From the official press release:

Players will delight in producing fantastical and sometimes hilarious interactions between the Mario and Legend of Zelda characters and objects, alongside everyone’s favorite word-wielding Scribblenauts adventurer, Maxwell. Discovered Nintendo characters and objects will behave in the fun and fantastical ways they do in their respective game worlds.

Nintendo’s number one asset is its library of iconic characters, so what better way to give third party publishers a boost than by loaning out some of those characters for a Nintendo-exclusive experience?

Loaning characters out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry may not be in Nintendo’s best interest, but Nintendo can still lay out some guidance and insight into their philosophies to third party developers in order to help create that unique Nintendo experience consumers look for when buying a Nintendo product.

I hope to see more of this kind of thing in the future. When Nintendo starts working with third party developers and publishers to create experiences unique to Nintendo platforms, everybody wins.

Howard Phillips talks to The Indoor Kids podcast about the early days of Nintendo of America, Nintendo Power, and some of the philosophy Nintendo employed in the early days of console gaming. This absolutely fascinating interview suffers from some audio quality issues, but it’s well worth a listen.

Speaking of Gamemaster Howard, he has a woefully underfunded Kickstarter project in the form of an iOS brain training game. As of this writing, only $15,341 has been pledged of the $50,000 goal with 7 days remaining.

Community blogger, vApathyv, over at Destructoid has a chilling answer to the question: “Have you ever felt like you could relate to a character from a video game?”

I think I can honestly admit that Max Payne is who saved me from my addiction.

Quite the antithesis to the mainstream media’s standard line on drugs and violence in video games.

A lazy, condescending dismissal of some of the best games of the past year.

On Mass Effect 3:

The amount of violence was both staggering and curiously untroubling: it was bland and empty – just like the game itself. Boring, sci-fi tosh, I wrote in my notebook. Alien both literally and metaphorically.

Some good stuff in the comments, though. Apologies to all the moms who aren’t stuck up, book-obsessed windbags.

Speaking of Windows 8, Microsoft has started taking pre-orders for Surface tablets. Same price tiers as WiFi iPads, 32GB with or without the keyboard cover, or 64GB with. Shipping the 26th of this month.

Windows 8 doom and gloom and entitlement from Casey Muratori at Gamasutra:

However, it is clear from Microsoft’s publications on Windows 8 that in order to participate in the new user interface, you must distribute your application through the Windows Store. That means as of October, Microsoft itself will become the sole source of software for everything you run on a Windows machine that isn’t relegated to the older desktop ecosystem.

It’s every American’s God-given right to use Microsoft’s new APIs however they want!

He goes on to predict the future:

For any developer keen on creating the breakthrough software of the future, it should be abundantly clear that the closed nature of Windows 8’s new ecosystem will be catastrophic for the platform. There’s no question it should be opened. But developers aren’t the people in charge of the policies for Windows 8.

Abundantly clear!

The most insightful bit in the article comes from the first commenter, who wisely points out that this is much more likely to be a move toward pushing the Xbox as Microsoft’s games platform and Windows as its productivity platform. My own guess is that they’re feeling out a variety of paths right now. Digital distribution on both dedicated and general purpose platforms, Apple-like content control for tablet devices, and continued support for classic Windows game development on non-RT Win8 platforms. They’re hedging their bets while testing the waters.

One question for the “they can pry my gaming PC from my cold, dead hands” crowd – How much longer will PC gaming remain truly relevant? This past generation already saw a larger dip than normal in its relevancy, with only World of Warcraft and the occasional Steam sale keeping interest alive at all for several years. Windows has been regaining strength as a platform of late to be sure, but how much of this can be attributed to the extended console cycle this generation has seen? My current video card is two generations old, and rarely has trouble keeping up with new releases. I’m not claiming we’ll ever reach a point where a pimped out PC isn’t noticeably better than a console, but I do think we’re heading to a point, probably in the next generation or two, where people will stop caring.

Gaming Angels has a brief opinion piece on Nintendo’s latest ad campaign, which features various famous women (Gabrielle Douglas stars in one) proudly proclaiming “I’m not a gamer” while holding out their 3DS.

I partly agree with GA’s take on the ads, that they’re dismissive of gamer culture and somewhat imply that a successful woman would never self-identify as a gamer. But I also see what they’re going for, and who they’re marketing to, and I’m not convinced that inclusiveness is a bad thing. Why are these things only for Gamers-with-a-capital-G? Are movies only for Film Buffs? Are novels the sole domain of Bookworms? Ultimately, this sort of abandonment of the hardcore is a necessary step in gaming’s transition from niche interest to legitimate artistic medium. There will always be room for dedicated aficionados to argue about the finer points of troop placement in XCOM, but that doesn’t mean we should be offended when someone makes something for Someone Who Is Not Us, or even makes an ad implying that those terrifying Others might like to dip their toe in the pool.

Eric Caoili:

Against strong competition like Nintendo’s 3DS and the flourishing mobile market, PS Vita has sold only 2.2 million units worldwide as of June. While Sony has been hesitant to share monthly sales data for the system in the West, it’s getting trounced in Japan not just by 3DS but by PSP, its seven-year-old predecessor. That’s been the case for the most part since the portable’s launch there last December.

The Vita is my handheld of choice this generation. The screen is beautiful, the hardware feels solid, and it’s capable of much more than the 3DS. Buying Sound Shapes or Retro City Rampage on the handheld and getting the PS3 version along with it is a wonderful, super consumer-friendly innovation. I think Sony made a mistake with the gimmicky back touch panel and the 3G models, but it would be a real shame to see the platform fail for want of new content.

The Verge’s Alexa Ray Correia got a chance to sit down with one of my favorite artists, Yoshitaka Amano, at New York Comic Con this weekend:

“When people look at the 16-bit characters and earlier iterations of these games, we know they don’t look like real, engaging, compelling characters,” Amano said. “But my artwork came with the box and showed this characters in great detail. Even though they play with 16-bit characters, inside their head players see these beautiful characters like the ones I draw.”

The whole interview is a great read.

Oh Capcom, you aren’t even hiding that you are pissing all over a beloved franchise anymore. First this game looked like a weekend project already, then they are just going all fuckwild with the canon and now we learn really, not only can it be done in a single day, but with an auto play included at that.

Look, if you want to piss away all that money to make a Mega Man game, give it to some people who care, and obviously way more than you do at that. Hell, give it to me at Critical Damage. I adore this series like it was my first born.

Tracey Lien at The Verge reports:

Over the weekend EA sent out special download codes as thanks to those who completed a survey, entitling them to one free game download from EA’s online store, Origin. But [a] blunder in the code’s security meant that the code could be used to download as many games as the user wanted, resulting in a Reddit thread where code recipients exploited the error and passed their codes around.

And the pile of shame grows larger…

In theory, this move to the free-to-play model should bring in more players to utilize Sony’s a la carte SingStore service. However, SingStar still requires the use of USB microphones, which may prove to be enough of a hinderance for new players curious to try the game.

Kyle Orland over at ars technica reports that the latest Android offering from Square Enix will not launch on rooted Android devices due to a deliberate check for root that occurs at launch.

Why Square Enix would do this is still a bit of a mystery. As Orland rightly points out, Android piracy is a simple fact of life, whether a device is rooted or not.

A great collection of Pile of Shame confessions from some major players in the games industry. My own Pile might be taken as a sign of mental illness if it were ever to come up in a court of law.

Emily Gera reporting for The Verge:

Stewart now states he wishes he released the title as a paid app, explaining that he “prefer [to] shoot for like a hundred thousand downloads at a few bucks each, instead of praying for 3 million players.”

Mobile gaming’s race to the bottom claims another victim.