To some, speedball is a dangerous mix of illicit substances but to others it's an excellent futuristic sports title developed by the Bitmap Brothers in 1991. Mix the rules of football, handball and rugby, add two teams of psycho-cyborg gladiators locked in a metal arena with a metal ball and you get speedball. The game consists of passing the ball around to reach the other team's net and score more goals than them in a limited amount of time. However, unlike the sports we play nowadays in speedball you can joyfully mangle your opponents to get the ball back.

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe is the second release in the series. Teams now have 9 players instead of 6 and you can hit targets on the walls to get bonuses. There's also a number of power ups and other options strewn across the gaming field. The reason we've decided to cover this classic is that Kotaku announced today that Frogster Interactive would be releasing a sequel in the summer of 2007. The gaming blog is worried that it will turn out to be a bad "Unreal Tournament Mod", however with Bitmap Brother Mike Montgomery on the team we can hope for the original spirit of Speedball to carry on.

What about improvements? Will the game environment move on from 2D to 3D? Any chances of multiplayer or online gaming? What about the tournament modes? Will new challenges be introduced? We'll just have to wait till this summer to see.

Sleeping Dogs’ development history is pretty well known. Developed by United Front Games and scheduled for release through Activision, the game was cancelled and brought back to life by Square Enix.

Originally planned as another game in the True Crime series, but now known as Sleeping Dogs, I had a chance to play two levels. The first focused on hand-to-hand combat and the second was to preview of driving.

I admit right now – I want to play this game as soon as possible.

If you're old enough to remember hours spent playing Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on the Commodore Amiga then you'll be delighted to see its been reinvented for Mac in the form of  Speedball 2: Evolution.

Speedball 2 was possibly my favorite game on the Amiga (apart from Kick Off 2) because it was unique, fun, addictive and the action was pulsating. It looks like the Mac version has stayed pretty faithful to the original with the same retro graphics, sound effects ("Ice Cream! Ice Cream!") and brutal gameplay. The aim is basically to outscore and smash your opponents into oblivion whether its with the metal ball that the players throw around the pitch or battering them with the body armor players wear.

Points are won by scoring goals, knocking out opponents, and also by hitting bumpers, stars and ramps on the pitch. This gives the game and element of pinball to it, and means that focusing on goal scoring is never enough. One of the most entertaining features is upgrading players with special qualities such as speed, stronger armor or more powerful throwing actions.

If you were a fan of the original, don't go out and enjoy the sun this weekend. Stay in and try Speedball 2: Evolution on Mac. All weekend.

This week saw the release onto the App Store of the ultra-violent iOS game, 100 Nazi Scalps. This bloody shoot em' up casts you as a soldier with one mission: to kill as many Nazis as you can. The game - clearly an homage to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds - sees you charge through each level splattering blood around the screen as you eliminate the enemy with your deadly arsenal of weapons.

Playing 100 Nazi Scalps got me wondering if this was actually the most violent iPhone game of all time. Despite being cartoony, the game is very brutal and kills are more gruesome than most hack and slash iOS. However, there are apps that contain more shocking themes. Here's a run-down of how my favorite ultra-violent mobile games square up. Please let us know which iOS game you think is the most brutal.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Grand Theft Auto is world renowned for its violence and Rockstar’s controversial series of games has been causing outrage for years. Chinatown Wars on the iPhone is one of the tamest versions of GTA to date, but that’s not to say it’s all teddy bears and tea parties. Dealing with themes such as murder, drug deals gone bad, car jacking and armed robbery, Chinatown Wars is not one to play with the grand kids.

The game's aerial view means the violence isn't as intense as it is in the recent console versions of the game. However, the pools of blood that appear when you make a kill, and some of the gruesome cut scenes, help to retain the trademark controversy of the GTA series.

Price: $9.99

The 12th Annual Independent Games Festival is almost upon us, and has a huge selection of submissions to check out. There's a record 306 entries, covering a huge range of genres. Lewie Procter at SavvyGames has completed part one of a 'Pretend you are an IGF judge' series, which usefully brings together all the publicly available submitted games, so you can check them out yourself.

The sheer volume of games is pretty intimidating, but there's sure to be tons of great stuff. I've already reviewed AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, which I love and Terry Cavanagh's excellent Don't Look Back is also there, alongside his upcoming and highly anticipated VVVVVV (no demo for this yet, sniff!).

While publishing giant Activision's Modern Warfare 2 will break barriers by allowing you to be a brutal terrorist, these indie developers are proving that you don't need to shock or ask ridiculous moral non-choices of your players to do something revolutionary with video games or story telling. There's also a wealth of humor, weirdness and creative enthusiasm that I feel is lacking from many of the season's big upcoming releases - which unless I'm forgetting something are all sequels. While there is certainly lots of good stuff to play, like Hollywood before it, the games industry seems stuck in a blockbuster-sequel cycle, making it seem difficult for genuinely new games to make their mark.

As a lad, I remember the Sega Genesis being the pinnacle of home computer entertainment systems. My television was rarely used for actually watching TV and every main present at Christmas was cartridge-shaped. It shows how far we've come (or how old I am) that I can now play Genesis/Mega Drive games on my phone for just a few bucks. Of course, the experience isn't quite the same as the old days, and the iPhone touchscreen isn't always conducive to intuitive console-style gameplay. However, if you're looking for a cheap thrill that will take you back to the glory days of the early Nineties then get these Sega classics on your iPhone now. Load up iTunes and click the links to the App Store pages.

Duke Nukem - The original king of action returns for more mindless mutant-mashing mayhem

Sonic The Hedgehog - The speedy critter's original and best adventure remade for the iPhone

Golden Axe - Relive your dragon-riding, dwarf-slashing childhood years

Ms. Pacman - Essentially Pacman with a bow on his head, but man was Ms. Pacman hot

Streets of Rage - Clean up the streets in this brutal side-scrolling beat-em-up from the old day

Columns- The second best falling-bricks game ever

Doom - OK, it's not that scary now but at the time you couldn't play it with the lights out

Bomberman - Explosive arcade fun on your iPhone

Worms - The slimy mercenaries return in this, one of the best games available for iPhone

Flashback - Make out like you're James Bond in this stylish mystery adventure game

Thanks to the MUGEN games engine, the Sega classic Brutal: Paws of Fury has been given a new lease of life and seems to have lost none of its popularity. Nowadays, it has become one of the most popular combat game downloads on Softonic due to its excellent playability and original MUGEN-based characters.

This 2D fighting game follows the trend set by Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat but it's much more than just a beat-em-up. Whereas the former have digitised characters, the characters in Paws of Fury are original animal-style cartoons, which gives the game its distinctive flavour. What's more, it also has a rather original and unique premise. The original Sega story goes that the Dalai Lama has organised a martial arts contest for animals and the final bout is against the great man himself! (although we never got that far).

MUGEN is a piece of software which is treasured by a significant part of the gaming community. This 2D gaming engine created in 1999 allows you to create your own levels, characters and game objects thanks to a set of interpreted text files, graphics and sound compilations. It has spawned a multitude of fighting games and original characters and even a number of wildly surrealist mashups just like Godzilla vs The Mushroom Kingdom: