With WTF come and gone, another game must fill its shoes. HOT PXL attempts to emulate Nintendo's successful Wario Ware formula by adding an Atari twist. With its expanded media profile, and skateboarding attitude, does this game have what it takes to stand out in an ever-growing crowd of genre clones? Well, watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

Wario Ware-styled games seem to be all the rage these days. We had a look at WTF a few days ago, and although HOT PXL also uses an all-capitalized abbreviated title, it has an interesting feature set that may help distinguish it from its competitor. Firstly, it has a 150 game off the bat, and is one of the few games that takes advantage of one of PSP's greatest features: downloadable levels. Atari plans on making at least fifty available to download. In addition, Atari is going to leverage the weight of its incredible catalog of games, and will bring out some quick retro remakes of their classic titles.

Not only does HOT PXL feature an incredible breadth of game content, but it appears like it will feature tons of multimedia content as well. In addition to an original licensed soundtrack, the game will feature videos, and some kind of podcasting ability. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it appears like this game will finally utilize all of PSP's unique capabilities. Unfortunately, the game won't be available until next February, so WTF may have to satiate you until then.

Read - Gamespot's Hands-On
Read - AMN's Hands-On

WTF, the darker, more sinister Wario Ware-ripoff, is heading to the states in September. The original called Baito Hell was fairly Japanese (read: crazy), but how does the English translation of the game fare? According to Gamespot, pretty well. Their description of the game sounds a bit too much like my life: "From chopping wood to performing contract killings to trying to get a girl's phone number, WTF ostensibly has it all..."

Check out Gamespot for some new videos from the American version of the game.

Hell as gone and puked all over the PSP, so suggests this review of the currently Japan-only Baito Hell 2000, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on what your sense of humor is like. The game, which was thought of as conceptually similar to Nintendo's Wario Ware Inc. line of games back when it was first revealed, brandishes a darker streak than its more tongue-in-cheek rival, but it also perhaps sacrifices a bit of enjoyability due to its cynicism. Baito Hell 2000 apparently takes the idea of doing tedious part-time work and tries to make a game out of it, which doesn't always work out. The lack of English translations unfortunately don't make this very import-friendly either.

There's still some room for the possibility that a more localized version for US or Europe may come into being, but as for the game in its current state, Wario can rest assured that his position on top of the manic mini-games heap still remains unchallenged.

[Thanks, Tim]