Mario and Luigi are quite the popular pair in the world of homoerotic art, it would seem. Last year we shared Muto Magazine's fetish-tastic spread featuring Nintendo's legendary plumber pair and now we've got a video of the two making out courtesy of Director Alex Goddard.
It's pretty hot.
Well...hot if you ignore the whole incest-thing and all the icky feelings it brings up.
Gamers: We exist in a world of illusion - awash in a sea of pixels and fancy bloom effects - knowing not of Valentines, flowers, chocolates, or any other silly dalliances. Preferring an endless mashing of buttons to the tender embrace of a lover, we troglodytes of the digital realm fritter away the days of our existence behind the comfort of the screen: an elaborate array of colors serving only to veil our otherwise grey existence.
Yet there are those who claim otherwise - that button-mashers and thumbstick jockeys of Earth can, in fact transcend their station - exposing the terrible secret that in the end, we, like our non-gamer counterparts, all long to have doted upon us those three little words: "Come hither, sexy."
So how best to express your Valentinian bliss? You could bow before the altar of the greeting card industry - that monstrous, corporate hydra, mass-marketing sentiment to the masses, with the implicit notion that refusing to buy their snake oil means that you don't love the object of your affection - or you could turn to the mad, mad world of "free and clever" that is the internet. Suck it, Hallmark.
Indeed, for those among you with a special gamer in your life, the infinite cyberscape has gifted you with some video game-themed Valentine's Day cards. Even Andrew Ryan, whose immense displeasure with "all things love" has been duly noted on the site, finds himself powerless against Cupid's pagan sorcery.
So check out the lovely loveliness after the jump, and prance fancifully (or gaily, depending on that for which the moment calls) through the flowering fields of love, and into the soft, pillowy bosom of Dame Romance.
I hate to sound like everyone's father, but I know what this "Halloween" business is all about. Yeah, you say that you're just going to get together with a few friends, have a drink or two, and perhaps cut a bit loose. Well I've been there Buster, and let me tell you, it goes wrong before you even get a chance to say, "What's your name, Candy*ss?" Soon enough you wake up in a jail cell with a pounding headache, an inability to recall the previous night, and as you will later find out from your doctor, a nasty case of VD.
So how do you purge your soul of the shame and regret accumulated over those fateful few hours? The answer is simple, and frankly, I'm disappointed that you haven't already guessed: BioShock Monopoly. Indeed, free market problems (i.e. lots of alcohol and terrible costumes) require free market solutions - especially fitting for the subject at hand, as one of the major themes in BioShock is capitalism. Keep in mind this is the Randian, "beat the working class until they cry, and then laugh at them for being weak" variety, rather than the regulated form to which we've become accustomed, but the same rule applies. This version of Monopoly comes as a digital download, including the board, all the title deeds and, more important than life itself, money. Unfortunately, as I go through the images in the BioShock Monopoly zip file, I see that it is missing the "Swami" and "Power to the People" cards, which I can only assume are the equivalent of "Chance" and "Community Chest." In fairness, quite a bit of work was put into everything else, and it would have no doubt been extraordinarily time consuming to write up and design them all. One will simply have to make do with the standard Monopoly cards, so long as you refer to the latter as "Venture Capitalist's Chest" - or something along those lines.
You'll probably need to fork over a decent chunk of change to enjoy this creation, assuming that, like me, you are without a printer. When I'm not doing articles for the site, I'm slaving away at a retail store working in the consumer printing sector which, while sending me headlong into a drinking habit so severe that I cough blood every morning not the most fulfilling job, does give me some insight into the cost of these sort of things. Be forewarned: Color printing can add up quickly, and the cost of the board (which will be considered large format printing) can be downright predatory. However, should you feel inclined to bring this beauty into the physical realm - it is quite impressive indeed - know that I will envy you from afar. BioShock Monopoly can be downloaded at this link.
I will give the following caveat: Corvus is a friend of mine, and I have been watching him develop this project for quite some time. What project? This Kickstarter funded project to publish a tabletop game.
"But Vorpal!" you might exclaim, "what does this have to do with these games of video or gay gaming, or--"
Here I would interrupt you. I have spoken with Corvus about this project at length over the years. What he is offering is an open platform: one that operates less on numbers and spreadsheets and tons of rulebooks, and one that puts the focus on telling stories. What type of stories?
I've seen quite the range. From story rules involving Cthulhu, to siblings attending a funeral, and as I have discussed with him, the stories we may wish to tell, whether they focus on being LGBT or not. The name itself, Bhaloidam, which is derived from roots that mean "story", "play", and "community," depends on people getting together and telling stories they want to tell and have a game to play while doing so.
Since I also know Corvus personally, I know he is a vocal supporter of this community, and I wish to invite any who might be interested in supporting him in turn. As of writing this, the project is $5,986 away from funding, and has five days left. Kickstarter campaigns often see surges in the last few days, so here's to wishing Corvus the best of luck!
If you do have questions, please feel free to contact Corvus himself, as he tends to be a pretty chatty, open fellow.
P.S. If you have a project of your own you wish to discuss with us, please feel free to email me and we'll start talking.
Just coming back from PAX and need some warm, cottony comfort to chase away the feeling of being surrounded by non-gamers? Well, Mojang has you covered--they've teamed up with Happy Socks (also Swedish!) to bring you a run of official Minecraft socks.
As shown, they come in a fully stackable, fully destructible little dirt block, and the effect only gets better once you open it and find a wearable piggy face, creeper, or mountain collage. Slip them on, and Happy Socks hopes you'll agree that the singular pixel style of Minecraft has never wrapped your toes quite like this! One glance at the isometric trees and everyone will know your calves are something special.
These may be more of a collector's item than a vanity thing, however: this socks-box will set you back $45. That's not a horrible price when one considers the 'prestige fee' that most official gaming gear carries, but the idea of spending that much and then even daring to break the seal and get some ambient carpet dirt on them is enough to make me shy away - let alone allowing them to wear out completely. But, if you've got the gold ore to make it happen, you should get them while the collab is still good!
In the video above, check out republican presidential candidate and Godfather's Pizza founder Herman Cain quoting some inspiring words he attributes only to "a poet."
Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it's never easy when there's so much on the line.
That poet? Disco siren Donna Summer, singing The Power of One, the theme song for Pokemon: The Movie 2000.
As NY Magazine points out, Cain has previously attributed the lyrics to the ending theme to the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, however that's not true. This also isn't an isolated incident, as he's repeated the same quote a number of times. According to the Bennington Vale Press, Cain owns his love of the movie: "I didn't want to see it, but I did it for the children and the grandchildren. A powerful piece of cinema." For those who haven't seen it, in short the movie is about a greedy pokemon trainer who nearly ruins the planet's climate by refusing to heed the warning of experts. Powerful.
Herman Cain has previously called being gay a sin and a choice and has made the imaginary threat of Sharia law a cornerstone of his floundering campaign, so it's possible that this is actually the most reasonable thing he's ever said.
If you're reading this site chances are you spent this past weekend in one of two ways: Enjoying Up Your Alley 2011 in San Francisco or enjoying EVO 2011 in Las Vegas.
DigitalLit and I happened to be at the former dressed in leathers doing things we can't talk about here and Kayo Satoh aka Kayopolice was at the latter dressed as Street Fighter's C. Viper playing (non-competitively), commentating, and generally just being adorable.
Who is Kayo Satoh you ask?
The twenty-two-year-old is known for her successful modeling career in Japan, her prowess as one of Japan's top Tekken and Street Fighter players, and for being quite the cosplay enthusiast. And also for how she was born: as a boy; a fact she unveiled in September 2010.
The competitive fighting game world might seem like a harsh place and while it in many ways can be it is also a subculture sub-subculture? that has ethnically diverse, female, homosexual, and transgendered(Ed. Note: Originally this read transgendered, and as Mittens points out in the comments, should have read transgender. We will endeavor to make sure such is used in the future.) transgender people as some of their most notable members.
Do you ever remember going to the school library, browsing through the various books available to see if anything looked interesting? Remember coming across some of the well-worn older ones in the fiction section that had ambiguous, monochromatic illustrations printed on the cover? Remember how they seemed a little cheap but at the same time carried a bit of an enticingly creepy ambiguity about the story within? UK artist AJ Hateley certainly does and has created several as a part of his/her (I'm really not sure of AJ's gender; the Tumblr blog is ambiguous) project on Tumblr called "Thirty Days of Video Games." The illustrations are fantastic and do a magnificent job of evoking that slightly eerie-yet-fascinating vibe that some old fiction paperbacks have and cover a wide swath of games, like Super Mario Land, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and Shadow of the Colossus (which is my personal fave of the bunch so far). Head on over to the Tumblr blog and give the artwork a look-see, and you lucky UK residents can even buy prints starting at the low, low price of £1.50.
And I will express personal gratitude in some presently unspecified-yet-enthusiastic and moderately publicly inappropriate way to the person who makes Majora Quest Series: A Link Adventure Novel a real thing.
Moving on: I've had a long and difficult relationship with handheld gaming devices - a history with which I will not bore you right now. That being said, I have recently found myself in possession of a 3DS and while the current selection of games doesn't exactly leave me overwhelmed with options, something totally unexpected - something other thanthe Ocarina of Time - has me hooked on the little system: .MPOs. "Whatever do you mean?" you may ask. Simple: 3D jpegs.
In full disclosure, I'm a photography nut. Actually, I'm a photography something-else-that-rhymes-with-"ut", but this is a family site. I have no fewer than ten cameras in my den, ranging from a 50 year-old twin-lens reflex beauty(which takes pictures that absolutely spank the modern cameras I've played with...sigh...) to a "prosumer" Canon body that I bought during my recent near-wholesale capitulation to digital photography. Now, to add to my collection, I have a stereoscopic camera - my 3DS. It may not be a Mamiya, but it's opened me up to a new way of taking, and viewing, pictures.
So this time, I'm going to take the commonly accepted concept of "romance" and apply it to game development. Seems like a connection that doesn't make a lot of sense, at first. Games are just fun ways to pass time, romance is that mushy, gushy stuff best saved for Lifetime Network and real life. What do we want romance in our games for? And where does Romance fit into Halo, or
There's some very good reasons why the best games deeply involve the concept of romance in their creation, and more importantly, in their execution. During this article I'm going to talk a little bit about what romance means to me, and how it affects a game during its design and after its release.
Before he became a suspicious, murderous mess loosely presiding over a corrupt corner of the ocean, Andrew Ryan had a posh life in New York - but not a comfortable one, with his fiery ethics opposing modern society at every turn. That's one part of the story told by the first Bioshock novel, Bioshock: Rapture. Published by TOR and written by John Shirley (The Crow, Black Butterflies), it chronicles the creation and dissolution of one of the most ambitious and politically charged settings in any video game.
While Rapture itself is the brainchild of Irrational Games, it was later given over to 2K Marin to enact a sequel, which carried Ken Levine's blessing but not necessarily an archival approval. Part of what made the sequel stand out as a cash-in was its deathmatch multiplayer, supposedly taking place during the genetic haywire of Rapture's civil war. (Rather than undergo a horrifying and irreversible transformation, players got to fight over a 'Big Daddy' powerup for a moment of awesome stompyness!) It's unclear from the Amazon description whether the novel will include such powerups, but whether it does will certainly color purists' perceptions of it.
Bioshock: Rapture may also answer some questions about how the Ryan/Fontaine rivalry ended in such disaster while still apparently staying within the confines of an objectivist utopia. To get a feel for the period language and setting, check out the preview on TOR's website. The full book is $17 for paper, or $10 as an eBook. Commerce!
From internet magazine Independent Visual Publication Muto, comes this gorgeous spread featuring two very hot men as the legendary plumbers.
You can check out the rest of the spread, and the entire issue, right here. But be warned, while not at all pornographic the issue is quite naughty and most certainly NSFW.
More SFW hotness under the cut. I promise shirtlessness and mustaches.
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Just coming back from PAX and need some warm, cottony comfort to chase away the feeling of being surrounded by non-gamers? Well, Mojang has you covered--they've teamed up with Happy Socks (also Swedish!) to bring you a run of 
Before he became a suspicious, murderous mess loosely presiding over a corrupt corner of the ocean, Andrew Ryan had a posh life in New York - but not a comfortable one, with his fiery ethics opposing modern society at every turn. That's one part of the story told by the first Bioshock novel, Bioshock: Rapture. Published by TOR and written by John Shirley (The Crow, Black Butterflies), it chronicles the creation and dissolution of one of the most ambitious and politically charged settings in any video game.
