My mother always told me not to waste food, and well, I imagine that the mother of this creative dude did so as well. Still, after seeing her son’s epic creation, I imagine that she’ll forgive him. Toast Mario stands as a delicious monument of creativity, and I can’t even begin to imagine the time and attention that would have to have gone into this. I don’t even have the attention span to count how many pieces of bread went into this thing! Now, just imagine how much patience you’d have to have to get every piece cooked to just the right color.

Oh man, mad respect to these guys. Alas, I can’t properly credit them, as the Walyou post doesn’t name them and the original source is currently down, but I hope that their toast was delicious.

Speaking of delicious, a couple of my other favorite nerd breakfast treats are past the cut.

source: Walyou

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Posting about Puzzle Quest 2 yesterday got me thinking about something. With all of the interconnected devices that we have now — the Wii and DS, the PS3 and PSP, and the Xbox and PC (through Live) — why don’t we have games that we can start playing on one device and continue on the next?

Square Enix did something like that with FFCC: Echoes of Time on the DS and Wii, where both devices could play the same game together, but I’m looking more for a way to start playing on your console at night and pick up on your handheld on the way to work the next morning. Take Puzzle Quest, for instance. I bought it on both my DS and on my 360. The reason I got the 360 version was to play online, but I had to go through the whole game again, just so I could use my character to duel some friends online. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could have uploaded my save game and started from where I was in the DS version?

Thinking about it, the only game I can think of that does something similar to this would be Pokemon Stadium. It would take your existing Pokemon and upload them to the console so you could duke it out on the big screen.

Is cloud gaming the solution to this? Last week, Greg mentioned that Steam was coming to Mac. Valve said that with Steam Cloud, you’ll be able to continue playing your games from either Mac or PC. Microsoft is also introducing this with their newly announced Windows Phone 7 device on the Live platform, allowing you to start from where you left off on any Live-enabled device.

So I guess we’re getting there. I’m just wondering why it took this long, since we’ve had interconnected devices for years. What do you think?

Puzzle Quest 2 kind of slipped past my radar during GDC, but a friend told me that it had been announced and shown, so I decided to dig up the info available.

Being a fan of the first one, I was glad to hear there would be a bigger focus on the RPG and story part of the game, while keeping the game mechanics unchanged. The change in mechanics in Galactrix was what turned me off.

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“An epic of epic epicness” pretty much says it all.

All except the sexual and/or violent actions that I would do to get my hands on one of those posters. If you happen to have one… E-mail me, won’t you?

View the full image

Update: High quality versions of the poster are now available on the official site. (and wallpapers too!)

As much as I hated the pre-rendered look of the old Donkey Kong Country games, I have to admit that that series had some seriously awesome music. So, I was pretty excited to see that OverClocked ReMix has finally released their epic remix of DKC2’s soundtrack.

The album, Serious Monkey Business, has been in the works since late 2007 and has involved a ton of blood, sweat, and tears on the part of the artists involved (including the game’s actual composer, David Wise, as well as Rare’s Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland). The end result is a melting pot of a bunch of styles, from trance to rock ballad, and the little bit I have listened to so far this morning is pretty interesting.

The remixed album is completely free, so go download it or go check out a preview.

[Update] Their site appears to be down right now, keep trying the link until it works.

I have to be honest, I hate most game commercials. They’re usually uncreative at best and outright misrepresentations of the content at worst. It’s amazing that some of the best video game advertising I’ve seen has come from commercials that developers have made for fun, clearly never intending that they appear on TV. A couple of examples of this have come out in the past week, leaving a huge grin on my face.

First up, we have Capcom’s Mega Man 10 commercial. It’s all part of the game’s faux-80’s shtick, which is probably why I dig so much. Sadly, Mega Man 10 does not include actual lasers and will probably not make your TV explode.

Dos Equis tastes like horse urine, but I have to give them props for those commercials with the “most interesting man in the world.” Atlus’ latest promo video for 3D Dot Game Heroes lampoons that ad campaign while showing off more of their 8-bit love fest, and I love it.

Both commercials are embedded past the cut. Oh, and while we’re on the topic, what are some of your favorite video game ad campaigns? Let us know in the comments.

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I bet that’s a headline you never expected to see again.

The 4cr Podcast returns, sort of. Yeah, that’s noncommittal, but while we plan to do these every two weeks or so, we also don’t want you to be disappointed if it takes another two and a half years to put the next one out. I’d like to say that we’ve been planning this for a while, but this really came about from Jamie and I deciding to just record something and get it out there.

What should you expect from our premier episode? Well, we’re a little rusty, so we’re starting off slow. No real segments, no Vinnk (there goes 75% of our audience) - just three of us chatting about recent gaming happenin’s.

Topics discussed: 2010 Game Developers Conference, Playstation Move, Metroid: Other M, our irrational love for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the comfort zone of the casual gamer, Tucker’s crippling Tron addiction, and - oh god - Nick Rumas is holding me hostage at gunpoint.

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One of the most interesting things to come out of this year’s GDC for Nintendo fans has been Metroid creator (and Other M producer) Yoshio Sakamoto’s openness regarding just about everything. He’s talked about the fabled Metroid Dread, his diverse inspirations and body of work, and he’s even shed some positive light on the prospects for Kid Icarus Wii, while seemingly shooting down any rumors of its existence in the process. He’s also hinted that Other M may have been on-rails featured classic controls if not for Team Ninja’s input, and provided a comical demonstration of his Japanese hit Tomodachi Collection for GDC attendees. This guy runs the gamut.

Doctor Who, the quirky British science fiction series about a time-traveling drifter and his human companions, is pretty much my favorite thing on television. I’ve always loved its characters, humor, and brains - it isn’t a show about shooting aliens, and I kind of appreciate that from time to time. Ever since the rumor popped up that Telltale was seeking the license, I’ve been craving the chance to play an adventure game based on The Doctor’s travels.

Well, it looks like a game is coming out and, while Telltale isn’t on the case, the BBC might have found an even better caretaker. According to an article published today in The Sun, Nintendo has signed a £10 million deal to develop a Doctor Who game for the Wii.

Don’t expect a shooting fest from the deal, according to the showrunners, they want a game that captures the Doctor’s more cerebral style. As former Doctor, David Tennant put it:

“The video game was quite actively developed, but it’s difficult to nail as the Doctor doesn’t blow things up. He’s not Batman, who goes around smacking people in the head.”

No screenshots have been spotted yet, and Nintendo has yet to officially confirm that the game is in development. In fact, I’m still expecting that the newspaper was confused and that a 3rd party is working on the game, and that it will just happen to be on the Wii.

The article states that the game is being aimed at a Christmas release in the UK. I’m praying that BBC America can bribe Nintendo into bringing it out here. We’ll give you guys an update when this either confirmed or busted.

source: The Sun

You’ve heard all about it, you’ve seen the pictures, and you’ve witnessed the backlash.

Sony’s PlayStation Move launches in the fall of this year, and for all intents and purposes, it appears to be a more technologically advanced take on what Nintendo did with the Wii four years ago. Its flagship title is a PS3-style take on the Wii Sports concept, and other launch titles cover the standard bases — party game, shooting game, fighting game, etc.

So what do you think? Is this something you find exciting, or is it too similar to what’s come before? Do you dig the lollipop design, or are you put off by it? Will games like SOCOM and LittleBigPlanet be enough to justify the estimated 100-dollar price tag? Chime in.

This would make an awesome video game. Just like it is, with giant MK characters chasing down LEGOs in meticulously detailed classic cars. The spiritual sequel to Toy Commander.

source: PhotoTuts+ via Twitter

Our friends over at Klei Entertainment just released a new trailer for their upcoming game The Shank. They’ve recently signed a deal with EA to publish it on PSN, XBLA and PC.

Macs are great - pretty much every single person on the 4cr staff uses them religiously. Unfortunately, they still fall short in one key area (again, especially for the 4cr staff). The games just aren’t there, and booting into Windows to play them is at best a major annoyance.

Well, Valve may just be the key to changing the face of Mac gaming forever. Yes, the same company famous for their PS3 putdowns has officially confirmed that their entire catalog of Source Engine games will arrive on the Mac this April, complete with a Mac-compatible version of Steam. The ability to play Left 4 Dead 2 without rebooting my computer is enough to make my day, but this news gets even more exciting when you dig into the details.

Mac gamers are used to the awful emulation-based ports of games like Civilization 4, and Valve is fully aware of this. These are real, honest-to-goodness ports, running natively in OpenGL. All of Valve’s future games (and updates to those games), starting with Portal 2 will launch simultaneously on Windows and Mac. Additionally, all of Valve’s multiplayer games will be cross-platform, allowing games to compete regardless of operating system.

All of that is incredible, but where Valve could truly revolutionize gaming on the Mac is through the port of their Steamworks APIs. Every single one of the existing tools has made it over to the new platform, along with one new feature - Steam Play. Building on the Steam Cloud, Steam Play allows a gamer on their PC to save their game to Valve’s servers and pick up exactly where they left off on their Mac.

The sum total of this? Any developer using Valve’s tools (and that is a significant number of them) can put out a game on both platforms that is truly cross-compatible, sharing saved games and putting players on both platforms in the same multiplayer games. If that doesn’t get you excited, you probably don’t have a pulse. If they can get those Mac versions running on Linux, I’ll really be a happy gamer.

source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I was lucky enough to get a key to try it last weekend with the rest of the press, and I am completely addicted. Here’s my one sentence take on it.

Take licensed cars, render them in beautiful graphics, add in the insanity of twenty players racing against each other, and mix that with Mario Kart (without the cheating weapons - I’m looking at you blue shell).

From what I’ve been hearing, Activision and Bizzare Creations are calling it the Call of Duty of racing games (mainly because of the online mode). They’re probably not far from the truth. Winning races and doing stuff like dodging attacks, drifting and taking down others will score you Fan points. Fan points are your experience - once you get enough you level up. Leveling will give you access to new cars, and new mods. It works just like the perks in Call of Duty, and it is pretty awesome.

I have more fifty keys for you after the break. The beta starts today, so go redeem them!

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We were all expecting it after all of the attention that the first game received, but it now looks official - Scribblenauts 2 is coming!

Details are still scarce, but it looks like the DS sequel will feature improved controls, 120 new levels, 10,000 new words, a new hint system, and new merits. Also, the par limits have been removed, and the developers are adding in a new “adjective” system.

Honestly, all of that sounds awesome to me. The controls were my biggest issue with the first (well, that and the fact that some items just didn’t work). Add in d-pad control and make sure that the objects interact as they should, and I’ll be in heaven.

Scribblenauts 2 will hit the DS this fall. No word yet on the Wii version that was leaked a little while back.

source: Tiny Cartridge