Having found major critical success last year with the DSiWare release Shantae: Risky's Revenge, developer WayForward is returning to the download service tomorrow with Mighty Milky Way.

As "Luna," you have a magical power to create and destroy planets, and then hop between them, making a celestial path for yourself as you escape from ... a "laser-eyed T-Rex." In 40 stages, you'll use the gravitational fields of the planets to carry yourself around, collect "planet candy" and avoid obstacles and space dinosaurs.

Mighty Milky Way will cost 800 DSi Points.

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Yet another gaming peripheral manufacturer is getting into the 3DS battery life extension racket -- following in the footsteps of Nyko's Power Pak+, Hyperkin is planning to release a 3DS attachment this summer which promises to double the lifespan of the handheld. The battery, which attaches to the bottom of the device, also includes an improved grip and an LED indicator to show how much longer you can get your Nintendogs on before you need to recharge.

The Hyperkin PowerPlus battery attachment will ship sometime this summer for $19.99, the same price as Nyko's 3DS battery expander. You'll have to make your final choice based on form factor -- for instance, the Nyko battery seems to snap onto the back of the handheld, while the Hyperkin pack seems to give the 3DS a loving embrace. Only you can decide which one is right for you.

Surprise! It's Mother's Day. You forgot -- didn't you? No worries. Activision has you covered.

Just zip this, uh, prototype card over to ma and get back to enjoying your Sunday.

Look, we purposefully forgot to reveal the winner of last week's Webcomic Wrapup yesterday. We're all about conserving time and effort, you know? Like, we could have spent a whole post telling you that Penny Arcade's "It Only Doesn't" was the victor by a wide margin. Instead, we can just do it right here, right now, killing two birds with a single blog article. We think that ... oh, you're not buying this, are you? We're sorry. It will never happen again. For a while.

Check out our favorite gaming-related comics from this week below! Make sure you vote for your favorite in the poll posted after the jump!

The Value Proposition (Penny Arcade)
Occam's Laser (Awkward Zombie)
Portal Tetris (Dueling Analogs)
Untitled (Omake Theater)
No Wrong Answers (No Cash Value)
Good Dog (Brawl in the Family)
News Cycle (Extra Life)

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Stop reading this right now, and put on a hat. Seriously. Grab the nearest bike helmet, fedora or beret, and slap it on your noggin. See, the latest CTA Digital product is going to make your brain explode, and clean-up is going to be way easier if you enclose your domepiece beforehand. Ready? It is a steering wheel peripheral for Kinect, designed for people with a penchant for driving games and, like, zero imagination.

Best of all, the $13 apparatus is totally translucent, meaning it won't obstruct your view of all the virtual driving you'll be doing. And maybe, just maybe, if you're very lucky, its transparentness will make it easier to hide the fact that you just spent $13 on an invisible steering wheel for your make-believe space car from your concerned family and friends.

Though it may lack the apologetic punch of a Hallmark card featuring doe-eyed kittens telling us how "sowwy" they are, Eden Games and Atari have released a pretty thorough make-up patch for its bug riddled racer, Test Drive Unlimited 2. The free Exploration DLC pack, which adds a number of new events, cars and outfits (as well as a plethora of much-needed bug fixes) is available today on PC, and is coming "very soon" to consoles.

You can check out the extensive list of updates after the jump, and spend the rest of the day wondering how this game made it to store shelves with problems like "Cars sometimes turn invisible." That seems like the kind of thing you'd notice in QA, right? Actually, since the cars were invisible, they wouldn't notice them? We need to think about that one.

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We assume that everyone reading this blog post are unswervingly hip individuals living in New York City -- if that is indeed the case, you should leave space in your social calendar for the 2nd Annual No Quarter games exhibit this coming Thursday, May 12. The event is a showcase of new titles from indie developers including Terry Cavanagh (creator of VVVVVV), Ramiro Corbetta, Charley Miller and Luke O' Connor.

The totally free expo will feature new creations from these developers -- for example, Cavanagh's Nidhogg was commissioned for No Quarter last year -- as well as a public appearance by the indie game-stuffed Winnitron 1000 arcade cabinet. If that doesn't float your boat, perhaps this will: Free refreshments. Check out the flier after the jump for more details on how you can book your ticket on this gravy train. (Man, we hope gravy is one of the aforementioned refreshments.)

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The first of eight original short stories in Rockstar's LA Noire: The Collected Stories series has just hit the web. Jonathan Santlofer's What's In a Name? (no relation to our own series, we assure you) tells the story of "a sociopath with high hopes, and a curious knowledge of the Los Angeles underworld. And of a young LAPD detective working to crack the latest murder case to terrify the city." The series, which includes big names like Joyce Carol Oates, revisits some of the "characters and cases in the game." If you'd rather wait until all eight installments are available, "the complete L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories which will be available for download at all major eBook retailers" on June 6th.

For your reading convenience, Rockstar is offering a downloadable PDF or, if you find yourself sans-Kindle or iPad, perhaps the web-based reader is more your speed. At a brisk 4100 words, it shouldn't take you long to read it, so you can get back to doing more important things ... like not playing LA Noire for another ten days.

GOG.com has delivered two much-awaited site updates to their online game store. First, the team has developed a special downloader app, now available for Windows, that will optionally take care of your various GOG.com games downloads, running things like error checks easily and automatically. And there's also a new messaging system on the site, allowing users to chat and message each other about games and other topics. Both new features are optional, but GOG says they're meant to fill out the online experience.

And to celebrate the big update, GOG (a.k.a. Good Old Games) is also giving away a title for free, MicroProse's point-and-click graphical adventure Dragonsphere, from all the way back in 1994. The game hasn't aged all that well (you young whippersnappers probably won't remember a time when all we had were 256 colors and fewer pixels than an iPhone), but if you're in the mood for a trip to retroland, the price is right.

Downloadable content is central to THQ's strategy for the (initially) budget-priced MX vs. ATV Alive. So it should come as no surprise that THQ is seeking DLC opportunities even outside of the game. A bunch of Xbox 360 Avatar items based on the off-road racer are available through the Marketplace now, in advance of the May 10 release of the game. So you can start buying DLC even before you get it!

This will be your chance to outfit your Avatar with that tiny 4-wheeler, helmet, or tire-shaped yo-yo you need to complete the virtual representation of your real-life self!

On Sunday, Sony announced that "some" PSN services, including online play, would come back this week. With very little of this week remaining, you might be wondering if it's still going to happen. Well, it isn't.

In an update on the PlayStation Blog, Sony's Patrick Seybold passes along the bad news that service renewal has been delayed to an unspecified time. "When we held the press conference in Japan last week," Seybold said, "based on what we knew, we expected to have the services online within a week. We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system." He didn't flat out say this week is out of the question, but that's definitely the implication.

Seybold apologized for the delay. To those of us (all of us) waiting to get back to our online services, he said "trust me when I say we're doing everything we can to make it happen."

For those of you who need a bribe in order to be pushed into a purchase of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Activision has prepared its cornucopia of goodies, divided up by retailer and by console.

GameStop pre-orders for Xbox 360 and PS3 will get you a code to unlock Sideswipe, while Amazon pre-orders get you Ratchet (and a $10 credit). But the Wii and DS games, pre-ordered anywhere, get you actual toys -- Bumblebee with the Autobots game, and Lockdown with the Decepticons version.

Other bonuses announced by Activision include an in-game Bumblebee skin for the 3DS version at Toys R Us, in-game "Deco" character skins for the Wii and DS games at Target, and a, "original, limited edition Transformers: Dark of the Moon comic book" at Kmart and Sears, seemingly not tied to any particular version.

Or you could pre-order from Best Buy and get a "free movie ticket upgrade to 3D." Thrilling.

We're in the final stretch before E3 2011. This is the time when the rumors start flying fast and furious, some will pan out... others will fizzle out before the sun sets on the day they began.

What's everyone playing?

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