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Like good burlesque, Telltale had been teasing a new season of Sam & Max ... meanwhile, like good porn, Australia's OFLC went ahead and just exposed the goods. Unless a dramatic change occurs, it appears the title of the next installment in the comedic adventure series is titled Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 1: The Penal Zone.

The premature ratings announcement obviously doesn't contain much aside from a title -- there's no telling whether the game might eventually come to Mac or iPhone as recently rumored -- but at this point, we'll take whatever glimpse we can get.

Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom is your usual text-based adventure game, with a decidedly vegetarian twist. It's tough for us to provide you with a comprehensive look at a genre with so much content -- plus all of the trial-and-error. It wouldn't make for a very comprehensive and enlightening video, however we soldier on. Check out the latest episode of VC in Brief above!

• Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (NES, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)

Capcom originally planned to release its WiiWare ports of the Phoenix Wright games every other month. However, the publisher today announced that the court date for the second game, Justice For All, has been moved up a month, and will now be available on WiiWare in North America on February 15 (February 19 in Europe).

If you're playing through the series for the first time on WiiWare, this will be your first opportunity to meet Franziska von Karma, a brilliant young prosecutor who attacks every person she meets with a whip. Somehow, she missed out on the whole "assault = illegal" thing in law school.

If you're hoping to play a cute DS game starring a young witch, but not NIS's A Witch's Tale, Natsume has you covered. The publisher just announced Witch's Wish, a new game joining its DS lineup of extraordinarily quirky stuff.

Witch's Wish stars "Vicky," a girl who wants to go to Hogwarts witch school, and has to help save her town from some kind of "dark force" while simultaneously learning how to do magic. The ESRB reveals a bit more about the gameplay, describing "comical duel sequences" -- rock-paper-scissors style duels in which "buckets of water are dumped, little tornadoes may twirl, and bursts of cloud-and-fire are sent." Precious!

(Retailer orders for) Witch's Wish will be fulfilled this spring.

While Xbox 360 and PC players are gallivanting across the galaxy in BioWare's latest, single-player only adventure, the PlayStation 3 is preparing for its own solitary storytelling in down-to-earth thriller Heavy Rain. Speaking to CVG, Sony product manager Lucy Duncan offered some comforting words to those who'd rather traverse a dialogue tree than a multiplayer map.

"... we strive to offer a broad set of experiences and a return to the single player 'adventure' format but with a state of the art graphical presentation, a terrific noir narrative and an hugely innovative interface seems like a compelling proposition for the discerning gamer," she explained. A lack of online play may strike some as an odd move -- even Rapture's making room for more residents -- but Duncan reckons a trust in developer Quantic Dream will pay off. Well, that and being a big player. "Being Sony, I suppose we have a little more luxury to take a gamble on more original and innovative IP -- and Heavy Rain definitely fits that category."

With God of War 3, Alan Wake and Final Fantasy XIII also steeped in excitement, the "big single-player adventure" looks to be one of 2010's best bets.

If you're reading this post from across the Atlantic, chances are you're wondering why we're announcing a release date for Runaway: A Twist of Fate, a game that was released in France and Germany four months ago. Well, you see, for those of you in the UK, the third game in the Runaway point-and-click adventure series is just arriving, with publisher Focus Home Interactive pinning March and April release dates on the PC/Nintendo DS title (respectively).

Aside from a website jam-packed with video of the game (including the trailer you see above and two more after the break), the publisher released a handful of screens that we've added to a gallery for your perusal just below. Don't say we never did nothin' for ya!

In its continued quest to unearth some of PC gaming's finest relics, GOG.com has announced a new deal with Activision Publishing Inc. -- in the context of purveying point-and-click classics, that means Sierra games! The first two games to be added to GOG's DRM-free lineup are role-playing favorite Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura; and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the first outing of Jane Jensen's caustic-witted writer and detective. Both titles are priced at $5.99.

More classic titles from Activision's vault are expected to be added over the coming weeks. With Gabriel Knight star Tim Curry leading the charge, anything can happen.

If you haven't already been point-and-clicking away at Amanita Design's gorgeous adventure game Machinarium over the past few months since its digital release, you're gonna have even less of a chance to avoid it when it hits retail (in a box!) on March 5. Lace Mamba Global announced the re-release this morning, noting that the retail version comes packed with some extra bonuses -- a 54-page "concept art document" (seen below), a poster, a printed walkthrough and the game's soundtrack (standalone disc). If you needed any more reason to grab the $20 title, we have to imagine this bag full of goodies certainly can't hurt.

We love the trend of adventure classics that maybe didn't get their due the first time around coming to iPhone, so we're excited to see it continuing this morning with the release of Broken Sword: The Director's Cut to the App Store. Not only does the Revolution Software release feature new art by Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, it's also around 20 percent longer than the original.

But Joystiq, is it possible that all this could be available for just $6.99? Indeed it is, little guy. Indeed it is.

If you've been sitting around, staring at the ceiling and wondering what you're going to do this weekend, you may be interested in the GoG.com weekend deal. It's a bundle of three Cyan Worlds games, all for under $14 -- a 25-percent savings.

You'll get Myst: Masterpiece Edition, Riven: The Sequel to Myst and The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition. All three games recently arrived on the DRM-free service, ready to show you just how out of shape your brain's logic center and not-getting-lost-in-Myst's-maze cortex are. The sale lasts until Monday, January 25 at 11:59PM ET.

CING's Again (once known as Again: Eye of Providence) is just the latest in a surprising bumper crop of DS mystery adventure games, joining peers like the Phoenix Wright series, Jake Hunter, Miami Law, and the developer's own Hotel Dusk. The Tecmo-published Again brings a couple of unique quirks to the genre, while not straying too far from the sort of "visual novel" gameplay we've come to expect from these titles.

Again stars a pair of FBI investigators, Jonathan "J" Weaver and Kate Hathaway, as they investigate an apparent serial killer. The murders they are looking into happen to share characteristics with an unsolved serial killer case from 19 years ago, with which J was also involved -- as seen in subtle clues like the note written to J telling him that what happened 19 years ago is going to happen again. Most law enforcement officials would probably call an agent's personal involvement in a case a conflict of interest -- CING would call it drama.

Happy Trogday, everybody! What? It's definitely a government-sanctioned holiday, steeped in tradition, and celebrated by millions of peoples across the globe. Telltale wouldn't make something like this up, just to help sell its adventure series Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, which has been temporarily discounted to $19.99 (when added to the cart). It's a real, legitimate holiday, based on an ancillary character from a popular web cartoon. Jeez. Maybe read an encyclopedia, sometime.

Following in the honored Trogday custom, Telltale has a present for you: The fifth chapter of SBCG4AP, titled 8-Bit is Enough, for free. Appropriately, this particular chapter is very Trogdor-centric -- but we find it difficult to get excited about that. We only have room for one Trogdor-based game in our hearts, and that game is Peasant's Quest. Why not dust off the ol' Videlectrix Diskbooter, and give it a spin?

Cyan Worlds' late-2000 remastered version of the classic adventure game, Myst, is now available for DRM-free purchase on Good Old Games. Real Myst takes the classic graphic adventure title and refines it with free-roaming and real-time 3D graphics, replacing the original's pre-rendered stills. According to GoG, this is the Myst designers Robyn and Rand Miller originally wanted to make. So, like George Lucas before it, Cyan Worlds reworks the original to take advantage of modern technology -- but with the added benefit of not ruining our childhoods in the process. The title is a steal at $5.99 and recommended for any adventure game junkie.

Did Qore say February 16 was the day Heavy Rain would be released? It meant February 23! As if specifically intended to correct this morning's report, Sony just announced the for-real North American release date for the adventure game. A reminder: pre-ordering the title will get you free launch-day access to the first downloadable Heavy Rain Chronicles episode, which won't be available otherwise until a later date (at which point it'll be $5).

Sony also confirmed European release dates for Quantic Dream's interactive novel thing: February 24 for mainland Europe and February 26 in the UK and Ireland.

We're delighted to report that the iPhone version of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition has been discounted 50% for the holidays. It's available for just $3.99 from now through January 4. If you didn't get it at half-price on Xbox (or even if you did), now you can enjoy savings on this version!

Our delight comes only partially from being able to tell you about a great price for a wonderful portable adventure game, but mostly from what we learned when we went to verify the price on the App Store: There's been a free, official Monkey Island soundboard app (iTunes link) available since September! We would never have known had the game not gone on sale.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition ($3.99):