The Legend of Zelda’s Link re-imagined as an aging elf—and looking like he’d be right at home in World of Warcraft—by artist Damien Canderle for ZBrush Central’s “Age of Legends” Comicon Challenge. Elder Link [ZBrush Central - thanks, Corey!] More »

I’ll not apologise for posting another Minecraft video. Because it’s a thing of joy. Interrupting yet another late night playing the game (tonight I’m laying some nice flooring upstairs in my house, and checking out some newly discovered caves for much needed iron) was an email pointing us toward something that at least equals this morning’s Enterprise model. It’s a functioning 16-bit computer. Oh yes.

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When Minecraft Players Are Also Trekkies, Insanity Goes To Warp Speed

A Minecraft player with great ambition and loads of spare time is building a 1:1 replica model of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s massive flagship vessel, the Enterprise D—and he needs some help getting it done.

Patient Minecraft fan “halnicholas” has finished preliminary work on the Enterprise’s frame. It’s lacking in warp nacelles, deck details, paneling, sonic showers, cups of Earl Gray… well, lots. But the grunt work has been done to get this “fucking enormous” Minecraft creation ready for space dock. Its creator has put the word out for volunteers, saying he “needs help building out the decks.”

If you know your Minecraft material crafting and your Enterprise D blueprints, please, help this brave man seek out new life and new civilizations on his PC. Boldly go where no Minecraft player has gone before!

*cue Jerry Goldsmith music*

Building Megaobjects in Minecraft [YouTube via Reddit]

Custom-made Portal shelf art, spied by reader martinf1 via Bob’s House of Video Games.

Seeing as how you’re reading this website at this specific time of day, I have to imagine you have — at one point or another — imagined what it’d be like to create a game from scratch; we’ve all been there. Markus Persson, the gentleman best known for Minecraft, can help with that.

You see, he created a game for the down-and-dirty design competition Ludum Dare 18 — and he streamed the entire creation process live. Genius! I was there for part of the “show,” so I feel okay in saying that this time-lapse video of the dev cycle is vastly more enjoyable to watch.

The finished game, Metagun, can be played here.

Timelapse of a game programmer [Reddit via Gawker.TV]

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game was just released for the PlayStation Network this week and the lead animator on the project, Paul Robertson, has released some animated sprites of the various characters in the game to celebrate. Scott, Ramona, Knives, the evil ex’s and more are all available for you to nab and use as your Forum avatars or something!

I adore everything Paul Robertson related and it’s so great that he’s finally put out a game. The Scott Pilgrim game is pretty awesome and I recommend you all try it out.

The two-disc package includes the original movie, as well as a “Reformat the Planet 1.5″ featurette that follows up with the next couple of years of the New York chiptune scene (a clip of that can be found after the break). The discs also have music videos and songs from some of the included artists.

In addition, 2PP partnered with Fangamer to create some lovely merchandise that can be purchased in bundles with the DVD. If you want to look like a person who knows a lot about music made with Game Boys, you can buy a shirt, square buttons (how is this possible?), a poster, and Blip Festival DVDs and CDs. Then you can watch the movie and actually know a lot about it!

Provided of course that your summer days involve hardened killers, big guns and chicks on poles. Ahh, how I recall my youth, wasting away many a lazy afternoon carrying out ruthless vendettas against those who had done me wrong, squeezing the life out of them by any and every means necessary. This really takes me back.

I think I may have mentioned that I have a certain level of… anticipation at work for Shank. The game played so smoothly at E3 that I’m honestly a little breathless thinking about it. Two more weeks. One day at a time.

In the meantime, enjoy these concept sketches because they are gorgeous. My favorite is the movie poster design.

Big news for fans of Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy series)! Speaking with MTV News, the director revealed that he’s finally ready to shift into the games side of the entertainment industry.

“One of the things we’re announcing in the next few weeks is a big deal with a big company. We’re going to do games that are going to be technically and narratively very interesting,” he says.

“It’s not a development deal. We’re going to do it. We’re doing them. And we’re going to announce it soon enough.” Consider me excited. My love of bizarre creature designs and hatred toward rampant CGI in movies has turned me into a fan of del Toro’s work over the years.

He’s got the pure imagination needed to make truly interesting games, which is why I sincerely hope this deal is for a brand new IP. What genre would you like to see del Toro tackle?

Guillermo del Toro Has Multiple Games In The Works With A ‘Big Company [MTV Multiplayer]

Talking to People: Promotion for Indies
“Andreas Zecher holds a presentation on how indie game developers should try to work more on the promotion of their games.”

Extremely Exlusive Preview of a Super Secret Game
“Petri Purho (of Crayon Physics fame) presents a super secret game that he has been developing on-and-off the last year.”

I don’t care about your input: Making games that play themselves
“Martin Jonasson tells us about how he’s exploring games that takes none or little input from the player. Martin has created a lot of flash-based games that he puts online on his Prototyprally site.”

Oxeye Game Studio Preview: DaisyMoon
“Jens Bergensten, programmer at Oxeye Game Studio, describes how their prototyping engine DaisyMoon became their main engine, and what kind of games they’ve created with it.”

Niklas Åkerblad on The Art of Kometen
“Niklas Åkerblad has created an iPhone/iPad game called Kometen together with Erik Svedäng. Niklas held a presentation at No More Sweden explaining how he worked out the style for the game, as well as discussing the topic of game art in general.”

Ciro Continisio on UFHO2
“Ciro Continisio presents his new game UFHO2 and his current plans.”

Painting backwards: Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas on Backworld
“Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas presents their project Backworld, its conception and the technical solutions that puts it all together.”

Bernhard Schulenburg: Designing Where is my Heart?
“Bernhard Schulenburg describes how he designed his new game Where is My Heart? and the difficulties he encountered.”

Stuff I learned about making big games after making small games (direct video link)
“Michael Todd held a presentation about how he learned how to do big games after doing a lot of smaller games.”