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Yesterday, a post popped up on voxel-based PC adventure-RPG Cube World's forums. "It's finally happened, the moment we've all been waiting for," it said, "the game is available [to] play as a Demo and paid Alpha access." Sadly, the servers were immediately crushed by the thousands of eager players trying to gain access to the game they've been waiting years for. Since then, the shop has been taken down, and developer wollay asked for everyone's patience in a blog post, in which he said that currently, their main priority is to "fix issues with all buyers so far and make sure they get their game." The shop, he added, will "remain closed until all issues are resolved," and, presumably, until they find a way to deal with the extreme demand. We'll be keeping an eye on Picroma's site, and will update this post should there be news. Cube World: Demo & Alpha out now! [Cube World Forums] Server Issues [Picroma] Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

In the classic Japanese anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the heroine Nausicaä flies a glider called a "Mehve". The anime might be a work of fiction, but the glider isn't. Not any more. Since 2003, Kazuhiko Hachiya has been working on a real-world Mehve—an actual single seat glider just like in Nausicaä. Back in the late 1990s, Hachiya created an email software called "PostPet", which became popular in Japan. Hachiya now makes toys and media art that are the stuff of dreams. This is a guy who once made a jet-powered skateboard that floated like a hoverboard—and accidentally caught on fire. The glider is another way Hachiya is bringing fantasy into reality. "This project is using the fictional Mehve that appears in Hayao Miyazaki's manga and anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as a reference point," says the project's website, "and seeing about prototyping and testing it as an aircraft that can truly fly." Above, you can see the first prototype. The goal is to create an aircraft able to fly with a pilot as a "personal jet glider". The project is called "Open Sky", and it began with paper planes, a radio-controlled mock-up, and hang glider lessons. That progressed to working prototypes and test after test. Now, a decade later, the project is in its third iteration: a jet engine-powered one-person glider. Starting July 13 and ending September 16, 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo is holding a new exhibition for the latest Open Sky glider. Visitors can see a documentary of the jet engine powered real-world Mehve take to the sky, with Hachiya as the test pilot. This isn't just art or only engineering. It's pure magic. 【風の谷のナウシカ】東京芸大准教授「メーヴェ作ってみた」[まとめ] Photos: Arts Chiyoda, みてきた To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

I love Magic: The Gathering. I've loved the card game since it first showed up back in the early 90s. The depth of strategy present in these bits of colored card stock is astounding, and the work Wizards of the Coast has put into building an empire based on them inspiring. I love Magic: The Gathering. I hate the people who play Magic: The Gathering. Perhaps it's better to say that I hated who I was when I would play Magic: The Gathering with other people. Back when the game was first introduced and we were just tearing open packs and playing with no regard to color combinations or any sort of strategy beyond the moment we were in, I was pretty bearable. Once it became plain that the best way to play was to invest heavily, trade aggressively, and build intelligently, I became a total asshole. I'd dump my disposable income into cards. I'd trash talk. I'd try to slip packs into my other groceries so cashiers wouldn't notice them. I was a real jerk. I grew out of it, eventually, but I never lost my passion for the game, so the various electronic incarnations have been received warmly on my part, especially since they've made the jump to iOS and now Android tablets. It's almost like I am lugging about a locked cardboard box (who locks cardboard!?) again. The latest installment of Wizards of the Coast's now annual Magic: The Gathering jam gives me more of fine single-player Magic I've come to expect. Magic 2014 has got an extensive campaign that sees the player travelling the various planes, battling AI chumps and taking their decks. It's got a wonderful series of challenges, puzzling battle scenarios that really deserve their own standalone title. It's got everything I loved from the previous installment, plus one major addition — Sealed Play mode. Sealed Play mode gives the player a number of booster packs to unwrap, and then tasks them with building a deck out of this random collection of cards. Oh, the memories. This really brings me back, while at the same time holding my hands with some AI deck-building assistance, highly necessary if you've not played with physical cards in awhile. Now I know what a Sliver is, and I want to hug all of them. Sealed Play mode sees players working through a series of battles, with new booster packs rewarded as they progress. Unlike some of the pushovers in the proper campaign mode, these battles can be particularly brutal, depending on your building skill. Available as a limited free download, with the entire game (barring card unlocks and future DLC) unlocking for $9.99, Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers gives fans of the series a ton of fun things to do without ever having to interact with another Magic player. There are multiplayer game modes too, but I can't see those ending well. Magic 2014 — Duels of the Planeswalkers Genre: Trading Card Game Developer: Wizards of the Coast Platform: iPad, Android Tablet Price: Free — Unlock full game for $9.99 Get Magic 2014 on iTunes — Get Magic 2014 on Google Play

There are plenty of times you need nice high-res box art images. Maybe you need to print a replacement. Maybe you want to do some photoshop work. Maybe you just want some new desktop wallpaper. Whatever your reasons, an enterprising soul over on NeoGAF has found a sneaky solution that lets you pull big, clean images from IGN without the site's trademark watermark. All you need to do is this UPDATE: Our new system isn't letting me paste a URL without automatically turning it into an image. Great. Look, here's how you do it. On a game's page on the site, the box art image url would normally look like this: But if you delete the boxart_160h part, so that it reads like this: You get a huge, clean image. Handy! Note it doesn't work for all games, especially older ones, but more recent titles should be good to go.

Magnus Rex is an art crew that specialises in content development. Meaning, they're contracted by companies to help create worlds, whether that be building all-new IP, concept art and/or character design. I showed you their Kickstarter book project yesterday, but today we're looking at their day job stuff, which has seen them work for game series like God of War and Tomb Raider, as well as for clients such as Nike, The History Channel and Google. You can see more of Magnus Rex's work at their company site and blog. 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. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

We've all had stories of finding lost games before - my copy of Rogue Galaxy had been missing since 2009 before I found it hiding in a drawer - but you don't hear many like this, where stuff has been missing for over 30 years. Weird Paul here made a bunch of primitive stuff for his Commodore 64 in 1983, from sprites to crude Star Wars text adventures. Between losing the disk and thinking the files were busted, it's been 30 years since he saw the code, but now that he's been reunited with it - and given it a good clean - it's time for an awkward trip down memory lane. Stick with it until you hit the Empire Strikes Back game. It's amazing. Commodore 64 floppy disk from 1983 [Weird Paul, via Retroist]

In 1999, a game called Outcast was released. It was a God-damn revolution, one of the most ambitious games ever released, though one that's sadly been almost forgotten in the years since. So it's about time for a comeback! The founders of the original game's development studio, Yann Robert, Franck Sauer and Yves Grolet, have bought the rights to game off Atari, with the aim of reviving the franchise. This is possibly the best news you will hear all week. Seriously, look at the video above. In terms of open world design, enemy AI and visuals, it was lightyears ahead of its peers. Can't wait to see a more modern treatment.

There's an interesting piece on former Xbox boss Don Mattrick over on Fast Company. He has over a dozen Ferraris, and "Oftentimes, he'll take his jet to work".

Avegost is a live-action role-playing (LARP) event held in Georgia. If you think you know LARP, and think it's just people using foam swords and screaming "LIGHTNING BOLT", you ain't seen nothing yet. Beginning as a humble tabletop gathering, it's grown into what's described as a "full-immersion" LARP, which means the entire event is done in-character. The outfits, the gear, the language, the works. It's as close to a fantasy world as Georgia is ever going to get. Blending historical re-enactment, sport and story-telling, it really is an RPG come to life, as the short documentary below shows. The comparisons to video or tabletop games run pretty deep; if you sign up to take part, you have to create a character using a set pool of points, and there are factions to choose from. There are even people responsible for creating and developing a narrative for people to play through. While this might seem hardcore to you, maybe even crazy, the emphasis really is on role-playing in its most extreme form. It's cool if you're happy to do it in front of a screen, but sometimes people want more, and this is absolutely perfect for that. You can read a great interview with Avegost's founder, Joe Landolfi, at the site below (which is also where these great shots came from). Avegost: An interview with Owner/Creator Joe Landolfi [Larping.org]

“Chester’s Mill is a place like any other… at least it used to be, until we were cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious dome.” Yes, that is the actual pre-credits exposition we got at the start of episode two of Under the Dome. A straightforward intro for a straightforward show, and one I'm having fun with so far, even if it is pretty dopey. The show, if you haven't heard of it, is CBS' adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name. I've read a fair amount of King, but not this particular book. Given the feedback I got from Twitter last night, it sounds like I can safely skip it. The show is helmed by Brian K. Vaughan, author of, among other things, the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man, better known as "One of Kirk's favorite things ever." The show's got Dean Norris from Breaking Bad, some good network-appropriate gore, and a great, Twilight Zone kinda setup. It's the stuff that good summer TV time-wasters are made of. The premise, if you hadn't guessed from the show's title, is this: A small town in Maine (where else) is suddenly encircled by a massive, mysterious and impenetrable dome. This leads to all manner of drama. While Under the Dome can be awfully dumb, sometimes even edging up to wasting its fun premise, it has enough cool stuff going on that I'll keep watching for the time being. That said, this "Junior" character, aka Evil Andy Samberg, aka Randy Samberg, has got to go. The reasons for this are best summed up at Previously.TV in an article called "Psycho Asperger Sex Dungeon Junior Is The Pierce Of Under The Dome." ("The Pierce" here being the drag on the show that, like Chevy Chase's character on Community, we could lose entirely without the show suffering.) I'm curious what you, fellow fans of sci-fi and cheesy but entertaining television, make of this show. Are you watching? Have you read the book? Do you agree that the show's writing leaves a lot to be desired? Do Vaughan's teleplays make you wonder if maybe Y: The Last Man had lousy dialogue and you just didn't notice? Do you, like me, actually find yourself pretty unbothered by all that stuff and enjoying the show anyway? I leave it to you. Discuss.

Do you want to dress your Animal Crossing: New Leaf character up like a child combatant from Battle Royale? Of course you do! And you're in luck: Depthakote has posted several versions of the film's bloody school uniforms, with QR codes for each one. Great, now I want to rewatch Battle Royale. (Via Tiny Cartridge)

Jeff, Brad, and Drew sit back and spin a yarn about surfing, the Saints, Don Mattrick, the infinite power of cloud magic, and... sure, numbers stations. Why not?

Broken Age is well into development, but Double Fine Productions has hit a snag. The game’s scope is bigger than its budget allows for. In a letter to backers that’s leaked out, studio founder and designer Tim Schafer is proposing the game be split in half.

“I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle,” said Scahfer. “There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.”

Double Fine is responsible for putting crowdfunding service Kickstarter on the map for video games, raising over $3 million for a new adventure game. It’s easy to forget the studio only asked for $400,000 originally, but the response was enormous, and it raised well over that amount during its funding run.

When the studio looked at the likely schedule for the game it wanted to build, the first half of the game wouldn’t be done until July 2014--more than a year from now. The second half wouldn’t be finished until well into 2015. The Kickstarter money wouldn’t last that long, and so unless the game’s gutted from top to bottom, Schafer’s team needs more money. The question is how. Another Kickstarter wouldn't work, nor a publisher.

Right now, Schafer is proposing some “modest” cuts are made to the first half of the game, and it’s released in January, instead of July. While backers would receive a first look, that half of the game would go on sale through Steam Early Access, so other people could have a look at it--and pay for it.

“That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development,” said Schafer. “The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May.”

“I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly,” he continued. “They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger.”

It should be noted that development hiccups, delays, and added funding are a regular part of the development process--it’s just never made public until way after the fact, if ever. I’m curious how people respond to this, given that it exposes the ugly, changing, messy, and unexpected ways games are made today.

Here's the full note:

A Note from Tim

Hello, Backers of Adventure!

Those of you who have been following along in the documentary know about the design vs. money tension we’ve had on this project since the early days. Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money.

I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.

So we have been looking for ways to improve our project’s efficiency while reducing scope where we could along the way. All while looking for additional funds from bundle revenue, ports, etc. But when we finished the final in-depth schedule recently it was clear that these opportunistic methods weren’t going to be enough.

We looked into what it would take to finish just first half of our game—Act 1. And the numbers showed it coming in July of next year. Not this July, but July 2014. For just the first half. The full game was looking like 2015! My jaw hit the floor.

This was a huge wake-up call for all of us. If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%! What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around.

Would we, instead, try to find more money? You guys have been been very generous in the tip jar (thanks!) but this is a larger sum of money we were talking about. Asking a publisher for the money was out of the question because it would violate the spirit of the Kickstarter, and also, publishers. Going back to Kickstarter for it seemed wrong. Clearly, any overages were going to have to be paid by Double Fine, with our own money from the sales of our other games. That actually makes a lot of sense and we feel good about it. We have been making more money since we began self-publishing our games, but unfortunately it still would not be enough.

Then we had a strange idea. What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more. They could play the first half of the game in January!

We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May.

So, everybody gets to play the game sooner, and we don’t have to cut the game down drastically. Backers still get the whole game this way—nobody has to pay again for the second half.

And whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter.

I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly. They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger.

With this shipping solution I think we’re balancing the size of the game and the realities of funding it pretty well. We are still working out the details and exact dates, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. This project has always been something we go through together and the ultimate solution needs to be something we all feel good about.

In the meantime, I’m hoping you are enjoying the documentary and like the progress you’re seeing on Broken Age. I’m really exciting about how it’s coming together, I can’t wait for you to see more of it, and I feel good about finally having a solid plan on how to ship it!

Thanks for reading,

Tim

You can spend a ton of time on Alex Onsager's amusing Pokemon fusion website, trying out as many Frankenstein combinations as you can think of. Or, if you'd like, you can take a look at the work of Redditor B_Stiles, who took the liberty of making every single combination possible for you. If that sounds like a lot of Pokemon, it is. "I used a simple Perl script to pull all the images down from the site, then used a small Java program to combine the images for each Pokemon," B_Stiles explains in this Reddit thread. "At first I tried to combine all of them into one giant image, but even after shrinking the individual images down to something manageable (since the original sizes created an image so large I didn't have enough memory to create it), the final image is almost 40 MB, so I went with this method instead." You can view the fusions at this link; here's a small taste of all the possible combinations. Note that Onsager isn't done uploading all the Pokemon into his program, so this collection is all Pokemon fusions possible as of this writing. Every Possible Pokemon Fusion From pokemon.alexonsager.net [B_Stiles]

Tropical gifts arrive by way of the frozen north!

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The town of OVOXO is a quaint, idyllic town. Lots of greenery. Right by the beach. It'd be perfect, except there's one problem: I have two penguin villagers. ...yeah, this is about to get ridiculous, but it's a true story of how I've lost my bearings trying to get two villagers to move out of Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong with penguins or anything. It's just that I can't help but look at all the screenshots on Twitter and Tumblr with an immense amount of jealousy as I notice all the awesome villagers other people have. Hippos! Robot frogs! Mummified stuff! Meanwhile, my town seems to have the most vanilla set of animals—lions, bears, squirrels...and not just one penguin, but two penguins. Like it wasn't enough for me to have one boring type of villager, I need to have two. Eff. That. Not in my town. Naturally my first response was to talk to my secretary, Isabelle—you have the option to report "problematic villagers," which is kind of a silly concept when you think about it. The game is so agreeable I can't imagine anyone actually having a legitimate problem with a villager that wasn't self-induced—you get to decide their catchphrases and are the one sending them letters, after all. Still, I used the feature to complain about Sprinkle the penguin first. Maybe I'd get results? Interestingly, there was no option for "my perfect town does not have two of anything," which I for one think is extremely inconsiderate of Nintendo. So instead I took the next most ridiculous complaint, attire. You, the mayor—in all your civic glory—can bitch about someone's clothes. Okay, fine. Maybe complaining about it will somehow get Sprinkle to move out. Isabelle, you speak my completely unreasonable language. ...except the next day, Sprinkle the penguin was still wearing the same clothes. Um. What the heck? Do the whims of your dictator mayor mean nothing around here?? I guess not. I started lamenting the situation on Twitter, at which point I heard stories about how a friend became cruel to unwanted villagers in his game in an effort to drive them out—notably, he covered their houses in trash. I was told about this about a month ago, and I was struck by how cruel it was. I began to wonder, how cruel could I become in a game that leaves little room for it? You can't even curse in this thing, but I'd heard of people doing stuff like turning their town into a prison by giving everyone a set of orange clothes. Pretty crafty. I then became consumed with doing everything in my power to be cruel to the two penguins in my town in the hopes that they'll stop liking me and then move out. Well, everything outside of actually looking up how to make them move out. Why would I do that? That's boring. Here's a few of the things I've tried. Nothing as genius as prison-town, but, y'know. There's the daily "smack them with my until they get depressed" method. (Subtitle: NO I'M TRYING TO GET YOU TO MOVE OUT AAAAAA). There's the "try to trap them in their own house (and then later wonder how they teleported into another building)" method. There's the "set pitfall traps outside their house" method. Other stuff I've tried but don't have pictures of: sending nasty letters. Refusing to buy them medicine when they get sick, even if that means they're out of commission for like a week straight. Never doing any of the quests the villagers like to send you on. Setting house visiting dates and then standing them up. Less effectively, sometimes I'll swing an axe at them in frustration. I even took to never speaking to them at all—but this was after I'd changed Sprinkle's catchphrase to "I'm moving!" So when I finally caved and talked to Sprinkle again, I temporarily tricked myself into thinking she was moving—I'd forgotten that I changed her catchphrase. @!!%$%**!@$ Sprinkle and Gwen are still there. In fact, the stupid birds love me. I don't get it. One of them calls me "Hon" and the other calls me "Little-A." Ironically, all the villagers I like and try to please have asked to move. Maybe they're scared of me after all this stuff I've been doing? Sigh. Oh, here's the best part. A second lion has moved into my town. Ugh. I guess a mayor's work is never done.

This is how Deadpool deals with the baddies in the beat 'em up game he stars in. The Deadpool game is basically one big comedy show, ripe for GIF-making. The game is full of madness so we couldn't put up everything, but be sure to hit the comments and share those GIFs and videos that are not here. sources: magitekarmor, r/deadpool To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Evan: Gentlemen, there were many good comics this past week. Let's start with Batman/Superman #1 Douglas: I found Batman/Superman less "good" than "beautiful and problematic." Graeme: Now that was a beautiful looking comic book. Evan: I liked it, just not as much as I was hoping to. Graeme: I agree; the art was staggeringly good, but the story felt unclear at times. Douglas: Jae Lee has become a really remarkable image designer, and page designer—one of my favorite pieces of original art I own is a page from that Ultimate Fantastic Four story he did where all the characters were just silhouettes all through the issue. Evan: Pak has impressed me over the years with his superhero work, especially with how he draws emotional tensions between a story's players, but there wasn't enough of that for me. And this was certainly too confusing for a first issue. Douglas: Exactly: the heart of this story is a conflict between two characters whose basic positions it's both redefining and expecting us to take for granted, and it's not a moody/evocative story, which means it doesn't play to Lee's strengths. Graeme: I feel as if it should've been double-length from a story perspective. After reading it, I wasn't entirely sure if there had actually been enough of an introduction to anything, and the cliffhanger was oddly obtuse. Douglas: The solicitation for this issue also only mentioned Jae Lee, and while it kind of made story sense for the art to switch where it did (to the section drawn by Ben Oliver), I have to worry if this is DC running up against deadline issues again. Graeme: It's almost definitely deadline issues - The book was also two weeks late. Evan: It also seemed like that that shift at the end was that meant to convey some kind of displacement. Douglas: Oh boy. So maybe there wasn't a ton of lead time on this one, as opposed to Before Watchmen, e.g. Graeme: I have to say, I liked Oliver's work, and thought it worked well with Lee's, better than I would've expected to be honest. That it happened with the shift to (I assume) another world was a nice touch. Douglas: Most of all, I don't get what the premise for this series is—even what the premise for this initial story is—and that's a serious failing for a first issue. Like, why is this series going to be about Batman and Superman together every issue, when it goes out of its way to indicate that they don't really have anything in common? Evan: Yeah, if Lee doesn't keep pace on this book, I won't stay with it. Graeme: Yeah, exactly. I feel like there's some attempt at "They're contrasting!" but that's nowhere near enough for a series. Pak needed to work harder at establishing what Batman/Superman is all about. And Evan, I really doubt we'll see Lee past the first storyline. Douglas: Also, has it now been established in the DCU that the Kents died in a _car accident_? Graeme: Yeah, that was in Action. Evan: Man, that confused me, too! Douglas: OK, I missed that. Graeme: Morrison established that the Kents died in a car accident because of Vyndytvek or whatever he was called. Evan: But that ties into a complaint I have about the current DCU: the new mythos hasn't had time to take root. to* Graeme: But again, it was taking too much for granted in this first issue to know that - It's hardly a well-known change. Evan: Exactly, Graeme Graeme: Definitely - And there's too much "HOW WILL THIS CHANGE THE STATUS QUO" in their stories, whereas there doesn't feel like there's any status quo anymore. "WHAT IF PA KENT DIDN'T DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT YOU DIDN'T KNOW HE DIED IN ANYWAY?" Douglas: That's a very good point. Graeme: It's very insular, and insular only for those keeping track of the New 52 as is. Even lapsed Superman fans would probably think that Pa was still alive seeing as he was around from 1986 through whenever Geoff Johns killed him (2010?). Evan: It also brings up another element of reading DC's output right now… Douglas: I'm willing to give Pak a bit of rope—he's very good at planning out long-range storylines—but this is an unpromising beginning, as beautiful as it looks. Evan: Part of me is always wondering how much of a given title has been left free of editorial edict. Graeme: Batman/Superman was very much a "Come for the art, read the words afterwards" comic, Douglas. Douglas: And "editorial edict," where current DC is concerned, tends to mean "random nonsensical imposition" rather than "clarifying guideline." Graeme: Evan, DC in general has a real problem with the concept of "creator-led" books right now; even when it's the case, there's always the suspicion that it's all really the work of an editorial hive mind handing down edicts, just because we've seen so many creators complaining of that. Douglas: Did you read that Sean Howe history of Marvel? There's a bit where the then-current editor-in-chief demanded that every comic had to have an "I can't!... But I must!..." moment within the first four pages. Evan: Yeah, and even when it might not be true with the “creator-led” thing, it still feels like it might be. Bad problem for them to have. Douglas, I didn't read the Howe book but that's an amazing detail. Douglas: How many DC titles at the moment really seem like they're a franchise handed over to a gifted creator or two that they totally trust & who can then take it to fresh new places? I count about three Graeme: What're the three?!? Douglas: Wonder Woman, Flash, Batwoman Evan: *opens iPad* Graeme: What's funny is that I am actually enjoying a lot of DC books right now, more than for awhile, but there are few that I genuinely adore. It's a lot of "Oh, hey, that's fun," if that makes sense. Douglas: Graeme, which are the ones you're enjoying most? Graeme: The most? Hrm. Justice League Dark, Flash, Suicide Squad off the top of my head. I have really enjoyed the first month of new creators on Green Lantern, too. But I'm a sucker for Green Lantern in general and so glad to see new blood that isn't Geoff Johns. Douglas: I did appreciate the Suicide Squad storyline being named after Foucault's "Discipline and Punish." Evan: I really like Batgirl, too. Douglas: On the other hand, as happy as I am to see the Giffen/DeMatteis team doing their thing, the fact that there is now a Larfleeze ongoing title speaks to a certain amount of conceptual desperation. Graeme: Batgirl is a little too dark for me, to be honest. But James Gordon Jr. is in Suicide Squad now... (Spoilers?) Agreed, Douglas. And the rumored Sinestro Corps title is the same. Evan: I need to catch up on Suicide Squad, Kotaku bossman Stephen Totilo says it's great. Graeme: The last couple issues are a stealth reboot. Worth checking out. Evan: If anything they need to contract the GL books, I think. Douglas: What else did y'all enjoy this week? Graeme: (Agreed re: contracting GL franchise, BTW). Evan: HAWKEYE Graeme: Oh, this is where I'm the grouch again. Douglas: I wouldn't go so far as saying that Hawkeye #11 was "the best comic book of the year," but it's a really terrific idea, nicely executed. Evan: It's why you're here, Graeme! Graeme: THANK YOU, DOUGLAS. Douglas: Graeme, be a grouch, please! In the meantime, I'll be a cheerleader. Graeme: I agree, it's a well-done and cute comic, but seeing people go overboard with praise is making me grumpy. I'm very happy that Fraction and Aja like Chris Ware so much, let's just put it that way. Evan: Here's why I liked it: Fraction and Aja are carrying the tonal shift of the last few issues through a incredibly unique set of mechanics Douglas: I love that it's a straight-up Chris Ware homage, actually. (Plus that Far Side "what we say to dogs/what they hear" cartoon) Evan: Things are not so happy-go-lucky anymore and it'd be easy to have that communicated through people talking at each other. Graeme: Yeah, the Larson thing makes me laugh but also made me all "I don't think that's the way dogs' brains work" because I am anal. Evan: But focusing on Pizza Dog is a great way to keep some humor and stay on the arc that they're on. Douglas: Aja and Hollingsworth both have an incredible sense of design—I mean , that's a radical piece of cover design (and the "RUFF RUFF RUFF" where the credits usually go made me snicker). Graeme: The Ruff Ruff Ruff thing was great. Kudos to Steve Wacker on that one, definitely. Douglas: Can we also please shout out Hollingsworth's color design for this issue, in particular? OF COURSE: dogs are colorblind! Evan: yeah, it's a different kind of beautiful from what Jae Lee does Graeme: Jae Lee does a... traditionally beautiful beautiful, whereas Aja is a chameleon, and in this one, it's the reduction that works so beautifully (for me, at least). Douglas: It also makes me wonder: why can't more serial comics have this sort of sense of play and experimentation? It's not like it doesn't sell, because Hawkeye is proving that it DOES. Graeme: Well, ish. It's hardly massively successful by Marvel standards. Evan: One other thing about this issue: I was so caught up about seeing things from the dog's-eye-view that I was genuinely surprised at hitting the end of the book Graeme: Surprised in what way, Evan? Douglas: It seems to be selling incredibly well as a trade, though, and that's where the long-term money is. Evan: It just wound up in a place I wasn't expecting. Graeme: Talking about it with you guys is zeroing me in on what I didn't like about it, by the way: it's that the writing tended towards the cute in a way that the art/colors didn't. Am I alone in thinking that? Douglas, agreed on trade success, but Marvel rarely judges success on that basis, sadly. Evan: I didn't get that, Graeme Douglas: I didn't find a lot of cuteness in the writing, aside from the scene with Lucky and his girlfriend. This was a very emotionally dark story as far as I was concerned... Graeme: Kieron Gillen had a great line somewhere about the reason there isn't more creativity in mainstream superhero comics being because creators feel more restricted than they actually are. Do you guys agree? Evan: Totally Douglas: That's a chicken/egg question, but it's also fair to say that lots of creators don't want to lose a gig over being "obscure." Graeme: Douglas, the girlfriend was one of the cute scenes, definitely. But also the teatime with the thugs and the standing guard outside the building page felt a little... I don't know... cute is the only way I can put it. Trying too hard? Too on the nose? I don't know. Evan: That, and experimenting takes time Douglas: And speaking of Gillen! I enjoyed this week's Young Avengers a ton, although we've sung that series' praises here before. Graeme: Experimenting also takes confidence and intent. It's one thing to go "I'm gonna be DIFFERENT!" and another to say "I'm trying to DO THIS." Yes to Young Avengers. I am loving that series a lot. Kate Brown's art was also lovely. Is this a week of lovely art? Douglas: Graeme, true. The point of actual experiments is that they might work and might not. Sure seems to have been a lovely art week, between all of those, Daredevil, Jupiter's Legacy, Prophet, Lazarus... Evan: And for comparison's sake, I felt like I got what I needed to know about characters I didn't really know anything about, like Prodigy Graeme: Evan, yes: I have never read a Prodigy comic before, but I knew who he was. Everything I needed was in the issue. Evan: Whereas Bats/Supes left me in the dark about what I was supposed to focus on regarding its main characters. Douglas: Gillen's really good at getting across necessary info without giving the impression that he's info-dumping. Evan: Let's move to Daredevil, if we may Graeme: Daredevil this week was one of those times when I realize how spoiled I am with the book. Douglas: How so? Graeme: It was REALLY, REALLY good, but for some reason it didn't click for me as previous issues have, and so I felt more a sense of disappointment than I did over Batman/Superman, which is almost definitely of lower quality. Even Samnee's art felt "not as good" this time around, and it's not as if it EVER approaches disappointing. Douglas: I think the past few issues have been cranking the tone up—the revelation of Ikari and the nearly-locked-in Bullseye at the end of last issue was a peak moment—and this one had nowhere to go from there but to see it out. Evan: I loved this issue and it stood out to me as feeling satisfying, when so many endings for big story arcs haven't felt that way. Graeme: Story arcs in general or in Daredevil, Evan? Because I think Waid's been good at sticking the landing throughout on this series. Evan: In general. Douglas: But yeah, one of the things I have liked so much about the Waid-era Daredevil is that nearly every issue expands the series' horizons and possibilities, and this one, of necessity, had to cut off a few. It's not like I'm not itching to read the next one, though. Evan: Waid's work homes in on one of the realities of writing superhero comics in 2013. Graeme: Yeah, even being disappointed in this - which really does feel selfish - I am eagerly awaiting the next issue. Douglas: Explain! Evan: which is that there's a element of... recursive syncretism? to a creator's stewardship. Graeme: You're going to have to unpack that for me, Evan. Evan: You go back over what's been done before and figure out a way to synthesize it into something simultaneously new and familiar. There's a bit of Stan Lee, Gene Colan, even Frank Miller in this run, but he's taken those tonal elements and reconfigured proportions. Douglas: I don't know that that really applies to Hawkeye, though. Or Young Avengers. Evan: Agreed. I shouldn't say that everyone does it or needs to but it makes Daredevil stand out for me. Douglas: I do think it applies much more to Fraction's Fantastic Four/FF, which are very deliberate attempts to find another new path into the Lee/Kirby FF canon—and I'm not sure there's a new path left there. Graeme: I think both Hawkeye and YA are very aware of their contexts and histories, even if it's genre history in the case of YA instead of character history, Douglas. But that might just be me...? Evan: Good point, Graeme Graeme: I think Fraction's F4/FF have been very deliberate attempts to do what Evan's describing (Especially FF's remixing of the Lee/Kirby originals), but not entirely successful. Douglas: True, but I don't think either of them lean too hard on familiarity. (That was in reference to Hawkeye/YA) Graeme: I think Hawkeye is a reaction TO the stylistic/tonal history of the character, so a response but in the different direction. Evan: Oh, absolutely Douglas: Did we have any feelings about the end of Age of Ultron and/or AoU #10AI? "Feelings"!! Evan: Oh, yeah. Age of Ultron felt like it just ended. Like the words and pictures just stopped. Graeme: I had "feelings," alright. Wait, does alternating weeping and laughing count as a feeling? Graeme: Age of Ultron's ending was, fittingly, out of nowhere like the rest of the series. Douglas: I found the end of Age of Ultron incredibly frustrating–fumbling with and then hitting the cosmic reset button, and tacking on teasers for three more events, is not any kind of dramatic resolution. Graeme: The big reveals in the epilogues were laughably weightless, I thought, especially the three pages of Angela. Douglas: Yes. "And we care because...?" Graeme: Age of Ultron as a whole felt like Bendis had an idea he was continually failing to articulate, and getting distracted from. Evan: Yeah, those beginning issues were so great Graeme: "So, I'm gonna tell a story about time travel, no wait, let's spend half the series in a time that won't exist and then, wait, what if there's an alternate reality and, hang on, everyone likes dragons, wait" and so on. Douglas: It's not like Marvel doesn't know how to do events that can push parts of the line in a new direction—AvX actually did that pretty nicely. But this produced very little of value. Evan: It felt like it was going to be more character-focused but then veered into all this bombast. Graeme: AoU felt like a contractual obligation instead of a story. "Oh, hey, we have these five issues of Bryan Hitch art..." Douglas: (In AoU itself, I thought the scene of the two Wolverines working out which one of them is going to kill the other was kind of fantastic; outside AoU proper, I loved the two tie-in issues of Avengers Assemble.) Graeme: Agreed on Avengers Assemble tie-ins, Douglas. Best part of the whole thing. Evan: There was a good Fantastic Four one, too. Douglas: You probably got many more of the jokes in the second one than I did (even with the annotations), but yes—really really really well-done. Graeme: Al Ewing doing Mighty Avengers is easily the best mainstream comics news I've seen in a long time. Douglas: AGREED. Evan: I'm hopeful even though that's spinning out of another big event.Piggybacking on your point Douglas, it feels like these events are fine when they have impact. Graeme: I think impact is often the point of these events, and this one was clearly meant to have some with the "time is broken" epilogues. It's just that that idea feels entirely disconnected from the rest of the series.

Killer is Dead, the latest mind-bending action game from Killer7 director Suda 51 and Grasshopper Manufacture, will hit store shelves in North America on August 27 with a bevy of bonus goodies in tow.

Publisher Xseed Games notes that all launch copies of Killer is Dead will include an 80-page hardcover art book, a soundtrack disc featuring 25 tracks by Silent Hill series composer Akira Yamaoka, and a download code for the "Smooth Operator" DLC pack, which adds extra in-game missions and other bonus content.

Deep Silver will publish an identical deluxe version of Killer is Dead in Europe on August 30.

With a soundtrack that's about as fresh as these recently upright corpses.

A survival game with no humans, solely focused on animals, is about as far as you can get from a platformer.

Starting tomorrow, Motorola is running a new ad for the Moto X, which claims you'll have some input on your smartphone's look.

Mutants have waved the ‘hated & feared’ flag in the Marvel Universe pretty much since the introduction of the X-Men fifty years ago. But, after the events of the publisher’s Age of Ultron event, humanity’s evolutionary offshoot will have some competition from the non-organic consciousnesses roaming in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s backyard. A new series called Avengers A.I. focuses on the frontlines of mankind-vs-machine drama, with members hailing from the robots and androids community. The Vision? Yup, that makes sense. A Doombot? Uh, aren’t these supposed to be the good guys? There are some humans on this new Avengers team, of course, chief amongst them Hank Pym. The super-scientist at the center of Age of Ultron is tasked with cleaning up some of his mess, as ripples from the crossover appear to be connected to a new machine-intelligence threat. The cast of characters includes some new and old characters, too, in a take that mirrors some of what’s happening in Uncanny Avengers. I had a chance to send some questions to series writer Sam Humphries and in the answers below, he discusses the Vision’s emotions, Hank Pym’s craziness and what the coming Singularity will look like in the Marvel Universe. Kotaku: There’s a distinct difference in tone from the Age of Ultron mini-series and the first issue of Avengers A.I. Does all the bickering and banter mean that this will be a more down-to-earth follow-up to that series’ grim time traveling? Yeah, you can't do grim apocalyptic epics all the time, right? Avengers A.I. is an Avengers book. They are 110% bonafide Earth's Mightiest Heroes. They also have a mandate that will put them up against robot, android, and artificial intelligence threats. So, yeah — this book is going to have a much different tone than AOU. It's gonna be weird, crazy, and fun. Kotaku: How long after the end of Age of Ultron does this new series start? Time travel stories + fuzzy comic book math = I don't want to fall in the trap of putting a number on it. But let me put it this way: AOU was recent enough that it still haunts Hank Pym, but distant enough that his actions at the end of that story now have irrevocable consequences for the Marvel Universe. The future is here, it is threatening to grind humanity into dust, and there's no turning back. Kotaku: The Singularity is the looming threat in Avengers A.I. If you had to have your consciousness uploaded into any Marvel artificial being, who would it be? Garret from Elektra: Assassin. Who wouldn't want to be drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz? Kotaku: Are we going to see a more well-adjusted Hank Pym at this point? In terms of his fictional biography, it feels like he’s been unbalanced longer than he was ever sane. Is being functionally dysfunctional the norm for him at this point? Will we see manic highs and depressive lows? In the past — not always, but definitely sometimes — Hank Pym's mental illness has been treated like a cold, or a super villian. He's crazy! Now he's sane again. Look out, the crazy is back! How's he going to escape this time? I would argue that Hank's "dysfunctional" is actually more "functional" than "normal" people. Hank has a chronic condition. There is no cure, there is no endpoint, there is no end of the labyrinth where you can say, "I've escaped!" You focus on managing your condition, you work hard to live a life as normally as possible, and understand that it's not going to be as easy as it is for the people around you. This is a fact of life for hundreds of millions of people with chronic condition. I'm epileptic, I can never be cured, I can just focus on making every day better than the last. This gets really interesting when you put it in the day-to-day context of being an Avenger. Kotaku: In the first issue, the Vision feels somewhere in between the pretty-much-human character he was in, say, The Vision & The Scarlet Witch mini-series and the more remote persona from his earliest appearances. What’s his relationship to humanity at this point? Does he care about having feelings anymore? The Vision was dead for most of the past ten years. Now that he's back, he's at a crossroads. He used to be, at best, a minority, and at worst, a novelty. But now there's been an explosion of artificial intelligence in the Marvel Universe. He's gone from being the one robot at the party to having millions of brothers and sisters. We'll see how that shifts the Vision's keel, how he finds a new role for himself in this brave new world. Kotaku: Both Hank Pym and Bruce Banner are mad scientists both leading super-teams in the Marvel Universe now. Is there a rivalry between the characters or creative teams on Avengers A.I. and Indestructible Hulk? How do you make sure you’re staying out of each other’s way? I make deliberate, factually incorrect statements about the Legion of Superheroes every day on Twitter — just to get in under Waid's skin. Shake him out of his zone, y'know? Ya gotta get in their heads, man. You think this is a game?! There's more than enough room for one super genius in the Marvel Universe. But we're all in the loop together. Waid's a maestro with this stuff so I'll talk his ear off any chance I get, just to see what he says. He wrote the Hank Pym prelude one shot, so he's been in the mix on Avengers A.I. since the early stages and his input was invaluable. We just got back from the Marvel Summit in New York where we all compared notes on the next year or so of our books. Waid's run on Hulk has already been awesome but it's about to get even better. Kotaku: Vision’s sporting some new abilities in the first issue. Can we expect similar upgrades for other characters? Alexis is a brand new character and a bleeding edge artificial intelligence. We meet her briefly in issue 1 and her mystery spins out from there. I'd argue that she represents an upgrade for every robot, android, and A.I. in the Marvel Universe.

When Stephen saw it or, rather, heard it, Mad Max's characters had no Australian accents and developers Avalanche Studios had no plans to include them, upsetting Mad Max devotees of all national origins. That posture has been officially reversed. Attn. fans who want Max to have an Aussie accent in #MadMaxGame : It shall be so. We admire your loyalty. You have been heard. — Christofer Sundberg (@CHSundberg) July 2, 2013 Christofer Sundberg is the founder of Avalanche Studios, makers of badass action series such as Just Cause. So you may consider his word law. Glad we cleared that up! I know Luke will be pleased. Now, will Max walk with a limp? And will he drive a 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT351 Coupe? To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Killer Is Dead, the next stylish action game by Suda51, will be out August 27 in North America, publisher XSEED said today. (August 30 in Europe.)

The second season of The Legend of Korra can't come soon enough. Fortunately there's some stuff to tide us over, the most recent of which is a cool interactive book Nickelodeon released for free today on iTunes. It's called The Legend of Korra: Enhanced Experience. There's concept art, storyboards, animatics and more included in said book according to IGN. I'm downloading it right now (and you can too, here), but already the storyboard versus final scene stuff looks interesting. The Legend of Korra: Sneak Peek at the New Enhanced Experience Interactive Book [IGN]

At a mere .66 inches thick and powerful enough to capably handle some of the most demanding games on the market, Razer's new 14-inch Blade might be the coolest piece of equipment I've ever played a PC game on. It's certainly the hottest. Once known for its mid-to-high-end gaming peripherals, Razer has gotten to a point where I can no longer refer to them as an accessory manufacturer. Between the original 17-inch Razer Blade, the Edge PC gaming tablet, and now this ridiculously thin beauty, the company has definitely made an impression on the PC gaming market. With engineers pushing the envelope and leadership unafraid to sacrifice a lower price point for a more innovative product, Razer is one of the gutsiest companies building gaming machines today. Case in point, the new Razer Blade, the 14-inch machine that's taking over the Blade name while its 17-inch predecessor goes pro. Prior to its debut in late May, Razer teased the unit with the tagline "thinner than a dime." As Kirk Hamilton pointed out during a write-up of his hands-on time with the unit, perhaps "shorter than a dime" would have been more appropriate. Another Razer marketing favorite is "impossibly thin," a much more apt description of the new Blade, as I can't see how it performs as well as it does without exploding. Crammed inside this sleek and sexy aluminium housing is a Intel Core i7-4702HQ quad core processor running at 2.2GHz (3.2 when Turbo Boosted) and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Cooling this sort of hardware is the very reason most dedicated gaming laptops are big and bulky. Yet the 14-inch Razer Blade survives marathon gaming sessions of demanding games — I've run Metro: Last Light on the highest settings for 10 hours straight — without melting into a puddle, and all the external cooling I can see is these two tiny fan vents on the bottom of the unit. That doesn't mean the unit doesn't get hot. It gets damn hot — so hot that a more traditional PC manufacturer might not have approved the design. What's amazing about the Blade's design is where it gets hot. I promised myself I wouldn't use stock images in this review, but this one's unavoidable. The Blade's unique thermal solution, as seen but probably not understood in the photo above, pipes all of the system's heat to the rear of the unit. On top, it's the area between the keyboard and the display. These areas get piping hot — not so much that brushing your finger past them would burn you, but holding them against the metal for any extended time is out of the question. This is not a system you'd want to bring with you into the bathroom (that's what the Edge is for). Unless you're planning to play PC games exclusively on your bare legs, the heat is little more than an annoyance, one easily overlooked in the light of the power packed into the Blade's slender, four pound frame. I tested several popular PC games, each running at their highest possible settings at the Blade's native 1600x900 resolution. Tomb Raider averaged 40 frames per second. BioShock Infinite averaged in the low 40s as well. Metro: Last Light's benchmark gave me an average of 31 FPS, but the game, as seen in the video above, seemed to run much better than the benchmark, easily averaging 45. The numbers may not be impressive compared to those of a high-end PC packed with top-of-the-line full-size graphics cards, but these are games running at ultra settings, on a machine that's only .66 inches thick. There is no other machine that comes close to pushing the amount of power the new Blade does in a similar form factor, period. Even when not engaged in a heated battle with demanding PC games, the new Blade is an impressive machine. The aluminum construction is impressively sturdy, the design understated, even with the ever-present glowing green serpent logo. The Killer wireless chip is quite speedy, important in a system without a physical network port. The built-in stereo speakers give good sound, though a nice set of headphones is preferred. The trackpad is a trackpad — external mouse for the win — devoid of the customizable Switchblade interface keys of its bigger brother. That's probably for the best. If I could improve one aspect of the new Blade, it would be the screen. It's quite lovely when you look at it just right, but the viewing angle isn't spectacular — expect regular adjustments if you shift about in your seat a lot while playing. The battery life could be better as well. I could see getting the promised six hours out of it during everyday use, but cord-free gaming isn't going to last more than an hour and a half before the system needs more juice. When Razer first got into the gaming PC business, trumpeting its rallying cry of "PC Gaming Is Not Dead," I was certain the company's plan to change the face of PC gaming was little more than marketing hype. Now that I've seen the original Blade, the Edge, and this impossible beauty, I'm not so sure. With the new 14-inch Razer Blade, the company has created a gaming machine the likes of which we may not have seen for a at least another couple of years otherwise. This sort of fearless innovation is exactly what the PC gaming hardware industry needs to take them beyond the big scary boxes and into the hearts and homes of gamers everywhere. The 14-Inch Blade is available for purchase at Razerzone.com.

Yesterday's Kotaku article about the arrest of a fighting game competitor for allegedly striking his ex-girlfriend after-hours at the CEO gaming tournament has provoked heated response, much of it from members of the fighting game community who feel their scene is treated unfairly by this site. Sadly, we've been here before, after covering a prominent incident of verbal sexual harassment by a fighting game coach early last year. We were accused of parachuting in, of only arriving to cover scandal. Meanwhile, many in the fighting game community mixed criticism of our site with self-reflection about the scene's problems with how it engages with and deals with sexism. Fighting gamers complained that we didn't give them a fair shake, that we ignored the positives of a beautifully ethnically-diverse scene of gamers that has often acted with charity to its own. They complained that we didn't get them, didn't know their games, didn't care other than when there was an opportunity to make them look bad. Wrong, we said, and asked—admittedly with some of the clunk of something that was going to seem like damage control—for help in talking about the positives of the fighting game community. The cycle is now repeating itself: we published news; we're criticized for running it while members of the fighting game community simultaneously attack Kotaku while lamenting their own circling of the wagons on this matter...and here we are with this piece. The cycle doesn't have to repeat. We at Kotaku don't want it to. So let's take a step back. Let's take a step back from some of the disturbing criticism that our story = white people targeting the non-white fighting game scene—as if we didn't cover gaming crimes allegedly committed by people of all types, didn't cover scandal in non-fighting eSports and didn't regularly cover diversity issues and weren't in fact a team comprised of a diverse set of writers and reporters. Let's take a step back from the erroneous assumption that we only parachute in to write about scandal, when we've covered some of the fighting game community's kindest actions again and again and again and again. The fact is that we at Kotaku cover what we know, which is a combination of what our reporters have expertise in, what our reporters uncover and what tipsters tell us about. This is why we regularly write about new fighting games like Divekick, which we know how to cover at events like PAX, or why we cover some of the interesting design wrinkles in fighting games thanks to the fact that the wonderful Seth Killian exists to explain them to us. There are always going to be more stories to cover than even we can get to, and so we will always be somewhat reliant on the tips of our own readers to signal stories we may have missed. This is standard in any type of reporting. There is a meme in the fighting game community when something unseemly is said or when there's scandal or faux-scandal that someone should "call Kotaku." The truth is that members of the FGC seldom do. Over the weekend, someone did. As a result, we reported the story and did so with the balance we think our readers deserve, complete with coverage of the police report, attempts for comment from relevant parties and context of the overall fighting game scene, pro and con, to make it clear that one incident shouldn't represent an entire scene. This is what someone "called" Kotaku about. No one calls Kotaku about thrilling fighting game matches. No one calls Kotaku about the upsets and the streaks, the comebacks and the records, the highs and lows, the big wins and spectacular losses. Perhaps it's because we've never asked you to. So, I'm asking... if you see an amazing match, something you think more people who love video games need to see... please tell us. We're going to continue to report and do our best to spot the good stuff, but insightful sources always help. Fighting game fans, we do want to cover your eSport as a sport. We do want to, but we admittedly struggle to identify the best matches, and so we surely miss some of the scene's most exciting moments. Yesterday, a couple of people remarked that members of the fighting game community had once again rallied to help another gamer in need—in this case pooling money together to help a fellow gamer keep their home. This is a wonderful thing. It's also the type of story we've covered regularly. But let's focus on what Kotaku is not sufficiently covering, which I believe is both what I want more of and what more fighting game fans would like to see: the action... the games. Here's something: reader flagged me to a match from CEO that had a surprising ending. The match took place in a cage. The winner gets so excited that he rips off part of the cage. Not the most amazing scene—could've been shot better—but not bad... Here's a close match from Sunday at CEO that just got posted to YouTube in the last 24 hours, well after we ran highlights of some top matches from last weekend's other tournament, Major League Gaming's Spring Championships. We've got renowned fighting game expert Justin Wong against the current dominant fighting gamer Chris G. And here's Chris G again in the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 finals from CEO, also just uploaded to YouTube in the last 24 hours. Want to see more stuff like that? I sense that Kotaku readers want to see more of the great moments in eSports, so we're going to try to show you more of them. Going forward, I'd rather give clips like the ones in this post their own place on Kotaku, separate from addressing any reaction to our coverage of a crime story. That wasn't an option this time, as it's never an option to avoid elephants in the room. Last year, we embedded the streams for EVO, the granddaddy of all fighting game tournaments. We expect to again later this month. We've been embedding the streams for other eSports events and will improve our consistency of that. We're going to do our best to watch the matches more closely, but, again, this is where we will benefit from those who decide to call Kotaku not because they're outraged or because they assume we only care about the bad stuff but who understand that we want to know about the things fighting game fans are the most excited about. Tell us about those and there's a good chance we'll tell more of the world about them through our site. (Up top: CEO 2013's Street Fighter IV grand final between Momochi and Xian.) To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo