Marinko Milosevski is not a name I recognize, which I find surprising. If someone is this talented and composing video game inspired art, chances are that I’ve heard of them doing this job when I spend every day looking for such things.

But wow, what a talent. He (she?) has a true eye for graphic design, and I’d love to hang any single one of these in my office. Lucky for me, I can, as there’s a poster store that houses most of the designs. $35 is a steal for these.

Below you’ll find the rest of his Zelda series, and he also covers Metal Gear Solids 1-4. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus round out the collection.  Continue Reading »

I’ve been writing a whole bunch of articles about the Xbox One reveal over at my other job, so much so that I’m sick to death of it only 72 hours later. That said, I really did enjoy this cut of the hour long Xbox presentation into a minute and a half.

You may see…certain terms repeated with alarming frequency. Granted, they did say “games” a lot too if you wanted to hunt down all those instances too, but “TV” and “sports” were certainly over-represented in a reveal about what we thought was a video game console.

And it is, but a great deal of focus was put on all the “other” things the Xbox One can do for this reveal, and what little time was devote to games was really just a 15 minute ad for Call of Duty Ghosts, which isn’t even an exclusive title for the system. It was a perplexing event, to say the least.

The Playstation 4 and Xbox One have now been officially announced, and the most clear proclamation made about either of them has been that neither will play last-generation games. Neither are backward compatible.

Yes, there are various issues about “always-on” connectivity and restriction of used games, but those issues are far more murky and have yet to be resolved. But backwards compatibility keeps coming up as an issue people love to gripe about when it comes to these new consoles.

It’s one that’s never particularly bothered me. I don’t throw away or sell my old consoles, and if I want to play a classic game on a new system, it seems like there are few titles that don’t have a HD remastered version of them out. We didn’t complain when the Gamecube didn’t play N64 games as gaming evolved, so why should we care now?

I’m genuinely curious. From what I can tell, some of this may come from the idea that many people like to sell their old systems to have money to put down toward the new one. Without backwards compatibility, you’re throwing your whole library away too if you do that. Additionally, I guess it’s nice to be able to play classic titles without hooking up an entirely separate system. But how often does that happen? I believe I’ve used backwards capability functionality less than a half dozen times across the lifespan of my PS3 and 360, and it just doesn’t seem all that important to me. Perhaps I’m alone in this, and I’m curious to hear more counter opinions on the matter.

One of the quote “gayest” things I’ve ever said is when I remarked that it must be pretty fun to be a girl because they get to wear a lot of different, colorful pieces of clothing, along with accessories and jewelry and cool shoes. Being a guy means your choices are a lot more limited, and it becomes “which sort of collared shirt do I want to wear out tonight” or “should I wear my dark jeans or my really dark jeans?”

Do you understand what I’m saying here? It’s not that I want to dress up in girl clothes as a guy, nor do I long to have ladyparts, but buying clothes as a male is just a drag, and girls can have a lot more fun with it. I think that’s why they like shopping so much. Now you all are probably questioning my sexuality, so I’ll have my fiancee make a post later explaining that I am indeed straight despite my propensity to raise issues like this one.

ANYWAY, case in point, I can never wear Street Fighter leggings in a socially appropriate way, and that is sad.

I remember going to Gameworks as a kid, because I was born too late to ever really go to a “traditional arcade” to hang out. In my mind, it was the coolest place on earth, and I never wanted to leave.

Well, this kid didn’t have to. His father crafted a vintage video game arcade/bar in his BASEMENT which is actually better than most actual arcades I’ve ever been to. It’s filled with classic titles and a few modern ones. Must-haves in my own version of this would be House of the Dead, The Simpsons and Marvel vs. Capcom.

Check out the rest of the photos below, all sent to me by our long lost Nattyb (probably via reddit). Continue Reading »

With no more Nolan Batman movies to salivate over, the caped crusader’s coolest media outlet for now continues to be the Arkham series of games that started with Asylum, moves to City and now turns to Origins.

Yes, I hate prequels as much as anyone, but in this case, I don’t mind. It’s really just a way to set up a Batman game in the same universe as the others without featuring all the same characters. We’re not really learning the “origin” of Batman, I imagine, something that hasn’t been a mystery for, I don’t know, sixty years.

The first lengthy trailer for the game is above and has Batman battling Deathstroke, last seen fighting Green Arrow in the CW’s Arrow. He’s doing so here at the behest of Black Mask, a comic book villain who hasn’t gotten ANY screen or game time until now, I don’t believe. I remember when it was rumored that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was playing him in The Dark Knight Rises. Hah!

We just featured Dan LuVisi‘s Buzz Lightyear and EVE art, but turns out he’s got even more stuff that I missed. Stuff that is so crazy, I owed it to him, and all of you, to feature it.

Yes, that IS Wreck-It Ralph as a barbarian-esque bloody punching machine above. And below you’ll find horrifying, terrifying versions of Bert and Ernie, Finn from Adventure Time, Donald Duck and more. I would be terrified to peak inside this guy’s brain for even five minutes.

Check out the rest of the craziness below: Continue Reading »

From artist Hannes Greyling comes one of the stranger bits of Pokemon fan art I’ve come across in my travels. The idea is supposedly Pokemon being stranded on a desert island, with only their own powers to entertain them. Judging by the wrinkles, they’ve been there quite a long time.

Charmander may be roasting s’mores above, but Squirtle and Bulbasaur are being…less productive than him in their own GIFs which you can check out below. I wonder if he’ll do more than just the three starters? Continue Reading »

It’s been a long time since I was truly horrified by a video game. Some of my favorite horror video games include the Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and Dead Space among many others. Yet, recent horror games tend to lean towards more action and less of the ‘scare’ element like Resident Evil 6. I missed the days when horror was more of a subtle suggestion instead of an “in your face” kind of thing. Sometimes all you need are silhouettes and an eerie soundtrack to scare the crap out of players. If you think about it, we are mostly frightened by our imagination than what we actually see in the game. Gargantuan and deformed monsters? Pass. Hordes of zombies? Pass. Give me an empty corridor, chilly music, suggestive camera shots, distant echoes of woeful moans (or children laughing), and I can guarantee you a week’s worth of nightmares.

Looking back, one of the best horror video games I have ever played growing up was ‘Forbidden Siren.’ The first entry in the series came out for the PlayStation 2. My cousins and myself had no idea what this game was about when we bought it. We were utterly terrified. Forbidden Siren is a game that features multiple protagonist as they try to escape a town amidst possessed zombie like town’s folk called shibitos. The best thing about this game is that the shibitos don’t die, and you have to rely on the character’s ‘sightjack’ ability (let’s you see through the perspective of the shibitos in the area) to escape. Continue Reading »

I couldn’t beat Skyrim. Not because it was too tough, or because I kept getting lost in the massive game. No, I couldn’t beat Skyrim because I was one of those people you read about who had a game-breaking bug. I couldn’t open up a door I needed to go through to finish the game because a crucial NPC fell through the floor, in the EXACT second the game auto-saved, and I never saw him (nor ever got to get the door open) again. Considering the hundred plus hours I had spent with the game, the final conclusion I had was that was just not okay. If a game is not finished, what right do developers have releasing it to the public? I may be a small sect of the game playing population, but as awesome a Skyrim was, every single person I know experienced atleast one glitch in that game.

Granted, most of the time the glitches were kind of funny, but in my case, they sucked out the enjoyment and made my OCD ass go crazy because I LITERALLY could not finish the game. That was the single moment that really got me thinking what I want out of the slew of next generation systems coming out down the line. With PS4 announced, and the newest addition to the Xbox family being announced later this month, I thought it an awesome time to write out a wishlist for what I would want from the future of gaming. Keep in mind a great deal of this is based solely off of speculation, and is merely me just dreaming out loud, but feel free to take to the comments and let me know what YOU want out of your next generation of gaming. The future is now, people, but maybe it’s not too late for us to help mold it.

Continue Reading »

People always call Xbox the “bro” gaming system, and brings to mind frat guys playing Call of Duty while chugging Natty Ice. But was it the frat boys themselves that started that stereotype, or was it Microsoft, way back when?

The video above is the first promotional video showcasing this new fangled play online system called “Xbox Live.” In it, two blond bros figure out how easy it is to play their games online, all the while making every single obnoxious noise a human mouth can make. My favorite part is how they mute a trash talking girl, because I’m sure the gender flipped scenario has played out about a million times since then.

I also forgot that the first Xbox was actually bigger than my house. Seriously, you could actually murder someone with that thing. Like these guys.