The first of the year is never a good time to overload on game announcements and releases. Everyone is still recovering from holiday madness and a lot of titles released this early are forgotten by mid-summer.

January 2

1972: Magnavox starts developing the Odyssey. The first prototype for this console draws its roots back to 1966.

1988: UNiCO is founded. They existed as a Korean arm and localization service for Konami.

January 3

2008: Ubisoft announces Far Cry 2.

January 4

2007: GameStop officially buys Florida-based Rhino Games from Blockbuster. For a very brief period of time, Blockbuster dabbled in multimedia retail stores, much like Movie Gallery did with Game Crazy. GameStop didn't take kindly to the increased competition.

2010: Sega announces that they likely won't publish another M-rated game on the Wii after the disappointing sales of House of the Dead: Overkill and MadWorld the year before.

January 5

2004:  Sonic Battle is released on the Game Boy Advance.

January 6

1999: Rayman  2: The Great Escape is released on the PlayStation.

January 8

1986: Japan Yacht Ltd. officially changes their name to Tecmo.