We love free stuff, and we’re sure you do, too. As a token of our appreciation, we are giving away a small bunch of DS swag to one lucky PVG reader. Two rare styli and a neat miniature DS Lite gashapon are up as prizes. All you have to do is leave a comment on this very post; a single post will win it all, randomly picked by this number picker. The winning post will be chosen on Thursday, March 13 at midnight Pacific Time. The winner will be announced during our weekly Shoutcast the following Friday at 7 PM Pacific / 10 PM Eastern Time. This giveaway is open to legal residents of the United States only. Duplicates will be erased and disqualified.

Prizes

Lost in Blue 2 Stylus: It’s a log, and it lights up!

Spectrobes Stylus: With a rubbery monster guiding your every move

DS Lite Gashapon: An amazing handheld, shrunken to embellish your life

The best price is free; leave a post!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Jake Jenova for his winning comment:

So, you just bought Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and you’re looking for someone to play with online? Well, look no further than PVG to settle your online gaming needs. That’s right, it’s time for PVG’s first ever online tournament!

To participate in this event, you will be required to supply us with both your friend code and your name (can be a username). Once this information is gathered, your information will be archived and used to setup the tournament. The tournament will run in a simple bracketed manner, which means that the more of you we can get to participate the more elaborate and (arguably) more fun this tournament will be. To allow this tournament to take off though, we’re going to need your participation. Sign up starts immediately, so please provide your desired nom de guerre and “friend” code in the comment section below.

We will be allowing sign ups through the end of the weekend, and matches will start this coming week. You will be required to finish your battle with your assigned opponents within a set amount of time, at which point we will pair you up with a new challenger. The winner walks away with some serious bragging rights, having essentially bested the entire internet (or at least our little slice of it). A full list of the matches will be posted in the coming days.

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Earlier this week we announced that we would be giving away 10 copies of THQ’s Drawn to Life for the Nintendo DS. The only catch was that in order to be considered, entrants needed to show a little bit of artistic creativity of their own, by helping a disaster-ridden castaway out of a sticky situation. Our poor, heroic, stick-person found himself in a bit of a tight spot on a deserted island (deserted except for very stern-looking sharks and freaky cannibal pelicans, that is!), and we asked readers to find a creative solution to his problem.

We were astonished by the drawing ability and creativeness that went in to all of the entries we received. Regrettably, we had to choose among them to find the 10 best entries. The winners below (ranked in no particular order) will each receive a copy of Drawn to Life. The rest of us will either have to get our own copy or look over their shoulder while they play (although that might get a tad annoying). Thanks to all who entered, and be sure to check back with us regularly as we run more game giveaways in the near future. Now, onto the winners:

First, Chris Autwell brings us this dramatic escape:

The mysterious “DC” gots mad skills:

Ceasar Enriquez busts out the coloring sticks:

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Websites are probably the hardest things to buy presents for. I mean, what do you get for something that has no arms or legs, is constantly busy with work, and sleeps in a server farm somewhere in Indiana? Well I agonized over this question for weeks, and finally came up with the perfect gift. You see, it turns out that websites — and blogs in particular — love having new functionality added to them. So, in celebration of Portable Video Gamer’s first birthday (which is like 10 in Internet years), I went out and got it not just one, but TWO swanky new widgets, accessible in the right-hand sidebar. The first new feature is a neat little map tool provided by whos.amung.us, which tracks where in the world our readers are coming from (everywhere, it turns out!). Yellow stars represent readers we have had in the past five days or thereabouts. Glowing yellow stars represent people who are currently viewing the site. The second widget is a shoutbox, which enables readers to communicate with each other and with us. Be sure to register your own unique username so that you can keep it the next time you visit. Give it a shot, who knows who you might meet!

In order to celebrate both our birthday and the inauguration of these two new features, we are going to be holding our first-ever PVG shoutcast in the chatbox, this friday at 7pm PST (10 pm on the east coast). Be sure to join us to chat about all of the goings on this past week in the handheld gaming world, as well as to check out the winners of our Drawn to Life contest. If all goes well, we plan to make this a regular weekly feature. We hope it will be a great opportunity to meet new people, catch up on gossip, and maybe even organize a few wi-fi matches.

Finally, on behalf of everybody at PVG (myself, Sergio, Chris and Brandon) I would like to thank all of our great readers who have joined us over the past year. After having started from scratch, now almost 1,000 of you check in with us on a daily basis to get your handheld gaming info. We are humbled by this awesome support and we look forward to another fun year of portable video games!

If you are anything like us, you probably love getting free stuff — especially free video-game related stuff! Well, this week PVG readers can do just that and walk away with some great DS software to help get over that post-holiday slump. We are excited to be able to give away 10 copies of THQ’s Drawn to Life. We love drawing games, and this one exploits the DS touch feature to the fullest: almost everything in the game world can be artistically customized by the player, right down to the look and shape of the main character. This is a great opportunity to grab this quirky and original title, in case you haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

All you have to do is help out our hero (or is it heroine?) below by using a little bit of imagination and your mad drawing (or MS-painting) skills. Find a way out of this pickle and send us your ideas by Thursday, January 17. Winning entries will be selected based on their imaginativeness, humor, and effort, so don’t worry if your artistic skills are as “sketchy” as ours. Hit the jump to read the full contest rules and find out where to send your entries.

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Oh my, how we have grown! PVG has been in print for less than a year, and we have already expanded to a staff of four (watch out IGN!). That’s right, in addition to Sergio and I, you will be seeing a couple of new faces around here from now on. Brandon Baker joins us as a DS news writer and reviewer. Chris Nuzzo will be providing us with news about the goings on in the wider games industry, as well as PSP news and reviews. We are excited to have such talented writers working with us, and I am sure you will enjoy their contributions to the site.

Following our call for applications during the holidays, we received a pile of emails about the job from some very talented writers. We would like to thank all of the excellent applicants who showed interest in the position, as well as you, our readers, who have enabled us to grow into the massive corporate cute independent site that we aspire to be.

This January will mark the first birthday of Portable Video Gamer. We have had a great first year, but we are not content to sit on our butts and grow fat from all the celebratory birthday cake. We want to grow in a more vertical direction, and growing means finding new people to contribute to the site. We are currently looking for contributing writers to join our team. The best thing is that just like Karl Marx´s motto, every worker at PVG gets a share!

What we need

There are several places where we would like to increase our coverage: PSP news and reviews, general handheld gaming news, the DS and PSP homebrew scene. An applicant who can write daily on one or more of these subjects would be a good fit here.

Some basic knowledge of HTML and image editing software (Photoshop) would be a definite asset, but not a requirement for this position.

IMPORTANT: We are looking for a long-term commitment (> 1 year) and a somewhat consistent posting schedule. At minimum we need writers who are able to produce 5-10 posts per week. Sure, moonlighting as a video game writer seems doable during the winter holidays, but what about three months from now when midterm assignments are due and a freak tornado has destroyed your house?

What we offer

As a team member at PVG you will benefit directly from the growth of the site. All writers receive a share of the advertising profits generated by Portable Video Gamer and will be paid as a percentage, rather than on a per-post basis. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you can raise a family of 4 on this meagre sum: at present it might get you a small, nonfat latte at Starbucks once a month.

Payment will be made electronically, so you need to be able to accept funds in US dollars via Paypal.

How to apply:

If you feel that you would make a good addition to the PVG team, here´s how to apply. Send us a short cover letter describing yourself and explaining why you want to write for PVG, as well as two writing samples by January 1. Both writing samples should be videogame-related, but one should be a sample blog post that could be published on this site (feature, news item, etc).

Good luck and thanks for your continued interest in Portable Video Gamer.

If you are one of those folks like me who has been drooling over the new iPhone, here is your chance to get one for free (but like anything, you will have to do a bit of work for it). Internet News Blog Profy.com is running a contest with 5 (acutally now 4) Apple iPhones up for grabs. All you have to do to snag one is write a compelling blog post for the site, on an Internet/Web 2.0 topic of your choosing. The guest post that attracts the most comments within a two-week period wins, and the site is giving away free phones all summer long! So, if you have a penchant for writing and some extra time, why not throw your hat in the ring for a chance to win one of the hottest gadgets currently available (at least until the PSP Lite arrives later in September). The webmaster is in touch with me and is shipping my phone as we speak, so hopefully I will have some impressions and unboxing shots soon.

In case you were wondering what a winning entry looks like, here is my post about the democratic failures of Web 2.0. You can also check out official contest rules here.

Two weeks ago we ran a contest to determine who would walk away with a couple of nifty Pokémon-themed styli and a stylus holder. The catch was that entries needed to contain an original design for a new species of Pokémon. Well, today we are happy to announce the winner of the contest. Sean Mattingly walks away with the prize for his design, which is quite interesting as you can see below. As well as possessing artistic merit, we like the idea of a Pokémon who has been brought back from the dead to kick some additional butt in the material world. Keep up the good work Sean, and remember that somewhere there is an office building full of people who get paid to do this kind of thing all day long!

Name: RESOUL (ree-soo-ael)
Type: Resurrection Pokémon (Ghost) (Dark)
Height: 5′ 9″
Weight: 134.9 lbs.

“The Seal of Forgiveness was placed on the OddKeystone. RESOUL was released and given a second chance. In the past it would commit horrible pranks on others. GENGAR and HAUNTER were its underlings.”

Would you like to win some nifty Pokémon-themed collectible swag? We have a pair of limited-edition styluses styli and a stylus holder up for grabs. With the recent launch and amazing sales of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, we can all safely assume that yet another Pokémon adventure is bound to be released in the future. Fortunately, however, we don’t have to wait very long to take a look at some potential new Pokémon characters! Are you a rabid fan just itching to show off your ideas for a new Pokémon? Then this contest is for you; Portable Video Gamer is happy to announce the Design-your-own Pokémon contest! Here’s how it works; you e-mail us your Pokémon design and info, we select the best of the bunch to show online, and the very best submission will be posted up for the world to see. Winner takes all, so get your designs in before the May 31 deadline. Continue reading to check out the rules and guidelines for submitting your entry.

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