Team Meat's crushingly difficult (and insanely fun!) Super Meat Boy launched this week on Xbox Live Arcade to mostly rave reviews. A trio of cool meat-related announcements have been made recently that are sure to please fans.

Though the game is currently only available from Xbox Live Arcade, a PC version is expected to hit Steam sometime next month. Destructoid reports that after some public back-and-forth tweeting with Minecraft creator Notch, Team Meat was given permission to include Mr. Minecraft (the game's protagonist) in the PC version. Mr. Minecraft will join a playable-character roster already jam-packed with appearances from other indie heroes, ranging from the BIT.TRIP. series' Commander Video, to Tim from Braid. Read more »

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has released some additional details about the game's planned Halloween update.

There are six new block types (five of them have unique abilities), one new monster, a new dimension, and a couple of bug fixes. Once I get the portals working, I'll have something very interesting going and I'll spend the rest of the time leading up to the release adding new smaller features and polishing stuff. Read more »

Minecraft will be getting a Halloween themed update on October 31, according to a blog post by developer Notch.

The feature list is written "in character" for the Halloween update, players should expect a new realm for fast travel, new monsters, torches that burn out, fishing, multiplayer features, and more. Read more »

Minecraft, that indie-game that people are making computers in, is making a lot of money for creator Markus "notch" Persson and his three co-workers. A page has been setup to track and visualize Minecraft registrations and sales taken from the official Minecraft site (via Joystiq).

The day following the unplanned free-to-play weekend brought on by server troubles, which took down the purchasing process, saw sales of 25,936 copies and 48,800 registrations. In the last week, the game has sold over 80,000 copies. At around $13 a copy, this amounts to around $1.1 million in the last seven days. Read more »

[Update 6PM]: Due to load problems with the Minecraft servers, the game's developer is currently unable to process new account registrations or verify online players. For now, the game is completely free to play and can be downloaded from the official site.

If you're interested in what all the fuss is about, this is your chance to check it out for no cost. [Thanks, Haxim] Read more »

Minecraft, the innovative indie game of collaborative creation (or destruction), has doubled its development team... from one to two. Well, maybe three.The massive influx of staff comes in the form of former CEO of Ludosity Interactive, Daniel Kaplan, who will serve as the game's business developer and "the other secret guy with the game idea we're going to make." Read more »

Before Garnett and Brian head to Texas for QuakeCon, they sit down with Jeff to record this week's show. It's a broad swath of gaming in Whatcha' Been Playin? ranging from more Madden and Starcraft 2 to Arc Rise Fantasia and even Minecraft. Your thoughts from our conversation last week about the viability of female characters leads the Warning before the subject turns to the line between fun, engaging game design and frustrating compulsion to beat a game. And in the front page there's news of new Borderlands DLC and the celebrity voice cast in Fallout New Vegas. Due to travel we recorded early this week but we'll have Jeff's reaction to Bioshock Infinite and look at July's sales figures next week.

Weekend Confirmed Ep. 21 - 08/13/2010 Read more »