In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Blizzard, Microsoft Game Studios and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Punisher: No Mercy
Punisher: No Mercy (Full Game)

Price: £6.99 / €7.99 / $12.95AUD

"The Punisher comes straight from the Marvel Universe to the PlayStation Network in this exclusive game – Offering frantic, arcade-style shooting action, with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer (supports eight players online), the goal is simple – survive!"


High Velocity Bowling
High Velocity Bowling Ball Pack 6 - 4th of July Americana

Price: $0.99

"It’s time to bowl – High Velocity style! Spice up your bowling game with this cool pack of six custom “4th of July Americana” theme bowling balls."

High Velocity Bowling Ball Pack 7 - Route 66 Americana

Price: $0.99

It’s time to bowl – High Velocity style! Spice up your bowling game with this cool pack of six custom “Route 66 Americana” theme bowling balls."

topatoi: The Great Tree Story
topatoi: The Great Tree Story (Full Game)

Price: £7.99 / €9.99 / Not Available In Australia

"You may have already read the post by Natalia from the Boolat team on the blog yesterday about topatoi - this unique puzzle/platform game allows you to control a gyroscopic vehicle and offers varied and inventive ways to control, and make your way round, the 3D environments."

Punisher: No Mercy
Punisher: No Mercy (Full Game)

Price: £6.99 / €7.99 / $12.95AUD

"The Punisher comes straight from the Marvel Universe to the PlayStation Network in this exclusive game – Offering frantic, arcade-style shooting action, with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer (supports eight players online), the goal is simple – survive!"


Numblast
Numblast (Full Game)

Price: £3.99 / €4.99 / $8.45AUD

"To play Numblast, move the cursor around the board and swap the positions of numeric cells to create combos of identical numbers aligned in 2×2 squares. These combos trigger explosions and as your skills improve so will the size of your combos."


Red Baron Arcade
Red Baron Arcade

Price: Trial free – unlock key £6.29 / €7.99

"Engage in the ultimate World War I arcade flight-shooter Red Baron Arcade. Grab the flight stick of 20 historic WWI planes and battle countless enemies including huge zeppelins, powerful battleships and authentic WWI aircraft in over 36 varied levels. Fight against intense computer AI in the single player missions or wage war against 7 other aspiring “Aces” online."

PSOne Classics
James Pond 2: Codename Robocod

Price: £3.99 / €4.99

"Join James Pond as he jumps and stretches his way around some truly memorable levels. This is a true platforming classic."

You've been pining for it for week now, with all the fake release dates constantly being thrown around, but no more! Battlefield 1943 will be out next week - July 8th on Xbox Live Arcade, and July 9th on the PlayStation Network.

The game will sell for 1200 Microsoft Points or $14.99. In the meantime, check out the new trailer embedded above and revisit our chat with the developers here.

Sidhe's Shatter was on display at E3, though not particularly in a widely acknowledged spot. The developers were unfortunately shoved in a corner of an art exhibit outside of the show, quite far away from the rest of the populace. Thankfully I was able to find them and got a chance to play this remarkable reinvention of the brick breaking game.

Shatter alternates between a vertical Breakout style board and horizontal Pong style board, but what makes it stand out is your gravity beam. During gameplay you can push or pull objects using Sonic waves, which also allows you to alter the path of your ball, pushing it back to destroy even more blocks, or sucking in the point shards.

One of the most interesting mechanics was the use of multi-ball - unlike most Breakout games, you can launch a second or third ball at anytime - but it will remove one of your lives. It's the sort of risk-reward system that has been missing from these kind of games in the past few years.

Shatter is set to come out by the end of the year. In the meantime you can check out new footage of the game over at 1UP.com

At E3 Konami were showing off a new version of Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, but strangely did not reveal any screenshots of it. Now that's been rectified, with a new selection of captures from the playable E3 arena.

You can check out all the new screens here. As someone who doesn't have any knowledge of the Vandal Hearts franchise, I think it both looks good and certainly played well at E3. Turn based strategy is something that has been attempted several times before on Xbox Live Arcade but its never been quite compelling enough - hopefully this is the answer.

Konami have also revealed that Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment will be released for Xbox Live Arcade during August and on the PlayStation Network during September. That puts the game smack-dab in the middle of the XBLA's Summer of Arcade, making it one crazy, crazy August.

Some months ago it was revealed that Empire Interactive, after several years of financial troubles, was to go into administration, and now two of its titles have disappeared from the marketplace.

Both Double Dragon and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe are no longer available for purchase, and likely will not be coming back. Empire Interactive also had Pipe Mania in development for Xbox Live Arcade but as Empire and the development studio are now gone, it can now be considered canceled.

All of Emipre's IP rights were sold off last month, and Zoo Games, or Zushi Games as they are also known, picked them all up. Double Dragon and Speedball 2's IP are owned by both Million and The Bitmap Brothers respectively, and most likely have returned to their holders.

However Empire's PSOne and PSP titles, which includeSheep, Pipe Mania and Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, are all still available on the PlayStation Network. As Empire owned these IP they appear to continue to be published by Zoo Interactive.

It's a matter of another publisher picking up the pieces, but would it be worth it? Some suggest that Double Dragon has done well, and continued to do well, at its 400MSP price point, while Speedball 2, at 800MSP, did not. As both games came out in 2007, selling more copies now might be a difficult task, and not worth the effort.

With the announcement that the majority of Midway will be picked up by Warner Bros. Interactive we might see this situation occur once again. Midway has 9 titles on Xbox Live Arcade, but as they were published by Midway themselves there's little conflict of interest. The PlayStation side however is a different story - Mortal Kombat II, Rampage and Rampart are all Midway properties that are published on PSN through Sony Online Entertainment, with Mortal Kombat II continuing to be one of the top sellers every month.

As there will be a new owner of these IPs it may require new contracts to be written for each game, both for the PlayStation network and Xbox Live Arcade, and those decisions will all have to be made by Warner Bros.

As for those games published by Empire Interactive, the best chance would be to have Microsoft pick up the publishing licenses, as they did once before when Sierra dropped Zombie Wranglers. If you want those games to come back, let Microsoft know.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Crystal Dynamics, Trion and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Droplitz
Droplitz - Full Game

Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: Atlus / Blitz Arcade
Players: 1
Price: $9.99

"Immerse yourself in this addictive puzzler that’s all about strategically twisting and connecting mismatched dials to save precious droplitz. Just making a single junction is child’s play; can you master the art of the combo or will you let your pipes runneth over? With four unique play modes, a variety of board sizes, and infinite replayability, Droplitz promises to drain all your time away."

High Velocity Bowling
‘60s Surf Ball Pack

Price: $0.99

Tiki Polynesian Ball Pack

Price: $0.99

"Now you can download either of these themed ball packs to take to the lanes, the balls don’t make the player, but at least you can bowl with some added style!"

Cuboid
"You can now enjoy further action from this 3D puzzle game (in which you maneuver a rectangular block through lush environments in the hunt towards mystical exits) via these additional packs:"

Booster Pack
Price: $2.99

Level Editor Pack:
Price: $3.99

Bundle Pack
Price: $4.99

"This pack bundles together the Booster Pack and Level Editor Pack"

PSOne Classics
Mobile Light Force

Price: $5.99

"This classic vertical scrolling shoot ‘em upbrings all the best of arcade action games into your home."

Super Stardust HD
Price Reduction

Price: £1.59 / €1.99

"To celebrate the game’s second anniversary, for one week only the price of Super Stardust HD is now reduced!"




Zuma
Zuma

Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: PopCap Games / SOE
Players: 1
Price: £6.99 / €7.99

"Discover the ancient secrets of Zuma! Now available on the PlayStation Network, experience the game that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish! Choose Adventure mode to explore a series of temples or Gauntlet mode to challenge your skills! With dazzling colors and levels in 1080p, Zuma will excite and mystify you!"

High Velocity Bowling
‘60s Surf Ball Pack

Price: £0.79 / €0.99

Tiki Polynesian Ball Pack

Price: £0.79 / €0.99

"Now you can download either of these themed ball packs to take to the lanes, the balls don’t make the player, but at least you can bowl with some added style!"

The NPD Group revealed the top retail sales of May 2009 some two weeks ago, and every month GamerBytes looks at what NPD numbers don’t cover: the games released via the Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3.

We’re taking a look at the Top 10 PlayStation Network titles for May 2009, supplied to us through Sony's PlayStation press representatives. The PlayStation Network received 3 new titles during May – Puzzle Quest Galactrix, Zen Pinball and Texas Cheat’em, all which must battle against recent titles such as Flower and continued top-sellers such as Mortal Kombat II.

In this analysis, we'll look to see how well each title did, see which games released for PSN in April 2009 were able to hold on, and try to determine what trends this downloadable space might be adhering to.

Here's the North American Top 10 for PlayStation Network games on the PS3 for May 2009:

The Zen Of Cheating

Zen Studios’ Zen Pinball was the best selling game on the PlayStation Network for May, and from data we have picked from the game's Leaderboards, we can see that the title has had well over 50,000 people playing for long enough to post a high score.

Zen Studios have confirmed that their second PlayStation Network title The Punisher: No Mercy will hit the PSN Store on July 2nd, 2009.

"Powered by Unreal Engine 3, The Punisher: No Mercy was designed with fast-paced online multiplayer FPS action in mind. The game allows players to choose from an eclectic mix of Punisher allies and villains. Battle arenas span from shipyards rife with contraband to the “birthplace” of the Punisher’s archenemy, Jigsaw, and up to eight players can blast away at each other in a variety of solo and team-based missions."

Zen Studios released Zen Pinball just last month, and it's been doing quite well for them. Punisher looks good, but with the recently released CellFactor: Psychokinetic Wars and the upcoming Battlefield 1943 the cheap online multiplayer shooter is looking mighty crowded.

The Punisher: No Mercy will be released at the low price of $9.99, whether or not this release includes Europe is currently unknown.