Happy Gaming New Year, everyone. If you thought there’d be no new games to play this month with the holiday season behind us, you’d be wrong. Retro Game Challenge is  a string of old-school game knockoffs tied together with features like fake old video game magazines and a sadistic boss ushering you from one challenge to the next. Once I realized it was a send-up and not a lame cash-in, I was sold.

We ran a feature on the best indie games of 2008 yesterday, including a mention of Crayon Physics Deluxe. The iPhone version is out already, and it drops tomorrow for PC. It’s $20, based on the review copy I played over the weekend. Not worth anything, however, is Hotel For Dogs, the video game out this week for the Wii and DS…

If you’re a Wii owner and haven’t already succumbed to your plastic instrument urges with Guitar Hero World Tour, the rival music game Rock Band 2 shipped out last week. Same goes for the Playstation 2 version of the game, though it isn’t clear when these titles will actually reach stores. As a Christmas gift, you’ll be tempting the fates.

Electronic Arts, the distributor of Rock Band 2, dominated the news last week. Because of the company’s propensity for hefty copy protection measures, it’s only possible to install the evolution simulator Spore on five computers, but a new de-authorization tool allows you to uninstall a copy on one computer and re-install elsewhere without lowering your total activation count. Then, EA offered an altogether SecurROM-free version by adding Spore and other top titles to Steam, a third-party download service. But it wasn’t all good news for the publisher. To cut costs, EA said 1,000 employees will be laid off and at least nine studios will close. Estimated annual savings? $120 million.

Our idea here is to give you an update on the latest games and happenings in video game land. If you’re a PC user, now’s the time to pick up Prince of Persia, which dropped for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 last week. I’ve had a chance to play most of the game, and it’s great fun if you enjoy running across walls and ceilings instead of solid ground. An award is also due here for least annoying female supporting character. Princess Elika actually aides your leaps and bounds, and rarely gets in the way. There’s a bit of combat interspersed with these acrobatic segments, often resembling some sort of synchronized dance routine. With swords.

In other news, we hear that Halo Wars, the real time strategy adaptation of the 360′s golden franchise, will reach U.S. stores on March 3, 2009. Oddly, the Brits and the Japanese get the game four and five days earlier, respectively. Now we know for sure that America’s lost its superpower status.