An aerial search is underway for a missing editor from CNET, GameSpot's parent company. James Kim, his wife, and two young daughters were last seen last Saturday, driving a 2005 silver Saab station wagon with California personalized plates reading "DOESF." They were driving to Gold Beach on the Southern Oregon Coast, where Oregon State Police are scouring state Highway 38, Interstate 5, and surrounding roads. Anyone with any information on the Kims' location is urged to contact the Pacific Northwest call center for the case at 1-800-452-7888. They can also reach the SFPD at 415-558-5508 during business hours and at 415-553-1071 after hours.

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Lopez has plenty of free time for events like these.

To help promote the Xbox 360 game Viva Pi�ata, Microsoft is holding a family-friendly party this Saturday on the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. The free event will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will include giveaways of Xbox 360 consoles, copies of Viva Pi�ata, and other pi�ata packages. Other activities include learning special Viva Pi�ata romance dances, photo opportunities with Hudson Horstachio, Fergy Fudgehog, and Paulie Pretztail, face painting, a free merry-go-round, and a 35-foot-tall Horstachio pi�ata. For more information, read the details over at Microsoft's Gamerscore blog. [UPDATE] The event will be hosted by Mario Lopez--better known as AC Slater from Saved by the Bell.

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The Adventure Company has announced Update 1.02 for the PC title Secret Files: Tunguska. The game puts players in the shoes of Nina Kalenkov, who whilst investigating the mysterious disappearance of her father becomes embroiled in a decade-old conspiracy. The patch will add a video gallery that allows cutscenes to be accessible from the main menu and resolves in-game timing issues with dual-core processors. It also negates the need to update graphic drivers for in-game video playback. Alongside these technical fixes will be a new ending for the game, which will feature "a more dramatic finale," and a character synopsis that will let players know what happened to everyone after the end of the story. The patch can be downloaded by following instructions from the company's official Web site.

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Sony may not be able to come to PSP gamers' houses and stuff their stockings personally, but it is still delivering gifts for the holiday season. On December 11, a new downloadable level for LocoRoco will be available from the Web site YourPSP.com. The snow-covered level will feature flying sleighs, prancing reindeer, and other "Christmassy characters." For more information on LocoRoco, read GameSpot's previous coverage.

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The effectiveness of advertising and marketing within games is yet to be decided, but one franchise that will likely find out sooner than others is Burger King. The fast-food chain has pushed itself onto Xbox 360 owners with a trio of BK-themed games, an unlockable character in Fight Night Round 3, and now, free gamerpics featuring icons from "The Home of the Whopper." Gamers in Canada and the US can log onto Xbox Live and download the Burger King Games Picture Pack, which contains seven gamerpics adorned with images of The King, Subservient Chicken, and Whopper Jr. Other nongame properties, such as Battlestar Galactica and Entourage, have branded content available on Xbox Live Marketplace, but Burger King is the first nonentertainment property to do so.

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PlayStation Portable owners in the UK will soon have a substantial content boost--the entire EMI back catalogue of music videos will be available to download from psp-playlist.com. Music videos on the psp-playlist Web site will cost between �1.89 (approx $3.66) and �2.19 ($4.24) a download.

"PSP owners are substantial in number and content hungry," said Graeme Rogan, EMI's UK commercial manager of digital media. "This deal will give consumers of the PSP format access to videos from EMI Music UK's rich back catalogue, generating incremental sales for our artists."

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UK readers of GameSpot can now sign up for a new mobizine service, which will supply five headlines per day, Monday and Friday afternoons, to mobile phones in Great Britain. To sign up, subscribers should go to the GameSpot UK Mobizines Web page and enter their phone number to download the Mobizines Reader to their phone. The service is free, but phone network standard data charges still apply--most downloads cost less than 5p.

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The Science Museum, London, will be getting a Wii and a PlayStation 3 as part of its Game On exhibition, which celebrates more than 40 years of video games. The two new consoles will be playable from 11 a.m. on November 29 until February 25, 2007. The Xbox 360 is already playable at the exhibition, as well as more than 120 games on other formats, including Space Invaders, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Outrun 2.

Europe is last in line for both the PS3 and the Wii. While Sony's console launched in the US on November 17 and in Japan on November 11, Europeans have to wait until March 2007 for the PS3. The Wii launched in the US on November 19. It will launch in Japan on December 2 and finally in the UK and most of Europe on December 8.

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Computec Media AG, a Germany-based media company, will be launching Play Vanilla for the holiday season. The publisher describes the magazine, aimed at female gamers, as "fresh, bold, upbeat, and feminine." It points to research that found that 60 percent of the Sims 2 players are female, as well as half of the casual gaming marketplace. The first issue of the magazine will be a supplement to women's lifestyle magazine Joy, due to newsstands on December 4. Beginning March 2007, the magazine will then start a regular print run. Play Vanilla editor-in-chief Petra Fr�hlich said, "Women want to play too, but are quite different from men in the demands they place on a game." Fr�hlich added that focus groups and game publishers have shown "excellent reactions" to Play Vanilla.

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Last week, online megaretailer Amazon.com held a holiday "Amazon Customers Vote Deal" promotion, which let visitors to its site choose a certain item to drastically discount on Thanksgiving Day. Visitors were asked to vote on discounts for four items: a Mongoose mountain bike, a Barbie doll, a package including a $100 toys gift certificate and a one-year Amazon Prime membership, or an Xbox 360 Core System.

Luckily, sanity prevailed, and the Xbox 360 triumphed. So, starting Thursday, November 23, at 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Amazon will sell 1,000 Xbox 360 Core Systems for just $100 a pop. The Core System, which does not contain a hard drive and has only a wired controller, normally retails for $299. The $100 Xbox 360 must be bought through Amazon's Amazon Customers Vote Deal page, which will issue a redemption code to winners. The site has also posted some helpful tips on how to submit a winning entry.

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