Acquire, the folks behindWay of the Samurai,theBadman/My Lordtitles and theTenchuseries (before it started sucking), have been feeling a little indecisive and wantyou, the all-powerful customer, to help them out a bit. They’ve got a poll upon this sitewith a list of genres they’re considering, and want you to vote. Choices include “Samurai Western” (likely a sequel to their ill-fatedSamurai Westernspinoff game), “God”, “Zombie Game”, and “Ninja Game”. That “Ninja Game” option sounds promising, as they never actually releasedShinobido: Way of the Ninja– the game they made after they lost theTenchulicense to From Software – in North America....

Comedy is not an easy thing to achieve. The recent release ofDeathSpankjust makes it look that way. As you can see from the above video, painstaking effort was made by the team at Hothead Games to make sure their game was packed with humor. I didn’t realize there was actually a formula for engineering comedy. It looks and sounds simple enough, but every time I try to pay off the loan shark my roommate borrowed money she lost for my school tuition with cooking lessons for his wife — who winds up being more interested in making sexual advances on me than learning — it manages to fall flat....

We just gotactual confirmationthat Ice T will be joining the cast ofGears of War 3. Let’s slow down here a moment.Gears of Waralready has a stereotypical black guy. There can’t be two of them! What if they touch or something? The world will end in an explosion of stereotyping. Epic is playing with fire here, and we’re all going to pay once the apocalypse occurs. Fear of the end of the world aside, Ice-T is actually a pretty talented guy, and a massive fan of theGearsgames....

Hey, Infinity Ward, why noModern Warfare 2on Wii? It’s the most popular home console, and the game is everywhere else, so why does Nintendo’s white box o’ waggle get Treyarch hand-me-downs instead of the biggest shooter of the year? According to the developer, the answer is simple: The Wii just can’t do what Infinity Ward wants it to do. “If we felt like we could deliver the cinematic experience we were going for on other platforms, then we would gladly move to that platform,”explainsInfinity Ward’s Robert Bowling....

The inevitable is happening:Angry Birdsis making the transition to Facebook. Quite frankly, I’m shocked it hasn’t been done already. Rovio’s “intent” is to get the game out by at least this summer — with May currently in mind — so the productivity of our working force isn’t going down the toilet just yet. Naturally, this version will have added social functionality, a staple of Facebook gaming. I thought the world was supposed to end in 2012, not May of 2011....

Actor Jake GysahlGreens seems to look perpetually doe-eyed and confused in everyPrince of Persiashot I’ve seen. Still, here he is looking much more like the titular Prince than ever before, even if his face does resemble that of a child who just dropped his ice cream on a cat, and is watching the cat run away with it on its back. This is the first official picture from Jerry Bruckheimer’s take onThe Sands of Time....

Composer Yasunori Mitsuda’s music forChrono Triggeris timeless, though it’s said that he feels like he’s done better work. Nonsense. In my opinion, it’s one of the best stand-alone musical scores ever created for anythying, ever. How good is it? Even today, some decade and a half later, one of the game’s main themes is set to live on as a Japanese pop song. Singer/songwriter Pop/R&B artistShota Shimizuhas a new double A-side single, titledUtsukushiki Hibi, set to drop in Japan in the middle of next week....

Ever since theRapeLaycontroversy, the tradition of the “erotic” game has been a touchy subject in Japan, and we don’t mean thegoodkind of touchy. It seems that certain Ero games might not be so acceptable in the land of the Rising Sun anymore, with at least one well known distributor of interactive filthbanninga vast number of titles based on certain key words. The key words banned by online shop Dejipare include things like torture, bondage, loli and rape....

When it seemed as though the collective sweat in the heated presentation hall had permanently bonded throes of gaming journalists to their seats, the one and only Hideo Kojima took to the stage to present the gem of Konami’s Gamer’s Night,Metal Gear Solid 4. In a sigh of confident relief, Kojima announced thatMGS 4was finally complete, dedicated “…to the fans, to the game creators, and to everyone in the industry.” Translated by Konami’s international product manager, Aki Saito, Kojima then proceeded to the stage, and meandered his way through the first twenty minutes of the game for the pleasure of many a weary-eyed onlooker....

Antichrist, Danish director Lars Von Trier’s newest film, hit Cannes this year and divided critics more than two rival console fanboys arguing over which system should be able to use the only outlet left in the house. Some thought it was a stroke of disturbing genius and others just found it disturbing. I’ll toss out a few key words for those you haven’t seen it: torture, sexual abuse, demented talking animals, depression and self inflicted genital mutilation....

Join me as we delve into my collection of unfinished games where we’re playingRatchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Last night, Ratchet came to the discovery that anybody who watched television a month before the release of the game has already made. Indeed, he’s not the last Lombax. Revelation! What other mysteries will be uncovered? Find out by watchingBacklogright now. I’m playing live and hanging out with the goons in our chat room over onDestructoid’s Justin....

I’m guessing that there’s one, maybe two days left inMajin and the Forsaken Kingdom, which I’ve been playing for about two weeks now on Backlog. It’s a slow sort of game. I dare say even contemplative in its environmental puzzles. But we’re pushing through and there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Come join me and all of the awesome folks that hang out every night for a little gaming and casual conversation....

Yes, that is Nintendo’s iconic mascot, recreated in a petri dish out of magical glowing bacteria. This piece of biological retro nonsense was created by researchers from the University of Osaka, whogenetically manipulatedthe bacteria to radiate fluorescent proteins and carotenoid pigments, which are science words that I don’t want to understand. Science we may not know, but wedoknow silly gimmicky videogame references, and that’s certainly what this is. Yes, these scientistscouldbe curing cancer instead of doing this, but if I had to choose between a world free of disease or a world free of glowing bacteria Marios, I’m afraid all those little bald kids are on their own....