TorrentFreak's annual report on the most pirated games of the year has Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops taking the dubious top honor for 2010. Even with Activision's attempts to play "good cop" with pirates, Black Ops is estimated to have been downloaded 4.27 million times on PC, with another 930,000 copies on Xbox 360. This would be the second year in a row that the Call of Duty franchise took the "prize," with Modern Warfare 2 allegedly being pirated over 4.1 million times in 2009.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii had over 1.47 million downloads, while Dante's Inferno took the top spot on Xbox 360 with 1.28 million downloads -- and we'll be damned if we can figure out why it was that game. Perhaps it was the game's marketing that instilled such sinful behavior.

For over a year, we in North America have been taunted by the presence of Yasumi Matsuno's PlayStation masterpiece Vagrant Story on the European and Japanese PlayStation Stores. Now, depending on how optimistic you feel, there's new information that is either encouraging, or just another taunt. It's been rated by the ESRB for release on PS3 and PSP, suggesting that Square Enix plans to release it here ... eventually.

It's joined by ratings for other Square RPGs, including Threads of Fate, Xenogears, and Legend of Mana, along with Working Designs-published Arc the Lad 3 (and Ridge Racer Type 4, which doesn't fit the RPG theme at all, but is still noteworthy). We can't know from the ratings when these games will be published, but we're shocked to have some PSOne Classics on the way from someone other than MonkeyPaw Games.

Uber Entertainment's über entertaining Monday Night Combat is on sale today for 600 Microsoft Points ($7.50), 50 percent off the regular price. If you decide to grab the inventive multiplayer shooter, don't forget to download the free "Spunky Cola Special" DLC, which adds more maps, more bacon, all-star leveling, protags and ... churros!

Monday Night Combat is currently in beta for PC, with an official launch date of Monday, January 17. When it launches, you'll have to shake $15 out of your moneyball. We'll watch.

Dozens of PopCap's titles are on sale through January 2 -- from Alchemy to Zuma's Revenge. The sale covers all PC and Mac downloadables, excluding the recently launched Bejeweled 3 (it also doesn't extend to any game bundles). Still, even sans its new puzzler, there are plenty of gems to be had.

Do you need to re-energize the power cores of your Wii Remotes in the raddest, most attitude-fueled way imaginable? The latest product from Mad Catz (PDF) is right up your alley: It's a Wiimote induction charger featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. At $49.99, it's probably not the most cost efficient way to refuel your gaming peripherals, but it is the ... um, bluest.

What's great about the charger's Sonic-centricity is that it not only possesses form, but also has quite a bit of function. See his hand, there? That's not a peace sign -- that's him telling you how many controllers the charger can hold. He's such a helpful little devil, isn't he?

Cliff Bleszinski said recently that Epic Games would unveil a brand new IP at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This will be a brand new universe, unrelated to anything Epic has done before, according to Bleszinski. "Gamers votes with their dollars and they often like established IP, but those IPs came from somewhere, right?" he told EGM. "Call of Duty was crafted by the original Medal of Honor guys. Gears of War was crafted by the original Unreal Tournament guy. I look forward to creating what's next."

We pinged Bleszinski ourselves to try and find out what platform Epic is aiming for, but he tells us there's "not much to say yet." The company has had a lot of success with Infinity Blade on iOS recently, and has also been rumored to be working on a Kinect title. GDC 2011 kicks off on February 28 -- we'll be there in San Francisco to cover any announcement for you.

Santa's got his heart in the right place, but c'mon, the guy can't do everything. He knows you wanted Fighters Uncaged (it was, in fact, the reason you were on the naughty list), but he just didn't have room in the sleigh this year. Luckily, Amazon is there to help you finish the job that Santa couldn't with a "Buy One, Get One 1/2 Off" offer on over 600 games.

Want the copies of Assassin's Creed 2 and Mass Effect 2 for around $37? No problem. Want Deca Sports Freedom and Adrenaline Misfits? You're just $60 away from that lofty dream becoming a reality, but word to the wise: Keep that particular purchase to yourself. You don't want to end up Perma-Naughty, do you?

Avid World of Warcraft players are always looking for that special something to incrementally boost their in-game performance -- little did they know that the greatest boost wouldn't come in the form of a legendary item, but rather a motion-detecting Kinect hack from researchers at USC.

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Our friends in Japan often have ... peculiar tastes when it comes to their gaming passions. Specifically, they are taught from a young age to despise any game in which they don't capture monsters. Fact: The nation's most popular T-shirt actually reads, "I'd rather capture a monster than my next breath of oxygen." It's true!

It's an even more impressive accomplishment, then, that the country's first game to sell six million copies on DS doesn't feature any monster capturing to speak of. No, it's New Super Mario Bros., which hit 6,015,255 units as of December 26 according to the latest Enterbrain data.

Congrats, Mario. Now, if science ever figures out a way to put monster catching into one of your games ... well, let's just pray it never comes to that.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam occupies a very strange place. It's a great addition to the Battlefield franchise, no doubt, but whether it was originally intended as a standalone game à la Battlefield 1943, or as an "expansion" to Battlefield Bad Company 2, is a question that lingers. Of course, it's hard to focus on such questions while you barbecue the enemy with a flamethrower.

Vietnam is, the way publisher EA and developer DICE sell it, a multiplayer-only "expansion pack" to this year's hit, Battlefield Bad Company 2. The $15 upgrade includes four new maps (a fifth will unlock shortly) and ramps up the overall game's tension by turning back the clock on weaponry. It occupies a separate location in the BFBC2 menu and the maps are not part of the core game's rotation. For all intents and purposes, Vietnam is such a different Battlefield experience that you'll forget it has anything to do with Bad Company 2.

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Okay, not quite. But fans of Super Meat Boy in Russia now have the opportunity to design the cover art for the PC box-copy release in the territory (so team Meat doesn't have to). Published by Buka Entertainment, the Russian release will be the first box copy of the game available in the world, so it's ... sort of a big deal?

To enter the box art contest -- well, first you have to be a resident of Russia or any of the former Soviet Union countries, and then -- just put together a 709x709-pixel image using this set of SMB assets (.ZIP link), send it in to Buka before midnight on January 15, 2011, and calmly wait for the results to be announced a day or so later (more specific instructions can be found here). Not only will the winner become "like semi-popular," but he or she will also receive an Acer monitor!

A personal message from Team Meat's Edmund McMillen spells out the intentions behind the contest, which you can view after the break. If you don't watch it for the pitch, watch it for his totally sweet hat.

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While we're no closer to learning if the HD update to the formerly Xbox-exclusive Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath will ever make it to Xbox Live Arcade – either it's got to shrink in size or Microsoft has to bump up that size limit ... again – developer Just Add Water is hinting at another platform that may see the "NOT PS3-exclusive" remake. JAW's Stewart Gilray took to the Steam forums to placate Oddboxx consumers angry about the inconsistency of the PC port of Stranger's Wrath.

Porting the title from Xbox (and an Xbox-specific implementation of DirectX) to PC and OpenGL introduced a number of issues, which Gilray was eager to address. "From a personal note, to read these comments that the game is beyond broken hurts," he wrote in the forums. "I am always incredibly paranoid about that work I/we do and am always self-critical, so please help us fix these issues by providing as much positive feedback as you can with system specs and detailed descriptions."

As users turned in (generally angry) bug reports, one asked the question everyone's been wondering: "Why can't the PC port be as good as the PS3 version?" Gilray responded simply, "Because the PS3 version is not completed yet," before adding, "As for the PS3 version, we will look to bring this to the PC as an update to the current PC version at a later date." While it's far from a promise, it is a reminder that the HD remake isn't contractually bound to remain a PS3-exclusive, and it's also a potential silver lining for anyone plagued by bugs in the current Oddboxx release. [Thanks, BoogerA]

Just what was that puzzling David O'Russell quote, referencing a "family dynamic" in the Uncharted movie, all about, I asked Uncharted 3 game director Justin Richmond at a recent press event. He laughed. "First of all, all that stuff was denied by David O. Russell," Richmond said. "He actually called us up and was like, 'I don't know what these guys are talking about.'" And Mark Wahlberg isn't anywhere near to being confirmed to play Nathan Drake either -- it's just Hollywood scuttlebutt, apparently. Still, I dutifully told Richmond that the Joystiq Biomass had chosen, and Nathan Fillion has our vote. Message received, Richmond responded.

With that important tidbit out of the way, we moved on to discussing the game: Uncharted 3 has the Cintamani Stone-sized task of living up to its predecessors, and Richmond and his team are busy implementing improvements across the board, subtle as they might appear. "The big thing is that we switched lighting engines between [Uncharted] 1 and 2, and we're keeping the same lighting engine now," he explained. "So we've already got all of those advancements. Now we're just refining them."

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Sony has released a pair of Uncharted 3 gameplay videos, comprising most of what we saw at a recent press event (and what Fallon stumbled through on Late Night). Seen after the break, Drake and Sully have found their way to an overgrown French chateau on the path of T.E. Laurence. As they find what they came for, a group of thugs from a mysterious cult -- hint: the bad guys! -- shows up to burn the place down ... with our heroes inside.

Keep an eye out for Drake's new combat moves, including kicking one enemy while being grappled by another, a flying stealth attack and some weapon-grabbing takedowns. Also take notice of Naughty Dog's slick new fire modeling as it consumes the crumbling chateau. It's too bad Drake and Sully appear to be falling to a fiery death at the end of the second clip -- the game probably would have turned out to be excellent.

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Lost Levels, a website dedicated to pulling unreleased video games out of the void of obscurity, recently obtained a pretty epic find: An alleged prototype build of the original, Famicom version of The Legend of Zelda. What's different about this early build? Well, apparently, while the retail version of Zelda was responsible for crushing the spirits of many a lesser gamer, this prototype build was designed to be played by sweet, little babies.

The difficulty of the early version of the game appears to be fairly reduced, as the prototype features a much more liberal rate of rupee distribution and an easier palette of enemies compared to the retail release, as evidenced by the screenshot comparison above (prototype on the left). If you've got the right emulator, you can download and play the prototype right now -- or, if you're not in the dungeon-diving mood, you can check more details about the Zelda prototype on The Cutting Room Floor wiki.

Nintendo's official website for Nintendo World 2011, next month's public showing of the 3DS in Japan, has been updated, now highlighting the full list of games to be shown during the Tokyo event. Playable versions of everything from MGS3: Snake Eater to Pilotwings Resort will be on hand, though, bizarrely, some demos that were playable at this year's E3 will be for display only, including Starfox 64 3D.

Nintendo has also announced that the 3DS will make an appearance at next month's World Hobby Fair (also in Japan) and at two Japanese outlet shopping centers, according to 1UP. We suspect you'd find the shortest lines at those outlets, but, personally, we'd rather take our chances at the Makuhari Messe event to check out the long list of titles (found after the break) than watch a few demos at the local Uniqlo.

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