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Nearly thirty years after the first game was released, veteran British developer Mel Croucher has decided that now is the time to jump on the Kickstarter bandwagon and make a sequel to 1984 cult classic Deus Ex Machina. You can see the trailer above. Its got Christopher Lee in it! And a rock music soundtrack, just the original. And...well, I'll leave you to soak up the rest of it yourselves (know that the first game was bonkers, if that helps). The game's actually been in development for a few years - hence all this footage - but hey, it can't hurt to get more cash together to get it over the line. Deus Ex Machina 2 [Kickstarter]

Another game, State of Decay, has been refused classification (read: banned) in Australia. It's the second in two days, and comes despite the country finally getting an adults-only rating last year.

The Game Critic Awards, of which some editors of this website (not me!) are judges, have announced their nominees for the 2013 Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 awards. These are the real deal; while individual sites can slap a ribbon or badge on anything they want, these nominees were settled on by a hivemind of representatives of 30 of the biggest and most influential video game outlets on the planet. A quick note on which games were eligible and which weren't: a game had to be playable by judges. Which is why some games not playable on the showroom floor are on this list, and why others not playable by anyone - like Metal Gear Solid V, Smash Bros. Wii U and The Division - were excluded. The winners will be announced next Tuesday. Best of Show- Destiny (Bungie/Activision)- Oculus Rift HD (Oculus VR)- PlayStation 4(Sony Computer Entertainment)- Titanfall (Respawn Games/Electronic Arts)- Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)Best Original Game- Destiny (Bungie/Activision)- Fantasia: Music Evolved (Harmonix/Disney Interactive)- Rain (Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Titanfall (Respawn Games/Electronic Arts)- Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)Best Console Game- Batman: Arkham Origins (WBIE Montreal/WBIE)- Beyond: Two Souls (Quantic Dream/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Destiny (Bungie/Activision)- Infamous: Second Son (Sucker Punch/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Titanfall (Respawn Games/Electronic Arts)- Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)Best Handheld Game- Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (Armature Studio/WBIE)- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (Capcom/Capcom)- Plants vs. Zombies 2 (Popcap/EA)- Tearaway (Media Molecule/Sony Computer Entertainment)- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Two Worlds (Nintendo EAD/Nintendo)Best PC Game- Battlefield 4 (DICE/Electronic Arts)- Company of Heroes 2 (Relic/Sega)- The Elder Scrolls Online (Zenimax Online/Bethesda)- Titanfall (Respawn/Electronic Arts)- Total War: Rome II (Creative Assembly/Sega)Best Hardware- Oculus Rift (Oculus VR)- PlayStation 4 (Sony Computer Entertainment)- Blade (Razr)- Shield (Nvidia)- Xbox One (Microsoft)Best Action Game- Battlefield 4 (DICE/Electronic Arts)- Call of Duty Ghosts (Infinity Ward/Activision)- Destiny (Bungie/Activision)- Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerilla Games/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Titanfall (Respawn/Electronic Arts)Best Action/Adventure Game- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)- Batman: Arkham Origins (WBIE Montreal/WBIE)- Bayonetta 2 (Platinum Games/Nintendo)- Infamous: Second Son (Sucker Punch/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Watch Dogs (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)Best RPG- Dark Souls II (FromSoftware/Namco-Bandai)- The Elder Scrolsl Online (Zenimax Online/Bethesda)- Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (AlphaDream/Nintendo)- Shin Megami Tensei IV (Atlus/Atlus)- South Park: The Stick of Truth (Obsidian/Ubisoft)Best Racing Game- Forza 5 (Turn 10 Studio/Microsoft Studios)- Gran Turismo 6 (Polyphony Digital/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo EAD/Nintendo)- Need for Speed: Rivals (Ghost Games/Electronic Arts)- The Crew ( Ivory Tower/Ubisoft)Best Sports Game- FIFA 14 (EA Canada/EA Sports)- NHL 14 (EA Canada/EA Sports)- Madden NFL 25 (Tiburon/EA Sports)- Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 (PES Productions/Konami)Best Strategy Game- Command and Conquer (Victory Games/Electronic Arts)- Company of Heroes 2 (Relic/Sega)- Pikmin 3 (Nintendo EAD/Nintendo)- Total War: Rome II (Creative Assembly/Sega)Best Social/Casual- Disney Infinity (Avalanche/Disney Interactive)- Fantasia: Music Evolved (Harmonix/Disney Interactive)- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (TT Games/WBIE)- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time (Popcap/EA)- Skylanders: Swap Force (Vicarious Visions/Activision)- Project Spark (Team Daokta/Microsoft Studios)Best Online Multiplayer- Battlefield 4 (DICE/Electronic Arts)- Destiny (Bungie/Activision)- Titanfall (Respawn/Electronic Arts)- The Elder Scrolls Online (Zenimax Online/Bethesda)- Watch Dogs (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)Best Downloadable- Contrast (Compulsion Games)- Octodad: Dadliest Catch (Young Horses Inc)- Outlast (Red Barrels)- Rain (Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment)- Transistor (Supergiant Games)

The following is an excerpt from Earthbound, Ken Baumann's upcoming book about Nintendo's cult classic 1994 RPG. “I mean, you have to pray to beat an emotion!” Scott laughs. “Yeah.” “How did this game get made?” • It's hard for me to reconcile EarthBound with any video games I've played since. Most games traffic in repetitive gristly thrills, but EarthBound focuses on emotion, on yearning. The team behind Call of Duty promotes the realism of its weaponry, which implies their pride in its resultant gore, but EarthBound's marketing campaign primarily hinged on scratch and sniff stickers designed to evoke the smell of hotdogs and vomit. Hundred million dollar games like Grand Theft Auto IV are made by reclusive Lamborghini-driving auteurs and massive teams of developers, programmed to simulate American hustle, but I don't think there's a game that embraces—and satirizes—America's sentimental mongrel spirit better than EarthBound, which was produced by less than twenty people, helmed by a copywriter-turned-philosopher. • I'm starting this book now, and writing about starting this book now, for a few reasons. The first is the most obvious and the most perennial: I'm on a deadline. I'm also tempted to lose myself in further research, but I know that could lead to a creative paralysis, so I'm preempting that you'll-never-know-enough anxiety by starting today. I'm also writing about writing right now—self-narrating, self-aware, like some of the most powerful moments in EarthBound—because I'm thinking about time. A few days ago, I called my older brother for the first time in a year. Well, nearly a year. We had spent time with each other when I got married—June 16th, 2012—but it's been awhile, and major events have occurred in both our lives and I haven't called the guy. I felt and still feel bad about this. I thought this book about EarthBound would be the perfect excuse to reconnect with him, get us talking again. Why I thought I needed a writing project to reconnect with my brother instead of any of the various quakes in our lives—familial death, lost jobs, new homes—is mysterious to me. Mysterious if I chalk it up to something more than “Well, I'm just an asshole.” So when I called him a few days ago, I felt guilty. But then I told him about writing this book. And then we started talking about EarthBound. • “I remember we got it, but we didn't play it for awhile,” Scott says. “Really?” “But when we finally started it we were obsessed with it. Played it all day on the weekends.” “I'm curious… What do you remember the most about it?” “The scratch and sniff cards in Nintendo Power—” “Yes! Holy shit!” The smell of caked barbecue Lay's potato chip dust on the pads of my fingers. “Do you remember the Mr. Barf smell?” “No—” Carbon Dog. The card that smelled like barbecue. “That was the strangest smell. I can't... I don't know how to describe it.” “For the sake of my book, you've gotta try.” “Maybe like... a pickle. A pickle but grosser. You remember Twang Pickle Salt?” “No.” I google Twang Pickle Salt. ADD zing TO anything! “It smelled like that,” Scott says. • You start up EarthBound and you see three somber logos: Nintendo, Ape, Halken. White on black. The Ape Inc. logo is hard to make out—scratchy white lines rendered by the Super Nintendo's 16-bit CPU—but it seems to be a Neanderthal man holding a torch next to the word APE, spelled out with bones. The next company, Halken, now known as HAL Laboratory Inc., is named after the brilliant and murderous HAL 9000 computer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Halken's logo reminds me of something, so I trawl the internet. I search for Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a movie I watched roughly six thousand times in my childhood, trying to find the name and fictive logo of the company that manufactures Skynet, another cybernetic machine that tries to eradicate its master. The Cyberdyne Systems logo comes up and it's too pyramidal, so I keep looking. I google 'Warner Bros. 70s logo' and hit symbolic paydirt—the vintage WB logo is a prelude to Halken's dots and dashes, and it's designed by Saul Bass, a designer whom I've come to love while learning about design, trying to feel learned enough to feel competent enough to say to other people, “Yes, I will design your book cover and it will look great.” The synchronicity here spooks me. What's even deeper about this dig into EarthBound's opening credit iconography is that both companies explicitly reference 2001, the movie that blew my twelve-year-old mind more than any other filmic experience, injecting philosophical questions into my kid-sized head that I didn't even know could exist. EarthBound came out in the summer of 1995. I was five. I don't know how old my brother was then, because I don't know how old he is now. • I grew up in Potosi, Texas. In 1992, when I was three, 1441 souls lived there, its windy flat shelf typically oil-laden. Over the next eight years, Potosi's population grew by 223 people. I grew up among animals. Lots of them. We called it a ranch, and it was functional: my mother rehabilitated wounded animals, no matter the species, and bred and showed miniature horses. At one point we hosted Tater Tot, the world's smallest stallion for about a year. My mom drafted an acronym in his name, of course: Talk of the Town. Trying to recover some internet-extant record of Tater Tot's miniature prowess comes up blank, but then leads me to another miniature horse named Tater Tot, covered by National Geographic as he visited hospitals and schools in Salmon, Idaho. I'm realizing that more and more of my past doesn't empirically exist if it's not salvageable with a Google search. The point I'm trying to muster is that I can't remember much of my sixth year alive. I mean, I can feel impressionist activities, but they lack climactic punctuation, looped and redrawn a million times by the attempts to recall and sharpen the memory in the first place. Allergies. High West Texan winds. Jumping on the trampoline. Watching out the north window, full of fear, for white, spindly clouds. “It was a really mature game, though.” Scott's getting enthusiastic. “You had to be an adult, or maybe at least a teenager to get all the innuendos.” “Yeah, I remember it feeling naughty. I don't know if I even knew what naughty felt like then, but...” I think about the time Scott called me upstairs to his computer, its monitor boldly in sight of anyone near the foot of the stairs, which was in turn near the front door. I stood at the top of the steps and stared at the screen, MS-DOS cursor blinking, wanting input. Pick a number, Scott said. One through thirteen. I paused, no idea what was coming. Thirteen, I said. Scott smiled, typed something, pecked Enter with a triumphant pointer finger, and revealed to me my first piece of pornography. A hippy redhead, a leather holster loosely arcing across hips and a smooth belly the color of our galaxy's blessed cosmic cream, and then of course there were boobs and a very bare bathing suit area. All said: immediate boner. Maybe immediate is an exaggeration. Hell, this memory feels like archaeological prophecy. I invite you—only this once under a self-enforced penalty of death—to Google my wife. “And, it was a RPG, but it felt like a totally different genre.” Scott says. “What do you mean?” “It was a lot simpler than most RPGs. There were only three core stats, only a few possible actions during battle sequences—the mechanics are really simple.” The mechanics. I pop out of forgetfulness to remember that Scott still programs video games. • The original North American Super Nintendo looks like a pallid tank, a chunky glyph. The old consoles are undeniably utilitarian looking, as if the rush to get them to market necessitated nothing more than plastic housing and functional controllers. The evolution of gaming consoles is less obviously linear than the march of Moore's law—game console design has oscillated between geometric, slot-full bricks, and sleek, sportscar-esque parabolas. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos gave a lecture in 1910 titled Ornament and Crime. It's a wild document, narcissistic and riled and a preachy, delivered by an architect-gone-ideologue who was in love with America. There's a line from the speech that went on to majorly impact architecture: The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. In the Villa Moller, a house Adolf designed in 1927, I see the blocky origins of the Super Nintendo. Might video game consoles might someday be purely utilitarian? Will screen-based media consumption someday be deemed necessary for psychological health? • As a kid, playing EarthBound felt like inhabiting a world as wide as human imagination. Just typing that sentence makes me want to start the game on my Macbook Pro. I've ordered an original SNES controller and the necessary USB adapter. I plan on plugging my laptop to the TV in my living room, sitting on my The Shining-esque rug, and playing through the entire game for the first time as an adult. “Final Fantasy VI had a bunch of different mechanics—it had the esper system, relics, custom moves for each character, real time input for certain stuff in combat—” “Yeah. You're right—there's something really elegant about EarthBound. It's like they decided to ignore everything that took away from the characters and the story. And the really weird tone.” “I mean, all you had to do is grind, and all you had to do to grind is level up, restore your health, upgrade your gear. Simple.” I feel impressed by Scott's breadth of video game knowledge and lingo. How casually he can deliver this shit. The next line from the notes I took during our two hour conversation is this jot, written without context: “Local story” • EarthBound's creator, Shigesato Itoi, became famous for his slogans. My favorite advertisement of his came out in June 1982—about a year before Nintendo released the Family Computer in Japan, known as the Nintendo in North America—and it's stark. Presumably reacting to a combo of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Japan's incoming Prime Minister—Yasuhiro Nakasone, the Ministry of Defense's director general—antimilitarism was rising among Japanese citizens. Published in the now-defunct magazine Kokoku Hihyo (literally “advertisement criticism”), the anti-war ad features a single white line of text and two Japanese soldiers. Helmets shade their faces into half-anonymity. They bow slightly, their far hands gesturing out toward the gray expanse of a painted soundstage wall. Their shadows are harsh convex half-circles, like a hand painted Zen ensō cleaved in two. Shigesato's slogan runs down the center of the image, ending between the men's hearts. “After you, Prime Minister.” His copywriting career lasted decades, fueled by Japan's economic bubble of the 1970's and 80's. His other copywriting work is all over the place—selling cars, jewelry, Suntori liquor, makeup, clothes, rock bands, Studio Ghibli's animated films—hell, even Woody Allen shows up. Shigesato's most iconic campaign, promoting the multi-floored Seibu department stores, features Woody and the phrase “Delicious life”. Japanese department stores are certainly sensual, and massive. My wife and I travelled through Japan for our honeymoon and our favorite store, Tokyo Hands, sports eight floors, the store's wares rising in sophistication while you ascend its behemoth levels. Second floor: suitcases and wallets. Eighth floor: stationary and “book reading supplies.” I realize that the malls in Earthbound aren't like most American malls—they don't sprawl out, repping shopping corridors like malignant appendages. They're department stores. • “I think we started playing it on the weekends and we'd play it all day, every day.” I laugh. “Sounds about right. How long did it take us to beat it?” I listen to Scott pause. “Maybe two months. One to two months of eight to ten hours a day, or whenever mom walked in and was like, 'Go outside now.'” “I remember playing it, but maybe I'm just making that up. I mean, I was five or six. Normally I'd just watch you play a lot of games, like I was watching you control a movie for us.” “No, we swapped back and forth.” Scott's seven years older than me. I realize this. Twelve-year-old Scott passing five-year-old Ken the controller. If you don't have an older brother, or you have an older brother but he's terrible, I'm sorry. • The company logos disappear. Eleven seconds into EarthBound's opening, a high-pitched whine fades in. A glitchy bloodstream of red and yellow static fills the screen. The whine is matched, doubled, synced—for fifteen seconds, it sounds like a chorus of car alarms, dying satellites and falling bombs heralding in some chaos. The static's replaced by an image of a city street at dusk. Its vanishing point is down and to the right. A placard—G A S—on the building in the foreground, frame left. Set against the purple and yellow sky are three flying saucers, each firing a ropey bolt of some energy down to the ground and into unseen buildings in the distance. It feels cinematic—the scene's letterboxed with odd concave lines, as if we're viewing it from the safety of a visored helmet, or from within some faraway theater. Capitalized and urgent red text at the top of frame reads: THE WAR AGAINST GIYGAS! At twenty-five seconds, the sky sparks. You feel these attacks, these strikes, the flashes of white light—both in the painted sky and reflecting off the buildings—each scored with a thump of bass. Then tighter thumps, and tighter, nonrhythmic. Explosions. The music's pure dystopia now—minor notes and the convincingly rendered sound of a panicked crowd—yelling, screaming—the lightning quickens, the explosions burst closer together, the sky quickly strobes and the sound rises—the whole screen goes white— Less than two seconds of black later, EarthBound's jazzy and Latin-neighborhood-wakes-up-to-a-glorious-sunrise-after-a-nightlong-block-party-esque theme music plays, the deco title card swings in, and you're thinking: what the *crag* kind of game is this? You can get a copy of Earthbound from the Kickstarter page of its publisher, Boss Fight Books.

The people working on the Rise of the Triad reboot take the game's 90s roots very seriously. They've already re-created the cover art, characters, and feel of Apogee's cult classic, and they're putting the same care into the soundtrack. This video diary details how they're re-recording the classic tracks from the original game, and if you're anything like me, hearing those tunes again will take you back.

Tiny Brains didn't exist seven months ago - hell, Spearhead Games, the developer of Tiny Brains, didn't exist seven months ago. The studio was founded in December by a trio of AAA desserters, including Dead Space 3 Game Designer Malik Boukhira and Assassin's Creed 3 Design Director Simon Darveau, and by E3 this year they had a stylish, playable next-gen game on the show floor.

Tiny Brains is due out on Steam, PSN and XBLA this fall, with a launch on PS4 to follow. It's a lot for one brand new studio to handle, but Darveau tells me he has the passion to make it happen - and it has to happen now.

"I really believe that a revolution is coming and that the future will belong to those guys who know how to create new types of experiences," Darveau says. "It was a very difficult choice for me to quit, because I was in a stable position and I was successful, but I felt like if I didn't do this I would miss the train. Something is happening right now, something huge, and it's only the beginning, I'm convinced of that."

And after some time playing it, I think Tiny Brains could be part of "something huge."

You may recall Molyjam, a 2012 "game jam" that brought together amateur and professional game developers from around the world to make games based on the weird ideas espoused by the satirical Peter Molydeux Twitter account. That account, of course, was a joke version of the very real game designer Peter Molyneux. Yes, it was all kind of difficult to explain. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta silent Xes. Well, guess whose ideas they're using for their second game jam? If you guessed "The actual Peter Molyneux," you win a prize! Maybe a weird and provocative prize, like the one inside of Molyneux's Curiosity cube. But a prize, nonetheless. Yes, the people behind the game jam have opted to base their second game jam (coming up this July) on the words of the man himself. They've taken Molyneux's own quotes out of context and used them to come up with 22 game ideas, any of which can be turned into a game by game jam participants. So, if you're keeping track, brings this entire meta-referential exercise all the way back around and up its own conceptual keister. The original Molyjam was a crashing success that attracted, according to Molyjam organizers, more than 900 developers across 35 cities worldwide. They created hundreds of playable (or, "playable") games, with at least two going on to find funding. The new game jam is hoping to replicate that success. Says Brandon Sheffield, one of the Molyjam organizers: We've gathered around 60 quotes for people to choose from, and we've got a "curated" list of 22 quotes, one for each of Molyneux' cans. But anyone who is enterprising enough can go out and find a quote of their own, so long as they are able to source it. There are some choice quotes in there, like like "Pull the right trigger to see The Most Interesting Thing In The World," and, "It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate." Or your very own, "If you go into battle, you could win a ginger-haired person!" Sheffield says that as it turns out, Molyneux's quotes, when taken out of context, provide "a crazy goldmine" of odd ideas. Enough, they're hoping, to cue a new group of developers to come up with a new bunch of weird games of their own. They're emphasizing that all game types are welcome, from polished 3D games to simple Twine games and text-adventures; the idea is just to get as many people as possible involved, have a good time, and to see what comes of it. Molyjam Part 2 will run from July 5-7, and you can sign up and find more information at the Molyjam Site. Godspeed, you crazy kids. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of all this.

Broforce: you're still a bro, and you're still blowing s**t up...and that's still awesome judging from this new development trailer. You can play a brototype build here, and vote for it on Steam Greenlight here.

We talk The Biggest Little City, The Last of Us, the fate of Phantasy Star Online 2, virtual Slurpee machines, Ken Levine's Logan's Run, bricked PlayStation 3s, Microsoft's shocking Xbox One DRM policy revision, and more!

I watched and watched and thought “Well, this looks cool but nothing’s really happening.” But then something happened—exactly what I don’t know—and I jumped in my desk chair. Yup, Routine’s got me. It’s been almost a year since we last saw a glimpse of Lunar Software’s Routine, the sci-fi horror game that looks to eschew gunplay as its primary interaction with a creepy world. The new clip shows off more of the game’s paradoxical vision of the future, which means that, yeah, those old-school monitors and floppy disks are still there. To contact the author of this post, write to evan@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @EvNarc

Fancy new artwork for a fancy new show!

Yesterday news broke that Saints Row IV had been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board, and we’ve just received a copy of the report. According to a statement from the Classification Board the game was refused classification as a result of implied sexual violence. Now we can confirm that the report states the following… The game includes a weapon referred to by the Applicant as an “Alien Anal Probe”. The Applicant states that this weapon can be “shoved into enemy’s backsides”. The lower half of the weapon resembles a sword hilt and the upper part contains prong-like appendages which circle around what appears to be a large dildo which runs down the centre of the weapon. When using this weapon the player approaches a (clothed) victim from behind and thrusts the weapon between the victim’s legs and then lifts them off the ground before pulling a trigger which launches the victim into the air. After the probe has been implicitly inserted into the victim’s anus the area around their buttocks becomes pixelated highlighting that the aim of the weapon is to penetrate the victim’s anus. The weapon can be used during gameplay on enemy characters or civilians. In the Board’s opinion, a weapon designed to penetrate the anus of enemy characters and civilians constitutes a visual depiction of implied sexual violence that is interactive and not justified by context and as such the game should be Refused Classification. The report also made mention of the use of illicit drugs. The game contains an optional mission which involves the player obtaining and smoking drugs referred to as “alien narcotics”. Smoking the “alien narcotics” equips the player with “superpowers” which increase their in-game abilities allowing them to progress through the mission more easily. According to the report these are the two main reasons why Saints Row IV has been refused classification.

The beamNG guys—responsible for some really amazing-looking video game car crashes—demonstrate their physics engine in a new video. In this video, you'll see three cars getting chewed up beyond recognition when dropped from a mountain. Realistically, of course. This is impressive, especially for an alpha build. Reminds me of the fun I had combining gravity and huge mountains in Just Cause 2, except way more realistic. Cliff Tumble [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

The answers to your questions will sprout up like a newly placed spruce. Or heck, how about a pine, huh?

Here's Hanako Games' Queen Maker, which looks a lot like the Princess Maker games. In it, you guide a princess into queendom, balancing the various aspects of her personal and professional life, and try not to die horribly in the process. It's been out for a little while now—you can play a free demo and buy the full game for Windows, Mac and Linux. They're resurfaced as they're not pushing a Steam Greenlight campaign, trying to get the game to a wider audience. If this trailer is any indication, this game looks like a fair bit of off-kilter fun. (Via Rock, Paper Shotgun)

Ah, Ridiculous Fishing. I believed in you, we all believed in you, but it's nice to see the good guys win. Speaking with Digital Spy, Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, the game's developer, says that the game has proven that artful, good games can win out despite cloners. The clone in this case being Gamenauts' Ninja Fishing, a blatant copy of an early version of Ridiculous Fishing that beat the Vlambeer to the App Store and found a fair amount of success there. Ridiculous Fishing released earlier this year and found more than a fair amount of success of its own. Here's Ismail: "We didn't expect it to be this big - we hoped it would be this size. We really hoped this would be the definitive statement about creativity will always win, because obviously the whole cloning background is still there for us, right? "We still want to make this statement that Ninja Fishing did well, but Ridiculous Fishing wins because it was the better game. Better games win. That's what we hoped people would get out of it, and I think they did." While I'm guessing they can't quite nail down the sales numbers for both games, it's certainly nice to see the better game do well, despite being cloned. Not content to have made one of the best games on iPhone, Vlambeer is going to be releasing a couple free updates for the game—one in July that adds a few new fish and items, and a "huge" update for later this year that, according to Ismail, will double the game's content. And despite the way the game parodies in-app purchases, it doesn't have them in the real world—all of those updates will be totally free.

The follow-up to last year's SmartWatch brings a bigger screen and longer battery life.

Ever wanted to be a mobile game developer and weren't sure where to start? This. This right here. Project Anarchy is completely free end-to-end game development engine, just waiting to bring your ideas to life. You know that Havok logo you're used to seeing at the beginning of PC and console games? Project Anarchy provides those same tools to mobile developers, allowing them to publish freely to iOS, Android and Tizen mobile platforms without restrictions on company size or revenue. “Project Anarchy liberates game developers to freely explore gameplay ideas on mobile platforms using the same award-winning tools that console and PC developers have used for years,” said Ross O’Dwyer, head of developer relations at Havok via official press release. “This complete set of tools lends powerful graphics, physics and animation capabilities to mobile game development teams for free regardless of team and project size.” Can't wait to see what budding mobile devs can create with Project Anarchy at their disposal. The tools and more information should be live shortly at the official Project Anarchy website.

Not that any other choices aren't valid, but typing in Kotaku into the referral code box on the pre-registration website for G.I. Joe Battleground won't get you anyone else. DeNA is gearing up to launch the free game on iOS and Android, and folks who pre-register using that super-secret code will score not only Hector Delgado up there, but also the Storm Shadow that all of those pre-reg folks get. It's one of those free-to-play collector-type games but damn, that art — that's the coolest Shipwreck has ever been.

American McGee's Spicy Horse development studio has picked a game for Kickstarter that's been pickling in pre-production for a while: OZombie for PC, Mac, Linux and latest-gen tablets. It's a twisted take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the books, not the movie), starring the Scarecrow as the former king of Emerald City, exiled and mentally tortured. Series author L. Frank Baum describes the Scarecrow as "the wisest man in all Oz," after all - and now he's the most evil.

Players will take control of Dorothy's great-great-granddaughter, alongside the Tin Woodsman and the Lion, to fight the Scarecrow and his army. OZombie is a single-player-centric game, with a multiplayer mode unlocked after completing the main campaign. It features multiple game modes, spanning RPG, tactical combat and exploration, and has a narrative focus.

Spicy Horse is looking for $950,000 in the OZombie Kickstarter, and it has 41 days to get there. In one day, it's raised around $60,000.

Earlier this year, Spicy Horse said it would launch a Kickstarter for either OZombie or Alice: Otherlands, American McGee's next foray into the Alice universe. The Alice license is tied up at EA following the launch of Alice: Madness Returns in 2011, and Spicy Horse is negotiating to get it back. Spicy Horse has started pre-production on Alice: Otherlands already.

"I won't stop trying to make new Alice games," McGee writes in a Kickstarter update. He continues: "We're still having meaningful and productive conversations with EA regarding Alice. Truth is, it's an important bit of IP for them and for us (and for you!) which means that negotiating a deal is going to take time."

Magic 2014 arrives in the App Store, you can grab League of Evil 2 for free and some turtles need saving in today's ASU.

If Kanto was a real place, many of us wouldn't need persuasion to visit—we'd just go. That fact doesn't make these travel posters by Little Pixel Posters any less awesome, though—they make Kanto look like a swell place to take a vacation in. Maybe that's just nostalgia for the original Pokemon games talking. Either way, the image above is official artwork of the Kanto region. The posters—which you can purchase here—are these: A beautiful city with flowing water and blooming flowers. A town used to be here until it was swept away by an eruption. A southern city that is bathed in orange by the setting sun. The biggest city in Kanto, shining with a golden light. A quiet city nestled between rugged mountains and rocks. A beautiful city that is enveloped in green year-round.

And with that, the circle is complete.

Many Kickstarter backers may still be empty handed, but retailers in U.S., Canada, and UK are expected to begin offering the Android console today.

Kyle Baker’s no idiot. The iconic comics and animation artist knows that he can’t call the characters in Mass Murderer of Steel Superman and General Zod. But the fighting super-powered dudes in his quickie browser game are totally based on the brawling Kryptonians in Warner Bros.’ new Man of Steel movie. How can you tell? They don’t give a damn about all the people dying as a result of their fighting. WARNING: MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW. One of the biggest criticisms lodged at Man of Steel has been the massive scale of devastation that happen during the movie’s action sequences. Much of Metropolis is a smoking crater by the time the film ends and there’s not much to be had by way of scenes where Superman is saving innocent bystanders. It—along with an uncharacteristic act by Superman—was my main gripe with the Zack Snyder-directed flick. Apparently, that focus on carnage bothered Kyle Baker, too. Baker’s written and/or drawn a ton of classic comics work—some of it for Superman owner DC Comics— including Deadpool MAX, Plastic Man and graphic novels like Why I Hate Saturn and Nat Turner: Revolution. He’s also done animation work, too, and has recently started dabbling in game-making. Here’s how Mass Murderer of Steel gets described on its official page: Enjoy high-flying mass destruction as you ignore the hideous death screams of the [millions] you are pledged to save! Use your super powers to wage a never-ending battle for self-important allegorical bombast! Bludgeon your senses into numbed awe! The game itself is one note and utterly simple. You click and drag or touch and flick the Superman/Zod analogues like a wrecking ball and watch building fall and people die as a result. Slight as it is, Mass Murderer of Steel hammers home the resentment some people have for the latest cinematic version of Superman. (Via Twitter)

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Two years ago I left a job at Rock, Paper, Shotgun to start a board game site. But that's not the strange part. What's odd is that I've never looked back. I'm getting more out of table games these days than video games, and the biggest reason is that somewhere along the line, video games became obsessed with winning, and it’s killing them. Forget achievements. Do you ever think about how many bruises you’ve collected, as a video gamer? Every evening you went online and got stomped by strangers. Every towering boss that kicked in your teeth. Every bad call you wincingly made, every time you had your entertainment taken away for not being good enough. You’re a failure! How about that? I remember a colleague taking a 5 minute break, away from the jittery job of reviewing Battlefield 2. “It’s fun when you win,” he said, exhausted. “And boring when you lose. Haven’t we moved past that yet?” No, we haven’t. For a medium that’s evolved from play, video games have an overwhelmingly binary view of success and failure, one so crippling that if we settle into a single player game and make no progress, or lose every multiplayer match in one night, our lives will have been worsened. And we never ask why games are like this. After all, how else could it be? For a medium that’s evolved from play, video games have an overwhelmingly binary view of success and failure. Board games have the answer. They speak it so noisily that it’s unbelievable it hasn’t penetrated the Video Games Bunker, but there’s a whole world of analog games that are dedicated to ensuring people simply have fun, all the time. Let me give you just three examples, and let’s start with Twilight Imperium. Everyone reading this will know how space strategy games work. They’re interstellar knife fights where everyone is working unfathomably hard to take everything away from everyone else; to inflict the worst possible time on everyone else. Now, let’s look at Twilight Imperium. A space strategy board game with the same pattern of claiming star systems, researching technology and engaging in wars, but where units simply aren’t disposable. Wars in Twilight Imperium are dread things. Which means players simply... talk to one another. The furious struggle of video games is replaced with more sedate maneuvering and politics. Better yet, politics where players inevitably end up roleplaying their race, because the prospect of an apocalyptic computer virus negotiating with space turtles is too entertaining not to do. The end result is a strategy game that isn’t about chasing victory, and where losing isn’t painful. The end result is a strategy game that isn’t about chasing victory, and where losing isn’t painful. Video games often deign to give you a happy victory. Like many board games, Twilight Imperium wants to give you moments, and stories, and that doesn’t just give your matches a better chance of being fun. It makes all of gaming more accessible. Next, let’s look at Agricola. A game of being a 17th century German farmer. I know! Calm down. But Agricola holds a dark secret. It belongs to the clandestine sect of “Eurogames,” which are a field of board games that let players compete, without anything as unimaginative as letting you actually fight. So, Agricola is a game where the best farm wins. You’ll want vegetables, and animals, and a family, which means you’ll be scratching together fields, fences and home improvement, and for that you’ll be scrounging peat, wood, clay and still more depressing basics. It’s like a hungover mathematics professor designed Harvest Moon. Where it gets interesting is that you get all these things from a central board. You can dispatch any family member you like to a space that gets you a certain thing, but where you go? Nobody else can go. And that’s your game. Everyone always gets something in Agricola. Everybody’s always winning, always building, which is satisfying. At the same time, everyone is always losing, feeding your family is always a terrifying prospect, and you all bond over this shared struggle. At the end, someone will have built the best farm, but here’s the thing about eurogames, their victory in the world of play: Nobody will care. Which brings us to party games. If Twilight Imperium shows how the pressure of competition can be eased, and Agricola shows how it can be avoided entirely, Party Games show how ferocious competition can be kept, but players can be rendered immune to that damage. Let’s look at Bang!. Bang! is a team-based, Wild West shootout. On your turn you can shoot a player sitting next to you, upgrade your weapon, drink whiskey for health, or deploy any one of dozens of surprises hidden in the game’s deck of cards. Roles are dealt in secret. One player reveals himself as the sheriff. Hidden around the table are the outlaws who want to kill him, the deputies who want to keep him alive, and the renegade who’s doomed. The renegade has to be the last man standing with the sheriff, and then has to kill him, and so muddies the waters to the point that people inevitably end up killing their own teammates. Bang! is ferociously competitive, AND it features player elimination, and yet it’s incredibly easy going because it’s funny, and it heavily employs random chance, that dirty second skin that competitive video games tore off long ago. Reasons randomness isn’t actually a bad thing? Not only does it encourage unusual play states and reward the ability to adapt (rather than plan), but it also removes the pressure to win, the sting of losing. Not only does it encourage unusual play states and reward the ability to adapt (rather than plan), but it also removes the pressure to win, the sting of losing. None of which is to say that strict competition doesn’t have its place. But I can’t help but feel games are more exciting every single time they peek outside of it. I remember being thrilled by every single fight in the Shenmue series, because once in a while the game would continue if you lost a fight. That fight would just become a permanent failure in Ryo Hazuki’s story. And wasn’t the best chapter in the Mass Effect series the suicide mission, where characters you’d come to love could be taken away, forever? I want you to do something. I want you to buy Damian Sommer and Emily Carroll’s The Yawhg. Out just last week, it's an excellent storytelling video game about preparing for a terrible tragedy, for anywhere from one to four players. See how its stories become that much more tender for being tinted with failure? See how boring winning is? I have a feeling video games are only working with half a palette. Losing will set us free. Quintin Smith is a games columnist able to identify different board game manufacturers by their scent. He is not proud of this. He's part of a team working to make a home for play in Shut Up & Sit Down, and @quinns108 on Twitter.

"To prey on their fear, move like an animal, to feel the kill." If you knew the answer to that question then congratulations, you're enough of a Venture Bros. fan to really, really want this Entertainment Earth San Diego Comic-Con exclusive. I am gearing up for San Diego Comic-Con next month, and that gearing up involves making a list of exclusive things to spend my money on. Last year Bloody Brock made the cut (sorry), but everyone I showed him to wanted to know why he wasn't naked. Well now he is. The same 3 3/4 scale as last year's figure, this Brock comes with removable censor bars that can be stowed to reveal... nothing. There's no junk there. For $15 you'd think you get junk. I guess I can make my own. The best thing about Naked Brock Samson? He's a convention exclusive you don't have to go to the convention to get. If any are left over after the show ends, you can snag him right here at Entertainment Earth, along with the rest of their exclusives. What Comic-Con exclusives are you craving this year?

There's some wrasslin' in there somewhere, but as often with the real thing, there's as much bark as bite in this Rock-in' first look at WWE 2K14. The game is coming to Xbox 360 and PS3, and pins retail shelves in North America on October 29.

An epic quest of vile dragons, guns that shoot exploding swords, and skeletons with immaculate haircuts.