From August 23 through September 4 of 2010, 1UP's Matt Leone and Richard Li left the office and hit the road for our first ever Cross Country Game Tour, visiting the hottest game development studios in the 48 contiguous United States.

With camera in tow, we took an inside look at Bungie's new home, met the actual hand model from the Left 4 Dead cover, got some insight into Thatgamecompany's upcoming Journey, ate tacos with Junction Point's Warren Spector, manhandled id Software's Emmy award, and lots more!

Sony has officially released a new firmware update for PS3, version 3.42, which seems to only include "additional security features" as explained by Sony's director of hardware marketing John Koller in the official announcement on the PlayStation Blog.

As rumored and then confirmed by Eurogamer, this firmware update's intention was to stop the much-discussed "PSJailbreak" exploit -- in which users used a USB dongle to "fool" a system into thinking it is a debug unit, allowing installation of "unsigned code " (the expectation being pirate games) on the system.

Activision tends to open its wallet to break out big voice talent in the Call of Duty series, and today the company announced Black Ops will be no exception. Gary Oldman and Ed Harris are on tap to play roles in the new game, and filmmaker David S. Goyer will be lending story consultation and support.

Both of the veteran actors have been in countless movies. Oldman is most known recently from his roles in The Dark Knight and The Book of Eli. In Black Ops, he'll be reprising his role as Viktor Reznov from World at War. Harris, meanwhile, is recognized for his roles in A History of Violence and Apollo 13. He'll be playing Jason Hudson, a CIA operative. David S. Goyer has written for both of the recent Batman films, Blade, and the upcoming Superman: Man of Steel.

"Oldman, Harris and Goyer are considered some of the finest talents and they perfectly complement Call of Duty: Black Ops' ambitious and immersive single-player experience," said Treyarch head Mark Lamia in the press release. "Their contributions have helped us to push the boundaries of our story telling and character development far beyond anything we have ever attempted before in the franchise."

Still haven't had enough of Uncharted 2? Good, because it turns out Sony isn't through with giving you more of it, as there's new DLC in development and on the way.

The news actually leaked out thanks to voice actress Emily Rose, who plays character Elena Fisher in the game. "Landed in LALA land yesterday and already the schedule is a buzz.... filming my first Night show today 4 #HAVEN then work on #UNCHARTED!" tweeted Rose yesterday.

This tweet created a short-lived buzz that Naughty Dog was already working on Uncharted 3, but a Sony representative quickly squashed the rumor by confirming to Kotaku that this "Uncharted work" was, in fact, for new Uncharted 2 DLC.

Just as the U.S. Open rolls into its second week, 2K Games has announced Top Spin 4, the latest entry in the long-running tennis sim series that started as an exclusive for the original Xbox. But as with Top Spin 3, Top Spin 4 is going multiplatform for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii, this time with 2K Czech (the studio behind Mafia II) handling the project.

The announcement is a little light on specific details, instead offering vague promises of "redesigned controls" and "one of the deepest player rosters to date." Specific players aren't mentioned (besides more vague promises of "top athletes and legendary pros"), but one player that is confirmed for the game will only be available as a pre-order bonus. If you reserve Top Spin 4 at GameStop, you'll get a "vintage" version of tennis legend Andre Agassi. And as you can see in the provided screenshot, "vintage" does indeed mean full-on mullet.

"Top Spin 4 is shaping up to be the most realistic and exhilarating tennis game in the Top Spin franchise," said 2K Sports president of product development Greg Thomas. "For this iteration, the development team is focused on delivering a bold new take on the sport of tennis by allowing gamers to experience first-hand an uncanny level of realism in the player and stadium models, authentic audio captured directly from real tennis matches, and all-new innovative controls to dominate the competition."

It looks like administrator Begbies Traynor has found a buyer for Project MyWorld, which formally belonged to the bankrupt studio Realtime Worlds.

Develop reports that the property has been purchased by an anonymous American company, with no word on how the purchase will affect the 23 developers currently working on the game. One of the more optimistic scenarios has the American company temporarily hiring the Dundee-based staff in order to finish the project, but they may also opt to purchase the build and the IP and finish it themselves.

APB remains up for purchase, though interest in the sandbox MMO has reportedly been weaker than it was for Project MyWorld. According to numbers released by Begbies Traynor, appoximately 130,000 registered users play the game an average of four hours per day.

When details of the latest Borderlands DLC, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, were announced, there was no mention of a level cap increase. Fortunately, one is coming -- and even better, it will be coming free of charge to all owners of Borderlands on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

When he wasn't busy discussing the return of Duke Nukem, Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford spent some time at PAX revealing that, around the release of the Borderlands Game of the Year edition (scheduled for October 12), Gearbox will update the game to increase the level cap by eight, bringing it to 69. They decided on an increase of 8 because they didn't want it to be too low, or as high as the 11-level increase that the General Knoxx brought.

Joystiq reports that Pitchford explained that Gearbox opted to make the increase a free update instead of including it in the Claptrap DLC because then "you'd have to buy every previous DLC." Also included in the free update will be a rebalancing of the original game to cater to the new level cap. Given that these are the sort of things you might expect to see in a premium DLC release, it's nice to see Gearbox instead release them to fans for free.

Not only has Gearbox Software gained the rights to finish Duke Nukem Forever; the developer has also gained ownership of the franchise name. Gamasutra reports that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford's decision to transfer ownership and finish the long-delayed title is partly due to his friendship with those at 3DRealms, like Scott Miller and George Broussard.

Pitchford credits Miller with getting him into the games industry, and he even worked on Duke Nukem Forever in the early days. When 3DR closed and the game seemed dead last May, Pitchford saw Broussard at a weekly poker game. "He told me it was the worst day of his life," he said. "I was worried about him. He was committed to the thing. He loved it so much he wanted it to be perfect."

Earlier this week, Index Holdings, the parent company of developer Atlus, announced it would dissolve Atlus into itself and no longer keep it as an independent company. This left a lot of concerns open for fans of Atlus's RPGs, but in a new statement, Atlus U.S.A. president Shinichi Suzuki assures that the company and its games will continue on.

"Recent news out of Japan that Index Holdings, the parent company of Atlus Co., Ltd. (and its wholly-owned private subsidiary Atlus U.S.A, Inc.), would be merging the Atlus brand into itself has created uncertainty as to the future of Atlus and its games," Suzuki's statement begins. "We want to assure our fans and affiliates that Atlus remains in operation and will continue, as always, to support our beloved community with the finest quality game experiences possible."

Suzuki concludes by saying the merger should make Atlus more efficient than if it remained an independent company. "The Atlus-Index merger allows us to achieve greater synergy among the Index group companies and further strengthens the foundation of Atlus, both in Japan and here in the United States," he said.

Retro City Rampage, one of the "PAX 10" indie games afforded free floorspace at PAX Prime this week, now has a more specific window for release. While demonstrating the game at PAX, creator Brian Provinciano told Joystiq they're aiming for a December WiiWare release.

So far Wii is the only confirmed platform for the game, although Provinciano also said that he's currently "in talks" with Microsoft about a potential release on Xbox Live Arcade, and that a PlayStation Network release is also a possibility. If you want to play it on the PC, though, no dice at least for a while -- Provinciano said a PC version won't happen for "at least a year."

For those unfamiliar, Retro City Rampage is billed as "a parody of the open-world action genre," attempting to create what a modern Grand Theft Auto game would be like if it was made for an 8-bit videogame system. You can check out the reveal trailer below.