Have you ever been to Hawaii? I hear they have some pretty crazy gamers. A trio of would-be robbers are testament to that claim, having been beaten up by a group of customers at a games cafe in Kaneohe just last week. Three masked assailants stormed the cafe collecting money from patrons, but when they asked one gamer to hand over his Nintendo DS, a line in the sand was drawn. SHORYUKEN!

It turns out Sega was planning to get back into the console hardware market after all, sort of. Kotaku has pointed out a page from Kmart's latest catalog, featuring a "15 games in one" Megadrive product. Yes, it's legit, and it comes with two seemingly original-spec controllers as well a cartridge slot for your old games if they're still lying around. And it's only $49!

I was happy enough to buy Mafia II on the PC purely for Nvidia 3D Vision support, but now there are a bunch of other good reasons, too. For starters, by pre-purchasing now, you'll get a free copy of the original game to re-explore, or explore for the first time if you for whatever reason missed it!

If you've ever felt that game you bought recently felt unfinished, 'then there's probably some basis to those thoughts. It seems that might be the trend for games to come. Comments from both Codemasters and Namco Bandai in recent weeks point to the companies looking to sell 'incomplete' games with consumers then having to purchase additional content and/or monthly fees.

EA has just officially announced a sequel to the cult classic that was American McGee's Alice, released way back in 2000. Named Alice: Madness Returns and being developed for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the "action horror" title is to hit store shelves sometime in 2011.

It feels like an eternity since we first launched GU. In fact, it was ten years ago when what you know as Gamers-Underground.com began as Gamers@Octa4. When the Darwin-based ISP was purchased by iiNet, we decided rather than let the community die, that we would re-brand and venture off down our own path.

Almost strangely, and most certainly conversely to many studies publicised by the mainstream media, a new study by Texas A&M International University's associate professor, Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson, suggests that violent video games could actually make for more stable personalities among youth.

We've just integrated a bundle of nifty Facebook Connect features into Gamers-Underground.com. If you're not a member of GU, in the space of two clicks, you now can be. Just hit the "F Connect" button top right, or in the main navigation bar underneath our game mascot of the moment.

If you're already a member, linking your Facebook account to your GU account via the same method will enable you to share any posts that you like directly to your profile, publish comments you make here to your profile, and much more.

Logged in to GU or not, there's a Facebook comments section in every profile page, and you can now "Facebook Like" threads. The button to do so is right underneath the title of the first post in any thread.

Finally, every news article published here is automatically sent to our Twitter and Facebook pages - so if you don't check our site frequently and are not a fan of RSS feeds, you'll have convenient access to the latest gaming headlines and media.

Dubbed 'Online Pass', all EA Sports console games will be sold with a one-time use registration code as of July this year that grants access to online multiplayer modes. If you've purchased the game second hand and the original access code has been redeemed already, you'll be up for an additional $10 charge to jump online to have a bash, kick, bat - or whatever your flavour of sports simulation is...

Dust off those flight sticks! Ubisoft is taking another stab at the flight sim genre with a follow-up to its well-received Tom Clany's HAWX. The sequel will land late this year on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and PC. Stay tuned for more details as they arrive.

Treyarch were pleased to release their debut tease trailer for the next Call of Duty installment, Black Ops. The sequel lands on November 9th, and will feature a co-op mode that has been handled by an entire team amidst the studio to ensure "the most intense, gripping and riveting experience possible for our fans on all fronts," Treyarch's Maark Lamia said.

Blizzard have sent out a press release finally declaring the date that we can all run out and pick-up our StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty pre-orders! The highly anticipated RTS will be available world-wide on July 27th. They've also noted that "players will also be able to purchase StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty directly from Blizzard Entertainment shortly after the retail launch." What exactly this means I'm unsure, but I'm expecting it probably means you'll be able to purchase it via Battle.net and simply download the title from your account management area, as per the beta.

Turn on your 360, throw in your Halo 3: ODST campaign disc and strap on your jetpack. Mepm dropped us a reminder on the forum that as of about 6 hours ago, while most of us were sleeping, the Halo: Reach beta went live! It only runs until May 19, so if you're a fan, don't waste anytime. Bungie sent a word of caution that "the download process may be subject to extended wait times. Server load is expected to be extremely high, especially during the first few hours and days of Beta availability. Please bear with us and stay tuned to Bungie.net for news and information."

Four days ago MekTek re-released MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries as a free download, after finally getting the green light from Microsoft to do so. They even made a number of improvements and fixes. Unfortunately, obtaining the 1.7GB installer proved problematic. And by problematic, I mean their site went down and you couldn't actually download it. Now though, it's back up, and you're free to go and grab it!