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Vinny dives into the sordid world of voice-acting for toys and grapples with gophers, Jeff shares his first weekend with the Oculus Rift, and we all discuss FUSE, Valve economics, next-gen aftermarkets, The Swapper, the dark side of Star Trek, and more!

In Ocarina of Time, heroic Link had a musical instrument that let him change day into night. But what if he'd had an iPhone? That's the question asked by Texts From Zelda, and the answers they supply are outstanding. And of course... You can find more over at their site. (Thanks, Alex!)

Insomniac's new game Fuse is out today in North America. We'll have more in our full review later, but for now here are a few of my immediate impressions of the game — how it plays, how it looks and where it left me a little cold.

Alien lifeforms aren't always just non-player characters, enemies or simple decorations. From time to time some games let us slip on creepy, gooey and downright ugly alien suits to play as cool aliens and extraterrestrial races. These alien simulators can usually be put into two categories. It's always under the context of either a serious, fearsome, advanced galactic civilization (of which you are often a member of), or a completely stupid one who crash-landed on Earth by accident. Let's take a look at the games that let us play with these characters. Alien vs. Predator (arcade) Let's forget Aliens: Colonial Marines for a second, and think back to one of the best games with aliens and predators where you can pick predators as playable characters. It's the arcade beat 'em up from Capcom: Alien vs. Predator circa 1994. ToeJam & Earl series Released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, Funkotron resident alien rapper crash-lands on Earth, and we have to collect missing spaceship parts in order to leave the planet. Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport This one's one of those rare PC fighters from the 90s with an alien theme. The playable characters include reptilians and all kinds of weird anthropomorphic shapes and blobs. Destroy All Humans! Made as a parody of the UFO frenzy of the 50s, we have to harvest brain stem cells from mankind with Crypto, a warrior of the Furon empire. StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm After the terran campaign we are finally able to crush everything in Heart of the Swarm with the zerg with Kerrigan and maybe infested terrans as the only beings that resemble humans. Alien Hominid Originally an indie flash game, Alien Hominid is a side-scrolling shooter that probably has the nuttiest alien protagonist on this list. The Feeble Files The Feeble Files is from 1997—an era when 2D adventure games still counted as a booming genre—and featured a scientist alien called Feeble as the main character. Stupid Invaders The animation series Space Goofs featured five completely nutty aliens who crash-landed on Earth and have to try to get home. Interestingly enough the 2001 adventure game based on the series is quite a long and decent one. Alien Soldier That is some awesome armor and character design! Alien Soldier is a pretty insane run and gun game—with 31 boss battles—from Treasure, released for the Sega Genesis. Oddworld series The Oddworld games let us control characters from various races like the mudokon Abe—who's definitely the most adorable alien video game character—as well as the gabbit in Munch's Odyssee and a creature from the steef race in Stranger's Wrath. Ascendancy The 1995 turn-based strategy game Ascendancy had a whopping number (21) of super-weird and unique playable extraterrestrial races. Ever wanted to conquer the galaxy with a race of flowing fibers? Yay! You can do it in Ascendancy! Master of Orion series The godfather of turn-based strategy games, first released in 1993. The first game introduced 10 playable races—all with their own advantages and disadvantages—including humans that later expanded in the following two sequels. Storm the comments with visuals if you played any great games that have alien playable characters! sources: vgjunk, HardcoreGaming101, Alien Hominid, sc2gifs, aliens wiki To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Gunpoint, an upcoming stealth game by PC Gamer writer-slash-game-designer Tom Francis, earned a "this is pretty cool" judgment from our own Luke Plunkett. But you don't have to take his word for it: The PC game, which comes out next week, has a free demo you can play right now. If you're curious how Gunpoint works, you can also check out the video up top, in which Francis walks through a level. I haven't played the demo yet, but this looks pretty fun.

In the popular consciousness, "Tecmo Bowl" usually means the 1989 NES port, if not 1991's Tecmo Super Bowl. Today, The Onion, satirizing White House sports photo ops, shows off its gamer cred by going back to the game's original arcade version, which featured only the "Bulldogs" and "Wildcats"—coached by BOB and ASS.

The new season of Arrested Development is out on Netflix—all fifteen episodes of it. You're not "supposed" to, but you could watch the entire season right away if you wanted. I'm guessing at least some of you did just that. Binge-watching something on Netflix isn't uncommon. If a show hooks you well enough, and you have more episodes left to watch, why wouldn't you watch them? If possible, people will watch through entire seasons of a show in a weekend. I've done it. Still, if you read through interviews leading up to the release of season 4 of Arrested Development, you'll find that the people behind the show hope you won't do that. Here's Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, in an interview with Wired: I think of it more like writing a mini-series than something [for] binge watching… I think that people do sit down and watch it all at once. Personally, I think [that] will be very fatiguing and will lose some of the fun of being able to mull on it. But I think that with the majority of binge watchers, it’s a modified binge watching, just like the majority of novel readers. You know, you don’t read it all at once. But you are in control of when you feel like going back to it… I personally hope people don’t sit and watch it for, you know, 500 minutes or longer. Here's Hurwitz again, in an interview with Vulture: “You’ll get tired!” says Hurwitz. “One of the producers came by when I was in post-production recently, and he said, ‘Can I see some of them?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got seven episodes.’ ‘Great.’ And I heard him in the other room laughing and laughing, and then I heard him laughing a little less, and then a little less, and then later I saw him getting a drink of water and I said, ‘What do you think?’ He goes, ‘I’m just getting a little tired. I love it, it’s great, but you can’t really laugh the whole time. You have to take a break. There’s so much material.’” “You can’t take it all in at once. It’s like the selective-attention test. The whole show is like the selective-attention test. No one sees the gorilla! I’ll give you an example: When I was at the last sound mix with our editors and there was one of our bigger sight gags in the background of one of our more absurd conversations, nobody saw the sight gag, including me. And all we were doing is staring at the screen! What I like about the show is not that gimmick but that it gives fans something to pore over if that’s fun for them. If they want to go right back and check out the Gob episode and see how that was set up, they can.” “Don’t feel obligated to watch it all at once. It’s a comedy! It’s not like Lord of the Rings. Comedy takes a lot out of you.” I had read these interviews going in, and I promised myself I wouldn't shotgun the entire season this weekend. A few episode, tops. While I didn't watch through the entire show this weekend, I definitely feel like I watched more than I 'should' have. Those against binge-watching would probably argue I didn't take in as much as I could had I taken it slow, had I taken more time to reflect on what I've watched. Heck, they might argue that I was tempted to binge-watch not because the show is good, but because it's potent escapism. Wired contributor Grant Mccracken argues that TV has become our "second home," and binge-watching is a way of providing ourselves with "a sense of security" which can create "comfort" and makes "the world go away." A description which could just as easily be about video games—another medium which "suffers" from binging. It's not a topic of heated discussion in this space in the same way it is for television—I've read like a dozen editorials that explore binge-watching on Netflix—but it's definitely something that I know people do. I for one, by nature of having a job that requires me to review games on occasion, will sometimes play through a game at what feels like an unnaturally fast pace as a means of meeting a review embargo. An eight to fifteen hour game will be played through in a weekend, easy. Of course, binge-playing isn't something exclusive to game reviewers. One of the reasons that we have day-one DLC is because developers know that at least some players burn through games at an absurd pace, and the extra content is meant to meet that demand. I expect games to let me gorge on them as much as I'd like It wasn't until I started playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf this month that I realized that I expect games to let me gorge on them as much as I'd like. This is completely anecdotal, but I've heard it said that the best way to play through Animal Crossing is to treat it like a chore that you devote no more than about 30 minutes per day to. And playing it, sure enough, there's only so much new stuff you can do on a daily basis—pull out weeds, find fossils, do some errands, capture some fish and insects, make some money. Maybe I'll do something exciting that day, like buy turnips or start a new project in town—but these are all things that won't take me long to do. So I could play for more than 30 minutes daily, but Animal Crossing's design encourages me to take it slow. It's a design decision that feels jarring when I live in a world where I can watch an entire show in a weekend. If given the option, I'd probably pay money so to be able to experience more of Animal Crossing every day—I mean, that's the basic business strategy behind a lot of social games, isn't it? Pay so you can keep playing, pay so you can see more? Except I have a feeling that Animal Crossing would be extremely different if I could play like that—and probably not for the better. Animal Crossing's efficacy as an idyllic game hinges on how much I can play at a time, in the same way that the comedy in Arrested Development hinges on how much I sit down to watch. Which makes me wonder: even if I'm not playing through an entire game in a weekend, am I changing the core experience for the worse if I don't take my time? My guess is yes, though I also know that realizing this is the case sometimes makes no difference. I knew Arrested Development shouldn't be something I binge on, and I did it anyway. I suspect I ruined some of the experience for myself, and will likely go back and re-watch in an effort to soak more of the show in. It's easy to chalk it up to a lack of self-control, but I'm not sure that's the only culprit to blame. When that's the fray I jump into with most games, Animal Crossing feels like a reprieve. How often do you see a game referred to as a "roller coaster"? I see it everywhere, often used as a shorthand that denotes when a game takes you on a high octane ride. Games are designed so that you keep playing: a roller coaster is not something you get off of, after all. It's purposeful, that roller-coaster feeling. So of course you'll keep playing, even though the prospect of a real-life roller-coaster lasting the length of a typical game sounds exhausting. I will never be able to say that Animal Crossing is exhausting—on the contrary, it feels meditative. Calming. Contrast that to barely pausing while playing through Fuse this weekend—that's a 9 hour game! I'd go from one huge gunfight to a cutscene and onto the next mission, never really taking the time to let scenes or events linger. This sort of thing isn't a rare occurrence. When that's the fray I jump into with most games, Animal Crossing feels like a reprieve. It took some time to look at it that way, though. At first I disliked the pace of Animal Crossing immensely, but now I'm learning to appreciate it—it allows me to take a step back and look at things differently. I feel like I'm taking more out of my playthrough with Animal Crossing, despite the short amount of time I'm spending with it, than with games I pour hundreds of hours into. Developers can't force you to play a game a certain way—heck, I've never seen a developer urging players to pace themselves, like Hurwitz does with Arrested Development—but even so, I hope more games find ways for players to take it slow. If nothing else, it feels good to step off the roller-coaster every once in a while.

Tired of TouchWiz or Sense? Here's how you can get the true Google experience on your Android device.

Gawker The Next Housing Bubble Is About To Pop All Over You | Jezebel Dear New Intern: Don't Be the Intern Your Fellow Interns Hate | Gizmodo Xbox One and Used Games: The Real Reason Everyone's So Mad | Kotaku #PS4NoDRM: The Next-Gen Twitter Campaign That's Got Sony's Attention

LOOK AT ALL THE NEW TOWERS.

Welcome to Wetware, an upcoming 80s-tinged cyberpunk strategy game from Reality Council that puts you in charge of a "megacorporate network" and tasks you with, well, taking over the internet. From the description on the Reality Council website: Hire elite hackers to attack other networks, steal information, crash their nodes and protect your assets. Get involved in corporate espionage, corrupt officials and prying journalists. Carve out a networked empire, neutralize your competition and dominate the Net. Dominate the net, baby! There's a LeBron James joke in there but I'm not quite pulling it all together. Wetware be out this summer on Windows, OSX and Linux. The soundtrack will be out of my head in approximately one day. (Via Rock, Paper Shotgun)

Hollywood sure does love a good video game reference, as evidenced by this remarkably thorough supercut of cinematic video game references and arcade appearances edited by Travis Greenwood and Brett Roberts for Slacktory. I cannot even begin to imagine the research that went into this. That must've been fun. They even managed to get The FP in there!

Keeper of the Light sez: Have Boots of Travel, will travel!

Feminist Frequency blogger/video host Anita Sarkeesian is back with the second in her "Tropes vs. Women in Games" series, in which she analyzes sexist tropes in video games. The first video in the series looked back at the origins of the "Damsel in Distress" trope, focusing mostly on Nintendo games. The new video puts more recent games under the damsel-scope. Sarkeesian first gained national attention when she launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the series and was subsequently subjected to a prolonged, intense online harassment campaign. That harassment inadvertently contributed to her massive Kickstarter success—her goal had been to raise $6,000 and she wound up with almost $160,000. Sarkeesian later explained to Kotaku how the extra money helped her increase the project's scope; that initially resulted in some delays, but she now appears to be full-steam ahead. Give it a watch.

Gamers are taking to Twitter to fight for their rights as consumers, and the gaming world seems to be paying attention. It started with a rumor. Following confirmation that the Xbox One will have some form of restriction on the way people can trade and borrow their games, GTTV's Geoff Keighley came out and said he'd heard that Sony is planning something similar for the PS4. This infuriated hardcore gamers, already fuming at the idea that they may not have full ownership over the Xbox One games they buy—would all next-gen games follow the same trend? One NeoGAFfer, Pete "famousmortimer" Dodd, decided to organize the mob. He started a thread on the major gaming message board asking people to hop on Twitter and send messages to executives at Sony, using the hashtag #PS4NoDRM. The message: "Hey Sony, we want to be able to buy, sell, and borrow our used games." Almost immediately, the campaign exploded. As of last night, one NeoGAFfer calculated that there were close to 14,000 tweets with the hashtag #PS4NoDRM The campaign has reached dozens of news sites including NBC News. Even now, people are tweeting messages with the hashtag in hopes of getting Sony's attention. "It's much larger than I ever imagined," Dodd told me this afternoon. "Honestly thought the post would go about 2 pages." As of right now, the NeoGAF thread has 105 pages and 467,690 pageviews. Sony has yet to officially respond to the surging campaign, but some executives have tweeted words of support. Tepid, generic words, but words nonetheless. "I know my colleagues might not appreciate me saying this," said Sony biz dev manager Shahid Kamal Ahmad, "but I’ve rather enjoyed being Twitter bombed by passionate fans recently." "Humbled by the outpouring of passionate PlayStation fans and their willingness to talk to us directly," said Sony producer Nick Accordino. "Please know that we hear you. <3" The strongest statement came from Sony's Adam Boyes, who responded to one Twitterer's criticism by supporting the fan campaign: "imho it's working pretty well, much better than a few letters would. We're seeing the message loudly, and it's immediate." We've reached out to Sony multiple times for comments on this campaign and the PS4's used game policy, but they have not responded. It's likely we won't hear anything official about their plans until E3, which unofficially begins on June 10, when publishers hold their big press conferences. Even if it's too late for Sony to change a thing, and even if publisher pressure has pinned the game industry's problems on the easy scapegoat of used games, convincing both Sony and Microsoft to hop on the bandwagon, it's encouraging to see gamers speaking up for their beliefs. And it's encouraging to see Sony acknowledging that they're listening. "It's easy to be cynical about these soulless corporations, but as I'm sure you know covering the industries... there are real people working there," Dodd said. "They don't like when the internet turns against them. They feel good when people like their work. They're human beings." So what happens if Sony suddenly announces that the PS4 will have heavy restrictions for used games? Riots, perhaps. "I'm sure the campaign will continue and turn quite angry," Dodd said. "At that point I would back away. I love games but rage isn't my thing." To contact the author of this post, write to jason@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, sometimes tragic. Games and consoles are currency, objects of dispute, sometimes even weapons themselves. Kotaku's Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. He Sends a Laptop to the Hospital, You Send a Wii to the Morgue KEY WEST, Fla.—A Key West man is in jail following a hardware smashing dispute whose victims included a laptop, Kindle, a Wii and an Xbox, reports The Key West Citizen [paywall http://keysnews.com/]. Police say the disturbance began when the man, a cook, and his girlfriend started arguing over money (basically, that she was not earning any to pay their bills.) She said he broke her laptop. He said she trashed the Xbox (their description) Wii and Kindle in retaliation. He said he left to fetch police when she threatened to throw his bicycle from their balcony. She said he cut her with the glass from a broken bong "smoking pipe." The man is in jail on domestic battery charges. Come On and Take a Free Ride—and an Xbox HARMONY, N.Y.—A woman here, upon discovering someone in her home who wasn't supposed to be there, drove him home "because he did not have a ride," according to a cop report. While the two wre gone, a second man burglarized her house, taking "an Xbox, two Xbox games, and a CD," according to The Post-Journal of Jamestown, N.Y. The two men got $71 for the console at a local game store and spent the proceeds on heroin. Both are in jail. Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe LEXINGTON, S.C.—A guy needing money to get to New Mexico to "see his family," set about financing the voyage in an unorthodox way—by stealing an Xbox 360 hard drive from a Walmart and selling it at a GameStop. An employee saw the shoplifting from start to finish, including the part where the accused went over to the men's department and tore the drive loose from its packaging. He and an accomplice are in jail. Baby Dead in Reprisal Killing Over PlayStation Theft CHICAGO—A Chicago man is facing first-degree murder charges after a revenge shooting over a stolen PlayStation and drugs killed an infant as her diaper was being changed. Chicago police say Koman Willis went looking for Johnathan Watkins, the baby's father, after Watkins allegedly stole the console and drugs from the home of Willis' mother. Discovering Watkins in a parked car, he opened fire; inside Watkins was changing his daughter's diaper. He was wounded in the shooting, which happened in March. Willis, who had been wanted by police since then, surrendered on Saturday. [Chicago Sun-Times] Wii Remote Shoplifter Shot Dead After Police Struggle ARLINGTON, Texas—In January, police shot dead a man suspected of shoplifting a Wii remote from a target near Tarrant County College's Southeast Campus. Police in Grand Prairie, Texas, fought the release of documents related to the case. But an investigation says the suspect, 22-year-old Jordan Ross Hatcher, was a former Marine who physically overpowered two loss prevention officers at the Target and bloodied a Grand Prairie cop. Hatcher, says the report, continued to run even while being Tasered, snapping the devices wires. Later, on the college's campus, Hatcher apparently took hold of an officer's Taser and fearing for his life and others, an unnamed officer shot him multiple times in the chest. [The Collegian, Tarrant County College] Lots of strange things happen in the pages of your local newspaper or on the 6 o'clock news. If you see something, say something. To me, that is. I'd like to write it up. Remember: You need not reveal your identity. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

There tends to be one thing missing from the all-too-easy media narratives that offer causal connections between video games and violent crimes and tragedies: the people who make and/or play games. Lawmakers and concerned non-gamers are usually the focus of a camera’s lens, justifiably so, but developers and fans don’t get that much screen time. That’s why this clip from the crowdfunded Video Games: the Movie is worth watching. The opinions expressed by people like Alison Haislip, Brian Fargo, Rob Pardo and Cliff Bleszinski probably won’t be surprising to your average console owner but they do add a dimension of commentary that more visible conversations of gaming content seem to lack.

After continuing reports on the decline on PC sales, a market research firm says tablets are about to dominate entirely.

ExZeus 2 blasts into the Store (causing some confusion), while Memorial Day's sales wind down and new freebies appear.

In a lengthy interview published Friday at Gamasutra, DayZ creator Dean Hall says that a handful of people are already playing an alpha of the standalone version of the game, and that the public alpha will begin in or around June. He says they'll follow Minecraft's example for allowing players to buy in for early access. He also talks about why he prefers Morrowind to Skyrim. Go check it out.

Once in a while, a Kickstarter project comes along that makes you want to drop everything and yell about it to anyone who might listen. This is one of those Kickstarters. John Szczepaniak, best known for his work profiling Japanese games and game developers at websites like Hardcore Gaming 101, is trying to raise £50,000 to write a book about Japanese game development stories we've never heard before. His goal: fly to Japan, hire an interpreter, and spend two or three months talking to just about every game developer he can. Then he'll transcribe, put it all together, and publish it next year. "I would treat this book as my full time job from July, all the way to April 2014," Szczepaniak told me in an e-mail today. "It's mainly a book of interviews, so the heavy lifting will be done in Japan. Writing the questions, conducting the interviews, and then transcribing during the down time." Check out the Kickstarter page for a sprinkling of some of the people he plans to interview. They've worked on an impressive list of games, from the well-known (Resident Evil) to the obscure (Dezaemon). And Szczepaniak says since launching the campaign yesterday, he's heard from even more interested parties. "Everything with this book I've planned for assumes the absolute worst case scenario," he said. "A super strong Yen, certain interpreters being unavailable, designers who I can't get in touch with, and a large volume of work handled entirely by myself. I can manage this with the current budget goal and time frame. If even a few things turn out better than I've planned for, and I get even a little assistance from friends, then this book will be even better than I imagined." Sounds fascinating, don't you think? There must be so many fascinating stories and tidbits surrounding Japanese games that have never made it to North America. Even today, we're still discovering secrets in the games we've played for decades. "It's like my friend Jeremy Blaustein says," Szczepaniak told me, "there's an entire lost generation of game developers who have never had the opportunity to talk about their games, despite the fact that we, in the rest of the world, have played and loved them for years."

Ubisoft's building five exclusive levels for the handheld version, too.

The great experiment came to an end of the weekend. Was it successful?

Daisuke Amaya and Studio Pixel's Gero Blaster isn't going to hop onto iPhones this month. The side-scroller starring a lovestruck frog was originally pinned for May, but with the month quickly depleting, Cave Story and Ikachan creator Amaya announced he's "decided to postpone it." While he didn't disclose a new release window, Amaya noted the delay isn't to overhaul the game, but to tweak it.

"Previously, I've remade my work a few times before its completion," Amaya said. "This time, however, is for improving it and not remaking it. I am now doing my best for the completion to make it a more fun and exciting game."

Gero Blaster stars Kaeru, a frog running-and-gunning to rescue his cat girlfriend. As for when this croak tale of interspecies love is likely to arrive, Amaya said he'll let fans know once he has an approximate idea.

Imagine yourself behind the wheel of a V12 monster, brimming with power and torque, throwing out a noise that would make Thor stand up and unironically slow-clap in admiration. You are waiting for the starting line's light to turn green, and your only mission in life is to pilot that tremendous craft beyond the limits of your own courage and, God willing, across the finish line.

Now imagine that, surrounding you on all sides, are 11 completely homicidal maniacs who want nothing more than to reach their respective vehicle's top speed and crash directly into you and/or anyone else around them. Despite your ability to partially rewind time, you are powerless to stop them and you will die. This is the madness that is Grid 2.

“I don’t want to put up with this shit anymore.” Susan O’Connor—a writer who’s worked on BioShock, Far Cry 2 and the new Tomb Raider—isn’t sure she wants to stay in video games anymore. Go read about where her head is at in this wide-ranging interview at The Gameological Society.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: Doc Seuss has a plea for folks to understand sexism better to fight it better. Koda89 offers up reasons why you may not need a Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One anytime soon. And Zarynx runs down examples and opinions of music influenced by the 8-bit video game era. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

Fuse reminds us that no matter where you are in the console cycle, helicopters are still a threat.

The shivering mass exposed at the summit of this week's charts is Resident Evil: Revelations. While last year's 3DS game debuted in sixth, its PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC port takes advantage of all its new platforms to knock Metro: Last Light off the top, and provide yet another new No. 1 in the UK.

Last Light continues to flicker in third, with charts mainstay FIFA 13 no doubt climbing to second thanks to some timely price promotion. It was a soccer-packed weekend in the UK, with the final of the Champions League taking place in Wembley, London. This led to a certain, spirited German fan dozing on the shoulder of a certain Joystiq editor on a certain early morning bus ride home. Repeatedly. And drippily.

Moving on, the other new entry in this week's top ten is Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, which surpasses the Wii version's best-ever placement of seventh; the 3DS port debuts in fifth. Further down the charts, Activision's Fast and Furious: Showdown tie-in screeches into a debut position of 14th.

Or, more eloquently, Black Talons is an upcoming real-time tactics game for the PC. A real-time XCOM in another galaxy, if you will. You take your squad from mission to mission, planet to planet, training them up in the process, with the goal of taking down the evil government in the end. Clichéd, yes—but fun-looking.