8bit Ego artist Josh Summana, who recently shared a time-lapse video of his killer Donkey Kong painting, has clued me into a new piece as part of his “Heroes” line. If you haven’t already, do check out his “Villains” line as well.

What struck me most about this particular piece is that sly, almost sinister smirk on Mario’s face. And that piercing gaze! Why does it look like he’s trying to skull f*ck your soul? Then I noticed the thumbs-down gesture and realized he’s actually directing your gaze towards his plumber’s snake. Who knows whose pipes he’s plunged with his Roto-Rooter.

God, Mario is a creepy man.

“Mario” by Josh Summana [deviantART]

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 love watching pre-IGF deadline trailers – these clips usually showcase games that are already in an advanced stage of development (fully working, usually playable) and are ready to be shown to the public.

The Swapper was famously previewed by Brian Crecente as his favorite IGF entry in 2009, and I’m certain that he’d be stoked to see how much an extra development period of twelve months has made this new build so different from the previous IGF-submitted version.

You can find trailers for two more IGF-submitted games in the extended (Alientrap Software’s upcoming action platformer Capsized and a great-looking rhythm game called Shield the Beat).

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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While not exactly about playing games (this is more for the making of games) the launch of Unity 3, the third iteration of the free-to-use game engine, has me excited. Of all the game-making tools out there, Unity is the one I’ve spent the most time with, and it was actually responsible for the RPS game, RockPaperShotgunity, which we cobbled together last year. Also, I totally made some big spheres move about making booming noises. I am The Creator. People who know stuff are more excited about the unified editor, the post-processing and shader improvements, the occlusion culling, deferred rendering, and other tech stuff. Full What’s New list here, although some of that is for the paid-for Pro version, which I think is limited to a month demo, something like that.

Never made a game before? Spong In A Posty! Although that’s probably a bit out of date for Unity 3. Maybe it’s time to do another one.

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]

When I was on my plane to Seattle, getting ready to play some games, meet some gamers, and prepare for tomorrow’s Destructoid LIVE panel, I never thought I’d be leaving the first day of PAX with the ability to say that I have played Duke Nukem Forever.

Sometimes things happen that are so bizarre, you don’t know how to process them.

I played Duke Nukem Forever today, and I liked it.

[Note: Please excuse the poor quality of the photographs. We were caught short and had to improvise with my video camera.]

Do you know how you can tell that a game is going to be something special? When it starts with a tutorial telling you how to piss into a urinal. That’s how the demo for Duke Nukem Forever starts, and it really doesn’t get much more highbrow than that.

At its core, Duke Nukem Forever is a solid first-person-shooter. The controls at this stage feel a little loose, but the fundamentals are sound. As you might expect, the gameplay doesn’t exactly have a modern feel, but that’s part of the charm. It feels like a Duke Nukem game — rough and ready, but it absolutely does the trick.

The demo was full of weaponry, ranging from the standard pistols and shotguns to the explosive Devastator, the machine-gun like Ripper, the sniping Rail Gun and the all-important Shrink Ray. Shrinking a porcine alien and then squashing him with a deft melee attack never felt so satisfying.

Duke is capable of performing finishers if he can cripple an alien into a dazed submission. A simple button press and the chewer of bubblegum will perform a gruesome execution. As if ticking all the FPS boxes, there are also gun turret sections. This is not a game that intends to innovate. It just intends to kill loads and loads of bipedal pigs.

As well as the shooting, Duke will also get to drive a logo-branded vehicle. Controls for the driving sections are decent and do a good job of getting our hero from A to B, although the car itself is a little bit bouncy, and there’s plenty of risk of flipping it. Fortunately, Duke can get out of the car and flip it back. In any case, it’s a fun break to just mow down enemies in your car, and at this early stage, with vehicular sections blended into the main gameplay, it doesn’t look like this new form of play will intrude.

One of the highlights of the demo is a huge boss fight against a one-eyed monster, the same fight you may have seen in screens leaked from the game’s long-winded past. Armed with explosive missiles, it’s a pretty easy first boss fight, although when it starts boosting toward Duke and kicking him over, things get a little hairy. The fight takes place in a football stadium, which comes into play during the battle’s grand finish, when the boss’s eye falls out, and Duke proceeds to kick it over the goal in a glorious finisher.

And that, right there, is the kind of thing that is making Duke Nukem Forever look so very promising. As a game, it looks very standard, with graphics that look like they belong in a game that started development twelve years ago, and shooting foundations that don’t feel evolved. As a piece of shameless, crass, unapologetically immature cavalcade of humor, however, Duke Nukem Forever may very well be genius.

Gearbox Software is possibly insane for taking on this project, a game which has twelve years of expectations and notoriety behind it. However, the studio has risen to the challenge and created a game that feels so incredibly Duke that you have to respect it no matter what. This is Duke Nukem at his puerile finest, and just from the demo, I was laughing out loud. It’s not even that it’s particularly witty. The humor is just so incredibly stupid that it starts to take on the illusion of brilliance, and that’s what matters.

Do you know how you can tell that a game is going to be something special? When its demo ends with the main character getting his dick sucked by twins, then admits that his game better be good because it “took twelve fucking years” to make.

Duke Nukem Forever is something special indeed. Tits and pigs and kicking eyes like footballs conspire to make this a serious game of the show contender for me.

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]