Tech Olive

With all pre-orders of Sam & Max‘s next series of adventures, The Devil’s Playhouse, Steam is offering several perks as detailed below. The Devil’s Playhouse is a 5-part episodic pack that will release a new episode every month with the first scheduled to release in April.

Get a FREE game with purchase: Sam & Max 203: Night of the Raving Dead

Get Freelance Police Elite Forces membership, which entitles you to:

• Access to private forum – featuring scheduled chats with Steve Purcell, series designers and more
• Special ‘member’ preview area – get first look at sneaks from upcoming episodes first!
• Elite Forces downloads – avatars, wallpaper
• Elite Forces pass for Telltale Store – monthly special deals thru Sept 2010

Yesterday, Toshiba introduced two new 2.5-inch laptop hard drives to add to their lineup. The 750GB model is a standard 9.5mm-thick, two-platter drive that can be housed in any laptop that has a SATA 2 connection. The 1TB is a 12.5mm-thick, three-platter laptop drive that can only be used in most newer laptops that are able to house such a drive.

Both drives spin at 5400RPM and have 8MB of cache on the 3Gb/s interface. They also sport Toshiba’s “silent seek” technology, which the company claims that the hard drives are as quiet when seeking as they are when idling. The 750GB drive is expected to ship in Q2 2010, while the 1TB will ship later in Q3 2010.

via [CNET]

Microsoft took a massive step towards cross-console play today with the opening of Game Room on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live for PC. We first heard about Game Room during CES earlier this year and it’s an intriguing idea, the cross-console leaderboards certainly don’t hurt that either. If you don’t know, Game Room is a virtual arcade for gamers that are craving some good old retro, quarter-driven gaming at an arcade cabinet. You can customize and outfit your very own arcade however you see fit, from the carpet to the games.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, then make yourself a Live account and download Game Room for free.

Through Twitter, Robert Bowling has announced some preview video footage of Modern Warfare 2‘s upcoming Stimulus Package maps. The upcoming DLC is loaded with five new maps; Bailout, Storm, Salvage, Crash, and Overgrown (or, rather, three new maps and two stolen from CoD4). While the pack is set for a March 30th release on Xbox Live, there are no details yet regarding PC release date. Follow the break to see the video.

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Adobe has officially posted a countdown timer for the release of Creative Suite CS5. On Monday, April 12th at 11AM EST, CS5 will be launched!

[Adobe]

A Spanish gaming magazine is getting the exclusive breaking story of  F3AR (worst title ever) in their issue next month. Unfortunately, that’s all the details that are to be had currently. As it stands, all we have is the (possible) cover art until next month when hopefully the issue will yield some solid information.

via [Meodia]

In celebration of launching the game’s first free DLC, Champions Online is opening up to all gamers free for the weekend. Starting this Friday, March 26th at 10:00AM PDT and running until Monday, March 29th. This free weekend will give all players complete access to the game’s world and the tools and items within. No restrictions at all. Now you can have an excuse for wearing that cape at your PC all the time.

via [Big Download]

L4D2‘s upcoming DLC, The Passing, has been a long-time coming and finally seems to be approaching its official release date. In light of this, Valve has released some details and changes that gamers should expect to see:

• A Wicked Witch Bride!
• A Gargantuan M60!
• A Slashing Golf Club!
• And Introducing The Fallen Survivor!
• Meet 3 Left 4 Dead 1 Survivors!
• New Game Modes!

“Was that a typo? Game Modes? Didn’t we mean Game MODE? Did we mean to include that ‘S’?!?!?”YES WE DID!”

via [Shack News]

Hot off the heels of SanDisk’s release of a 32GB microSDHC card, Corsair also unveiled their own 32GB masterpiece added to the Flash Voyager Mini lineup. Along with the 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB flavors, the 32GB flash drive sports a retractable USB connector that you flick open with your thumb. You can grab the ultra-tiny 32GB flash drive for $100.

[Corsair]

Epic Vid of the Week is a new weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that are worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

No, really. This guy is crazy. He keeps it real. I mean, we’ve all seen parkour, but this guy takes it to the next level. And the whole point of keeping it real is so that you can take it to the next level (kudos to anyone who knows what TV show that reference is from).