboards. What we do know, is that it comes with a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and enhanced Push-to-Talk capabilities. No word on operating system (what version of Android), processor, battery, RAM, or any of the other details one would expect from a phone announcement. It will have full phone data encryption though, so add secret agents to the list of professions that would use this handset.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

If you’ve been looking for an Android tablet, you’re no doubt familiar with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 by this point. AT&T will be bringing the device onto their 4G LTE network soon. To recap what this tablet offers, it operates on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), features a 10.1-inch screen, and is run by a 1GHz dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM. Check out our full review of the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 for our overall impressions of the tablet.

Samsung Galaxy Note II

While we’ve known that the Galaxy Note 2 is coming to major carriers, AT&T confirmed it’s presence in their upcoming lineup. The phone-tablet hybrid features a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display powered by 2GB of RAM and a 1.6GHz quad-core processor. It’s the only device announced that will come running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Take a look at our hands-on with the Galaxy Note 2 for more information.

AT&T puts control right at user's fingertips with MiFi Liberate, the first mobile hotspot with a touchscreen.

Not too many years ago, people would joke about how everything has a camera built into it. But since everything also has a touchscreen nowadays, wouldn’t it make sense if touchscreens were the new camera? Wouldn’t that be the gadget everyone needs to own? Well, that seems to be the rationale behind AT&T latest device: the MiFi Liberate, the mobile provider’s first ever hotspot device decked out with touchscreen capacity.

The MiFi Liberate, developed by Novatel Wireless, can connect up to 10 devices to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Those devices can then be managed right from the MiFi Liberate’s 2.8-inch color screen. From the MiFi Liberate, you can control various functionalities, such as monitoring data usage, changing networks, and editing the device settings — straight from the touch interface. Users will also be able to add extra memory space with MicroSD cards. AT&T is promising about 11 hours of battery life in continuous use.

There are currently no pricing or availability information for the MiFi Liberate, and it’s something AT&T may want to move quick to announce. It’s only a matter of time before a company releases a WiFi hotspot with a larger touchscreen and more functionalities, which will prompt the competitive process to continue until someone realizes they’re just creating a tablet that acts as a WiFi hotspot.

Wolverine battles Mega Man once again as Capcom offers gamers the reheated roots of the Marvel Vs Capcom franchise.

When Capcom released Marvel Vs Capcom 3 in February of 2011, it backed itself into a corner. It had been over a decade since the last Marvel Vs Capcom sequel, and while the company’s latest crossover fighters offered tons of content for new and old fans of the series alike, those neophyte players had no idea where this franchise came from. Or so goes the logic behind Capcom’s latest downloadable arcade game collection, the aptly titled Marvel Vs Capcom Origins.

See, long before Capcom revived the series as part of its 2D fighter renaissance period, the company had been issuing a long line of games that directly led up to the characters and gameplay concepts found in Marvel Vs Capcom 3. Obviously that numeral at the end of the game’s title indicates that there must have been an original Marvel Vs Capcom, but even before that, Capcom established the roots of its “Versus” fighter line in games like X-Men: Children Of The Atom, X-Men Vs Street Fighter, and Marvel Super Heroes. That last title joins the first Marvel Vs Capcom in this collection, and while I’ll cover why this decision is so baffling, let’s first examine Capcom’s success in reviving these genuine arcade classics.

Capcom’s goal in reviving Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel Vs Capcom for this downloadable compilation was obviously to capture the feeling of the original arcade cabinets, and in that regard it’s a smashing success. Along with expected aesthetics options like wide screen display, the developers behind Marvel Vs Capcom Origins designed a number of more “arcade accurate” viewing modes. This includes a mode in which the screen is slightly tilted and covered in scanlines to match the experience of playing the game on an old CRT monitor instead of a modern HDTV. Another mode allows you to view either game as if you were standing off to the side of the arcade machine it’s running on. While most people will find one particular viewing mode they prefer and stick with that for the majority of their time in the game, it’s impressive that Capcom went to such lengths to ape the arcade aesthetic.

Unfortunately, certain viewing modes are objectively less useful than others. The picture directly above these displays my chosen viewing mode, and as you can see it includes a streaming list of various challenges the game has tasked me with completing during a match. Those aren’t there in some of the larger viewing modes.

Anyway, as with Capcom’s downloadable release of Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online, both of the arcade games here have been augmented with hundreds of game-specific tasks. Completing these tasks will earn you Vault Points which can be redeemed for a number of hidden extras. Unlike Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online however, the bonuses in Marvel Vs Capcom Online are far more appealing than simple concept art. Though that’s represented as well, the best stuff to be found in the Vault includes items that unlock either game’s numerous secret characters, as well as items that unlock each character’s ending cinematics. It’s a totally unnecessary addition given that both games are utterly arcade-perfect, but it does offer a tasty carrot on a stick to entice people to keep playing the game.

Excelsior!

The biggest and most important addition to the games found in Marvel Vs Capcom Origins is definitely the game’s online multiplayer component. It’s a slightly upgraded version of the online component seen in Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online, and as in that game, punching people over the ‘net in Marvel Vs Capcom Origins is as silky smooth an experience as you can have outside of an actual arcade setting. Over the 100 matches I played online specifically to test the feature, I encountered absolutely zero lag. Once connected to your opponent, the game feels as smooth and responsive as in any of its offline modes. No hyperbole: Marvel Vs Capcom Origins has the best netcode of any fighting game to date.

As far as the actual gameplay in these games, they’re exactly how you remember them, for better or for worse. While I’m very pleased to see that Capcom perfectly replicated the gameplay experience of these original arcade titles, that also means that each game is utterly broken. The characters are unbalanced, certain fighters are much, much, much better than others, and each game includes a number of exploitable flaws. Normally that would be a problem, but this lack of balance actually made these games more entertaining in their original incarnations and I wouldn’t want to play them any other way. That said, I predict that anyone who plays this game online will get sick of seeing Wolverine and Red Venom very quickly.

Conclusion

Marvel Vs Capcom Origins seeks to offer the definitive, perfect home version of two classic arcade fighters and it does just that. Granted, it’s a bit odd that Capcom would choose Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel Vs Capcom from the six-plus games that could have conceivably appeared as part of this package, but who can really argue with perfectly preserved arcade games like this? The graphics are admirably retro, the in-game audio is as cheesy and lo-fi as you remember and the online component nearly perfectly replicates playing in a real arcade. Given Capcom’s goals here, I’d say the company did admirably. Fighting fans who fondly recall these games will find exactly what they’ve been missing, and maybe a few newcomers will get a bit of a history lesson on why Ryu occasionally has to punch Captain America in the face.

(This game was reviewed using an Xbox Live Arcade copy provided by Capcom.)