Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Maybe it's because we're approaching some of the biggest conventions of the year, maybe it's just a lucky week, but there has been some incredible cosplay on show over the past seven days. The highlights for me are probably the 40K and Odin Sphere (yes!) outfits, but really, everything below is from the very top shelf, from Pokemon beauty shots to an Ellie that's a little too real for my liking. As for Wii Fit Girl...bravo. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fancy Pants is Kotaku's weekly round-up of the best in video game cosplay (costume play), where fans dress up as their favourite characters. As seen on LeonChiroCosplayArt. As seen on Hopie-chan. As seen on alberti. As seen on vaxzone. As seen on SoranoSuzu. As seen on xThunderbolt. As seen on HayleyElise.

As expected after the tease earlier this year, Satellite Reign is the name of a game that really just wants to be a new Syndicate. A proper Syndicate, not a shooter bearing the franchise's name. It's being developed by 5 Lives Studios, based in Brisbane, Australia, and really just sounds like the kind of Syndicate game we'd have expected from Bullfrog had the studio somehow survived into the 21st century. So in addition to your research, squads and tactical gameplay, the cities are now alive, changing from day to night, while also giving you a means to interact with things like power supplies. Most interesting, though, is that the game isn't broken up into distinct levels. You're given access to one huge city, a single open world, and you can tackle missions and objectives at your leisure. There's more art and story info below. Satellite Reign [Kickstarter]

On Saturday night one warehouse in downtown Phoenix was overrun with independent games, developers and players, backlit by bumpin' live music and an array of food and drinks. It was the first Made in Phoenix: Indie Game Demo Night presented by local indie game incubator, Game CoLab.

Projected on two giant screens, party-goers played Ivy Games' Gravity Ghost and Team Colorblind's Aztez, while Retora Games' Oculus Rift project about exploring the surface of Mars lurked astride one wall. Other games on tablets and laptops littered the tables beyond, including Kyle Pulver's Offspring Fling and Abstrakt Games' Protein Pirates.

Game CoLab established residence in this warehouse in May, offering game developers a place to create their dream projects while surrounded by inspiring people and ideas. Saturday night wasn't the last party planned for the space, Game CoLab founder Joseph Darnell told me. He saw Indie Game Demo Night as a success, and with a packed house, smiling players and games all around, it certainly felt like one.

Hat in right hand, right hand over heart, I raised my beer cup with my left and took a sip. Dad chided me for that, so I put it down. The singer was behind the beat on The Star-Spangled Banner. My thumb tapped against my cap's bill. A distinctly video-game thought came to me: Can't we just button through this? Nope. America's mandatory moment of patriotism precedes nearly every spectator sport, whether it's the Super Bowl, or a dirt track race (frequently accompanied by a prayer), or a Thirsty Thursday in single-A ball, Even a college tennis meet, where most players worth a damn were probably born overseas, begins with The Star-Spangled Banner. By my reckoning, there are only two kinds of sporting exhibitions played on American soil that are brought to you without jingoist interruption: golf, and any video game. It takes about 96 seconds for someone to sing the national anthem of the United States. In that span, I tried to account for all of the video games I've played that imposed this civic obligation. Back in the 1980s, Hardball! on the Commodore 64 led off the top of the first inning with a jazzy chiptune rendition. It would play until a ball was struck, so if you couldn't get the first batter out without him making contact, I guess you didn't love America. Konami's Double Dribble is more familiar on the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it opens with a fast version that leaves out one verse (either the first or the second). The arcade version of Double Dribble played the entire thing, with a synthesized voice singing the words. In its time, it was an impressive inclusion for purposes of verisimilitude. Madden NFL, true to the league it represents, frequently opens with the most militarized and nationalistic ceremonies of any current sports video game. But even it doesn't play the full Star-Spangled Banner or, in the most current edition, any excerpt, even for the Super Bowl. Madden NFL 12 would have flyovers and the last few bars of the anthem for regular season games. Madden NFL 13 covers the field with an enormous flag during postseason games and follows it with either three attack helicopters or a stealth bomber overhead. but no music. All of it can be dismissed with your thumb. MLB The Show punched up its postseason presentation and players will stand on the baselines, hands over heart, as a flag animation waves on the center field video screen. That's it. NHL 13 will play an excerpt of the Star-Spangled Banner during its Winter Classic mode as players gaze at their skates solemnly. It's really amusing if you select two Canadian teams (although, technically, the home venue's anthem is played last, so if you assume the broadcast skipped past O Canada, this is still correct protocol). In tournament mode, when national teams play, both sides will stand at the blue lines to hear the home country's anthem, but as this is necessarily a national competition, playing the song here is more akin to a fight song in NCAA Football—where I have never heard The Star-Spangled Banner played, by the way. None of these instances—truncated, altered, minimized, dismissed—have resulted in any condemnation of these games' makers or accusations of disrespect. Nor should they be. But if it's in the game, it's in the game, right? And The Star Spangled Banner is in the public domain. If the Winston-Salem Dash, tomorrow, decided it would skip the national anthem in the interest of time, or of organizational effort (they have to find someone to sing it) or for any other reason, what kind of a nationwide talkshow fury do you think that would raise? No, actually, I don't think these cases are all that different. In both matters, you've paid money for an entertainment spectacle, not a civics lesson. If the American national anthem is just harmless aesthetic garnish, a sporting tradition, then why isn't it completely available in a sports video game? NCAA Football makes the effort to run out a buffalo before Colorado's home games, after all. Is it because, in a video game, I'm a participant more than I am a spectator, and thus get to be exempted? OK. The participants in a real game have even less choice than someone in the stands. Do you really think a ballplayer vying for a good managerial report and promotion is going to opt out of this salute? Over the course of a 138-game season he'll spend 3 hours and 40 minutes honoring America, born here or not. Is it because, enjoying a video game, I am alone on my couch, while enjoying a real game, I'm patronizing a public accommodation with a large gathering of fellow citizens? Then why don't movie theaters play The Star-Spangled Banner before the main feature? Do they hate America? I don't have any problem with The Star-Spangled Banner as a song (some complain about its military imagery; this always strikes me as a pretext), or with playing it at a sporting event that truly represents the nation, such as at the Olympics or another national competition. Domestically, it's simply being overused in a tacky way. It's reducing the song to the level of Boston's More Than a Feeling, the kind of ballad that needs years between performances to come anywhere close to exciting or memorable in an unironic way. Marvin Gaye's performance of the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game is as much a part of the league's lore as Dr. J's rock-the-cradle dunk in The Finals later that year. Whitney Houston's version, with full military flyover, even as the kindling of the modern coercive patriotism movement still puts a lump in my throat. The Cowsills finishing out "home of the brave," before breaking into the chorus of "Hair" at the 2004 American League Championship Series set the perfect tone for things to come. Only once have I not stood and removed my cap for The Star-Spangled Banner. The other times I felt like doing so, I was with others who didn't come to the park to see a political protest protest, to say nothing of the ridiculous irony of going to a baseball game to make a political statement against political statements made at a baseball game. The time I did sit silently I was with a friend of a like mind, and we were in San Francisco, so we hardly deserved any credit for political bravery. The song still played. It probably always will. In Little League we were excited to hear The Star-Spangled Banner before a game not because it was a special song, but because it made us into pretend major leaguers. Yet I go home to play a pretend major leaguer on my television and I never hear a note of it. I pondered all of this last Thursday as the anthem wound up and finished. Dad and I put our caps back on and sang, without coercion, the final two words of The Star-Spangled Banner which everyone knows are "Play ball!" I picked up my beer and took a sip. The P.A. began calling out the opposing team's batting order and home team's defensive positions. And I drummed my right thumb against my thigh, trying to button through all of that, too STICK JOCKEY Stick Jockey is Kotaku's column on sports video games. It appears Sundays. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

FF #8: The tricky thing (sorry, that was totally unintentional) about picking a standout moment from reading a bunch of comics every week is that I try to defy my own expectations. And while, I loved sequences from Daredevil, Hawkeye and some of the other comics that came out last Wednesday—more on those in a coming Panel Discussion—this part of Matt Fraction and Mike Allred's alt-Fantastic Four book won out by making me laugh out loud unexpectedly. Why? Because it memorializes a terrible Hanna-Barbera carton that nobody should ever remember. That 'Thing ring' line comes Fred & Barney Meet the Thing, a woeful animated series that featured neither the Flintstones' friends or the rest of the Fantastic Four. For some damn reason, it had as its star a teenage version of Ben Grimm who ran around as a human until it was time to do something super. Who knows why this thing existed? I have no idea why Fraction and Allred decided to integrate in FF but I'm glad they did. The thought that said integration brings to mind is that the idea that everything counts in the long, twisting lives of serially published superhero characters. It's all raw ore for something awesome to be forged in the future. Nothing need be wasted. The rest of the issue testifies to that, too. This is, after all, a series about lesser-light characters substituting for Marvel's first family. Alex Power, who debuted in the wonderful and weird Power Pack kids' comic, back in the '80s, finds himself up against Doctor Doom. The Moloids have moved from nameless cannon fodder to creatures with thoughts, feelings and surprising revelations. Lost things can find their way to a higher realization, in the right moments and in the right hands. That's what this new iteration of FF seems to be all about. Lazarus #1: When we look at the monarchy-based societies of the past, we do so through the blurry lens of history, dazzled sometimes by the finery and mythology built up around the royal families. So, the best thing about writer Greg Rucka and Michael Lark's new Image Comics series is the fact that it shows how wretched near-future feudalism would be. The creators don't show much of the world Lazarus happens in, but they tease us with enough to make want to know more. Seed vaults filled with food whose abundance we take for granted. Merciless rule by the super-rich where innocents sacrifice themselves to appease those same super-rich. And, yeah, a woman who somehow can get up after being mortally wounded and apparently dead for two minutes. In lesser hands, this stuff would be middling. But Rucka and Lark—along with Fatale writer Ed Brubaker—worked together on the beloved DC Comics police procedural Gotham Central. I'll follow then anywhere, even if that destination is a just-around-the-corner glimpse into the future that makes me a little queasy. What about you? What sequences or covers from this week's comics made your eyeballs happy? Share ‘em in the comments below.

Video game-themed tonsorial stylings constituted a mini-trend in the news this week—from a kid with a bangin' Mario shaved tattoo-like into his head to, well, that guy and ... the thing he did. Get out your scissors and your clippers, it's time for another 'Shop Contest. Source Image: Mario hair win. Source Image: Pac-Man beard fail. I get the feeling most of you will go for the guy on the right, but, who knows. This thing always turns out a bunch of surprises every time I check in on it. While most of you are smart enough to figure out how to upload images, here are some simple steps to take for those less familiar with the practice. 1. Create your 'Shop and save it to your desktop. 2. Go to the bottom of this post and click "Discuss." 3. This brings up a comment window. Click the icon that looks like a picture. 4. This brings up another window called "Insert Image." Click "Choose file" if you're uploading your 'shop from your desktop 5. Alternatively, you can upload the 'Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then paste the image's URL into the field that says "Image URL." Note: this must be the URL of the image itself, not the page where it is displayed. That means the URL ends in .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever. 6. Add editorial commentary and hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, upload the image to imgur and paste the image URL as a comment. I promise I will look at it. 7. Large-size images may not upload properly, though we have seen some big-ass animated .gifs upwards of 5 MB. If you're still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels, or the whole thing under 2 MB. Alright! Have at it. Thanks very much for your participation. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Welcome to Kotaku's Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Virtual Shackles by Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie. Published June 26. Read more of Virtual Shackles Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published June 26. Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published June 24. Read more of Awkward Zombie Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly Turnbull. Published June 24. Read more of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Brawl In The Family by Matthew Taranto. Published June 25. Read more of Brawl In The Family Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published June 25. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Brentalfloss the Comic by Brent Black, Andrew Dobson and Dan Roth. Published June 25. Read more of Brentalfloss the Comic Another Videogame Webcomic by Phil Chan and Joe Dunn. Published June 28. Read more of Another Videogame Webcomic Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published June 24. Read more of Corpse Run Nerd Rage by Andy Kluthe. Published June 28. Read more of Nerd Rage

The menace of Animal Crossing's Villager is upon us, lurking around every corner with his mirthless grin and vitrified eyes. We asked for your worst nightmares and you gave them to us, eighteen in all, including overall No. 1 Anshin above! Honorable mentions this week go to DonCopal, Insomnis, mrdark and double finalist MrEck0. Oh, btw, there were a bunch of "once you see it ..." entries. I never saw it. On with the finalists! Alnilam81 Anshin arniejolt DonCopal Gurkenlord Insomnis itfresh MacabreAngel21 Mr. Marsu mrdark MrEck0 MrEck0 negitoro NightmareAsylum sciteach Slate TopGun wyverntear03 To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

In keeping with our inability to notice anniversaries until it's too late, we'd like to point out that it was 15 years ago last night that Mankind and the Undertaker faced off in one of the most memorable and brutal wrestling matches of all time. Fifteen years is a long time. For those around the right age, the card for the June 28, 1998 King of the Ring PPV will make you feel old: the Headbangers vs. Kaientai, Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor vs. Al Snow and Head, X-Pac vs. Owen Hart. The Pittsburgh Civic Arena was demolished last year. And yet the Hell in a Cell match, which wasn't even the main event, still holds up as the ideal of what wrestling is capable of—making you actually fear for the competitors. The match is known for its two spots, especially the one above—the Undertaker hurling Foley maybe 20 feet from the top of the cell through the Spanish announcers' table. In a brief, gravity-sped spill, that's Mick Foley's legacy. One of the smartest, funniest wrestlers to ever enter the ring, was always the one dumb enough to endanger his health for entertainment's sake. (On the night, Foley suffered a concussion, a dislocated jaw, a dislocated shoulder a bruised kidney, a gash in his lip, and had one tooth knocked out and another broken. He has said he barely remembers the match.) It was Terry Funk's idea. According to Foley's autobiography, he and Funk were tossing around ideas on how to top the previous year's Hell in the Cell, specifically a (prosaic by comparison) Shawn Michaels bump. Funk suggested he let the Undertaker throw him from the top of the cage to the ground below. Foley wrote: Man, that was a good one, and we were having a good time thinking completely ludicrous things to do inside, outside, and on top of the cage. After a while I got serious and said quietly to Terry, "I think I can do it." More iconic even than Foley's helpless, corkscrewing plunge is Jim Ross's call. Even if you don't know it's from this match, you know it: "Good God almighty! Good God almighty! That killed him! As God as my witness, he is broken in half!" The call has become meme shorthand for any sort of sports brutality. What most don't remember is that Foley's fall was one of the first spots of the match. He and the Undertaker had started atop the cage; by the time Foley rolled off the gurney and limped his way back to the ring, there were still 10 minutes left of action. The most replayed moment in WWE history wasn't even a climax; it was a warmup. The second famous spot was an accident. Foley scaled the cage again, and after some tentative brawling, prepared to be chokeslammed onto the yielding chain link. He went through the cage, landing awkwardly on his neck and back. Because this fall was unplanned and uncontrolled, it was immensely more dangerous than the first. This time, no snappy patter from Ross. Just a yelp from Jerry Lawler, and silence until it was clear that Foley was still moving. Foley still had nine more minutes of wrestling to do. Do you even remember who won? (The Undertaker pinned Foley after chokeslamming him onto a pile of thumbtacks.) If you don't, it's because the outcome never particularly mattered. As David Shoemaker writes, "it's fair to say that winning or losing isn't entirely the point at Hell in a Cell — it's inflicting punishment on your opponent that counts. And fans, for their part, rarely cite Hell in a Cell "wins" so much as they preach about instances of spectacular violence." The 1998 Hell in a Cell match was the apex of the violence facet of the Attitude Era, and in some ways the beginning of the end. (The death of Owen Hart less than a year later would change everything.) The way of wrestling has always been to give bigger, better, bloodier, more, but this just wouldn't be topped. There wasn't anyone else willing to abuse himself quite like Foley, and even Foley thought he might have gone too far. After the match, Foley's wife called him in tears, and he says he considered retiring. So the match remains a time capsule of a company and a wrestler at their peaks of popularity and maximum willingness to push the envelope. Somehow, they found out exactly where the limit lay. The entire match has been uploaded to Youtube. Set some time aside.

Aaron Hernandez might not make it back in time for the next Madden, but if you want to play a topical video game (not about a crack-smoking mayor), try Snowden's Leaks: The Game. It was made by Dutch developers in 72 hours. No, it won't report your high scores to the NSA.

There are many factors that have made me into the person I am today, as is the case with any person on this planet. My personality has been partially formed by that chemical factor called 'depression' that I have discussed here many times but, as any good psychologist would tell me, there are also plenty of external elements that have played roles in my development as a human being. I certainly didn't become a games journalist by accident. Like pretty much every other dude my age, I've long had an interest in video games. The reasons I have for preferring certain types of games over others, however, can be traced back to a specific origin: my dad. His influence is why I've almost always been primarily a PC gamer. He's also why I have such an intense fascination with storytelling in games that I've made that aspect of the medium my main editorial focus as a columnist and critic. My dad, also named Phil, has been an engineer working for the US Army since he graduated college in the mid-'80s. He was, to put it bluntly, a nerd. In his formative years, my father spent a lot of time at the arcade dropping quarter after quarter into games like Galaga and Tempest. But he married my mom when he was only a year into college, and by the time he was 22 my older sister and I had invaded his life. He didn't have time for the arcade but, being of a nerd type, he had a personal computer. My dad knew how much he enjoyed playing video games when he was a kid, and he wanted to share those experiences with me. By the earliest time in my life that I can still remember—some time in the early '90s—he had a PC with a 486 DX 100 CPU. He played a lot of old-style arcade-ish games on it. I would watch him play, and sometimes he would give me a turn. He told me recently that he knew how much he enjoyed playing video games when he was a kid, and he wanted to share those experiences with me. My dad is therefore the reason why I was playing games on the computer, before we ever had a game console in our house. My earliest gaming memories are of Lemmings and the Home Alone 2 platformer and something called Brix, which I remember being my dad's poison. My dad encouraged me to become comfortable with a mouse and keyboard before I ever touched a gamepad. Back during Christmas in 1996, my parents gifted me something that would greatly impact my destiny as a human being: LucasArts Archives vol II: The Star Wars Collection for the PC. They gave me a joystick to go with it. By this time we had a Super Nintendo. I spent a lot of time on it playing Donkey Kong and sports games. But this pack of PC games that I received included TIE Fighter, both Rebel Assault games and a three-level demo for Dark Forces. Those games scratched an itch I didn't know I had. My dad tried to take turns playing Rebel Assault with me, but he found he couldn't keep up with action in those games. That didn't stop me from becoming what could charitably be called 'obsessed.' I already greatly enjoyed Star Wars—another way my dad influenced my taste in entertainment—but the idea of playing through stories set in that universe was unbelievably exciting to me. I consumed those titles with the same urgency that I approach a home-cooked meal. Before I knew it I was begging my dad to upgrade the family computer to something Pentium-powered with a 3D accelerator graphics chip. I needed to be able play more technically-demanding games like Dark Forces 2, Rogue Squadron and X-Wing Alliance. My father obliged, although not quite all at once. He saw how much fun I was having, how much joy these experiences brought me, and he encouraged my growing habit—plus, I got good grades at school and played a lot of sports, so my dad let me play. I would, of course, branch out from Star Wars games. I developed a liking for Command & Conquer and Half-Life and Quake 2, but I rarely strayed from games with stories. I played some Counter-Strike, sure, but even with that game, for match after match, I would create narratives in my mind. Today, I play games on a desktop PC that I built with my bare hands. My dad, excited that I was doing that, purchased the graphics card for it. That's not an insignificant part, as PC nerds will know. As he always had, he wanted to support my desire to game on a PC. There's one other thing I want to share about my father. Even though he is only 48 years old, he is dying of cancer. Chemotherapy has been completely ineffective, and his doctors say he won't last the year. He probably won't even make it to his birthday in September. When he does go, he will leave behind a tangible legacy: my writings on games, writing that was borne from the love of gaming he instilled in me. I don't know who I would be today had my father not chosen to share his enjoyment of interactive entertainment with me. I am certain that I am who I am because he, all those years ago, let me sit in front of a computer and have all the fun in the world. Phil Owen is a freelance entertainment journalist whose work you might have seen at VG247, GameFront, Appolicious, Gameranx and many, many other places. You can follow him on Twitter at @philrowen. Send hate mail to phil.r.owen@gmail.com.

What's happened in the business of video games this past week ... QUOTE | "The hire-and-fire cycle is simply an aspect of our industry. When a game ships, sometimes the guillotine has to drop."—David Valjalo, game consultant, talking about an unfortunate reality of making AAA games today. QUOTE | "It's not the decline of consoles, it's the decline of a generation."—Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide development studios, talking about his fundamental belief in consoles and why people are tired of current-gen. QUOTE | "It's clear that the vast majority of the people ... don't want to buy [games] online right now."—Guy Longworth, Sony's SVP of brand marketing, talking about why retail game sales will continue to dominate. QUOTE | "We will continue to support the Wii U this Christmas, and we're expecting it to take off in terms of sales."—Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, talking about the company's position on the Wii U. QUOTE | "We're in the business of blowing minds and providing huge experiences."—Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, talking about what Activision needs to do to stay on top in the console business. QUOTE | "A big company can become very dumb, very quickly."—Hilmar Petursson, CEO of CCP, talking about the difficulties involved with the company's growth over time. QUOTE | "We're working hard as a team to build this and to break a couple of rules inside Microsoft."—Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming, talking about the new version of the World of Tanks free-to-play game for Xbox 360. QUOTE | "We think of Origin, in this new world, as the gracious host of the party."—EA's EVP Andrew Wilson, talking about his vision for the future of EA's digital distribution service and how it must improve. QUOTE | "The ultimate target for us is that of raising $1 billion for charity over the next three years."—Jude Ower, CEO of PlayMob, talking about their plans to integrate philanthropy into gaming. QUOTE | "I think we're able to show something new here that's separate from Ninja Gaiden but still familiar."—Comcept founder Keiji Inafune, talking about his upcoming game Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z containing humor and zombies. STAT | 11 million—Number of copies of Minecraft sold for PC, Mac and Linux combined; the Pocket Edition for Android and iOS hit 10 million sales last month. QUOTE | "If you look at what drives innovation, it's the investment and research in those high-end products."—Travis Williams, AMD's global communications head, talking about AMD's commitment to console and PC gaming. This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International Image by Shutterstock

It kinda feels like it's been a slow week, but looking back it really wasn't. Deadpool released, so did Company of Heroes 2, we're still catching up with all our E3 previews of games we saw in LA, and everyone is slowly coming together to discuss The Last of Us as they complete it. Check out these articles and more at Kotaku Selects, where I round up our best content. Have you all been playing The Last Of Us? It's superb. I'm almost done with the game myself (no spoilers!). But this GIF still makes me laugh. And yes, Gergo got to it first, but I got to it firster!

The classic Neo Geo fighting game, Samurai Shodown 2, is now on the iOS App Store and Google Play. The port features customizable controls in the form of virtual touchscreen buttons, which can be placed outside of the game's visual area in "window mode."

All 15 characters are included, and multiplayer matches can be played over Bluetooth.

Slicing things up with Haohmaru, Jubei and the rest of the gang costs a relatively premium price of $8.99.

It's likely that the amount of content will justify it, but man alive is Total War: Rome II going to take up a lot of hard drive space. 35 gigabytes, to be precise, according to the recommended specs released today by Creative Assembly. Time to start clearing out those unplayed Steam games, folks. Here are the full minimum and recommended specs: Minimum: OS: XP/ Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8Processor:2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor / 2.6 GHz Intel Single Core processorMemory: 2GB RAMGraphics:512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card (shader model 3, vertex texture fetch support).DirectX®:9.0cHard Drive: 35 GB HD spaceScreen Resolution: 1024x768 Recommended: OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8Processor:2nd Generation Intel Core i5 processor (or greater)Memory: 4GB RAMGraphics:1024 MB DirectX 11 compatible graphics card.DirectX®:11Hard Drive:35 GB HD spaceScreen Resolution: 1920x1080

Typically, when someone does an ode to Final Fantasy, they'll do stuff like fan art or fan fiction. Mikeosong has a more novel idea: choreography to go along with some of his favorite Final Fantasy themes—it's so good, you'd think it was something out of a boy band (my mind goes to K-Pop, but only because I've watched way too much of it). Why choreography? His YouTube page says he's a dancer, so there you go. I'd watch other video game themed dances for sure, so hopefully he makes more. FINAL FANTASY DANCE MODE (Final Fantasy VII & XIII Themes) [mikesong]

Kenneth McCulloch, a developer at Precursor Games—the developers who want to create a sequel to Eternal Darkness—is now facing child pornography charges according to Bullet News Niagara. McCulloch is being charged with "one count each of possession of child pornography, making child pornography available and accessing child pornography," to be specific. Last month, Precursor Games held a Kickstarter for Shadows of the Eternals, but the campaign was suspended. In a post on the Precursor Games forums, Paul Caporicci, CEO of Precursor Games—a studio that formed from the ashes of Silicon Knights—says that they learned of the charges today and that due to their serious nature, McCulloch is "no longer affiliated in any way with Precursor Games." McCulloch is currently in custody, pending bail. We've contacted Precursor Games about the matter and will update this post as soon as we hear back. CRIME: St. Catharines man facing child pornography charges [Bullet News Niagara]

It's not really clear whether being gay in Rogue Legacy, the roguelike-like in which characters have randomly-generated traits, actually does anything. (Players and reviewers say it doesn't.) Either way, this GameFAQs screengrab (via Mike Henry) is too good not to share.

Kotaku How The PS4 Came To Be | io9 Low Budget Films That Are More Thrilling Than Most Big Summer Movies | Jezebel Be Honest: Is Your Kid an Asshole? | Gawker Convicted Pedophile Priest Claims the Vatican Had a Rentboy Ring | Valleywag The Most Uncomfortable Thing on The Internet Right Now

Brad stares deep into the heart of Devil May Cry, but what happens when it stares back?

Are you ready for another all-new, all-different Week in Gaming Apps? Well tough, it's happening. After a couple of years' worth of putting together a lengthy list packed with images and prices and lengths, we're going to harness the power of Kinja to make things a little more organized. I'll drop the links, images and descriptions of the games we've played this week into the comments section. Why? So each can be addressed individually. Organization! That is a word I heard once. Plus, it also allows for you folks to add your own, following the same format. Three cheers for community interaction! Hip hip... ... that was your cue. Nevermind, just go look what I played, and tell me what you played.

In the 16 years since the Fallout franchise was introduced to the world, all of the games have been met with praise—which means that ranking them isn't easy. That's especially true when you consider that the post-nuclear franchise underwent a genre change. Still, here we are. The Pecking Order god is not satisfied with our Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon, Final Fantasy and Halo rankings. It wants more. So we'll feed the beast another feature, this one ranking the Fallout games, from best to 'worst.' Here's some things you should keep in mind before we get started: 1) We'll only be covering the main entries in the Fallout franchise; no spin-offs or DLC. Sorry, Tactics! 2) Remember, this is my personal opinion. You might disagree! You're welcome to comment with your own rankings, if not debate my personal order—although naturally I'll do my best to justify my choices. Let's do this. 1) Fallout 2 Full disclosure: this entry has a lot of personal significance for me—it altered how I viewed America and its politics, and it gave me a safe space to explore my sexual identity. But objectively, I see it as the pinnacle of what Fallout has to offer: a zany, post-apocalyptic game with an incredible amount of choice, a smart critique of American ideals—all packaged in a more cerebral genre than the modern titles. (It's a turn-based RPG.) The modern games feel too easy by comparison, and not in the good way. This is a game where you can choose to strategize a way to get to the final boss in 30 minutes (it's very difficult, but do-able)—or opt to explore for dozens of hours. And if you do decide to explore, you can do all sorts of stuff—from becoming a porn star or a made-man, to being able to talk to the AI responsible for ending the world. It's the sort of freedom and versatility that most modern games that brag about "choice," and "consequences" can't touch. 2) Fallout 3 While I lament the change in genre—especially after XCOM proved that you can modernize a franchise without turning it into an FPS—Fallout 3 is the Fallout game most people are familiar with. With good reason: the capital wasteland (what a perfect setting for a game about America, by the way), in its full, open world glory, is a joy to explore. It's tough to forget unhinged characters like Moira, nevermind levels like Tranqulity Lane. And that opening level, in the Vault? It's gotta be one of the best introductions in a game, ever. Can't say I'm a big fan of V.A.T.S or how, mechanically, it felt like I was playing The Elder Scrolls with a different skin, though 3) Fallout: New Vegas Many consider New Vegas to be superior to Fallout 3, namely because of the writing. Unfortunately, having played the original games, it's difficult for me to rank it higher than third place. Now, make no mistake: it's more of the Fallout goodness that 3 offers—and that's great! It's a great game. But the entire casino/Vegas shtick? It's been done, and not by other games. By Fallout itself! Fallout 2 has New Reno...I'll quote Richard Cobbett on why New Vegas disappointing when compared to New Reno, as he puts it well: While I enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas, the actual town of New Vegas—to be more exact, the Strip—was a bitter disappointment. You spend a good third of the game waiting to get into this fabled gambling utopia, only for the gates to finally open and reveal four deserted casinos squatting amongst post-apocalyptic debris. No texture, no threat, no soul. Not so in New Reno. You fight for control of the Vegas strip, but it feels inconsequential to the degree of control that you have over Reno. That, and Vegas makes it so that there's a very specific and linear way to explore the world—which feels antithetical to what Fallout is about. While I have other criticisms, in the interest of not making it seem like I hate New Vegas, I'll end by saying that I appreciate that New Vegas feels like it's a more refined Fallout 3 in some respects, like when it comes to the RPG elements. 4) Fallout 1 Another game that I feel guilty of ranking so 'low,' but reminder: all of the games in the franchise are excellent. Fallout—which is a digital take on GURPS, a pen and paper role-playing system—is no exception. It offered players a considerable amount of customization, and the SPECIAL system allowed players to adopt any playstyle of their choosing. We're still familiar with these systems thanks to the newer games, but remember, this was the game that started it all. Couple both those things with amazing, atmospheric writing (convincing the big bad to kill himself? Fallout 1 did it first) and it's difficult to find someone that doesn't adore Fallout...provided they've played it. Of course, by nature of its age, it's the title that has aged the worst. Now I turn it over to you guys. How would you rank the Fallout games, best to worst?

Technically, the mansion where America’s chief executive lives is called the White Crib in Volition’s latest open-world action game. But, given that it gets blown up about two minutes into this preview of Saints Row IV, the new name doesn’t seem like that big a deal. In the clip above, which originally debuted at E3, you’ll see the gangsta-turned-president get those superpowers and show off some new moves as he tries to repel an extraterrestrial invasion. That super-speed running looks like a lot of damn fun.

Red Little House, the developers behind adventure game Fleish & Cherry in Crazy Hotel, have created a series of cool illustrations that mash up Fleish characters with other video games. It kind of makes me wish we had more video games in the style of classic cartoons, because it looks rad. The one above features Street Fighter in that classic black and white cartoon style. Here's a few more. Pokemon The Legend of Zelda Monkey Island Trine BIT.TRIP Presents Runner2 You can view more of the rad illustrations here, vote for Fleish & Cherry in Crazy Hotel on Steam Greenlight here, and donate to the Indiegogo campaign here.

"Defeat the monstrous mutants and barbaric brutes of Moscow’s underground" begins the description of the game I've been playing where I shoot vagrants and bag ladies in the face. Why am I killing all of these people? "Veiled terrors have transformed the inhabitants of Moscow into horrific demons," the description of Moscow Dash explains. Well, if they're horrific demons, then I... ... I mean, they're not pretty, but that's no reason to run around killing them in droves. They are trying to kill me, an armed courier tasked with delivering a mysterious package across the dark, gritty and sometimes scenic streets of Moscow, so I suppose that counts as self-defense. Still, I'm killing grandmas. Not just grandmas, but the aforementioned vagrants, Chavs (at least that's what the description calls them), beefy legbreakers and a whole host of Russian stereotypes. It almost makes me feel bad for the folks walking by the windows of Russian developer Starkom. They must all look like targets. When I'm not feeling incredibly bad for killing people, Moscow Dash is not a bad little game. I move from stage-to-stage, taking out these horrific demons... ... gaining experience points, upping my stats and unlocking creative new ways to perform my duties. Music plays, mostly metal, mostly the sort that's so bad it starts to go good again. There are wailing guitars. Maybe that's why grandma wants me dead. It's a solid little game, with 70 episodes spread across 9 levels, delivering quite a bang for your just-under-a-buck. If I were shooting critters that looked less like extras from Day Watch, I might enjoy it thoroughly. Instead, I enjoy it with a heaping helping of guilt. Sorry, Mom-Mom. Moscow Dash Genre: Side-scrolling shooter Developer: Starkom Platform: iOS Price: $.99 Get Moscow Dash in iTunes

The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod is having another public test—more info on how to get in on the driving, skydiving and general mayhem here. (Via PC Gamer)

The people in charge of hyping the new PC game Total War: Rome II keep exploiting our weakness for absurdly large, detailed screenshots—screenshots that could get their game mistaken for the most violent Where's Waldo ever. Their new shot today is 30000x4087 and weighs in at a mere 80MB. It's not quite as gargantuan as their last one, but it's big nonetheless. Download it from this official page. It is a truly impressive thing, both in its scale and in the horrors it manages to hide. Poor guy. Obviously, the Creative Assembly's real-time strategy game is never going to look quite like this screenshot, but to get the game running this September on your rig and normal-sized monitors, make sure you can meet the official minimum/recommended specs. Minimum: OS: XP/ Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8Processor:2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor / 2.6 GHz Intel Single Core processorMemory: 2GB RAMGraphics:512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card (shader model 3, vertex texture fetch support).DirectX:9.0cHard Drive: 35 GB HD spaceScreen Resolution: 1024x768 Recommended: OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8Processor:2nd Generation Intel Core i5 processor (or greater)Memory: 4GB RAMGraphics:1024 MB DirectX 11 compatible graphics card.DirectX:11Hard Drive:35 GB HD spaceScreen Resolution: 1920x1080

On May 26, two weeks before E3, a man named Pete Dodd started a thread on the message board NeoGAF. Microsoft had just announced their next-gen console, the Xbox One, and with it, customer-unfriendly policies like used game restrictions and a mandatory 24-hour Internet check-in. Meanwhile, Sony was staying quiet about their own possible plans for digital-rights management (DRM) on the PlayStation 4. So Dodd went to gamers with a request: go on Twitter and send messages to Sony executives using the hashtag #PS4NoDRM, asking them to keep those sort of policies off the next PlayStation. "Will a couple hundred posts from NeoGAF change the entire industry?" Dodd wrote. "No. Can it help give a little more momentum to something Sony seems to be leaning towards already? I would think so." Over the next few days, the campaign spread across Twitter and reached Sony executives' ears. On June 10, Sony went all in, announcing at their E3 press conference that the PS4 will be DRM-free. The next week, Microsoft followed suit and backtracked on their own digital policies. Whew. The campaign was ultimately more successful than Dodd ever dreamed it would be, and while Sony execs have denied that their decision was influenced by the outpour of fans, their E3 presentation certainly was—at one point, they even featured a #PS4NoDRM tweet on one of their many big screens. If not for this campaign, Sony prez Jack Tretton might not have delivered his now-infamous smackdown, and if not for that smackdown, Microsoft might not have backtracked on their own policies. "The Tweets didn't influence us," Sony vice president of hardware marketing John Koller told Kotaku at E3. "We had decided. But the Tweets influenced how we messaged it in the press conference to make it as clean and efficient as possible for everyone to understand what we stand for." If not for Dodd, the past month could have played out much differently. It's a climactic moment for the 36-year-old, who has suffered from anxiety for most of his life. In fact, if he hadn't started exercising about a month ago as a way to overcome his condition, #PS4NoDRM might never have happened. "I don't think I would have been able to lead the campaign in the way that I did if I wasn't feeling better," Dodd told me during a chat this week. "I had this incredible energy and actually felt like I could do it. I have to credit that to exercise." Dodd has been fighting anxiety since he was a teenager. At 25, doctors diagnosed him with a general anxiety disorder. He's tried to combat it with counseling, meds, and even alcohol, but he says the best remedy has been biking and swimming. It seems almost too simple, but he says it works. "The clearest way I've ever been able to describe what it's like is think back to a time when you are in a car and someone comes so close to crashing into you," he said. "Your heart goes nuts, you get a burst of adrenline, your palms sweat.... but imagine that feeling happening for no reason, out of the blue. And then trying to rationalize why it's happening. It's terrifying and single-handedly turned me from an extrovert to an introvert." Same old story: man feels awful; man gets better; man starts a digital revolution. The timing is amazing: Dodd, who lives in Connecticut and works in human services, says that he had just started pushing himself to swim, ride bikes, and walk more, and he had just started to feel better when he started this campaign. Hours after he started that NeoGAF thread, Dodd was fielding tons of private messages and emails from people who wanted to contribute. The campaign started to blow up on Twitter, and the next morning, Dodd woke up to coverage from all sorts of media sites. Eventually he was getting calls from NBC and the Wall Street Journal—calls that might have triggered an anxiety attack a month ago. "Pre-exercise, I think the attention would have freaked me out and I would have passed it on or just straight botched it by being defensive," Dodd said. "Instead, I felt great. I was confident and relaxed and was able to lead from a position of calm, which I think was a big part of the success of the movement. We weren't a collection of angry gamers screaming at Sony or Microsoft. The campaign was designed to talk to them in a very polite manner." Dodd says the campaign boosted his confidence. He says he hasn't had an anxiety attack—big or small—in over a month. And he's proud of what he accomplished. "What I've realized is that I am capable of much greater things than I thought was possible just a few months ago," Dodd said. "I know a lot of gamers use video games as escapism because of a variety of rotten reasons. I've been there and I fought through that and that's a story that I hope gives hope to others."

Deadspin Rivers: "I Would Like To Call (Simmons) An Idiot"; Simmons Fires Back | Jalopnik Ten Foreign Cars Americans Hated | Gizmodo Getting a Shorter Headphone Cable Will Change Your Life | Lifehacker Choose the Right Career Path Based on Your Motivational Focus

The GamePop Mini, a new subscription-based Android console from BlueStacks, is coming to market with an interesting business model: It's "free" after purchasing a 12-month subscription at $7 per month. In total, the GamePop Mini comes to $84 - less than the Ouya and a tad more than the GameStick - and has secured 500 "popular mobile game partners."

Even though it is powered by Android, an interesting piece of proprietary software called Looking Glass allows iOS apps to run on the console. "[Porting is] not easy, but I would submit it's not hard, relatively speaking," BlueStacks' Head of Marketing and Business Development John Garguilo told Engadget. "If you're a developer and you've built your app and put it on iOS, it's your app. You built it, you own the bits and you own all the intellectual property. If you apply Looking Glass' layer, you can put [your app] on a TV with us."

The GamePop Mini has a tentative launch window of "this winter." Subscription is required to access GamePop Mini services and if you cancel your subscription before the end of the first year, there is a $25 restocking fee.